This German article was written as a collaboration with the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich and first published on Inside IT, later on UZH News.
New Work erlaubt mehr Flexibilität beim Organisieren und Strukturieren der eigenen Arbeit. Dies kann zwar zu erhöhter Produktivität führen, aber die Teamarbeit leidet öfters darunter. Wie geht das unter einen Hut?
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Since a few colleagues asked me how I’ve prepared for my recent Scrum.org Product Owner certification, I am summarizing my preparation for easy reference. Note that I’ve passed the exam in November 2021, it might have changed since then.
First of all, I want to emphasize that the exam tests that you’ve understood the theoretical foundation and basic processes of being a Scrum Product Owner (PO) in theory. In my opinion, it’s much more important to actually work as a PO in practice, learn with and from your teams, and grow with them as the processes and product matures.
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It is with a deep regret that we announce that we will shutdown our beloved service, Picturex. We started Picturex almost five years ago, with a small team of passionate and experienced engineers and IT-professionals at MIT Cloud Innovation AG. Over the years, we have tried to follow our vision of making photo sharing private, secure and easy.
It has been a fantastic journey for us, we have learnt a lot, and we want to THANK YOU, our valued users, supporters, testers and partners, for giving us the opportunity to serve you! 😍
Hello everyone,
it’s with a heavy heart that we share with you the news that TouchMountain will be shutting down on December 31th, 2018.
The past seven years have been an incredible journey for all of us. What started as a university industry project at MIT Cloud Innovation AG shortly after Windows Phone 7.5 launched, quickly grew into an award-winning app, with love and support from almost 70′000 users. Our database stored almost 900′000 different mountains, overall almost 100′000 peaks have been recognized, and the top peaks (Mount Everest, Matterhorn, Rigi, Pilatus) were each recognized thousands of times. We want to say a big THANK YOU to all our users, supporters, testers and sponsors/partners 😍
One topic that many software developers in our productivity studies are very vocal about are meetings. For example, in an online survey with 379 developers, 58% described meetings as a waste of time – one of the main reasons for feeling unproductive. In this blogpost, I explore reasons why meetings are so unpopular, especially for developers, and discuss why I think meeting agendas could make your meetings more efficient and successful!
Update 2022: The new modern hybrid workplace scenarios show that finding a balance between deep work and collaboration is more important than ever. Since we are still receiving strong interest from companies and individuals for using the FlowLight, we revived the project. Learn more here!
Original post: I am extremely happy to announce our newest project, FlowLight, a traffic-light-like light for knowledge workers to reduce their interruptions at work, and makes them more productive! The research project, published with the title “Reducing Interruptions at Work: A Large-Scale Field Study of FlowLight”, was conducted in close collaboration with researchers at ABB. It was also awared with an Honorable Mention award.
I am a frequent reader of Paul Thurrot’s Microsoft Insider blog and think this one about securing your internet identity/accounts is very worth to share, and probably a good intention to do (soon) in 2017!
In the blog post, he talks about how important and easy (!) it is to secure your online accounts on Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Google, and so on with the Two-Factor-Authentication and why you should use a separate password for each online service you are using! As probably nobody can remember all the passwords used anyway, he recommends to use a password manager, such as LastPass or KeePass.
You can find the article on thurrot.com. Start now, and secure your online identity!
Why is Microsoft suddenly back as a leader in the mobile and cloud computing space? Jay Greene from the Wall Street Journal has asked the question to many Microsoft top executives and learnt of how the company shifted strategies under Satya Nadella. This includes acknowledging not getting everything right, buying talent (i.e. startups), and making people responsible for products even if they don’t have a 10-year-long history at Microsoft.
The lengthy, very worth-to-read article can be found here.
Are you a wedding planner (or organizing your friends’ wedding) and are you looking for a way to collect the best photos from the big day without breaking a sweat? – Search no more!
Picturex makes it incredibly easy to collect all photos, the guests and even the professional photographer take at the wedding in a single, shared space! With Picturex, the best wedding memories are easily shared with newly-weds and guests and even printed – no complex organization or set-up required!
Learn here how you can use Picturex for your wedding company and how you can gain a unique marketing opportunity and help the newly-weds get the best memories of their big day!
Unsere Picturex-App, die bisher für Private den einfachen und sicheren Foto-Tausch von Fotos während einem Event mit allen Gästen ermöglicht, wurde kürzlich um ein weiteres Angebot erweitert: Mit Picturex für Business können Firmen ganz leicht das User Engagement, die Kundenzufriedenheit und Verkäufe steigern. Einzelne Funktionen können gemäss Ihren Wünschen aktiviert werden, die Apps (Web und mobile Apps) können mit Ihrem Corporate design umgesetzt werden und in die bestehende (oder eine neue) Infrastruktur integriert werden. Alle Informationen zum Angebot sehen Sie hier.
Haben Sie Fragen? Wir beraten Sie gerne!
Es freut mich sehr, verkünden zu dürfen, dass Picturex vor kurzem einen ersten internationalen Award gewonnen hat. Und zwar ist es der Silicon Beach App Award in der Kategorie Photo.
Vor kurzem wurden wir von WindowsArea.de, einer der grössten deutschsprachigen Windows-News-Site, angefragt, ob wir Interesse an einem Interview hätten. André Meyer hat sich sehr gerne dem Interview gestellt und Fragen zu unseren Apps (Picturex, TouchMountain & Co) und der neuen mobilen Strategie mit Microsoft (Stichwort: One Microsoft) beantwortet.
As part of a promotion with MyAppFree, we are offering the full version of TouchMountain for free (instead of 2.99$) today (8th September).
> Download TouchMountain here.
By the way: Right now, we are working on a completely new Live View (Augmented Reality). It will still take 1-2 months until it’s ready; this is why we are offering the current version for free. Everyone who downloads TouchMountain today will of course also get the update for free when it’s ready.
> Do you want to get the update earlier? Register as a Beta-Tester here.
Last week was a busy week: Just a few days, after we released a big update for Picturex (see the next blogpost), we traveled to Brussels to pitch our app in front of a Jury at the AppCup 2015. The AppCup was hosted by Microsoft as a part of the IAMCP Summit 2015. Prior to the pitch, we received some extensive Pitch training by Lars Sudmann, a presentation and pitching specialist. The pitch went great and we got incredible feedback: Most were interested in our unique technology of having a secure and private data exchange, but still having a service that is easier than any other service. We hope, we can use the feedback to add some new and useful features and start some partnerships. In the end, we didn’t win the AppCup, but are very happy to have received the nomination as one of the top three (out of 100) business-to-consumer (B2C) apps in the mobile apps world.
A few weeks ago, we got the good news to be nominated for the European AppCup 2015 Award in the category B2C with Picturex. Next week, we will pitch Picturex in front of a jury in Brussels.
If you want, you can follow us and our experiences in Brussels with this shared photo album (PicEx) (just install the free Picturex app, click on the link again and you’re good to go; works with Windows Phone, Android and iPhone).