Travellers addicted to their devises

According to a survey commissioned by Four Points by Sheraton Hotels, a Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc brand a majority (55%) of survey respondents bring three or four devices with them on the road. This is true across all nationalities. Brazilian respondents were more likely than others to juggle five or more devices while traveling (27%), while Germans were the least device-dependent, with 33% reporting they travel with only one or two. This survey polled a total of 6,000 business travellers globally - 1,000 each from the United Kingdom, Germany, United States, China, India and Brazil. Other finding of the report  was that Smartphones were the travellers’ #1 device. Business travellers are glued to their smartphones. After landing, the majority (54%) turn on their smartphone while the plane is still taxiing on the tarmac, while 12% — ahem — never turn it off in the first place. The remaining respondents wait until they’re in the terminal or settle into their taxi/car (17% each). Checking their smartphone is also the first thing respondents do when they wake up in their hotel (36%).  Only 19% turn on the TV first and 18% take a shower. Checking Facebook (12%) ranks fourth, while calling home has a distant fifth (7%). Tablets beat laptops. Nearly seven in 10 respondents (68%) use their tablet more often than their laptop, and accordingly a similar number (69%), if told they could take only one of the two on the road, would choose to travel with their tablet. In Europe, UK (67%) and German (70%) respondents prefer their tablets to a computer.

(Use as a graph)

What three or four devices are respondents likely to bring while travelling?

 Smartphones are tops (74%), followed by tablets (65%), music players (43%) and laptops (32%). 

A Leap in technology

After more than five years of development, a proprietary technology has emerged that synthesises the shape and movement of the human hand to produce movement onto a computer. It’s called The Leap - and for an astonishingly low price of QR255 ($70), you can begin to control a computer with nothing more than your hands, as early as next February.

“We really wanted to build a device that would actually be leaps and bounds better at doing a lot of things that most people want to do with their computers,” says Michael Buckwald, CEO, Leap Motion to Mashable. “And in order to do that, you need to be able to track fingers, and you need to be able to do that at a deep, centimeter level.”

Living Social exits from MENA

LivingSocial has confirmed its rumored exit from the Middle East and North Africa. In a statement, the global daily deals company revealed its rationale. “At the beginning of 2012, LivingSocial laid out its strategic plan. We continue to aggressively execute against that plan by focusing on areas with the greatest opportunity for growth and profitability. As a result, LivingSocial will suspend its Middle East operations and direct company resources to other regions. All LivingSocial ME merchants will receive their payments, and we are working with them to ensure all outstanding vouchers will be honored. Should any LivingSocial ME members or merchants have questions, we encourage them to contact us at me.help@livingsocial.com,” said Brendan Lewis, Director of Corporate Communications for LivingSocial.

Incompatibility between teams or fallout from company restructuring or rebranding appear not to have been an issue; Lewis confirmed that the culture at GoNabit was a great match for LivingSocial. Yet as the daily deals giant moves towards profitability, reportedly narrowing net losses from $198 million in the second quarter of 2011 to $93 million during the same period in 2012, perhaps the time has come to batten down the hatches and exit a market that is generally acknowledged to be difficult for e-commerce.  

Google Chrome for iOS

Google has announced its first update to Google Chrome for iOS, adding the ability to share pages from the browser directly on your favorite social network, including Facebook and Twitter.

Google Chrome for iOS was announced and launched at the company’s annual developer’s conference in June.

The mobile browser offers a number of features already available in its desktop version, including synched tabs; if you’re checking out a website on your iPhone, you can open it on your desktop computer, and vice versa. Users can also share saved passwords between devices, bookmarks and search history. The updated version of Chrome for iOS is now available in the App Store.

UAE innovation

UAE based companies Arabi on TV and SkyGrid have collaborated to develop Touch TV - the first free application to watch TV shows on Facebook, according to a report in a UAE daily.

The app, which works on all major operating systems, is designed to tap into the way people in the region access social networking sites for entertainment. Marwa Abdel Wahed, Head of Strategy at Arabi On TV states “The app allows users to watch more than 20 television channels free of charge via Facebook.”