immedia Newsletter: June 2013

Warm yourself this winter with a fireside fable

It’s the season of snug reading underneath the covers. What better way to do this than from your iPad? We’ve recently produced a collection of interactive children’s stories to captivate your kids’ imaginations. And just in case you’re ready to shed those pjs, we’d like to have you join us as our devs share experiences and insights gained from their recent adventure at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier this month.

Meet your kids’ new favourite characters

This month saw the release of our first richly illustrated, interactive iBook directed at kids. Lezulu Fireside Fables, Volume: 1 is the first in a five-volume series centred on some of Africa’s best-loved creatures. Each story emphasises wildlife conservation and attempts to help children learn valuable life lessons as they journey along the African plains with author Lezulu’s charming animal characters. This series also encourages learning and development through fun, easy-to-read material, with a review section at the end of every volume to help reinforce the main concepts introduced to them.

Whether you’re a kid or a kid at heart, you’ll enjoy learning how Ronnie the rhino got his horn, why Jamima the Hippo lives in water or why Leonard the leopard will never change his spots. Want to catch up on a bit more interactive reading? Then check out our other books in the African Storybook library.

Bringing a world of discovery back home

Since 2008, our developers have been attending Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco, giving them a direct portal to the future of digital innovation and opportunity. We also do this with the aim of them returning with valuable insight into the future of app development in order to share this with their peers and local community, providing them with the a way to redefine their own development.

This year, Apple made several big announcements including a MacBook Pro and revising their OS naming process by going against the tradition of naming them after big cats and calling the latest version OS X Mavericks (a new tradition of naming them after places of significance in California). Apple launched iTunes Radio and developed App Nap to redirect battery consumption. Amongst other big developments are tagging, multiple display, password management, smart calendar, iBooks on Mac and an array of improved functionality on iOS 7. Our devs will be discussing key aspects from WWDC at our #OpenNight this Thursday, 27 June. We’ll also be rounding up Microsoft Build, as they share their advancements at their developer conference this week.

To find out more about our #OpenNight or to RSVP for this one, email opennight@immedia.co.za.

Interesting insights…

When to Use the 5 iOS Apps You Never Use – Mashable
3 June 2013

Some apps just don’t get the love they deserve. Whether they’re native programs that came installed on your phone or an early purchase that seemed like a good idea, these apps are like guests that overstay their welcome. But they don’t have to be. Apple is notorious for pre-programmed apps and rigid barriers against customization. So how can you get the most out of your iPhone while working within its parameters? Specifically, how can you use the apps … that seem unusable? We’ve selected five such apps that can still serve a function… more

Want cheap high-performance computing at scale like Google? Look to GPUs – Gigaom
17 June 2013

Some startups pitch themselves as ways to extend certain impressive things Google can do to everyone, from real-time website updates to machine learning. One of Google’s next-generation projects is without doubt the so-called Google Brain, to make search and other products behave more intuitively based on information Google already knows about users. Now one researcher behind Google Brain is showing how other companies can do their own deep-learning computations at a non-Google price with GPUs and Infiniband interconnects… more

What Microsoft Must Achieve With Build 2013 – Mashable
25 June 2013

Microsoft recently launched Office for the iPhone. In years past, when Microsoft software didn’t just rule, but defined “computing,” bringing its gold-standard productivity suite to the world’s most popular device would have been a gigantic move, with millions of users downloading and using it within hours… more

Instagrams from the team

@anice
Great article on @immediaza in the Sunday Tribune Business supplement today. Really proud of all the team have achieved

@paul5000
Where magic happens

@selenish
Some of my favourite people doing some of their favourite things with their favourite devices