Better decision support at iPad

Translated from Computer Sweden by Google translate:

Of Joel Åsblom

The Swedish decision support provider QlikTech has developed a version of QlikView iPad. Among the users are a Dutch customer who has supplied 150 offices with Apple’s tablet PC.

Qlikview of various widgets.

QlikTech has recently invested heavily in developing mobile versions of the decision support tool QlikView. 

– We tailor Qlikview for iPad, iPhone and Android. One can of course also run regular QlikView AJAX client in the browser on them, “says marketing manager Jennifer Ehle QlikTech.

She says that many Swedish customers running pilots of mobile clients, mainly on the iPhone, and that interest is also great from the outside world. The latest example is the Dutch mortgage lender, the Hypotheekshop as equipped sellers of 150 offices with Apple iPad. With them will Qlikview enhance sales and improve customer service.

Among the advantages of QlikView brings out is that Ipadversionen of Qlikview has features to analyze business data directly with customers. Since the iPad has built-in GPS, you can, for example to obtain local information about the inventory data to customers within a specific geographic area.

Qlikview HD will initially be designed for the multi-touch interface that is available in Apple’s tablet PC where you can both tap, pinch and drag to select data points.

Bye-bye Browser (?)

For more and more online users the device of choice is a mobile device and for more and more of these users  ‘Apps are the Web and the Web is Apps”.

Applications (Apps)  for mobile devices can be downloaded and installed in seconds. These apps focus on certain needs and perhaps half a dozen of Apps meet the daily online demands for you and me.

With Apple’s planned App store for laptop and desktop computers  these devices join this philosophy, too.  So what about the future of Websurfing using classic browsers? And what about the future of complex Websites offering many levels of browser navigation and tons of pages delivering information?

The discussion (the fight) is under way and the users will decide.

For information suppliers like statistical agencies this issue is of huge importance.

How to ensure the mission for public information and democracy given such developments in the online world?

– with traditional websites?
– with (small) Apps (or Widgets) with specific, user-focused information portions?
– or both (for how long)?
– with integration into existing Apps or platforms where people are, like facebook or Google?

There are already today some interesting developments in statistics’ dissemination giving partial answers.

So have a look at:

CBS iPhone App (search CBS Statline in the iPhone App store)

And also some of the widgets like i.e. https://blogstats.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/imaodbc-2010-and-the-winner-is/

What’s New@OECD July 2009, revised (some extracts)

Follow OECD on Twitter! OECDtweet and on Facebook! OECD on Facebook and on Youtube! OECD on Youtube

Bookmark  the OECD Factbook 2009 – Mobile Edition on your iPhone, Blackberry or any phone, and access the 100 top OECD indicators from anywhere: Factbook 2009 – Mobile Edition

OECD Statistics Newsletter features articles migration statistics, synergies between official and private source data, the query wizard for development data, China’s statistical system, and information economic product definitions: Newsletter

OECD Statistics Portal: Website

Showing off your data on the go

Ok, you’ve seen animated population pyramids before, but it happens to the best of us that they don’t work in a certain environment. Like I had to witness during a recent conference, someone clicks a link and nothing happens: wrong browser, missing plugin, content/security restrictions. All you get is a blank window.

While many of us will have their prepared laptop with them on conferences, there are lots of occasions where booting up even a smaller laptop doesn’t fit. Now what if you could show your data during every conversation and it just worked? Lucky enough who has an iPhone or iPod touch (OS 2.1 from August 2008 or newer). Have a look:

And check it out right here for yourself (works with Firefox 3+, Safari 3+, Opera 9.5+):

Animated Population Pyramid (Germany 1950-2050) – iPhone edition

Depending on the language of your browser this visualisation will be localized to either english, french, german, spanish or russian (meta-data is available in english/german only).

Don’t mistake this for a gadget ad. A lot of our products need quite some explanation, they need someone who puts them into context and this could perfectly happen during so many face to face conversations we have. And while we put most of our efforts online these days, in a personal conversation usually a leaflet or booklet has worked better so far. But this changes.

You might argue that mobile phones just become as powerful as ordinary computers and so will play all our web content including animations (like the iPhone already does), but with this example I wanted to show how one could adapt – with just a few hours work – interactive graphics for those smaller devices.