It’s fine and dandy when you say you can get three nines of service uptime, but would you be willing to have your server control your car’s brake system? Well if you did I woud guarantee you that your servers would find a way to be up more often – one way or another. That is what Computer scientists at Saarland University were thinking when he used their wifi as the communication channel is their bikes. They wanted to demonstrate how certain they were that their wifi can get up to thirteen-nines of accuracy. I really love how they are putting their money where his mouth is. They basically alined their lives and their product’s quality perfectly. Now their success is yours 🙂
The iPad (tablets) is at it again. After all these years Stanford has uped the anti on what the bar is for acceptable braille reading and writing devices. The tablet system shown here calibrates through a swipe and audio queues, and sets the type pad to where ever the users fingers lie. (This solves the problem with the lack of tactile response the flat screen of an iPad provides. In essence, as descried in the video, the input points find the users fingers, not the other way around.)
Couple a lack of a keyboard and mouse with the lack of real estate in most mobile devices and you have a brand new problem with ergonomics and accessibility. Apple broke in the door with multi touch sensors that allow the screen to pinch and zoom with two fingers. The ability to recognize how your fingers interact with the screen means more intuitive gersture commands opening the door to far more access to tools and usage paths. This vide demonstares the ability for this phone to recognize what part of hand is tapping the screen. The result: your fingernail tapping the screen equals a right click, and a knuckle tab opens a new window.
Microsoft is doing some cool stuff with interactive vertual 3d. No cords, or gloves, or glasses required. They are working on holograms, and not just for looking at. These holograms are able to be controlled by “touch” and simulate true interaction with virtual objects with the help of a real time physics engine. In short, it is starting to look pretty cool. If this technology continues to advance designers will be able to virtually interact with the models they create before they start need to develop any molds. At the end of the video they demo a mobile device that a user is able to pick up, interact with it, and all within a completely virtual holographic environment.
Curious to see how it’s done? At min 1:02 they show how the system recognizes real objects, such as hands, paper, or bowls, and displays how they interact with the virtual objects onto a clear glass plate. This plus the users line of site create the illusion of true interaction with the virtual objects.
I can’t wait for these technologies to find their way into meetings, to help team of engineers quickly to get on the same page by passing a prototype, modeled only moments ago, at a round table, as they literally pass the object from one person to the next.
It shows a graphical representation of the frequency words used in books over a rangeof years. It is based on on all the books google has scanned into their database to date.
This TED talk is what turned me on to the project.
The project, the tool and the lecture are all quite entertaining.
Here are some graphs I created playing with the tool. Graphic data, especially that which is based on sentiment represented by our societies authors, gives us amazing clues into how perception and reality intersect.
I read somewhere many years ago that the experience of allowing the user to ready just enough content until the fold, but giving them just enough info that there is more uner the fold was a better tactic then framing your site above the fold with links to actions. For sites that want to say allot, and take users on a journy the scroll is smoother and quicker. It is like a timeline of content from top to bottom, as apposed to a choose yoru own adventure. Since then, I have seen some pretty cool examples of implementations like this. The lastst one I came across was from mozilla (https://webfwd.org/en-US/) Which would make sence since they are the advocates of the web.
Here are some slides (in case they change the site by the time you read this.)
The main home screen looks pretty standard. But notice the color and the footer….
As you scroll up he page the footer rises from the bottom, revealing a whole other expereince….
As the you scroll up, the color of the back ground fades into white, and the old footer is now the new header. I thought it was a beautiful experience…
I have seen many variations of the concept of scrolling while browsing the internet. Here are some others:
This one is called “Ben the body guard” and it was a website for a game. (http://goo.gl/HG9PQ) In this creative experience, the body guard tells you his story as you scroll down the page. The animation of his walking and the street passing by are all based on your scrolling down the page. After the story and his walk is over, the links are neon signs on the buildings rooftops, and the bottom of the page gives you a link to the appstore and a close up of ben peerig down the edge of the top of a high rise. Well done!
In 2008, when we started PointAbout, my co-founders and I imagined a flat phone completely running of the Internet. It seemed possible with the advent of the iPhone, although we weren’t exactly sure how it would get there, or that we would be integral in its coming. Just last week, shortly after Job’s death, my co-founder Isaac sent out a video of Steve jobs from 1997 where he describes a completely networked computer/device as the goal of Apple at an early WWDC keynote. Amazing.
Well, I just installed iOS 5 and I realized that vision is closer than it has ever been. In iOS 5 not only is all you data fully synced in their cloud, but you have access to more and more tools to connect and control your network and devices from apps. It is a subtle nudge forward from Steve’s grand plan as we quietly fall in line without questions, and eager, not complacent, for the next beautifully implemented well thought out upgrade towards an endpoint we all believe in, but are not entirely sure at all what it will look like.
As Steve mentioned a few years ago, the world will be seen through apps. And his new console of apps show more an more of how vast that vision was, beyond serving ads and owning an app store as the medias interpretation originally thought. (he always seemed to be slinging from the hip to be ahead of next years curve, and a year or so later we would always end up seeing how short sighted we were and how well planned out and far reaching he was.)
Apple is a new way of computing. Every system in its own sandbox to avoid problems across the board like viruses, or poorly programmed apps and utilities. It also abstracts away from silly notion that we need to manage our “hard drive” or system.
On a side note, a few notable additions in iOS 5 (on both the 4 or 4S): Rich media in notifications, friend finder, airport utility, photo stream, and single button photography. Also, the change to the blue on/off switch, and some new design implementations of text messages and background processes..Your computer is apps and your apps are on the cloud, and before you know it, bam, we are here – the future – without vaporware and prototypes solutions – actual solutions in a very real direction and easily achieved “next step” plan. Our devices run smoothly, cleanly, beautifully, innovatively, and as Steve would say “it all just works.”
Excerpt:
Nothing can evolve when everyone sees things the same. A teacher simply teaches what they are taught, but an observer, a thinker, a new mind -‐ a geek -‐ is the one that pushes the seed of thought that goes from unnecessary, to foolish, to laughed at. And they endure through those stages due to their intense passion, un-l it blossoms, becomes admired, and eventually takes over as the new school of thought.
As the PC experience keeps pushing away from the OS and into the browser as the main entry point for data, with web sites being those data points – the mobile experience is doing the opposite. It keeps pushing users back to the OS level as the entry point to get to data, with those data points being apps.
One consequence of that experience: how will businesses harvest value from the users interactions when a user is not in their app? That problems has manifested itself into things such as app discovery, re-targeting, etc. Where before serendipity and injection in the browser experience had value for advertiser, the mobile user is more specific with their actions. Entering the phone to get specific data from specific apps.
Unfortunately the OS level of a mobile device isn’t in itself serendipitous, and therefor many business must rethink how they get injected into a users experience, before the user knows they want it.
The idea of “browse” has changed considerably in mobile, and one must focus on the change in foundation to re-think how to create new solutions to old problems.
One way to look at this through the lens of solutions: If the mobile device, which is primarily intent based and very rarely spoken of in terms of browsing, pushes its content to the web; And the PC, which is primarily referred to using the word “browse”, pushes users serendipitously to a device; then having the two work with one another as an ecosystem allows both sides of the puzzle to fill in for weaknesses and leverage strengths, and most importantly solve problems with tools that cross the device/tool/experience chasim. This is a true form of making vertical fragmentation (single user cross many devices) work for you.
Sean Shadmand 