Moving to a tactile web
With the iPad and also the rumours of Google going tablet, you can predict this new way of interacting with devices is taking off this year. What I find interesting in the videos is the way the interaction become more and more tactile, much more than the touchphones we use now. Where on an iPhone or Android you have a more finger interaction, the iPad and Google demo really does something more: gesture moving. The Minority Report feel.
You feel the gesture interaction on two interaction principles:
- interacting a touchscreen with two hands the same time with ten fingers will feel different. You will make bigger movements with, not only with the fingers but also with the whole arm.
- using the movement of the whole screen as extra input gives a lot of new possibilities. Like the e-mail program on the iPad where the avalailable functions follows the orientation of the screen
Of course we should not forget the stuff Microsoft develops in this field. With Surface they have made a gesture interface come true. And the promise of the new Natal game experience of Microsoft is also promising. This is the most literally translation of the gesture interface. But both have less impact because it limits to the specific uses (professional and gaming).
It looks like that we will have some serious steps to a new tactile experience in the use of our digital media. This can be also an extra driver for the developing of the Internet of Things.
AR is not the product
Just read this column on the future of Augmented Reality (AR) in relation to the marketing thingys made with it right now.
Now, I’ll grant that all of these are marketing gimmicks. They’re probably not meant to be anything more. But let’s just step back and call a spade a spade–and recognize that whatever “augmented reality” becomes, these projects probably won’t have much to do with it.
And of course Cliff is completely right.
I think this is also a recurrent pattern you see with a lot of new technologies that are a-claimed as promising. The first uses are based on what you can, not what you need. This was already the case with DTP years ago. It turned out to be a useful thing.
In AR there are two separate uses now. The marketing gimmicks as mentioned in the column, and the functional uses where adding information to the reality serves a purpose. Like the heads up manual for car mechanics, or the Layar-apps that add non-existing buildings to the city.
The sign that AR will be mature will be when we are not designing AR solutions, but we are integrating AR in holistic services when this adds a necessary function. When an AR service does not equals AR anymore.
We will definitely see those emerge the coming year, but can expect that real integration will take even much longer. At the end we will see that the current uses has a strong function in making AR understandable.
links for 2010-01-14
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Beautiful clear infograph of the world progress report. With some interesting numbers too.
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Better version than the Dutch wie-o-wie. Looks adequate.
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Tool for making bookmarklets form a lot of short cuts in one bookmarklet. Works smart, like quicksilver but in the browser.
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Marketplace for fan pages of Facebook. More hype than trend maybe…
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Like the simple design and the focus of this tool. I doubt this could be a word killer for meeting minutes. And really missing an export function.
links for 2010-01-12
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Great list of speakers, good place for inspiration lost hours ;-)
links for 2010-01-11
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This is a good post on the new phase in the web we are experiencing right now. I think I wrote about it more than one, the smart context. The term predictive web describes is well.
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Adding feedback options on a beta-version of site is hip. And this is a nice overview of the current products in the market.
links for 2010-01-10
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It is an interesting continuous discussion; the role of privacy. It definitely is changing, people will be using privacy more instrumental. With a more open starting point indeed.
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Another tool for company inside collaborative working. For on the list.
links for 2010-01-09
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A research on the use of twitter. With a analysis of a sample of 1000 tweets with not a lot of surprises.
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Good overview of the new form of marketing where you start with a dialogue, conversate and collaborate.
2010 the year with new focus and service attitude
It is a tradition on my blog to give some predictions on the coming year. See these for 2009 and 2008 (both in Dutch). I will not look back in detail to see if the predictions came true, in the end it is more a residu of my thinking of that moment, than a serious hitting for the trends to come true. Broader trends are more interesting than one hot wonders, in my opinion, and I’m glad that the predictions of the last two year has started and/or are still developing. As I said last year: the short term developments are always slower, but looking back in a couple of years we will be surprised by the changes.
This said, I will share some thoughts for the coming year; I think this will be a year as a start of a new focus and service attitude.
Read the rest of this entry »
The end of SEO with an evolution to semantic search
In this post by Robert Scoble, he coined some interesting thoughts ont the developments of SEO and SEM. I especially found the ideas on the evolution of search engines like Google and Bing to search results that are relevant by heart and not by design interesting. It is an evolution to a semantic web in another way than mostly is promoted.
Most of the time the idea of the semantic web is linked to a better understanding of the question, of a smart determination of the question. Do you look for a bank to collect money, or to sit on. In the example of Scoble the semantic part is found in the search results itself. What results do really fit, apart from any influencing designing elements. It may look like just another accent but it is a world of difference.
So this will mean that the current services for search will evolve to semantic systems. Fed by the conversational realtime search and cloud based sensors to the real relevance. Services like Twine will be obsolete. We won’t call them semantic by the way, they are just intuitive and authentic.
Is SEO therefor also obsolete. Not completely. It will stay for some time, and it will be more and more a hygienic factor. A basic requirement you cannot avoid. It is just like the development of usability. Usability is not the discriminator, the experience and persuasion aspects of an interface are. SEO will be part of the basic toolset. The real behavior makes the difference.
