June 6th, 2009 by eric
Last week we were introduced to a new Xbox 360 experience that will lead the way to breaking us out of the web 2.0 doldrums.
Project Natal will change the way we use the World Wide Web forever. Microsoft made a smart move investing in the advanced motion sensor, voice recognition and facial recognition technology. Add to this the ability to scan real world objects and incorporate them into the experience and you have a very powerful Xbox Live that makes the Nintendo Wii look like a calculator.
The applications for anything from gaming to online shopping in a virtual store will make what we currently call websites all-but-obsolete. It will be interesting to watch how fast this will spread through the tech world and how quickly other consoles try to bang out their own version of this technology.
In typical Microsoft fashion, the Xbox is now poised to be the device of choice for all things online. I can only imagine how this might be licensed for a multitude of purposes as the largest brands with the biggest budgets line up to be the first to take advantage of Project Natal. Of course, also in true Microsoft fashion, there are bound to be plenty of bugs for the early adopters to deal with. Even with that, I am still very encouraged by what I see in Project Natal as this will be a big step in evolution for Information Architects who want to break out of the box.
See the Xbox 360’s Project Natal for yourself
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May 24th, 2009 by eric
There are certain self-proclaimed social media gurus who are willing to hang their hats on the phenomenon of creating your own celebrity through twitter. Yeah okay - I just don’t have the time for it all. There is no way that these so called busy people have time to send tweets every 10-20 minutes each day. So I dug deeper and found that most Twitter super-stars don’t have to. There are several web services you can use to set up auto-tweets. The way auto tweets work is that you pre-write a slew of tweets. The auto tweet service can be set up to send a tweet from your account at regular intervals from your list of pre-canned tweets. This means you can tweet diligently without logging-in more than a couple of times per week.
So it really makes me wonder: who is reading all these tweets? If the author isn’t reading twitter daily for updates, can they be considered a real user? Do they really have a true audience of faithful followers?
Speaking of automation…
There are also automated ways to build your followers audience but its fast becoming a discouraged practice in the true Twitter-verse. It is however, how each celeb or wannabe celeb generates thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of followers. The secret: auto-followers. Yes, these little bots will crawl through the twitter-verse and do all kinds of wonderful things for your celeb status. For example, they can catch all the reciprocating twitter accounts that will follow them back thus grabbing thousands of fans in no time. So are these gurus building any true equity through Twitter?
Of course if you are an A, B or even D-list celeb, you can spread the word easily with the help of your publicist. On TV You can advertise to the world that you are on Twitter and how everyone should follow your tweets.
So what is the moral of the story? Twitter may not be the great marketing engine that some believe it to be. It has many uses and many faces and as I’ve said before, it is being used widely but is not yet being used well.
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April 24th, 2009 by eric
Everyone might wonder what I‘m smoking but being someone who has actually played around with holography in a previous life, the reality of holographic displays is just around the corner. Don’t uninstall your browsers just yet! Still, it might soon be time to consider what the possibilities will be when web applications are delivered in a 180 degree experience.
Let’s consider all the technologies which up until years ago, were considered science fiction: advanced touch screen technology, video phones, photo and video manipulation software. We saw these things in movies such as Blade Runner back in the early 80’s and thought: wouldn’t it be cool if we could really do that?
Now seeing the holographic user interface displays in movies like Ironman and even a few years back in Minority Report, it seems we’re asking ourselves the same rhetorical question, “wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Think of all the problems we could solve with portability if we had a self contained holographic display. Laptops, desktops, multiple monitors and even i-phones would be almost obsolete. If you could carry a thin device no larger than your current cell phone to project a display and a virtual touch-screen - imagine how virtual shopping would be via mobile?
I have often said lately that we have come to the end of browser- based experience design. We should get ready to soon turn our attention towards better uses for the web. Even with LCD and plasma technology becoming more and more cost effective - is there any reason why online media cannot be served up in real time on a billboard space in the real world?
We haven’t gotten to the point where the virtual web has actually entered our real world but it will happen very soon. The desire is certainly there, with everyone starting to craft augmented reality experiences to satisfy their cravings for the real-world meets web. Holography is the next logical step in this tech revolution and it will be open up a whole new realm of design possibilities as it hits the early-adopter market.To find out what’s been going on in the world of holographic displays,check out the links below. Some are fact others are fiction. Regardless, it’s always fun to see the imagination at work.
The Real thing:
General:
Holographic movies:
Fake:
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