Archive for April, 2009

YouTube Fuels Debate

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

When US democratic leadership hopefuls took to the podiums last week in Charleston, South Carolina for their televised debate of the campaign, they didn’t just face off against pre-formatted press questions and a local audience. Instead they opened themselves up to questions from citizens across the globe. Pretty much anyone with a web camera and a question to ask was able to participate in the debate.

For the first time in history thousands of Americans recorded and uploaded their questions to YouTube for the two-hour debate on Monday evening. CNN editors chose about 25 questions from more than 2,000 YouTube submissions.

With the debate complete, it’s been touted by the media as a groundbreaking event and the first debate of its kind to enlist the Web as a tool to open politics up to the public. But its significance goes beyond just opening up the political process.

This broad use of YouTube really legitimizes it as a valid communications vehicle. Sure, YouTube’s been used in the past for many commercial purposes, including as a way to stealth market new products, and build brand awareness and affinity. However, this extends YouTube’s direct exposure to reach the entire US population.

With this event, YouTube, and the concept of user generated content as a whole has gone from a novel concept that a few businesses really grasped the impact of to a necessary channel to explore.

At the very least, it was fun to see Anderson Cooper trying to explain the concept of “user generated content”.

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Adobe Flash takes to the big(ger) screen

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

To keep up with the convergence of media devices occurring at rapid-fire speed, Adobe has secured a deal to embed its Flash software within televisions, Blu-ray players and set top boxes to allow for developers and content providers to create and deploy web content such as news, weather and stock charts. The applications are set to deploy on televisions early in 2010 and will allow users to engage in the all of activities they are used to performing on the web.

There are a few televisions on the market that are using Yahoo’s widgets to provide a rich media experience for viewers but this deal will allow for the creation of a single standard for a media application that can be re-used for numerous other devices.

“Adobe Flash Platform for the Digital Home will dramatically change the way we view content on televisions,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Consumers are looking to access their favorite Flash technology-based videos, applications, services and other rich Web content across screens. We are looking forward to working with partners to create these new experiences and deliver content consistently across devices whether consumers view it on their desktop, mobile phone or television.”

With this announcement, Adobe has lined up partnerships with content providers such as Comcast, Netflix, the New York Times and Disney to deliver the “Adobe Flash Platform for the Digital Home”.

BBC News reports that “Adobe is aiming to become the global standard for all rich media in the “three screen” world – PC, TV, and mobile. Up to 40% of all mobile devices shipped in 2008 are expected to carry Flash Lite. However, the big omission remains Apple’s iPhone.”

As a side effect from this announcement, INM expects for Flash on TV sets to dramatically enhance the usability of devices that have now become too complex to use for most consumers. We’re looking forward to seeing how Flash will help to personalize, simplify and enhance multi-device navigation and programming systems. In essence, Adobe’s move is helping consumers to move closer towards the full convergence of their televisions, DVD players, gaming systems, photo album viewers, internet browsers and multi-media devices.

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More Rumors of a New Apple Tablet Device

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

We’ve been eagerly awaiting Apple’s next move in the Tablet or Netbook space. The product category doesn’t yet exist, or have a name to go by, but it will most likely not be called Ultra-Mobile or Tablet or Netbook or Personal Digital Anything. It would primarily meet the needs of audiences who need mobility and a larger display than smart phones, and who will mainly use the device for Read-Only tasks (eBooks, eLibraries, educational material, etc.) and occasional note taking or communication.

The rumors are back: it seems that Steve Jobs and team are working on a reincarnation of the Newton based on a 10-inch touchscreen.

There is an artist’s rendition of what the device might look like at the Appleinsider website.

You may also want to take a look at the patent Apple filed in relation to input devices: it is pretty creative and extremely smart from a product line management perspective

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The Ongoing Debate on Who Owns Multi-Touch

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

In a previous post, we noted that it is likely for RIAs to begin to “propagate to mobile devices” as the next natural step in their evolution. We believe that having a highly natural and organic user interface is primary to the success of any technology to ensure adoption, repeated use and success.

There’s much debate going on these days on who is the rightful owner of ‘multi-touch’ – a technology that has moved into many areas of our day to day life and become a pervasive part of our experiences. On this note, T-Mobile has just announced that they are planning to offer Google Android beyond mobile phones to extend to both the home phone as well as tablet computer.

Recently it has been reported that Microsoft has documentation showing it was the first to file a patent application back in May, 2006, a bit before Apple launched their bit for rights to claim this technology in April, 2008 and well before the anticipated launch of the Palm Pre.

In this comprehensive white paper, Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research provides a detailed history of “Multi-Touch systems that I Have Known and Loved” and offers up a very diplomatic approach to the debate on who was, or should have been, first in line at the patent office. It’s interesting to note that the claim is made that the story of multi-touch could be said to have begun with electronic music keyboards.

Beyond the keyboard, mobile phone and other traditional-looking multi-touch objects which traditionally have taken a flat, squared-off form, in 2010, Moixa is set to launch a 3D interactive multi-touch unit by the name of ‘Sphere’ that is the size and weight of an apple and can be used for to display applications such as Google Earth, web browsing, interacting with applications and environments or as a game controller.

Moixa are demonstrating that it’s not about being the first to lay claim to the technology, but rather it’s what you do with the technology that counts. I hope that they can deliver a top quality product.

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RIAs hit Hollywood

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Universal Pictures have launched an Adobe AIR widget to allow film-goers to get all the information they’ll need in order to keep up to date on the upcoming movie ‘Fast and Furious’. The application offers breaking news related to the film, exclusive content, a countdown timer to the launch date, easy access to view trailers and video clips, wallpaper images, polls, and a chat feature to allow users to connect with other fans.

The widget is a solid piece of marketing and is a must-have for anyone who is passionate about this film. It is one of the first examples of the use of an RIA by Hollywood in the promotion of a film and demonstrates a creative execution which enables fans to connect with each other and discover the information they are seeking all from one desktop-based application. Universal Pictures was able to repurpose existing content and package it within a high-octane looking package, ensuring that they are creating a dynamic user experience with materials already on hand. It’ll be interesting to see the results of how many users downloaded the application as well as if this has any impact on the box-office receipts.

Click here to download the ‘Fast and Furious’ RIA.

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