the future is what we make it

Watching US Network TV in England in my web browser

2008-11-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of a friend who has daisy chained cable boxes, a cluster of 3 capture machines and Flash Media Server I am able to watch the US TV network election coverage live from the comfort of my laptop.

Semantic Web Panel Discussion at LinkedData Conference 2008

2008-06-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a really fascinating panel discussion about the Semantic Web which was part of the LinkedData Planet 2008 conference.

Panel Organizers:

Marco Neumann, New York Semantic Web Meetup

Moderators:

* Hank Williams, Founder and CEO, Kloudshare
* Eric Hoffer, Second Integral

Panelists:

* Sir Tim Berners-Lee, W3C, MIT, inventor of the world wide web.
* Sergey Chernyshev, CTO, Semantic Communities LLC
* Dan Connolly, Research Scientist, W3C (tentative)
* Christine Connors, Global Director, Semantic Technology Solutions, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
* Taylor Cowan, Emerging Solutions Principal, Sabre Holdings, Travelocity
* Richard Cyganiak, Reseacher, DERI and Project Leader D2RQ http://www.d2rq.org…
* Nic Fulton PhD, Chief Scientist, Reuters Media
* Marc Hadfield, President and CTO, Alitora
* Savas Parastastidis PhD, Architect, Technical Computing, Microsoft Research

Topics covered during the panel included:

How can we monetize the semantic web?
Is the semantic web relevant and ready for what we’re doing today?
The importance of interoperability and standards.
Barriers to adoption of semantic technologies and how can we encourage adoption of it
Practical insights into the semantic web.
What technologies and products are available today?

(Disclaimer: My notes are not comprehensive and I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies – they are meant more to spark thoughts and ideas than a complete record of the panel discussion. I tried to capture everything being said but in some cases I may have misheard or substituted some words for my own.)

The answers to the questions below are the combined set of panel responses, except were I called out TBL.) The first question went to Tim Berners-Lee. (who’s brilliance increasingly shone through as the panel progressed, and being from England myself, I was pleasantly surprised that he had an English accent, for some reason I thought he was American or Swiss, although judging from his suntan I would guess that he probably spent most of his time away from England!).

Q. What's next with WC3 initiatives? Should we encourage people to write more code and add more standards?

A’s: TBL - We need to have all these things coming together - open data, consuming data, playing with ideas. It would be a mistake to focus on one thing. Consumption of linked data, people pushing for mash ups sites. One thing is certain is that there needs to be more things out there consuming and using this stuff.

Q: Best reasons for people to adopt these technologies? Can we prove the value? Has anyone seen examples of this being done?

A’s: One of the best reasons is because they solve a problem or business need. We need to help them (companies, enterprise) understand the value of a semantic solution. How can we prove the values of semantic technology?

Within the life science community we seek to answer questions that are unanswerable.

It has been shown that companies can cut 6-8 months of development of a drug if they have access to this sort of information and data integration.

In the financial sector, hedge funds find that linking data sets help customers to make money, the same goes for legal and financial databases. In business people want all the information they can have as soon as possible.

At the moment there are massive amounts of data and airline companies don't want people to have that data.

With regards to semantic technologies….In reference to data feeds, SKOS is easier for people to understand and migrate to than OWL and RDF. For people that have been building taxonomies, it lets people identity discrete sets of data. If we can send people feedback - 'this string is.. earnings per share'.. it can have billions of dollars affects on the markets.

It is more elegant for consumers to tell companies - this is where I want to go and how long I’m going to be there. Then travel bidders can scrape the web and people/companies can find people who want these offers and 'spam' them. This is a perfect case for the semantic web and for creating the semantic data. The content is just available, they don't have to tell us and this means less work for the consumer.

Q: How can we facilitate communication about the semantic web?

A’s: There needs to be a community of discussion around describing data on the web where
people can share ideas about how to talk about data, a semantic web SIG (TBL's suggestion)

SWIRC channel, ES (?) wiki. The current tool sets are still not simple enough for the average user and until we make the tools simple won't get adoption we are talking about.

A wiki type communication environment where people can post and comment on and things can become standardized.

Q: How do we convert this tool one microformat into another one and support transitioning between microformats?

By the creation of ontologies for life sciences communities, triple stores. Pharmaceutical companies are doing this but it's hard to query data at the moment because it is inefficient.

With regards to data storage, we might want to adopt service model (like google) for storing and processing information and have vendors to do this. As service providers make it an easier sell than enterprise sell, there will be a trend in life sciences to outsource services.

We need a repository for communication where it is easy for developers to build solutions and create a graph so we can do interesting things such as queries. Microsoft is building RDF and OWL export feature into their products to enable object reuse..

Q: How do we process it and make it more efficient?

A’s: Triple stores not doing that well. If we can map data into a relational schema and still export RDF then we have the best of both worlds, triple stores flexible, relational stores efficient.

Q: Should people be rushing to implement RDF and SPARQL and to achieve the standards based interoperability as with SQL? What kind of queries can you express?

A’s: RDF and SPARQL integration to combine XML with relational data. We need to standardize these extensions and have a larger set as well as include mathematical and aggregate functions in SPARQL, like SQL currently does.

Q: Why should web app. Developers and IT departments care?

A’s: Semantic web technologies do not currently provide that level of control. A SPARQL query can kill servers… project for adding meta data… effort to talk to semantic web in REST

There are currently not enough applications to consume semantic data for web app developers to put efforts into developing it. It's a chicken and egg situation.

We need more standard data models.. yelp .. standard web ontologies, reuse of components,
web services where we can grab components and a high level of use between service that creates it...

There is a lot of hype around semantic web. It’s really all about structured data..

Could FB release data as RDF triples?? When information around data becomes a commodity people will talk about structuring data more. The question is how much data and how much to share?

Why not give it away in a standards way? When of interest to others...structure is there...

For N-way mash ups of content (coming from multiple sources) value is not currently there.
It is currently easier for developers not to bother at the moment.

Q: Barriers to adoption:

A’s: The data parsing process is currently too long to process. It is currently easier to just give name/value pairs...

Google has a huge global graph, taken a copy of it and created structure for others to discover,
converted it into structured info and adds value on top of it.

Q: What are some of the myths about the SW?

It won't happen until we have AI to convert unstructured data into structured data.

People won't have time to mock up their html pages with RDF data.

Once we start to correlate data there will be incentives to release it. There
are no services to consume it right now and add value to them. There is no monetization value.

(Start ups are already doing it.. the only question is formats...).

Q: What ways can people get from the universe they are at to another place?
What would you advise people to do?

FB and social networking sites, car companies, flights.. could add the menu for example

Audience participation

Discussion about mashups and the semantic web:

If all data is labelled correctly then all mashups are just a question of people asking for what they want.

Gave example of Seat Guru http://www.seatguru.com/ - airline ticket site.. all mashups will eventually become services, people will mashup the mashups... ideas, knowledge, discovery.

WSDL and REST incorporate ways to label APIs with semantic concepts, roll them up into auto discovery of API calls for looking up flight numbers which will be labelled with semantics....

A semantic mashup provider doesn't have to do it themselves, the annotation of mashups exists in a cloud.. what are mashups out there labelled with a particular concept.. Someone creates it, someone labels it and someone else consumes it.

Mashups are no more complicated than spreadsheet.

Q: What needs to be done to encourage adoption?

According to TBL: "RDF specs need trimming" , things need to be thrown out otherwise it
makes it difficult to read. RDF can't express all things.... it's ready but could use a bit of a clean up.

TBL: Express a literal as a subject.. to be able to say 3 is negation of -3.

RDF is ready when it is built into a programming language so we don't have to look for toolkits. I want a programming language where it incorporates RDF intrinsically and expands to full SPARKL query.

A few people have tried to use RDF and hack python underneath.

We need a killer app.. written on top of the graph… and have the data available in RDF.

Q: How do we link up the data with descriptions?

We need tools to create this easily. How do we get data linked with meaningful labels?
For data to be labelled with URIs we need an extra URI space which is community driven
and we need a wiki for ontologies and concepts...

We need trusted 3rd party and global community to define this..

TBL added that WC3 was founded for this.

One of the problems is to agree on and define ontologies, the most important thing to worry about is getting the data and what ontology can we use to map the data?

Database schemas..we can find all over the place.

RQ: What vocabulary, what schema?? How do we express the most important concepts?

A’s: People, location, sub class is city.. regarding ontologies - do we create new or reuse one?

The most important process is getting people to agree on it. Getting agreement on vocabulary is hard work.. have to engage stakeholders...

Metaweb startup that exports data into graph model and builds apis.. Build a semantic layer onto of RDBMS then we can ask questions on top of that. Each dB could have it's own semantic ontology around it and ask questions of all 500 dBs not just one...

The power of the predicate - we can create a controlled value of predicates..

Ontologies will become a commodity and we will have average level (publically accessible) ontologies and then the behind firewall stuff.

Outputting data is separate from attaching it to other's... inferencing engines... part of a bigger conversation.. How do we annotate other people's ontologies? We cannot plan this for all cases... create one based on current RDBMS.

Q: The tools are still not simple enough for the average user and until we make the tools simple we won't get adoption we are talking about. How large content organizations engage restricted on how mature the tools are?

Tools such as ClearForest exist to parse data into semantic relationships. Artificial Intelligence and natural language processing is the answer but we are not there yet.

(Audience Applause)

Some Afterthoughts: Exciting things to come with increasingly open data initiatives combined with semantic labeling, increased user adoption, opportunities for monetization and a technological infrastructure to create, maintain and parse semantic content. I came away from the panel feeling that we are on the verge of being ‘there’ although as with a lot of technologies it will take awhile to get all the kinks ironed out and for widespread adoption to take place. Although the web has come along way from the early ‘90’s there is still so much more still to come and it left me thinking why the semantic web didn’t evolve sooner, given the usefulness and power of it. Ideas, thoughts anyone??

Is my Maxtor 3200 a brick?

2008-06-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

I uninstalled and reinstalled my USB controllers as pchell.com recommended but to no avail...
will try plugging it into another computer as suggested but I am thinking that it might need some sort of data recovery intervention.

Installation of a Passport Studio Western Digital External Storage Device

2008-06-19T18:41:00.001-07:00

First off, it is definitely not plug and play and it might be
Mac-ready but it's definitely not PC-ready ;-)

So first of all it comes with no instructions whatsoever, the only hint it gives you is a link to support.wdc.com -> knowledge base ID# 1550, clicking here lets you download the drivers, formatting utility (which i discovered was useless), and backup software.

The driver installed without a problem, the formatting utility did not which might be because i am out of disk space on my primary drive. Clicking on the knowledge base for clues let me to "a consult the quick start guide" which came with the disk. The only quick start that came with it was the link to tell me to go to support.wdc.com.

The FAQs knowledge base was really poorly structured and the answers contained hyperlinks to other answers which contained further links.

Clicking around I eventually found this which tells me to go to use the Windows Disk Management Utility.

So here are the instructions for this:

(in the screenshot it is already assigned to a volume but when I first started this was blank).

Right click on My computer, Click on Manage, then Click on Disk Management. In the top frame you will see an unlabelled disk which is the your new WD hard drive. Right click this and select format, assign it a volume (letter) and then wait for a minute whilst Windows formats your drive. Formatting takes quite awhile for a 350GB drive especially on my crappy dell. Once formatting is complete the drive will be assigned an online status of healthy and you can click on My Computer and you can now see and use your external hard drive!

Tesla Coils responding to musical input

2008-04-10T22:40:00.001-07:00

2 tesla coils playing music, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

They were quite beautiful and were synched with a completely automated drum kit with mechanical beaters

Man with the moog

2008-04-10T22:36:00.001-07:00

man with the moog, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

moog synth performance at tonights dorkbot in austin texas, sounded like a pipe organ from a doctor who episode

SxSW Keynote: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder and CEO

2008-03-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Photo Source: Wired Blog

Referred to by some industry analysts as a train wreck interview, there is no shortage of opinions debating the merits of Sarah Lacey's keynote interview with Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook. I will leave it up to the blogosphere, twitter, Cnet and Wired to explain what happened and instead focus on some of the high points. During the interview, Zuckerberg gave several concrete examples about how Facebook was being utilized to bring about positive social change. On numerous occasions he spoke about their goals, concepts and mission and it became clear to me that one of the main reasons for their phenomenal success was the fact that they have tapped into fundamental human needs and have built tools around them. Facebook's core goals of facilitating communication, generating empathy and fostering connections between people is inline with behaviors people are already engaged in.

The new trends arising in the digital market place such as social shopping (where an individual's purchasing decisions are influenced by their social network) is something Facebook pre-empted with their Beacon initiative. A new form of advertising and marketing is entering the arena and is being ushered in through the social networking medium. If we look at human behavior, the concept of social shopping makes a lot of sense. In the real world we are heavily influenced by what our friends and peers say before making a purchase. Shiv Singh in his "Going Social Now" panel spoke about how the real-world experience of buying a couch is a very social one which very few online retailers are currently tapping into this. Having friends, social networks and other people endorse products and offer opinions is probably one of the most powerful marketing tool and is something that social networks such as Facebook are pioneering.

Other notable points were the fact that Facebook is engineering a highly responsive and adaptable ecosystem which operates on the basic premise that people are fundamentally good, but if individual users or applications become "too spammy" (as Zuckerberg puts it) their voices will be dumbed down and not allowed as many opportunities to reach their fellow social networkers. It's an interesting deterrent for reducing bad social networking behaviors.

Zuckerberg went on to openly admit that Facebook made mistakes with the Beacon initiative and demonstrated how they are working hard to address privacy concerns by affording users with increasingly granular permissions and levels of control over who they share what sorts of data with. Adopting such an approach is going to be key for all social networking sites and keepers/sharers of data moving forward and again is an example of how the digital world is a mirror of the real world in that we choose carefully who we share information with. People will be willing to share information more freely on the web if they can control who they share it with.

Below are my abridged Q&A notes from the interview (heckles deleted).

Z: Facebook's mission is to help people connect and communicate more effectively. Facebook recently lauched in Spanish and
it became very popular in Columbia where the first thing people started doing with Facebook was to organize, communicate and revolt against guerilla armies.

L: Did you ever think this would happen?

Z: Well. No. It's very hard to predict these things. It helps on a microlevel for people to communicate with people around them and generate empathy. When you add up all these connections something quite profound happens.

L: Why do we need Facebook to do this?

Z: A lot of people are doing this but people need other tools to communicate efficiently with people around them. There are different ways people can do this. FB helps people communicate with people the way they would already do but more effectively.

L: The other day you spoke about Facebook and terrorism.
Z: FB has a large user population in Lebanon.Young people growing up are trying to figure out what they are going to be when they grow up . Am I going to be a terrorist or do other things? With no other options it's easy to drift into religous extremism. Facebook had a positive impact in such societies amongst young people who were able to broaden their horizons and outlook connecting with others from different backgrounds and generate more empathy between them. In turn this makes them less likely to become religious extremists. We're not the only ones doing this. it's very profound if you can enable these sorts of connections.

L: Are these things you're doing proactively?

Z: We're helping people communicate more efficiently and make connections. We're trying to build an infrastructure on which to build these things. We were involved with the 'One' Foundation who want to build an organization to have enough political clout to change things.. their goal was to build an organization that powerful that sought to end poverty. Why does there need to be a big organization to channel these voices? The internet is big enough that these voices can be heard and big enough without having a huge organisation with millions of dollars to fight these causes. For things like this to work.. there needs to be a solid base not build top down but bottom up. This is an important trend in the world.. We're building an infrastructure where people can communicate on these things

L:I hear you guys are launching France tonight

Z: Yes, we're launching in French....

L: A lot of web companies have hard time scaling internationally - what's the secret to this?

Z: I think the need we are tapping into is a fundamental need. A lot of people thought it was just a college thing but by helping people communicate effectively we are tapping into a fundamental human need.

L: Let's talk about ad stuff. Google and Microsoft buying up stuff. Sites like Facebook and Digg are not really monetizable - are MS getting their money's worth?

Z: A lot of people have focussed on valuation. At Facebook we are building a product which helps people communicate and connect. Everything we do is through this framework. In terms of Microsoft relationship.. the way we think about serving our users and the way we want way we make money is in line with the way people share information, people share movies, things they're into.. people expressing their identities.. monetization is in line with what people are already doing.

If we give users enough opportunities for control...... (heckle)

L: Yes you have this immediate revenue from Microsoft but will there be pressure to crack this before money run outs?

Z: I'm pretty sure they're happy with that. I can tell you it's going really well for both of us.

L: The world of advertising is changing.

Z: There are new trends with people basically endorsing things. People endorse things the way they would do things naturally and normally. We want to help people share information.

L: Do you see this as a decade project.. building out the social graph?

Z: Interesting to watch this unfold

L: Let's talk about beacon and what your vision was.

Z: Beacon is a part of the platform team not the ad team.. we think there is a trend from these companies going towards a collection of social services ... profiles inbox, feeds.. We've tried to build a platform to enable people to build their own services and having access to other people's information as they want to share and push information back to their friends. With beacon we were trying to develop this system. It also ties into our ad system.. they can be used as endorsements ... people are coming to the site to learn about what their friends are doing.

The first iteration of Beacon was trying to get at this. We made some mistakes .. some interface things.. not doing things... we're learning as we go along.

L: Contrast with what happened with news feed and concerns people about privacy..

Z: We need to give people complete control over who they share information with.. 20% of people are now sharing their phone no. on Facebook. By giving users granular control over who they share information with the more they are willing to share and the more we will be able to give controls.

L: The thing that changed Facbook was when you opened up the platform. What tweaks are you making?

Z: Big changes are under away. At FB we believe people are fundamentally good. We allow users to do everything up to a point. If you're too spammy you get censored. We allow people to do this without going over the line.. What we are moving towards is to make it so that if you send requests to people.. the more people accept requests, the more people click on your feeds, the more things you can publish.. The applications that can publish the most things will be trust based, reacting to what users want....

L: Is FB setting more rules

Z: We're letting FB users decide .. more laissez faire... FB setting less rules now..

L: Itunes killer? Becoming a music mogul?

Z: As soon as we opened up platform, other developers filled this void with applications like iLike.. who knows how we will work together in the future....

L:Is this something that appeals to you?

Z:We are just trying to build this base, a developer platform that allows people to build on top of it.

L: According to Forbes ..you're the youngest billionaire on the list

Z: Not focussed on that..

L: Do you think the company is worth $15 billion

Z: Not focussed on this... way to be effective is to build a business/ecosystem..

L: Is having a valuation like that a negative? By having to live up to such a high mark?

Z: We're helping people map out who their friends are, communicate a story.. Having such a focus on money and business can self select for people who care too much about that. We are not planning on going public any time soon. Revenue and value for company is a trailing indicator of value we're building..

L: Is there an imminent Facebook IPO?

Z: We're not making decisions based on that.. For an IPO it's not we don't want to do it. we're just not focussed on it. It's not what we're trying to go for.. We had a similar thing when Yahoo was trying to buy the company for a billion dollars. The primary analysis was.. is this the correct ROI thing to do..

We have a chance here to build a platform that fundamentally changes the way people relate..so we decided to go for this.

L: Some people think you're a "know-it-all" kid.. if you don't like the way they do things they don't tend to stick around

Z: A lot of it is about expectations and what people are trying to get out it. If people joined...(missed this) For people focussed on building this platform.. the amount of change we have isn't that extreme.

L: I think it's good you fire people when they don't match.. I think it's a strength.

Z: Ok.

L: Let's talk about Cheryl..How will Cheryl cope in a male dominated world
Z: She has a great track record.. I don't think it will be an issue.

We're building a product management organization now. We just need to build out different teams now. We're trying to scale the company in an effective way. We have over 200,000 developers .. we are trying to bring a big platform to faciliate scaling..

L: So many people hate the job of CEO from a technical background. DO you do it because you want control
Z: I think what a CEO does is set the tone of the organization.. being in this role it helps us stay focus on that.. how we evolve privacy policy, advertiser systems, scale operations.. as the orgainzation grows.. I help people keep eye on that goal.. as CEO this is what people are doing.

L: Everyone wants to write about web 2.0 and use Facebook as their model.. you consdier yourelf a tech. company not a media company.

Z: Technology is important for company.. having a technical backgrounds allows us to have empathy for developers.... for us to help other people build companies being technical is a very fundamental part of our company.

L: One thing a lot of people don't talk about are the bound books you produce showing your.. ideas and the evolution of ideas..

Z: Yeah sure.

L: That wasn't a strong response.

Z: You have to ask questions.. (audience laughs and claps)

People chalk things up to original idea.. but most of work done by people, engineers.. working on it for months.. I wouldn't want to down play fact that other people are doing and building.

Audience questions..

There is no real way of holding on to information.. I can't search for messages.. hold onto content..

Z: We don't have a lot of this stuff yet.. giving people default settings and control... If we don't succeed at this privacy and trust key pillars which enables people to succeed.

We're working on it....

When asked about privacy:

The ideal format is that users only use apps. they want to and not be bugged by others. We want to remove friction in platform.. if you click on something.. that takes you to install page.. we don't think this is a great experience.

Q: What's the single biggest obstacle FB faces in the future?

Z: A lot of it is around giving people control of information in the future...

SxSW Opening Remarks: The Youth of Today is Engaged, Creative and Politically Active

2008-03-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

A lively and thought provoking panel between Henry Jenkins (MIT professor and Cultural Theorist) and Stephen Johnson, CEO of outside.in and author.

Photo Source: ArMiller

Here were some of the main takeaways:

New forms of learning are emerging and Jenkins and Johnson argued that today’s youth culture is not dumber. The youth of today are not guilty of the frequent charge levelled at them that they are dumbing down popular culture but rather 18-24 year olds are adopting new media as part of their learning process. New literacies are emerging from this generation that parents don’t understand such as mySpace and WoW. Young people are early adaptors of new media and in this space they are able to explore their autonomy and identity. Parents engagement with technology is one of fear and consequently they tend to have a conservative reaction to things alien to them.

There exists a disparity between the way we are taught to learn in school and new forms of learning which are emerging. They gave the example of the difference between the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. Wikipedia represents a collective intelligence, a pooling of resources and knowledge in which learning can take place in a more efficient manner. Formal schooling does not currently recognize or test for these new forms of learning and knowledge acquisition. School kids might perform badly on tests that measure reading but they are not tested on for alternate skills such as their mastery of technology.

A lively discussion (with audience participation) ensued regarding the merits of the TV shows Lost and The Wire. According to the panelists, Lost represents a glimpse at a new sort of television, one which promotes new rules of engagement around a television show - discussion forums where fans can participate in deeper levels of analysis and knowledge sharing around the show. Fan fiction culture is an example of a new trend in learning and engagement. Harry Potter fans are writing stories and music, then sharing it through social networks and soliciting feedback and in the process learning and self educating.

Research studies show that the percentage of young people producing their own media compared to 10 years ago is growing and it is this ratio of consumption vs. creation which is important. In an information society, kids play with information and not bows and arrows. Young people are becoming a social force for change in the world and are one of the most politically engaged generations compared to earlier generations that grew up in the age of mass media – young people are starting companies, blogging and far more politically active. The language of social networks is about the collective and using words like “we” as opposed to the ego-centric “I”. Barack Obama’s adoption of the “Yes, we can” slogan is indicative of this collective “We” which stands in sharp contrast to more old school politicians. Obama’s strength lies in the fact he is building a movement and not just a campaign which succeeds in bringing together a generation of young people via social networking sites, engaging them and creating ownership of the campaign and it’s circle of voters. The internet is becoming a powerful tool for civic engagement. The past 40 years witnessed a decline in civic engagement and now online communities and social networks are creating ways to self organize and create social connections which transcend time zones. The challenge exists for technologists to build systems to enable people to connect with each other.

The internet is an urban enhancing location device. Stephen Johnson, founder of outside in spoke about how the digital revolution is creating a renaissance in civic media. People care passionately about what is happening in their local area and about things not typically covered in mass media outlets. Outside in will soon be launching Online Radar which is a mashup of Fire Eagle’s location sharing service and user generated content or ‘civic media’. Jenkins and Johnson asked: How do we engage more people through a sense of empowerment and give them the tools and skills to participate?

Overall a very optimistic and insightful discussion, with the panelists concluding that today’s society is not a hive mind but a new democratic society based on pooling knowledge and information fuelled by the internet.

SxSW: The 10 Things We’ve Learned at 37 Signals

2008-03-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

I went to Jason Fried’s talk about what he’s learned from starting 37 Signals, the Chicago-based company responsible for Basecamp and Highrise. With his no nonsense and thoughtful approach to running a company it is easy to appreciate why 37 Signals is such a phenomenal success. His panel was intelligent and highly informative and I counted at least 15 pearls of wisdom.

Photo Source: Deney Terrio

#1 The decisions we make today don’t have to last forever

Try new things and change them as you go along. Above all optimize for now! (37 signals recently implemented a 4 day work week, paying for hobbies and gave all employees company credit cards).

#2 When communicating with fellow employees avoid certain words

Out of the million words exchanged (distributed across geographical locations, 37 signal employees tend to communicate electronically) it was found that certain words tended to cause problems. Be careful how you communicate and pay attention to red flag words: need, can’t, easy, only and fast. e.g “It’s only one more feature, we really need it and can’t launch without it. It should be easy”. Be particularly careful about describing someone else’s work as “easy”.

#3 To be successful help other people be successful and make money

One of the reasons behind Basecamp’s success is that it is a tool to help others make money by enabling them to become more efficient at managing projects and making their client’s happy. People are more willing to spend money on your products is they can make money from it.

#4 Simplify your products and avoid competition with entrenched players

Highrise is a simplified version of Salesforce. According to Fried, Salesforce is overkill for contacts management. MS Project is overkill for project management. Many people are doing project management via email. Fly under the radar by acquiring customers that the big players have never even thought about. When basecamp first launched it didn’t have file upload capability, instant messaging but instead new features were added over time. A good way to think about digital design is to think of it as a physical device. A remote control is physically constrained in terms of how many buttons it can have. Software does not have such physical constraints but consider how your software would look if it had physical constraints.

#5 Question your work regularly

Ask the following questions: Does it make sense? Why are we doing this? What problem is this solving? Is this useful? Are we adding value? For each and every feature you implement or work task you undertake. Consider whether adding a feature will change behavior, for example does it add value to display stats such as a message count within brackets (10) to a user interface? Is this useful? Ask: will the user do something differently if it wasn’t there? If the answer is no then remove these elements because they are adding clutter. Clutter will change behaviour negatively by causing users to get frustrated and leave. Continually ask whether you are building something worthwhile.

#6 Read copy out loud

Bad copy writing is a huge problem – form labels, dialog boxes, help text. We don’t pay enough attention to copy. We are paying too much attention to pixels and not enough to words when words are the cheapest and easiest thing to fix. Re-write first, redesign second since you may find that a redesign is not even necessary and after the copy is rewritten the design will be more focussed.

#7 Err on the side of simple

“Whenever 37 signals screwed up it was because we did too much.” Begin with the easy way and see what happens. Initially, we might not deliver everything, try the easy way first and ramp up. Often we try too hard when in fact things are easy by default.

#8 The new zone is the good zone

As a goal aim to get three things done in one week instead of one thing in 3 weeks. If something takes too long then this will impact morale and motivation… the longer it takes to develop something, the less likely it is to launch.

#9 Invest in what doesn’t change

We don’t generally hear this from technology companies who are focused on what’s up and coming. Consider what core things about business work today. For Google it’s speed and accuracy. For Amazon, shipping and distribution. These things will continue to work in 10 years from now. Focus on the things people want and don’t get carried away by the next big thing.

#10 Follow the chefs and share your expertise.

Be inspired by famous chefs such as Lagasse, Oliver, Bayless, Batali. As experts and authorities in their field - these people share a lot. They have been successful in building their empires because they share their techniques. The business world is often sensitive about sharing and keeping things locked up an proprietary. The advantage of giving stuff away is that you reach a huge audience and you can build a big thing by giving stuff away.

#11 Interruption is the enemy of productivity

Close physical proximity is not always the best way to get stuff done. A fragmented day is not a productive day and it is more effective to have solid blocks of productive time. One of the techniques 37 signal uses to ensure productivity is through employing passive communication (IM, email, basecamp etc) since this reduces interruption and allows people to get to it when they’re ready. Consider creating team rules such as on Thursday afternoons no one talk to each other and then measure how much productivity increases.

#12 Road maps send you in the wrong direction

Road maps and fixed timelines for roll outs can lock you into the past. Instead set expectations and deliver the things that matter when they matter. It’s ok to think about the future, just don’t write it down. Fried recommends the Brazilian author of Maverick and 7 day weekend, Ricardo Summer.

#13 Be clear in crisis

Be open, honest, public and responsive. Being truthful builds up goodwill and telling the truth even in a down time is not such a big deal. Besides, if you don’t talk about it other people will – the web does not shut up!

#14 Make tiny decisions

Solve one thing at a time and break problems down to the atomic level. Celebrate little launches since morale feeds off progress and new stuff keeps people motivated, focus on this. When you make tiny decisions you can’t make big mistakes

#15 Make it matter

Everything you do should matter, every pixel, each blog post. Otherwise, don’t do it. Focus only on the stuff that matters, think about this when designing, writing or coding.

Dilip Venkatachari gives talk at AA | RF

2008-01-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

We had an interesting talk in our offices today by Mr. Venkatachari - Director, Mobile Ads.. not sure if I am allowed to blog about what he told us..

I think Google had a really interesting way of approaching things and a lot in common with Nokia's research division in which they go out into the field and conduct ethnographic studies to observe the ingenious ways people make use of their cellphones in order to obtain information.

Interesting that he thought the killer apps. for the phone would involve voice.

I also like the fact that Google puts the user first in everything. Very smart and why they are so successful in addition to hiring really smart people and being progressive in many areas of business.

Interesting that google are not manufacturing an exclusive device or gPhone - if i had kept up with reading google mobile blogs i would know this!

I really hope someone hacks the iPhone firmware so it can dual boot into either android or iPhone OS.. i don't want to have to buy another phone to run android.

2008-01-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

2007 Digital Retrospective: Repost from my article on www.digitaldesignblog.com

January 4th, 2008 by dawa riley

In order make big predictions regarding what innovations might occur within our industry moving forward, it is useful to look back at the past. The following acknowledges some of the 2007’s biggest achievements.

The Facebook Platform

In May this year, Facebook released its “Platform” or software environment which allowed third party developers to build mini applications that can be installed on users profiles. Such a move by Mark Zuckerberg et al. was met with an unprecedented success. Within the space of six months, 12,000 applications were developed that users could install. They included the ability to draw graffiti, to play Scrabulous, donate to charitable causes and compare movie tastes. Some applications were created for advertising and marketing purposes by companies such as Microsoft, Washington Post, Flixster and TripAdvisor whilst others were designed for fundraising and entertainment. As a result of such a move Facebook saw its user base increase a whopping 89% from last year with the biggest growth being in the 25-34 age group. It remains to be seen whether Facebook will eventually succumb to the billion dollar offers made to purchase it and how they will evolve a sustainable business model moving forward which capitalizes on the rich social graph they are building.

Open Social

Hot on the tails of Facebook’s success in the social networking arena, Google announced OpenSocial in October this year. OpenSocial is a set of common API standards that several social networking sites have already pledged to adopt including: Orkut, Linkedin, hi5, Ning, Friendster, Plaxo and now MySpace. This standard will make developers jobs easier by allowing them to re-purpose their code across multiple platforms and allow the end user to have a more integrated experience. The support of companies such as Oracle and Salesforce.com for OpenSocial suggests that the adoption of business-oriented social networking applications could be on the increase at the enterprise level. The evolution of a richer social graph across networks allows businesses to reach more customers and suggests that social networking sites could become more profitable than ever.

Radiohead Stick It To The Man.

In spite of the somewhat modest earnings from their decision to self release their album via digital download, Radiohead succeeded in challenging traditional music industry business norms. Their bold move showed that it’s possible to circumvent the iron grip of the RIAA and the music industry. This could pave the way for new distribution models and encourage other artists to take risks by exploring new mediums for reaching their consumers. With start ups such as Amie Street, Music Nation and the Hype Machine pioneering new business models it’s anyone’s guess how things will move within this space going forward.

The iPhone

Apple’s release of the iPhone has revolutionized the way we think about cell phones and has set new expectations for usability and interaction design in mobile devices. Its ease of use, touch screen technology, native applications and inclusion of the safari web browser has meant that people can interact with information and consume data on the go in a manner never seen before. Apple’s announcement that it will be releasing an SDK for third party developers suggests that Smartphone wars could be heating up this coming year.

Android Platform

In the last quarter of this year, Google announced Android, an open-source mobile phone platform which will allow third-party developers to build applications to reside on it. In conjunction with the Open Handset Alliance, Android is set to revolutionize a proprietary, locked-down technology and open it up to never seen before innovation possibly surpassing what Facebook did for the social networking world.

One Laptop Per Child

One of my personal favorites is Nicolas Negroponte’s OLPC initiative launched with the aim of “empowering children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child”. The XO laptop consists of specially created hardware and software designed to be “extremely durable, functional, energy-efficient, responsive, and fun”. OLPC is changing the way school age children interact with each other and technology and provides an opportunity for them to “connect, chat, share information on the Web, gather by videoconference, make music together, edit texts, read e-books, and enjoy the use of collaborative games online.” It’s great to see an initiative which empowers children to learn and connect with each other on such a large scale and it will be interesting to see how it evolves moving forward.

The final groundbreaking achievements are trends within our industry that have grown momentum in the past year and which are set to pave the way for good things to come.

The Semantic Web

When the semantic web will replace web 2.0 remains to be seen but pioneering work is currently being undertaken within academic institutions such as MIT particularly in the realm of building enabling technologies such as the Simile project and Piggybank. Companies such as Twine, self-described as “a revolutionary new way to share, organize, and find information” are taking things to the next level. The result will be an immense repository of information accessible for a wide range of new applications that will revolutionize our digital world.

Opening up Data and Platforms

This year, many companies have shown a willingness to open their platforms and data to third parties. A wave of start-ups are emerging which owe their existence to accessing other companies’ data. A growth in the popularity of niche search engine sites such as properazzi.com, greenmaven.com and Rapleaf has been made possible by the growth of open APIs and forging alliances with data providers. Collaboration within the web sphere looks set to continue and new business and revenue models will likely emerge from this. Competition for users will continue to be as fierce as ever and if the trend in opening up data and platforms to third parties continues we can be assured of some innovative and ground breaking new applications. There seems little doubt that companies willing to open up will fare better than those which remain proprietary and closed.

Green Tech

Web sites have sprung up in the past year exclusively devoted to championing environmental causes. Yahoo launched 2 websites devoted to all things green including the aptly named Yahoo Green (http://green.yahoo.com/) and Be a Better Planet (http://better.yahoo.com/planet/). Furthermore, there is a growing momentum for companies within our industry to adopt energy efficient practices. Companies such as Google and AMD are going green with their datacenters and installing alternative-energy systems such as solar panels and low carbon emission generators. As some of the key players within our industry take environmental concerns seriously, we can look forward to many more green initiatives moving forward.

And last but not least the creators of Guitar Hero launched Rock Band…

Are Facebook and Google Big Brother?

2007-12-05T13:08:00.000-08:00

I read an interesting post at Google’s official blog concerning “free expression and controversial content on the web” which got me thinking about the role and responsibility of companies in terms of data exposure vs. respecting the individual’s right to privacy. Are companies who collect, disseminate and filter our digital content/personal information playing the role of Big Brother?

On the one hand, providers of digital content are under legal obligation to governments such as China and Germany to remove content which violates their policies but to what extent should companies such as Google and Facebook respect individual rights and freedoms when it comes to the collection and display of our data?

Censorship of content on the web has always been a sensitive issue. One of the fundamental tenets of the web is the right to publish freely. Many content providers such as Digg, MySpace and YouTube rely upon collective intelligence to surface or bury content. So should user generated content be more closely monitored?

Recently a video appeared of a Finnish boy (responsible for the school shooting) showing his guns and threatening to commit a massacre. After the shooting occurred, YouTube responded swiftly by removing the offensive material and offering their condolences to all the families affected by the tragedy. CNET article author Greg Sandoval concurs that “blaming YouTube in such a situation would be equivalent to holding the U.S. Postal Service responsible for delivering the messages sent by the Zodiac Killer.”

Google’s Rachel Whetstone makes a valid point when she says that offering a search index that is for the most part uncensored is akin to phone companies and ISP providers allowing unscreened phone conversations and emails to be transmitted freely. However, the main difference with the web vs. email/phone is that the target audience is potentially world wide. The ethics around censorship vs. freedom is a perennial issue but what are data collectors doing to protect our individual rights to privacy and what happens if the information we share falls into the wrong hands? Can Google’s powerful search index get users in trouble for saying the wrong thing?

I’m sure it can.

I recently encountered a situation where I had mentioned a client’s name in the context of an office move which resulted in the client requesting that I not blog about them. How did they find my innocuous post? Through Google Alerts, which deliver content based on a keyword search directly to a user’s inbox or iGoogle page. To their credit, Blogger (owned by Google) includes a feature that allows users to request that their blog content not be indexed by search engines.

Disclosure of personal information continues to be a hot topic and surfaced again recently with regards to the new Facebook Beacon alerts. On Nov. 6th Facebook introduced a new feature to publicly display users actions performed on external sites (such as Blockbuster movie rental, Epicurious recipe clipping, and Travelocity bookings), as mini feeds on a user’s Facebook page. Such a move sparked a wave of Facebook user protests.

According to a NYT article, more than 50,000 Facebook members signed a petition objecting to displaying such messages to their friends. The article cites the example of a user who saw a news feed informing her that her sister had purchased the Harry Potter game “Scene It”. This particular user is quoted saying “I don’t want to know what people are getting me for Christmas”. The signers of the MoveOn.org petition are pushing to be able to opt out of the Beacon program with one click. The users’ main complaint was that it is impossible to disable this feature and that the beacon, which pops up informing users on the 3rd party site that their information is about to be shared with Facebook, is too small and displayed for too short a time. In response to protests, Facebook management made the decision to make the beacon box appear larger on the screen, display for longer and changed the display rules to require users to click an affirmative ‘OK’ button for each beacon displayed. If users ignore the alert boxes, Facebook will not post a news feed but they will not at the time of writing be adding a universal opt-out choice.

Early Beacon Warnings

Later Modified Beacon Warnings

(source: NYT “The Evolution of Facebook’s Beacon” November 29, 2007)

Removing content across and within domains is a sensitive and topical issue, as much of our world becomes digital, searchable and archived. Should we be more cautious about what we publish or continue to share freely? What rights should the user have to request removal from search indices such as Google? Companies and organizations such as women’s shelters already exercise the right to remain under the radar. What about individual rights? Who owns our data anyway? Could photographs of you during college prevent you from getting your dream job upon graduation? And how about digital detective agents or reputation lookup sites springing up such as Rapleaf who display facts, figures and information about you that you didn’t even know or have forgotten existed. And what if they chose to expose this information (like Facebook did)? When the semantic web really takes off and more powerful ways of tagging, relating and distributing content exist, such issues will become even more pressing and will no doubt require more powerful technical solutions to solve them.

Perhaps Google (or any company who holds ‘our’ data) needs to include a “Remove this from your search engine” button in their search results experience.

Canadian Rail - A more human way to travel

2007-11-19T10:36:00.000-08:00

I am on the VIA train to Montreal from Canada and I was pleasantly surprised to discover power outlets and wi-fi.. IMHO - this is the mark of a civilised country. *

* Although it is running as slowly as a donkey pulling a cart of lead up the Mont Real.

My parents christmas present: a wi fi enabled photo frame..

2007-11-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

How cool is that!!! I did some research and eStarling make them.
You can email pictures to the frame and also pull images via an RSS feed from sites
such as flickr, pikasa, photo bucket and iphoto.

It has a wi-fi card and needs a PC to set up the software on it then it's standalone. You can also send messages to it and program it to display certain photographs on certain occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries.. My mum will love it i'm sure!!!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/cameras/94a5/

It also has an off-line mode and power down at night feature. Pretty cool!

Mobilecampnyc2 Opening Speech

2007-11-11T17:29:00.001-08:00

Mobilecampnyc2 Opening Speech, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Introduction/Welcome speech at Mobile Bar Camp NYC. People tagged their polaroids and stuck them up on the wall next to the sessions schedule.

Location Based Services Brainstorm

2007-11-11T17:24:00.001-08:00

Location Based Services Brainstorm, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Discussion - Best way to enter location information?
Cookies store 4 or 5 previously entered locations.
Looped - mobile java application displays dots where friends are.
Real proximity vs. social proximity.
Remembers last location. Pick from list of locations. Free text as a last resort.
Service which asks user to reply to SMS message -> sends to 3rd party -> returns Lat/Long.
Interior location based services using RFID. Hyper location - breakdown ot stadium, school. Need blueprints. Data delivered within firewall different.
Dash -offered incentives for users to report location. Asking users to find new roads. Cost goes down. Google monitors GPS and speed tracking to monitor traffic. Getting users to report photographs.
Digital Compass on phone.
GPShopper - local product search tool has inventory management - feeds from Best buys, shiftler, Circuit City(?).
GPS huge add-on.
Need opt in option - Can I locate you?
Absolute or Relative positioning? Jaiku - activity streams. Passively tracks what you're doing plug in different services. Flicker. Friendfeed.com - dashboard for social networks brings activity log together in continuous stream.

Accuracy of LBS? Important for social services because user will complains that service is broken. Technique of locating is importat - triangulation (from cellphone towers) is not accurate enough. Yahoo checkmates.

LOOP - passively tracking on and off. Location - sharing/hiding issues. fuzziness - user might not want to always display their location. Dopplr - social travel site. Real world implications - social acceptance of LBS.

Barcodes, QR Codes

2007-11-11T17:07:00.001-08:00

Barcodes, QR Codes, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Uptake in Asian markets. Barriers to uptake in US markets.

Megaphone Project

2007-11-11T16:43:00.001-08:00

Megaphone Project, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

mobile gaming. NYU ICP student project

Live gaming contest and Nokia phone givewaways. Multi-user space invaders and hungry hippos played on a cellphone.

Android Presentation

2007-11-11T16:41:00.001-08:00

Android Presentation, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Google employee presents Android - new google mobile OS

Pete Noffit Mobile Usability

2007-11-11T16:40:00.001-08:00

Pete Noffit Mobile Usability, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Pete started the talk with examples of good and bad mobile site design. Goog: The New York Times mobile site includes skip links which help you jump down to the page to minimize scrolling. Google moile has the search at the top and promotes other services in context 1 800 411 GOOG.
Bad: Mouser.com - contains a lot of redundant information. Begins with an ad pushing other content below the limited fold on mobile devices. Too much horizontal whitespace.
Good. Mogoso - more information displayed in context. Returns category type against individual search results to increase relevance. Results grouped according to type and locality.
Yelp Mobile - using up a lot of screen real estate for 1 result.
ESPN does a good job of knowing of displaying what information people are coming to access.

Developing sites on emulators but emulators lie - do not render accurately. Emulators: Blackberry, Windows, Yospace.mobi.

Forms on mobile sites. Many not necessary. Users hate filling out forms. Move non essential form inputs to deeper levels (or illiminate).

Transcode == barfcode. Transcoding wikipedia - make it mobile friendly. Yahoo mobile research.

Disconnect ?? mobile phone and web browser. People share information - javascript object instantiate a location share. Facebook - Cityscape facebook application enables friend location tracking.

Wil Tan from WirelessVisions talks about Widget Design

2007-11-11T16:15:00.001-08:00

Wil Tan from WirelessVisions talks about Widgets, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Widget design for mobile devices things to consider:

* Screen Size is typically 320x240. Do we miniturize exsiting sites to fit mobile devices or do we mobilize site content?

* Need to consider user input mechanisms and how they ways users can interact with sites. Typically: touch, tackball, thumbwheel or keypad. The only common input mechanism between devices is the numeric keypad. Cannot create a widget that depends on a certain input mechanism besides the keypad.

* Mobile access is currently complex and inconsistent across content providers. Certain providers redirect based on device detection and deliver mobile optimized sites.

* Widget footprint - W.'s need to be fast and slim. Need to consider what resources will be consumed. Strip images to lower bandwidth consumption. To cache of not to cache and the size of the footprint on the phone.

* Media support. There is no standardized platform for flash or video or current media support provided by individual phone carriers.

* Widget viral marketing. Widget based embedded video players. Spread virally. YouTube did this - drives traffic back to their site by developing embeddable video player for myspace and facebook.
Mybloglog have reader roll widget - see who has been to a blog and read their comments. Powerful driver of traffic.

* Widgets or Advertising Mediums
Offer incentives to access content. Clearspring.

* Personalized Top List Widgets. Smartlink Widget. Rock You's social networking widgets showing ads appear in applications. Pop ups within widget application on facebook.

* Widget trends. Groupware awareness widgets. These widgets augment a users's view of the workspace - the location of other collaborators and their actions.
ChipIn Widgets personal fundraising campaign on behalf of any non profit organization or causes.
Nokia S60 widget platform - allow javascript widgets on phones.

Opening Up Social Networks

2007-11-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

The trend towards open APIs continues this time within the social networking realm. Following the success of Facebook’s open API with over 5,000 mini applications and widgets, Google has launched OpenSocial which they define as a “common open set of APIs for building social applications across multiple sites”. Several social networking sites have already pledged to adopt these open API standards including: Orkut, Linkedin, hi5, Ning, Friendster, Plaxo and now MySpace.

A common set of APIs shared across social networks makes a developer’s job a lot easier by enabling them to implement one codebase and share their apps across multiple platforms. This in turn benefits the end user by ensuring that a rich suite of tools will be available across several social networks and affords a more integrated and less fragmented experience. It also prevents one company from forcing everyone to dance to their tune and more importantly, in any discipline, openness and collaboration foster innovation.

According to a New York Times’ article , Google was in part reacting to the success of the Facebook API within the market place in order to ‘forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook’. It remains to be seen whether Facebook will adopt Open Social standards for its API or not. According to the NYT’s article, Facebook representatives have declined to comment.

Oracle and Salesforce.com have also pledged their support for OpenSocial and according to a Wired.com article: the participation of such enterprise-level would suggest “a crop of business-oriented social networking applications, far different from the fun-and-games orientation of most Facebook and MySpace apps”.

Whatever Google’s true motivations for pioneering open standards across APIs there is no doubt in my mind that they are doing the right thing. Data sharing across applications afforded by open APIs together with common standards will be the cornerstone of the next wave of internet innovation. Open APIs combined with the semantic web will make the next generation of web applications high on interoperability, smarter, and capable of delivering a more relevant, integrated and personal web experience. That said, the user needs to feel empowered with the new wave of applications and not as though they’re being randomly bitten by some chump unless they request to be! Developers and designers need to consider building end user choice and control into their cross platform social apps. Stay tuned for a lot more openness moving forward...

Playfulness in interaction design

2007-11-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

I recently sat in on a talk given by our very own Kevin Kearney on how we as designers can introduce playfulness into the user interface. Kevin gave some examples from brands such as Flickr, Digg and Apple who were incorporating playful elements into their interfaces and doing it well.

Did you ever notice the ‘Flickr loves you’ logo and the post-login greeting in one of several languages? This playfulness even extends to their error messaging. On the rare occasion the site is down the user is not greeted by a server error message but a cute “Flickr is having massage” message.

I recently went to tribe.net and was pleasantly surprised with the following example. A site down for maintenance is an opportunity for engagement and also an opportunity to sell t-shirts!

Why is incorporating playfulness into the interface so important one might ask? Playfulness in the user interface enhances user engagement and ultimately brand perception. This for me was the take home message from Kevin’s talk since it provides users with a memorable and rewarding experience and in turn promotes a positive image of a company as friendly and human which in turn promotes customer loyalty.

And there’s no reason why as Kevin correctly pointed out that financial institutions can;t benefit from introducing playfulness into their interfaces. A financial application does not need to be dull and boring. What matters is how well we do something and there is fine line between being playful and being annoying or redundant. I once remember a former colleague of mine coding a financial trading application. He attempted to introduce playfulness into the interface by having running legs come in when the application was busy fetching data. Much depends on how and when playful is implemented. The Mac FTP client Fetch is an example of playful being successful. It features an animation of a small dog running which signifies that the application is busy fetching files and ties in nicely with the name of the software and the real world analogy. Being playful is really about being clever, appropriate and subtley surprising whilst remaining non intrusive. The now infamous Mr. Clippy (RIP: 1997 - 2007) was an example Kevin gave for how not to do things.

Furthermore, brand playfulness can and should extend across multiple channels. Kevin gave the example of how JetBlue does this with their quirky and entertaining welcoming messages played whilst passengers are getting seated on the plane. This serves several purposes including putting passengers at ease, filling in time before take off and creating a positive brand perception. And it’s this attention to detail that really sets JetBlue apart from it’s competitors.

Google is another example of a company that incorporates playfulness in many ways from changing their logo to mark special days and holidays and conjuring up an elaborate April Fools Day prank in the form of TISP.

The sorts of playfulness we see in our interfaces and brands says a lot about the designers, engineers and managers behind a product and the extent to which they will go to connect with their users. More recently they launched their 1-800-GOOG-411 voice activated information listing service. I was encouraged to try this by the gigantic billboards I saw on a recent visit to the Bay Area and I encountered another example of playfulness. I would encourage anyone reading this to try it out. If you pick a more ‘obscure’ listing then chances are you will trigger this cute ‘look up' sound which is akin to someone muttering under their breath as they attempt to find what you’re looking for and a ‘honk honk’ sound when a result is found. This is a simple but effective example of how sound can be used to entertain the user whilst providing them with valuable feedback that they (Google) are working on it.

Apple is abound with examples of playfulness across their desktop, web properties and device designs. Kevin made the point that they didn’t need to implement the genie effect when you minimize an application within their OS – but the genie disappearing into the lamp is so much more fun and elegant an example of interaction design than simply making something go away. On the iPhone – a task such as deleting photographs is made more fun/less like work by a trash can whose lid lifts up to receive a deleted image in the from of a genie and then wobbles slightly upon task completion.

At apple.com I was recently redirected to a password retrieval page that provided an opportunity for brand building. The page title was iForgot.

Playfulness presents an opportunity for designers, product managers, strategists, engineers and as Kevin pointed out: especially copywriters to improve user experience and shape brand. The real challenge comes in convincing certain clients that incorporating playfulness into their interfaces/brand is worthy of the time, effort and risk involved. A nod to the success of pioneers such as Google and Apple plus increased user satisfaction and brand loyalty translating into real world ROI might do the trick.

What examples of brand/UI playfulness have you come across?

Fonejacker Faster Providings

2007-10-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

This is soooooooooooo funny. It's almost too like real-life at least if you live in the UK and get sales calls or have been to India and experienced some hardcore sales pitches.

i think i love my iPhone

2007-10-14T09:03:00.001-07:00

Ok.. so it's a sexy, aesthetically pleasing device with a well designed user interface and slick interaction design... (although there are a few glitches)

Not being a showy type person, I must admit I felt a bit of a poser when I first started using my iPhone in public - mainly to check my email to see where I was supposed to be when. How great it would be if there were some auto sync feature between calendars and mail. The calendar app. would 'know' when a person was supposed to be when without having to laboriously add all of one's appointments. similarly when things you find on the web or other media can automatically be added to one's scheduler/calendar. Such a solution might be an example of the semantic web - a concept i am still trying to get my head around and what the true 'real-world' implications of this might be.

Anyway back to the iPhone - I have had to reboot it a couple of times within the first few days. (Note there is no force quit to my knowledge - but instead you must use brute force by holding down the 'power off button - top right of the device' and the 'home button' - bottom center together for a few seconds). The main malfunction I have had is when trying to place calls and keys 'stick' or do not respond to touch. I've also this same issue with the unlock feature.

I read a review recently from someone who's iPhone went south and she complained of it getting extremely hot when she was charging it whilst making a call. I have noticed this device sometimes runs hot too especially when on a call for an extended period of time... leading to a slight burning sensation in the ear.

The UI - on the whole is very intuitive. Note there are no real instructions/help guidance on how to use it. For me it has been a process of trial and error as I've tried to navigate my around it's many features and often subtle interactions. One of the interactions I expect to be able to do is when inside an address bar - is to run my finger quickly to the right of screen and wipe the address field.. instead I have to hit the 'x' key which for some reason seems easy to miss.
It's interesting when I started to get into the touch screen interface for performing every interaction I then tried to touch my iPod (5th generation) screen by habit expecting something to happen before reluctantly going back to the click wheel as my input device. Yes, I know there's iTouch but I'm not going to get yet another portable apple device.

At the moment I'm trying to wipe my calendar of all events and I'm having to manually delete each item which requires a total of 4 taps.

Using the safari over wifi is great but trying to surf the net over edge network is like using a 14K modem.

The propritaryness and control* over the device by Apple is something I had anticipated but not down to which ringtone I could have on it. I miss my Slayer - Rain In Blood ringtone on my crappy Sanyo Katana phone - but at least I could have my own ringtone. I tried to use the tone creation application embedded inside itunes - the problem is though you still don't get to choose which tunes you can create tones from. A word of advice - make sure you perform an advanced search in the itunes store and filter only by songs that you can convert to ringtones. Otherwise as I discovered much to my chagrin, the songs I downloaded (and paid for) could not be converted into tones. Crackers posted workarounds to this problem but Apple quickly countered this with patches. My iPhone is running firmware 1.1.1 which at the time of purchase was uncrackable - but things change but to be honest I've sort of grown used to the default 'robot' ringtone I've opted for.

In short, do I regret buying an iPhone - no, definitely not. Is there room for improvement - yes!

*At the time of writing this there was no way for developers to write 3rd party native applications for it.. Steve Jobs has since seen the light and announced that apple will be releasing an SDK. Exciting news but it probably won't do anything to address the standards problems and interoperability across mobile phone apps.

Wired Next Fest 2007

2007-10-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

I was in LA recently with work and I happened to find out about Wired Next Fest through a chatter post on iminlikewithyou.com. So off I went to see what it was about.

Coloured lights projected on to screen of falling dust

2007-10-03T12:30:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This was near the entrance of the Next Fest and and had the advantage of traditional video projection screens in that the audience could actually walk through the screen sort of like an Alice Cooper stage show circa 1989.

Magnetic Liquid Brightly Lit Cones

2007-10-03T12:27:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Not sure what the purpose of these are - but they were interesting to look at and constantly changing made entirely of a thick, magnetic fluid.

Flight Patterns Touch Screen

2007-10-03T12:24:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Here's a touch screen that shows a real time visualization of flight data. Sort of a mashup of google earth and flightstats.

Google Sky: The satellites point the opposite direction

2007-10-03T12:21:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Google Engineer demos their Google Sky project (part of Google Earth) ...let's the user's explore constellations and distant galaxies. It has almost street level view clarity.

Google showing their Google Moon product

2007-10-03T12:19:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Google engineers demo their Google Moon Maps plus wikipedia-style facts mash up.. All the photos were stitched together from space missions (most from the 1960's). This was another one of my favorite projects. (Dawa = moon afterall!)

Mars Robot Crawler

2007-10-03T12:17:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This is a robot crawling over a man just like it would a space rock on mars

Jetson's Space Capsule

2007-10-03T12:16:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Space X's Dragon Capsule on display. It was smaller than expected but the rockets that propel these things into space are gigantic.

Rocket Scientists shows Nasa's Second Life World

2007-10-03T12:14:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This guy went from building rockets to building virtual models of them in Nasa's Second Life world. You could even go inside the rockets and see dashboard controls as well as launch rockets.. well you could if you had the right permissions.

From silicon to innocence

2007-10-03T12:12:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Here's a picture of a school age child drawing with an interactive whiteboard. The tool palette bore a striking resemblance to Adobe products.

Ridiculous Use of Silicon

2007-10-03T12:10:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

I took this picture because it was silly to see such an obvious and use of silicon to market a racing game. IMHO Silicon Implants + Cars = Silly.

Yahoo's Visualization of Email Traffic

2007-10-03T12:08:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This photo is a bit blurry but at the Yahoo booth they had a projection of email traffic in north america in real time.

Bump Tops Virtual Touch Screen Desktop

2007-10-03T12:06:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Seemed like a convoluted way to interact with your desk top. It was fun for 5 minutes but I'd rather just have one click do it for me than manually having to arrange things... too much like the real world :-)

Carl Sagan's Time Travel becomes reality?

2007-10-03T12:05:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Here was a video projected on to a mesh screen. Pressing on the mesh made it possible to fast forward, rewind or pause the video. The video consisted of people and cars at a busy intersection and by interacting with it you could make people and cars walk backwards or speed up.

Clothes that hug

2007-10-03T11:59:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Embedded computing in action. I didn't see a demo of it but here on display were clothes that could be remotely controlled to deliver hugs to the wearer. Great invention for maintaining long distance relationships.

Brainloop: Navigating Google Earth with Brainwaves

2007-10-03T11:58:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This was one of my favorite projects. Here one of the brain loop team members is navigating google earth solely with his brainwaves obtained from an Electro-encephalograph (EEG) device. 4 electrodes were sufficient and the man in the picture had learned to use his thoughts as if he were actually making a movement right or left. These thoughts were translated into directional movements that determined the path he took in Google's Earth application.

Bipedal Robotic Chair

2007-10-03T11:52:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

Here is a bipedal robotic chair equipped with a joy stick. Fascinating to watch this move around the floor.

Robots with facial recognition and 'human-like' facial expressions

2007-10-03T11:48:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This was an impressive but slightly eerie demonstration of a robot. It had a latex face and wires/metal body. It appeared to make eye contact with the audience and respond to laughter and waves. It had a limited range of gestures such as making a peace sign and running motion with it's metal limbs. The guy in the white lab coat to the right added an even more sci-fi twist to it. Whatever the merits of this invention - it certainly was a crowd puller.

Cycle powered servers

2007-10-03T11:44:00.001-07:00

Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

This was a demonstration of how cyclists generated the electricity to power a server. Not really sure what the server was serving up.. but it made an impressive demonstration. Too bad the cyclists didn't have there own terminals or internet devices. Perhaps this is the environmentally friendly office of the future: working and exercising at the same time.

Kevin Demos Yahoo's Fire Eagle @ Wired Next Fest

2007-10-03T11:41:00.001-07:00

Kevin Demos Yahoo's Fire Eagle @ Wired Next Fest, originally uploaded by dawachan1.

I knew Kevin back from my days at sdo.net. He has moved on to bigger and better things. Here he is at the Yahoo booth demo'ing fire eagle the new geo location look up service from Yahoo. It's really great - it offers a web service where a user's location can be supplied based on the cellphone signal alone.. no need for zip code entry and is a good fix before GPS enabled mobile phones really take off.