design, innovation, mobile, social and emerging tech links for you
I love the idea of a map customized for what’s important to *only* you. The illustration style is perfect. I’m also a huge sucker for the giant blue whale which was my favorite place to hang out as a child. That and the dinosaur room. Check out the large version here.
(via kottke)
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Over the weekend some information came out on some location-based features of the newly announced Palm Pre:
When you’re late it — remember, this thing has GPS; it has a clock; and it has your calendar. So it not only knows where you are, it knows where you’re supposed to be and when….so when it realizes you’re going to be late, it says, ‘Hey, not only are you going to be late, but I can take care of it for you. I’ll send an email to your assistant or to the people in the meeting, which would you prefer? And oh, by the way, here’s the map.’
To me this sounds like a classic example of a company essentially showing off by finding problems for technology to solve that a) aren’t actually the big problems users in this space need a solution for and b) will never work as fluidly as described during this pre-release media courting phase.
In this case, they seem to be attacking what they perceive as the big problem by stringing together solutions to a bunch of little problems rather than addressing it as a holistic experience. I mean, it’s been how many years and it’s still tough to find a syncing solution that works across multiple devices? Shouldn’t we feel like we’ve solved that before jumping to phone as automated personal assistant?
Of course it all comes down to the execution and most importantly (as John from Boing Boing points out) user control but my point is that not everything that can be automated, should be automated (even if it’s a technical hurdle developers drool over) and I’m not yet convinced this particular scenario is something I see improving people’s lives in the near future.
Read more here (BoingBoing)
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I recently downloaded Flixster for the iPhone, a mobile movie application that, by all accounts, has everything you’d expect from such an app: show times, nearby theaters, upcoming releases, trailers, reviews, etc.
While they do a great job of making all that content easy to navigate on the device, it got me thinking of a feature that would better reflect an understanding of mobile users, rather than just making existing content available on a mobile device (with basic leveraging of the phone’s location to help narrow theater lists, etc.)
Rather than just letting users sort movies by rating, popularity, title or even theater proximity, wouldn’t it be great to have the option to sort movies by proximity and start times – i.e. “I wonder what’s playing nearby and starting soon.” That would give you a list with a rich, relevant context empowering you to act on that information quickly.
When I saw the “Upcoming” tab in Flixster (above) that’s actually what I expected (and was excited) to see but instead was given a list of upcoming release dates for movies – something that feels decidedly less tailored to a user on the go. Perhaps it’ll come in a later update.
I believe the apps that show an understanding of the nuances of mobile users rather than the ones that simply plop their content on a smaller screen (Flixster is by no means guilty of the latter) are the ones that will truly push mobility forward, and ultimately reap the rewards (in the form of customer loyalty) down the road.
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Imagine all the cool apps you could build on top of this.
Judging by the upcoming potential budget cuts and slashed lines, I don’t see something like this in our MTA’s future. Sniffle.
… basically this is the type of data that drives the signs you see on the L train ("Next Train: 25 minutes"). Now imagine building this into an iPhone app or something so whenever you are standing over a subway station (GPS!) the phone can tel you whether it’s worth going in and paying the $2 (vs. you sitting around waiting 45 mins for the next train)…. or your phone buzzing with an SMS before you leave your apt for work / airport/ night out letting you know the F train is on fire / delayed 20 minutes / etc
Read more over at Dennis’.
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Today the internet is a-twitter over Nokia’s announcement of the N97, which is undeniably a very sexy looking device. Here’s a quick look at the specs:
That being said, it’s hard not to reserve judgement on the overall experience as hardware never seemed to be Nokia’s problem. The true test will be whether it can enable that seamless hardware + software integration that Nokia desperately needs to be able to challenge Apple from a UX POV. Is Symbian up for the challenge? This version of the OS looks much slicker and I’m really looking forward to playing with it but it’s hard to really lay down an opinion without having it in your hands. It also won’t be out in the US until June 29th for a cool $650.
Until that time, here are a few links detailing the launch and even some initial impressions from bloggers over in Barcelona.
As an aside GigaOm calls out a potentially exciting feature:
With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ’status’ and share their ’social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.
Read more from Mr. Malik here.
Also…
+ Scoble’s going bananas about it being the best Facebook phone evar! (OMG!)
+ Gizmodo’s got a pretty good hands on account.
I’m interested to hear how the announcement is received by Nokia community. Post your thoughts in the comments!
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Disclaimer: While I am an Obama supporter and really appreciate that his campaign is the one that’s finding new ways to leverage technology (and in turn engage new groups of voters), the features that make this app is so great are smart in and of themselves.
Back to the app!
I can’t say enough about how impressed I am with the Obama ’08 iPhone app (iTunes link) that was released yesterday. The thoroughness and the polish really shows how a political process so often stuck in the past can really be revolutionized in 4 short years.
My favorite things about the app:
There are, of course, other features that you’d expect: sign up for alerts + watch videos (I’d like tighter integration with the video player a la MLB At Bat).
Anyway, I highly recommend you check it out to get a glimpse at how politics (and political movements) are changing in a way that, I imagine, no generation before us has witnessed.
Read more about it here.
Now I’m going to go back to my side of the aisle real quick…
I tweeted about this yesterday but I enjoy imagining what features a quickly hacked together McCain/Palin iPhone app might have: A random newspaper name generator? “Places one can drill” game? 101 ways to work the word “maverick” into a sentence? What else?
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If one were to look at their actions over the past two days in a vacuum, you might think Nokia is really concerned about how things are lining up for them with Apple and Google entering a space they’ve dominated for years.
Yesterday they made a move to acquire their way into the LBS space with their Plazes acquisition and today, in what is a clear attack on the market Google is going after with Android, Nokia has acquired the remaining part of Symbian they didn’t already own with plans to take it all open source in the next two years (with certain components coming sooner).
This is potentially really big, particularly on the heels of the recent issues for Google/Android.
I certainly don’t think Android is going to be a non-factor by any means but Nokia’s doing a decent job “battening down the hatches” (something they had to do in my opinion) in preparation for Google’s inevitable launch (we hope) and Apple’s new presence. That being said, acquisitions aren’t always the easiest thing to work into a seamless consumer offering so a lot still remains to be seen but in case there was any doubt, it’s now officially on.
Om Malik has an excellent piece on how the landscape shakes out after Nokia’s recent move.
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A few weeks ago I posted about how Google’s recent Android phone-as-compass demos, paired with the addition of geo-located wikipedia entries to Google Maps would usher in the era of consumer-grade augmented reality. This morning I came across this video by a company called Enkin doing just that. This is their mission:
“Enkin” introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices.
And here’s a video showing what they’re up to:
Very exciting.
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Augmented reality (wikipedia) has, for the most part, been relegated to the world of academics and researchers, resulting in interesting (but dubiously practical) demos like this or this funny video of a dog playing augmented reality soccer. Wee!
This week Google made 2 separate announcements that, when looked at together, lay out an almost too obvious path to realizing augmented reality at a consumer (and dare I say, practical) level.
The consensus showstopper at Google’s Android event this week was the built-in compass functionality that enables the phone to act as a lens on Google’s street view. Be sure to check out the story and the video here to see what I mean. It’s one of those things you have to see in action, spatially, to really get it.
Also this week, Google added an admittedly tantalizing (for those that have a soft spot for all things geo-locative) “More…” button to Google Maps with two choices: Photos and Wikipedia entries. Toggling these on and off will overlay user-uploaded photos and wikipedia entries that are tagged with location data on the map you’re looking at. Also, these two choices are clearly only the beginning.
So… after you see both of these in action, it’s really easy to imagine how Android will allow you to orient yourself with the compass on a street view of a map and give you those same toggles to look at buildings/spaces/etc. around you and see photos that people have taken in that place or historical information about the neighborhood.
Really, really cool, eh?
ps: On a side note, I’m not at all enthused by the fact that, for the photos, Google’s asking you to use yet another piece of software, Panoramio (I already don’t think I know anyone who uses Picasa), so I don’t feel compelled to contribute until they open it up a bit.
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I’m finally starting to get caught up after our trip to Barcelona last week. As a little teaser of the photos to come, I wanted to post this photo of a map kiosk I saw in center of Figueres, Spain when we went to check out the Dali Museum (Quick review: Really neat, totally unique, museum. Unfortunately they don’t throttle the people they admit into the space at one time so it was a total mob scene).
I love how someone Sharpied in some streets that the map designers neglected making the map more useful for everyone.
Update: My buddy Eduardo (who actually reads Spanish) cued me into the following:
Come to think of it, I’m sort of ashamed I didn’t pick up on “C / Putas“. Anyway, let’s all think about how great it would have been if someone took the time to update an out-of-date public kiosk.
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