C'mon Facebook! What are you thinking?

Are the latest FB updates a UX fail? Or is this just one brilliant ingredient to the new "secret sauce" of social due out today at f8?

Pulling my hair out. And not much to work with, Yet another seemingly useless Facebook update irritating my social fiber. Thanks. Seems like every time one turns around the coders at Facebook have come with some narrow, engineer driven, new, improved concept of how things should work, look, and feel. "Hey guys!" I just rewrote that algorithm and optimized the variable of quantifying the edge ranking based on the number of times a user clicks on a family member (first cousin or closer) more than twice a month on consecutive Tuesdays, as that's when our statistics show the highest weight of family-to-family member posts - including photos!" "Oh yeah... I changed the background colour for photos so you can't see the ad links behind them and have to scroll down the page to see the comments as well"

Here's a tip Facebook. What's fun for engineers is not always what's fun for the rest of the world. We want it simple. And simple means - something we can understand - not something you can understand. The news feed has come farther and farther away from anything relevant to me. People I have never posted to, commented on, or received anything from, constantly come into the top of my feed, I had given up on the feed and used "most recent" only. Simple enough to scroll down that list. Now you've complicated that and removed the easy drop down filter. Geez! And added a ticker/scroller in the sidebar - where I can Facebook while I'm Facebooking? At least have the courtesy to allow us to turn these on/off as modules, just like My Yahoo or Google. Or is that your plan?

Ahhhh.... the plot thickens. Later today the powers that be at FB are going to launch something BIG. A new game-changer for social as some report it.  I have no insight how it will be, but with some of the changes we're seeing I wonder if modularity will be the cornerstone of the new FB. The rumor mill abounds with music services, or music service plugins perhaps? Netflix, Hulu, or other video serivces integrated? Skype video? Already there. Yup! I think FB is going modular and the simple ticker/sidebar is why. Today that little feature seems quite redundant, but if the central area of screen real estate on FB is being filled up with music, video, or other services (video requiring large viewing real estate) then the social interactive features need to become modular and more of an IM oriented piece of the proposition. That's why they have been putting so much effort into the UX placement and capabilities of the messaging and the chat functions. Think about the usefullness of the ticker for listening or viewing parties powered by Spotify or Hulu. Now you're getting it.

Just my theory looking at the box from the outside but who knows? We'll find out shortly.

The Unspoken Benefit Of Cloud Services - More Gadgets

I can have even more gadgets at the same time!

Samsung announced the Galaxy Note the other day. A sweet 5.3" phone/tablet/phone which will be shipping shortly. Straight away I could hear people asking, "Why? Don't we have our hands full with 10" and 7" tablets and 4.5" phones already?" I say - "Hell no! More stuff!" This is the true agenda with cloud services. It's why manufacturers have been trying for years to provide users with backup services for their data and to make it easy to migrate to newer products when they come along. With Android, iOS, Dropbox, and everything else connected in the cloud - who cares? I can have my iPad, my Arc, my iMac, my wife's iPhone, and anything else, all connected and updated 24/7. And now they're coming with yet another product category and I just don't have any threshold left to stop me (money aside). I simply must have a Galaxy Note in my bag for those times when my eyes are too tired to look at a 4" screen, and I am too tired to hold the weight of an iPad. Now, if I could somehow pair my Bluetooth stereo headset with multiple simultaneous devices...

Life in a bathtub at 250 km/h - what a rush!

Grand Theft Auto's got nothin' on this!

Not too long ago I reached another milestone in Birthdays. My wife and friends pitched in to buy me a day of racing in both Formula Renault and Formula 1 cars as an "experience" package with Rajamäki Racing Experience. The fun part was that we had all pitched together to get the same gift certificate for my Best Man on his similar milestone the year before, but due to scheduling conflicts he never used it. So a grudge race was in the makings.

All I can say is, WOW! What an experience! And what a well managed operation. The gang at Rajamäki was fantastic and very thorough in everything they did. As is the way in racing circles, the day went like clockwork, filled with speed, yellow flags, cars into the wall, and every bit of testosterone pumping, adrenaline-junkie excitement you'd expect. This is the story.

Angry Balls Attack My Kitchen In New 3D Shooter

Ball Invasion Turns Real World Into 3D Shooter for iPad2

We've seen AR overlay shooters using live camera input before. We've seen game surfaces generated by using the camera. What is new and innovative here is generating a 3D playing field using the camera and accurately, quickly, updating the environment during gameplay. 

What It Is

Ball Invasion uses simultaneous localization and mapping technology to generate real-time 3D maps of the environment as you move the iPad’s camera around. Once you generate the playing field your challenge is to shoot “malicious and cunning balls hiding in the real world,” with the challenges and difficulty increasing with each progressive level.

The scanning process is simple and the on-screen instructions are very clear and helpful. There's even a first-run video that instructs you how to scan an environment with your iPad2 camera. 

Ball Invasion is the first product from Stockholm-based computer vision startup 13th Lab. The startup specializes in simultaneous localization and mapping technology (as opposed to your average, everyday augmented reality) in mobile environments. Their platform, called SLAM, "lets you very accurately position your iPad 2 in 3D space and overlay stuff on reality without any known or printed visual markers, as is required in other solutions,” 13th Lab founder Petter Ivmark explains. 

They recommend backgrounds with high detail and I did notice the app mapping loads of tracking points based on highlights and contrasts as I captured the environment, similar to motion tracking in video effects software. In layman’s terms, the technology turns your real world surroundings into the backdrop for interactive, 3D game play.

Game Play

The game itself is quite fun. There increasing levels of skill involved such as ricocheting balls off of spinning objects to hit targets or bouncing off of surfaces like walls or tables. The accuracy is actually quite good and while it's a little difficult to judge the distance to target in 3D space, you zero-in quickly. 

I've had a few problems generating playing fields depending on the backgrounds and the app does not seem to support landscape mode (which would be ergonomically preferred), but these are small problems. The one big drawback is hand and arm fatigue. As fun as it is, the iPad2 isn't exactly lightweight when you're holding it up with both arms for several minutes at a time. Guess I need to load up on my 12oz. curls to build up arm strength.

Ball Invasion for iPad2 has been out a while and is available on iTunes with 50% discounted introductory pricing ($1.99).

Hard working fashionistas recording HD on their DSLRs

More proof of the higher quality and growing dominance of web-based video

See the Ida Sjöstedt show at BON magazine

Backstage and all around the fashion venues at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week you couldn't help but notice the complete absence of TV news cameras. Sure, there were loads of fantastic collections to distract me but being the tech nerd I am, I was into observing the tech kit as well. I won't say there was an absence of television teams, but there was barely a traditional camera front-end to be seen.

Thank you Huff Post for adding Classic View to your iPad app!

the new & improved classic version

A few days ago I got an update notice that Huff Post had released their iPad app version 3.0. After downloading it and starting up, I was met by the choice of selecting Glide or Classic mode. Whew! I had given up using their iPad app and was just browsing in Atomic Web instead. The previous version 2.0 was based on a picture-driven visual orgy, sliding, gliding, "look what you can do with an iPad" interface which was completely useless and over-the top. It was like their developers drank way too much Jolt cola or Red Bull (or maybe both) and went crrrraaaazy!

All credit to innovation but this (and you too CNN if you're listening) reminded me of when digital video effects (DVE) boxes came into television production in the 80's. Picture in picture effects flying around your TV screen, spinning with stardust trails and light effects gleaming across hundreds, thousands of page turns in every newscast, sports scoreboard, local car advert... STOP!

Magazines are meant to be read. News images are meant to support the story, not be icons or the center of some navigation paradigm. Faces covering the screen with small text underneath in a video-wall look and feel scaled down to a 9-inch tablet? Really? I love eye candy but when it grossly sacrifices function for form it just ain't right. Keep it classic, elegant, familiar, and readable and limit new touch features to ease of use functionality and menu structure. With classic view I can now get back onboard.

Apple's patently obvious moves

Yet another Apple filing has surfaced. This one seemingly describing a means for providing global phone, or as Engadget put it, "one phone to rule them all". At the very least it allows for a "customized user experience" allowing users to seamlessly switch carriers without the need for a new phone or a new SIM card. The latter would require a global SIM card.

The patent in question, entitled: Method and apparatus for using a wireless communication device with multiple service providers, describes using "a set of one or more identifier values stored in the mobile wireless communication device" in order to allow for the automatic configuration of that device to any carrier service profile. Simply put, you could put your SIM card into any iPhone (or sim bearing product) and configure for the correct carrier. This part in itself is nothing new and may well be patented already.  Unique identifiers that most handset manufacturers grab over the network from your SIM and phone during first-run would be:

MNC (Mobile Network Code)  your primary carrier)

MCC (Mobile Country Code) Country issue of the SIM

SNC (Secondary Network Code) the one you're roaming on

SCC (Secondary Country Code) If you're traveling internationally

IMEI Number (Unique identifier for each handset lie a VIN on your car)

MSISDN (your unique carrier subscription number, typically phone number)

With this info most handset manufacturers have automated first-run wizards which send this info to their own databases of carrier settings to then configure all of your SMS, MMS, Internet, etc. and get you hooked up. Most handsets will have a limited number of these configurations onboard to match the software versions by territory. What Apple is proposing, apparently, is to have everything onboard the product so that each product is a global release. And then to take it one step further by ranking carriers based on pricing and subscription models and matching that to your user profile (how much you call, text, surf, and so on).

This last bit is what is new, challenges the market as we know it today, and points to Apple truly looking for the Global SIM and removing the carrier as gatekeeper to the customer. They have previously met with stiff resistance and I would be surprised if that attitude softens. I am also of the opinion that Apple is once again trying to patent the obvious by taking existing patents and years-old standard telco practices and submitting them with very small changes as revolutionary new ideas worthy of a patent. Just like their submission for streaming music optimization. A technology that Spotify has been doing since its inception - only better. 

Frankly, with all of the patent suits flying around the mobile industry right now it's becoming comical and Apple is more than beginning to look like Microsoft in the 90's, scooping up every good idea that's already out there and pitching it as their own.

Source: Apple Insider 

GLMPS is cool but it's been done before

All Things D had a story on a new startup, Glmps (pronounced "glimpse"), which has created a new iPhone app that captures the moments just before taking a still image on your iPhone. It achieves this by recording video from the moment the camera is engaged. Once everything is captured you can save it to their website and share via Twitter or Facebook. They even have Foursquare check-in.

Now, the social aspects of this are sort of hygiene at this point and the concept, while appearing innovative, has been done already and patented. Ina Fried actually mentions this in the article referencing Sony who had a simliar feature integrated into their Cybershot cameras. Here's where Glmps may be on the verge of some IP difficulties.

The patent for the technology that Sony used is actually held by Sony Ericsson who debuted it in the K800i cameraphone in 2006 under the name "Best Pic"(video below the break). The technology was to record/buffer a series of frames before and after shutter activation by - you guessed it - beginning to buffer still frames once the camera was activated (video below). The user could then select the best picture from any one of the recorded frames. Sony Ericsson then licensed this over to the Cybershot team at Sony.

I got mustard all over my Facebook!

Johnny's Mustard moves the Facebook "Like" Button off the page and onto the product

It may have been done already somewhere but this is the first time I've seen it, and by a little mustard brand in southern Sweden no less. That's right. Johnny's Senap (senap = mustard), a brand under Dr. PersFood of Eslöv in Sweden has taken social media to heart in a big way. Right on the label! We all know how important the call to action is in determining the success of brand marketing activities, and especially with regards to social media, but I wonder how many major brands have actually moved the "Like" button call to action beyond their web presence and onto their product.

This is fantastic and it makes me wonder what interesting combination of Augmented Reality and app integration, can succeed in moving the actual function of the Like button off of the web and onto the product. It's only a matter of time.

Well done Johnny's Senap!

The new measure of "cool"

When I was a teenager you could have lifted me into any scene from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. I was a major music junkie. I spent all my money on albums (that would be vinyl) and listened to them till the grooves wore thru. And, like any properly cool teenager of the time, LP's were stored in orange crates or other similar packing crates. I maybe had 3 crates worth of vinyl at any given time, but I didn't come remotely close to my best friend, Matt. He must have had 5-6 crates of LP's. Very cool. And my brother-in-law? He had at least 10! He was cool beyond words.

You get it. Music is cool. Having music is cool. And in my youth, the measure of "cool" was the number of orange crates of LP's you had stacked up next to your amp and turntable. That was how you knew who to go to for music advice or to make a casette tape. 

But, the measure of "cool" has evolved over the years. In the 80's and early 90's it was the number of CD's you had on your bookshelves (I was only up to about 500). With the advent of the internet and with many thanks to the team at Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft for inventing the mp3 format, the measure of "cool" evolved into how many gigabytes of mp3's you had on your hard disk. Fantastic! Everything playable on-demand right from my computer or even... wait for it... a portable mp3 player no larger than a pack of cigs!

Well now we've entered the new millenium, and following Kazaa, Napster, Limewire and every other "get your mp3's free" service, it's been said we have created a generation of music listeners who are lacking a sense of ownership. I would argue, however.  that we have simply evolved to the next level in the music coolness equation. 

Spotify founder, Daniel Ek, said recently in an interview that the future of music is not ownership but access. He is spot on, and has been ever since I first had Spotify pitched at me in 2008. In this case, what's important to understand is that "ownership" does not necessarily even need to mean "purchased music". "Ownership" means owning the ingestion, storing, database management, syncing and every other process of the file management - music listening experience. And all we really want and need to make it work seamlessly, is access. Quick, easy, access. Why else would radio still be so popular? I push the button in my car and music comes out. Butt simple.

So, in 2011, what's cooler than 120GB of mp3's on your hard disk? 10 million tracks in the air around you all the time, 24/7, just waiting for you to hit a button and bring them into your headphones, stereo, computer, car, tablet, smartphone, whatever. Has the currency of music lost it's value? Or is it simply that the process isn't worth it any more? Maybe a little of both. One thing is certain: access is the new measure of "cool". Accept it and get on board.