Apple's Patent Pipeline Shows What to Expect

With iPhone 4 and iPad selling like crazy, you might think Apple's laptop research may be taking a back seat. Think again. Here are some of the patent filings related to Mac, the ultimate Apple experience:

• Solar powered computers
• Touch-screen desktops
• Built-in projector which lets you display video on a wall
• Seamless laptop with invisible buttons, keyboards and trackpad
• Screen camera that detects your presence and powers up the computer as soon as you approach it

As Apple surpasses Microsoft in market capitalization - a significant milestone - it is good to see its focus on innovative R & D which will make great user experiences.

Augmented Reality: Who's Got the Business Model?

Dutch firm SPRX, the maker of Layar, the Augmented Reality platform, says it now has an ecosystem of over 3500 developer partners. These partners have signed up to develop 'layers' containing interesting location-specific data that objects could be tagged with. Examples of such data might be house prices, robbery incidents, accident prone spots etc. Essentially the developers sell apps for a small fee, and Layar leverages the network effect. The firm has also introduced Layar Stream, a sort of search engine that takes care of discovery problem based on contextual elements in the field of vision.

Then there is a host of other players: Metaio, Neogens, Oogmento, Total Immersion, Int13, Mobilizy and others. Soon you will have an ecosystem of platform vendors, app writers, service providers and content developers. It will be interesting to see who emerges as the Google of this space. 

HTML5: Telltale Sign of the Future of the Web

HTML5 sure has a lot going for it, given that Google, Microsoft and Apple agree to the direction it is taking. A short tour of the key features of HTML5 should be enough to convince ourselves that support for greater interactivity is getting entrenched in the browser.

Many features currently provided by large JavaScript libraries such as JQuery will be native to HTML5-enabled browsers, slimming down libraries considerably. Laborious validations will move into the browser. New HTML5 APIs allow drag-and-drop. Video is embedded easily without the need of JavaScript - although codec compatibilities are yet to be straightened out for all browsers.

There is some discussion about how HTML5 impacts the future of Flash. To me, the larger issue is how it impacts the future of the Web. The very prospect of better interactive support in browsers is a positive sign for the future of the Web. Interactive applications will be easier to build and deploy - and users will find the Web content more engaging.

Adobe Embraces Android, Renounces Apple

The platform war wages on. A recent article in ReadWriteWeb repeats Adobe's latest pronouncement: Adobe's "Packager for iPhone", which allows Flash files to play on iPhone, has hit the end of the road. The version being shipped with CS5 will be the last one, and no more development is planned.

In short, no future for Flash on iPhone, iTouch and iPad... or so it seems if you were to believe what Adobe's program manager has to say about Flash, CS5 and iPhone applications. Or, for that matter what Apple has been signaling for past several months.

The consequences will be interesting. Apple will continue to block Flash as long as it makes business sense. In the meantime, Adobe will make it easier for developers to play their Flash apps on Android, the Google mobile operating system. In parallel, Nokia, Microsoft, RIM and others will play their strategic moves in support of interactivity on their mobile devices.

What does this mean for interactive application developers? Clearly there is no question of writing off Flash yet - Android marketshare is growing, and Flash will thrive there. Next, Apple is clearly signaling that  developers can no longer use cross-platform compilers for building iPhone apps.

So, get ready for developing apps in a variety of languages: Objective C, C++, Javascript, HTML5 and Flash ActionScript - at least. And may be the list will start growing soon, depending on what moves the other players make.

The ReadWriteWeb article, titled Adobe Gives up on Apple, Welcomes Android can be found here.

Why and How to Keep Users on a Web Site

A recently published article on Knowtebook argues that it is impossible to show all information of interest to users at one go - so searching is inevitable. However, users tend to leave a web page if they don't see what they are looking for - immediately.

How are some of the most interactive websites combating this challenge? The article, titled Why and How to Keep Users on a Web Site,  includes great examples from some of the coolest sites. iPad, Wrangler and Bebopjeans, to name a few. Worth a look. I love the way these sites give you cool activities to do, while revealing more and more information. It's as though you were exploring their collection.

New Trends in Site Maps

When was the last time you were excited about looking up a site map? Yes, I hear you - the answer is ten thousand years back or more. Site maps are boring, and we don't really expect much from them. In most cases, they are an apology for poorly designed site navigation. In many cases they are hopelessly out of date. I could go on. But here is something interesting. Poonam Agarwal's article titled Changing Design Trends for Site Maps does a great job of showcasing some of the trendiest site maps around. Worth a look.

Adobe, Apple and the UX Platform Holy Grail

This is a guest post by Shivesh Vishwanathan.

As the search for the dominant mobile platform continues amongst players, including Apple and Adobe, it is helpful to bring out some analogies from the past. This stand-off has many similarities to the Microsoft/Win32 vs. Java dominance battle that was fought a decade ago. Apple is today's Microsoft with its proprietary OS and a strong iPhone developer community. Adobe is today's Java with its dreams of becoming a device-agnostic platform. "Singular experience, multiple devices", proclaims its Open Screen Project.

One problem that Adobe will have to tackle is that in today's world, the user interface paradigm can only go so far in providing great user experiences. What today's devices and platforms enable is much more than UI. They provide Interactive User Experience or IUX. IUX combines three types of interactivity, Interface, Sensor and Location, which in turn exploit unique platform capabilities such as direction, touch, orientation, location, movement, proximity and others. As you can see, user interface is just one piece of the puzzle that is the next generation application.

Apple not providing Adobe with access to iPhone is a war for platform supremacy, no doubt. What is also true is that the singular experience that Adobe wants will force the company to go way beyond UI. If history is any judge, Adobe has its task cut out. Creating a write-once-run-anywhere platform is the holy grail of software, but if Adobe treats it like a panacea, it could be in trouble.