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.

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.

Flash on iPad and Android - Not Quite the Time to Cheer Yet?

According to news coming out of the Adobe camp, Flash seems to be catching up on emerging platforms. Using a new packager coming in Flash CS5, it seems application developers will be able to export packages to iPhone and iPad platforms. There are many factors at play here - the growing adoption of new Apple devices and emergence of  HTML5, to name a few. Key question is, will Flash developers find it easy to deploy their Flash apps over Apple Appstore? That's a big gatekeeper there. In the meantime, news is out that Flash 10.1 is almost ready to be released, with support for Android. That should cheer up Flash developers. The release date however is 'later this year' - so, it is not quite the time to uncork champagne bottles yet.

Listening Skills for Presenters: 7 Questions

Watch out - now I'm rambling.

1. Good presenters are good listeners. Do you agree?
2. People in the audience do not always talk back. However, they provide visual cues. There are nods and smiles. Or claps. Or yawns. Can you think of any more visual cues?
3. Sometimes the presenter calls a show of hands, asks an open question or initiates a discussion. At other times, someone in the audience asks a question or makes a comment. In either case, interaction gets going. Does interaction always help a presentation along?
4. You need to know your audience. Will the key takeaways from your presentation differ from one group to the next?
5. You need to adapt to the audience, and they receive you well. Can you think of some techniques for adaptation you have used in the past?
6. Sometimes you conduct a presentation online, and audience is remote. How do you listen to your audience in such cases?
7. Sometimes you simply email a presentation to a group of people, or upload it to a web site. How do you listen to your audience in such cases?

I close this piece with these lines from poet Dylan Thomas: Someone’s boring me. I think it’s me.

Interactivity vs Bandwidth

Would you rather have a web page that loads quickly - and offers minimal or no interactivity, or build a nice interactive experience - and hope that the site visitor will not lose patience as the page loads?

A recent article by Poonam on Hongkiat.com titled The Importance of Web Interactivity: Tips and Examples provides a case in point. The article itself is a remarkable compilation of some of the world's most interesting interactive web sites. Poonam' s radar sweeps from Starbuck's Find My Perfect Coffee quiz to Mercedes, Nokia and Harry Potter. She even talks about Monoface, a site where you can manipulate facial features to create funny faces with mouse clicks.

What's interesting is the numerous comments on this article - presumably from web designers. Several of them loved the ideas in her article, but are not sure they can take the leap of faith in the face of bandwidth constraints many users face.

It will be interesting to see how increasing bandwidths, better compression techniques and improvements in Flash and Silverlight resolve these concerns.

Six Steps to Building Effective Presentations

Harbinger Knowledge Products has recently published a white paper on interactive presentations. This white paper is a must-read for presenters who wish to exploit the power of interactivity. This post is a companion piece for its readers.

The white paper identifies six areas in a presentation that could leverage interactivity:

1. Create a first impression
2. Build instant rapport
3. Drive presentation through audience inputs
4. Simplify complex ideas and educate your audience
5. Make it easy to see your value proposition
6. Facilitate effective meeting closures

For each area, the paper suggests appropriate interactive elements presenters can use. To assess how good a job you are doing with this, here are some questions I suggest you pose yourself.

1. Create a first impression

• Have I got my audience's attention?
• Have I got them curious and interested?
• Do they get a sense that together we are about to explore something interesting?

If you don't have a resounding 'yes' in answer to all these questions, it is time to re-assess your use of interactivity. Maybe what you have is too passive or too overbearing. For example, a video clip may gain attention, but render the audience passive. A witty quote may get a few people very interested but leave out others. A game right at the start may be interesting in itself but may not always build the right expectation.

2. Build instant rapport

• Have I demonstrated that I care to know my audience?
• Have I let them open up and talk to me?
• Have I set the right expectations?
• Do I have their trust?

Well chosen icebreakers help in building rapport. Polling or surveying the audience is one technique. Getting them to brainstorm ideas is another. The goal should be to build rapport and to create a foundation for the dialog to follow. You have to be careful in choosing your questions. Posing open-ended questions at this stage in presentation can be disastrous because you have not set the momentum and the discussions can go in all directions.

3. Drive presentation through audience inputs

• Can my audience have a say in where we go next?
• Is there a way for me to navigate the presentation accordingly?

Give too much information, and only a little will be received and retained. The level of detail required will vary based on the audience. Drill-downs and roll-overs provide the kind of interactivity that helps you calibrate the depth of information being presented.

4. Simplify complex ideas and educate your audience

• Am I telling good stories?
• Do I break down complex ideas into simpler ones, explaining them one at a time?

Display a whole slide full of text at once, and you instantly lose your audience. The preferred way is to unfold a story. Several interactive elements serve as excellent visual companions to storytelling. Dynamic flowcharts and other interactivites that build up visuals in a step-by-step fashion work great when you want to simplify complex ideas.

5. Make it easy to see your value proposition

• Do I use appropriate business visuals?
• Do the visuals permit interaction, drill-down etc?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, business visuals are pivotal to describing business ideas. Presenters often stress verbal communication too much, and ignore graphics in the process. Watch out for this bias.


6. Facilitate effective meeting closures

• Does the audience get to take part in summarizing key ideas?
• Are the takeaways listed in one place?
• Is there a clear conclusion and action plan articulated?

In the end, it is about leaving an imprint in your audience's mind. The more interactively you summarize the ideas discussed, the better they will be retained. Well designed interactivities can mimic sticky notes that collect key takeaways from the audience. These are then are collated and posted in one place so it is easy to go back and refer to them. The white paper gives an example of such interactivity.

As you start using interactivity in your presentations, you are sure to see increased audience involvement. Feel free to add your own tips and questions to enrich this framework for interactive presentations.

What the iPad Means for Interactive Application Developers

When it comes to interactivity, the idea of 'less is more' is proved yet again by iPad. It remains to be seen whether it lives up to its promise of delivering the best browsing experience ever. Yet, what impresses me is the elegance of its design - the largest touchscreen device ever designed by Apple is remarkably clutter free.

In one of my earlier posts, I laid out ten new trends in interactivity. It is remarkable to see how some of them are playing out with iPad and its native applications. Here are some illustrations drawn at random.

1. The sea change in input mechanisms is evident in the increasing use of multi-touch and device orientation while keeping the keyboard as a soft popup.
2. The way photo albums are presented and rendered indicates a paradigm shift away from interfaces to interactivity. You see a world map, click on a city to see clusters of pictures you took there. Hover your pointer on any cluster to get a sort of preview of what's in there, and finally pick one that you like and render it in an engaging origami-like presentation where pictures unfold in myriad ways.
3. The breadth of platform support required of interactive applications keeps increasing. Now web pages should play on iPad optimally as well. If designing web pages for multiple viewing devices was a challenge already, now it gets even more interesting with iPad in the mix.

Every time there is a platform shift, application developers have an opportunity to exploit the new capabilities it offers. It will be interesting to see how app developers render richer applications for iPad - it is almost certain that they will be different from laptop browser apps and smartphone apps. There is a new unlearning and learning curve waiting here for app developers. They need to take advantage of the larger size and touch capabilities while reducing the dependence on keyboard.