Web vs. Applications
TR: The future of #media on #mobile devices isn’t with #applications but with the #Web; http://j.mp/KMRv2T
TR: The future of #media on #mobile devices isn’t with #applications but with the #Web; http://j.mp/KMRv2T
The strategic focus on clouds shifts from infrastructure to application platforms/ecosystems; http://eicker.at/MobileCloudWars
Google Plus redesigns for its 170M users (100M monthly): adaptive, fluid web design; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusRedesign
Gartner: Cloud, social, mobile and information combine to transform the IT landscape in 2012; http://eicker.at/IT2012
Gartner: “Four IT forces, IT consumerization and new technology styles are forcing IT organizations to see they can’t control IT spending. They must actively manage technology investments inside and outside IT. … This Predicts 2012 special report highlights how the control of technology and technology-driven decisions is shifting out of the hands of IT organizations. New forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending. Specifically, the forces of cloud computing, social media and social networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. … These technological evolutions in the workplace are largely happening despite the controls IT normally places on the use of technologies. The cloud offers new delivery styles and options that are industrialized in a value chain that renders on-premises IT systems and expertise as only part of the overall delivery of IT capabilities to the company. Social computing is allowing collaboration, and a shift of behavioral patterns of users and the communities in which they work. Mobility offers new access channels to applications and data, and at the same time provides end users with a wide variety of device choices. The combination of cloud, social computing and mobility can be used to increase geographic diversity and raise the productivity of virtual teams. Users expect to get access to personal, work, business applications and data from any device, anytime and anywhere. – Finally, the concept of ‘big data’ is beginning to forever alter the relationship of technology to information consumption, as data coming from multiple federated sources and in structured and unstructured forms must now be analyzed using new methodologies foreign to many IT departments. … As the relationship between ‘technology means’ and ‘technology outcomes’ becomes ever clearer, stakeholders of all kinds are gaining a sharper understanding of how technology decisions will impact the business, and are raising the bar in terms of expectations for success.”
Potentially Apple’s Siri changes how we interact with computers entirely: Siri, let’s talk! http://eicker.at/Siri
Apple: “Siri. Your wish is its command. – Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it. … Talk to Siri as you would to a person. Say something like ‘Tell my wife I’m running late.’ ‘Remind me to call the vet.’ ‘Any good burger joints around here?’ And Siri answers you. It does what you say and finds the information you need. And then it hits you. You’re actually having a conversation with your iPhone. … Siri not only understands what you say, it’s smart enough to know what you mean. So when you ask ‘Any good burger joints around here?’ Siri will reply ‘I found a number of burger restaurants near you.’ Then you can say ‘Hmm. How about tacos?’ Siri remembers that you just asked about restaurants, so it will look for Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood. And Siri is proactive, so it will question you until it finds what you’re looking for.”
Wikipedia: “Siri is a personal assistant application for iOS. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to an expanding set of web services. The iOS app is the first public product by its makers, who are focused on artificial intelligence applications. Siri was acquired by Apple Inc. on April 28, 2010. – Siri’s marketing claims include that Siri adapts to the user’s individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab. … Siri was founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), together with Norman Winarsky from SRI’s venture group. … It was announced on October 4, 2011 that Siri will be included with the iPhone 4S. The new version of Siri is deeply integrated into iOS, and offers conversational interaction with many applications, including reminders, weather, stocks, messaging, email, calendar, contacts, notes, music, clocks, web browser, Wolfram Alpha, and maps. Currently, Siri only supports English (US, UK, and Australia), German and French. … Siri is a spin-out from SRI International’s Artificial Intelligence Center, and is an offshoot of the DARPA-funded CALO project, described as perhaps the largest artificial-intelligence project ever launched.”
TC: “The integration with iOS seems to be just as impressive as we’ve been hearing: you can ask it to remind you to call someone before you leave the office, and it’ll automatically create an entry in the Reminders app, complete with a geo-fence just to be sure. You can also ask Siri to read your queued messages to you and make an appointment in the Calendar app. – The worst part so far? Siri indeed seems to require the iPhone 4S’s extra horsepower, because it appears to be a 4S exclusive. The kicker? Siri was originally a run-of-the-mill iPhone app. What a shame. – Siri will be a beta for the time being, as it only supports English, German, and French voice input, but there are more language add-ons and tweaks to come.”
WP: “As rumored, Apple’s doing some all-new voice-control AI stuff in iOS 5. It’s called Siri, which is the name of the app Apple bought for $200 million a couple years ago. … You can also ask Siri to look things up on Wikipedia for you, and Siri can use Wolfram Alpha to do more complicated calculations. Siri’s list of capabilities is near endless, including asking it to play genres of music for you, look up something on maps, or what the weather is. Our favorite question? ‘Siri, who are you?’ Siri responds: ‘I am your humble personal assistant.’ … The bad news? All this great stuff is only available for the iPhone 4S – Apple had to do something to force an upgrade! In all seriousness, some of this AI functionality can be incredibly processor intensive, so Siri might be leaning on the A5 chip quite heavily.”
MLS: “Siri Search, makes use of Yelp’s business ratings, thus this makes instantly makes Yelp a strong local competitor to Google Places. Yelp is now very relevant to your small business rankings. Google Places has been the big dog in local optimization or as I call it, Local Awesomeization… And your places ranking and profile completion has become very important for your local marketing.- Now, Siri, which is a virtual assistant will be able to find you anything you want… and it is using the Yelp Reviews to rank the recommendations. … Nuture your Yelp account now. Claim it, and begin getting good reviews. Local search is a science, and you have to get that information out there.”
GigaOM: “Apple’s intent when it bought Siri was rumored to be building a search engine, though Jobs defused that speculation by saying, ‘We have no plans to go into the search business. We don’t care about it – other people do it well.’ But Jobs also said earlier last year: ‘On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop. They’re (consumers are) spending all their time on these apps – they’re using apps to get to data on the internet, not generalized search.‘ – With Siri, Apple doesn’t have to get into the search game if it can use Siri to direct people to the apps, services and information they need. That’s probably not a big money-gainer for Apple, but it could put a hurt on rival Google, which relies on search advertising.”
TUAW: “Curious about the iPhone 4S’s new voice assistant feature? So were we. – [We] tracked down a set of example phrases that the new Siri voice assistant is capable of understanding. It turns out that Siri can handle many categories of voice interaction. – Without further ado, here they are, ordered by interaction category, along with Apple-supplied examples of using each category.”
FC: “Don’t let her dulcet voice and easygoing, eager-to-please manner fool you. Behind Siri, the voice-controlled personal assistant app destined to power Apple’s iPhone 4S, lies the heart of a hardened combat veteran. That’s because the technology was spun out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s high-tech research and development arm. … For now it can only respond to simple commands, but the technology underlying it is anything but. The problem with most speech recognition technology has been that it has a hell of a time with all-too human variations in speech – accents, dialects, intonation, enunciation, and slang. Tell it you want to hide under ‘a rock’ and it might tell you about ‘Iraq.’ Like the dream of the paperless office, which the advent of the personal computer was supposed to herald, speech recognition often makes more work than it saves. Siri promises to change all that, and you should thank the wizards at DARPA. While they didn’t create the technology, they incubated it. … I can’t wait to tell that to my Siri-powered iPhone, although I doubt it’ll know how to respond – not yet, anyhow.”
TC: “The most talked about element of … Apple event had to be Siri. The new feature of the iPhone 4S, born out of Apple’s purchase of the company by the same name in 2010, looks amazing. But one thing never mentioned during the keynote was a key piece of technology behind Siri: Nuance. – We first reported that Siri would be a key part of iOS 5 back in March. As we dug deeper, we learned that Apple and Nuance were involved in negotiations to make sure this could be a reality. You see, Siri does not work without Nuance. … So, is Nuance a part of Apple’s implementation of Siri as well? Yes. Though, don’t bother trying to get anyone to admit that. …Nuance is powering Siri. But Apple clearly struck a deal with Nuance which precludes them from talking about it. This is Apple technology, this is not about Nuance, is how I imagine Apple may put it. Apparently, Nuance is happy enough with Apple’s undoubtedly large check for this licensing agreement that they are willing to keep quiet.”
RWW: “Apple finally introduced the availability of the voice-command personal assistant app it paid $200m for today, called Siri. The military spin-off technology was both widely loved and often panned when it was available independently; it was either lovable Skynet or a fish on a bicycle, depending on who you ask. I tended towards thinking it the latter, myself. … But what do I want as a user – on my iPhone? I want Swype! Swype is a keyboard program available on almost every smartphone in the world except the iPhone. … It’s the fastest way to provide input on a mobile device. It’s fabulous and it’s incredible that Swype isn’t on iOS yet. I assume it’s because of Apple’s strict control over interface design and unwillingness to provide options in design. … Time will tell, but I don’t think Siri is going to be a killer app on the iPhone. Will it be used more than the current iPhone voice control? We’ll see.”
TUAW: “Since the iPhone 4S features the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, owners of Apple’s current-gen tablet have wondered if it’s possible that Siri, Apple’s new voice assistant, might be offered on the iPad 2. … Voice Control as it now exists on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 doesn’t function on the iPad or iPad 2, but there’s a reason for that: the existing commands would be essentially useless on those devices. … On the other hand, Siri’s commands would be immensely useful on the iPad. … In fact, we’ve done some digging into Siri and found that most of the actual work of understanding voice commands gets offloaded to external servers. In essence, the iPhone 4S and its built-in processing functions determine what you said, while Apple’s servers translate that into what you meant and send that information back to your iPhone. … For the time being, Siri remains an iPhone 4S exclusive and one we have yet to test for ourselves. We look forward to putting this innovative feature under our interrogation lights once the iPhone 4S is released on October 14.”
Waxy: “In 1987, Apple released this concept video for Knowledge Navigator [the rest of the video is newer, probably circa 1996 or so, but the Knowledge Navigator part is from 1987], a voice-based assistant combined with a touchscreen tablet computer. … Based on the dates mentioned in the Knowledge Navigator video, it takes place on September 16, 2011. The date on the professor’s calendar is September 16, and he’s looking for a 2006 paper written ‘about five years ago,’ setting the year as 2011. – And … at the iPhone keynote, Apple announced Siri, a natural language-based voice assistant, would be built into iOS 5 and a core part of the new iPhone 4S. – So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off.“
hi siri
Well, she won’t hear you at this place. ;)
Hi siri
Hello
Hi Siri
Sometimes she has a little attitude
Hey siri.
how you doing today.
Hi Siri
Facebook F8 amplifies the Facebook Platform: Like, Timeline, News Feed, API; http://eicker.at/FacebookPlatform
Forbes: “[T]here’s no question – Facebook remains the most ambitious, most technologically sophisticated, fastest-moving Internet company. The changes announced [at F8] were as big as anything the company has ever done – to turn Facebook into a real-time engine for seeing what your friends are doing and joining them right now… The changes are all big, but perhaps the most interesting is that Facebook is becoming a real-time communication service. … Longtime tech pundit and thinker Esther Dyson posted on Twitter today that Facebook was launching the ‘semantic Web’ without calling it that. Good, because hardly anyone ever understood what that meant. … In order to launch these real-time features for its platform, Facebook needed a way for users to access them. That’s why it launched the ticker earlier this week. … The best way to think of Facebook is as infrastructure – the social infrastructure of the Internet. Zuckerberg believes Facebook has far more to gain over the long term by reinforcing itself as a universal platform than by any other means. … Granted, it is potentially problematic for one company to own an essential piece of Net infrastructure.”
SG: “Without a doubt, [the] major keynote at f8 2011 showed Facebook to be making some major changes in the very near future. Starting with a whole new layout and set of functions they’re calling ‘Timeline‘ and moving through app enhancements that have the potential to change the way we use apps on all platforms, we’ve got a guide here for you, the Facebook user, to easily understand what you’ve got in store. This is Facebook as it will exist starting at the tail end of 2011. … There is a new class of application on Facebook now called Open Graph. This class is defined by three principles: Frictionless experiences, Realtime serendipity, and Finding patterns. The goal here is to have subject matter (games, music, video, social apps) spread to friends via friends in as enjoyable a manner as possible.”
AF: “According to Zuck[erberg]… ‘A record 500 million people used Facebook the same day. We’re connected now. The next era will be defined by the social apps that use these connections. … But there’s more to us, to our deepest conversations. You want to express the story of your life in terms of the most important and meaningful parts of your life – this is the heart of your Facebook experience.’ … Facebook has created a new class of apps to deal with the next version of open graph. Facebook’s mission is to make world more open and connected. They want you to have a more personal experience. … Now you’ll be able to eat a meal, hike a trail, and so on, and the activity shows up in the news feed. This means Facebook is adding verbs to the connections in the social graph. … GraphRank may be the new EdgeRank. What do I want to see in the news feed versus someone’s timeline? Different types of relationships work differently – work friends versus family, for example. And this is probably going to integrate the new friends lists and family categorizations.”
Guardian: “While Facebook is keen for its users to stay on the site for as long as possible, Zuckerberg has consistently emphasised that the site is a ‘distribution platform’ to other media companies. – The social network has moved to strengthen its ties with media partners in recent months as it moves closer to its hotly anticipated initial public offering. Facebook was recently valued at $66.5bn on secondary markets. Its global revenues are expected to reach $4.3bn in 2011, up from $2bn in 2010, according to the research firm eMarketer. … [Zuckerberg] wants Facebook to be the centre of your web experience. That’s the purpose of the redesign of the ‘timeline’ – the river of experiences recounted by your friends. Rather than being a river, he’s offering the chance to organise it, with the photos and videos. … The key is that he wants Facebook to become the de facto authentication mechanism of the web.”
Green, TC: “I was one of the first people to join Facebook in February of 2004, and launched one of the inaugural applications on the platform in May 2007. The new Facebook profile and Open Graph announced…, along with the launch of smart friend lists last week, is going to usher in a new era of the Facebook platform. And I believe entire industries will potentially be revolutionized by social, from travel to reviews to health to e-commerce, and of course charity. … I am confident we will see major sectors, from music to reviews to commerce, revolutionized by authentic friend-to-friend interactions. We are fortunate at Causes to have a big start in one of the largest markets around, the $300 billion giving market. It is anyone’s guess if the other major categories will go social with their current leading companies, or if entirely new ones will emerge, like Zynga in gaming. Either way, it will be a fun ride.”
RWW: “Facebook significantly scaled up the amount of information it tracks about you – and many millions of other people. The once humble status update field has been expanded to include 6 types of ‘life events.’ You now automatically share data about what you’re reading or listening to. … Here’s a quick summary of what’s changed: A new Subscribe button, allowing you to follow people you aren’t friends with, plus filter the amount of information you get from current friends. Improved friends lists – easier way to group people into lists, including via semi-automated ‘smart lists.’ A News Ticker that streams a constant flow of user updates in a sidebar (on top of your chat bar). A newspaper-like relevancy filter for your Facebook homepage. Instant sharing of what you read, listen to and watch. A new Timeline profile (a colorful history of you and your ‘life events’).”
Apple‘s iOS stores user’s location histories on iPhones and iPads: huge security and privacy fail; http://eicker.at/iOStracker
Apple responds: “The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.“
Game design elements in non-gaming contexts: great gamification introductory papers for CHI 2011; http://eicker.at/GRN
Meaningful Play, getting gamification right with: meaning, mastery, autonomy; http://eicker.at/Gamification @dingstweets
Cloud computing gains mainstream attention, but what exactly do IaaS, PaaS, SaaS mean? http://eicker.at/AsAService
Google: “More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+, enjoying new ways to share in Search, Gmail, YouTube and lots of other places. It’s still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we’re more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google. – A critical piece of this social layer is a design that grows alongside our aspirations. So today we’re introducing a more functional and flexible version of Google+. We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google. … Once you’ve upgraded to Google+, it’s easy to share with your circles from just about anywhere. We’re dreaming bigger, though. We’re aiming for an experience that fuses utility with beauty… Today we’re adding a dedicated Hangouts page that creates even more opportunities to connect in person… Today’s Google+ update extends beyond navigation, the stream and hangouts. For instance: there’s a new Explore page that shows what’s interesting and trending across the network. And a new profile with much bigger photos. And a new chat list that puts your friends front and center. And a whole lot more. … By focusing on you, the people you care about, and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know and love – from Search and Maps to Gmail and YouTube. With today’s foundational changes we can move even faster-toward a simpler, more beautiful Google.”
Guardian: “Google says 170m people have registered for its Google+ service since it was launched 10 months ago – and that 100m have ‘engaged’ with the service at least once in the past 30 days and 50m have engaged with the service at least once a day in the past month. … Since January, new users signing up for Google services such as a YouTube or Gmail account have had to create a Google+ profile: in the past three months, that has added 80m people, says Search Engine Watch. In all, Gmail has 350m users worldwide. … In the US, Google has pushed Google+ profiles into search results – with the effect that a search for ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ puts his Google+ page ahead of his Facebook page, a result which appeared distorted compared with previous Google search results.”
TC: “It’s interesting that Google+ has now changed its design, after its first efforts received such praise. But, after using the service for some time, it became clear that Google+’s navigational elements became a little cluttered. That ‘share a YouTube video’ feature, for example, which popped out a box on the right side of the screen, felt tacked on. … The new interface drops the static icons at the top and moves all the navigation off to the side, allowing users to reorder the icons as they wish. … Hangouts, which have always been one of the network’s main selling points, are now being better highlighted in the refreshed site, and now have their own dedicated page, featuring a list of Hangout invitations from people in your Circles, easy access to live and public Hangouts, and a rotating billboard showing popular Hangouts, and other information.”
VB: “Tough questions aside, the redesign appears to give those who use Google+ on purpose some handy new features and better visuals. First off, you’ll notice on the left side that there is a new customizable navigation bar that lets you drag apps up or down to create the best order for accessing content. You can even hide apps by moving them in and out of the ‘More’ panel. … The roll out appears to be moving slowly as many folks on Google+, including myself, are still waiting for the redesign to go live. Google expects all users to get the new digs in ‘the next few days.’”
GigaOM: “The key term here seems to be ‘applications.’ The sidebar is essentially an app launcher, and users can use it to get quick access to certain actions available through individual apps. Want to share a photo from your phone? Then simply hover the photos app and select the relevant action. … Apps can also be rearranged in one’s personal order of importance, or completely hidden from plain sight. All of this makes it easier to use the Google+ apps that are available today, including Hangouts, games and photos – but there’s really not that much of a point in constantly reorganizing a half dozen apps. Instead, this seems to be built for something much bigger.”
FC: “Google+ has failed to take off. And it’s not even necessarily a fault of the product: Facebook is the de facto social network of our time. … But that’s not stopping Google from announcing a major redesign of Google+ today. It’s better in almost every way, focused on real-time trends, customization, and playing to Google’s few advantages they have in the space. But, you know, it’s just a little too late for design alone to save the day. … A lot of what Google announced today was pure catch-up. It snagged a new ‘Trending on Google+’ function from Twitter. It now features a profile page with a top, landscape portrait that’s nearly identical to Facebook’s Timeline. But if Google is going to copy, at least they’re copying some good ideas. And at least they haven’t given up on the vast potential of the one ace up their sleeve: Hangouts.”
TC: “Instead of a traditional fixed-width design, responsive design adapts to the size of your browser window. So while your Facebook page always looks the same, no matter whether you’ve maximized your browser window or not, the new Google+ design actually changes as you resize your browser window. Right now, Google isn’t doing much with this capability, but it definitely built this redesign around this idea. … What Google will do with this space is anybody’s guess. As we’re moving to bigger and wider screens, though (which are actually rather suboptimal for the kind of news feeds that are at the center of services like Google+, Facebook and Twitter), it only makes sense for Google to experiment with wider layouts as well and to figure out how to best use them.”