Crystal balling from TechCrunch on what we can expect from 2011.
So here we are in a new decade, and the technologies that are now available to us continue to engage (and enthrall) in fascinating ways. The rise and collision of several trends—social, mobile, touch computing, geo, cloud—keep spitting out new products and technologies which keep propelling us forward
What’s your verdict? Is this list spot on or way off?
The “uncanny valley” describes the perception gap between a human-like impression and an actual human. To cross the uncanny valley, a simulation must match the impossibly subtle nuances of detail in a real human beyond perception.
“We’re trying something new that’s never been done. We’re not just releasing a game – everybody looks at this who hasn’t seen it in person, even from the screenshots you look at it and go, ‘Oh, it’s GTA with Fedoras on’. But the reality is that it’s a whole new different concept, it’s a whole new way of looking at interactive entertainment. I think we’re starting to blur the lines between a television program and a video game.”
Word Lens instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems.
Word Lens is a dictionary — evolved. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. You can use Word Lens on your vacations to translate restaurant menus, street signs, and other things that have clearly printed words.
Word Lens has its limits. Sometimes the translation will be hard to understand, but it usually gets the point across. If a translation fails, there is a way to manually look up words by typing them in. Word Lens does not read very stylized fonts, handwriting, or cursive.
This camera doesn’t exist yet. But… it could. And… probably will. Very soon.
It’s always fun thinking about what photography will be like in the future, and the direction camera technology will go. What’s even cooler is seeing these ideas turned into concept drawings or videos. The Capture180 is a concept camera by Lucas Ainsworth that takes a 180° hemispheric photograph with each exposure in addition to the ordinary, framed photograph. When viewing the photographs with the camera, you can “knock” the camera into a viewing mode in which it acts as a small window into the giant scene that was captured.
Aside from the evil spec nature of this “contest”, the Project format is an interesting concept. Check out the demo video and project assets for inspiration in how mobile media is changing editorial.
As part of its launch on Tuesday, Virgin’s first iPad-only magazine, Project, announced a contest to redesign the magazine’s animated cover. In order to get ahold of the brief and assets for the contest, however, designers (or their unemployed friends) had to locate one of four paper mannequins (with Sir Richard Branson, pictured above) touring New York and San Francisco, each of which held the coordinates of USB sticks containing the brief, earlier this week.
I’ve since gotten ahold of a .zip file containing the outline and assets for the cover contest, which you can download from my personal Dropbox account here. You can watch a video outlining the challenge below, and enter your design at facebook.com/project.
A modern Shakespeare would claim that, “All the world’s a game,” then it might be time for us to collectively revisit what we mean by ‘game’ and extract the concept of ‘fun’ from the pastimes of our youth. If sending out invoices can be fun, why can’t your customer interactions be fun? With a few exceptions I think it would be a mistake to brush off the concept no matter what business you’re in. Customer experiences – even the most mundane – can be more rewarding and pleasurable (for all involved) if you think differently about your customers’ motivations. Help them do what they already want or need to do and if you can make it fun or pleasurable and social – even better.
Research company Juniper has drawn up a list of predictions for the mobile and wireless industry for 2011 and they portray humanity hurtling headlong towards a mobile-centric lifestyle. Juniper sees 2011 as a year where we’ll see increasing use of Augmented Reality, the first Cloud-Based Operating Systems, Mobile Banking becomes a must, the beginning of the demise of the credit card, the rise of Mobile Lottery Tickets, biometrics coming to mobile and Social Purchasing moving to a whole new level.
Download Juniper’s full report.
Here are Juniper’s top 10 wireless predictions:
Imagine the implications of this with a dozen cameras in a room.
If Oliver Kreylos’ Kinect 3D video capture work was amazing already, his hack to use two Kinects to eliminate shadows and fully capture reality in 3D space is just crazy.
In Oliver’s previous experiment, the 3D video capture was limited by Kinect’s single point of view. This point of view created shadows of nonexistent data, since Microsoft’s camera can’t see behind objects. To solve this problem, he added a second Kinect at a different angle to capture what the other Kinect couldn’t see. By combining both video signals and three-dimensional information, he was able to fully recreate three-dimensional reality, with no shadows.
“Readers on the web want a quieter, less hectic news experience with a clear beginning and end and a vetted choice of news,” says Pontus Schultz of Bonnier R&D. “We’ve listened to how readers prefer getting their news. They expect an innovative experience that uses the format’s possibilities fully, not just a PDF of the newspaper or another window to the online version.”
In December 2009, Bonnier launched Mag+, a format that quickly set a new standard for digital magazines. Mag+ got a lot of attention worldwide in the trade press and was called “King of the Hill” by Steve Jobs when Apple launched the iPad.
The lessons learned from Mag+ have shaped the development of a new digital format for tomorrow’s newspapers: News+. News+ combines the depth and editorial choices of a daily newspaper with the web’s possibilities for interaction and quick updates.
Browsing News+ and absorbing the content comes naturally, making readers feel close to the articles and photos. You can follow the most important news as it develops in a special section that is continuously updated, so News+ keeps you on top of the news all day. Subscribers get a daily newspaper with well-qualified and in-depth analysis, and the possibility to follow the most important events of the day – live.
The format was developed by several of Bonnier’s daily newspapers along with Bonnier R&D. Readers have also been involved and had their say on the new format during development.
The essential compendium of need-to-know statistics – global mobile subscribers, 3G, mobile Web, mobile advertising, mobile apps, consumer mobile behavior, SMS, m-commerce, m-banking, handset share and much more. Beware of media hype and mobile myth – put your mobile strategy on a sound footing with the latest research from credible independent experts.
What is the real game, then?
‘Gamification’, the internet will tell you, is the future. It’s coming soon to your bank, your gym, your job, your government and your gynaecologist. All human activity will be gamified, we are promised, because gamifying guarantees a whole bunch of other buzz-words like Immersion! and Emotional Engagement! and Socialised Monestisation! You’ll be able to tell when something’s been gamified because it will have points and badges. And this is the nub of the problem.
That problem being that gamification isn’t gamification at all. What we’re currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking the thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience. Points and badges have no closer a relationship to games than they do to websites and fitness apps and loyalty cards. They’re great tools for communicating progress and acknowledging effort, but neither points nor badges in any way constitute a game. Games just use them – as primary school teachers, military hierarchies and coffee shops have for centuries – to help people visualise things they might otherwise lose track of. They are the least important bit of a game, the bit that has the least to do with all of the rich cognitive, emotional and social drivers which gamifiers are intending to connect with.
A nice roundup of mobile web stats from Dave Rupert, developer of Lettering.js.
I usually don’t usually sit around and ponder “The Mobile Web”, but about two weeks ago I accidentally inundated myself with multiple talks about it from two separate podcasts. Because of that, the Mobile Web has a growing market share in my brain space.
The mobile web is a big freaking deal. Here are some current Mobile Web trends as of June 2010.
An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world’s unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data.
A contentious article that discusses a designer’s role in the “future” of the Internet.
If there’s a definite winner in this possible future Internet, it is the content creators. If the only thing that sets one company or organization apart from their competition, then those who can create high-quality content will be in high demand. The thousands of dollars that a company used to be spent on website design will be funneled into website content instead.
Users will also benefit as they’ll have a more integrated, customized experience. Their version of the Internet will be tailored specifically to them, based on their own wants and needs. They’ll get content in the manner they prefer and find most usable.
Application developers will also likely win in all this. While the APIs and the data available will be pretty standardized, the manner in which it’s displayed will become a battleground of creativity. Innovation here will be key, doing something different and better than what everyone else is doing is the only way an app will stand out.
As a designer, does your role include content creation?
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