A Wider Net

With plenty of arguments for asimov and other writers toiling away in the bars of Philadelphia in WWI, my vote is for Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

The book birthed the concept of Avatars (virtual representation of someone in cyberspace) and a ‘metaverse/virtual’ world as well as an interesting examination of religion and politics and acceptance within the context of a changing social world. With a virus taking over computers and a chase through both the real and metaverse worlds, the book exposes concepts such as permanent connections to the internet, business and lives existing only in the meta-verse (second life anyone?) and the de-valuation of the IPO (the main character IPOs and then needs to deliver pizzas to make ends meet…ah the bubble predicted…)
The book may have not been the first with these concepts but it is an important piece of science fiction that was able to popularize them.

It is amazing how a good book change still change the way we think.

Social networking is commonly misunderstood as a business version of a dating service. Too often, people assume that social networking is limited to helping attendees find other attendees to talk to. To be clear, there is huge value in connecting attendees with other attendees who can help each other solve problems and grow professionally. But if you think that’s all there is to it, or if you’ve never considered Social Networking, then you must read on.

Social Networking is already huge, and the exploding growth of social media websites like You Tube and MySpace indicates that the trend will only increase as the younger generations move higher in business. More and more, people seek to find information provided by trusted peers, or information recommended by trusted peers. We will find that social networking components will be demanded in the enterprise, in marketing, and at events.

At an event, social networking has an obvious role. It can connect attendees, build an enthusiastic community of users, connect future business partners, and unite employees from distant divisions. Buyers can find ideal sellers or products, and sellers can do more to find the perfect buyers. Recently I used a social networking system at Infocomm and I was surprised to discover how easily it helped me connect with potential new partners, clients, and vendors.

Another common misconception is that an event social network is only temporary. For association events in particular, these sites live on indefinitely, building membership and helping to share ideas and solutions among members. These community sites are gaining in popularity for almost any annual live event.
In the enterprise, social networks allow employees to find mentors, or sales people to find current training materials and product information.

In healthcare communities, patients dealing with the same condition can find each other for support.
One of the companies that really gets it is introNetworks. They have developed a platform for social networking that, in their words, connects anything to anything. Sure - it can help attendees find each other, but that’s just the beginning. An introNetwork can help connect buyers to sellers, partners to partners, employees to mentors, and people to media (papers, podcasts, etc).

Customers determine how the introNetwork will be used, and what information is to be asked of users in order to productively match them and start conversations. This is one area where introNetworks shines - the profiling process is slick and refined to make the process easier and the results effective. Once the users complete the profile, they are presented with a unique “Pin Map” that looks like an array of push pins on a map. The center pin represents “you”, the user, and the closer the pin is to you, the more likely that the person or content represented by that pin is a good match for you.

They recently added a bunch of new features including calendars, forums, and revised search and connection finding. Many existing features have been enhanced or revised. The application is built entirely in flash, making it compatible with nearly any browser on Mac’s or PC’s.

I could go on for days on this system, but after trying it I have to admit- you need to try it yourself.

Unison^TM, sold as “The Collaborative Meeting Experience^TM“, is a premium meeting collaboration service that consists of 1-3 computer monitors on every table and an extensive suite of collaboration activities. The monitors-on-the-table approach helps bring the meeting down from a large didactic presentation to feel more like a group of intimate discussions.

The activities include a Q&A handling system, “U-Ask”, that assists with gathering and moderating questions from the audience to the presenter, as well as allowing direct answers back to the individual tables. “U-Learn” is a real-time assessment and certification system. “U-Think” enables group collaboration, brainstorming, and decision making. “U-Select” is a polling and issue-ranking tool. “U-Talk”, “U-Tell Us”, and “U-Compete” provide additional capabilities for communication, surveys pre-, post-, and during events, and competitive learning. I recommend checking out their web site, which has detailed information about the different components.

We’re excited to have Unison participate at our Innovation Day open house because they understand how to maximize the productivity of meetings. Their team includes learning professionals, developers, and seasoned meeting production veterans. Their system reflects a passionate commitment to making the most of every meeting-goer’s time and expertise. And their commitment doesn’t stop at the tool. In fact, a large part of a Unison deployment is the planning, during which they work closely with the meeting planners to develop the most effective curriculum possible. It takes a fair amount of planning and strategic thinking to properly execute a Unison meeting, but it’s worth it. Careful planning insures that the right information is gathered in pre-event surveys to enable productive discussions and brainstorming sessions. Paying attention to what’s on the mind of attendees before they arrive helps align the presentation materials, the discussion topics, and the decision-making activities.

Everyone is familiar with the phrase “Death by PowerPoint” and for good reason. It feels like a crime to think of endless speeches and slide shows as communication. Bringing the audience into the presentation through audience participation and Q&A is only the beginning. Systems like Unison excite audiences, allowing them to ask tough questions, prioritize critical issues, brainstorm to reach solutions and consensus, and make informed decisions that have broad support and, as a result, a higher likelihood of successful execution.

It’s also interesting to me that this is a face-to-face solution. If I were to build a productive virtual meeting technology, this would be a sound framework to make everyone feel like an active participant even when they’re not together. This is pretty much how I would do it. Couple this with the intangibles and social networking aspects inherent to face to face meetings, and you may have the ultimate meeting experience.

When these artists sat down to design and craft their flower and seashell-shaped urinals, did they ever stop to ask “what type of user is this intended for?” Ironically, the type of user who also tends to…. miss.
Moronland.com - The Worlds Most Unique Urinals

It’s hip to be square. Actually, it’s hip to be square on the same planet where it’s hip to be called “Huey”. And when it comes to video we’re bored with square. Granted, regular standard definition TV isn’t technically square. It’s a nearly square rectangle- a “squectangle”. High Def TV is w-i-d-e, which is another adjective that isn’t exactly hip. But w-i-d-e-screen is still square(ish). B-O-R-I-N-G!

Take a trip to Circuit City and bask in the Squectangular jungle of TV’s and Computer Monitors. Everywhere you look - nothing but clean right angles and super-huge images of Nemo the clownfish. Maybe that’s why plasma screens have so little impact on exhibits. They get bigger, brighter, and cheaper every year, and they get less and less impressive. It’s hard enough to be “eye-catching” in a trade show booth, but if your video display is similar to, or even smaller-than, your typical attendee’s living room sets, then you may find them looking elsewhere for visual stimulation.

Custom shaped screens have been around for years, and typically involve cutting a sheet of grey diffusive acrylic into a simple shape like a circle. Small versions of this on a simple stand have been called “Lollipop screens”. Not every exhibitor is comfortable specifying technology called a lollipop, but when it comes to visual appeal, circle takes the square.

3M has changed everything with their new Vikuiti rear-projection film. Vikuiti (vigh-cue-it-ee) Film is a dark grey material that can be applied easily to glass or acrylic. It can be cut with scissors. It can also be applied to curved surfaces. What makes this material really special is its unique ability to produce very bright high contrast images in high ambient light situations. That’s right - a great picture in a trade show booth.

The demonstrations I saw at Infocomm were fun and diverse. A large circle screen was the simplest example, looking bright and bold compared to acrylic circles I’ve seen in the past. Then they had a cool display cut in the shape of a soda bottle that kept filling and bubbling and spelling out messages. And as if that wasn’t enough to sell the story, they had a person cutting out shapes of fish from a large sheet in front of us. A projection of a lively underwater scene created an impossible-to-ignore display. As you’ll see in the attached image, it’s not just the shape but also the (complete lack of) thickness and the way it floats in mid-air when applied to a large sheet of glass.

It’s a compelling look. It’s easily shaped into a logo or product. It’s bright, and fine in high ambient light. It’s thin - making flat panel displays downright pudgy. It will be at Innovation Day. And it’s not square.

With all the buzz around the world of RSS, it seems like few have been able to actually monetize it. I ran into a company that is starting with a good idea. Offertrax is focused on enabling merchants and their products with RSS. The idea is that 97% of people leave without purchasing from e-commerce sites. RSS is a way to gain a level of commitment when the full sales conversion is not reached, continuing the conversation with the buyer – hoping to eventually bring them back to the site, or in-store, to buy.

From a consumer perspective RSS is a nice way to get information on our terms. Whether it is a feed from a news paper or blog (like this one) or from merchants as companies enable them, RSS puts the control back into the consumers’ hands.

What I keep waiting for is someone to arm the world of bloggers with a way to capitalize on their readers the way that affiliate programs did in the late 90s. Perhaps RSS’ role will be to leverage communities as buying groups or simple as an easier way to manage the flood of spam.

One thing is for sure; RSS is about to hit big. Whenever Microsoft agrees with anyone else, you know something’s brewing. Microsoft and Mozilla have agreed to use the same icon for RSS even loading it into MS Office 2007– a new standard….

the logo they agreed on….

http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam/archive/2005/12/14/503778.aspx

You can check them Offertrax here:

www.offertrax.com

Having just written about clever input devices in my Gesturetek entry, I figured this was a good time to mention the revolutionary Cintiq tablet from Wacom. It’s a stylus-based wireless graphics tablet interactive pen display that has a monitor built in so you can draw right on the screen. Apparently Wacom (pronounced “Waw-com”, which you can repeat four times fast for that tell-tale Pac-Man sound) creates the input technology for most if not all of the tablet PC’s out there. This, therefore, is a tablet computer with higher precision, and less… computer. It will be at Innovation Day, so I look forward to trying it out - it looks like a graphics designer’s dream.
They even have a payback calculator that lets you figure out how quickly this little productivity booster will pay off in productivity gains.

This device is also being marketed as an interactive input device. As a tablet device, it is sleek, light, and wireless. Because the computer is not part of the device, you can upgrade the PC any time. This may be a better choice for doctor’s offices and trade show exhibits than tablet computers. I’m not sure, but I imagine it is considerably more theft-resistant as well. If you’ve tried one of these, let me know. Otherwise, I will share our findings.

For nearly 20 years we computer users have been part of a point-and-click world. Whether we move a mouse, roll a trackball, bend a stick, or slide along a pad - we have a device that we must manipulate in some fashion in order to use a computer. The purpose of this man-machine interface is to interpret a gesture and translate it into a logical control. Nothing is more simple than point and click, said Apple and Xerox back in the ’80’s, and they were right - mostly.

Simpler interfaces are upon us. PDA’s brought forth the era of the stylus. Pointing with a stylus is a comfortable, familiar interface because you interact directly - point and tap. (Of course, PDA’s also brought back handwriting as an input method which is just nutty to me, but we’ll let that go). Touchscreens allow us to point directly at what we want. You simply point and touch. Don’t try that at Yoga class. Tablet computers (wicked big PDA’s) are a pen-meets-PC mashup with laptop display capabilities, handwriting familiarity, point-and-peck simplicity, and a degree of precision that makes PDA’s and Touchscreens envious.
Now there are gesture-based interfaces. You simply… point. No point and click. No point and tap. No point and touch. Just point. It may not be as sexy as telling your Hondacura to “Find nearest Starbucks” and may not fly in countries where pointing is rude, but pointing interfaces are very “Minority Report” (cool) without the “Tom Cruise” (not).

Gesturetek has long been a pioneer in the field of gesture-based input. Three of their most popular products: HoloPoint, GroundFX, and Illuminate allow you to interact with content by pointing, waving, or even kicking, and all three are coming to our upcoming Innovation Day. I have used all of these devices before, and I just love them. HoloPoint combines a transparent holoscreen and a gesture-based pointing interface. The video image appears to float in mid air, and to interact with it, you simply point at it. Illuminate is similar except the video is projected onto a frosted piece of glass, allowing you to touch the video surface like a touch screen. Unlike a touch screen there is no technology in the video screen - it is really a piece of glass, and that makes it more elegant, reliable, and vandal-proof. GroundFX, a system that combines large video projection with gesture-tracking input, can be used on the ground or on the wall. You can point, wave, and kick at it and it reacts.

Gesturetek also provided technology for Microsoft’s XBOX 360 Live Vision Camera, also on display at Innovation Day. They also designed technology for mobile phones to support gesture-based games. The obvious question is - who holds the phone while you’re busy pointing and waving?

Gesture-based input devices aren’t suitable for every application. They aren’t super-responsive, and they aren’t super-precise. They are, however, magical, compelling, intuitive, and fun. They create interactive experiences that are memorable and cool. Gamers can rest their thumbs, and Boston drivers can rest their other finger. I encourage everyone thinking about exhibits, installations, and events to consider how powerful it is to have your guests point - at your content, at your products, and at your brand.

Google announced today that it is allowing anyone to build specialty search engines on Google’s huge online index – for free. All they want in return is the ability to place their text ads within your customized search engine.

The idea is pretty powerful for lots of sites. For instance, a site catering to small business may now implement a customized search engine that will prioritize ‘money’ or ‘cash’ within financial content instead of pages about the music industry. Google claims that the process of setting up one of these tailored engines is only a 10 minute adventure.

Other products exist but seem to offer less flexibility in terms of altering look-and-feel. It appears that Google’s product will allow sites to keep visitors and allow site owners to make money on the advertising.

http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

One of Cramer’s signature sites was featured as an example of atypical navigation on Design Melt Down.

From the article: Creative navigation techniques that don’t make the site more difficult to use can be a difficult challenge. The goal is to enable people to easily work their way through your content, but at the same time it is great to make it something more then that.

The site is for CTAM (Cable and Telecommunications Associations for Marketing).
Thanks to Colin Henson, an amazing Art Director in Interactive, for emailing this along.