HTML5. A Great Intro to What is New.

August 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Tech
Tags: Agencies, Blast Radius, Cool, Development, flash, HTML5, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, visual

When you start a new job it is always extremely interesting to find out about your coworkers after a while. Who is this guy across the table actually? And what did he or she do before we actually started collaborating?
One of my new colleagues who really surprised me is Bobby van der Sluis.

Bobby is Technical Experience Director here at Blast Radius, Amsterdam and a veteran of Flash Development. He is author of UFO and co-author of SWFObject 2 (along with a lot of other projects), which are both well-known open source JavaScript libraries for detecting the Adobe Flash Player and embedding Flash content in web pages. In addition to that he does publish articles at A list apart quite often and speaks at conferences. Oooh….and he is also a very nice guy – a fact that should not go unnoticed here as well.

Anyway, last week Bobby held a very insightful presentation about Flash HTML5 and his personal perspectives on its progress. It is interesting to watch Flash veterans such as Bobby to reinvent their job profiles and start developing on a similar  different platform.

Here is Bobby’s presentation. Check out his blog as well and follow him on Slideshare.

PSFK. The Future of Retail.

Juni 3rd, 2010 • View Comments Retail, Social Business, Tech, Trends
Tags: Business, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, PSFK, Report, Retail, Social Business Design, Strategy, Trends, World

As the world intertwines the web and reality, retail becomes one of the most crucial sectors to stage new marketing experiences for customers. Notorious PSFK has just staged its deck about ‘The future of Retail‘. The free 80 page analysis highlights how new technologies and senses play a crucial role in shaping shopping experiences. The trends identified within this document and the examples used to bring them to life are inspired by innovation from around the globe. And as usual it comes with a handy guide what is going to be hot in tomorrow’s retail experiences. PSFK, I love your decks.

Hey Mashable. I think you can drop the google Buzz button now.

April 27th, 2010 • View Comments Social, Tech, Tools
Tags: google, google Buzz, mashable, Prediction, Social Networks, Tech, Tools, Twitter

I don’ t want to say, I told you so. But I told you so. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about google’s twitter killer social network thing that is not as cool as the other things with massive privacy flaws. Chitika has the figures:

February 9th, 2010 – the day Buzz was launched – the search engines lit up with queries.  The Chitika network saw about 1,500 searches that day for the term “Google Buzz,” approximately 15 times the number of searches for “Twitter.”

By the 15th, searches for the service had dwindled to less than ten a day, and since February 26th there has been a constant stream of one search per day.

Finally I want to add an artwork which I have created from share buttons on mashable’s homepage. I think we can drop the google buzz button now, can we?

World Domination. We like.

April 24th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Social, Tech, Tools, Trends
Tags: Business, Facebook, Future, I like, Open Graph, Philosophy, Social Graph, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Tools, Trends, World

With about 420 million active users (more than 50% of them logging in every day) Facebook really is a James Bond villain’s dream come true. And no, it is not just successful. Facebook is killing it’s competitors. It has simply buried Myspace, Orkut and others and won’t stop growing. I don’t know what is going to be the No 1 social network 2020. But currently I bet it still might be Facebook.

What was once google, is – in parts – about to become our favourite Evil Empire. google may still rule everything Pull but Zuckerberg works hard to turn its business into a Push Superpower. If you search for the Large Hadron Collider you choose google. But Facebook is your choice for the restaurant around the corner and your fave sneaker brand. And since wednesday things are on the move again…

One Graph to Rule them all

In case you haven’t heard the term Social Graph before – it will either become important or obsolete in the future – simply because Facebook wants to own or dominate it. In his 2007 article ‘Thoughts on the Social Graph‘ Brad Fitzpatrick talked about the Social Graph as ‘the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related‘. Basically it is the people you know, the stuff you listen to, read, tweet, and tag, and what you put on maps – and the question how you access and distribute the information to your friends. By now there wasn’t one but many disperse social graphs. But the more we are intertwined on Facebook as the one connector, the better the platform’s chances to become the knot of earth’s social graph. Now, after some technical adjustments last week Facebook is de facto trying to nothing less than that.

Well, world domination looks a little bit different, I have to admit. Mark Zuckerberg’s tools for world domination are so unobrusive that nobody understand them who is not part of the industry. What Facebook delivered on its F8 conference looked…well…small…but may have more than significant outcomes.

• Cornerstone of Facebook’s conquest is the Open Graph Protocol -  basically a techn0logical extension of the social network that treats the free web (the artist formerly known as Not Facebook) as Facebook entities.
• This can be studied through Facebook’s well known ‘I like’ button (plus many more new social plugins) which is now available for every web page (look up). Facebook will treat blog posts (which are part of the system) just like Facebook posts – and of course draws data from them.
• Facebook Fanpages and ‘Fans’ do not exist anymore, get replaced by ‘I like’
• Facebook Connect as a quasi-brand will be dumped
• And a couple of other revisions. Facebook did not go too much into details but it will soon finish off all other competitors in the economy by offering its own currency and geo-location solutions.

Read more »

Apple. Inside the App Store’s Rejection Department.

Januar 29th, 2010 • View Comments Mobile, Tech
Tags: Apple, Apps, Cool, Funny, Ideas, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Truth

The unparalleled freedom of Web 2.0 can nowhere be witnessed as fully as in Apple’s App Store. Well, of course there is criteria to become part of this exclusive digital warehouse – clear, transparent criteria to leave no room for speculation how to get in there. And in order to stop everyone with bad or fake ideas to take advantage of them, Apple, and you, the user, Apple has now opened the doors to its App Store Rejection Department. Thanks to Chris for this link.

Digital Magazines. Another future for print.

Dezember 18th, 2009 • View Comments Ideas, Tech
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Print, Tech, Trends, UX, visual, We like, World

Is print dead? If you read my own headlines you will find out that I am undecided as well. I am sure that the majority of mainstream print media nowadays is doomed. But, I think that some traditional print media products might reinvent themselves. Lately Outsider Magazine and Esquire came up with remarkable experiments in this sector.

Publishing thinktank Bonnier plus its partner Berg London have come up with this cool vision of how magazine UX might evolve. It’s a concept video and does not exist yet. But the concept convincingly uses digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future.

Razorfish. Emerging Experiences launches Razorfone.

November 23rd, 2009 • View Comments Experimental, Tech, Trends
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Ideas, Mobile, Razorfish, Retail, Tech, Tools, Touch, visual, We like

My colleagues from Razorfish’s Emerging Experience team have come up with a new application which furthermore eases shopping processes. Razorfone is a prototype application which simplifies buying processes using the means of touchscreens. Razorfish Emerging Experiences has come up with a lot of innovative touch applications lately. Do also check out the configurator they made for Audi and their Razorfashion application.

Razorfone Interactive Retail Experience from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

SixthSense. Redefining Man-Machine-Interaction.

November 18th, 2009 • View Comments Experimental, Tech, Tools
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Gesture, innovation, Interfaces, Interview, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, TED, Touch, Trends, World

The latest series of Ted takes us to India. Pranav Mistry is a student at the notorious innovation factory M.I.T and inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. In this demo he explains this new type of men-machine interaction – including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. Fantastic stuff.

Nokia. N900 goes Maemo.

November 12th, 2009 • View Comments Mobile, Tech
Tags: Ads, Brands, Business, Cool, Lifestyle, Linux, Maemo, Mobile, Strategy, Tech

Today Nokia will bring out its latest handset, the Nokia N900. For the Finish brand it is not just another smartphone. In fact, it’s it first handset with the latest Linux OS. Maemo 5 renders it one of the first smartphones to have true PC-like multitasking and not only lets it run “dozens” of app windows at once but gives it a simple, large dashboard for switching and closing apps. Of course the pretty idiotic term ‘iPhone killer’ was used here again. But whatever the phone does. The first clip to promote it is pretty cool (won’t use the word viral).

Hirngespinster. Giving life to a story.

Oktober 12th, 2009 • View Comments Experimental, Ideas, Surface, Tech
Tags: Art, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Hirngespinster, Media, Motion, Print, Surface, Tech, Tools, visual, We like, World

Hirngespinster is the final project of Tristan Hohne to graduate from University of Applied Sciences Dortmund in Germany. Tristan describes it as a tangible user interface which combines the analogue book with the digital world. Hirngespinst is one of those German words which might make it into an English dictionary one day. I would roughly translate it as phantasy-driven fixation.

And as Tristan’s Hirngespinste find their way into your head, he shows a nice way to make print and digital interact – whenever Hirngespinster are seen on a book page, the viewer can interact by catching them. Once caught, an animation lets you get an inside look from the affected point of view.

Nice one, Tristan (thx Helge for the link).

Hirngespinster from Tristan Hohne on Vimeo.