Archive for the ‘personal preferences’ tag
Future of mobile: “compound” apps that know what you want
Apple’s App Store may have more than 600,000 apps right now, but the future of mobile computing is not about stand-alone applications. Certainly, new apps will be invented, but the real innovation will be in the creation of “compound” apps that transform how we live and work.
Compound mobile applications of the future will connect together not just data, but information and services from multiple industries. Information will no longer reside in silos, such as info from the airline or the restaurant industries, but will be connected together with stored information about your personal preferences to give you a seamless experience.
Since people have their phones or their tablets with them all the time, their location your be aligned with the information about yourself that you make public, such as in social media. Analytics and big data will bring together information about people similar to you, so that if you are traveling through an airport with a 20-minute walk to a gate, your phone will help you choose where to eat dinner based upon personal preferences.
In other words, you’ll be able to do things you’ve never done before. Mobile computing will be the connection point to things that have traditionally been unrelated.
The most interesting apps of the future will be the ones that blur the lines between industries and improve our quality of life and the quality of how work gets accomplished.
In a related development, mobile currency will be a new way of purchasing things on our smartphones and tablets.
For example, if you check into a flight using the app on your phone right now, and the flight is delayed, the airline may hand you a slip of paper that entitles you to get a snack in the airport. Instead, why not add a monetary credit to your phone to spend for that meal? Or, since I travel a lot, if I have several thousand miles accrued in airline miles, why do I have to pay for a meal on the plane using my credit card? Why can’t I spend 500 miles of my 50,000 accrued on a meal?
When I want to buy things, I want to be able to use my phone to pay for them using the most appropriate currency.
As we look at the future roadmap for mobile computing, we can divide businesses into two categories.
One group is extending current business applications and processes. If they have an online web site for commerce, a business will want a mobile app to do the same. They are adding a channel, becoming multichannel, to what they do now. Businesses have to extend their reach in this way to stay competitive.
The other group has started adopting a “mobile first” position. So of all the possible ways of reaching their employees or customers, companies are now switching to an approach that says, “when I do the next application, the first place I’m going to use it is for mobile devices.” Or if they decide to change an infrastructure, it must support mobile computing first.
As someone who has spent much of his career promoting open technology in computing, I see the need for movement away from proprietary computing to open standards in mobile computing.
When ideas start to be incorporated into things that many people use, or the technology becomes mainstream, there must be standards.
For example, IBM bought Worklight earlier this year because it’s a company that based its work on open standards and open technology. Having open standards and open technology is the best way to successfully deal with all the different mobile devices with different mobile operating systems and lots of apps that need to access the same data.
Along those lines of thinking, we very much feel that HTML5 is critical to the success of mobile, versus strictly proprietary technology. We support a hybrid approach of using HTML5 to extend native apps. The hybrid approach allows a developer to optimize the technology that will be used. In fact, we feel that the hybrid is usually the very best approach to developing applications. It allows reuse of existing web skills and builds new, standards-based skills for use in development of multiple apps.
These are just some of the trends I see occurring over the next few years in mobile computing. One thing is for sure, mobile is changing the way our world operates.
Bob Sutor is vice president of mobile enterprise and the WebSphere Foundation for IBM. He’s also a widely read blogger and is a frequent speaker around the world on open source, Linux, open standards, virtual worlds, and cloud computing.
Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.
[Top image credit: VLADGRIN/Shutterstock]
Filed under: VentureBeat 
Seek or Shout: A Review
I don’t know why the new service from Cision makes me want to play hide and seek. Perhaps because it’s named Seek or Shout? It makes me all juvenile.
But the service itself is not juvenile (apparently that’s just me).
For those of you who have been in the PR industry a long time, you likely know HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, created by Peter Shankman and then sold to Vocus in 2010.
Well, now Cision has a similar service, but it’s for journalists, bloggers, and PR pros.
From their site:
Seek content, expert sources, research and other support for stories. Shout to let the community know you have a story to tell. Join Seek or Shout today and see what a difference the right connection and the right time can make.
I’ve been using it since there were only five (I made up that number, but it was very few) of us on there and it’s a great way for me to get story ideas and sources for blog posts. I also really love that I can push pitches to come through there instead of to my inbox.
For the PR pros who need extra tools in determining the best relationships to build either for your company or your clients, Seek or Shout uses the Cision database and combines it with personal preferences, most recent stories, and stories that are culminating in real time.
It also tells you about job changes, promotions, and new jobs at the media outlets. It’s come a long way since the big green books that were updated only once a year.
If you’re seeking sources or story ideas, you click the “seek” button. If you have something newsworthy to tell – a new product, campaign, or award – you click the “shout” button.
Either way, it allows you to connect directly on stories, blog posts, videos, and podcasts that are most valuable to you right at this moment.
If I’ve convinced you to at least check it out, you can do so by watching the video below (or click here and it’ll magically appear).
It’s free to join. I highly recommend you do so, no matter which side of the table you sit…or even if you sit on both sides like me.
Seek or Shout…not Hide and Seek.
Blog Wise Tip 3: Plan for Productivity
Given all the tasks that can crop up on a blogger’s to do list, it’s no surprise that many of us struggle with task planning and control. Even the big-name bloggers we interviewed for Blog Wise grappled with these issues.
Having realized the negative impacts of stress on her productivity, Amy Porterfield has adopted a range of tools—from physical calendars to Google Docs—that help smooth her daily workload, and make sure she gets everything done.
Importantly, she actually uses these tools: she told us that she discards any that don’t really work well for her. In this way, her task and time management tactics are constantly evolving to suit her personal preferences and her changing workload and goals.
Gretchen Rubin has found that having a clear desk, and an uncluttered workspace, helps her to feel calm and in control. “Outer order contributes to inner calm,” she said. “And I used to think, ‘well, it doesn’t really matter if my desk is messy, because I can find everything.’ But now I’ve really keyed into the fact that I feel calmer, my mind feels more orderly, when my stuff is more orderly.”
Bloggers who work at home with families obviously face a particular set of planning challenges. Both Heather and Darren explained the value of sitting down at the start of the week—perhaps even on a Sunday—and looking at the work-life schedule to see what’s on that week.
Darren also takes the opportunity to speak with his wife about the family’s plans, so that he can schedule in the things he needs to do as a dad, as well as a blogger.
Heather says Google Calendars have been a “life-changer” for her. “We’ve hooked up all of our calendars onto Gmail,” she says. “And so my assistant has a calendar, my husband has a calendar, there’s a home calendar, there’s a me-work calendar, there’s a me-exercise calendar, and all of those are synced together on my phone so that I can look at my day.
“And I can make a change, my husband can make a change, and it immediately updates on my phone so that I know what to be prepared for the rest of the day.” Heather adds that while things don’t always go to plan, “It’s having all the other days go smoothly that makes that one or two days off the rails doable.”
Finally Leo, who blogs without either goals or plans, also feels that “I definitely am more in control of my life now than I ever was before.
“Blogging made that possible,” he adds.
How much do you plan your blogging—and how much do you leave up to chance? We’d love to hear your take on planning in the comments.
Tomorrow: how structure helps productivity.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Blog Wise Tip 3: Plan for Productivity
Eat Smarter: Foodie.fm Debuts Personalized Grocery Shopping Platform
This week at the Le Web conference in Paris, Foodie.fm will be formally launching its personalized social shopping platform for groceries. The Finnish startup basically aims to better inform shoppers about the food they buy, and help retailers communicate directly about the groceries they sell.
At the core of Foodie.fm is a recommendation system, which the company says relies on patent-pending technology, that learns from a user’s eating and purchasing habits, and suggests recipes and groceries that match his or her ‘taste profile’. The system takes into account personal preferences – think food allergies or intolerance, budgetary restrictions and predilections.
Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
Have Script, Will Pedal
Getting a break in Hollywood is a super-human task, best sought by those with unnaturally thick skin, insane perseverance and palpable talent. If you’re an aspiring screenwriter, you will also want to harness the power of “the crowd” to move your script up the chain and get it read by the right people.
According to The New York Times, by using an algorithm similar to the one Netflix uses to recommend movies, Blcklst.com, will give industry gatekeepers the ability to locate screenplays that fit their personal preferences and to view the recommendations of others in the industry. A screening process will determine who qualifies to become a member, and there will be a $20-a-month fee.
“It’s a response to the question you always hear of, ‘Have you read anything good lately?’ ” said Black List’s founder, Franklin Leonard, a vice president of creative affairs at the actor Will Smith’s production company. “You hear it at lunch, every breakfast, every premiere.”
Originally, the Black List was distributed as an e-mailed PDF, giving it a clubby, underground feel.
Site recommends personalized deals based on user interaction
Websites that collate and present consumers with deals tailored to their specific likes and interests have appeared recently on Springwise in the form of
Users of the site can create an account for free, browse discounted items — currently “fashion” and “living space” categories are available — and can search by local, trending, new or last chance deals. Goods can be purchased via the site, and selecting the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons enables Dibsie to make better personalized recommendations. Rewards points can be earned by sharing finds, inviting friends and voting on deals, which can then be used as credit on select retailers. Businesses also create their own account and add deals to the site using the self-serve dashboard, which are then posted and emailed to users based on their personal preferences and interactions with Dibsie. Analysis is available so businesses can track products on offer and adapt accordingly. While in beta, it’s free for companies to add up to 100 credits of deals, after which Dibsie will charge on a per deal basis or for an unlimited membership.
With its promise to present products to those most likely to be interested, Dibsie may be a useful additional channel to reach potential and loyal customers with compelling discounts. One to get involved in?
Website:
Spotted by: Murtaza Patel
Related Ideas:
Apartment List Uses Your Personal Preferences to Find You a New Home [Webapps]
Apartment hunting can be a pain, but new service Apartment List uses your answers to specific questions and information from your Facebook profile to help narrow your search to apartments you’ll actually like. More »
Toshiba Outs Monstrous 55? 4K, Glasses-Free 3D TV With Facial Recognition
This TV is a beast. It’s called the ZL2, and to be honest it’s the only TV I actually have gadget envy for right now. The rest of the 3D TVs out there rely on end-of-life active shutter glasses or immature polarized 3D, but this monster is going straight to the lenticular lenslets. This technique involves a layer of tiny lenses that direct the light in the direction of the viewer, with a slightly offset to send a different image to each eye. No glasses required.
Oh, and did I mention that this TV has a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160? That’s “quad-HD,” twice the height and width of 1080p and four times the pixels.
The ZL2 can provide 3D for up to nine positions, adjusting its lenslets to send information in the right direction (it tracks faces with a built-in camera). There’s no saying how well it’ll actually work, but Toshiba seems pretty confident about it.
And as long as it’s tracking your face, it will adjust the TV to your personal preferences once it recognizes you. Favorite channels, shows, that kind of thing. And there’s an iPhone app! And it’ll record to and play from USB drives!
Honestly, I rarely get excited, or even slightly interested, in TVs. I don’t own a TV, I don’t particularly want one. But this one sounds just plain amazing. The only thing I’m worried about is the price. I don’t see this thing hitting for less than five grand. I guess we’ll find out what the damage is when December rolls around.