Liftware amazing technology for those with motor difficulties

Originally designed for sufferers of Parkinson's and other conditions with motor tremors, Lifeware is a brilliant application of technology. It uses trickle down technology from smartphones and cameras in the form of motion sensors to help counter the effects of tremors in people's hands while they try to eat. By doing so it makes eating a relatively easy process, which in turn allows the person to focus on the social side of eating rather than just the mechanics.

I hope they will sell these in the UK as I will buy one for my daughter Ruby.

Predictions for 2013

Windows 8

Windows 8 will be seen as a failed digital mashup. The Jeckle and Hyde nature of attempting to combine two UI paradimes does not resonate with users. Those that upgrade find they live in either one UI or the other, but rarely switch between the two. The old school Windows users find it does not significantly improve Windows 7 and removing the start menu frustrates many. Microsoft eventually relent and launch a campaign telling users how to reinstate the start menu. Those that looked forward to the bright new world of touch are equally disappointed by the limited functionality of the core apps, and the low number of 1st rate apps available in the app store. The effort required to learn the charms metaphor or hidden functionality proves too annoying a hurdle for those used to the iPad's on screen approach. The minimalist design attracts while the minimal functionality confuses.

As a result PC sales continue their decline. Hundreds of millions of copies will be sold via OEM sales and a trickle of expensive touch enabled laptop hybrids will cater to the business market. Despite Microsoft's best efforts Windows 8 and Surface and the undelivered promise of Courier will further hasten the decline from what was once global dominance.

Second Screen

Sports will fuel the second screen revolution. The use of the second screen as an integrated supplement to TV broadcasts has started to arrive in the US but has yet to make significant inroads in the UK. 2013 will be the year when it goes mainstream. Data rich events such as sports events are the ideal content  for the dual screen approach.  Sky will continue to lead the charge. They will extend the functionality of their second screen enabled iPad apps to include data on a wider range of sports. There will be a closer integration with social media, and the ability to share realtime self commentary with your social circle. More and more people will augment their viewing experience of live sports events both at home and in the stadium by using a second screen. Making sense of all this data and deciding what stats to display and the level of information required by different user types will prove a significant UX challenge.

3D rights

Staples are set to launch a 3D printing services in two European cities with plans to roll the service out over the course of the year. But in order to print people need models. 3D modeling is still a specialist skill, even tools such as Google Sketchup require a significant effort to become adept at producing complex printable models. The 3D clip art market will expand as witll portable scanners. 3D smartphone based scanning apps such as 123D Catch, will proliferate. Now with a  smartphone and an app anyone can create a facsimile of a 3D object. Admittedly the intial offerings will be low fidelity but 2^nd and 3^rd generation apps will make significant increases in quality. The mainstream press will latch onto the dire concequences of such a capability. Stories will abound about who owns the rights 3d rights to objects. Museums will have to consider if they allow visitors to scan their artifacts. Brands will try to protect the 3d rights of their products, as a whole and in component form.   Celebrities will charge for 3d files of their bodies. Questions will be raised in the house.

Bot Menus

Tesco and other data rich retailers will employ more proactive and intelligent shopping bots. Regular grocery shopping will automatically take into account calendar events, school holidays, festive periods, birthdays. Weather predictions will inform alternative choices based on personal and aggregate and regional tastes. Users will be able to specify how the shopping bot can assist them. Any shopping list can be analyised to deliver, cheaper, healthier, and ethical or celebration alternatives. Users will be incentivized to employ the bots by preferential prices on staple goods. Brands will have to pay the supermarket chain to be part of the schemes and to feature their products in the initiative. Some will go as far as to offer "surprise me" features for new menu selections.

Eyes in the sky

Low cost aerial drones fitted with video cameras will be the top geek presents for Christmas 2013. Just as remote helicopters have moved from the domain of hobbyist to the general public so will quad copter. In 2013 these four and six motor devices which range from the cheap and cheerful with a low power video camera to robust versions capable of carrying the owner’s own camera will find a mass market. As these will be designed for non commercial purposes they will escape the existing legislation. Even so privacy issues will be raised and the public will be wary of these toy eyes in the sky. Digital services will spring up to allow users to geotag their movies as we all get up close and aerial with our, and our neighbor’s world. Police and security forces will employ them in a more Orwellian fashion. In 2013 it will be the norm for strikes, public demonstrations and even small scale public events to be monitored from the skies.

Google Now the starter pistol for the semantic web?

Google Now is one of many new features of Jelly bean the latest incarnation of the Android OS. In some ways it initially seems similar to Apple's Siri, but it goes further. Rather than just answer questions or enter into a knowledgable conversation it remembers things about you and offers information even when not prompted. 

On the launch page Google show various examples of how Google Now will help users. All but one example are simple search, location based searches, local weather, places to eat etc. But one feature stands out. 

What is most interesting about Now is that it can use different data sources in intelligent ways. As Hugo Barra said it is designed :

"to figure out what information you might need, and when"

For me they only showed one truly new example of this. Google Now knows what is in your diary and if the diary entry includes a location it will compare this with your current location and prompt you about when you need to leave to arrive in time for your appointment. It does this by selecting a route and knowing current traffic congestion. 

While this is not rocket science in terms of a useful function, and it has been the staple of visions of future tech for some time, this is the first real world incarnation of this functionality. This form of merging data to form useful information is one of the goals of the semantic web. I assume the plan is to marry Now to Google's semantic search and use a wider range of more diverse data sources as input. If this is the case then the widespread unconscious use of the semantic web will have arrive sooner than expected.

Targeted advertising hits the streets

Some comments I added to the discussion on targeted advertising, on My.Customer.com

Mobile is not an island

Forrester predicts the mobile wave will engulf us all. One billion smartphones by 2016. As smartphones increase in numbers so does their effect. Who betide the company that does not make ready for the coming deluge.

The mobile user is not a specific type of user, a distinct breed form the “standard” PC user. In many cases the mobile user is the user. They will only engage with you via their phone. For many the principle form of engagement will increasingly become via mobile. The principle analyst at Forrester, Ted Schadler makes the point perfectly:

“Mobile is the new face of engagement,” Mr. Schadler said. “Businesses should stop thinking about it as a small Web site on a tiny computer, and start thinking about mobile as being deeply embedded systems of engagement. That turns out to have huge implications.”

It is no longer enough, or even right, to think of the mobile user as only requiring a subset of the functionality and content of your standard digital offering. If the only way someone will interact with you is via a mobile device then that does not mean we should limit what’s on offer.

The mobile user does have hurdles to overcome, the UI has to accommodate the restrictions of smaller screens, in the case of IOS they cannot access Flash content, which while it may be in its death throws it is still a common delivery medium. The smartphone user has distinct needs and usage patterns. We need to accommodate their on the move mentality.

But the mobile user gives us so much more than their desk bound counterparts. We need to reward the knowledge they give us about their location and time of interaction. We need to deliver meaningful and useful services. In some ways they are a super set of the traditional user. We should deliver the full web site package and then some.

We should see mobile as part of the complete interaction spectrum. A spectrum which reaches from the actual engagement with the brand product, through the social consideration and interpretation of the brand through all forms of digital interaction. So while the mobile experience should not be the poor partner of the PC experience, neither should it exist in isolation from it. Interaction is a continuum where the historic engagements play their part in current and future actions and reactions. The digital offering which is not only cognisent of this history but adaptive to it is far more powerful than an island of interaction.

When developing today’s mobile strategy it should weave its way through all parts of the digital strategy and indeed, the complete marketing and sales strategy. Assigning responsibility for the mobile deluge to one department will not work.  As Karl Heiselman the author of a his report "Game Changers" puts it in a recent Fact Company article:

"Companies are only valuable if they prove themselves useful, time and again. Viewed with that lens, most companies come up short. "What’s interesting is that, on the client side, it’s never anybody’s job to own the customer experience," says Heiselman. "Some people think about pieces of it, but it’s nobody’s job to think about it in any kind of joined-up way."

Joined up thinking is such a tired expression, but from a user's experience they are dealing with one entity through many touch points and medium. They do not see or expect a mobile interaction to differ in quality and value from a marketing engagement or a sales experience or an after sales encounter. They increasingly expect the company or brand to know them and know about them and previous encounters. As mobile is taking a leading role we have to rethink our digital priorities and no longer consign it to a niche activity but make it a prime element in the spectrum of engagement. Make ready to take advantage and ride the wave, or else get soaked. 

Investments ideas for 2012

On Facebook I posted a couple of updates about things which I jokingly said were likely to be this year's big thing. It made me think, what would I invest in if I had any cash? Here are some ideas, a mix of realistic and, shall we say optimistic.


Social search
Google are doing it with Google+ which is a step in the right direction but Facebook is the social gold mine that would be the one to crack. Given that this is not likely to be open to outsiders, I still think there is money to be made in search engines which specialize in tapping into social communities. No idea how the deals would work out but someone will start doing this and making money from it.


Wearable sensors
Jawbone Up and other sensor devices are starting to appear. These will become more common and the uses for the data will expand. For example why does your TV and PC and tablet each have to have the separate ability  to respond to touch less gestures or voice commands? Why not wear a single motion sensor which uses a  common set of gestures to talk to all of them. Do a unique gesture to address the TV, and then a sideways flick of the head to page through channel listings, a nod to select and another to confirm. Could be a necklace or earring, or a bracelet. One ring to rule them all.


Anything to do with Graphene

The next wonder material, it used to be bucky balls and carbon nanotubes, but now Graphene is the new king. It holds great promise in many fields, electronics, solar energy, antibacterial applications, replacement for silicon in ICs. Of course there will be many dead ends, and some applications will take longer to come to market, but it looks good. And it was first generated as single atomic planes by the researchers at Manchester University, who also won a nobel prize for their troubles.


Art by John Clark

Lets review

John produces fantastic images inspired by the tensions of everyday life. Especially office group gatherings and cultures. You see them and you know the moments they portray. I dont know anyone else who has this as their subject mater or who portrays it so well. A mix of Goya and at times Hieronymus Bosch. They are the modern potato pickers, the labourers of the information industries of the 21st century. Brilliant. I would buy them all up if I could. 


Software to make 3D design mass market
3D printing has moved from research and industry to home geeks. Its next step will be mainstream, but in order to get there and become useful to the masses we need to improve the way 3D design is done. Google Sketchup is the best there currently is, but things need to go further. With motion sensors and much faster graphic chips it would seem possible to make 3d modeling packages which did not have to rely solely on mice or on 2D screens to represent the object. Alternatively the companies which already have huge 3D clip art libraries need to start generating models of useful items. 3D printing will be used to print spare parts to fix a broken product and to make unique objects. 


Synthetic hair follicles
Not for those like myself who are folically challenged, but as a way to produce clothing which can dynamically changes its thermal properties. When animals, use included, get cold their fur stands up and traps more air to make an insulating layer. Imagine a coat which was sleek and whose "fur" hung close to the backing membrane when the weather was hot, it could even undulate to create waves of ait to flow over the surface to cool you down. Then when the temperature rose it would fluff up its individual "hairs". Each hair may be hollow and expand to trap air within their core. 


80's shit stuff

We have had the 70's and are due for an 80's revival. Some 80's hit song will form the backdrop to an advert and the band will rise form the dead. 80's design and memorabilia will rise in price, clothes will embarrass us once more and the decade that gave us post modern will become the plaything of the thirty somethings. Buy up original Sony Walkmen, invest in Memphis lights and start flogging replica RaRa skirts. I must admit I have always loved Memphis design and think it was much more influential than it is often given credit for.

Why do tilt shift images look miniature?

My original image taken on the Isle of Staffa

With tilt shift effect added

Here is my rather poor example of a trend which has been around for a while. We have all seen them, the amazing pictures which seem to show some model or minature version of our world, complete with figures and scenes of everyday life. Like taken of the worlds most complex model village. They are created using an effect called tilt shift or selective focus, and use depth of field to give the impression of a miniature scene. The miniature effect caused by blurring elements of the fore ground and /or background.

Tilt shift used to be a specialist area of photography, primarily used by architectural photographers. They used it to ensure the vertical lines of a tall building did not converge and thus reduced the effect of perspective. Tilt shift cameras allowed the photographer to alter the alignment of the lenses and the film plane. The tilt shift miniaturisation effect we see today was only rarely captured with such cameras as the primary aim was to try and get everything into focus rather than to introduce discrepancies.

The advent of digital photography and digital manipulation has made it easy to achieve this depth of field or selective focus technique. The effect is achievable in many iPhone apps and as dedicated filters in many digital cameras.

From Sharenator

What I want to know why does tilt shift give us the impression of a miniature world, like looking down on a model railway?

I believe it is a learnt response to an artefact of photography. Before photography, most people were not aware of the notion of depth of field, of items being in and out of focus. When we view the world we tend to see everything in focus. That is, the central fovea the small area which we use for viewing the world in detail and is colour is in focus. If we are aware that another area is out of focused or blurred as soon as we look over to check it too becomes focused. The way we see the world and construct a coherent image is by rapid eye movements or saccadic which allow us to sample many  areas of the scene.

What we see in tilt shift image is a totality of a 3 dimensional view as presented as on a 2 dimensional plane. The depth of field and selective focus are artefacts of the way a camera lens can only bring into focus a portion of the image. It is not a natural phenomena that we experience through our eyes. We have become conditioned by seeing photographic images to interpret it as a realistic representation of the real world.

To support the case that it is not natural, one only has to look at paintings. I can think of no painting from the period before the advent of photography which exhibits this form of depth of field – please advise me if I am wrong. If it were natural, then one would expect the hyper observant renaissance artists to have attempted to replicate it.