Over the next few months, I’m going to be speaking at quite a few engagements about multitouch and iPads. Would love to hear from anyone else going along as well …
This is an event as part of the Science Festival. Alongside Anthony Ashbrook (Mobile Acuity, Augmented Reality), Gavin Dutch (Kotikan, Event Guides) and myself, we’ll be talking about the past, present and future of mobile.
This open Mobile Innovation Camp (MIC) is on Gamification and will be held in Dundee. My talk will be based around the game mechanics in Cityville and how they are used to fuel our addiction.
Well what can I say? For the past week, I’ve been at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.
From a business perspective, it was a productive week. I managed to speak to and show a few people the alpha version of our iChalkboard app and got some great feedback. I also met some amazing people working in startups; talking to minded people to exchange views/opinions without having to give a social media 101, or transmedia basics class means that we can get to the good stuff, quicker. Continue reading →
5. Massive Growth of iOS Content Management Systems
Everyone wants an iPhone app. EVERYONE. Why? Look at the stats – according to one report, it is estimated that revenues will hit 2 billion dollars in the iPhone apps store this year … Just like everyone wanted a website back in the early 2000s, we’re seeing a similar trend with iPhone/Android apps.
Building websites back in 2001 was a pain, in the same way that building iPhone apps nowadays is not exactly a walk in the park (Objective-C is about as much fun as brussel sprouts – its an acquired taste). Thankfully, Content Management Systems (CMS) began springing up to help build and maintain websites in a much less painful way. Once configured and installed, a website could be handed over to your regular user and they could update as much as they want. And this year, I predict that we will see a similar trend with iPhone/iPad apps.
Two startups with iPhone building systems that impress me at the moment – Red Foundry and AppMakr. I’ve been lucky enough to beta test Red Foundry’s system in the last two months and I have to say, I’m really impressed with the look and feel of the final output of the app. There’s a CMS type option where you can produce a “magazine” type app using RSS feeds. There is also a more advanced version using a markup language. Either way, it is now possible for a non-programmer to build and update an iPhone app. To me, systems like these will help to bridge the demand for iPhone apps and the lack of iPhone developers.
I think 2011 will see a massive growth in the use of these systems – especially since the smartphone market is growing and growing.
This is the last instalment of my predictions for the big tech trends this year. Have you got a list of your own? or do you have any comments on this? Feel free to drop them below.
This is the fourth instalment of my predictions for big tech trends for 2011. You can read predictions 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
4. A Re-Focus on Non-Smartphones
Remember the days when you didn’t have a smartphone? I only switched over to an iPhone in Nov (let me add that this was after some cruel bullying by all the other geeks in Appleton Tower about how the screen on my Nokia N95 didn’t ‘work’ – peer pressure is harsh and I don’t think I could ever live without it. But sometimes it’s hard to remember that people with smartphones are the exception rather than the norm. According to a recent report published by Nielson (Jan 2011), just under 70% of the phones are non-smartphones – a statistic that is sometimes forgot when the discussions about iOS vs android (vs Web OS) are dragged up.
This really means there is a huge market out there for any startup that can make feature phone services. Hailed as the next big startup – GroupMe – is a service which allows people to set up little groups that they can text with a single number. These groups can be set up for an hour, a day or a week. It just makes communicating with a bunch of people fairly easy. One scenario would be being on a long weekend with a bunch of friends; you can set up a short number to allow people to communicate with each other when everyone is off doing their own thing.
I know that local mobile design company – Yiibu – is re-focusing on mobile web design. Bryan has an excellent presentation on this:
The web isn’t just about smartphones and I think this year, with the upcoming success of GroupMe, we’ll see a bunch of new startups which will shun away from smartphones only and tap into the huge market of non-smartphones.
This is the third instalment of my predictions for big tech trends in 2011. Read prediction 1 and prediction 2 as well …
3. The Rise of Multi-user, Multi-device Tablet Applications
Multi-user games and apps are not new (just look at World of Warcraft), but alongside the rise of the new multi-touch tablets, a new type of user experience is possible: co-located, multi-user applications. In other words, apps which allow two or more people to simulatenously interact together over the same device. Continue reading →
I was first introduced to the concept of Gamification back in Nov by Alicia Dudek at one of the Girl Geek Dinners. In brief, gamification is the use of gaming priniciples for everyday life. 4square is often mentioned as an example, as well as Farmville/FrontierVille/CityVille. While the ‘theory’ behind gamification is drawn from the recent invention of video games, it can be applied to a number of seemingly unrelated fields such as marketing and web app design. Not convinced? Just look at loyalty schemes where Continue reading →
So, the naugties are over and we’re heading straight into 2011. Over the next five days, I’m going to writing about what I think will be the next big tech trends this coming year.
1. Home entertainment embracing the Second screen
CES 2011 has already seen titles like “tablet wars“. The iPad has made the tablet form factor /the/ latest gadget to have back in 2010, and this year, a whole pile of Windows and Android based tablets are coming out making them even cheaper and more accessible. What does this mean? Well, most people have commented on how iPads are the perfect sofa companion. Its Continue reading →
Just now, I was looking up some old Microsoft Word files that I had written a while back. After taking a little while to find the right ones, I double clicked and got this incredibly helpful message:
“This file was created in a pre-release version of Word 2007 and cannot be opened in this version.”
Of course, I had create the file in the beta release of Word 2007 and now that I have Office 2010, it wouldn’t open. You would think that this is slightly insane, considering Microsoft didn’t actually explicit warn me that any files I created in the beta version would actually not be readable later. (I wouldn’t have minded, I would just liked to have been warned.)
This is the interesting bit. My first thought was to email myself a copy of the file, and see whether Gmail’s Word document previewer could open it. Well …. turns out it did. With no problems. I then thought it would be interesting to look up the official “fix” for the situation and found this webpage from Microsoft Support telling me that what I should really do is either find the Administrative templates or I could edit the registry.
Seriously? Edit the registry? Just to read a Word file, which clearly, didn’t pose that much of a problem for a non-MS previewer?
Yeah. This is the reason why Google wins over Microsoft.
In Oct this year (2010), the Edinburgh University Hoppers Group which Maxim Cramer and I help to run, decided to run a female developers conference. We ran this conference for a variety of reasons which warrants a blog post all by itself, but the important thing here is that I’ve been spending an increasing amount of time thinking about is how to encourage non-coders to code.
There are two groups of people which I think could benefit a lot from learning coding.
In my startup life, I am lucky enough to meet a variety of people from different backgrounds – some in management, marketing etc – some starting their own companies for the first time. Unsurprisingly, most of them are web-based. But one thing that it always strikes me is how quickly people are willing for someone just to take over the design and development of their sites without they themselves, having a go. Of course I’m not saying that you should build the whole website yourself first – after all, it takes YEARS to train as a good developer – but having some sort of background understanding helps articulating your vision in their terms, helps to understand what is and what isn’t possible, and helps you to see where opportunities for innovation are.
The second set of people which I think would help are … well, less a ‘set’ of people, but more the world … unlike two or three decades ago where new innovative products were real, physical things; instead, opportunities lie increasingly in the digital space. However, rather than seeing increasing trend of students going on to study computer science at University level, we see the opposite. And don’t even talk to me about the percentage of women within that number too. Having spent many long hours discussing how this could be better resolved, one large part of the answer is the need to make programming fun and exciting.
So here are some awesome tools which you should look at if you are interesting in learning how to code, or if you’re looking to teach non-coders to code.
Android App Inventor is by far one of the coolest tools I’ve seen in graphical programming. The idea is, with a few simple clicks by dragging and dropping components, you can get a fully functioning app running on your mobile really quickly. Meaning that non-coders can get results, fast. And the ability to show off to their friends what they had built.
There’s a front-end (interface builder) and a back-end (“blocks” builder for the programming aspects). Certainly the blocks builder is the most important part, as it is a gentle way to start teaching common programming concepts such as loops, if-then statements and database access.
I’ve had a play with it myself. Its fun. Although it can get me frustrated really quickly because I just want to get around to tweak the code, that’s probably a sign that this tool is great for step 1, but once you’ve got to a reasonable level, its time to move on.
The idea behind Rails for Zombies is that you would be walked through the basics of creating a “twitter for zombies” through a series of tasks. In each section, you start with a simple task which gets built up to much more complex tasks. You get to learn about database programming prinicples, web development through ruby and so forth. Each player gets credits for solving a puzzle. Its meant to be fun and way more interactive than learning from a book or screencasts.
I can’t even explain how excited I am about the potential for Rails for Zombies and how awesome it is that gamification prinicples have FINALLY arrived in programming. I haven’t had a chance to play with it properly yet, but once I do, I’m certainly going to explore setting up programming workshops with Rails for Zombies.
Built by the awesome people at FUSE labs (brought by Microsoft), Kodu is a visual programming lanugage made specifically for creating games. In particular, its aimed at teaching children programming principles. (And in that sense, it has a lot in common with SCRATCH).
The idea is that you can design, build and play your own games through a graphical interface. You can create the (3D) environment, build your character and set obstacles and tasks that the character has to achieve. The best thing about Kodu is that (not only is it free) but that you can run games on your XBox360 meaning that it makes you feel like you’ve actually created a real game. For fairly little work, someone can create a simple, but very polished looking game.
Obviously this one is aimed more at children: of the demos I’ve seen most of them have been aimed at the primary school age. Kids can share and play each other’s games over the network, and they can also download numerous other games around. To me, this is the 21st century equivalent of creating your own board game (I created quite a few when I was little) and enables them to explore their creativity. For adults, you should definitely check out Wild Pockets (Shanna Tellerman, their CEO, actually came and at one of the Girl Geeks Dinners this year).
So there you go. Hope you have fun!
(And after all that hard work, here’s some humour to go with it …)
and I don’t think I could ever live without it. But sometimes it’s hard to remember that people with smartphones are the exception rather than the norm. According to a recent report published by Nielson (Jan 2011), 
