Flickr: it's time to catch up... oh and Flash is dead!

These past few weeks I've been looking for compelling alternatives to Instagram, specially now that the full power of Facebook and it's choices are behind it.

I haven't found one.

Then came Flickr this week with a redesigned mobile app and some changes to the web... at first it looked like an interesting approach, but after playing with it, it's still miles away from where I want it to be... nevertheless, the only thought that there is new stuff after so long, brought me hope.

I'm not alone thinking Yahoo is in a position where it could bring Flickr back to where it once stand, but it won't be easy. Instagram is the new service de-facto and others like 500px, Picasa and now even Twitter, are pushing heavily to own both amateur and professional photo sharing... but there is a difference, Yahoo has the potential to differentiate in 3 areas: speed, all-social-inclusive and simplicity!

But most importantly... they can up the game to a whole new level if they center the experience around the user and not about building a monopoly! - which these days more and more services are forgetting about.

The journey has just resumed, the land of opportunities just opened up for Flickr and I want to believe they can come back... so I'll keep waiting... eyes opened wide!

PS: this also means you will have to adopt new technologies - so guys in case you were not there when the memo was sent... Flash is dead, so please update your home page for the rest of us who have moved on!

Compression, Disposability, Curation and Self-Promotion of Content

I came across this video today where Jonathan Harris talks about the effect social networks have had in our daily live, how we behave and how our cognitive system has evolved because of compression, disposability, curation and self-promotion of content... to the point of how we come to enjoy the world outside,

The points he presents in this short video are key to any of us who are building experiences over discovery, consumption and curation of content in the modern days, specially when your target market are native digitals.

If you like the video above, make sure you also watch his presentations at TED.

Welcome to the experience revolution

We are in the tipping point of the information revolution, we believe the internet, the gadgets, the globalization, will move everything to the internet, that there won't be a need, tomorrow, to get out of the house...

But then, it hits you, you need to go to the barbershop... the butchery... to the corner. Whatever it is. You need to get out.

There are experiences that will never be replaced by the internet. Specially, if those experiences are handle in a personalized, high-touch oriented way.

Welcome to the new revolution. The experience revolution. How are you going to make it different?

On Apple, HTML5 and the "open web"

If you are a developer - at least a web or mobile one - you probably have heard the news on Apple's latest HTML5 show case and how cool their demos are... and cool they are. But there is something that stroke me the most and that was the dialog I got when I tried to see the demos from my Google Chrome browser (see image above).

If indeed this were the future of open web then why do I need to download a proprietary browser to see how the open web looks like? or, why can't I use my browser of choice (Chrome) which also is developed on top Safari's same HTML5-friendly layout engine and which, by the way, is more actively developed than Safari itself?

As mozilla veteran Mike Shaver points out

lots of -webkit- stuff in there, from my quick view sourcing; webmonkey has the article about it.

The open web is about openness and freedom of choice, Internet Explorer has it's own showcase ( a bigger one if you care to look ) and it works just fine with other browsers, even when it was put together to showcase the goodness on the preview build of IE9.

If Apple indeed wants to fight the fight against Flash and proprietary plugins it has to do so from an stand of true openness and support for true standards, -webkit- stuff is not standard and what it creates is nothing more than the next generation Internet Explorer 6.

There is a reason why HTML5 is not finished yet and until that happens we as developers have to be careful not to bend to corporations whims if what we stand for and what we choose to support is openness.

There is a long way to go in this story but we as developers have the power to stop or support things from happening. What will be your stand?

Gilverlight

A jewel from me early days in Silverlight...

After we finished our first Silverlight project in Schematic (the WWE Video Experience that launch during MIX '07) one of the designers in my team came up with this cartoon, an expression of what could be described as the experience going on after nights and nights of coding, bug-fixing, late calls with Microsoft and early morning beers to suppress the stress.

ahhh good times left behind :)

So long Mossy... I still ow u a beer!

Today the news broke public that Scott is leaving Microsoft as of November 1st, so this post is to say thanks for all and good bye. Microsoft is loosing a great piece in their chess game, I hope they will keep a list of his rants and points and keep making the Interactive world a better place to be.

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I meet Scott first because of our relationship with the Rich Internet Application world, he had recently switch to Microsoft from a long standing career in the Adobe front and who better than him to put the dots in the i's for what Microsoft needed to do in order to move the whole Silverlight wagon forward and create a community around it.

Scott doesn't get scared easily and with full commitment to his position he started pushing the boundaries to make Silverlight a better place to be among all RIA technologies out there. He was vocal and he was loud, something Microsoft was in need if they wanted to make a change in the way we build experiences.

Fast forward a year in and a lot of emails back and forward and there I was in his office in Redmond discussing the future of Silverlight, what needed to get done and how, we were even putting code together past 2am just to make our point into how some feature or other should be modeled.

Scott backed up things that in an house of engineers will otherwise will be let out unseen. He knew the business and he knew that in order for Silverlight to make it, it'd had to be something other than just pretty C# & XAML code behind.

We as a creative industry are loosing a voice inside the interactive team that fought the battles not a lot of people knew they were facing, Microsoft has done a lot of good things to improve but it's still far from finished and venturing in a field like creative, they need creative people like Scott reminding them that things are not only strings of 1 and 0s but rather a rainbow of colors.

Now, we as an industry are gaining quite a loud voice to partner with. Scott will now be able to be vocal about the industry itself and put his hands to work to help other companies succeed with great experiences. Pushing the pins from the wild and with no front other than the community and its business.

I'm sure he leaves behind a lot of battles that have resulted in things we now give for granted and I'm sure there will be more results to come. There are still people in the house that will pick up those fights.

Dude, as I told you not that long ago... you fight great for us here behind the wheel and now your job at Microsoft is done... time to move up and look forward to more awesomeness from Oz.

Cheers,

G.

Ubisoft’s R.U.S.E. & the future of multi touch experiences

Even though the Microsoft Surface has been around from conference hall to conference hall showing up how cool their technology is for the last few years, I haven’t been able to see one single implementation in a large scale where this really interesting interaction medium is at the front of the experience.

Now, I know the piece only went live last October at PDC and that its near $12000 price tag ain’t a really accessible price, but… remembering the day I first lay hands on one in Schematic’s LA office back in 2007, there were a myriad of opportunities flashing thru me mind on stuff that would be possible once this toy hit mainstream; yet I’m still waiting.

What if there could be a way were we could take these experiences a little bit further? I know my friends at Identity Mine, VectorForm and my buddy of whacks Rick Barraza at Cynergy Systems, have been able to take it a little further, creating really cool demos of their own… but what if we could all make it into something engaging? Something that will make us remain interested after 10min of using it… something that transcend the feeling of “just a demo”.

We as experience designers are as responsible for engaging our audiences, as the medium we use to deliver them is. The Nintendo Wii showed us that you don’t need fancy graphics and 3D life-like experiences to entertain us for hours. The iPhone and iPod Touch brought gestures and natural  interaction to regular non-tech savvy people, lacking features even the cheapest phones had at the time.

Today I saw Ubisoft’s R.U.S.E. teaser, and that’s when I saw there is a compelling future for table top experiences out there.

It might not be available today… but it serves as inspiration for the stuff we might have to ship tomorrow.


Enjoy!
G.