Steve Jobs presenting Apple’s plans for its new, stunningly gorgeous corporate campus to the Cupertino City Council. Its awesome.
Tag Archives: Technology
iPad Playbooks in the NFL
CNET reported over the weekend that NFL teams like the Dallas Cowboys are considering replacing the “traditional” paper playbooks and the massive index cards coaches use to call plays with iPads or similar digital tablets.
In a lot of ways, this is exactly what tablets are meant for: easy access to data via wireless networks, high-quality photos, and portability. And from a coach’s or player’s perspective, imagine being able to quickly sort through a large set of plays, look at them in a stylish graphical presentation, see animations of them in action, and more–or to download a photo of the last play seconds later.
From a geek perspective, I think this is a super cool idea and could really be beneficial to teams – consider when they need to look up plays quickly, or check out a photo of a formation the opposition just ran. I think the hang up is that athletes and coaches are supremely superstitious animals. They like their routines, they find comfort in knowing their system so they don’t have to worry about anything else other than the game and its elements. I think there is a place for tablets on the NFL sideline, and other pro sports sidelines for that matter, but I think its going to be a bigger U/X transition than is anticipated. And thats saying nothing about the security issues that need to be factored in and managed.
via CNET News
Ad Industry Asleep At The Wheel
Over at Mediapost, a spot on article about how the advertising and ad agency world is lagging behind from a technology and measurement perspective. The article is basically saying that the elevator is going to the top floor, but no one is home. They understand what needs to be done but have zero idea of how to get there. And if they don’t know, someone else will walk in (i.e Google), figure it out, and put them out of their misery.
As much as the industry sees this exciting vision, there are fundamental steps the industry needs to take to get there. Last year the steps required the industry to create open platforms to connect a fragmented industry.
Future steps include:
1) Measurements must align in display ads against consumer behavior such as dwell time or passive or active engagement.
2) Make processes within agencies quicker and easier through technology.
3) One system for all inventory processes.
Agency reps have been spending too much time cutting and pasting into and out of Microsoft Excel. So, MediaMind created a dashboard to centralize all information for media buyers. It aims to simply the process of managing ad campaigns across Facebook, mobile, display and email. It also helps buyers find audiences.
The MediaMind version 2.0 product launch this week focuses on tackling the immediate tasks at hand, which Donaldson will address at Digital Experience Day (DED). He says it’s necessary for agencies to embrace this concept now to manage any kind of future change as digital and traditional media converge, and look at “smarter’ ways of engaging consumers.” But that’s really only the beginning.
The advertising industry will face serious issues if technologists don’t step up to nurture this transition.
This is hardly a revelation to me since the advertising and marketing world still relies on the dinosaur aged Neilsen Rating system to measure TV audience…a measurement system derived in the 1960′s and 1970′s that is the biggest joke and the industry’s dirty little secret. It still baffles me that an entire multi-billion dollar industry is based completely on a panel based model who’s methodology has not changed much in 25 years.
via mediapost
Love The Brands That Tweet
It appears that consumers are more apt to trust and be loyal to brands that are active on Twitter according to the 2nd annual Digital Influence Index study conducted by Fleishman Hilliard.
This does make sense as it reinforces how brands can have a much more open and “conversational” dialogue with customers, wether its to promote a new product or stem the tide of a crisis.
Designing For Mobile Gestures
An interesting article from Nokia on how their industrial designers are incorporating human gestures into their mobile product/device design. They are basically tapping into the “relationship” that everyone has with their mobile device these days, and are using human gestures as a new dialect of interaction and communication with the phone. I’m sure we’ve all looked at our phone with one of those WTF expressions. It appears that in the future, there will be an app for that. :-)
Half Baked Idea: The Outlet Wall
I think I could use this in my basement. The fiasco of wires under my desk is beyond repair. With all the technical advances in our lives, is there no way for all these device manufacturers to figure out a way to reduce the number of wires that we have to deal with?
This Is Why Government is Broken
The Obama team started off their first week of his Presidency with the harsh realization that they have moved into the dark ages from a technological and communications perspective.
It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari. Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.
It appears they will be working on biege computer boxes with Windows 2000 on them. I realize that the Federal Government is quite a large organization and upgrading the systems is not a simple task, but you would have to think that the staff at the White House of all places would have an IT system and infrastructure that employs standards and technology from this decade.
Mobile E-Mail/SMS
I read an interesting article in the NYTimes “Circuits” section yesterday about a company called Teleflip (although I don’t know how much of a company it is since its service is free). Essentially they enable you to send an email to any mobile phone in the US, no matter the carrier, by sending an email to @teleflip.com">[any-mobile-phone-number]@teleflip.com. Its really a pretty simple concept – the email is sent to their server, they associate the number with the right carrier, and then re-route it to the appropriate domain. So check it out by clicking on the email link above.