Posts Tagged: emerging tech

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9
Jun 11

iCloud Single Sign-On

Apple announced iCloud earlier this week, and this has been a long time coming. Not in that the feature itself is something that everyone has been asking for, but it solves a problem many applications have: maintaining state between hardware devices.

Google’s answer to this problem is that the device doesn’t matter. Its all about the browser. Apples answer is iCloud — it’s all about apps.

[A short recap for those just joining the conversation, iCloud is a thing that enables sharing of data between your devices. You take a picture on your iPhone, and moments later that photo is on your iPad, in iPhoto on your Mac, and even the photos folder on your PC. Apple is initially building this into many apps: iTunes, Photos, App Store, iBooks, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Backup, Contacts, Calendar, and Mail]

Why is this important?
Today maintaining state between computers, smartphones and tablets relies on a hodge-podge of technologies:

  • Mail is kept in sync using special imap server settings on each device.
  • Music is sync’d only with a cable connected to iTunes running on just one computer. Same for bookmarks, photos, iBooks.
  • Kindle books, probable the closest in style to iCloud, syncs through my Anazon login. Yet that one login on each device gets me precious little beyond the books.
  • Calendars use a mashup of CalDAV, Googles services, and Microsoft Exchange. My address book is in a similar situation.
  • OmniFocus todo’s are sync’d through a custom WebDAV folder on my edstrom.net server.
  • Dropbox, one of my favorite utilities, also comes close. Their big claim to fame is their open API which many applications have adopted instead of building their own sync layer. And there is certainly demand for it: take a look at all the Dropbox apps.
  • Games may or may not save state…

In a lot of ways, I think iCloud is the answer to the old buzz catch-phrase: Single Sign-On. Now I can sign into any device -once- and all my apps, my photos, my documents, my music … will all be there. Outside of the browser window.

 

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20
Dec 10

The Balmer Tablet

Smart talk about a Microsoft tablet:

“What’s remarkable—and what should be, for any Microsoft shareholders, a deeply troubling sign—is that Ballmer, apparently, wants to do none of this. For him, the PC model is the only option. It doesn’t matter that it has never worked for this market in the past. It doesn’t matter that the tablet needs a new approach to user interface design, one that is fundamentally different from that of traditional PCs. Ballmer wants the PC business model—a Microsoft operating system on commodity hardware—running PC software, and the unsuitability of that software is seen as an irrelevance.”

Apparently though, they have a new tablet to show at CES this year. Given how well their announced-at-last-year’s-CES tablets did this year, it’ll be awesome … oh wait, they never shipped. Never mind.

Anyone else noticing a pattern with Microsoft announcements?

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6
Dec 10

Interface or Information

In The future of writing on tablets:

“Apart from seeing how new interfaces for designing, reading, writing and watching movies evolve, I’d like to see a news publisher that surprises us with a really gutsy, innovative, beautiful news product, that is: A product that users really need and are happy to pay for in some way. People that bought papers used to pay for the interface — the actual paper, not the content. Some consciously, some not. We come out of a tradition of thousands of years, where we exchange money for physical goods or are guaranteed hilarious entertainment. Digital information has not changed anything in that regard. We still don’t like to pay for information.”

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25
Nov 10

Crowd-sourced Manufacturing

A couple of guys with a good idea, and no funding to move forward, found a way to get their widget manufactured:

“It’s a hunk of rubberized plastic with a threaded bushing that will ultimately retail for $15. Last week, its designers hoped to raise $10,000 through the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. In the first three days, the total contributions were $70,000.”

For some reason, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this one. Manufacturing seems to be one of those things that I am under the delusion you need a full team of people for, not just a couple people in a garage. What is next? Full-sized automobiles designed, delivered, and sold by a 2-person team working from their parents basement?

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7
Oct 10

Innovation Forum: Social Networks

The Innovation Forum is a monthly discussion I lead talking about “new stuff that is made useful”.  This was the 4th Innovation Forum. We did a quick overview of various social networks and how they were being used by corporate staff around the country.

Handouts:

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