A way of package information so that it is usable on the go.

As opposed to web that does not cater for this function.

Though the definition is simple I think it is powerful. It does not say anything about the user experience and could be delivered to an intelligent wrist watch. The only requirement is that it can be used on the go i.e. when the user is in motion or is mobile.

The way I think of apps is that they define an area. Lets take the room analogy. As a user I go in and out of these rooms. Each room is designed by the service owner to his likings. Each room contains interesting information.

Two trends threaten apps:

1. A more flowing user experience where apps as rooms feel old school
2. Content delivery as apps add friction.

Flowing experience. I hate multitasking. I hate exit apps. I hate back. I dont like windows and menus. I do like people, movies, photos and music. Touch devices have to opportunity to redefine how to engage with content without the surrounding stuff. Windows Mobile 7 looks cool and different perhaps a step towards a more flowing consumption of content.

Content delivery. If I want to sell you content let it be a mix of multimedia I would need a programmer to create the app experience and to publish it into the app store. That is a lot of friction if I am say a photographer. The great thing with digital media is that standards have evolved for how media is packaged e.g JPEG and all computers and mobile phones can read them. But now an app is proprietary format and this does not make any sense for me the photographer.

However, WM7 will also have apps, I wonder if this is a mistake.

• not web sites
• not native applications

web applications are apps that are written using web technology but the user experience is closer to apps than web sites.

When the user experience of web applications gets as good as native (not there yet but improving very rapidly) and it will be soon, there will be very little incentive for anyone to create native apps (except games). The reason being that it is more expensive to create native apps and not so good reach (single platform).

So web applications is the future and so far there are limited number of devices out there that can handle them correctly. IPad does a great job and more will follow.

Question is still how web applications will be distributed? Through www or app stores? I assume both will exist and one will win. Advantage of app store is charging and discovery. Advantage of www is flexibility and faster development  (no approval process, update when you want). Advertisement will be available on both.My assumption is that charging will be less relevant and discovery is today bad on www but will get better (probably much better than app stores can do) so my bet is www.

• Some apps are really beautiful and create a complete new experience that I have not seen before. Example of this is BBC, Time
• Best app so far: Ideas from Adobe
• Not sure that the LIST metaphor, that most iphone apps use, is the right one for iPad. Twitter in a very big list looks kind of boring.
• So few apps. No good feed reader. No Facebook app.
• Cannot listen to hypem.com. no flash. no app. sucks.
• Reading books on the Amazon app is great. Better than I had though.
• Safari works good but is a bit slow to render the pages sometimes. I miss the keyboard to quickly bring up a new page and write one character to get suggested bookmarks. zooming is great though.
• It is not connected the way a smartphone is (my N900) or my laptop is. Having to get in and out of apps to check for new messages is not so smooth.
• Looks great on my coffee table. A bit of fatty fingers but thats ok.

If your service is completely on the cloud + web access you run the risk of being invisible. You are not in the store. you are not on device.

You have to be both. cloud + web + client. And both web and clients must be excellent experiences. This is a big investment though to support a multitude of client platforms e.g. Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung, Apple, Google etc.

The only cost effective way to do this is web technology on the client too. Currently the experience is not good enough on vendor devices but it will be.

Apple on the other hand is maintaining the old school “we know what is best for you” kind of conversation. Risky.

How can I design my product or service so that it enables conversation?

But the Internet has changed, has grown up and has become more human and social. Now we use the internet not only for “browsing” but for “connecting”. When we want to connect, the web is no longer optimal because connecting is different from reading and linking. Web sites like Facebook does not leverage the true potential of connecting because it is limited to the web paradigm.

Now comes mobile and apps. No longer bound to the browsing paradigm. New possibilities arise to invent a better way of connecting.

Some say the web is dying but I dont think it is as long as we want to browse, discover and read information.

There are two forms of communication: synchronous e.g. voice and asynchronous e.g. email. Synchronous way of communication has the advantage that you get instant feedback i.e. point (4): you talk, you listen, you talk you listen. Asynchronous ways of communication has the advantage of being consumed when the receiver wants to consume it i.e. (2): I can read the email after my lunch, no need to interrupt my eating.

Asynchronous communication is good at communicating a message  (3). Books for example are very good at pushing an idea. Email as well.

None of these two forms are good at (1) and (5). I cannot call or email everyone on the planet to tell them about global warming. I cannot search old phone calls to build upon information and collaborate towards a means. In the same way it is very difficult to email everyone that should get some piece of information and effectively collaborate on that.

The web has changed the possibilities for (1) and (5). I can now broadcast a message to anyone with e.g. twitter or blogs. I can collaborate on new ideas in e.g. Wikipedia so how are these services different from the old ones? By selecting to not name any human receiver of the information we have liberated ourselves from  the closed set of potential recipients. When someone in Iran broadcast a message via twitter  it is sent to twitter. Not to his friends. When someone adds an article in wikipedia it is sent to wikipedia, not to his colleagues. Lets call this type of communication broadcasting. When I update my status on Facebook I am broadcasting that message to Facebook.

The problem with broadcasting is of course that you dont know who is listening so systems for broadcasting must build it tools for listening to the information and acting upon the information. But the problem is deeper. I cannot be certain that I will reach a person with my message.

In summary we have

• Broadcasting
• Asynchronous communication
• Synchronous communication

• Internet is all about networking. The network effect is the added value of connecting. It opens up the potential for sharing information and knowledge and ideas. It will help humanity to become more intelligent and make better decisions in the future.
• The added value is collected and never forgotten. It constantly grows. Some describe this as information overload, others go as far as talking about it as a global brain.
• The social aspects are a natural part of the web, connecting people to people and people to information is what it is all about. The scary aspect of it is that by sharing, and we must share to feel the value of having done something, we cannot at the same time be private. Our privacy is something we give up. We become public persons.
• Today social communities are mainly on “portals” like the early “information net” was but will likely become more integrated in everything online. The big change that Facebook invented was the so called news feed: a feed of constant information that can be acted upon. Instead of having “pages” as in the early days of Facebook, we are not interacting almost real time. The information bits in this real time flow must be singular entities to make sense, if they are to complex, one cannot easily react to it. Some people worry that “snack size” information overload impacts our ability to concentrate on more complex matters like reading to become a doctor.
• What was missing from the documentary is the “internet of things” i.e. that my fridge would broadcast its status on milk publicly.

To me it seams that if one is to make a big impact on society one must innovate on the internets ability for network effect.

1. Google search
2. The Hype Machine
3. Facebook
4. Gmail
5. Google reader
6. Amazon
7. Techmeme
8. Twitter
9. Xmarks
10. Google Maps
11. YouTube
12. Instapaper
13. Readability
14. Evernote
15. Feedly
16. Veetle
17. Vimeo
18. WordPress
19. IMDB
20. Foursquare
21. Wikipedia

Those that did not quite make it:

• Flickr
• Picasa
• Ebay
• Tumblr
• Brizzly
• TheSixtyOne
• Skype
• Spotify
• Todoist

could this be done as an app on the iPad? (sans pen)

1 to 1: telephony networks

1 to many: social networks

many to many: community networks

Apps will win when it is personal – I want it. I pay for it. I consume it.
Web will win when it is neutral – No hurdles to information

Web will turn into a resource for mainly free information and apps will be an economy. Premium content will be apps. Each company will create web as information resource and apps as premium offering.

Example: a hotel chain. What should they do apps or web? – both!

They should release an app for its most frequent users who feel that this hotel chain is something very personal for them. They want extra features. They want to be able to book directly from the app. They want more than the average…
They should release a mobile web site that inform about the basics. Where is the hotels? Rates, phone numbers etc.

Take a picture of that wine bottle when you are in the restaurant and order 5 bottles. Look up a nearby taxi and order it. Buy movie tickets, music, books, or those new Nike shoes in the window.

Just do it. Now. With your phone.

what got my attention is how they introduce a second dimension to scrolling. Looks like they imagine any app being a big canvas where the user can scroll not only vertically a-la-iphone but also horizontally. The effect is a two-dimensional canvas of information pretty much like a big web page. Will be interesting to see how this feels in real everyday use.

Images courtesy Microsoft.

What service/product has context about me now?

Facebook, Twitter – what I like and who I like

Apple, Amazon, eBay – what I buy

Google – what I am looking for

…

What can it be used for? Increase my network, get recommendations, better search results…

Will I want to use it? Yes. Will it be required? Yes – products without it will loose out, look stupid.

Check out siri.com for a pretty cool implementation of a service based on context.

- if we cannot control every single part of the UX we will not support it.

And so the iphone, iPad does not support 3rd party runtimes: Flash, Java etc. By doing this Apple makes sure there is no crashes, viruses etc. It simplifies the use of the product by imposing these restrictions. The problem however is the open web. When a user browse to a web page that uses flash on an iphone he will be remembered of the fact that flash is not supported and will need to pick up his PC/Mac to continue.  Apple however gambles that the simple beats openness. (Apple in fact go so far in the race towards total simplicity that it will not allow multitasking on the iPad. Wow that is commitment!)

Google will go the other way and support whatever format there is out there. Google will take the risk of crashes, viruses etc.

The most surprising thought is that caring for the user experience will limit what you can do with the product. Now is that good UX? To some perhaps but not for all. Apple is indeed a very interesting company to follow. But I think what it tries to achieve is something very difficult so other companies should perhaps tot try to follow blindly but to go a slightly different direction.

iPad is a personal computer. I dont care how much Steve tries to position it as something else.

If your needs are “simple”, you might just not need any other computer. You got web browsing, emailing, photos, and of course 140 000 special purpose apps in the store.And it is much simpler to use, lighter, and virus free.

And that the new way of using internet in that sentence is the store. Yes you can do all the stuff you are used to but you will need to pay for it. Same as in the old (real) commercial world. Until now it was free. internet was free.

So if there is one takaway from yesterdays announcement it is that we might look back at the early days of internet in a couple of years and say wow how cool wasn’t that, what incredible anarchy and freedom the internet was in those days!

And of course we cant wait getting my hands on one.

1. Big touch screen (no keyboard)  = a device that can morph into any kind of appliance: phone, games, weather etc – in simple to understand way.

“Want a music player or a GPS or a guitar tuner or a drawing pad or a camera or a calendar or a sound recorder or whatever task you can come up with? No problem: Just redraw the perfect interface on the screen, specially tailored for any of those tasks. So easy that people would instantly get it.” http://gizmodo.com/5452501/the-apple-tablet-interface-must-be-like-this

and a year later

2. App store. a market for software apps

What it changed:

- multi-functional device (“an app for that”…300M apps and counting) is no longer more complex than single purpose devices. This accelerated the transformation to “smart phones” from “feature phones”

- UI paradigm shift where the data structure is hidden. (No more folders. No distinction between offline and online data.). It is all about the service, not about the data.

- created a market for mobile services/content.

What will the Apple tablet change? We will know in 2 days…

I think this is the way to design services. Focus on the user. Focus on what the user wants. Focus focus focus.

Im gonna do it too. soon.

What strikes me reading these predictions is that they do not put the user in the center. The predict things like “Mobile will completely revolutionize the way local advertisers can connect with potential customers” uhhh well maybe but I think this is the wrong angle to look at it.

Mobile “phones” change to mobile “wands” that will help us, inform us, transform us, connect us and augment anything we point it at.

Sounds exciting? well its 2010, we are ready, bring it on!