Perry

Hewitt

Tag: mobile

Friday 5 — 5.23.14
1. How does your LinkedIn profile rank? LinkedIn taps into inherent narcissism by exposing your percentile in profile views compared with that of your connections, or with others in your company. Disappointed in your results? LinkedIn suggests that you beef up your summary, add more skills, and join more groups.
2. There’s a big opportunity for native mobile apps to take advantage of your handheld’s hardware from camera or accelerometer. This week, Facebook announced an imminent mobile app feature that uses the microphone to identify ambient TV shows, music, or movies. The app then offers up the content to be approved for inclusion in a status update.
3. In a surely wholly unrelated initiative, Facebook changed the default privacy setting for new users to be “friends and family” versus “public” and announced a new privacy check up tool to be rolled out in the coming weeks. Here’s hoping your new privacy settings will keep your mobile device microphone from reporting you are home in your pajamas watching Veep, rather than at the Childish Gambino concert featured in your status message.
4. The internet of things means, sadly but inevitably, ads running on all those connected things. Like on your thermostat. Or your refrigerator. See the full list as well as a couple of clarifications from Google.
5. Why did that video go viral? Success can be attributed to eliciting strong, positive emotion. Be sure to keep it upbeat — people want to see the daring rescue attempt, but no one wants to know that the kitten actually died.
Weekend fun: Speaking of viral video, here’s a slick maneuver from a clever young man who caught a foul ball — and perhaps tried to win a heart.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
May 23, 2014
Next gen mobile: your app data finds you

The news industry is still struggling with the shift to digital, as the leaked New York Times innovation report underscores. Apart from new required competencies like video, data visualization, and analytics that digital transformation demands, there is a similar tectonic shift in reader (user) expectation. News has gone from being a canonical resource that people are expected to consult to a digital, just-in-time service delivered to people wherever they are. It’s now been six years since we first heard, if news is important, it will find me, and news outlets are still striving to realize that vision.

The current expectation that important news will find the user is highly relevant to mobile. Chances are, your handheld device knows everything about you: the location of your favorite restaurant, your movie preferences, and even your fitness habits. And yet in many cases we are still using our phones the way we read print newspapers — consulting them when we need information, and optimizing our home screen (front page). But as people spend more of their mobile time interacting with apps, there is an ever greater opportunity for those apps to take advantage of the data via the software and the hardware to deliver what users want when they are likely to need it.

Yahoo is moving toward contextual search, which would enable them, if granted API access, to provide far more relevant search results informed by apps. And the idea of invisible apps running in the background and serving up information and services on the fly is taking hold. Just as the news industry is responding to the shift in user expectation that the important news must find us, next-generation mobile will require that context-aware, timely information gathered via software and hardware finds us, too.

May 19, 2014
Friday 5 — 4.25.2014
1. Are you reading this on your phone right now? Do you find you’re checking your phone compulsively? Then you might just be a mobile addict — defined by mobile analytics firm Flurry as someone who launches apps more than 60 times a day. High risk groups are identified as Teens, College Students (skewing female), and Middle Aged Parents, all of which ensures college campuses are teeming with the Infected.
2. Facebook makes nice with the media by launching FB Newswire, a service that helps users find, share, and embed newsworthy items from its vast trove of user-generated content. A partnership with social media news agency Storyful provides content verification to separate wheat from chaff. No doubt this service will do some useful sifting for overtaxed newsrooms, but ultimately Facebook and its algorithms retain editorial control by deciding what’s newsworthy enough to make the wire.
3. Fun fact from Q1 earnings report: Facebook now has 1.1B mobile monthly active users. Not including its Messenger app. Or Instagram. Or newly-acquired What’s App. For context, those monthly mobile users united would be the third largest country in the world, after China and India.
4. This week Airbnb, the website that lets you make a buck renting out your pull-out couch or luxury vacation home, closed a round of 500M on a 10B valuation. Looks like the collaborative economy is starting to have quantifiable impact at least at the lower end of the hotel market: The Economist reports on research suggesting that if Airbnb’s growth continues at its current clip, budget hotel revenue will be down 10% by 2016.
5. Codeacademy, an interactive platform that teaches people to code, relaunched its website. Here are the 10 design principles that informed their approach. Elevated social proof, commitment to fewer form fields, and enabling focus stand out as drivers of superior user experience.
Weekend fun: Wait — you’ve already seen Brian Williams rapping gin and juice? Well, you should probably watch it again, because it doesn’t get any less funny the tenth time around. Jimmy Fallon’s video editors are a force to be reckoned with.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
April 25, 2014
Friday 5 — 4.11.2014
1. Twitter is going all Facebook with new, expanded profile pages. The new profile pages offer a wider banner, a larger profile image, and the ability to “pin” a tweet to the top of your profile. The profile pages will now emphasize your tweets with the most engagement by making them larger. First Lady Michelle Obama is already up and running — soon you will be, too.
2. Good explainer post on the difference between the card design proliferating across the web and emerging card architectures. The former reflects a design aesthetic, which may be a more ephemeral trend. The latter supplants embedded media, and enables third-party and first-party content to co-mingle — potentially delivering more value to the user.
3. Speaking of cards, the explanatory journalism startup Vox launched this week with a lush, card-enhanced look. Bright yellow highlights tease explainer cards that act almost like dynamic FAQs. Topics range from “what is marijuana” (really?) to “is it the Ukraine or just Ukraine.” GigaOm broke down the benefits and challenges of the new site.
4. Internet of Things was canonized as the biggest new thing when John Chamber at Cisco referred to it as a $19T (t, as in trillion) market back in January. This Business Insider scrolling presentation walks you through examples (smart TVs, connected cars, wearables), venture capital investments, and security questions.
5. A new report from mobile analytics and advertising firm Flurry tracked mobile behaviors from January to March 2014. Findings confirm that native mobile apps (versus mobile web) continue to dominate, commanding an astonishing 86% of the average U.S. mobile consumer’s time. HTML5 and CSS3 were the mobile web darlings of 2010 — today, not so much..
Weekend fun: Turns out, Game of Thrones is more than a blood-thirsty way to spend a delightful Sunday evening with the family. The show’s popularity has ensured that there are now more baby Khaleesis than Betsys, and has spawned a veritable spike in female baby Aryas. But cheer up — weekend is coming.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
April 11, 2014
Friday 5 — 3.28.2014
1. This week, Facebook acquired virtual reality purveyor Oculus Rift for $2B in cash and stock. This purchase gives the social networking company, which was only two years ago struggling to get its arms around mobile, a leg up in virtual reality hardware. What will they use it for? Gaming’s an obvious first use case, but there’s a big vision opportunity. Semil Shah penned a terrific, if pun-laden piece on Facebook’s strategy and direction.
2. In an effort to boost Google Wallet, Google enables friction-free money transfer for Gmail users. The simple user interface — as easy as adding an attachment — is sure to attract entice more people into signing up for Google Wallet.
3. What’s content marketing, again? This piece breaks down this generic term, and explains why companies like NewsCred and Percolate are closing significant financing rounds.
4. From the Something Useful Now department, the Starbucks app has added a couple of handy features. The app now enables shake-to-pay, which uses your mobile’s native accelerometer to pull up the scannable barcode, and a feature than enables tipping for up to two hours after your visit.
5. Nieman Lab runs an extensive review of NY Times Now, a mobile product launching in the app stores on April 2. The launch is a step forward into current digital news best practices (mobile-first approach, briefs, curation of third party content). But will it lure more subscribers with this new app, or introduce product confusion with too many similar offerings?
Weekend fun: Are you still immersed in March Madness this weekend? Then check out @NailbiterBot, which will tweet to you when games are close in the second half. Follow the account now, so you can quietly excuse yourself from your in-laws and tune in.

IOWAST (3) v. UNC (6) is 74-76 with 2:59 left. Watch on CBS. http://t.co/zwra5bpZ3T

— Nailbiter Bot (@NailbiterBot) March 23, 2014

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 28, 2014
Friday 5 — 3.21.2014
1. Medium has released its first mobile app, bringing its elegant, curated reading experience to your iPhone. Login requires Twitter, and they made the somewhat curious decision not to “bog users down” with a homepage. Still to come: more robust search and a mobile writing experience.
2. The internet of things garnered a lot of attention in January when Google shelled out $3.2 billion for Nest, its patents, and its people. Is the next step for IoT consumers an app store for hardware? NEX band is making an early foray, counting on the viral sharing behaviors of youth to attract developers and ideas.
3. If you manage a Facebook page for a brand, you might want to double-check those reach numbers. With an upcoming algorithm change, the organic reach for a brand page may fall to as little as 1-2% of the fan base. Facebook is looking to migrate organizations to a paid acquisition and retention model.
4. Why do people edit Wikipedia? Here’s a quick explanation — part of a useful short series on the who, why, and how of Wikipedia editors.
5. Is Twitter ditching @ replies and hashtags? Sounds as though they will keep the functionality, but lose some of this “visible scaffolding” around user behaviors. Expect to see ongoing evolution of the user experience as Twitter seeks the user growth needed to buoy its newly-public stock.
Weekend fun: Ever wish you could go back and erase or edit your early online ramblings? For better or worse, Twitter is breathing new life into them by featuring “my first tweet” for its eighth birthday. Here’s how you can look up your own very first tweet.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 21, 2014
Friday 5 — 2.28.2014
1. Pew released a report on the Web at 25 — and how Americans have adopted and are affected by the internet usage. A full 87% of us now use the internet, 90% have cell phones, and 58% have smartphones. And as you can see from the chart above, many report it would be very hard to give some of these behaviors up. Interesting to see that while 71% of Americans online report using Facebook, and 40% do so several times a day, only 11% reported social media would be hard to give up. Hmmm.
2. Here’s an unscientific yet thoroughly enjoyable analysis of what people have on their homescreens, as self-reported on Twitter. Lots of texting, news, and social apps win top spots on homescreens, compared to gaming and payment apps.
3. Self-confessed map geeks might enjoy browsing Google Maps’ new gallery. Google partners like National Geographic have provided maps and geospatial information which the gallery aims to make more visible and usable. Google sorts them into handy categories, like Historical and Infrastructure and Space.
4. Many who shake their heads at Google+ have a soft spot for Hangouts. Today Google released a redesign of Hangouts for iOS, with the ability to attach a map, add animated stickers, and record a short clip. It makes sense that Google would invest more in the product given Facebook’s aggressive move into social messaging with WhatsApp purchase.
5. If you think people smile a lots less in Moscow than Sao Paulo, you’d be right — at least according to their selfies. Selfiecity analyzed over 120,000 images from Instagram and found that only about 3-5% of pictures posted were selfies, and that women take far more than men. See the site for more interesting findings, and visualizations by city.
Weekend fun: Getting ready for your Oscar party on Sunday? Challenge your guests to identify every single Best Picture winner from these gorgeous and clever icons designed by Beutler Ink.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 28, 2014
Alone together, or shared space?

Pew Internet reports that 25% of married or partnered adults who text have texted their partner when they were both home together.

Is this a good or a bad development? The answer may well depend on the circumstance.

Social behaviors vary dramatically by age cohort. danah boyd’s new book focuses on social media behaviors of teens — and how they may differ from their parents’ habits and understanding. In one instance described here in the FT, parents are far more immersed (and isolated) by their use of mobile devices in a crowd. In stark contrast, teens are using their smartphones to locate others, share images, and connect.

So 25% of couples texting each other at home is a big number, but what it means depends on who is doing it, and how.

February 24, 2014
Friday 5 — 2.21.2014
1. Facebook forked over $19 billion for WhatsApp, and the internet is full of articles explaining why. Among the most compelling is Buzzfeed’s take that WhatsApp posed a significant threat. WhatsApp is growing fast globally, consumes a great deal of young users’ smartphone time, and fills that critical “staying in touch” niche that Facebook would like to own.
2. The visual social network Instagram, another Facebook purchase, is looking like it might be living up to its relatively modest $1 billion price tag. Explosive growth and high engagement mean that Instagram is increasingly attractive to brands. It has exceptionally high engagement with affluent, young women — a demographic particularly attractive for retail.
3. If you’re an online publisher — and pretty much all brands are these days — you might be interested in Echobox. This analytics package offers data-driven insights about your content’s performance both on site and as shared across social channels. The end result is fewer charts and numbers, and more specific recommendations for your content.
4. LinkedIn this week entered the realm of “platisher” — the dreadful coinage for part platform and part publisher — as it opened up its content marketing Influencers program to everyone. Like Medium, LinkedIn will cultivate brand names and high-quality submissions, but sees value in building a broad-based content empire.
5. Just where will we wear the internet of things? We’re easing in with wristbands and the stunningly awkward Google Glass, but there’s more to come. Quartz provides a list of body parts likely to be adorned with tech in the near future.
Weekend fun: Jimmy Fallon took over The Tonight Show this week with a celebrity-studded vengeance, but the #hashtag2 performance sealed the deal.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 21, 2014
Friday 5 — 1.10.2014
1. If you’re not shivering right now, perhaps you were at CES in Vegas this week. Among the loveliest of launches is Yahoo’s News Digest app, the fruit of its Summly acquisition a year ago. With this sleek app, Marissa Mayer is making good on her commitment to prioritize beautiful product. Yahoo is cleverly delivering not only well-designed mobile news, but the far more valuable editorial filtering via morning and evening digest editions (complete with a countdown clock to the next edition).
2. Is it OK to admit we’re all getting overwhelmed by the endless stream of information? This article makes the case for more filters and bridges, and summarizes recent attempts to staunch the flow like nuking your Twitter feed.
3. There’s been a saying for a while now — and Jonathan Zittrain takes a stab at its provenance here — that when something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. In a similar vein, this article asks if we will come to regret the myriad small decisions we make each day — opting into free products like social networks, email provider, file and photo storage in the cloud — where we don’t pay with money, but with our private data.
4. Here’s a compelling argument for building online systems with empathy and not disdain in civic tech. It’s a great example of how digital strategy and communications are inextricable. The best digital platforms with stellar experience design, flawless cross-device rendering, and optimal performance become useless when impeded by content and communications that obfuscate rather then enable.
5. How do African Americans have access to or use technology differently? Pew’s recent report finds that there’s a 12 percentage point gap in broadband adoption, but that African Americans are represented in roughly similar mobile numbers for cell phone and smartphone ownership. And the phenomenon referred to as “Black Twitter” may be backed up by these numbers: 22% of online African Americans use Twitter versus 16% of online whites.
Weekend fun: If you enjoy black humor, you may already have played Cards Against Humanity. If you’re concerned about the future of news and painful linkbait headlines, why not go play Headlines Against Humanity?

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
January 10, 2014