Couple a lack of a keyboard and mouse with the lack of real estate in most mobile devices and you have a brand new problem with ergonomics and accessibility. Apple broke in the door with multi touch sensors that allow the screen to pinch and zoom with two fingers. The ability to recognize how your fingers interact with the screen means more intuitive gersture commands opening the door to far more access to tools and usage paths. This vide demonstares the ability for this phone to recognize what part of hand is tapping the screen. The result: your fingernail tapping the screen equals a right click, and a knuckle tab opens a new window.
Author Archive
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A new dimension to the multi-toch
November 2, 2011 by sshadmand
Category products, Technology | Tags: device,interaction,mobile,ui | No Comments
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Screw watching 3D Screens, actually grab 3D objects!
November 1, 2011 by sshadmand
Microsoft is doing some cool stuff with interactive vertual 3d. No cords, or gloves, or glasses required. They are working on holograms, and not just for looking at. These holograms are able to be controlled by “touch” and simulate true interaction with virtual objects with the help of a real time physics engine. In short, it is starting to look pretty cool. If this technology continues to advance designers will be able to virtually interact with the models they create before they start need to develop any molds. At the end of the video they demo a mobile device that a user is able to pick up, interact with it, and all within a completely virtual holographic environment.
Curious to see how it’s done? At min 1:02 they show how the system recognizes real objects, such as hands, paper, or bowls, and displays how they interact with the virtual objects onto a clear glass plate. This plus the users line of site create the illusion of true interaction with the virtual objects.
I can’t wait for these technologies to find their way into meetings, to help team of engineers quickly to get on the same page by passing a prototype, modeled only moments ago, at a round table, as they literally pass the object from one person to the next.
Category Feature Tech, Technology | Tags: 3d,hologram,microsoft,prototype | No Comments
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Pictures that are literally worth over a million words
October 28, 2011 by sshadmand
Check out this cool little tool: Google N-Grams
It shows a graphical representation of the frequency words used in books over a rangeof years. It is based on on all the books google has scanned into their database to date.
This TED talk is what turned me on to the project.
The project, the tool and the lecture are all quite entertaining.
Here are some graphs I created playing with the tool. Graphic data, especially that which is based on sentiment represented by our societies authors, gives us amazing clues into how perception and reality intersect.
Category Feature Style, learning, Presentation & Lectures, Style, Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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Creative ways to tell your story through scrolling.
October 20, 2011 by sshadmand
I read somewhere many years ago that the experience of allowing the user to ready just enough content until the fold, but giving them just enough info that there is more uner the fold was a better tactic then framing your site above the fold with links to actions. For sites that want to say allot, and take users on a journy the scroll is smoother and quicker. It is like a timeline of content from top to bottom, as apposed to a choose yoru own adventure. Since then, I have seen some pretty cool examples of implementations like this. The lastst one I came across was from mozilla (https://webfwd.org/en-US/) Which would make sence since they are the advocates of the web.
Here are some slides (in case they change the site by the time you read this.)
The main home screen looks pretty standard. But notice the color and the footer….
As you scroll up he page the footer rises from the bottom, revealing a whole other expereince….
As the you scroll up, the color of the back ground fades into white, and the old footer is now the new header. I thought it was a beautiful experience…
I have seen many variations of the concept of scrolling while browsing the internet. Here are some others:
This one is called “Ben the body guard” and it was a website for a game. (http://goo.gl/HG9PQ) In this creative experience, the body guard tells you his story as you scroll down the page. The animation of his walking and the street passing by are all based on your scrolling down the page. After the story and his walk is over, the links are neon signs on the buildings rooftops, and the bottom of the page gives you a link to the appstore and a close up of ben peerig down the edge of the top of a high rise. Well done!
Category design, products, Style, Technology | Tags: scroll sites | 1 Comment
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A head in the clouds
October 13, 2011 by sshadmand
In 2008, when we started PointAbout, my co-founders and I imagined a flat phone completely running of the Internet. It seemed possible with the advent of the iPhone, although we weren’t exactly sure how it would get there, or that we would be integral in its coming. Just last week, shortly after Job’s death, my co-founder Isaac sent out a video of Steve jobs from 1997 where he describes a completely networked computer/device as the goal of Apple at an early WWDC keynote. Amazing.
Well, I just installed iOS 5 and I realized that vision is closer than it has ever been. In iOS 5 not only is all you data fully synced in their cloud, but you have access to more and more tools to connect and control your network and devices from apps. It is a subtle nudge forward from Steve’s grand plan as we quietly fall in line without questions, and eager, not complacent, for the next beautifully implemented well thought out upgrade towards an endpoint we all believe in, but are not entirely sure at all what it will look like.
As Steve mentioned a few years ago, the world will be seen through apps. And his new console of apps show more an more of how vast that vision was, beyond serving ads and owning an app store as the medias interpretation originally thought. (he always seemed to be slinging from the hip to be ahead of next years curve, and a year or so later we would always end up seeing how short sighted we were and how well planned out and far reaching he was.)
Apple is a new way of computing. Every system in its own sandbox to avoid problems across the board like viruses, or poorly programmed apps and utilities. It also abstracts away from silly notion that we need to manage our “hard drive” or system.
On a side note, a few notable additions in iOS 5 (on both the 4 or 4S): Rich media in notifications, friend finder, airport utility, photo stream, and single button photography. Also, the change to the blue on/off switch, and some new design implementations of text messages and background processes..Your computer is apps and your apps are on the cloud, and before you know it, bam, we are here – the future – without vaporware and prototypes solutions – actual solutions in a very real direction and easily achieved “next step” plan. Our devices run smoothly, cleanly, beautifully, innovatively, and as Steve would say “it all just works.”
Sorry for the brevity. Sent from my iPhone.
Category Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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My Presentation on the Evolution of Geeks (Where did geeks go right?)
October 6, 2011 by sshadmand
Excerpt:
Nothing can evolve when everyone sees things the same. A teacher simply teaches what they are taught, but an observer, a thinker, a new mind -‐ a geek -‐ is the one that pushes the seed of thought that goes from unnecessary, to foolish, to laughed at. And they endure through those stages due to their intense passion, un-l it blossoms, becomes admired, and eventually takes over as the new school of thought.Category Technology | Tags: | 1 Comment
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Songs from Geekend Boston Presentation
October 4, 2011 by sshadmand
- In the Garage – Weezer
- The Legend of Zelda – RMaster
- Nerd Versus Jock – MC Frontalot
- The neverending Story – The Hitsingers
- Ramble On – Led Zepagain
Category Presentation & Lectures | Tags: geekend,presentation | No Comments
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Geekend Images, Radio and Videos to help inspire my presentation
October 4, 2011 by sshadmand
Cool NPR Broadcast about the book “The Geeks Shall inherit the earth”: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/22/136498042/quirk-cachet-why-geeks-shall-inherit-the-earth
Category Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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Enter here please. How does mobile change the browsing experience?
October 1, 2011 by sshadmand
As the PC experience keeps pushing away from the OS and into the browser as the main entry point for data, with web sites being those data points – the mobile experience is doing the opposite. It keeps pushing users back to the OS level as the entry point to get to data, with those data points being apps.One consequence of that experience: how will businesses harvest value from the users interactions when a user is not in their app? That problems has manifested itself into things such as app discovery, re-targeting, etc. Where before serendipity and injection in the browser experience had value for advertiser, the mobile user is more specific with their actions. Entering the phone to get specific data from specific apps.
Unfortunately the OS level of a mobile device isn’t in itself serendipitous, and therefor many business must rethink how they get injected into a users experience, before the user knows they want it.
The idea of “browse” has changed considerably in mobile, and one must focus on the change in foundation to re-think how to create new solutions to old problems.
One way to look at this through the lens of solutions: If the mobile device, which is primarily intent based and very rarely spoken of in terms of browsing, pushes its content to the web; And the PC, which is primarily referred to using the word “browse”, pushes users serendipitously to a device; then having the two work with one another as an ecosystem allows both sides of the puzzle to fill in for weaknesses and leverage strengths, and most importantly solve problems with tools that cross the device/tool/experience chasim. This is a true form of making vertical fragmentation (single user cross many devices) work for you.
Category Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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Do you see what I see?
September 30, 2011 by sshadmand
Can you guess who that famous person is in the image on the left? Not a clue huh? Well it’s Steve Martin in a scene from the movie Pink Panther. But it isn’t exactly straight from the big screen film, and it isn’t exactly not from the movie either. Confused? Well, it is a mind boggling concept. The technology that Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at U.C., has developed is able to produce a video from what a persons mind is seeing or thinking.It really is hard to explain the amazing nature of the this technology so I attached a video below showing it in action. It’s is a must see, and probably is THE most amazing technology I have seen in my entire life.
It’s is interesting how many of the representations of people look primarily the same from the minds eye, and how there are strange over laps of data on others at times. Almost like you can see the minds eye wander, or you can see the related emotions that are associated with some visual queues.
You also have to give allot of credit to the impressionist movement. They were way ahead of their time. As you can see they completely got the nature of the difference between what we “see”, and what we remember or interpret even though we don’t realize it. The videos also remind me allot of what it feels like when I am dreaming.
Video: Left side what was actually seen, right side what the technology decoded from the brain:
Category Feature Tech, Style, Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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Video games may rot your brain, but those gamers may help find the cure for AIDS
September 30, 2011 by sshadmand
Just when parents and wives everywhere finally got thier point across to get their loved ones out from in front of the large screen TV and unplugged from their beloved game console, a twist emerges.
As it turns out even our most powerful computers have problems figuring out the right combinations, patters and sequences necessary to solve large complex problems. AN example of these complex problems that baffle our silicon constructed counter parts is defining the model of many viruses, and you can’t defeat what you do not understand. By leveraging the power of crowd sourcing and the serendipitous realizations that only humans can have (so far,) creating a game to engage gamers to figure out the unique characteristics (folds) of the simian AIDS-causing Mason – Pfizer monkey virus retroviral protease (AKA M-MVP) is having some great success. It’s kind of like Tetris meets chemistry class. Move over xenga, no virtual good in the world will trump the prize of being the person who helped conqore aids!
Even after this gaming experiment ends, the analyzation of the methods and patterms applied to the game by the gamers will be adopted by the computer algorithms, thereby furthering our ability to solve problems at scale.
Check out the video:
Category Feature Style, Style, Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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…A man produces even when he is free from physical need
September 26, 2011 by sshadmand
Category Quotes | Tags: | No Comments
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The strong live off the week, and the clever live of the strong
September 26, 2011 by sshadmand
Category Quotes | Tags: quotes | No Comments
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Google Labs is Shutting Down :(
September 3, 2011 by sshadmand
Early on in transformation into an official entrepreneur I began preaching the benfiist of focus, and the trap that any small task will invariably have the potential to become a time suck from what you should be spending brain cycles on instead (what has now been known as ABBA in our circle). But I am still left with a small sense of saddens to find out that Google Labs is shuttung down. :(Check out the list of many of the apps that will be phased out, and find those are already gone: http://www.googlelabs.com/
It was a good feeling to know that Google maintained their, seemingly altruistic, attention to the experimentation of new ideas for the sake of simply knowing more, and fixing our uneeded hudles in data through tech and science. They were the “casual NASA” of our dat, and althought I understand the need to focus, I had always hoped Google would remain the exception to the rule, and give us something to map our ideals to.
Farewell Google Labs, I hope what you represented does not fall by the wayside in your company or our tech community as well.
Category Style, Technology | Tags: | No Comments
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A new take on flight: One wing is all you need.
August 17, 2011 by sshadmand
Check out this video. It’s kind of geeky, well it’s very geeky, but still neat-o. These guys at lockhead took a short break from creating deadly weaponry and re-invented flight.
From divincis screw shaped helicopter, to the right brothers wheeless test flight, flight has been a display of symetrical balance. Most likley due tothe need to ma the air craft as part of the prerequisites. But as unmaned aor craft becomes moreand more of a mission of our miltary, the premises are thrown out the door, and the ability for our engineers and deisgners to get creative beings in the begining of a new era of what we see as flight.
Here, the helicoprter-ish-one-winged-airplane spins in cricles to achive all raged of motions, as well as take of and langing. With this design laucnhng by flingin
the aircraft into the area is also a falry easy manuver.
Category Feature Style, Technology | Tags: cool,flight,inventions | No Comments
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Socially Non-Social
August 16, 2011 by sshadmand
We always search for strong connections, but I am fascinated with the sociological need to be surrounded by those you don’t necessarily want to share a strong or long term connection with. But, at the same time, you still feel compelled to be around these people; being social without socializing. An empty dining hall seems stale, a crowded one seems more inviting, and one is more favorable over the over without having the intent to interact with any one individually. Maybe it is because you know you are all there for the same purpose as you that draws us to those situations . Is that enough to feel connected, be intrigued, be involved? How can that be productized?To date, the majority of what we see as or interaction trails are signified by actions around our usage of some “thing”. An action is usually meaningful on it’s own, like friending, commenting, sharing, or liking. But just the other day I sat by myself in a crowded jazz lounge by myself and although I did not make any meaningful conversation with those around me, I still felt like I did *something*, that I was involved. And without a single action. Why do those feelings exist, and how does that transfer to the online product world?
Well, I guess it feels most like I left a trail of existence, that others can share with me, behind. I am allowing myself to be observed and observing others around me that share a similar interest. Our trails intersect and interact even when we don’t. So why can’t this trails be used to provoke action instead of focusing on having specific interactions provoking observations? My trail is left behind, the fact that I was interested, observed, and left, has a signifocance that the online world can benefit from. As new trails are created, other trails are attached. I displayed the fact that I observed something of interest to me in a group setting by being there, and I allow others to observe that fact. I allow them make a decision to attach themselves on to that trail, or create a trail similar to mine (or vice versa.) I left behind something, whether I did something of any real significance with my interactions or not.
I am most intreuiged by the phenomenon that surround these facts of social nehavoir. Socially non-social, strongly connected without heavy interaction, high emotional social gains without longterm commitments. These are some under appreciated parts of our everyday life as social beings. These situations need to be represented with more attention in our online world.
Category Business, Feature Concepts, Philosophy | Tags: interests,product,social | 1 Comment
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Short Cycle Scrum: A leaner, meaner, scrum.
August 14, 2011 by sshadmand
Here is a summary of how we implemented a leaner, more efficient Scrum at Socialize coined Short-Cycle-Scrum. We have added some rules of thumb, and processes around ou Scrum to deliver stories with a surprisingly good amount of efficiency. This is a style we have specially tuned for short sprints (usually one week.)Short Sprints Cycles
Sprint plaanning meetings can go long. They should definitely go as long as the need to, but no longer. One of the main reasons to have a sprint planning meeting at the beginning of yur sprint with the whole projects team members is that having a system that relies on having meetings throughout the week are like death by a million paper cuts for each developers time. Many times, those metings throughout the week are unfocused, not involving all the members of the team needed, and breaks up a developers day. most likley one devlopers need for a quick meeting means another developers inability to focus on delivering their story. So, with a single, team wide, sprint planning meeting you take care of all the discussions scheduled for your sprint as a team, all at once, when every one is in “meeting mode”. The goal is to get as many questions out of the way as possible. By the end of the meeting all your developers should be confident enough to solve their own questions or problems, as much as they can, throughout the sprint. If your sprints are short enough, and your stories are as atomic as possible, your devs will never truly implement something so wrong, due to a quick judgement call, that can truly ruin your the product. They must make judgement calls on their own to get the story delivered, this will get features out, allow for interative improvements, and avoid analysis paralysis.A good rule of thumb is: If you can’t do it in a week (or your sprint’s time span), it is a sign that the story should be smaller. This takes a little convivcing when going over new features or stories with your team, but for us, even if at first it does not seems so, it ends up being the case time after time.
This and Next Sprint Need Only Apply
Another way we have made our planning meetings even more efficient is by asking the team to only address issues in terms of “this sprint” or the “next sprint”, every other situation can wait. People have a tendancy to use planning meetings, their PM tool, and stories to “remember” things that are”needed”. We have found that things that are truly needed are rarely forgotten and adding them to the plan do nothing more then create noise. If the concept or feature will take more than 1 sprint or is something that needs to be done, or done at a later sprint, then create a thread or discussion abut it, but do not take up sprint planning time, or your queue with it.
Asynchronicity and Simplicity
Using sharable threads (for us we use basecamp) for asynchronous conversations helps us hash out discussions, and preserve the sprints for only things that are ready, or close to being ready, for implementation. This helps your team sperate planninng and ideas, from implementation and delivery. A good tip for a synchronouse discussions is to make sure new threads are created for new topics and that the title of the thread is the topic to close and focus on. Again, only after there is a clear concept formulated and ready/need to be implemented in tis or the next sprint, should it be added the icebox or queue.
Planning Meeting Agenda
So how do we set up the agenda for the next sprint so we know what to talk about? We create a sharable doc that devs can add the link to a story they want to delve into, or they want moved from the ice box into the backlog or sprint. Again, only things that need to go into the next sprint are added here. At the sprint planning meeting we go over the sprint we are starting, and maybe a few stories into the backlog, just incase we have a high velocity week, and then links added to the sprint planning doc. This keeps the sprint plannig meeting tight and focused and works very well for short sprints.
Tools
We use pivotal tracker and google docs to manage all this, and base camp for discussions and group notifications. I will go more into the use of these tools in subsequent posts.
Summary
The main take sways: if it is not for now then it does not exists in the panning world. And discussions together things onto the planning world should be as asynchronous as possible. Finally, completely sperate high goals with systems that are used for accomplishing the next step.
Category Process, Technology | Tags: agile,management,scrum,teams | 2 Comments
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An ethical rule of thumb
August 14, 2011 by sshadmand
History has a way of repeating itself. I try to keep myself objective about todays events and ethics, so I am able to rise above the norm and into the right.
Apply what you believe in today: how your perceive morality, ethics and kindness, and apply it to the past, 200, 100 and 50 years. Would you be in what history has decided was good or evil? In what we now see as right or wrong? That should tell you how the future will look back at you, and help guide your perspective on how you see the world today, allowing for some objectivity. This extra step in your thought process while making descisions about morality and ethics in today’s current events, could help prevent you from becoming the great grandfather or grandmother no one wants to talk about in public.
There is one extra step to make this ability to predict how the world will view your stance on current issues in 100 years+. you have to recognize the general terms in which a situation is defined. For instance, racism is not a question of race, but about human equality, poverty is as much about greed and sharing than it is about finance, science is a question about asking questions and challenging systems as much as it’s about what is “proven”, and culture is more about fear of the unknown than it is about what you beleive is right or acceptable.
Category Philosophy, Style | Tags: ethics,morality | No Comments
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Release Notes Generator (For Pivotal Tracker)
August 13, 2011 by sshadmand
Here is another quick tool built on GAE. It takes all your PT stories and bugs, scrapes out chores, and release stories, leaving a listof features and bugs available to copy and paste in to your release notes, emailer, or README file.
Often departments always asking if a release is out, what features are included, and if it is not out how long until it is. This tool will also print a header letting the person using the tool know if the release in question is out, and if not how far down the pipeline it is.
To use the tool most effectively you should check out my post on releasing versions through PT. (coming soon)
Category Code, Feature Tech, Technology | Tags: GAE,google app engine,pivotal tracker,release,updates | No Comments
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Team City Monitor (with coverage history) for GAE
August 3, 2011 by sshadmand
Per my last post about the splendor of GAE, below is one example of a tool I built for us at Socialize to keep an eye on code coverage and lets the group know if a build is broken (if our tests have failed.) This script is built to run on Google AppEngine, checks against a TeamCity Server install, and expects that each project in team city has code coverage outputted to its artifacts folder.What is C.I. Server and why is it important?
C.I. stand for Continuous Integration, and is a system used to constantly/”continuously” checks to see if a code base is “working” or not. Team City (by JetBrains) is a product made for that process. Usually it is used to run tests against a code base to make sure it is working as expected, as a part of the QA life cycle. These tests are made up of “unit tests” that are created by the developers whom write code to test the code they are writing. It can be a bit odd for those that have not ever done so, but it is quite important when trying to deliver stable code. In short, and in its simplest form, this whole system makes sure new code/changes doesn’t break old code already in place. You can read more about these processes and purposes here: Unit Testing & Integration Testing.
What is code coverage, and why is it important?
Code coverage examines how much of your code is being tested. For instance, you may have a C.I. system in place, and a unit test frame work running within it, but if the tests only test/”cover” 1% of all of the code you aren’t really delivering a level of confidence you should be. In this tool we track the coverage percentage over time. Seeing it as a graph helps recognize dips in coverage easily.
Category Feature Tech, featured, Technology | Tags: code,code coverage,GAE,google,python,tools,unit tests | 2 Comments
