David Emery OnlineWhat Apple Should (But Won't) Annouce At WWDC
So, we all know what Apple is going to announce at their WWDC later today, right? iCloud – all sorts of cloud based syncing, including a music locker; iOS 5 – with iCloud syncing, notifications and other new nice bits and Mac OS X Li – again with iCloud syncing, and an all over iOS-inspired polish.
What I’d like to talk about is something I don’t think they will announce today, but something I think it would make a lot of sense for them to announce at some point in the not too distant future. Apple is sitting on a potential goldmine that could seriously shake up the web.
Facebook have had a great success with their Facebook Connect initiative – it’s rare now you visit a content-based site that doesn’t have some form of simple Facebook integration, whether it’s a Like button or full on login and comments integration. It’s been so successful because a publisher can be certain that the vast majority of their audience has a Facebook account; it’s become the defacto online identity.
Apple, however, have a much more powerful online identity database. Everyone that has ever bought anything from iTunes – including the App Store – has...
Read more ➔Is This iOS 5? Dunno, But It’s Likely The Right Idea
Notifications that come down from the top bar could be how Apple ends up doing things in iOS 5. After all, this would mimic already existing functionality — when tethering, a blue strip appears along the top; when on the phone, it’s a green strip. Might notifications (or at least Twitter notifications) produce a gray strip?
Should have blogged about this earlier – this is how I’ve thought Apple would improve notifications for ages, as it shouldn’t require any modifications to any apps out there at the moment (as in theory they should be able to cope with the double height status bar already).
Visit ➔Mobile + Websockets + CSS 3D
Thanks to Pusher hosting websocket service, i was able to create this quick experiment using smartphones' accelerometer, websockets (with fallback to flash) and CSS 3D magic.
This is very cool – it lets you control an object in 3d space in your desktop browser using the accelerometer in your phone, all just using clever javascript and CSS.
Visit ➔Microsoft unveils Windows 8
There'll be two kinds of applications for Windows 8, one that runs in a traditional desktop, and the other pseudo-mobile apps based on HTML5 and Javascript, but both environments -- rather, the entire OS -- have been designed from the ground up for touchscreen use. Keyboard and mouse will still be options for both sets of programs.
Well this looks pretty nice – which for Microsoft is generally no mean feat – but I wonder if it would actually work that well in practice? The information density is pretty low so I can see a lot of sliding and tapping to get to the content you’re after at any given time. Also, the look would fall down pretty quickly if 3rd party devs don’t stick to it carefully so either it’s going to be hemmed in tightly or it won’t ever look that nice in practice (imagine all the garbage that normally gets pre-loaded on a PC integrated into that demo and you get what I mean).
Also, don’t get me started about how traditional apps are integrated in – i.e, they’re not, you just use them exactly like you always have. So, in essence Microsoft have welded a tablet optimised version of Windows Phone 7 onto the top of Windows 7 in the hope it will all work out nicely…
Visit ➔3D (sort of) on your iPad without glasses
What i3D does instead is show you several scenes that change perspective as you tilt your iPad side to side and up and down. The effect does not depend on the gyros built into the iPad, but instead uses the camera to track the position of your head and render a changing perspective in real time.
A little bit buggy – it depends a lot I think on the quality of the lighting where you are and the distance you are from the camera – but this is really pretty nifty – 3D without glasses or funny screens (like the 3DS).
Visit ➔Hype
Using Hype, you can create beautiful HTML5 web content. Animations and interactive content made with Hype work on desktops, smartphones and iPads. No coding required.
Looks pretty interesting, although the demos are full on Flash-style microsites – complete with loading bar – which is a little worrying…
Visit ➔wahwah.fm
Other wahwah.fm users can tune into your broadcast and hear the exact same music you are listening to. It's like running your own mobile radio station. Anywhere you are. Anytime you like.
Looks quite interesting – reminds me a little of the Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx Album Transmitter we did a couple of months ago.
Visit ➔Futuristic
So, I’m sitting in a cafe; coffee on one side, iPad on the other reading the latest issue of Wired.
I veer dangerously close to fulfilling a variety of different technology hipster clichés on a fairly regular basis, it’s true.
As I flicked through the pages, I felt something that no doubt many of you have realised before and is becoming a regular sensation for me: we’re living in the future – isn’t that crazy?
It certainly feels like certain developments in technology in the near past have changed things on a more fundamental level then previous developments, at least in my lifetime. Mobile phones, for one; they’ve been around for a while now and were merrily changing the way people communicate but in a way that was an evolutionary step, not revolutionary; phones we have always had – phones without wires is a nice progression but not something new.
Phones without wires that have a communication method like Twitter on, though – that’s revolutionary. Social networking, a term that is so overused that we’ve almost lost sight of the fact that it’s a term that doesn’t really mean anything, is something new – something that didn’t exist before but is now being adopted...
Read more ➔Check Out Danger Mouse's Interactive 3D Video
Rome, the new album from Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi, is inspired by spaghetti westerns, so it makes sense that a video from the album would be a filmic experience unto itself. Danger Mouse has teamed up with Google and director Chris Milk, the man behind Arcade Fire's amazing interactive "The Wilderness Downtown" video, to make "3 Dreams of Black", an interactive 3D complement to the Rome track "Black", which features Norah Jones on vocals.
Looks beautiful, and an amazing demonstration of what you can do with the right browser without Flash these days, but the interactivity seems like an afterthought.
Visit ➔"Location, location, location": Radio 1 Big Weekend Check-In Experiment
The Radio 1 Big Weekend offered the perfect opportunity to try this. We know the line-up in detail, and where each stage is located, and we know the audience has an appetite for 'sharing their pride' via social networks. Some research was conducted to see which platform would reach the most users, and somewhat unsurprisingly Facebook was in the top slot.
Nice HTML5-based location check-in work by the BBC.
Visit ➔