What I’d like to do today is talk about where we are now with mobile computing, what the next five or so years could look like, and then some talk about some big picture strategies that content owners and creators can use in the face of unprecedented change. \n
No matter how you measure it, mobile computing is exploding. Hardware sales, search traffic, smartphone penetration, data usage... everything is up.\n\nREFERENCE:\n\nTim Bray: “The Numbers Are Really Big · Insane, I mean. The billion-plus phones sold per year. The number of active subscriptions, which is greater than half of the human population. The number of new Android devices that check in with Google every day. The line-ups outside Apple stores for every new iOS device. The hundreds of thousands of apps. The ridiculous number of new ones that flow into Android Market every day. Everywhere I look, I see something astounding. This is the big league; bigger today than the computer industry ever was, and growing fast. This is as fierce a concentration of R&D heat and manufacturing virtuosity and distribution wizardry and marketing mojo as humanity has ever seen.”\n\nhttp://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/07/30/Mobile-Market-Share#p-1\n
Numbers as of Nov 2010\n\nIn India, this number is 59%\nEgypt is highest at 70%\n\nhttp://www.slideshare.net/OnDevice/the-mobile-only-internet-generation\n\n
Well over half of the worlds population will be connected to the internet 2016. We can not begin to imagine what effect this will have on the human race.\n\nhttp://techcrunch.com/2011/11/07/ericsson-forecasts-5-billion-mobile-broadband-subscribers-data-traffic-to-grow-tenfold-by-2016/\n
The long term effects of the wireless revolution will touch everything. The convergence of cloud computing, wireless connectivity, and affordable mobile devices is going to have a profound effect on every aspect of society. \n\n\n
Mobile devices will soon become the dominant computing platform for humanity and supplant the PC which has reigned since the late 1970's.\n\nhttp://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/11/the-great-game-mobile-devices-overtaking-pcs/\n\n
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Our world is growing increasing connected. The smartphone is at the center right now, but everything that can have a chip in it will have a chip in it. \n\n
One of the tacit assumptions of mobile is 24/7 access to real-time data and services from anywhere, and on any device. As screens - touch or otherwise - proliferate through our households, we’re going to want them to seamlessly transition from one to the other based on our current context. \n\nhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/05/26/a-modest-proposal-the-continuous-client/\n
These guys are examples of big players who have committed to a future of ubiquitous computing and have been working on it for a while. All are available on almost any device or platform you can think of. \n
Amazon is the one I want to focus on for a sec because they have the most impressive implementation. I have 20 different devices that I use to read Kindle books. Amazon’s Whispersync allows me to pick up where I left off on any device. Current locations, highlights, notes and bookmarks are shared across all music players, phones, laptops, desktops, and tvs in real time. \n\nThis is a big deal. Remember that eBooks are in competition with physical books - a wildly successful and proven technology. If Jeff Bezos wants to replace books, the Kindle ecosystem better dang well deliver a significantly improved experience. \n\nIMHO, it does. \n
The walls between us and our devices will continue to break down. \n
If I could search (or contribute to) wikipedia merely thinking about it, where does my mind end and the web begin?\n\nhttp://www.amazon.com/Mattel-P2639-Mindflex-Game/dp/B001UEUHCG\n
Our world might seem amazing now, but it’s going to looks positively quaint in the next decade or so. \n
At some point, we will look back at the iPhone 4S and think, “Can you believe we used those things?” This may sound absurd now but it’s inevitable. What could change that would make the current technology look like a hopelessly outdated?\n
Improvements in power tech. What if we never had to worry about charging our devices again?\n
Improvements in materials. What if you could wrap a phone around your wrist? Or stretch it up to tablet size?\n
Taken to it’s logical extreme, the “phone” will eventually disappear and be replaced by some transparent networked communication technology like smart clothing or some sort of sensory augmentation implants. I don’t know how it’ll manifest itself but it is the path we’re headed down. \n
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Based on DJs NPR preso at Wolfram Data Summit 2010:\n\nhttp://www.slideshare.net/danieljacobson/npr-presentation-at-wolfram-data-summit-2010\n
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- Define the platonic ideal of your content structure\n- Create a container for this content that is completely agnostic to the output\n\n
- Think in terms of chunks, not pages\n- Wordpress, for example, is a web publishing platform (i.e., not good for billboards, t-shirts, or coffee cups, right?)\n\n
Create once, publish everywhere.\n
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- Stop trying to control the presentation of the content\n- Enable your constituents to "remix" the content via API\n- If you want to control something, control an experience (but not "the" experience)\n\n\n
- Don’t confuse “your” world with “the” world (not everyone can afford an iPhone)\n- You should be scared of getting in bed with Apple (or anyone else, for that matter)\n\n
Don’t punish your most engaged constituents. Help them curate, remix, mashup, reinterpret, and ultimately spread your content however they like. \n
I’m a musician, so to me the most obvious examples of “unexpected reuse of content” come from the music world: sampling, remixing, and “turntablism”. The folks who created the music that this dj is tearing up could never have possibly imagined how he’d repurpose their material for a new audience. As content creators, we need to embrace and enable this sort of behavior. Because it’s awesome. \n