Topic: Personal Technology
User research often catalogs findings and implications, but stops short of generating specific design improvements. Designers increasingly involved with contextual research may find themselves holding onto a trove of raw data but with little awareness of how to turn it into design. Steve Portigal introduces a framework for synthesizing raw data into a fresh, contextual understanding of a customer's unmet needs.
Dave Winer discusses how Twitter and other social networking tools are changing the way that people read and react to the news. He talks about how the new ways to keep track of events have changed over the years and how these new methods are also likely to change. He also reviews his work in Twitter stats and what we can learn from them as well as where things may go next.
As more individuals have an online presence, developers continue to come up with new ways for people to post items. Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan discuss Posterous, a rich microblogging platform. They talk about how the service was developed, the architecture of the process, and the security methods in place to protect people. They also review their business model and their product roadmap.
If you're looking for a Linux initiative that is truly open source, where you can download the source, contribute without censorship, and drive the project, check out Moblin.org. The Moblin project was conceived in order to drive innovation on the new breed of Internet-enabled mobile devices, to foster community participation, and to avoid locking into a proprietary platform. Dirk Hohndel, the helmsman, woos open source developers to take this platform to its next level by participating in the community.
Intel has built its business by creating new markets with advanced technology. In this talk from the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference, Paul Otellini talks about Intel's plans for the next few years. He says that two major businesses that will be created are enterprise collaboration and the personal internet.
Dan Bricklin discusses his new book, Bricklin on Technology, in which he talks about the human aspect of technology: how it is created, how it is used, and how it evolves. He talks about how the book came about and how he decided what content to include. He also reviews the particular issues in trying to adapt a book for the Amazon Kindle.
David Glazer says that people are the killer app of the web. That is, finding ways to connect people easily and seamlessly is the next great wave in computing. There are barriers to overcome, but the desire to see it happen is great. In this presentation Glazer offers a snapshot of how we got to this point and where things will need to go from here.
Today's human-computer interaction paradigms are not enough; they are clunky and not very efficient. We should instead follow Mother Nature and approach it in a more 'neural-like' way to make the human-computer interaction experience as smooth and natural as possible. Robert Nevin believes he has the right tool for the job at hand and introduces his take on this exciting field.
The market for Internet and mobile use is growing at a rapid pace in India, which makes it ripe for solutions aimed at its unique population. Rajesh Jain is at the forefront of this growth, seeking out ways to reach as many users as possible. In this presentation he outlines how his companies address cost and complexity issues in Internet usage, and how mobile data is being used to reach more subscribers than ever.
Geo is impacting many industries including automotive, retail, telecom and advertising. Emerging from these current technologies are applications for the GeoWeb, GeoMobile, GeoCar, and GeoVoice. These entrenched industries are wide-open for investments and this presentation provides some guidance and perspective for those looking to cash in. In this show, Dev Khare, partner at VC firm Venrock, discusses the current landscape on the GeoWeb from a VC perspective.
