Category Archives: Internet

Native applications are the new future?

May 16, 2010 –

Internet services are more and more complimenting their service with native applications. The rise of the Iphone — including derivatives like the Ipod Touch and Ipad — and Apple’s appstore have boosted the availability of internet connected native applications. Applications to read news stories on newyorktimes.com or Twitter clients to keep everyone updated on your life.

A bit of history
Computing more or less started with the mainframe era. Mainframes were the primary computing unit and users accessed the mainframe using dumb terminals.
In the 80s and rise of Microsoft Windows and personal computers the paradigm changed to standalone usage. Individual computers were islands only connected through floppy disks. Next came the rise of computer networks. Companies connected computers together. These computers used servers to store and retrieve information. The era of client – server computing was born.
When the internet gained popularity and became mainstream with the invention of the worldwide web another paradigm shift took place. Computing moved to the web and using sophisticated — but standard — web browser software personal computers could access information on the internet. The new trend was to move all applications to the web. The web would offer a standard and uniform way to interact with applications.

Ipod, Iphone, Kindle, Evernote
And then another thing happened. A myriad of special purpose devices were created. Devices like the Ipod to listen to music, smartphones to connect to both the online and offline world and ebook readers to read your books. And all of these devices have one thing in common. That is that they use the internet as part of their content delivery network. Ipod are loaded with music through iTunes and iTunes loads its music from the internet. Smartphones access emails and twitters from the internet and ebooks get their books using online bookstores.
But these devices also have in common that they do not use a web browser. Some, if not most, of them are capable of running it but they use native applications for their primary use cases.

During this time I also see this trend translate to internet services who use personal computers as their primary platform. Services like Evernote and Kindle offer native applications for the personal computer. These services think they can offer a better service to their users this way. The reasons vary from a more powerful user experience to offline usage of the service.

Google Gears and Adobe Air
Companies like Adobe and Google have recognized this need and developed their own solutions. Adobe developed Adobe Air. Software to develop and run flash applications as a standalone application on the desktop. And Google created Gears to use web applications without an internet connection. Gears has not been a great success. The adoption rate beyond a few Google applications is zero. The result off Adobe Air is still in the air so to speak. There are 900 applications available through Adobe Air’s website. The availability on Android will boost its adoption. But there are two reasons why I do not think it will happen. First is the user interface which looks alien on any platform and the second is that it is a standard controlled by a company. Eventually this always leads to failure.

Trend to offer a more powerful user experience using native applications
I see a definite trend to offer next to an internet service a native application experience on individual platforms including personal computers. Even HTML5 cannot change that. There are so many advantages for native applications in specific use cases and companies start to recognize that web is not the end of all others. The web is great for general purpose applications and will never go away. But for specific use cases native applications are back. And the internet plays the role of content store and content delivery network.

Tags adobe, air, applications, evernotem, gears, google, html5, ipad, kindle, native, user experience | Permalink | Comment (0)

Internet

Electronic media: the price is right

May 10, 2010 –

The trend to make content available as electronic media has been going on for a while now. It started with music back in around 1997. The introduction did not go very smoothly since the music industry did not understand the potential of electronic media and you could argue that they still do not.
Back then music was made available in music formats like WMA with limiting options on using the content using digital rights management (DRM). Around 2009 music became available without restrictions using the MP3 format most of the time. This led to a price increase.
Pricing of ebooks on Amazon.com were lower than real books on introduction. But with the introduction of the iPad and Apple’s bookstore the publishing industry managed to increase the price of ebooks to the same level as real books.

Overall the prices of electronic media is more or less the same as their physical equivalents. The question is if that is fair?

I argue this is not fair and I have several reasons for that. First reason is that it is not physical good. This means no printing and packaging costs. Moreover the stock and logistic costs are much lower than for a physical good. Second reason is that most electronic media come with restrictions on its usage. I cannot simply resell my ebooks to someone else when I am done reading. I cannot lend a book to a friend for instance. And the third reason is that I do not own the content itself but I get a license to use to content within a set of restrictions.
To me electronic media has a much lower value than real physical goods.

If you look at the revenue model of the publishers there will be a significant increase in volume because of the restrictions on electronic media. As I cannot lend or resell my item to someone else other people will have to acquire their own copy. This increases volume.

In short to make electronic media really take off the publishing companies have to seriously consider changing the prices and bring them in line with the actual usage options users have. The changing media consumption is a real revolution for the industry and clearly this industry is struggling to cope with this change. They have to understand that this change will happen anyway. The companies who really understand the new game of electronic media will end up coming on top. Unfortunately most publishing companies show that they have a long way to go.

Tags amazon, apple, ebook, electronic media, emedia, itunes, mp3 | Permalink | Comment (0)

Hardware Internet

Touchscreens bring new requirements for web design

April 26, 2010 –

A new class of devices are becoming more prevalent and these are touchscreen enabled devices. The touchscreen is a very common interface on mobile devices nowadays, mobile phones and mp3 players use them very often. And now with the release of the iPad combined with the upcoming slate pcs of companies like HP, Dell and Asus the touchscreen is growing up. And this has an impact on the design of websites (among other things like application user interface design).

With the growth of these devices web designers need to take care of yet another class of devices. In this case a new class of devices with a particular input method. Using a finger to navigate and manipulate directly on the screen requires changes. A mouse can be controlled very precisely. But using your finger you can still hit very specific areas — arguably maybe even more precise as a mouse — but the interaction area is much larger. In other words a finger is bigger than a mouse pointer.

Web designer need to take these new class of devices into account when designing new websites. Things they need to consider:

Easy to hit buttons for navigation and actions
Leave enough space around links to avoid miss clicks using a finger
Employ other user interface paradigms in line with touchscreen use:
- Dragging feels more natural with fingers than with the mouse
- Gestures for navigation or manipulation of items

Another aspect with touchscreen devices unrelated to the input is that the available screen estate is smaller. This means that website need to be optimized for screens with low resolution. Also these screens are often used in portrait mode instead of widescreen like most laptops and monitors.

Also very important to note is that these devices have often the ability to dynamically change the orientation of the screen. It is possible to catch this event using Javascript and dynamically update the stylesheet to change the screen layout for the chosen orientation.

Touchscreen devices bring new requirements for websites and with the launch of the Apple Ipad it is now time to think and implement optimizations to cope with these devices. In my opinion these devices will become very important for reading and using internet content and web designers need to be ready for them.

Tags design, gestures, ipad, touchscreen, webdesign | Permalink | Comment (1)

The next trend on the internet

April 10, 2010 –

The internet is one of the major achievements of mankind in the last decades. It has changed our lives significantly. I cannot even imagine how life would look like or how to manage without it.
As the internet develops or reinvents itself every 4-5 years I see new trends popping up and this post I would to give you my view on how the internet developed and what my take is on the next big trend on the internet.

Data exchange age
When the internet was invented is primarily data exchange network. The US army and (mostly) North American universities used it to exchange data with each other. I call it the data exchange age. The internet population mostly consisted of academics and military personnel.

Communication age
In the 80s the internet changed to a communication network. Users used E-Mail and IRC (chat) to communicate. Standardized communication protocols were implemented to facilitate the communication. In these years the internet expanded rapidly from a primarily US-presence to the rest of the world. It was the communication age. At this time the internet population was still mostly composed of academics and military personnel. But above that students started using the internet more frequently.

Communication age
After communication age came the information age. It started with the invention of the world wide web in 1990. Companies were promoting their products online. The digital brochure was born. Simple websites were setup all over the world and the first web browsers like Mosaic and Netscape appeared. Also the first internet providers opened their doors to offer the internet service via dialup for everybody. This changed the internet population dramatically.

Commerce age
In 1995 Amazon started selling its books on the internet and in 1996 Dell its computers. These events started the commerce age. In the commerce age companies started selling their products over the internet. At this time Microsoft started offering their web browser as standard part of their Windows operating system.

Interaction age
Next came the social networks like MySpace (2003), LinkedIn (2003) and Facebook (2006). I call this the interaction age. In this age people start to interact with each other on the internet. Using these social networks people brought their private life to the internet. Before it is was limited to some personal web pages, email and chat. The social networks made it easier to reach other and connect and keep up to date with your social life.

Cooperation age
In upcoming age will be the age of cooperation. Interaction brought to the next level. In this age people start creating together on the internet. And like with any new major age you see the first signs popping up all over the internet. A few examples:

NikeID where customers can design their own shoes which Nike will make
Dell IdeaStorm where customers can make recommendations and vote on ideas to make Dells products better
Lego DesignByMe where customers can design and create their own Lego kits
Wikipedia where users work together to make the best encyclopedia in the world
Reddit, del.icio.us and Digg where users work together to make the best news sites

The cooperation age enables users to create and work together to make better products and services. These can be in cooperation with commercial organizations like Dell or Nike, but it can also be without commercial involvement like Wikipedia.
The best example of the cooperation age is the open source movement. Programmers develop computer applications and share them freely on the internet. They work together in groups to create large software applications. Great examples are Linux, GNU and Apache. In these groups thousands of developers work together to create the best software possible. These groups are composed of spare time hobbyists on one side of the spectrum to professionals on the other side of the spectrum. Nobody owns the software and everybody is free to use them in their own products. Linux runs now several mobile phones from companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola. It runs on televisions from Sony and several brands of netbooks.

Another example is co-creation where designers work together with customers to create new personalized and customized products. These products better fit the need of the customer since they were involved in the creation process. And of course this is not applicable for every product currently available, but a regular BMW 3-series is available in more than 1 million permutations straight from the production line. You can design your personal car on the internet and order it with your dealership. In these are one on one cooperations between a company and their customers. Combine that with cooperation’s between multiple customers, designers and companies and the options are endless. Companies like Ponoko (2007) and Shapeways (2008, my company) are in this arena. I see the creativity of customers designing on a daily basis and it is exciting to see how they use the options we make available to them.

The next trend on the internet will be the cooperation age enabling groups of people working together to create new products and services. This will be another major impact the internet is going to make in our daily life.

Tags amazon, cooperation, digg, email, facebook, history, Internet, open source, ponoko, shapeways, social networks, trend | Permalink | Comment (0)

Internet

Operators charge too much for pay per view

March 6, 2010 –

Major cable operators are offering pay per view to their subscribers. In The Netherlands they charge 3 – 8 EUR per show. I always found this too expensive. It was an intuitive thing without any real data. In this article I try to make this real and answer the question: what does television cost?

In 2008 RTL NL had a revenue of 437 million EURO. This reveneu was made with three TV stations; RTL4, RTL5, RTL7 and RTL8. The most important television hours are from 18.00 until 24.00 which are 6 hours in total. In one year there are 365 days with 6 hours of television spread over 4 channels. In total 8760 hours to generate 437 million EURO. That is 49.885 EUR revenue per hour television for each channel.
Based on research done by the Stichting Kijkersonderzoek I calculated the average viewers for RTLs three television channels per evening for week 8 2010. I found the following figures:

1. RTL4 – 800.000 viewers
2. RTL5 – 234.000 viewers
3. RTL7 – 308.000 viewers
4. RTL8 – 115.000 viewers

On average evening RTL captures 1.458.000 viewers (between 18.00 and 24.00). This means they have to make 0.82 EUR revenue per viewer per evening. I calculated this by multiplying 49.885 EUR x 6 hours x 4 channels / total viewers = 0.82 EUR per viewer per evening. In 6 hours of television on average 6 shows are broadcasted. This means each shows costs only 0.18 EUR per show per viewer.

Now if I look at our local cable provider UPC they charge between 3 – 8 EUR per show with their pay per view offering.

Of course there is a difference in number of viewers per show. But even that cannot explain the 3000% price difference.

Most people I talk to find pay per view too expensive. They do not have a specific reason for it. I think they intuitively recognize that the price is not fair. When prompted about what they are prepared to pay they tell me figures between 0.50 EUR and 1 EUR. And this seems fair. Especially recognizing that the chance that viewers only tend to watch the hit shows and forget about less popular shows.

My conclusion is that Pay Per View will not get popular up until the producers and broadcasters understand that the price should be inline with the actual costs. In the end they should not care if I watch a show on one of their channels with commercial breaks or I pay to view it at my convenience without commercial breaks. Only advertisers should worry when they start loosing an advertising channel. On the other hand those Marketing boys and girls are creative enough to find new ways to advertise their products.

Tags pay per view, rtl, television | Permalink | Comment (0)

Internet

Future of SMS, MMS, IM, Email, Tweets

February 28, 2010 –

The last decade the number of types of messages we can send has exploded. We have email, SMS, MMS, IM and, the newest kid on the block, Tweets. All these message types are linked to specific communication media. SMS is typically send via a mobile network like GSM, same for MMS, IMs and Tweets use the internet and email is available on a wide variety networks.

In the end it is all about the communication and each message type has its specific purpose. You do not write a newsletter in SMS and at the same time you do not Tweet personal messages. The purposes of each message type can be summarized as follows:

* long and short messages
* instant or non-instant
* targeted or broadcast

The purpose demands the selection of message type and network. Instant messages are better delivered to a always-on mobile platform but non-instant long messages can be delivered to a sometimes-on non- or semi-mobile platform. A message can be targeted to a person or a group of people. Another option is to broadcast it like a “What are you doing” message on social networks.

To communicate we have a myriad of choices of applications and networks. These networks are non-coupled effectively creating closed ecosystems. Skype users cannot reach MSN users or the other way around. At the same time you cannot SMS Skype users. These boundaries are the biggest threat to any network. Without internetwork messaging users will select one platform as a winner. All others will lead a niche life.

Services like Twitter are completely useless in the future. Their role will be taken over by others. There is really no compelling reason to use Twitter except their large userbase. But the user base of Facebook or Gmail is larger. It is no problem for them to move into this type of services and Twitter becomes the Netscape of messaging.

It is in all networks interest to work on internetworking and focus on standardizing message types. Then they can compete on user interface, quality of service and delivery platforms.

Tags email, facebook, gmail, im, instant messaging, mms, sms, tweets, twitter | Permalink | Comment (0)

Internet

Power of the long tail in advertising

February 20, 2010 –

A perfect example of the power of the long tail is the change Google brought in advertising. Their AdWords system brings advertising power to everybody. Advertising was only reserved for big coorporations and huge ad budgets. Google’s system enables anybody to advertise and small coorporations or even individuals are able to advertise on big brand new media sites like Amazon or Google.com itself.

For this reason I created a shameless self promotion ad. Not because I want to advertise myself but just because I can. With a budget of only $5 / month I could advertise myself using my name as keywords. Of course the ad is not shown very often (who searches on Robert Schouwenburg at Google.com or Amazon.com?) but still it works brilliantly.

It feels like advertising on a major TV channel or major subscription magazine. I think it is a great example of the Long Tail. Internet enables niche advertising because you can target very precise target groups with tiny budget.

Tags advertising, adwords, amazon, google, Internet, long tail | Permalink | Comment (0)

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