As revolutionary as the mobile ecosystem is, it’s the interactions of more intelligent connected devices with people outside of the context of phones or computers that will drive more innovation, says Mark Rolston, chief creative officer at Frog Design. Rolston, speaking at the Mobile Future Forward conference Monday in Seattle described a future where devices become more contextually aware thanks to embedded and connected sensors.

Instead of thinking about the buttons on a phone or a laptop, manufacturers and designers need to think about what will happen when computers are embedded in everything and connected all the time. Instead of computing confined in a box on a desk or in the hand, computers will be everywhere pulling data from a variety of places. Understanding how those computers will pull information about their environment, relay that data to users and then interpret what users want them to do creates a web of interaction that will require new ways of thinking and design.

In fact, user interaction might be a very minimal part of the overall design. For example, Rolston described a wearable glucose monitor that has elements embedded in the body, a monitor interpreting the data from the user’s bloodstream and a wearable screen for the patient to interact with. Of those three elements the patient input screen is likely gathering the least important information and must convey complicated information simply.

In a conversation after his panel, Rolston explained the challenges inherent in designing interfaces in such a world will come from devices trying to understand a user’s intent, as we build out new ways to interact with them, such as motion. How will a machine know when someone waving their hands while they talk to a friend becomes someone trying to tell a computer to do something? Of course, when a device can watch us and interpret our movements and commands effectively it essentially gives computers the illusion of humanity. That’s the illusion Rolston apparently is trying to create.

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Newspapers and magazines used to publish content into a kind of void: they knew how many people subscribed, but that was about it — everything else was guesswork based on consumer surveys and other mumbo-jumbo. But online, every click and interaction can be tracked and charted and graphed over time, to create a picture of what is happening at any minute of the day. Is that good or bad for the news business? Tony Haile, general manager of Chartbeat, is convinced that the more information a publisher has, the better job they can do, and he has just launched a new service called Newsbeat to help provide that data.

Chartbeat — which was launched in 2009 by Betaworks, the New York-based incubator run by John Borthwick — provides real-time analytics for websites of all kinds, with a dashboard that shows how many people are reading a particular page at any given minute, as well as where they came from and how long they have been on the site. But in an interview with GigaOM, Haile says he wanted to create something specifically designed for publishers, in the hope that more information could help the media industry through the transition it is currently struggling with from the print world to a digital one.

Not funnels but engagement

The way publishers think about analytical data, Haile notes, is very different from the way that e-commerce companies do. Anyone who is selling something is obsessed with “funnels” — in other words, how well their site moves someone to the point where they will buy the product. Publishers, however, are more concerned about where their traffic is coming from and maximizing that (as well as engagement with readers), because for the most part their business is advertising-based. Said Haile:

For me, the most interesting thing was that this is an industry in complete transition. It’s moving away from the ‘fire-and-forget’ model of publishing to one that is much more adaptive and iterative. We thought ‘What does the newsroom look like in five years, and how can we help build it now?’

While Chartbeat shows real-time analytics for a site, Haile says Newsbeat has more data that publishers would be interested in — including detailed data about every story on a site (Chartbeat only provides detailed info for the top 20 most-read pages on a site) as well as social-sharing information. For example, one tab of data for each story shows a “sound wave-style” graph of Twitter-related activity related to that story, which an editor or writer can zoom in on and see who has been posting a link or mentioning the story on Twitter. Newsbeat also ranks the tweets based on the Klout “influence score” of the user, Haile says, so that publishers can see which tweets matter.

Chartbeat created Newsbeat by working with a group of mainstream media companies, including Forbes, Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal, as well as some new media entities such as Gawker and Fast Company. But won’t focusing so much on real-time data about traffic patterns create a “race to the bottom,” as everyone chases the high-traffic stories about Brittany Spears or Lady Gaga? Haile says he has heard all of these horror stories, but he doesn’t believe them.

Seeing how readers are responding is good

Traffic data might show that readers are really interested in racy photos of a celebrity, he says, which might help convince Gawker Media or some other outlet to focus on them, but it’s not going to make the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal do so. “Journalists deserve more credit than they get,” says the Chartbeat GM. “Knowing how readers are responding to what they’re writing isn’t going to change the way most of them write about the things that matter to them. This data is never going to result in the ‘tyranny of the popular’ — it’s just not going to happen.”

Haile said that even some of the most vociferous critics he has run into inside newsrooms are starting to see the value of the information Newsbeat provides. “I heard one of these guys say ‘It’s not enough for me to write about these important stories — I need to know that people have read them. I need to know if the headline isn’t drawing people in, or if they aren’t getting to the important point in the fourth paragraph.’”

One of the things the software can do, Haile says, is alert editors and publishers when something unusual is happening in the traffic pattern for a story. After ingesting enough of the data about a site, Newsbeat can predict what kind of readership a specific story will get during a day, Haile says, and if there is a sudden spike in readers it can alert an editor, so they can take advantage of that attention. He notes that Gawker founder Nick Denton has talked about how he built traffic at the network by spotting stories that were spiking in interest and then “doubling down” on them by throwing more resources at them.

The audience may be smarter than you think

And not only will this data not accelerate a “race to the bottom” with respect to content, Haile says it can actually help do the opposite: the Chartbeat GM says that one of the major publishers the company was working with looked at the data from Newsbeat and saw that two stories were getting large amounts of traffic: one about a case of infanticide in France and the other about Iraq. The number one story on the front page of the site was about season two of The Jersey Shore, and it was getting hardly any traffic at all — and neither of the two most-read stories were above the fold on the home page.

“So in that case, the site had an audience that was actually smarter than they thought they were,” says Haile. “Sometimes we underestimate our audience, and this can help websites see that and change the way they are doing things.”

Will the kind of data that Newsbeat provides allow some editors to become even more obsessed with lowest-common denominator stories? Undoubtedly. But I think Haile is right when he says it can also do the opposite, and show news publishers when they are misunderstanding what their readers are interested in — and it can let individual writers see whether what they are writing is having an impact or not, as well as showing them who their biggest fans are when it comes to referring traffic. As publishers try to become more efficient at serving their markets, that is clearly valuable information.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Steve Snodgrass

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While combing through the show floor at Computex, our fortunate selves stumbled upon a new phone-tablet duo at Leadtek’s booth. Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t yet another phone-in-pad design; but actually a VoIP / home phone docked next to an Android tablet. Dubbed AMOR Multimedia Phone 8218, the idea here is that the docking station acts as both a DECT base and a WiFi router, but also packs ZigBee radio to relay data from compatible devices (for healthcare, home surveillance, home automation, etc.) to the web.

Alas, there’s no direct interaction between the phone and the tablet, but we were still intrigued by the latter’s specs: Android 2.3 (although this demo unit had 2.2), Tegra 2, 7-inch 1,280 x 720 LCD, HDMI-out, and a front-facing camera for video calls. For a home device, this is actually a pretty powerful package and certainly a significant upgrade from the AMOR 8210 announced earlier this year. No word on US availability, but Taiwanese buyers will be able to grab hold of an 8218 starting in September.

Leadtek AMOR 8218 DECT phone with Tegra 2 Android tablet hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You will need to consider what Web 2.0 is focused on. Fundamentally, the new era of the web focuses on a user interface design that’s easy to use and understand. One that tends to make shopping online super easy and keeps clients revisiting. Web 2.0 also produces advertising over the internet simple and easy and as problem free as it can be. Many of the principles of web 2.0 design are reviewed below to offer a good notion.

Any person will advise you that Web 2.0 is drastically distinctive from Web 1.0. There were just a lot of modifications and most of them had to do with web user interface design.

User friendly set up

For starters Web 2.0 programs ought to be as easy as possible to make use of plus the web page design as a whole should enhance easy interaction by online users. There’s no need in the new generation of the net to acquire sites that just really don’t stream well or web pages that use Web 1.0 technology. A brand new web is here and it focuses on Beta versions of program to help raise superb usability and selection. Web 2.0 actually is all about knowing easy methods to please clients and you can keep them heading back time and again. Obviously, this takes practice and some errors appear, but all this learning will bring us into a web 3.0 world with a good deal of info and a completely new web!

Style and design

Websites today are certainly flexible as well as the design is focused on the web surfer. You should have easy to read web pages that flow from numerous fonts and styles to streaming video and more. When a design firm purports to design your web blog ask them about Web 2.0 and how they intend on creating your site so that it flows in a Web 2.0 world. Almost all web designers should know about what you really are talking about and also give you a fast reaction. Steer clear of those who don’t know what web 2.0 is!

Features

Internet sites within this age bracket present more functions and merely make the online experience more pleasurable. That exactly what Web 2.0 is centred on since the more capabilities you will discover the more it will be for online users to acquire whatever it is they are trying to find.

A few weeks ago, Instagram released an API in private beta as the first step to open the service to outside developers. But the company is looking to spark many more Instagram-linked apps and services with a public real-time API that will help developers tap into the power of the fast-growing photo sharing network.

Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom said the new API, which is now open to all, will create a raft of new apps and services that will bring more real-time sharing of photos to the web and to existing and new apps. Developers who tap into the API will be able to get photos pushed out instantly based on information they subscribe to including their users’ names, tags, individual locations and larger geographies. When Instagram receives an uploaded photo with matching information, it posts an update to the developer’s server. You can see a cool demo Instagram made with the API.

By further enabling developers to leverage Instagram, the API should help accelerate even more sharing over Instagram and increase the number of users. The company, which launched in October, is up to 2 million registered users who share about 300,000 pictures a day. Systrom said he expects usage and interaction to grow immensely as people have more ways to view photos and respond.

“What this means is you’ll have more opportunity to see what your friends are sharing and not miss a moment,” Systrom said to me in an interview this week.

Systrom said Foodspotting, Thefancy.com, and Dropbox are some of the companies already taking advantage of the API. Foodspotting and Thefancy are able to take any Instagram photos shot by their users and instantly upload them to the user’s page. Dropbox has used the API to give users the ability to instantly back-up their pictures to a Dropbox account. Other apps like Flipboard and Momento are using the API to display photos on mobile devices, while a new site called Instagre.at provides a view of some of the best Instagram photos.

Systrom said while Instagram is building out its web presence and is looking at Android  for its next mobile app after iOS, it can’t match the creativity and output of all the developers looking to hook into Instagram. Already, 2,000 developers have applied to participate with the private beta API.  Opening the API allows the company to reach other platforms like BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 quickly and prompt a lot of apps and services the company never dreamed of. It will also help Instagram keep pace with rivals like PicPlz, which also released its API earlier this month, though Systrom said it’s not about competition.

“It’s just good hygiene for any startup to have an API,” Systrom said. “If we had all the time to do things we would, but now people can do it themselves.”

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