It’s really nothing that new. Companies like FedEx have been connecting physical things to the web for years. Most of the examples are similar though – they involve scanning codes and updating systems to keep customers up-to-date. Another notable one is Domino’s pizza tracker. A system that lets the pizza makers scan barcodes at certain parts of the pizza making process to update their customers on the Web.

Recently we’re seeing an increase in activity here that goes beyond scanning codes, and it has me giddy with excitement to see where it goes. Poke’s Baker Tweet is a prime example of the physical Internet. Put simply, it’s a physical box located in the bakery that sends messages wirelessly to Twitter to let followers know what’s fresh. The guys who built it actually started a company called Breakfast who, from what I’m told, is all about creating experiences like this.

Another good example of this is Nike’s Chalkbot. A machine that took tweets and messages from real people and plotted them in chalk along a portion of the Tour de France.

I think we’re going to see some really innovative stuff this year, most of which will be connecting virtual stuff with real stuff. Last week, Andy Sandoz over at Work Club posted an interesting article that touched (sorry) on what it may be like if Facebook had a physical ‘Like’ button. I’d love to hear of more examples or thoughts on this.

While Apple won’t be blessing Canada with the iPad until later this month, that hasn’t stopped some of us from crossing the border and heading directly to the nearest Apple Store. I didn’t take the road trip myself, however I was the beneficiary of one and over the past 2 days, I’ve been using my iPad quite frequently (in fact, most of this post was written using the Wordpress App).

Since its announcement and subsequent release, the general consensus appears to be a) the battery life / speed & industrial design is unparalleled, and b) the software is somewhat limiting. I’ll definitely echo these observations, however I’ve noticed much of the criticism has been focused on issues which will undoubtable be addressed in future OS updates. Everyone is busy looking at their feet, complaining about the immediate and obvious shortcomings, when they should be focused on where Apple is going with the iPad. Make no mistake about it, the iPad really is Apple’s reconception of personal computing, however they’ve only taken the first of many steps in that direction.

“It’s just a big iPod Touch”

When Apple first announced the iPad, an audible groan echoed across the Internet. It’s just a big iPod Touch appears to be the most common reaction upon seeing the iPad for the first time, and while there is definitely some validity to that observation, it’s not exactly true. Yes, the iPad looks and feels very similar to an iPod Touch, and yes they share the same operating system (which really makes them fraternal twins). However, the iPad currently sits uncomfortably between the iPod Touch and the MacBook; Born from a smartphone and wanting to be laptop replacement, but unable to reach its full stride. It wants to run—and starts to pickup pace— but then trips over it’s own feet.

Coming from an iPod Touch or iPhone, you’ll feel right at home. Sure, the screen is roughly 4x the size, but it looks and functions more or less the same. You’ve got the singular home button on the face, the same dock along the bottom, and the same lock screen (now with 4x the unused space!) . However, once you start using iPad-optimized Apps, it becomes clear that this is a different ballgame. The larger screen affords a completely unique experience, and the developer community is taking full advantage of this. It’s actually quite amazing how quickly the operating system disappears once you launch an App. The App fills the entire screen and you immediately feel like you’re holding an entirely different device. But then you try to delete something and a tiny blue dialog window appears, drowning in a sea of pixels. It feels odd and out of place, like a relic from a different era. There are all sorts of little details like this that reflect the iPads smaller-screen lineage.

You get the same feeling when you turn the iPad on for the first time, and you’re forced to tether with your computer and authorize via iTunes. Arguably, you shouldn’t have to do this with an iPhone/iPod either, but it feels even worse with the iPad. This isn’t a device that should require a separate computer. You should be able to give it your Apple ID and have everything automatically sync. Apps, email contacts, calendars… files. And this is where the iPad begins to move towards the MacBook and then stumbles. I want to save & edit files on the go, but there’s no meaningful way of managing them. While I believe Dropbox is vastly superior, Apple’s iDisk should really be the “exposed” filesystem on the iPad. It shouldn’t be an App like it is on the iPod, but a home directory that’s accessible by all Apps and sync’d across all your devices. But what happens if you’re sharing the iPad with other family members?

“The First Real Family Computer”

I’ve seen a number of people describe the iPad as the first real family computer, and I would agree that this is an apt description. My iPad will live in the kitchen and will be shared by my wife and I. However, when I started setting up my email and calendars and contacts, I realized that this wasn’t really going to work. We may want to share the device itself, however we don’t want to share applications. The iPad really needs unique user accounts, complete with independent setups. Of course, this adds a magnitude of complexity and I’m unsure if the platform can really support it. Fundamentally, the iPhone and iPod Touch were designed as single-user devices, but the iPad clearly has multi-user intentions. Being that the share the same OS underpinnings, I can see how the iPad could be weighed down by it’s resolution-deprived siblings.

I’m incredibly excited about how much potential the iPad has. I’m sure Apple will address the multitasking issues that plague it and the iPhone. I’m sure they’ll correct the odd interface holdovers its smaller siblings. And I’m hopeful they’ll introduce some sort of cloud-based solution for the file management issues. The only question is if Apple will allow for multiple users per iPad, or if they’re expecting 1 iPad per person. I have a feeling it’s the latter.

After last week’s announcement of the Kindle coming to Canada I re-kindled (get it) a purchase decision I had started several years ago when I first saw a Sony e-Reader at CES.

Here are my thoughts after spending 24 hours with the Kindle.

Ordering

I bought the Kindle with accompanying leather cover. Total cost: $352.99

Order placed November 23. Order Arrived November 24.

Packaging

The Kindle arrives in a pretty simple brown package.

Kindle Packaging

At first I was underwhelmed but I really like the “Once Upon a Time” on the side.

side of kindle box

Here is an unboxing video….

The Amazon Kindle Arrives at Teehan+Lax from Greg Washington on Vimeo.

After opening the box this is what you see.

That text on the screen is not a sticker. That is the screen! It is incredibly sharp and crisp.

USB Kindle

You need to charge it fully by connecting the micro USB to the supplied power connector.

I’m not going to cover a full tour of the UI since these shots exist elsewhere online. But here are my initial thoughts.

* Purchasing content is easy. I bought a book on Amazon.com and it appears on the Kindle within 60 seconds. Buying content from the Kindle is as easy. Great experience!

* Reading is effortless and little to no eye strain. I read for about 2 hours last night and had no problems.

* When you hold the Kindle your fingers naturally rest on two buttons.

Kindle with Fingers on Nxt Page

My natural inclination is that pressing on the left button will go back and the right will go forward but that is not the case.

Kindle with Fingers off

It’s not a big deal but I miss hit it a few times.

* My biggest issue is something that I would never have thought of until I used the Kindle. When you read a book you make note of where you are spatially in the book. You are always aware of if you are 1/3 of the way through or 1/2 or near the end. The tactile feedback of weight in your left or right hand is an important cognitive clue, it also helps your brain position passages and narrative in a physical space. I can go to a book I read a year ago and know roughly where certain passages or parts are. “I know it was in the first half of the book”.

* With the Kindle I was aware that I would need to mark passages I may want to remember. There is a very robust notes and bookmarking feature in the Kindle. You can highlight passages, makes notes or simple bookmarks. The problem is to do this, you need to enter a menu, navigate a 5 way controller and then select the passage. It takes not only 10 or 15 seconds of time but more importantly you consciously need to stop reading and do this action. It is disruptive to the experience.

* The keyboard is ass. The buttons are really tough to type on. Maybe in the future I will type more notes and use it more, for now it’s just in the way.

* The Kindle arrives with your name and Amazon account programmed. This means there is zero setup when you turn it on.

* You get a Kindle.com email address. Sending PDFs to that address will add them to your Kindle.

I will try to cover more about the Kindle Store, newspaper and magazine reading in another post.

Yesterday Jon visited the BNN studios to chat about the Palm Pre. For those not in the know, it launches today. Watch the video for his thoughts. type=”text/javascript”>Watch the video for his thoughts. type=”text/javascript”>AKPC_IDS += “1834,”;

3beat

Lately, one of the hot topics around our shop has been how to cut the cable. At least 5 of us have canceled our cable contracts, added OTA HD, or both. For me, it’s been an interesting project and I thought I’d share the experience.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while ago when I was explaining my plan to get off the TV grid. Someone said to me, “it makes sense that you’d do that, you interactive guys think TV is dead.” But I don’t. I love TV and I think it’s far from dying. According to the recent Neilson 3 Screen report (pdf), TV is thriving.

<blockquote>”Viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices continues to increase and has hit record levels.”</blockquote>

What is changing is how consumers access and consume TV shows and movies. To me, that’s the real issue because it illustrates how networks need to adapt in order to meet our changing consumption habits. If they ignore the new reality they risk a similar future as the music industry and will become irrelevant. Networks must reinvent themselves mostly because that’s exactly what consumers are doing.

After years of dishing out big bucks to Bell ExpressVu I finally got my act together and canceled my $100/month satellite service. I’m no longer tied to a traditional source for my entertainment needs. My path to freedom took three simple steps.

First, I re-configured my existing home network to automatically collect and organize content. The main computer in my home is a G5 tower and it handles the bulk of all the data coming in and out of my home. It’s not an actual server, but that’s basically what it does. This box moves content around, modifies it, and then parks everything on a 2TB network accessible storage device. I also upgraded my Rogers Internet connection to the 10MB Extreme package. I’m reasonably happy with it now that my system is optimized to deal with throttling. For the most part, bandwidth caps are no longer a concern. To monitor the content I want and access it the moment it becomes available, I use TVshows and Ted. And apart from my newsgroup client (Thanks Chris Erwin), I use Transmission for the heavy lifting.

Next I had to get the content from my network onto my screen(s). I opted to integrate a 40GB AppleTV into my home theatre as my media server. Some people have asked why I didn’t use a Mac Mini, and the simple answer is cost. The secondary purpose of this project was to reduce the amount I pay for home entertainment and the AppleTV integrated perfectly into my existing home network for around $150. Plus, I’m storing all data on an NAS device so I didn’t need the larger capacity version, and I really didn’t want another box to maintain.

I patched my AppleTV to run both Boxee and XBMC. The process was remarkably simple and easy to do – with all the code, how-tos, and decent video walkthroughs at my fingertips. From start to finish I was up and running in about 20-mins.

I’m a huge Boxee fan, but I actually find I use XBMC more often. I use Boxee to watch Internet channels like the Revision3, Make and TWiT – thanks to the simplicity of the repository and apps service. But I rarely use Boxee for movies and TV shows. Instead, I rely on XBMC with the MediaStream skin which pretty much makes it an AppleTV version of Plex. (UPDATE: Andreas correctly points out that XBMC for AppleTV is “not ‘like Plex’, it is Plex that is like XBMC”. Sorry for the confusion). It’s easy to configure. Simple to use. And looks absolutely stunning on a 50″ screen (thank you teamrazorfish). I also love how it indexes any new content it finds on my networked drive, scrapes IMDb and IMDbTV for names, titles and plot summaries, and then downloads things like artwork and cast details in the background.

The last part of the puzzle I wanted to solve was how to get local TV station programming for things like news and sports. Thankfully, most stations now broadcast over-the-air ATSC signals (which is uncompressed HD) and all you need is the equipment to grab them. I removed my satellite dish and mounted two Channel Master 4220 antennas. I aimed one at the CN Tower and the other at Buffalo, NY. Now I have access to around 15 crystal clear HD channels.

My 50″ Panasonic plasma is a commercial unit and doesn’t have a built-in tuner so I needed to find an ATSC decoder box to convert the OTA HD signal. After pouring through various forums I considered the HD HomeRun. But decided that the Samsung DTB-H260F was the one for me. Unfortunately it’s not available in Canada. Fortunately I found one on eBay (incidentally, the only thing I use eBay for these days is to buy/sell second hand geek toys). I think this unit was taken off the market because of a beef with the MPAA because it allows straight pass-through of the HD signal to any recording device. Newer ATSC decoders – especially ones with built-in recorders – down rez the HD signal to SC for storage, the uprez for viewing, resulting in a degraded HD signal and something I wanted to avoid. With my setup I grab uncompressed HD signals over-the-air, my Samsung box takes the signal data to create the channel guide and passes the unaltered 720p/1080i signal through to my home theater receiver which then uprezes it to 1080p and passes it to my plasma. And voila, free HDTV programming.

So, why did I do it? Mostly because I could. I’ve always hated being tied to someone else’s schedule, especially one that defines when and how I can consume media. I tried time-shifting with Bell ExpressVu and even that left me annoyed. With my new home system I can watch whatever, whenever and however I want. I can watch it on the TV in my living room. I can watch it on the computer in my den. And I can watch it on my iPhone in the backyard. I’m the one that decides. And that’s what networks can’t wrap their heads around. They insist on creating systems that define the habits of viewers instead of delivering an experience that their customers want. If they don’t switch gears they are doomed. TV will live. Networks will die.

And this brings me to one last point… Hulu. Guys, open up access. Track viewer habits. Analyze the metrics. Then sell it back to your advertisers. People might not love commercials, but they definitely watch them. Mostly because they’re too lazy to do anything about them.

I’m pretty sure that what consumers hate most is paying bundled rates for channels they don’t want, restrictive scheduling practices, and not being in control. Listen to your consumers. Learn about what they’re doing and change the way you do business. Set up your network distribution properly and no one will ever need a Tivo or PVR again. This is a new era of media consumption where the viewer controls their access. Figure it out and we all win.

Got a minute? Take our Free TV survey.

Resources:
Make an AppleTV Patchstick
How To Install AppleTV Patchstick
Boxee Setup on AppleTV
XBMC Setup on AppleTV

Software:
Transmission
TVshows
Ted
TVNZB

Over The Air HD Info & Equipment:
Free TV in Toronto
Digital Home Forum
Save And Replay Equipment Sales
Sensuz Equipment Sales

(UPDATE) OTA Station Listings:
US – FCC database search
US – Transition Plans by City
Canada – Available OTA stations

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3beat

After attending the MediaPost Digital Out of Home awards in New York (where we won the best point-of-sale award) I was invited to attend my first Toronto Digital Signage Industry mixer. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but have to admit I was pleasantly surprised and had a great time.

Most of the people in attendance were from the hardware, installation and deployment side of the business, but there were also reps from research companies, developers, and a couple of account types from creative shops. Apple sponsored the event and was there to showcase the latest mac mini as an affordable network solution for displaying HD signage.

I mention all this because I was taken by the diversity, enthusiasm and positive vibe of the group. It reminded me a lot of the early days in interactive where people talked about how the Internet would change everything. As one attendee said to me, “It’s just a matter of time before digital signs replace regular billboards… they’re simple to update, way more engaging… and eventually you’ll be able to interact with them.” Now, I don’t think digital signage will ever have the same transforming influence as the Internet, but I can appreciate the enthusiasm. And that got me thinking about where digital signage is headed.

Over the last two years we’ve seen digital signage show up on more and more media strategies, in direct contrast to the declining spends on TV and print. Clearly clients and media companies are see a benefit. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we got into signage. It was seen as a natural extension of the online work we did, there was a compelling budget/timing argument and quite frankly, the traditional agency didn’t want to do the work. And even though tough economic times have resulted in some production flowing back into the studios of traditional ad agencies, they still aren’t necessarily the ones best suited to do the work. As Michael Lebowitz, CEO of Big Spaceship, said in the article, Digital Shops Caught in Transition,

“The changed (economic) landscape will inevitably lead to new models that blur production and agency services. “One of the big issues for the traditional TV-driven agencies is they have outsourced craft that forget how to do it and its value,” he said. “Craft is more important than ever. Making things and seeing what sticks in a time of flux is the only answer.”

So who will be the ones to test new approaches and make sense of this opportunity? Personally, I think it will be innovators from the interactive world. And I hold up the MEGAphone work being done by Colin Moock and Derek Clayton as a prime example.

I’m also reminded of a visit I made over a year ago to the testing lab of a local digital signage company where they showcased gesture-based interfaces for retail storefront windows. It was very Minority Report, but it worked.

When it comes to digital signage, the future may not be here yet but it’s closer than we think. And with it will come new opportunities to extend a brand’s digital footprint and connect with consumers in fresh and meaningful ways. See you at the next mixer.

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Following the inauguration, whitehouse.gov has been updated to reflect the Obama administration’s promise to use interactive media to make government more open and accessible.

I’m assuming the Presidential Pets section will get a good amount of traffic too.

As the kinds of digital interactive user experiences we’re designing at T+L begin to move beyond the computer screen, fundamental things like display resolution become a little more complicated and a lot more interesting.

Effective resolution is a perceptual term—I’ll define it here* as the perceived pixel density of a display image at a given viewing distance. Math-wise, the basic equation can be pretty simple: Effective Resolution (ER) = DPI x Distance**. From this, we can see that for a given absolute resolution, the effective resolution increases along with viewing distance.

Pretty straightforward stuff so far. Here’s where it starts to get interesting…

Comparing resolution across devices

You can compare the effective resolution for different devices using the formula above. For example Using this DPI calculator, here’s what you get for an iPhone, Macbook, and generic mid-sized HDTV:

Notice that even though the iPhone has the highest absolute resolution of the 3, it has the lowest effective resolution***.

Optimizing for effective resolution

In terms of user experience, ER is a better way to compare display technology because it takes the context of use into account. For example, let’s say that the optimal effective resolution was the threshold at which individual pixels were just no longer noticeable, and let’s say this happened hypothetically at ER=300 (red line below). Based on the comparison example above, we could see that while the MacBook over-performs against this measure, the viewing experience for both the iPhone and HDTV could still benefit from higher (absolute) resolution displays.

Optimal viewing distance

You can calculate an optimal viewing distance based on effective resolution. Just set ER to a desired value—say, to 300 as in the example above—and solve for distance (D = ER/DPI).

Practical and ergonomic constraints on effective resolution

Depending on usage and input modality for a given device, the viewing distance will be a constraining factor on effective resolution. For example, an iPhone’s effective resolution is constrained by the fact that you hold it in your hand. Similarly, laptop or surface-based computing devices need to remain within reach. TVs are a little more flexible, although there are recommended viewing distances for those too.

Interaction design implications

So how could or should interaction designers be taking effective resolution into account? Here are two suggestions for starters:

1. Improving readability. This article is actually what started us thinking about effective resolution. Most digital design use pixel height for specifying font size. (Point size is more appropriate for print media.) We could use effective resolution to set baseline pixel heights that are relative to both display technology and context of use in order to ensure readability.

2. Design tools. I think it’d be great to be able to simulate different effective resolution modes in design environments like Photoshop. This could be achieved through a combination of pixel interpolation and zooming transformations. For example, say you were designing icons for an IPTV interface and wanted to know if they will be easily recognizable from the couch. Toggling into an HDTV preview mode would automatically zoom out and slightly degrade the resolution to give you a rough idea of what they’ll look like.

Here’s an interesting demo of augmented reality from the folks at Digital Pictures Interactive. Using nothing but a webcam and Flash player, they’ve managed to blend virtual content in real time with a webcam feed. The possibilities here are endless and it’s great to see work being done with such ubiquitous technology. The accessibility of this project reminds me of Jonny Lee’s Wii based demos, in which he used a $40 Wii controller to hack together a sophisticated touch screen and a head mounted 3D viewer (still waiting for a killer game from Nintendo based off this tech). It’s exciting to see technology once limited to science fiction making its way to consumer level devices. Augmented reality seems like it’s still in its infancy, but all it needs is that one killer app to break into the mainstream. Whether that comes in the form of a game, or an Android app, I have a feeling it’s not too far off.

Available for pre-order today the new Adobe Creative Suite boasts a ton of new features across all platforms, however in this post I’ll only highlight a couple… Read the rest of this entry »