Author Archives: William Bertolo
Twitter announced last week that it would be using CT3 (community, crowdsourced and collaborative translation) to make its content available in the FIGS (French, Italian, German and Spanish) group of languages. They’re stepping on ground that brought some trouble to LinkedIn some time ago. Despite specific website approaches, the CT3 matter will be sure to generate a lot of debate in the times to come. So it would be nice to start understanding the factors that surround it.
The first factor is resistance. Professional translators may feel their market is at risk. To be honest, as a web developer, I felt the same in the past, when potential clients started considering the option of having their nephews, who “knew a bit of HTML”, build their corporate sites. So they probably question how people, who are not even professionals in the language area, can do their work for free, especially for-profit corporations. On the other hand, this kind of initiative can even bring more work for language professionals, as it can create opportunities for proofreading content which didn’t exist before.
On the CT3 defense side, it’s said that costs are not the motivation of crowdsourcing. CT3 is desired because it’s faster, better, wider and democratic. The article about LinkedIn I mention above goes deeper into this discussion, but I’ll try to summarize it below.
It’s faster: whoever has worked with contracting services for a specific business knows how long and painful the process can be. Vendor selection, contract process, prototype design, implementation and tests can take months. CT3 can bring results in a fraction of this time, as you can check out in this article about the Facebook experience.
(more…)
The first draft of the HTML5 specification was released on January 22, 2008, and though it’s an ongoing work, some parts of it are already being implemented in some browsers, such as Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. Microsoft has started implementing it in IE8.
In his article “Are You Ready for a Flash-Free Future?” on Advertising Age, Garrick Schmitt gives us some links to HTML5 experiments and discusses if the adoption of this technology will happen only with the final recommendation in 2022 or before, at the final draft stage, in 2012. I personally believe that the industry will push this date to even earlier and we’ll start seeing more and more examples in the following months.
But how is HTML5 going to change the way people interact with websites?
To be honest, I believe that, from a non-technical standpoint, people won’t see much difference. Because we already have a lot of rich interactions happening in our websites today, thanks to the use of Flash, Silverlight and Java, the point is: with HTML5, things we are already building with these technologies will be achieved more easily, with less code and less dependencies. That may mean reduction of time, complexity and cost for projects. Some JavaScript libraries, such as JQuery and Prototype, have been playing the role of making web development easier for some time and with great success, and HTML5 applies some of their principles for the sake of productivity.
These are some cool features of HTML5 that will contribute to building good user experience:
(more…)
The buzz around augmented reality seems to be growing. This technology involves the interaction of live and computer-based data. It can be used to retrieve real time data based on what’s being captured with an input device, like a camera or a microphone, and display the information layer over the input one.
The video gaming industry seems to be definitely going towards that direction. First, Sony released the PlaystationEye, but the titles released until now didn’t seem to achieve great popularity. I believe they hope to change it with EyePet. Microsoft, in its turn, is now investing on Project Natal, which uses the same movement recognition principle. The gaming industry will probably be a huge factor for the popularization of augmented reality. You can read a bit more about the two systems here.
Outside the entertainment industry, applications based on this technology start to pop. The GR Smart Grid seems to be one of the most popular at this point. Recently, I came across the USPS shipment box simulator which “project box holograms onto the image from your [webcam]. Then, compare the size of the real stuff you want to ship to size of the virtual box on your screen,” according to the USPS Priority Mail website.
When we see the current state of the interaction between real and computer data (how things take a while to follow the path and their movements are not that natural), we realize that there’s still a lot to improve, like Total Immersion did, and we start thinking what’s the real value of augmented reality aside seeing cool 3D graphics that react to your movements on a screen. How can this technology help the developmThe buzz around augmented reality seems to be growing. This technology involves the interaction of live and computer-based data. It can be used to retrieve real time data based on what’s being captured with an input device, like a camera or a microphone, and display the information layer over the input one.
The video gaming industry seems to be definitely going towards that direction. First, Sony released the PlaystationEye, but the titles released until now didn’t seem to achieve great popularity. I believe they hope to change it with EyePet. Microsoft, in its turn, is now investing on Project Natal, which uses the same movement recognition principle. The gaming industry will probably be a huge factor for the popularization of augmented reality. You can read a bit more about the two systems here.
Outside the entertainment industry, applications based on this technology start to pop. The GR Smart Grid seems to be one of the most popular at this point. Recently, I came across the USPS shipment box simulator which “project box holograms onto the image from your [webcam]. Then, compare the size of the real stuff you want to ship to size of the virtual box on your screen,” according to the USPS Priority Mail website.
When we see the current state of the interaction between real and computer data (how things take a while to follow the path and their movements are not that natural), we realize that there’s still a lot to improve, like Total Immersion did, and we start thinking what’s the real value of augmented reality aside seeing cool 3D graphics that react to your movements on a screen. How can this technology help the development of better user experience?
So you may be able to come to a CD store, point your cell phone camera to a CD cover and check listeners’ reviews from amazon.com, or even compare prices with other stores. The same kind of thing you do while browsing the Internet today, but adapted to what you have in sight, anytime, anywhere. While grocery shopping, you may be able to check available recipes, nutritional information or even the availability of that item on your freezer. I really dream about the day when the front windshield of my car will be GPS-driven and I won’t even make a mistake on a bifurcation again, because that coloured lane will be shown no more on a GPS device screen, but over the actual road.
I’ve seen complicated devices like head-mounted displays, which involve helmets, goggles, tracking systems and mobile computer units, but I don’t believe many people without a really specific application field will want to use them. They will probably wait until Oakley engineer all that machinery to work inside a Juliet model.
The fact is the use of this technology, in the next few years, will be much more simple and easy. And that’s why we can believe it will be successful. In this context, the role of agencies will be to identify opportunities to create interesting applications and interactions and plan interfaces that will make the experience desirable. This technology is promising, but, as any other, only the development of good applications can create public interest to make this field develop.
ent of better user experience?
In the last week of April, I attended the “MTV Jackass on AIR” presentation on the FITC Toronto and I found the technology aspect and the marketing idea behind it both very interesting.
The creators describe the application as a “Casual Social Game”, in which users send “virtual pranks” to their friends. The characters of Jackass then invade the victim’s desktop and mess with it in several ways (most of them result in the desktop virtually dirty with some disgusting fluid). There’s also integration with Facebook.
Recently, my PlayStation 3 surprised me when I found, on the XMB (XrossMediaBar), something called “Playstation Home”, a community-based environment developed by Sony Computer Entertainment’s London and Cambridge studios. The open beta service has started last December. Phil Harrison used the term “Game 3.0″ to describe it back in 2007.
It’s still a small world: users can wander their own empty harbour studio (you can customize it later), the central plaza, a bowling center, a movie theatre and a mall. There are also dedicated game spaces (Uncharted and Far Cry 2) and a Red Bull area. Red Bull? Yes, the corporations are already there. Despite the size, according to Sony, 3.4 million users already downloaded it.
Aside the energetic drink environment, users can also find Ligne Roset and Diesel stores at the mall, where they can buy, using the PlayStation Network Wallet, virtual clothing for real dollars! Activision, SEGA, Ubisoft, Atari and Midway are reportedly creating Spaces for the service. EA announced the future opening of the EA Sports Complex, with leader boards, game trailers and some multiplayer games.
Search engine expert Danny Sullivan is one person who believes that rooftop ads are not aimed at Google Maps, but at passengers in airplanes. Perhaps this is because most of the rooftop ads are found in zones near airports, and that RoofAds, a company specialized in rooftop painting, doesn’t mention Google Maps on its website. Some companies have gone even further and used farmland to create crops designs that display their logos.
Aside from being seen by people in the air, these logos will inevitably be caught in one of the Google updates. But before you go out and place a logo on your roof, consider that Google’s database updates can take months or years to complete. Think of it as a medium to long-term investment.
Is there maybe a shorter way?
