The good
The tile interface. The Android/Apple cold war has lead to a similar UX for the two largest smartphone platforms. On Windows Phone 7, my Facebook, Twitter and other social accounts are all aggregated into my People tile. No need to flip through separate apps for all of my separate social networks. Emails and upcoming meetings are even previewed on tiles so I do not need to dig into an app to review my information- they’re all consolidated into one experience. The concept behind this was to connect you to information as quickly as possible, getting you in and out of your phone in a few gestures so you can go back to your life without missing a beat. Very cool.

Attention to detail. The interface elements, scrolling and subtle animations that guide the interface are intuitive, snappy, and just plain fun. I love how updates flip through to my home screen as they happen. No need to check individual apps as the newest news is pushed to me directly. Even the system fonts tout a polished design that looks crisp onscreen and has a subtle hipness to it. You won’t find Times New Roman here.

The bad
Camera experience. The software is clunky and the Samsung camera is slow, although overall image quality is pretty good. This will disappoint iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users but could be on par with midrange Android and older iPhones. No doubt your mileage will vary depending on your particular phone, but the laggy response and clunky UI were somewhat disappointing.

Disjointed Syncing Experience. Much to my surprise, nothing happened when I plugged in the WIndows Phone 7 to my Mac. There was no included documentation on connecting my device either. After a Google search, I was directed to a file on Microsoft.com for a Mac-compatible Windows Phone 7 media manager. Unfortunately, the file was a 4kb text document that contained a link to the “real” URL in the Mac App Store. Very lame but easy to fix.
Then once I managed to load the software, I had stability problems as the app forced my Mac to restart after one freeze and took an incredibly long time to load just one album. This was a pretty lousy experience, and I’m hoping Microsoft works to educate users where to find their software and improve the application experience.

The Potential
Windows Phone 7 has a ton of potential through its genuinely fresh take on organizing our digital lives through the tile UI. But for me, the honeymoon ended when I tried to sync the device. Specifics like including quick-start documentation with the phone to updating the content mess on Microsoft.com that send users on a wild goose chase are easy fixes to get users what they need.

Updating the Mac media manager is mission-critical for Microsoft to be taken even remotely seriously on the Mac platform. While you could argue Microsoft should prioritize the user experience for Windows users, I think it’s shortsighted to see Apple’s OS X tied only to the iPhone.

Windows 7 has already won praise from mobile critics and I think the platform will only gain momentum as developers create more apps and services, effectively replacing RIM as the “big three” companies dominating the mobile landscape. Unlike Blackberry, Microsoft proved it has the chops to develop a genuinely new approach to mobile, putting the user first. I think 2012 will be the true demise of RIM, plagued by software delays, disappointing hardware and corporate mismanagement. In it’s place, I can see Windows phones rising to the occasion, dramatically increasing market share.

I really want Windows 7 to succeed. The system feels fresh and will force Android and Apple to up the ante to deliver even better user experiences. While I’m not quite ready to trade in my iPhone for Win7 just yet, I think Android may see Windows 7 turn into a formidable opponent. And with integrated Office support, I can see the Windows platform destroying RIM’s Blackberry platform and stealing this business-oriented user base. Microsoft has a ton of potential here. Windows Phone 7 feels more like XBOX than Windows- and that’s a great thing.

In this third and final installment, Senior Developer Kevin Malone shares his thoughts on Facebook’s workflow improvements from a tech perspective.

What are they going to break this time? That’s probably the question most Facebook application developers were thinking at the start of the f8 2011 conference. When it comes to Facebook, change can be scary. While users of Facebook get all worked up over interface changes, those of us who build applications on top of the Facebook platform have legitimate concerns. Namely, did the changes break our applications? Unfortunately, it happens more often than anyone cares to think about.

Thankfully, this post isn’t about what Facebook broke. It’s about what they have made better. Facebook has introduced a number of changes that will make the lives of developers a bit easier.

Platform Documentation

All platform documentation has been updated. With clients increasingly asking for Facebook applications or integration into their web properties, we need documentation that accurately reflects and describes what can be accomplished using the platform. If we’re to push through new and compelling uses of the platform, we need a place to validate the functionality we would like to create. Only time will tell if the documentation will remain current.

As part of this change, the top 5 related questions from the Facebook-specific version of StackOverflow are included in every page of documentation. For those of you who aren’t developers, StackOverflow is an invaluable resource for getting answers to development related questions, and Facebook recently partnered with StackOverflow to create a Facebook-specific version of the site.

Developer App updates

The Developer App allows developers to create and manage new applications. Some of the updates to the Developer App outlined below have been rolling out over the last month or so, but they were officially unveiled at f8.

Let’s not be friends

Previously, users who were given roles on an application (admin, developer, tester, insights user) had to be friends on Facebook. This created an extra step to adding and assigning users to different roles. Previously, the user with the role of application admin (or developer) had to first friend the user. That user then had to accept. Once both users were friends, the application admin could then assign the user a role. Now, there is no requirement for users to be friends on Facebook in order to jointly work on an application. This greatly streamlines the development process, saves colleagues the discomfort of getting more personal than they might like, while reducing time spent curating personal profiles.

User groups

You can now add Groups to any role within an application. If you don’t have a Group already created, you can create one right from the Developer App. If you already have Groups created from previous applications, those Groups can be easily added. This makes it nice if you have a team of people that always develop or test your applications. You can create the appropriate Groups and manage those Groups like you would with any Group on Facebook. By adding a Group to a role, you don’t have to add each person individually, eliminating the risk of leaving someone off the list.

Test users

The ability to create test users is essential to testing the functionality of any application on the Facebook platform. For example, how would you know if the code you wrote to crawl a user’s social graph is working if you don’t have any users to test against? For obvious reasons, you wouldn’t want to add real users to an application that is in development.

Developers have been able to create, manage, and add test users for a while now, but it had to be done using the test user API. Now, developers or application admins can create and manage test users through the application settings within the Developer App.

Before the introduction of the ability to create test users (and I’m sure it’s still happening now), people would create fake accounts for testing applications. However, be warned, Facebook is actively searching for fake accounts, and they will be removed as they are found. You can’t blame them, either. Fake accounts are also created for spamming, and we can all get behind a more safe and secure Facebook.

Where am I going to host this thing?

One of the first things a developer needs to know is where the application will be hosted. Whether it’s for QA or production, every application needs a home. In a few simple steps, you can now add Heroku application hosting directly through the Developer App. If you don’t have an account with Heroku, one will be created for you as part of the setup process. You can choose the development environment you want to use: PHP, Node.js, Python or Ruby. As part of your application hosting, a Git repository (version control) is created and a sample application is installed on your site. You can be up and running in a couple minutes. Even if you don’t end up hosting your production-ready application on Heroku, it can be a great resource for hosting the QA version of your application.

While these updates may not be as high profile as the new Timeline or News Ticker, they are key to simplifying the process of developing on the Facebook platform. The quicker we can get our apps out, the better it will be to refine and iterate on them.

Leif: Overall, I think the new Facebook interface has a lot going for it and at the same time, may have some hurdles besides the general distaste for change from users.

Brand Implications
It will be interesting to see how the new Newsfeed and realtime content Ticker will impact impressions and engagement on branded content from Pages. Already, we’ve noticed that impressions are no longer published on brand posts. How will “Top Posts” integrate branded content or will it at all? Will brands, in the future, be able to buy “Top Posts?” If branded content is not published as frequently or is secondary to Top Posts, will consumers and fans interact with brands as much as they did before? If so, how will brands prepare for decreased engagement?

News Feed and Ticker
The revamped Newsfeed and Ticker went over like a lead balloon with users, due perhaps to its unceremonious introduction. I’ve heard the Ticker called “a Facebook within a Facebook”–Inception style. It is and it isn’t. It offers the most up-to-date, low impact information for the user without congesting the Newsfeed. I’m all for it. The more ways a website or application can organize and publish information, the better. They say it’s all about the information, when actually it’s all about the organization and analysis of the information.

Well done Facebook. I don’t know if it was your tactic to change over Newsfeed and Ticker before the keynote, to get the “Facebook Change Hate” out of everyone’s system, then present the “pretty-change” that everyone loves and can’t wait to get their hands on. If it was, ingenious. If it wasn’t, well, it worked to your benefit.

Scot: From a measurement standpoint, the Facebook changes announced at F8 – while very welcome from my perspective as a user – have so far amounted to no change at all in my role as a data analyst.

The new design and sharing elements are undeniably cool, but despite the changes, Facebook remains the only party with full insight into any users’ integrated history, and the exchanges across the social graph created by its users.

Implications of Open Graph
Facebook’s business is still built on targeted marketing and its expansion of interest signaling from “liking” to any verb will certainly improve its ability to target based on unique and shared interests. Every business on Facebook would benefit from an understanding of their consumers’ shared interests and key influences across their social graph, but Facebook retains a tight hold on their sole position as market-maker.

With their changes in user experience and interactive capabilities, Facebook is seeking to solidify a place as the one true personal portal. In this context, marketers need to immediately begin a shift from thinking of Facebook as a forum for messages from brands that users have liked, and/or a system for serving targeted ads. What Facebook ultimately wants to to with its data is drive highly targeted and personalized apps serving every sort of commerce, and I’m sure they have a plan to extract some value for their role in each exchange.

Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights offers a very shallow level of insight into users and their engagement in the social graph. The Facebook API and Facebook Query Language (FQL) have historically offered some opportunity to access more depth in users’ interests and interactions, but access to the true depth of insight into preferences, influences/influencers and social interactions available to Facebook itself has always been stifled by API limits and awkward FQL indexing schemas.

Ultimately, marketers have no right to the data that Facebook has collected, so there is no real basis for protest from this standpoint – we data-driven marketers must take whatever Facebook is willing to offer.

The exchange for the new and fun ways to express your “true self” and interact with “friends” is that this can only happen in Facebook. While it’s true that all of the information you enter into your profile can be exported (in Facebook’s token nod to calls for data portability), none of your history of activity on Facebook – your likes (and now other verbs), the comments you’ve made on other posts – none of that stuff that is the true core of your Facebook use and history, that is of true value for marketing insight, none of that can actually be exported. That history is not yours, unless you stay in Facebook. (To paraphrase the Eagles, you can check-in any time you like, but your data can never leave).

In a truly open semantic web, each individual could access and share any part of their prior history of digital interaction as well as current interests and preferences within and across that web with any party or site, and for any purpose, be it social exchange, play, commerce, etc. Facebook is becoming a really compelling place to hang out online. Unfortunately, Facebook’s current model seems aimed at becoming the only place to hang out online, at least if you want a web that understands your preferences and networks. (Read a longer post from Scot on Intelitecht.)

*In our next post on this topic, CM’s team of Community Moderators will discuss the changes from a branded user’s perspective.

Google’s highly anticipated foray into social media networking, Google+, debuted to the broader public last week as invitations began leaking out to those participating in its limited trial. Given the high-profile failure of Google Wave, and last year’s rumors of declining innovation after of a rash of executive defections to Facebook, we felt justified in greeting Google’s entry into game with some misgivings. After a week of exploring the network’s landmark features and mercifully simple interface design, we are pleased to report that there is quite a lot Google has done right. That said, it may not be enough to kill the elephant network in the room. It may be most interesting to watch them continue to compete toe-to-toe and find a way to co-exist.

With the web full of hyperbole like “Facebook-killer!” and “game-changer!” we thought there might be room for a reasoned look at the network’s features, benefits and the opportunities they present for private users and brands.

*Because we’ll be referencing Google+ features throughout the post, feel free to reference our friendly Glossary of Features at the end.

In the Beginning…
It’s still in the invite-only beta phase of rollout, and users are coming online in a steady stream. Google hasn’t released usage stats yet, but a list has already surfaced of the top 100 Google+ users by followers, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg topping the chart at nearly 45,000 followers at the time of this writing. If we make the thoroughly unscientific assumption that half the population of Google+ has Mark in their “Following” Circle, then Facebook can probably rest easy for the time being.

Due to the invite-only nature of the membership spread, the current population seems to be mainly tech-loving early adopter types (or Nerds, for short.) Most of the conversations in our feeds still seem to be about the experience of using Google+, rather than the spontaneous posting you see on Facebook and Twitter. Given that Google has tried twice to shoehorn their network of Gmail users into a social network–and failed twice, gaining membership is stepping into the territory of “forced.” Considering that Twitter and Facebook grew naturally, if Google+ needs to be explained, hyped and artificially made “exclusive” we don’t feel positive about the ability to truly compete with the giants. If it were, somehow, to catch on with the hundreds of Millions of gmail users who now have access to the network, that wont be something for 750,000,000 Facbook accounts to sneeze at.

What’s the Benefit for Consumers to +1?
Consumers tend to be resistant to change when it comes to social media, but when a vocal majority adopts a new network and abandons their old haunts, the rest follow. The network has some key differentiators that could tip the scale in favor of its use.

First up, Sparks. As a long-time advocate for a healthy and profitable transition of traditional journalism to web, Jeana is wild about the potential of Sparks. In its current state, the tool is more Google Alerts than Google Reader, which is a pretty big missed opportunity given the value of Google Reader. Right now, you can only create a Spark that pulls in content from search term rather than a source. This integration would make Google+ a little like having all of your smartest friends in one room, along with Wolf Blitzer and all of the authors of NYTimes Bits blogs.

Next up: the multitude of communication choices that are hardwired into the network. By bundling low cost video conferencing, with the customization privacy of text-based posts and seamless mobile integration, Google is positioning the service as the switchboard of the Internet. Every niche network that you could think of has a counterpart on Google+. Google really wrapped its arms around the breadth of social networks and represented as many as it could in its first iteration: check-ins, photo sharing, news aggregation, video sharing, status updates, chat, video chat, group chat and I cannot confirm, but probably Ashton Kutcher. If uptake is swift and support is ongoing, this could be the angle that sells Google+ to a large group of users. (He’s a social network, right?) Google should be feeling the pressure to get Hangouts and Huddle up and running on the double, particularly after Facebook’s announcement of their own video chat powered by Skype, both for groups and one-on-ones.

A factor that may slow growth is the network’s current lack of applications and games. The purists among us may hail this as a decision that will keep streams free of clutter and obnoxious Farmville requests, but excluding a fun factor from the network could make it a hard sell to people who like to use social media to unwind and catch up. As a result, the network may always be a niche destination, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Brand Opportunities
Brands have a unique opportunity on Google+ that they don’t have on Facebook–they can interact with consumers in the same way that they interact with each other.

Google says brand pages are coming and companies are currently discouraged from starting their own profiles, but that hasn’t stopped early adopter brands from descending upon the service. Social Media news blog Mashable already has over 9500 followers and are seeing a lot of responses to every post. Starbucks even has a rough-in for a profile, but no activity or posts have been published, so it’s difficult to tell whether the page is the real deal or an early example of brand squatting.

The brands in there now are commenting on fans’ posts, adding influencers and consumers to their Circles and sharing with different Circles as they see fit, creating tailored content based on known customer interests or soliciting feedback from beta test groups. Ford Motor Company’s profile started out syndicating content from their Facebook pages, but has been engaging with users a little more actively recently, trying to feel out the type of presence people want to see in the space. With interactions that focus more on the excitement and controversy of being the first major brand active in the space and next to no comment on the brand’s product or content, it leads to the inevitable question: What is the strategic value of being first past the post if the core audience is currently elsewhere? As well, addressing many unique Circles will quickly become exhausting for a single moderator, which means a brand looking to fully explore these possibilities can’t expect to run a Google+ program as easily (or cheaply) as a Facebook page.

An additional considering in in the inherent focus of the network on individual use. Perhaps this means that the stronger opportunity is for more individuals to step up as brand representatives. The Google+ structure makes it possible to do this without the reps being forced to make the choice to be either professional or personal. They can interact with friends and family in their “real life” Circles, and present an entirely different face to brand followers and work acquaintances. Given how much consumers seem to like certain brands that have a transparent “face” (ie. @ExpressLisaG, Barry Judge from Best Buy or the everlasting example of Frank behind @ComcastCares) this could be a great way for brands to expand their usage of social media and encourage more truly social organizations internally.

Hangouts presents a huge opportunity for brand representatives with a following to host Q&As, demonstrate new developments, get real-time product feedback, and give users the experience of knowing an accountable and inspiring representative at their favorite brand.

All these opportunities call for a solid content strategy from brands looking to enter the space. Given the current audience, just syndicating the push marketing content that brands release on other networks will likely fall flat in such a news-driven sharing environment. This is good news though; it will force brands to develop a more interesting and compelling story to drive engagement.

While tracking sales is likely to prove just as difficult as it’s been on other social networks, brands with a stake in reaching Google+’s demographic can capitalize on high awareness at the moment, and those who move quickly can expect to enjoy big fish prominence in a pretty comfy pond.

Although we’ve tried to look at both pros and cons, opportunities and threats, we’re struggling to look at Google+ in its own right. At the heart, this is a toe-to-toe battle with Facebook–there is no blue ocean here. It will be a critical six months to watch who sinks, who swims and who must redefine.

What do you think?
Have you been using Google+? Where do you see it going?

Glossary of Key Features
Circles: Your social connections are grouped into Circles (e.g., Friends, Best Friends, Family, Colleagues), which essentially define your relationship to those people, allowing you to assign each post to the appropriate group. The privacy afforded by this selectivity is one of the greatest advantages Google+ offers over other networks.

Sparks: The Sparks tool automatically aggregates content according to subject area and delivers a feed of articles and sites of interest directly into your information stream, mating the functionality of Google Reader with the immediacy of Twitter. It’s a little hard to find, as Sparks can only be initiated from the Welcome page, but once set up, they’re visible from any screen on the site.

Hangouts: Hangouts are meant to be video chatrooms where groups of friends can spend time together online when they can’t be together in person. You have to download the Google chat plugin, and the functionality has been full of glitches in these early days. We have yet to successfully initiate a Hangout, but the technology remains promising, and at least the error image is entertaining.

Mobile App: The iPhone app is currently clearing the App Store, but iPhone users can access a mobile browser version.

The native Android app provides location-based check-ins and a super convenient Instant Upload feature that natively syncs photos and video to both the mobile and web galleries with no upload time or physical connection required. The group messaging service Huddle is currently offline for maintenance, but offers a BBM-like environment for coordinating real-life group meetups.

Project has a really informative ‘how to use’ screen, however, there are a lot of different interactive elements and it still runs the risk of being overlooked as it comes off a little too complex.

After sharing with a few friends, I noticed they were having some issues with the interactions. There are sections on the page that contain numbered screens which hold different content when the numbers are selected, and without reading the how to, I can see a lot people missing this really unique area. I also found that some of the galleries are not labeled as galleries, so it does take some exploring to get a feel for the magazines standards.

Once you get used to the interactions however, the magazine is quite amazing. You can fly through it easily and the interactive nature of the content is engaging and informative. This is the new way of viewing magazines. I’m confident that the interaction issues will be ironed out in future issues, and this is one iPad magazine I can’t wait for every month.

As the iPad is still a new medium, it is interesting to see the variety of interaction standards between apps and magazines and it will be fun to keep an eye on which ones  develop the standard for interaction.

Darren is an Information Architect in our Calgary office.

As the ‘noughties’ finish, those of us in the marketing/advertising/PR (more simply termed, ‘communications’) industry recall last decade’s tectonic shifts with nervous anticipation. Brands are finally able to offer its customers advertising they can choose to watch, services they genuinely enjoy and dialogues that are, well, actual conversations.

At the same time, a large number of traditional agencies have disappeared while audiences seem to be everywhere but in front of TV sets or newspapers. And yet the French adage, ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’ still holds. Here are 10 books published last decade offering a good shape of the communications industry and what’s to come:

What’s Changing?

1. The Idea Writers by Teressa Iezzi: If you want to get caught up fast, read this. It’s a great primer with plenty of insights on what’s changed and what’s still required to get an audience’s attention, online or off. Teressa is the editor of Advertising Age’s Creativity magazine and an expert on branded campaigns. Highly recommended.

2. Baked In by Alex Bogusky and John Winsor: This book was written by what could be the alpha and the omega of advertising in the past decade. Alex Bogusky is arguably one of the leaders of “a second “Golden Creative Age” and “Creative Revolution”. John Winsor is the founder of crowdsourcing agency Victors & Spoils, perhaps the end of what we call agencies today. Together they’ve written a book that expands the marketing process into product design, anthropology and beyond.

3. Hoopla by Crispin, Porter & Bogusky with Warren Berger: An ad shouldn’t be an ad. It should be a piece of news that invites curiosity, which brings about engagement. This thinking is what made CP+B one of the most renowned agencies of the last decade. It also makes the book worth reading.

4. Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini: What probably won’t ever change are the soothsayers and scientists who claim to know your heart. What’s news is how much of our conventional wisdom is being proven wrong, and how a few slight tweaks could drastically change our persuasive impact.

5. The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy by Tom Monahan: Most books on ideation are shelf dressing. Some are too short, too theoretical or contain too many accessories to be worth your effort. Not so with Monahan’s book. It contains plenty of advice while condensing your brainstorm into a number of exercises that you can do from anywhere.

What’s Staying the Same?

6. The Art of Client Service by Robert Solomon: As long as business exists, there will be clients. Solomon presents a great refresher on client service, with engaging stories and important lessons on how to sell great work.

7. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be. By Paul Ardern: Legendary art director, commercial director and former creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi during its red-hot years, Paul Arden also became a best-selling author. Using beautiful layouts and well-chosen words, he created an Art of War for the post-modern age.

8. Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite. By Paul Arden: Arden’s fascinating follow-up to his wildly successful first book. Using the format of the first, this book features a series of unconventional truths that have led Arden to great acclaim. Truths like: recklessness is an asset, risk is security and unreason is better than reason. Both books should be constant rereads.

9. The Creative Process Illustrated by W. Glenn Griffin and Deborah Morrison: Unlike asking your favorite creative directors to draw you a diagram of how they come up with ideas, many actually found time to fill this book. There’s still much to learn about how ideas are formed. Use these self-portraits of the creative process for inspiration while you wait for a scientific cure to writer’s block.

10. E by Matthew Beaumont: Whether it’s Words and Pictures , Mad Men or Putney Swope, stories of agency life will always be entertaining (and over-exaggerated). Written entirely in emails, think of E as a fictionalized Wikileaks for a particularly dysfunctional ad agency.

And One for All Decades:

11. The Book of Gossage by Howard Gossage, edited by Prof. Kim Rotzoll, Jarlath Graham and Barrows Mussey: First published in 1995, I’ve included this book because it’s time we resolved to give our tomes of Ogilvy on Advertising (cough—Ogilvy promo pieces—cough) to Mad Men fans rather than aspiring students. Instead of David Ogilvy’s invocations against humor, reverse type, and color printing, readers of Howard Gossage would learn lessons useful to this era. Interactive principles like leaving the target room to talk back, making content interesting, and creating ideas that compel your target to interact were all staunch Gossage beliefs.

These are my top picks for the 00’s. Many are missing because I’m sure you’ve probably read all the Godins and Gladwells out there. Perhaps your other favorites didn’t make it because I never got around to them. What others would you add?

And while we’re on the topic, I’ve got my eye on a couple new books for the new decade. Namely, Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo and War of Art by Stephen Pressfield

What’s on your reading list as we kick off 2011?

Richard is a Copywriter in the CM Toronto office.

Sharing all of your music across the internet to any device

Earlier this year, Google acquired Simplify Media in a move that will open digital syncing services to the masses. Simplify Media provided a service that let you seamlessly share music and photo libraries through the web.

By running the service on two computers, each other’s music collections would appear as a local iTunes shared library, even if each machine was thousands of miles apart. The service also allowed you to connect to libraries of up to thirty friends to stream all of their collections too. The real game changer came when the company released its iPhone application, allowing you to pull down your entire library wherever there was an internet connection.

This signaled a fundamental shift in media consumption:  No longer was it the case that a device’s media capacity was limited by internal storage. As long as the device was online, it could pull down entire libraries of content. Storage space became irrevelant.

The service ceased in June and the software has been pulled from the website and Apple’s App store. It will certainly be interesting to see how Google, known for creating web-based solutions and shunning desktop programs, will implement this service. There’s speculation the company may incorporate the syncing technology into its own Android OS software but I’m hoping they maintain a presence across all platforms.

The next killer music application will be in the cloud

Google has been incorporating HTML5 to provide mobile and desktop experiences that mirror full desktop applications. Earlier this year, Google released a mobile-optimized version of their Google Voice service when the application was famously rejected from the App Store. New HTML5 features like Gmail drag-and-drop support demonstrate how close web experiences can mimic desktop apps.

In the music realm, it would be incredible if we saw a Google Music service sometime this year, allowing users to play and access entire music libraries, as well as libraries from all of their Gmail contacts, from within their browser window with no local media player required.

Similarly, Apple has been rumored to be working on a cloud-based iTunes service, signaled by the purchase of streaming service Lala earlier this year. Mixed with native iPhone support for streaming music through Dropbox and MobileMe, as well as a new billion dollar datacenter in North Carolina, Apple appears to be setting the stage for a new era of media streaming through the cloud.

Spotifiy looks to stream millions of tracks to your desktop and mobile- for free

Spotify will also be a big player once it debuts in the U.S. later this year. Tremendously popular in Europe, the service streams millions of songs to your desktop or mobile for free (although an ad-free premium service exists) was due to hit the U.S. at the beginning of 2010 but got held up due to licensing disputes with the big recording agencies.

Spotify’s site boasts millions of users, and its catalog of 8 million songs rivals that of iTunes. As with Simplify Media, Spotify’s service makes the need for local storage irrelevant. In the same fashion this generation sacrificed physical media, will the next wave of listeners forgo even digital copies in favor of free ad-supported streaming services? While it’s difficult to predict how the service will affect existing distribution channels, the service has been well-received in Europe since debuting in 2009. Demand is already increasing for the US version. Spotify-related forums and blog posts are inundated with workarounds to get the service operational by using a proxy service or UK-based credit card. While Spotify has taken measures to lock down these attempts, there may be 30,000 users in the US (although this is highly refuted by Spotify), including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg.

Revenue from Pirates in a Transformed Industry

As early adopters eagerly anticipate Spotify’s release, the biggest impact may be felt on those record companies responsible for delaying the service’s debut. A slick application and access to millions of songs already freely available could not only deter online piracy, but generate revenue based on the number of plays each song receives.  By providing the end user with a simpler way to access music than even piracy offers, Spotify has the potential to transform the music industry.

The record labels are forced to walk a tight rope. On one hand, they can sell Spotify as a means of generating revenue from casual listeners who may otherwise obtain an album illegally. But they’ll have to be careful that the service won’t cannibalize existing digital channels such as iTunes or Amazon.  While negotiations have stalled or outright failed, the service is long overdue for a U.S., it’s clear that incredible demand exists for legally streamed music.

A Facebook Music App Could Bring Streaming Mainstream

Not to be outdone, Facebook has also recently been rumored to be working on a similar music service. The company announced Spotify’s chief designer Rasmus Andersson will join Facebook this October, leading to speculation a music-based initiative may be the next thing the social media giant focuses on. With hundreds of millions of users, Facebook has potential to make a major play in the music industry, given the widespread adaption and user base that’s already comfortable sharing photos, interests and secret weddings. A Facebook music service could propel streaming music into the mainstream, much how iTunes transformed digital music in the early 2000’s.

Details from the big players in digital media are still developing but over the next year the way we interact with media will change in a big way. Streaming services will give access to millions of tracks without taking any space on your mobile phone or laptop. That cavernous hard drive sitting inside your computer might start to gather dust if you find it easier to stream albums and playlists (and soon videos and movies) instead of saving local copies. You could decide it’s easier to stream your entire iTunes library to your iPhone instead of picking and choosing what fits- although the need for a reliable data connection may make more than a few users hesitant to hope for this so soon.  Whether you’re going through Bieber fever or loved Gaga at Lolla it’s clear that we’re about to see a lot of interesting innovations in digital music- with or without the Beatles.

Alan is the Business Development and Marketing Coordinator in our Chicago office.

There’s an old statistic my dad used to say to me. “The Saturday edition of the Toronto Star contains more knowledge than a person living in the 16^th Century got in their entire lifetime.” It made no sense to me why anyone would want this much information. The funnies were about the only section useful to my sixth-grade self. Everything else just seemed to get in the way.

Today you can access the Saturday editions of every major newspaper in the world online. You can also get near-instantaneous Wikipedia entries, tweets, blogs, RSS updates, and tons more, all of which makes it even harder to separate information you want from information you don’t. Enter Web 3.0, a.k.a. Semantic Web.

Web info overload and why Web 3.0

This iteration of the web promises to better serve users with a smarter search system. In addition to 2.0’s content creation and 1.0’s system of content delivery, 3.0 aims to manage content as well.

What does Semantic Web mean?

The first version of the web was a means of delivering documents online through methods of download and display. The second, web 2.0, allowed users to generate their own content through tools such as blogger and youtube, flickr and myspace. 3.0 aims to have the web intelligently filter content for users.

One way of achieving this is OWL (Web Ontology Language), a language that both computers and laymen can easily understand. Another is through a universal sharing, linking and describing service such as XDI. Both allow computers to pick up on the context of what’s posted and categorize accordingly.

In this way, the results you get would be specific not so much to the terms you enter, but what you intend to find. The software wouldn’t just give you links that mention the term you’re searching for. It would also figure out why you’re searching for that term and rank results based on what you mean. Basically, it’s semantics.

A web without marketers?

When the web first began, it was possible for users to manually filter out the pages they didn’t intend to find. There would only be a few hundred relevant mentions and perhaps a dozen that were most pertinent. The rest you opened and closed relatively quickly or learned to avoid.

Today, despite the best attempts of aggregators, SEO, Google Ads, and other sorting techniques, advertisers frequently show up inappropriately or worse, don’t show up at all when they should.

The semantic web would help us avoid these problems. Ideally it would allow us to speak solely to those we targeted. With added filtration, we would also be able to author messages that were more target-specific. The web will get more personalized, and so will clients’ abilities to serve customers.

On the other hand, this could be the end of non-consensual advertising altogether. Computers that can return exactly what you want can also filter out everything you don’t. The software could be smart enough to know that even if the ad in question matches the users’ request exactly, because the user also requested not to receive any advertising, the ad is never seen. In effect, a safe search for ads.

A web without privacy?

Another aspect of a personalized, intelligent web is the erosion of anonymity. Users’ preferences could be stored online rather than in their computers as they increasingly access the net through multiple platforms and devices. We are already starting to see this. Email is slowly becoming the standard sign-up ID and multiple accounts are being merged (i.e. using facebook to blog, email or access flickr, etc.).

But in order for Web 3.0 to understand user intentions, it will need to glean more and more specific information from individual users. As the resulting ethical concerns become even more hotly debated, digital marketers will need to recognize the implications. For example, some people accept that their brands know everything about them while others want to believe in anonymity. For brands, recognizing these preferences and behaving accordingly will be crucial to whether they can retain customers.

Will it happen?
Whether all of the web can go semantic is up for debate. Computers have not historically been good at dealing with vagueness. Logic fails when confronted with inconsistencies. Computers accept nearly all human input as fact even though humans don’t always input the truth. Content in the form of images and videos are still not automatically recognizable to computers without human tagging. While a new version of the web is in the works, how long it will take to get up and running is pure conjecture.

Being ahead of the upgrade

Still, there are things we can do now to pave the way for a semantic web. As with much of interactive, Web 3.0 is primarily about anticipating people’s needs. By designing smarter sites that are both intuitive and comprehensible, we’ll stay relevant with the advent of smarter search. By providing value, creating services and delivering ads which users can opt into or out of with ease, we prevent pushback from privacy-conscious consumers.

Clay Shirky's newspaper would do nothing but aggregate

With content more plentiful and easily produced than ever, aggregation and delivery could actually become a more valuable service than production. Clay Shirky’s ideal newspaper has no original content whatsoever. We should remember this for clients who still think going viral is a matter of aping what’s hot on YouTube right now. If we do create content, keeping it 100% worthwhile, interesting and relevant will keep us from being filtered out of existence.

Summing up

We’ve gone from hard drive capacities smaller than a single comic panel to computer networks larger than our own memories. Web 3.0 is trying to help us retain only what we want to know. Aside from having far-reaching cultural and ethical consequences, it will also mean that, more than ever, brands have to be worth engaging with. We have to ensure our messages stay in the need-to-know. For soon clutter will not only be ignored, it won’t be seen at all. There may be more in the Saturday Star than in a Renaissance man’s head. But that’s not to say he’d find any of it worth reading.

Richard is a Copywriter in the CM Toronto office.

In this post, I’d like to outline a handful of techniques and technologies we as creators for the web can employ today. Although some of these methods are only available in more modern browsers, I hope to explain how we can still maintain support and offer alternative solutions for older browsers.

A Bit of History

Back in 1997, I had just began dipping my feet into web development — more specifically HTML. Later that year, a new version of the HTML specification was to be released, known as “HTML 4.0”. Three U.S. Presidents, a dot-com bust and a housing bubble later we find ourselves still writing the same old HTML, now “HTML 4.01”. CSS shared a very similar story. Technicalities aside, my point is simply this: HTML and CSS have not seen a new major release of their specifications in several years.

The Future Is Now

You may have heard that there are two new kids on the block: HTML5 and CSS3. Although both of these specifications haven’t been finalized, modern browsers are beginning to implement features of HTML5 and CSS3. Of course, older browsers don’t have most of these features, but that’s okay.

Think about this for a moment: we’re still supporting and trying to create “pixel perfect” designs for Internet Explorer 6, a browser shipped with Microsoft’s nine year old operating system Windows XP. Let me say that again, we’re still designing websites that are meant to look exactly the same in modern browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome but also a browser that is almost a decade old. Sad, but true.

Here’s where I propose we ditch that old idea and start using something I call “pixel imperfect” designs by using a well known strategy called Progressive Enhancement. Essentially, one design does not fit all browsers anymore. We need to accept the fact that browsers ARE different and they each offer their users different capabilities. We’ll need to start creating variants of our designs to show the potential experience in both modern and legacy browsers. What’s great about using Progressive Enhancement is that we can design our solutions in a way that less capable browsers still receive a great experience because we’re simply “layering” on new features that more capable browsers will utilize when they’re supported.

Implementations

Font Embedding

Arguably one of the most (if not THE most) important additions to CSS3 is the official support for embedding fonts. No longer are we stuck with having to cut images or use Flash when we want to use fonts not considered “web-safe”. We can use whatever fonts we want as long as the seller of the font permits web embedding. Several font providers like Typekit and FontShop are already providing solutions for embedding fonts on the web.

No more opening up Photoshop to do minor copy tweaks, or re-cut all of a site’s images containing copy when we want to translate it to another language, or using slow Flash solutions unsupported by most mobile platforms.

The best part about CSS3 font embedding: it’s supported in virtually all browsers used today! That includes Internet Explorer 4+, Firefox 3.5+, Opera 10+, Safari 3.1+, and Chrome 4+.

Enhanced Forms

In HTML5, forms get a bit more usable. For starters, we get a baker’s dozen of new input types: color, date, datetime, datetime-local, email, month, number, range, search, tel, time, url and week. iPhone users (other phone manufacturers will likely follow suit) get contextual keyboards when the new HTML5 input types are used:

Drag & Drop

Google recently added support for the new HTML5 Drag & Drop API in it’s Gmail. Simply put, users can now drag files right off their desktop into Gmail. It’s subtle, yet awesome.

Geolocation

Imagine visiting your favorite retailer’s store locator and it already knows your location, making suggestions of stores near your current location? This is one of the many applications of the new Geolocation API available in HTML5. Many mobile platforms already support this method with many more desktop browsers to follow.

Conclusion

The above examples aren’t the only new technologies available to us today. For a complete list, just ask your local web developer over a cup of coffee (or even better, a beer).

Just remember: browsers are different, their capabilities are different, and we should be utilizing them instead of crippling our creations because of older platforms. Let’s move the web forward.

Ben is a Senior Developer in our Chicago office.

Mobile and emerging technology have historically had more hype than actual adoption or implementation within marketing campaigns; but with the proliferation of mobile devices and digitization, the mobile channel is slowly becoming a necessity rather than a novelty. In this post, I wanted to address key developmental areas of mobile and their impact on customer experience and engagement.

Traditional & Mobile Integration in Marketing

From an integrative marketing standpoint, the mobile device can be seen as an extension of the brand experience; it’s what connects the end user with the brand messaging. Mobile is often an overlooked or undervalued channel of communication but in reality, it’s one of the most personal forms of communication in this digital world. When campaigns are successfully crafted and executed, the channel that connects the end user with the message has the power to change both brand perception and consumer behavior. With that said I believe we will continue to see more brands create mobile campaigns or initiatives that complement traditional marketing channels while allocating a significant amount of their advertising budget towards mobile and emerging technologies.

Advertising

The recent launch of the Apple iAd platform will only further prove my point that there will continue to be a major marketing shift and emphasis on mobile within integrated marketing campaigns. The iAd platform allows developers to create beautiful and rich advertising executions that are less disruptive and reach the consumer at the intersection of emotion and interactivity. In addition to this innovative approach, the developers will retain 60% of revenues which have already shown signs of success. Obviously, these signs of success are due more to novelty rather than active engagement and interest, but the iAd platform is definitely a step in the right direction for advertisers.

Payment

Mobile commerce is another key area of significant growth that is driving adoption and new users. With more brands integrating traditional and mobile campaigns, allowing consumers to easily pay for various products and services on-the-go will benefit both parties. Apples iTunes payment system is a great example of quick, convenient one-click purchasing. During the D8 conference, eBay CEO, John Donahoe, discussed the adoption of the mobile device as a way to pay for goods and services. Donahoe explained that the mobile delivered $600M last year and will deliver $1.5B to $2.0B in revenue to eBay this year.

Additional examples of up and coming payment models include Jack Dorsey’s recent startup, Square, which allows consumer to send and receive payments through their iPhone or iPad. In addition to Square, which is hardware dependent, other emerging opportunities lie within Near Field Communications. Near Field Communications would allow RFID chips to be imbedded within phones which enable direct payments. While these payment models will continue to help the mobile space evolve, privacy concerns are still a very hot topic. The recent news of Apple iTunes accounts being hacked will require companies to provide a “reason to believe” and reassure them that their information is secure.

Social & Location Based Services

When discussing social and mobile with our very own Neil Clemmons, he pointed out that the intersection of mobile and social is a key driver of adoption and growth. Over the past year there have been several social and location based service developments which have supported his opinion. Brands that take the time to understand and develop services based around social media and GPS locations can provide personal messages and incentives to highly segmented groups thus creating relevant content and messaging for consumers who are actively seeking the information. Facebook is a great example of mobile adoption, with over 100MM mobile users today. In addition to highly segmented groups, brands have the ability to collect location based consumer insights.
All of the following, when used strategically in an integrative marketing campaign, will help provide a flawless user experience for consumers. I think we will continue to see significant developments in mobile and more brands pursing its highly targeted and relevant services as a complement to their traditional marketing efforts.

Johnny is a planner intern from our Chicago office.