Move to Mobility Continues With Misunderstood iPad

For all the controversy around the recently introduced Apple iPad, one thing is certain. This is but one in a long series of devices which will continue to be introduced to the market as part of a computing revolution. The advent of these technologies combined with demographic shifts and global ism will fundamentally change everything about our world.

Love it or hate it, the IPad is just one example of many more highly functional internet connected devices with more features delivered at lower and lower prices to come. These devices are highly mobile and will get smaller, becoming more imbeded into our daily lives.

The impact of products like iPad, combined with an increasingly available high speed Internet grid will eventually revolutionize each and every business model and organization existing today - and sooner than one might think.

When one reads analysis of the device, like Rueter's article " Publishers embrace iPad, but revolution unlikely", it shows how many continue to measure the success of an evolutionary product in terms of old paradigms. The device will not rescue a failing publishing industry, such is hope for the dying. It and its off spring to come, however, will lead the way to completely change how people produce, distribute and digest content; leaving the extant industry vanquished in its wake. Just look at the explosion of devices reflected in the graphic below.

The same is true for vast segments of the entertainment industry. When one reads that the iPad device underwhelmed Hollywood, people should laugh aloud. These devices were not designed to save the dinosaurs of that industry. However, they will be a part of redefining the entire method in which entertainment content is created, distributed and deployed as the demonstration below reflects.

Let's see the iPad for what it is. Not a savior but as part of a progression of innovations that will ultimately change everything.

Leveraging Technology & Social Media to Impact Military Wellness & Quality of Life

Meeting people who work in a variety of organizations and industries is quite enlightening. Interestingly, no matter their field or nature of their organization, I hear fairly consistent themes regarding technology adoption. This is particulary true as it pertains to wellness. I lectured at the Symposium for the Army's MWR leadership in Louisville, KY on January 26, 2010. The fine people at the American Logistics Association and their representatives Bob Ellis and Chris Rottner sponsored the lecture. You can view content in the slide show below.

Leveraging Technology & Social Media to Impact Military Community Wellness & Quality of Life

View more presentations from Bryan ORourke.

My talk on technology and social media adoption and its potential impact on the health of military personnel and their families led to a series of conversations with the rank and file of the Army's MWR community. No matter the venue, there exists a great opportunity to educate leadership on how solutions like cloud computing, social media, and wellness technologies can be adopted to positively impact the missions of organizations at much lower cost than extant methods. While the rapid pace of change happenning today makes adoption a challenge, we've got to do a better job of unleashing the potential solutions offer to solve important problems. That is why the symposium was such a great event.  Watch this video. As John Chambers of Cisco points out, organizations can change how they fundamentally work to become more productive.

The ALA also sponsored Dr. James Sallis, who spoke on environmental considerations relating to wellness. His talk was very interesting and pointed out important facts regarding how simple changes in the manner which communities are designed can have a meaingful and lasting impact on wellness. Great work and worth a review.

My thanks to the men and women of our armed services and the leadership of the ALA and MWR. I particulary thank my father, who recently passed away , for being the stellar military officer and distinguished pilot and academy graduate he was. He would have enjoyed attending the symposium and meeting the fine and dedicated professionals I had the privledge to address.

Socialgraphics - A Practical Guide to Understanding Consumer Social Behaviors

I am a big fan  of Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyeng . Their firm the Altimeter group is doing good work and sharing views on how to practically evaluate and employ social media as a strategic advantage. Of particular interest is their research on socialgraphics and other topics addressing social media. Their concepts show how organizations can utilize social media which gives a voice to buyers who can now describe their experience and disappointment to a global audience. And, wow, are they saying a lot. 

B2B or B2C marketers, eager to know how social media fits into the marketing mix, can use Social Technographic Profiles of decision-makers to design marketing programs that not only capitalize on emerging social behaviors but also fundamentally change the nature of the marketing relationship between buyers and sellers.

A recent webinar “Understanding Your Customers’ Social Behaviors“ contained some great content and practical tips on how to approach social media spaces. The slides and a video recording are available herefrom Slideshare.net (for slides) - see below - and drop.io (for the recording).

There is this cool tool from Forrestor research (below) that enables you to evaluate the social profile of B2B customers.

Also, there is on-going and vibrant conversation taking place on sites like Twitter, using the hashtag #socialgraphics. Check it out.

Understand Your Customers' Social Behaviors

View more presentations from Charlene Li.

Augmented Reality - What We're In For With AR

Augmented reality is a “disruptive technology.” As a result industries and businesses must prepare to adapt to AR quickly, before those who have assimilated this technology use it to take market share. To learn what augmented reality is you can watch an example here or read about it here. Portions of this post are related to and associated with a recent article by Jack Graham which you can find here . Jack is a reputable writer and thought leader on the topic. Suggest you follow him on twitter.

I shared this clip at IHRSA and during other fitness industry event. If you’re a fitness facility, fitness education or any type of fitness or wellness content provider AR has the potential to greatly impact the industry. Watch the example below and tell me, Bryan O'Rourke, what do you think about AR ?

The Challenges of AR

If you’re walking down the street looking into augspace with your iphone, you lose your peripheral vision. Playing Spec Trek, I was having a great time until I stumbled over a pothole while chasing down an AR ghost. I almost broke my neck.

Augmented reality apps that enable public tagging of buildings leave businesses vulnerable to harassment and vandalism via augmented reality sticky notes. AR apps which perform facial recognition threaten to further erode privacy, removing anonimoty in public places.

The Positives

AR technoogy holds a great deal of promise. Better heads up display glasses, are already appearing and will give augspace even greater immediacy, freeing the user from having to pull out their phone and look through it. Gestural and wearable interfaces will let us click on an object or building in a scene and bring up information on it, or allow complex interactions with phantom objects.

Industry standards for tagging places and objects with AR content will allow apps to access public AR channels. And educational AR apps capable of recognizing parts in a machine from the scene in the user’s camera could be used to coach workers through assembling and maintaining complex devices.

Emergent AR Technologies

Two research projects producing results are MIT’s SixthSense and a project at Cambridge University to create positional tracking for camera-based apps. SixthSense (watch it here) is particularly interesting because it’s in the small class of working AR applications that don’t display their output on a device monitor of some type.

Implications for AR in the Future

Soon we’ll see the emergence of open standards for building and tagging augspace, search engines selling premium AR placement, location based AR audio, and spam (along with spam filters). Farther out, augmented reality will completely transform how we compute. It will allow us to put a user-defined skin on reality, radiate and interact with personal area social networks, and wear graphics like clothing. It will enhance our intelligence, providing instant information on anything we look at and cueing us if we forget a name or a face. It will erase the boundary between the real and the digital, turning the world around us into a search engine whose results are displayed on thin air.

Merger of Physical & Digital World Continues

Vuzix makes a variety of video eyewear that enables users to view video content up close and personal. The company recently debuted a new piece of vision wear that allows augmented reality functionality. The new wrap 920AR eyewear overlays information over video of what the user is looking at while wearing the device. This new form of continuous AR will have even more applications.

This device uses stereo cameras to capture the video and gives the user a 67 inch display when seen
from 10 feet away. The company will begin selling the new device later this year and will also offer the
AR functionality as an add on to their existing video eyewear designs. The merger of the physical and digital worlds continues.