2009

Minority Report Interfaces: Coming to a Screen Near You

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Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer at design firm Schematic, spoke today at the XML Auckland conference. Herigstad worked with Steven Spielberg on the conceptual design for the film Minority Report, including designing the hologram screens on which Tom Cruise used his hands to navigate. The subject of Herigstad’s presentation today was new forms of User … Read more

LifeCase & LifeApp Solution Wins $10,000 Diabetes Challenge

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A prototype for an iPhone app that provides an integrated hardware-software solution for diabetes patients, has won a $10,000 prize in a competition run by DiabetesMine. The competition aimed to find an iPod-like device or web app for diabetes management. The winning concept was designed to solve a problem that all diabetes patients (including this … Read more

Your Favorite Location-Based Mobile Apps

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One of the web trends we’re noticing this year is more location-based mobile phone applications – i.e. apps that know where you and/or your friends are and utilize that data in some way. Some of this activity was fueled by Google’s entrance into the market as a serious player, in February when Google Latitude launched. … Read more

Visible Past: Where Information Searches For You

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Visible Past is a location-aware learning environment being developed at Purdue University. It is based around the idea that data can be organized using space and time attributes. The team behind the project believes that Visible Past can be used as a learning tool in schools and museums. Practically speaking, Visible Past is a mix … Read more

Linked Data is Blooming: Why You Should Care

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Last week we discussed how the current era of the Web is evolving. One of the concepts we noted was Linked Data, an idea whose time has come in 2009. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year, evangelizing Linked Data. He said that … Read more

Augmented Reality & The Web: Present and Future Scenarios

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Augmented Reality (AR) is when virtual graphics and/or data are overlaid onto real world objects. Many of you have seen this portrayed in movies such as Minority Report and The Matrix. It still seems a bit far fetched in 2009, yet there are apps that are beginning to make it a reality. One is Wikitude, … Read more

Understanding the New Web Era: Web 3.0, Linked Data, Semantic Web

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I’ve been following a fascinating 3-part series of posts this week by Greg Boutin, founder of Growthroute Ventures. The series aimed to tie together 3 big trends, all based around structured data: 1) the still nascent “Web 3.0” concept, 2) the relatively new kid on the structured Web block, Linked Data, and 3) the long-running … Read more

Google Search Evolves – But Has Google Finally Lost its Core Focus?

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Yesterday at Google’s Searchology event, which we live-blogged, the search market leader announced two significant features to its search product: Search Options and Rich Snippets. It also previewed a new fact-finding search product called Google Squared. The first two features are already live on google.com and they’ve notably extended Google’s core search product. As we … Read more

Report: Mobile Website Performance Getting Worse

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In the evolving Web, where mobile web growth is exploding and therefore the mobile experience matters as much as the desktop one, it is becoming increasingly important for websites to ensure that their mobile site performs well. According to a new mobile web performance benchmark produced by Gomez (a web application performance management firm) and … Read more

IBM CoScripter: Automate Web Processes

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CoScripter is a Firefox plug-in created by IBM Research, with the aim of automating web processes. CoScripter is described as a “system for recording, automating, and sharing processes performed in a web browser such as printing photos online, requesting a vacation hold for postal mail, or checking flight arrival times.” In effect it is a … Read more