I’ve recently authored a new post for PharmaVOICE looking at how embedded systems are poised to change health in our everyday lives. Embedded systems are those integrated technologies that help power everything from our televisions to refrigerators to our cars. The biggest advances will occur in wearable technology. These “smart clothes” will help us monitor health, athletic performance, and even our emotional state. Read the entire article on PharmaVOICE.
Author: Chris Cullmann
The New Windows 8 Workstation
With the RTM version of Windows 8 being released, I’ve had a chance to dabble in the interface and spend some time ‘working’. It’s really quite nice. It’s very usable and intuitive OS for day to day use and Windows 8 has all of the winning components from the previous generation and quite a bit more.
The Windows 8 user experience, formerly known as Metro, is beautiful to look at. The graphic approach to the user interface and chrome is current, user friendly, and honestly, a very relevant solution for both powerhouse desktops and tablets alike.
What has really captured my attention is the integration between Windows 8 and their peripheral platforms. The tablet platform, Surface in particular, seems like an ideal pairing that extends the desktop as a platform and may completely replace it. Windows 8 Phone is also an impressive offering. Despite the smartphone market being well serviced by iOS and Android, I think this new scrappy platform might still have a shot.
I think that for the first time perhaps a decade, Microsoft has a truly innovative solution that can be an ideal platform for Creatives. Crazy as this idea seems, for those who produce content for a digital audience, Windows is a producing an almost ideal offering for writing, designing, developing, and supporting big digital ideas.
The desktop environment itself serves many purposes for the creator (as in content creator). Traditional applications can be run in keyboard and mouse mode and now, through large touch screens and hybrid overlays, users can select, scale, move, draw, paint, and otherwise interact directly with the user interfaces via touch screens. For additional or supplemental input, Windows 8 tablets can be paired with desktops to extend the display or used as a touch input like a Wacom Tablet-ideally suited for creative teams.
That same tablet is an ideal portable interface for capturing ideas. Photographing from life, drawing, writing, recording audio and video can all be done on the device and acted upon using the same software that’s run on the Windows desktop. Content can also be synchronized and used immediately on a desktop interface if additional computing power is required (video being an example of such an instance).
Windows 8 Phone offers another example of a similar scenario. Smartphones have become our planners, wallets, health centers, cameras, notebooks, and sketchbooks. Having a truly synchronous environment would make the lines between these platforms irrelevant and hurdles of the past.
I’m looking at Windows 8 as a bit of a reinvention for Microsoft and would like to see people really consider it as a contender for their workstation. This is a chrysalis moment for Microsoft. Although they have a market majority, they have lost some of their relevance to companies like Apple and Google. This new crop of software is something that shows a renewed attention to users and a serious shot to stay connected to the market they helped create.
I think there is real opportunity for Windows 8 to find a place as a Creative workhorse. As OS X starts to show a move towards a very consumer oriented experience via Mountain Lion, Content authors will need heavy-lifting, high end workstations to create videos, web sites, manuscripts, mobile apps, and new media creations. The new Windows 8 experience can bring much of the user experience offering to users and also support a multi-window, heavy-lifting, experience at the same time.
The Twitter API Compromise
Twitter announced last week that they would be making several changes to their API that allows developer to creat applications like TweetBot, Instapaper, and Timehop. These changes are controversial because Twitter’s growth is largely attributable to the geekier-developers that created clients and applications that gave the social network the user experience that made it palatable. Wider adoption happened not through the SMS (texting) interface that Twitter launched with, but through apps and tools for smartphones and other social networks.
Twitter is a community. It’s a living, thriving, and changing group of people that began as a very niche geek clique and grew into the second largest social network in the world. The Twitter icon is everywhere. #hashtags ride beneath every television commercial, cereal box, and even on plumber’s trucks. Tweeting is a ‘thing’. Most importantly, it’s an active community that anyone can use as a soapbox or publishing platform.
The ease of use and built-in community makes Twitter a natural choice for a publishing platform. I simply cannot reach as many people or interact with such a wide group using my own channel. Because of this, I’m comfortable sacrificing access and ownership of what I am creating in exchange for amplification.
I am cognizant of the changes Twitter is making and how those influencers who helped build the social network are questioning the motivations behind the API change. This same audience is beginning to fragment and move to new channels.
As an early adopter and someone who was attracted to Twitter because of a the niche community, I have to ask myself if I’m willing to begin with a new community and abandon Twitter, which is still very active.
APP.NET is a new social network and an example of a new community that has taken advantage of those unhappy with Twitter. It’s captured favor with an open API and a paid service model that should absolve any reliance on advertising for revenue moving forward. The user base is a very tech-savvy influencer group similar to what populated the original Twitter timeline. The appeal is there, but a $50 funding to APP.NET’s kickstarter is the minimum cost to begin playing in this new network.
I’m not going to abandon Twitter anytime soon, but I am intrigued by the model APP.NET offers. It promises a stable environment with a consistent API for developers and a model that is sustainable. Success will depend on how the APP.NET community will grow and how many engaged users will pay for access to this new model of a social network.
The New Microsoft Branding
Microsoft is in a year of reinvention. The company is trying to shed an image of stuffiness, slowness, and “uncool” with innovative new products, aggressive marketing, and a significant movement with it’s core strategies. To punctuate these operational changes, Microsoft has released a new brand mark and visual Identity.
The new identity polarized the tech audience. Some hate it, others love it. Like anything coming out of Redmund lately, there seems to be little middle-ground for acceptance.
I think the new logo is excellent. For a brand that draws on 25 years of history in the technology space, Microsoft is very much ‘your father’s computer company’. I think the emergence of tablets as a power-technology and a muddying of the consumer electronics and consumer markets has left Microsoft scared and forced some changes. To survive, the must change their approach to new products and software.
Windows 8 looks to be an excellent move forward from a user experience standpoint and a shift to an iterate-quickly model that Google and Apple are seeing success with. XBox is a massive success in the gaming category. Windows Phone is still waiting for wider adoption by consumers, but it’s well received by the tech community and (based on first hand experience) is an excellent interface and contenter in the mobile space.
I think the new Microsoft brand is an excellent design solution. It embodies Microsoft’s history in the technology space, but is also very current in it’s palette and type. There is a very traditional structure featuring the windows icon on the left. The new interpretation of the “window” is modern, but still familiar. The Microsoft moniker, in medium grey, is set in Segoe–a clean, san-serif slotted to replace a tired Trebuchet as a screen-optimized font. The proportions are conservative and balanced. The palette is carried over from previous versions of the logo, but in the flat, graphic representation reflects the new interface in Windows 8, due for a public launch this fall.
It’s very easy to criticize Microsoft as being conservative or to note that the new branding is an evolution rather than a new approach entirely. This is a perfect move for Microsoft to plunge into 2013 with new products, new markets, and enthusiasm for a reinvention.