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The adoption of smartphones is increasing at an incredible rate. Nielsen predicts that smartphones will overtake feature phones by the end of 2011. This shift will be the catalyst for innovation in the mobile marketplace. Marketers and their partner agencies need to consider how they’ll create for the next-generation mobile devices.

These next-generation mobile devices will push far beyond current devices in both hardware and software capabilities. Increases in mobile broadband, processing power, image resolution, storage, and connected services will drive innovation.

A competitive mobile platform marketplace dominated by RIM, Apple, and Google has been the primary storyline over the last few years. Previous market leaders such as Nokia and Microsoft are poised to challenge the current leaders and regain market share.

The operating systems that have dominated the marketplace for the last few years have focused on an app-driven paradigm. The central focus was on the capabilities of the individual mobile application. Nokia, RIM, and Apple built successful platforms based around this type of user interaction. More apps in a platform’s market provided the end user with more options and a perceived greater value than other competing platforms.

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Eva-Lotta Lamm has published a book of sketches she crafted while at web conferences over the last two years. The book includes notes for 100+ speakers, including Edward Tufte, Jesse James Garrett, Dave Gray, and Eric Reiss.

I’m always impressed with people that can take talking points or ideas and make them visually interesting. Rather than creating an ordinary bullet list that is less likely to be referenced after the conference, this is a great way of channeling your creative self and bringing ideas to life that you can later share with others (and possibly make a profit on!).

Check out some sample pages on Flickr.

It seems like forever ago, but I clearly remember when computer mice became popular. I remember avoiding them like the plague at first – thinking how inefficient they were compared to a keyboard. I also remember a friend’s naive younger sister grabbing at the mouse as soon as she turned the computer on and thinking “this thing is going to dumb down computer users so much”. Fifteen years later and my opinions couldn’t be more different.

The mouse is to the PC, just as the game controller is to the XBox, just as the remote is to the TV – they are forms of interaction which are workhorses to millions. All of these controllers are pretty simple in nature: you push a button, it travels some wires (or wirelessly), and it tells a computer something to do. All of these forms of control were built back when computing power was at a premium, and before computer sensors are what they are today. What is becoming clear is that the biggest device innovations today are not just measured by computing power, storage, or screen size – the biggest innovations today are measured in how you interact with them, and how they interact with you.

A camera making use of face and smile detection

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Earlier this year, we took some time to tinker with with QR codes — specifically Microsoft TAG. As part of a recruiting effort, we designed a pocketbook journal with a TAG code that led to a mobile site targeted to young creatives just entering the field. You can view the mobile site on your phone at http://www.iqagency.com/tag/

These mini books were given away at SCAD career fair, Portfolio Center, Creative Circus and the like.

BTW I still have some left over if anyone wants some free schwag…

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I guess this solves the text-while driving problem!

“Google announced this weekend that it has been driving automated cars around California’s roads, and that the vehicles have already logged about 140,000 miles. A fully automated car just finished a big trip,all the way from Google’s campus in Mountain View, California to Hollywood… A Google car drives with the help of a variety of sensors,including cameras on the roof and in front, radars, and laser range finders,which build a detailed map of the car’s surroundings. This information is transmitted to the Google servers and processed to detect and react to any obstacles that get in the car’s way, mimicking the decisions a human driver would make.”

Google's self driving car

“Chance favors the connected mind.” – Steven Johnson

Brings back fond memories of the UPS whiteboard campaign.. but this is fantastic on a whole new level!

Here’s a great clip from TEDx Boston 2010. Seth Priebatsch of scvngr discusses how the last decade was all about the Social Layer (building connections) whereas this decade is all about the Game Layer (influencing behavior), and describes four of the game dynamics already used in society to influence behavior:

1. The appointment dynamic
2. Influence and status
3. The progression dynamic
4. Communal discovery

Seth’s presentation shows how the behavioral influences we take for granted have shaped our lives and influenced our society, from elementary school report cards to Farmville.

IQ just launched this real estate site for SunTrust which demonstrates a simple solution to the problem of exposing foreclosed properties to potential buyers.

The site has three distinct faces: a broker upload site, an administrative suite of tools for property and broker management, and the public-facing web site. The entire site, including the custom content management system, was designed and built in-house.

Just a week after the site launched, the client said that the site has “excellent user experience and design,” is “miles ahead of other meat and potato sites in our industry,” and works equally well on mobile phones and Internet browsers.

So multi-touch is no longer the Minority Report of the future. The iPhone, iPad and iEverything else has helped pave the way for mainstream uhhh… touching. This is all cool and everything, but currently designers are tied to making an application when they want to design for multi-touch. With the release of the Magic trackpad and multi-touch being integrated into so many devices, when will I be able to design a regular website for multi-touch? We are currently in an in-between phase where regular websites needs to be more minimalistic to play nicely with the iStuff and I’m ready to allow our imagination to go wild without having to think about the apple store or multiple platforms.

Since my transition from developer to manager of developers 4 years ago, I’ve been fascinated with art of technology management within an advertising agency environment. While technology management is well documented for software development companies, little exist for the development of complex web applications within a creative based environment. Below are a few high-level thoughts I’ve considered when approaching the art of technical management at an agency.

Organization within an Unorganized Setting
Where as the software development life-cycle is based on months and years the agency development life-cycle is often based on weeks. This is made even more challenging considering requirements tend to be more loosely defined and effected by non-technical stakeholders (the client). The agency environment forces you to have a more of a “run and gun” mentality. While you want to have: objects, requirements and goals clearly defined up front, timelines and bandwidth don’t always allow for it. One true rule of development is that clean organized code is necessary regardless of the size or scope of a project.

Letting Developers Develop
Probably the #1 goal of anyone managing developers is to make sure your developers have everything they need to write great code that can be delivered in a feasible timeline.  While management requires the ability to sit in hours of continuous meetings daily, developers need the ability to write code for continuous amounts of time. Being brought into unnecessary meetings or forced to hunt down project status or assets is a huge detractor to this.  Doing these things for the sake of code being written requires a very selfless mindset.

Ownership of Technical Failure or Success
With a waterfall method being the easiest and most dangerous process to follow, it’s easy for technology to be the last informed of project progress and status.  Early in my career there was a situation where I was told not to attend a meeting by the organizer since “development was not being discussed so you would be wasting your time”. When I told the my boss afterwards he stated in similar situations to tell the organizer that “unless you want to be responsible for the technical success of a project I should attend this meeting and determine if it’s appropriate for myself”. From initial requirements gathering through QA there are enough moving parts to warrant ownership from one individual. For the sake of the project success that person should be technical in nature.

Fighting Upstream
Combined with QA, development is the last  stage in the overall process. This results in being the last informed within the project. Within technology management you have to always make an effort to seek project status and information particularly when you know the project is active. You have to be willing to walk into meetings that you weren’t originally invited to and challenge deliverables from other departments.

Promotion of Innovation
Unlike others areas of the advertising industry, digital is totally based on constantly progressing technical mediums. Rather the output is: desktop browser, mobile or native os applications, there are numerous considerations beyond the design and content which can attribute to the success or failure of a project.  Innovation requires a understanding of theses constantly evolving platform so known boundaries can be challenged. The technical management lead needs to be at the forefront of these trends.