Total Active Apps (currently available for download): 134,215 
Total Inactive Apps (no longer available for download): 16,382
Total Apps Seen in US App Store: 150,597
Number of Active Publishers in the US App Store: 29,340 - source http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics/?mpage=appcount

That has created a lush application environment for the new multi-touch 10″ tablet. (All specifications are speculations based on the flurry of information floating around the inter webs). The failure of other Tablets to truly gain mass adoption has come down to the fact that they have been computers that convert into a tablet. They maintained the same start menu UI with application windows and the likes that we see in our PC’s and Laptops.

The potential power of this seed change comes in the overhaul of interface. Even it’s only a larger iPhone multi-touch model I can see a much greater adoption even if only for the games. My wife and I play Scrabble and I can see this becoming the new board game of choice with all sorts of add on’s and extensions. The other big potential is in the reader space where a B&W Kindle looks weak next to a sexy Apple tablet.

Here is a great concept video on user interface and rich media consumption of magazine styled content that could save the print industry.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

All of this is of course a pre-cursor to the coming projected UI. Now that will revolutionize computing forever. Mobile HD access to data that you touch and manipulate thats my dream UI.

Fast forward to last week and I find myself with a Google Wave account and now that I actually have my hands on Wave it’s time to dust off the idea. So I started doing some research and what should I come across but this article Google Wave for Filmmakers: A Concept and said well I must not be too crazy if others had put so much thought into this idea as well.

So I left this comment :

Brilliant! I love this ball and will roll with it until I am using it to create collaborative media on a daily bases. Imagine if you will hooking the API to the open source Celtx – http://celtx.com – (all-in-one media pre-production software) Just from having the Wifi feed the video into the WAVE feeding Celtx you could do things like:
drop still’s into story board
adjust scene length based on footage
script annotate video edits
adjust scheduling based on amount of actual footage shot
These are just a few for only a segment of what you COULD do. Going to write up more ideas over on my blog.

Great work and I would love to “brain storm” more ideas with you drop me an email.

Keep up the good work!
Johnny

So this is the post I spoke of in the comment.

Let me expand on other options for how we might use Google Wave.

***note- Thank you to my unwilling participants in the sample blips.

So first scouting a location

Scouting a Location

Second is choosing talent (imagine a bot that replies to the appropriate agent when the talent is chosen)

Choosing Talent

I also added a bit of script notes about character development I can see a ton of potential for script writing and collaboration. Hook this to Celtx or other production software using the Google API.

The third example is integrating Robots into the process with video examples.

Adding Robots to the Production Wave

The elephant in the room that I have not talked about yet is the ability to use this to proof shots. Imagine if you will the wifi camera idea posed by Jonathan in his blog post ties to a Final Cut Server that has the ability to publish to embeddable video platform. The editors could rough cut push and embed the video for feed back directly into Wave. Excuse me I am starting to drool.

Now I know looking at the current state of a limited release product it is hard to see beyond the current state of blips and the choppy small Waves. But go with me on this and imagine the epic Wave and you just rode it out.

Like this Dude you might call me crazy but COWABUNGA I’m droppin’ in!

Sparks Will Fly!

Come prepared for an exclusive ideas exchange and an electrifying romp inside the heads of such luminaries as:

• Dan Wieden, legendary advertising guru and co-founder of Weiden + Kennedy
• Bill Oakley, creative genius, writer and producer known for his work on TV’s popular, The Simpsons
• Emek “The Thinking Mans Poster Artist”
• Larry Brooks Writer and Former Texas Rangers Pitcher

How are you developing your overlaid User Interface as we push forward into our machine enhanced existence?

With brand you on display are you invisible or engaging and interacting with your audiences like never before. Understanding the Psychosocial implications for technological implementation of improving our interfaces to machines and each other is something that will forever change our lives. We have sat to long tethered to a key board and mouse and it is time to take back our work environments and cast off this twentieth century shackle.

Who’s with me?

Looks like IBM and Wimbledon are in

The perils of the economic landscape of banking an finance has created and bust like none in a generation and the digital natives are looking at the boomers and gen-Xer’s  going whoa! The MONEY ship struck the iceberg someone call Cameron and get Leo and Kate to the front of the boat because we are all going down.

This has been the sentiment from the mass “hysteria” media and something we all felt in our 401k’s and worse yet foreclosure. So now the dust has settled a bit or the life rafts are full. What do we do as a post internet culture ? The best question however is how do we help the most effected and how to handle and manage our credit score in 2009.

I found this nice call to action to the banking industry to understand the web 2.0ishness of the state of the web from back in 2007 but it is still a good start for any financial industry conversation.

I hope you are not here but if you are going through bankruptcy you should know this. After the U.S. Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, the Executive Office for United States Trustees (EOUST) was charged with coordinating the development of a list of approved providers of credit counseling and debtor education courses. http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/mps/manual/eoust.htm

I also found this very interesting for those going through bankruptcy. According to a 2009 survey, consumers who received pre-bankruptcy counseling exhibited significantly improved credit profiles in as little as two years when compared to consumers who did not receive pre-bankruptcy counseling. Of the clients who received pre-filing bankruptcy counseling, 15.2 percent were able to avoid filing bankruptcy due to the counseling and resources received. http://www.nbkrc.com/news.aspx

Consumers who entered a debt management plan had a significantly lower incidence of bankruptcy filing
Pre-BAPCPA Credit Counseling Clients – 28.9% vs 19.8%.
Post-BAPCPA Credit Counseling Clients - 30.4% vs 17.3%.
Post-BAPCPA Pre-BK Clients – 92.5% vs 58.2%.
Of the clients who received pre-filing bankruptcy counseling, 84.8 percent went on to file for bankruptcy and 15.2 percent did not file bankruptcy during the study period.
Credit counseled consumers who filed for bankruptcy had lower dismissal rates in comparison to the national sample for both Chapter 7 (1.6 percent vs. 2.1 percent) and Chapter 13 (30.9 percent vs. 44.6 percent) filings.

An organization who has come to my attention that is doing a lot in this area is Money Management International (MMI).
With a $16 million grant from NeighborWorks America - the largest grant amount awarded to a housing counseling agency working to support the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 - MMI offers free counseling to families at risk of losing their homes through the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program. This program is designed to help consumers understand the complex foreclosure process, review their options and identify a possible course of action, and make informed decisions. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS187293+22-Jan-2009+BW20090122

The process of educating and mitigation of the needless foreclosure and or bankruptcy needs to be forefront of the discourse on the stimulus recovery activities we as a world are facing. It is time for the consumer to evolve and take back control of our financial futures and work with educators and experts to create the fastest economic rebound in world history. We are primed to retool our economies and our personal financial futures through the leveraging of technological innovations as well as the human where with all that has seen us through two world wars and the original depression.

Buck up and take charge of your tomorrow. Evolve with the digital world or stand in analog static forever.

Here is the full IO video - so when you find yourself with an hour and 20 to spare, if you have not all ready seen it.

If you jump to 7:32 they start the actual demo thanks Philipp Lenssen

So much has been said all ready
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-drips-with-ambition-can-it-fulfill-googles-grand-web-vision/
http://www.reuters.com/article/bigMoney/idUS356338050520090601

From Google Wave Site:

The Google Wave API is an open platform allowing developers to extend the functionality of Google Wave itself, or extend other applications with waves. As a developer, you can think of Google Wave as three pieces:

* The Google Wave client application, the interface designed for users
* The Google Wave APIs, which are documented throughout this site
* The Google Wave Federation Protocol, the underlying network protocol for wave communication

We truly do need to redefine the communication paradigm and move beyond our weak threaded emails and 140 character tweets of A.D.D. communication. The ability to move through the conversation back and forth and the play back integrated with the bots and automation that can occur wrapped in OSS third party API openness send me to a giddy state but I might just be twisted like that.

Any company solution or tool that gives me power over the volume and dysfunctional interface that is today’s social web gives me hope that we are overcoming our limited interface challenges of the last century, think keyboard, monitor etc. in the user interface experience we are building towards.

WOW as I write this I get this

BBC-
Microsoft has unveiled its new control system for the Xbox 360 console, at E3 in Los Angeles.

Project Natal is a fully hands-free control system that will use face recognition and motion sensors to allow users to play games.

Well interface meet innovation get ready for our constructed interactive social experiences. When we as a culture get off the couch and interact via the internet infrastructures and the visions of Lanier and the virtual realities of the past come into existence today. Where fictionalized imaginative stories as well as face to face business applications meet mid telepresence and an escalation in the console wars just occurred without changing the “box”. Now that’s a 360!

Two Thumbs up to both technologies!

I make no claim as to my expert nature for such a monumental task as to writing the users manual for the modern day web but I know the “wisdom”, or folly for that matter, of the crowds can help to define it. I am going to publish all the materials and am asking my class and the rest of the InterWebs to chime in and help to craft an interconnected conversation.

As a part of this I am putting out a tip jar (only to cover fee for an about us spotlight for site marketing purposes for right now)

My ultimate goal would be to put the Web Manual into the public domain however the conversations in my class about modern culture include the remix and mash up cultures of the 21st century. This makes such attempts to very very vexing so my license has to be

The Web Manual by Everyone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

The social effect has changed how we interact online and off. It has also evolved how brand is engaged and its effectiveness is measured. Understanding internet strategy in 2009 one must know for example that the 90-9-1 rule (90% view 9% contribute from time to time 1% account for most contributions) is a site based analytical instrument but does not necessarily apply to a population. A greater understanding can be gained through the attention and interactivity of a consumer’s behavior. Forester speaks to this through its Social Technographics which seeks to profile online social behaviors. I would assert that to measure this nonlinear, multi-platform experience one needs to look at all transmedia touch points to garner effective metrics.

It is not merely all about eye balls and traffic but about the development of affinity with a brand. Henry Jenkins in his book Convergence Culture refers to the vigilant viewers of a show who will go to great lengths to solve a puzzle or engage with media. I espouse the what others have called brand ambassadors or evangelists are evolving into a hybrid of the vigilant viewer and brand ambassador where the evangelism is happening at the water cooler, via SMS messages and in the mash ups of media that extend your message. This shift in the cultural dynamic that we as consumers have with our tools, technologies and products is played out across these multiple touch points and the need for good transemedia analytics is paramount to understanding effectiveness.

With that said, understanding internet strategy is not all about numbers and metrics but the creative process as well. To provide the audience with a story worth hearing, be that humorous, dramatic or curious in nature the desired effect is to engage the consumer and get them to interact. It is the artisans ability to mix the binary analytical mindset with the myriad of creative ideas into an effective experience.

Digital - available in electronic form; readable and manipulable by computer.

Ethnography- a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures.  (source:dictionary.com)

Examination of culture in the digital age has evolved and understanding these changes is key for any modern ethnography.  Convergence culture has become an integrated part of media creation and the lines between producers and audiences is radically changing. From the “we are the media” mantra of content creation to fan fiction meets wikiality the way content is generated is  changing. Observing digital culture we see an ever extended array of tools that brings our life experiences into our social graph online. The strategies employed to use these tools effectively are what I focus on.

In the not to distant future our rapidly changing user interface (UI) will bring our online lives and our real lives completely together.  With technologies like Augmented Reality and the  annotation of the planet, our heads up display of the world will be mixed with data and digital feeds from our trusted networks. Mobile platforms are just beginning to show the potential for a real time digital overlay for our lives. As our culture moves towards a constantly connected cyber-society we will need to redefine knowledge. The ability to process and manage research tools will become a integral part of our constantly connected selves. The ability to filter this ocean of data at our fingertips becomes a critical skill we must learn and apply if we are to be effective and knowledgeable in this cyber-society.

The purpose of this blog is to examin our Digital Evolution.