Archives for May 2013

The niches of Google Glass; The work force and the Moms

One part of being at Google I/O last week was eerily like being in a parallel future universe. Everywhere you looked you could see someone in Glass.

The sessions on Glass and developing for the platform were packed to the rafters.

Even though Google didn’t mention Glass in the keynote, it was something that people really wanted to talk about it. The hype is beyond where it is, and Google itself realizes (has from the get go!) that this is a long term play. It is part of Google X after all. The press will want to talk about how Glass is a success or a failure before it is even really released, so Google has to manage any roll out so very carefully.

Mainstream

You can debate if this will hit mainstream. Some argue that is the next step… and that people can get away from reaching into their pockets, or looking at life through their camera phone. Other’s worry about privacy, or say that getting your phone isn’t that big of a deal.

Is Glass as it currently stands: notifications + take photos + take 10 second video enough of a killer app to warrant another device to charge and feel a lil weird wearing?

A few changes could change the balance of the force. If it was always streaming video back and you could switch from “hey take a photo” to “hey, can you save the last 2 minutes as a video for me?” then the entire notion of capturing the moment drastically changes in an exciting way.

Niche

There are also plenty of niches where Glass could be useful earlier than mainstream ones. Most of the ideas are around the work force. The parking attendant who looks at a car and is told (from the license plate) that it has been in that spot too long. The in store worker who can augment the shelf with product information and know what inventory is in the back.

I do not doubt that we will see some great niche solutions soon.

Mom

And then there is the Mom. I recently got a Kindle for my wife even though:

• I always poo poo’d it (I can read just fine on an iPad)
• She has an iPad.

The reason I got it for her was because the kids wouldn’t bug her if she had it open. With an iPad though, the minute they saw it in her hand, they wanted to play a game on it.

The same happens with a phone, which is one reason why my wife’s phone is often in her bag.

With Glass though, the Mom can be always watching, without the kid reaching out. Maybe an early adopter is the Mom this time around?

I work in the mobile group at Walmart Labs, and we are a bridge between the world of eCommerce and brick and mortar stores. As such, we have systems running all the way into the stores themselves.

There was a sobering reminder of how our technology is trying to serve people. It is so easy to get into your work and be thinking about programming languages and architecture and mobile phones.

When you are thinking about the bits you aren’t thinking about the blood flowing through the people that you are trying to empower.

One of our monitoring systems starting alerting us to a problem in systems in an Oklahoma Walmart store. While looking to hunt down the problem (we assumed it was some network issue, or software bug, or the like) we eventually found the source of the “bug” in the news.

A tornado went through towns in Oklahoma causing much destruction to peoples lives.

This was a dark day for the large number of people who are affected by this devastation, and since we are all connected, all of us.

My heart goes out to everyone.

When I look at our dashboard and see a blip, I have a feeling my heart will jump a little, and I won’t jump to any assumptions.

Not focusing on in fighting, but out fighting!

Ben and I are often trying to honestly reflect on the power of the Web, and where the platform fits in with the big picture in 2013.

In the middle of a great chat about Blink, I see this gem from Paul Irish, who I feel also has very honest reflections:

“For me, seeing the mobile web be successful trumps language wars and certainly quibbling over syntax. So I’m happy to see developers embrace the authoring advantages of Coffeescript, the smart subset of JavaScript strict mode, the legendary Emscripten & asm.js combo, the compiler feedback of TypeScript and the performance ambitions of Dart. It’s worth trying out technologies that can leapfrog the current expectations of the user experience that we can deliver. Our web is worth it.”

The Web is a very diverse place, with many tribes. We have all read the books, or seen the movies, where a powerful player tries to get the tribes to all kill each other, making their life a lot easier. The flip side to this is when the tribes band together under a common cause and use their diversity as a weapon. This is what we need to do. I have said before that I think we need to use HTML5 as a jewel that we need to cut into a weapon. Bring that to the current day and we are talking about the entire Web.

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We have a ton of innovation going on in the Web right now. This includes the tech that Paul mentions above (asm.js, CS, etc) and also the grouping of work that fits in nicely to Web Components.

There were two great sessions on Web Components that you should checkout. First we have an intro to it all, and then we have an early look at an approach that wraps it all together and also polyfills to some of the past browsers, allowing you to use it now vs. “some time”. There is still work to be done, and I am not sure how I feel about any performance impact of the HTTP links to resources (need to think about the grouping), and the inline JS, but I think this will all get worked out.

What is so exciting about this world is glimpsed in the examples where components from different frameworks are used together. A bane in the world of the Web has been this situation:

I really like component A from Dojo, but my base is jQuery, and there is this other cool widget from Prototype

Ever had those thoughts? If we can finally get the right abstractions in the platform we can bring the tribes together, and the work that they do will grow by seeing that work combine.

Come on tribes. Let’s do this thing.Time to fight for the user.

Speaking of Google I/O talks by the way: one of the best talks by far from last weeks Google I/O was Paul showing us how freaking awesome the Chrome Dev Tools are getting. Watch the video.