Author: Scott

Tuesday, March 11th 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

David Hyman CEO, MOG Inc
Nancy Miller Sr Editor, Wired Magazine
Anil Dewan Dir of New Media, KCRW Radio
Tom Conrad CTO, Pandora
Anu Kirk Dir of Product Mgmt/Rhapsody, Rhapsody America LLC

What is going to be the new personalized music experience compared to mainstream radio experience?
-things are moving towards a much more personalized type of radio as wireless networks get more prevalent
-Internet Radio isn’t really radio – more a mode of delivering content to people – that image (radio) can be destructive.
-Infinite number of stations
-interactivity
-metadata (album cover, label)
-future holds community (similar tastes)
-location

How will P2P and internet radio join together in the future?

Three categories of community
-quantitative metadata driven
-qualitative similar bands
-social and community influence

Should traditional radio have an option of taste driven interactive but keep DJ making choices for those who like it?

It is just the platform – “how do we do radio better?” It isn’t about the technology – give the user what they want ignoring how it is delivered. Maybe the challenge is making it easier to find those stations (traditional) that fit your preferences.

Why did we leave traditional radio? Because there was more diversity online. Where is that diversity online? Even satellite radio is lacking some of that diversity.

Pandora is all about getting you want you want – there is nothing about popularity it is a blank slate about coming to your site. We aren’t telling you who is popular, you get what you want and enjoy. Pandora is radio, but there is a lot of good about traditional radio. One button for music another button to change music. Repetition is an important part of it – helps you get what you like. There are many values to radio and it is just how important those values are to your listening experience.

What do the people want in radio? People are falling out of love with music because they can’t get what they used to like when they determined their music preferences. Pandora can get you back into things – but “new is scary.”

There is a certain amount of effort that people are willing to put in when finding and listening to music. Fortunately the possibilities with the internet make that limitless.

The panelists got to a point where they are going at each other a bit trying to figure out “which is better.” Their product is better because of X. The conversation seems to be each of the groups sayin, “some people use our product because of X. Some people like our model.”

Pandora is less than 1% of all internet radio stations. They view their competitors as Clear Channel, Satellite, stuff. They are bigger than any terrestrial radio station.

When will the reality of ubiquitous broadband get internet radio off the ground?
-Pandora is available on some mobile phones Sprint & ATT

RIAA licensing issues:
Ultimately internet radio will survive, but is still up in the air on the royalties officially.
Traditional radio is the music business trying like mad trying to get their music on the air (breaking the law).

Tuesday, March 11th 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Chris Lea Media Temple
Joe Stump Lead Architect, Digg.com Inc
Cal Henderson Badass MC, Flickr
Matt Mullenweg Founding Dev, Automattic/WordPress
Kevin Rose Founder, Diggnation/Digg Inc

Who do you ask about this stuff?
When should you worry about scaling?
-it depends on the app
-it doesn’t really matter for some… just need to worry about a large traffic spike like getting dugg or slashdotted.
-flickr didn’t worry about it early on – they were more concerned about putting together a great app vs. spending the time to concentrate on scaling.

It is good to at the very least take some time to think about how be something could get and have a general idea in place vs. waiting till it is too late. Livejournal has good information on what they have done. Wikipedia’s approach is also available and open.

Netscaler: NOT needed
LVS works – commodity hardware plus OSS works well – Pounce load ballencer

Flickr serves 32k photos per second.

Tuesday, March 11th 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Jane McGonigal Creative Dir, Avant Game
http://www.avantgame.blogspot.com/

Make the real world more like games vs. taking video games to the next level (better graphics etc.)

There is much going on in the area of happiness research – positive psychology. This newer field answers the question, what makes us function well? What makes us happy compared to the core of game design. This field has come up with many new metrics for measuring happiness.

Are developers (or game developers) in the happiness business? By the year 2013, quality of life will become a metric for evaluation of all brands. Communities will begin to form around different visions of a life worth living. Value will be defined a a measure of the quality of life. Happiness is no longer defined with the image of a warm puppy.

What makes us happy?

1. satisfy a work to do item
2. experience of being good at something
3. spending time with people we like
4. chance to be part of something bigger
   *nothing gives you these more than games*
   *multiplayer games are the ultimate happiness engine*

Signals:
“I’m not good at life” we can do things in games that we can’t do in the real world.
-better instructions in games vs. real world
-better feedback in games
-better community in games

Problem: global mass exodus towards game worlds. There is a perception that quality of life in games or the virtual world is beating reality.

ARG games:
ChoreWars – points for doing chores in real life
Zyked – exercise
Serios – pay for certain tasks at work ($ for a meeting etc.)
Citizen Logistics – game to help other people
World Without Oil – what would the world be like?

“To imagine the future, always look back at least as far into the past.”
Soap kills germs 1931 ad. Why not think the same way about games? Games kill alienation/anxiety/depression

How ARG’s amplify human happiness:
-Mobbability – ability to collaborate on a large scale
-Influency – ability to adapt persuasion based on a person or personality
-Cooperation Radar – track strengths in certain people and see their individual values
-Ping Quotient – ability to reach out and network
-Multi Capitalism – different capital gets you different returns
-Protovation – rapid fearless innovation – the more you fail, the more you learn
-Open Authorship – able to give things away and modify in a positive way
-Signal Noise Management – know which info is relevant
-Longbroading – zoom out and see the big picture
-Emergensight – spot patterns as they pop up
*all of these optomise the quality of life*

Where to go next? Twitter is a good interface. The Nike iPod needs a game interface. How about the sniff network for dogs? Trackstick GPS tracker, SFQ.com

Thelostring.com – olympic ARG to find a new sport never played before.

-soon we’ll be in the happiness business
-games are good for improving our quality of life
-AR signals the need for all of us to redesign reality

Tuesday, March 11th 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Samuel Felder Sr Designer, University of Southern California

How is your team put together?
Departments do what they want essentially. Set up as for hire group in IT. Set up web council and when creating central content, create an API or pattern library for designs (yahoo). Opened course catalog for people to use as they chose.

The API’s were created for the class schedule and events calendar. Push events into facebook etc. Also provide a way to pull events into dept sites.

Who has guidelines for navigation and look?
IT – programming services – – Communications – design and branding
or
mishmash where you do what you want
U of Kansas has a good branding policy/docs/site

U of Chicago redesign used a consulting firm for interviews with stakeholders to determine the best direction to go and determine the internal dev priorities. The homepage is just the traffic cop where interest and information is mainly on the 2nd levels. When putting together the new site, don’t talk about the look, just talk about the users.

Use of Flickr API for asset management

Harvard: Empower students to create content or watch the trends an follow up with them. They know the newest things out there and are using them. Their knowledge can be harnessed to use and maintain those resources. Sponsor dev contests and hack days to build on resources.

Student blogging:
MIT has a great student blog that gives a view into what goes on at a university – REAL experiences.

-Google Analytics is a great tool that many many universities are using for stats.

How do you do ID management for perspective students who aren’t yet in the system? OpenID is a good option since many of the email providers they are using support OpenID with a single sign-on

Tuesday, March 11th 10:00 am – 11:00 am

Kate Ryan Sr Content Strategist, Ten Digital
Kyle Outlaw Sr Information Architect, Avenue A | Razorfish
Scott Jenson Google
Karen Kaushansky Sr UX Engineer, Tellme
Loic Maestracci Dir of Mktg, Groove Mobile

iPhone Fun Facts:
-200 patent filings
-$150 million on development
-1 year of work to get ATT deal
-ATT gets 5 year exclusive
-Apple built human head models to test the phone
-SDK will allow VOIP via wifi

Voice in data out easier to say something to get a restaurant vs. typing in a restaurant type or food.
What is comfortable and safe for people using a device while driving?

Google.com must owrk in every small browser on all phones – iPhone browser on all phone – iPhone browser changes all the rules. It can handle everything vs. most mobile browsers.

iPhone is a very big change in how we think of mobile phones.
Music delivery on a phone: UK is looking for web based music
US looking for a client to download an play.

iPhone leads to disruptive mobile industry in both UI and apps.
User experience changes – simple wireframes are gone and companies have to be more creative with the interface.

smartbox.com – phone barcode
Newsbreaker.com – share and report names
Food Ninja – iphone food and restaurant finder

What do you love/hate about the iPhone?
L: many want to interact – works well! HTC doesn’t work as well with the interface.
H: doesn’t do simple phone tasks well (calls, sms, send video)

L: audacity of design – no menu system or scrollbars is amazing! Unlimited data required, simple easy to play around with phone very simple to use.
H: “Web in your pocket” is still hard

L: Visual voice mail (not painful to listen to message 7 of 12)
H: hard o make phone calls (driving)

L: Mobile user experience is great – shutters the myth that phones need to be complicated
H: hardware/software unseperable – open platforms/access better

Design of the iPhone
enable desktop in mobile
Who else is taking design seriously?
Sony Erikson is trying to push things a bit – media UI similar to PSP

Screens don’t take advantage of voice and voice doesn’t take advantage of screens

iPhone stripped things down to core features – many phones have more features than needed – or the features they have aren’t done well.

Other phones to look at:
Sidekick – nice keyboard, but a bit too big – now that MS has them things could change
PSPSlim – use Skype on it

Open Access:
Google android and iPhone SDK gives users the ability to access and develop for the platform. Currently carries control the channel Current phones are a consumer of information. At some point they need to be a producer of information.

Wish Killer Apps
Luggage search application (know if/when it is on the wrong plane)
Shell to get information from – cloud based on where you are (car, desk, living room, etc.)
Infinite battery life!

Continue the conversation at http://lifeafteriphone.ning.com