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Posts Tagged ‘Use Case’

Keepin’ it real fake: iPhone hits discount retailers as an eyeshadow palette

Now, these may have been around for ages, we can’t really be sure because, truth be told, it’s pretty rare for us to troll the aisles of Kohl’s makeup section looking for KIRFs. Regardless, a helpful, hawk-eyed reader snapped this shot of an eyeshadow palette — called eyemobile — that’s got the distinct iPhone aura going on, though we’re 100 percent certain this is an unauthorized use case. It’s hard to say from the photo, but it also looks like there’s a lip gloss palette in the background (which we assume is called lipmobile), and that, friends, we would pay money for. Lots of money.

[Thanks, Bill]

Keepin’ it real fake: iPhone hits discount retailers as an eyeshadow palette originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An Ecosystem Is Born: Animoto Opens Up API

We’re big fans of Animoto, a website that lets you easily create photo and video slideshows matched to music. The site is constantly innovating its nifty product, most recently adding an iPhone app and the ability to incorporate video. For those not familiar with Animoto, the startup basically allows you to take your images, video and your music and mash them together to create cool videos. What makes the videos cool is the company’s technology that renders the pictures so they’re in-step with the music you’ve chosen, adding nice transition effects. This morning, Animoto is opening up its API, allowing partners to now incorporate Animoto’s compelling technologies into independent sites

The first API that being rolled out for the Animoto Partner Platform is Animoto Quickstart.  The API essentially allows any website to tap into Animoto’s video creation flow.  The aim is to make Animoto one click away from any website that has photos, videos or music.  Quickstart allows websites to connect their own content, including photos, video clips and music to Animoto as the first step in creating an Animoto video. So partners can integrate Animoto’s video slideshow creation tool into their sites. And the startup promises that Quickstart takes only hours to a partner to set up on a site.

For example, SmugMug, a photo sharing site that caters to professional photographers, uses Quickstart so users can ‘pass’ their photo albums into Animoto’s video creation flow. So the user now has the option of making a slideshow from their hosted photos and simply needs to pick a song to complete their Animoto video. Once a user clicks to make the slideshow, he or she will be taken to Animoto’s site, where their video and photos will automatically be placed into Animoto’s site.

Another use case is a promotion Animoto is launching with iconic musician John Bon Jovi where fans of Bon Jovi can go to Bonjovi’s site to create an Animoto music video with Bon Jovi’s latest single and footage from his music video.  Pepsi also used the Quickstart API to help users create video slideshows in a contest involving its ShareTheJoy campaign.

With the launch of this API at SXSW, Animoto is partnering with music publication SPIN magazine to allow fans to promote their favorite South by Southwest bands for a chance to win prizes.
From now until March 31, 2010, fans can create and submit Animoto videos featuring songs from top South by Southwest bands for a chance to win $1000 and a spot on Spin.com, and other prizes.
 
Currently Animoto has 1.4 million users and makes money off of its paid subscriptions. On its site its free to create 30 second videos, but you need to pay $3 per video to make an lengthier slideshow. The site sells a year long subscription to users for $30. A large part of Animoto’s subscription business is composed of professional videographers and photographers who pay $250 per year to create their own branded videos that they can download, and burn to a CD (and the slideshow doesn’t bear the “Animoto” logo). Animoto’s CEO Brad Jefferson tells me that 10 percent of users, so 140,000 people, are have paid for at least one product on the site.The company is already cash-flow positive, which isn’t bad for a startup that’s less than three years old.

In terms of monetizing the API, Animoto isn’t charging any of its partners. In fact, it’s actually paying its partners in terms of affiliate fees. So if any partners lead new users to the site who end up buying a subscription, Animoto will give the partner a 40 percent cut of the first year’s consumer subscription fee or $50 of the first years pro subscription fee.

The Quickstart API seems to be the first of a few sets of APIs that will extend Animoto’s technology onto the other sites. It’s a smart move. While many photo sharing sites have the ability to make slideshows, the technology is not nearly as fun and easy to use as Animoto’s. And Animoto is undoubtedly a compelling tool for an brand marketer to use for a campaign. Frankly, the possibilities are endless because Animoto is such an easy tool to use.

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Why The iPad May Save The Internet Fridge

In part 1 of our interview with Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, we discussed the impact of the iPhone and other smartphones on the Internet of Things.

In Part 2, we explore how the Apple iPad may also become a key device. Adam Greenfield thinks it may become the missing link between Internet-connected items in your home, for example the Internet fridge, and the Web.

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In yesterday’s post, we talked about how Asian cities are ahead of the curve in deployment of Internet of Things technologies. One reason is that quality of life can be more easily be delivered as a service in a country like Korea, because its citizens are more open to futuristic appliances like the Internet fridge.

The counter-argument is that the Western market has never taken to the Internet fridge because of the poor utility of such appliances. The answer may be a device that acts as an effective intermediary between the fridge and the Internet. The iPad could be that device.

Adam Greenfield explained to me that the iPad may become the kind of device that people carry around with them everywhere inside the house, from the lounge to the bedroom to the kitchen.

That got me to thinking. Imagine this use case: you’re feeling peckish, so you wander into the kitchen for a snack. Your trusty iPad is tucked under your arm, as usual, and you place it on the kitchen bench while you open the fridge. You guiltily pick up a chocolate bar and you’re about to close the fridge door when your iPad beeps. You glance at the iPad, where a diet management iPad app has automagically opened and is flashing the message: "Hey buddy, you’ve already had too many calories today – put that back!" Blushing, you return the chocolate bar into the fridge and pick up a punnet of strawberries instead. You glance back at your iPad, which now displays a large green check mark on its screen!

There are many other scenarios I could describe, but the point is the iPad may well become a linking device between Internet-connected appliances and objects in your house, and the Web.

Adam Greenfield explained that the mistake we’ve made with Internet fridges in the past was to think of them like a dumb sensor. He remarked that it’s not the instrumentation that is important in an Internet fridge – it’s the network.

The data will probably be collected by the fridge, in time via RFID-enabled food packaging. But the fridge itself is a clumsy interface to that data. Early examples of Internet fridges have tried to be an interface for the consumer. Although some have had tablet-like devices that could be disconnected from the fridge and used on the kitchen bench, users have not found even those very compelling. There are a variety of reasons, including limited utility of fridge-tablets, poor user experience, and the sheer awkwardness of attaching a tablet to and from a fridge.

The iPad, however, will be used anywhere and everywhere by its users – inside and outside the house. So it’s a natural device to use to connect (virtually, not physically) to your fridge – along with other appliances and objects.

This isn’t restricted to inside the house either. We’ve written before about cars as a service. This is where you, the consumer, can effectively subscribe to a car or a car provider. This is already happening with the American service Zipcars. Greenfield noted that cars will become a "network resource" – addressable, scriptable, queryable, and so on. And once again, the iPad may be the device which connects you to cars and all of the data that is pumped out by cars and connected web services.

In the not too distant future, household appliances and other real-world objects such as cars will be connected to the Internet. The iPad may well become the connector to all of those things.

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We’re Still Not Facebook: Lessons from Late Adopters

This week thousands of visitors arrived at ReadWriteWeb thinking we were the new Facebook and asking us how to login. The phenomenon came about as mainstream audiences were directed to our story via Google search for “Facebook login”. While RWW’s regular tech readers found the mistake amusing, it perhaps speaks to the fact that there are huge variables in user interaction.

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A few months ago Betaworks’ Andrew Weissman wrote an article entitled, Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply where he tells entrepreneurs to step outside of their insular worlds. He writes, “[It] can mean not believing what other people say or write about your service – good or bad – it is the use case that matters, not the chatter.”

In our world of tech media, it’s easy to forget that there is a large group of users who type terms like “Facebook login” into Google search. Could you imagine if we’d written an article entitled, “Bank of America Wants to Be Your One True Password”? We might all be sipping margaritas in the Grand Cayman right now.

If a huge audience can’t understand the difference between a blog and a social networking site, how are we supposed to explain the concepts of OAuth and OpenID? If you’re a startup entrepreneur, step outside of your own world of early adopters and look at your product through the eyes of a n00b. While we didn’t mean to confuse Facebook users, the traffic on this week’s login post is proof that the late adoption audience is a valuable group to consider.

Photo Credit: Dave Olson

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Cartoon: A Use Case for the iPad

Ah, yup. Between the price point, the locked-down App Store approach, the spiffy design, the tech specs, the lack of camera, the lack of multitasking, the lack of phone, the cool iBook Store, the corny iBook shelves, the impending transformation of personal computing, the impending collapse of Apple stock, the green light for 3G voice-over-IP apps, the telco deals, the publisher deals, the rumor fact checks, the comparisons with Windows, the Kindle-killing, the not-Kindle-killing and the just-have-to-wait-and-see, all of the good points are taken.

Okay, except maybe pointing out how disappointed cartoonists are that there’s no pressure-sensitive stylus. But That Would Be Self-Serving, so I won’t say it.

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I’m sure there are probably a few more sanitary-napkin jokes left waiting in the wings (Anyone joke about a Maxi model yet? They did? Bugger.) but I’d like to think I’m above that. (Addendum: Alex tells me that “wings” is also circulating as an iPad joke. God, I’m clueless about this stuff. Is there a course I can take somewhere? Or maybe an app?)

All I can say is this: Dollhouse wrapped on Friday night, and I’m just about certain that even if the zombie apocalypse was brought about, not by the depradations of the Rossum Corporation, but by an iPad OS update that went horribly, horribly wrong… I’d still want one of the gorgeous damn things.

More Noise to Signal.

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Arrayent Called The Cisco of Internet of Things

Arrayent is a new Internet of Things company being billed as the "Cisco of small things." It is basically middleware for companies wanting to connect their products to the Internet. In particular it’s targeting smartphones, which is a trend we’re closely tracking too. Arrayent made its first public appearance earlier this month at CES.

Arrayent offers a "turnkey communication system" called the Internet-Connect System, which enables product companies to connect their products to smartphones and computers via the Internet. It counts toy company Mattel and audio/video components supplier Monster Cable among its early customers.

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"There was a lot more interest in connecting products to the Internet this CES over 2009," according to Arrayent Vice President of Sales and Marketing Bob Dahlberg. He told ReadWriteWeb that there were two segments in particular that were interested in Arrayent’s system.

The first was "greener home / home automation suppliers in the z-wave / zigbee camp," who are looking for ways to connect their customers’ home LANs to remote diagnosis and repair suppliers.

The second use case Arrayent saw at CES was companies in the home health monitoring space, who were looking for a way to "connect their products to web based applications such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault or [their] health provider’s system."

A big part of Arrayent’s marketing pitch is that it is a lower cost alternative to connecting products to the Internet. According to the company, it is "1/3 to 1/10 the cost of alternative (piece part) solutions."

Arrayent hangs its marketing hat on the emerging trend of Internet-connected consumer appliances. As other examples of this trend, Arrayent notes Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iTouch, Nordic Track’s iFit and Schlage’s home automation product LiNK (mentioned in this August 2009 post).

The company has identified the following applications as potential markets for it to pursue:

• Energy and water monitoring and control from a smartphone or web browser.
• Home control (door locks, home security, window shades, smoke alarms, pipe freeze alarm, flood alarms, power strips, thermostats, appliances.)
• Toys and entertainment devices such as e-book readers, personalized radio, and connected physical toys.
• Home health and presence monitoring that connect patients to doctors and family members.
• Automobile location services, remote control access, and engine monitoring.

Arrayent is an interesting company, because it has correctly identified a gap in the massive consumer products market. According to the company, most consumer product companies "lack Internet-connect expertise." I agree with that assessment and think that Arrayent is positioning itself well to provide that expertise.

Given the potential of Internet of Things to revolutionize consumer products – because a great many more products will become Internet-connected in the coming years – we’re picking Arrayent as one to watch.

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Stantum multitouch Slate PC prototype hands-on

We’ve had a few run-ins with Stantum before, and never came away less than impressed. This time they sent us their Slate PC concept, which is actually a hacked-up Dell mini 10. The 10-inches of real estate don’t seem to hamper Stantum’s multitouch, ultra-sensitive and pressure-simulating resistive touchscreen technology one bit. Unfortunately, with stock Windows 7 on here we’re not sure this makes much more of a compelling use-case for a “slate” computer than we’ve seen already littering the halls of CES. Read-on for our full impressions and a video tour.

Continue reading Stantum multitouch Slate PC prototype hands-on

Stantum multitouch Slate PC prototype hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Devs Hack iPhone API for True Augmented Reality

An international team of computer scientists has created software that lets anyone perform on-the-fly analysis of live streaming video on the iPhone. Used alongside existing methods of displaying data on top of the camera’s view, this new functionality signals a fundamental change in the kinds of Augmented Reality (AR) that iPhone developers can create. Existing AR apps, like Yelp, Layar, Wikitude and others display data on top of a camera’s view but don’t actually analyze what the camera sees. This new development changes that.

The iPhone has a private API for analysis of live-streaming video but developers’ requests that it be made accessible haven’t been granted by Apple. The new software opening up access to that API was made freely available to anyone this morning by the team that built it.

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The Visual Media Lab at Ben Gurion University in collaboration with HIT Lab NZ wrote the code in question and unveiled it along with video demonstrations at the AR-specialist blog Games Alfresco today. The unveiling comes just days before the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Orlando, Florida.

In a demonstration video the team showed how software built on top of the now-exposed API could look at a 2D image drawn on paper and render the image in 3D. Then the 3D rendering is subjected to a physics simulation.

This is of course just one use-case. Video AR-enabled software could do almost anything in direct response to the actual images seen through the iPhone’s camera view, in real time. Image processing locally will be easier and faster than comparison with a large number of related images, something that would likely require some connection to the cloud, but these are early days.

GamesAlfresco author Ori Inbar calls this the dawn of an era of “user-generated Augmented Reality.”

For the first time ever, the core code necessary for real augmented reality (”real” here means precise alignment of graphics overlaid on real life objects) on iPhone 3.0 is available to the public

How will Apple respond? That’s a big question; the company has had an ambivalent relationship with the emerging field of Augmented Reality so far and exercises infamously obtuse control over applications distributed through its app store.

For now the code is being distributed for its creators by Ori Inbar, whose email address to request it is available at the conclusion of his coverage on GamesAlfresco.

The possibilities here are huge. While location-based AR is clumsy at best so far, due to the imprecise nature of GPS and mapping data, these kinds of object-centric AR tied to the actual viewed world open up a whole new world of potential developments. Let’s see what you’ve got, AR devs of the world!

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