Google Glass needs an update

On Apr 4, 2013, Timothy Jordan from Google gave developers at SXSW in Austin, TX a sneak peek at the Google Mirror API, which is what they'll use to build services for Glass (see YouTube).
A few years ago I experimented with Layar, an app for augmented reality. As AR will be best experienced using see-through devices, I was excited when Google announced their Google Glass project. But, to be honest, after watching the mentioned video, I am a little bit disappointed.
My dissatisfaction focusses on the following 2 key points:

1. Google Glass is not a see-through device at all. It is a tiny screen in the corner of your eyes. Adding digital information to real world objects is not possible. This is one of the main requirements for augmented reality.
2. Google Glass can only be used by programming Google's Mirror API. That means that every bit between the glassses and my application will pass Google's premises. I must admit, it is the very same architectural model Layar uses for their app. But Google is not the company to be trusted about privacy of your data and that didn't count for Layar a few years ago. Having a mandatory man-in-middle service is a little bit scaring.

So, my pred-ICT-ion is, that if Google Glass will break through to the masses, it needs an update. It should have real see-through capabilities and the Google Mirror API would allow to be bypassed for certain data transfers between the glasses and your application.

Paleofuture and pred-ICT-ion about mouse and keyboard

During one of the first innovation sessions about user interfaces at my company in 2008 we challenged the audience with the following: 'within 5 years, mouse and keyboard are obsolete.
'Touch' has already superseded mouse input, at least for most of the interactions, but it did not replace text input by keyboards, nor did voice input. Some argue that keyboards will stay for ever, like Piet Opperman from Henley Management College in his comment on this blog about voice input:

"Two things: I had some bright young people research this issue almost 20 years ago. The conclusion they came to was that the adoption rate would be very slow (that proved to be correct.) Why? It's uncomfortable at first, and it is uncomfortable for a long time.
Next, it changes the relationship with your device. If you press the wrong key, you think "Expletive, I made a mistake." If you say a word, and the device misinterprets it, you think "You dumb expletive, YOU made a mistake."
They also concluded that the improvement in efficiency was minimal at best, sometimes non-existent, and often was the opposite. Typing, proofreading and correcting is faster than speaking, proofreading and editing. Note the difference: "correcting" vs "editing." Our speech "voice" is very different from our writing "voice."
The second thing? You missed quite a few typo corrections. You would have picked them up if you were typing the article."

My pred-ICT-ion for keyboards is in line with Piet's comment: for the next 10 years keyboards will be the number one choice for text input.
 

Windows 8: Office killer app

Now that Microsoft Windows 8 is globally available many people wonder if it will be the next Windows Vista or the next Mobile 5. Well, I am not that pessimistic and I am sure W8 will be adopted by at least 50% of the desktop users. As tablet use increases in enterprises, I am confident W8 tablets will gain its share. Ok, it will never outnumber iPads (not even reach 10% market share), but the full Office license will be the killer app for touch tablets. This is where we were waiting for, it is the next step for laptop users and a cool step.
So my predICTion is that more than 60% of laptop users will swap it for a touch tablet with W8 within 4 years!

Pred-ICT-ion: Layar.com is heading the wrong AR direction

Layar (www.layar.com) started as a very succesfull augmented reality company, by launching their layar browser and content services. But, nowadays, they are fully focussing on adding digital content to print. And in my opinion, that is a great mistake. They should deliver the best environment for augmented reality content creation, for in the near future several interesting devices will become available for consumers, like smart digital windows, AR-glasses and other see-through equipment. My pred-ICT-ion is that Layar will lose ground to companies like Google and Microsoft within 2 years and. I don't understand why Layar is directing to digital print. Pressure of their investors....?

Coders are a dying breed?

Last week our company Centric held a so-called RAD-race, a one-night competition for developers to show their skills on their favorite development platforms. The technology used by our developers is listed below:

1. Microsoft C# .Net using Centric proprietary software factory
2. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 + NinTex
3. Pronto / Bre4all: Centric proprietary software factory, model driven, 4GL-like
4. Microsoft LightSwitch
5. Grails, high-productivity web framework based on the Groovy language
6. <m_twize>: Centric proprietary software factory, model driven, 4GL-like
7. Mendix, see website, agile application development without coding
8. Microsoft C#.Net + NuGet

The assigment consisted of 3 parts:

1. Develop an application for registering software components
1. All CRUD functions
2. Additional processes like alerting owners, requests for change
2. Add multi-tenancy to the application
1. Security is important
3. Add connections to Twitter, Yammer or Facebook

The winning team used SharePoint 2010 with NinTex. Second team used...SharePoint 2010 with NinTex. Third team used Mendix. These teams didn't produce a single line of code!
Our proprietary software factories failed to integrate with social media, but did well for the remainder. The teams using LightSwitch and Grails finished last.

As the one who created the assignment I was really surprised. Can coding no longer keep up with modern development frameworks? We did not perform scientific research nor did we try more complicated tests. But the results made me think.
Let me add a pred-ICT-ion: within 5 years application development will be a practice performed without coding. Coding will be needed to build the frameworks application developers will use and programming will become a high-level profession only a few will attain.

The future of the Cloud is offline storage, at least for mobile devices

An interesting thought of Jeff Belk in an article at gigaom.com: The future beyond the cloud is in our hands. In, let's say 2020, mobile devices will have a capacity of many many terabytes offline storage. Bandwidth and capacity of the mobile carriers will still be a problem according to Jeff. So many companies like Google and Amazon will make use of local storage to put lots of their online content making it available offline. Synchronizing will take place at moments when devices are in reach of local area networks.

To me it is plausible, although it contradicts with one of my own pred-ICT-ions: 'future mobile devices will be small and with limited functionality'. Jeff's prediction might be the situation for rural areas with wide area networks with limited capacity, mine for urban areas where high bandwidth wide area networks like LTE are ubiquitous.

We'll see if our pred-ICT-ions will contrad-ICT or not!

Pred-ICT-ion: future personal mobile devices will be small and with limited functionality

In 2009 SIMYO and Ahead of Time presented the future of mobile media and communication. See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FScddkTMlTc
This film is presenting a summary of key results of the open think tank MOCOM 2020.
It always surprises me what those predictors think of the future role of an hand-held device. It will be larger, smarter, faster, with more bandwith than ever and more powerful. But it will still be there!

My pred-ICT-ion is that the world around us will become smarter, always connected and adaptive to us: a user-centric world. So the need for such a super-device will diminish in my opinion. We might still wear an identification device, for security reasons, although the world around us should recognise us and determine our identity unmistakably. Identification, combined with communication facilities, especially for rural environments which world is less smart than in urban areas.

In short: instead of a super mobile device in 2020 the function of our personal device is limited to identification and live communication. That's it. The world around us will provide us the rest.

Next step is an implanted device....