How the Apple iSlate could change the way we work

(article from Maddock Douglas Innovation Engine by Brett Miller, originally titled "New Product Innovation: Apple iSlate Tablet Set to Change the Fundamentals... Again")

Some are saying its arrival is the beginning of the end for the old mouse and keyboard (insert sad violin music here.) Others are claiming it’ll flop (we all remember the Newton – at least most of us do.)

Yes, we’re talking about the apple tablet—now speculatively named iSlate. But, instead of making predictions about iSlate’s features, (there’s plenty of blogs and articles covering that aspect) we want to de-tech the tablet and talk cause and effect.

Let’s start here: what do we know?

The iSlate will be flat. Hold on, don’t roll your eyes yet. This may seem like a boring observation, but lets look at it a bit harder.

As of now, we work on our desktop or notebook computers by sitting in a chair and looking straight ahead at a screen. And everything around that screen? It’s been designed for optimal viewing, comfort and health. But before 1981, when the first Personal Computer was purchased, we were using typewriters. Yeah, remember those? And before that, it was paper. But something interesting happened in between paper and typewriters—the position of the page. Typewriters began what the PC finished—an upright page demanded a sitting, looking straight ahead body position. That transition began to define the design of products all around us. Ironically though, before paper, what did we use? Clay tablets. (The Summerians were transcribing cuneiform into these tablets before papyrus got its start.) Oh, what a cyclical web we weave.

So, even though it’s probable that the iSlate may have a dock that positions it similarly to a laptop or desktop computer, (old habits are hard to break,) the option to utilize the iSlate it in its native position may win out. And, if this is the case, imagine how this could affect everything around us. Imagine the world, re-invented to fit flat top technologies. Everything from chairs to desks to lighting to classrooms to entire office complexes could experience a rebirth of design. And because efficiency optimized design must also work together as seamlessly as possible with other products, flat top technology, if widely adopted, could have a sizeable domino effect on other industries. Imagine parks, restaurants, roadways, etc. all designed with flat top technology as the catalyst.

Every one is talking tech in regard to iSlate, but if we widen our view a little, we can see the parallel industries it can touch, the change that can be created by that friction, and, the best part of it all—the opportunities that can be found in that change.

What do you think the future of mobile computing would look like if we all had a device similar to the iSlate?

Here's one for iPhone Lovers: The Find My iPhone Hunt

As my friend Paulo would put it, "I'm more impressed with Google than Apple." But to pacify Mac & iPhone fans, here's a story about the Find My iPhone feature working in real life.

A LiveJournal blog entry by happywaffle describes how he lost his iPhone in a bar in Chicago, uses a 3G USB donggle connected to a Macbook to track down the phone into a Latino neighborhood and gets the thief to hand the phone over.

Here's an exerpt of the blog entry:

So I felt like about zero cents, but then we giddily realized that I had *just* activated the brand-new Find My iPhone service. Even better, Mark had a Sprint (yes, Sprint) USB dongle giving him Internet access over 3G on his MacBook Pro. Excited to try it out, we hopped onto me.com and clicked the Find My iPhone link.

"Your iPhone is not connected to a data network or does not have Find My iPhone enabled."

Well, crap. I guess all bets are off if the thieving person has the bright idea to turn the iPhone off. Oddly the phone still rang when we called it, suggesting it wasn't off; but, one way or the other, it was unable to broadcast itself to Apple so I could track it down. We sent a message to the phone - "CALL 512-796-xxxx" - but no luck. The MobileMe website said it would send me an email when the message had been displayed, but no email arrived.

Dejected, we prowled the bar one more time, but it wasn't that big a place and there weren't any places for the phone to be hiding. Game over. We went back to the hotel and I was disconsolate. This morning we checked again with no additional luck, and when Mark tried dialing the phone around noon, it *did* go straight to voicemail. The odds of ever seeing the phone again were slim to say the least.

After lunch, while at the Lego convention, I checked my email...

Holy crap! I jumped back to me.com and clicked Find My iPhone again, and to my absolute shock and amazement, it displayed Google Maps and drew a circle around Medill St.

The block was about four or five miles west of the bar. It was too perfect to be a random glitch.

The full blog entry here.

Now I don't find this iPhone feature/service truly unique or superior. Location-based services and 3G broadband access havw been available for quite some time now. It's just amusing that regular folk can do stuff like these without all the technical know-how, just with expensive, cool-looking gadgets selling like hotcakes that glorify yesterday's technological advances like it was a God-given gift to humanity. Apple is for dumb blondes, I would say.

Now, before I start sounding like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, I will end this post.

From AdAge Digital: Bringing Back CREATIVE in Online Advertising

I've never been a fan of online banner ads, nor an avid fan of Apple products. I do look up to them though for their creativity and innovation. Maybe it's the pompousness and the eliteness of Apple that turns me off. And maybe it's the intrusiveness of banner advertising that I don't believe in. But I'm definitely a fan of sparks of creativity especially when recognition is due. 

Happy reading!

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Apple Ads Breathe New Life Into Online Creative

TBWA/Media Arts Lab's 'Mac Vs. PC' Synched Banners Inspire Sharing Among Consumers

By Abbey Klaassen 

Published: March 30, 2009

Illustration: Pete McDonell

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- At an industry conference almost a year ago, Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer of TBWA/Media Arts Lab, deplored the state of online ad creative as "semi-nowhere." It's fitting, then, that arguably the most creative banner-ad execution of the past 12 months came from Mr. Clow's shop.

The ads, for Apple's Leopard operating system and its "Mac vs. PC" campaign, started showing up in spring 2008 in the form of synched ad banners running on NYtimes.com. In the fall, they started running on sites such as Yahoo Games, where iPhone ads appeared to interact with the content of the page -- game play got so intense it "busted" the navigation bar of the page on which the ad appeared.

It was enough to inspire what is perhaps the ultimate reward for compelling advertising: consumer distribution. Fans of the "Mac vs. PC" creative on NYtimes.com, for example, captured videos of the ads' animation and uploaded them to YouTube where, collectively, they got tens of thousands of more views.

Apple and Media Arts Lab weren't the first to use such tactics. Synched banners have been around for years -- an early version of an Applebee's ad ran on iVillage a few years ago. And last summer Nintendo ran a trailer on YouTube for Wii's "Warioland" game, in which the game's action busted up the entire page's navigation (the game has received 5.2 million views on the video-sharing site). But with Apple, creativity has been a consistent theme in all its web ads. And let's not forget it was only a year ago -- in this same issue -- that Ad Age wrote about the brand's paltry investment in online ads.

"Most online advertising still feels like it is a result of a conversation about click rates and the tactics of grabbing attention through gimmicks, as if tricking people to engage is a measure of true success," Mr. Clow told Ad Age via e-mail recently. "But I believe creativity should be our filter. I want to see artists and idea people find more influence in this space."

Saving online ads
His point of view has been gaining steam lately. The "semi-nowhere" remark last year was a prologue to the recent conversation about the dearth of online ad creativity. That discussion itself lies within a larger debate: Can online advertising, a once-promising medium whose momentum has slowed, be saved?

WORK

Rich-media ads with a twist tout the iPhone as a gaming device: When the user tilts the device, the web page's navigation bar follows along.

When the web was conceived as a potential marketing medium, it had little to offer besides two-way interaction via the mouse and, thus, the click was born as a proxy for effectiveness.

The conversation about clicks is not a pretty one these days -- fewer than 0.1% of display ads are clicked on, according to ComScore. And bemoaning dropping click-through rates as a sign display ads are dying is a big part of the problem.

"Simply put, we need a creative renaissance in interactive advertising," Randy Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, challenged the industry at his association's recent annual meeting. "Because of our direct-response heritage, we've toiled under the tyranny of the click for too long. ... We simply have got to emerge from under the shadow of our technological wizardry and start paying attention to the power of great creativity."

But few are doing that. According to PointRoll, the rich-media provider that worked with TBWA/Media Arts Lab on the ads, only about 5% of online ads served today include some sort of rich media. Why so few? Reasons range from budget (rich-media ads are more expensive to run) to the fact some publishers don't accept a full range of rich-media ads, making them difficult to scale.

Engagement is possible
Catherine Spurway,VP-strategy and marketing at PointRoll, said about 6% of users who see PointRoll-served ads interact with them, whether by mousing over them for at least a few seconds or performing some sort of activity within the ad unit, showing that when creative is good and engaging, people will engage with it. Online isn't passive, she said, and "people should be able to engage with advertising the way they do the rest of the net."

Ultimately the Apple ads work, both online and off, because they're the starting point of a story. AKQA co-Chief Creative Officer Lars Bastholm called this concept "social storytelling" and said it's even more essential online, since the water cooler is built into the system. The users that took the time to capture video of the ads on NYtimes.com and upload them to YouTube were continuing the conversation that TBWA/Media Arts Lab started.

Figuring out how to "let emotional ideas live naturally" is still something most brands struggle with, Mr. Clow said. In his mind, it's not just about embracing the rational utilities of this space -- search, information and functionality -- something most brands are still trying to figure out. It's also about creating desirable content that works for the audience and the environment.

"That is the stuff that gets discovered and posted on YouTube," he said. "Because when you lead with being surprising or fun, people will pass your ideas around. But if brands force themselves into the wrong spaces, they will be called out or ignored."

MOST IMPORTANT DIGITAL LESSON I'VE LEARNED

Expand the definition of contextual targeting.

"Being contextual sometimes also means being aware of the 'physical' space," said Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer TBWA/Media Arts Lab. "The Touch ad actually used elements of the website to mimic the physical behavior of playing a game on the device itself. The intention of these ideas can't be a gimmick for technology's sake but a way to help with the storytelling of the idea."