The future may not be pretty, but the tech’s pretty awesome

The news that Facebook snapped up the VR startup Oculus Rift this week brought the tech into the limelight and kicked off a heated debate over the social giant’s plans.

Thanks to the media frenzy, a brand everyone had heard of brought one very few knew existed into mainstream conversation. I didn’t need to Google ‘Oculus’ or ‘Rift’, I had one on my desk.

When I say Oculus Rift isn’t new to me, I’m not being dismissive. Far from it – it’s my job to know about this stuff, assess the relevance of future platforms and create stunning content for it.

Rift has been on our radar (and our heads) at Brandwidth since its original Kickstarter campaign and we’ve had plenty of time to consider incredible possibilities for the future. The concept and rudimentary equipment has been around for decades but the whole platform fell out of favour until recently when Oculus reignited the flame of innovation in this area, along with Sony’s intention to compete with their Project Morpheus.

Virtual Reality (VR) is back, helped in no small measure by Google’s own efforts to tempt consumers to strap technology to their faces and massive advancements in CGI and screen resolution.

OK, it’s not back just yet but the technology is. Oculus Rift content and the delivery platform it requires haven’t launched yet but 2014 is the year it finally hits homes as well as developers’ desks.

So what is it? Well, it’s a black box with a screen over each eye to simulate an immersive 3D environment and motion sensors to track head movements. It’s this experience of looking around the digital landscape that truly transports you to another world. Add a set of stereo headphones and the effect is complete... or is it?

The moment you dip into this virtual world, you’ll be hooked. From rollercoaster rides to epic space battles to eerie haunted houses, the virtual feels real. But what’s missing? You are.

The next big steps will come from the ability to place yourself within these incredible environments. Using Leap gestural units, MYO armbands or bluetooth-connected smartphones, you’ll be able to see your virtual body parts in front of you. At Brandwidth we’re already using iPhones as light sabres – who wouldn’t want to get their hands on one of those inside Rift?

Surely there isn’t another step? Actually, there is. We now have the opportunity to add other people to your virtual world to share the ultimate storytelling experience, explore epic worlds like Disney’s Infinity, or meet in virtual shopping malls, showrooms or conference facilities. Social plug-ins are an obvious move.

Yes, I can see why Mark Zuckerburg wanted to add Oculus Rift to his growing portfolio. but also, if you’ve got the billions to invest and you love technology, why wouldn’t you?

There’s a business case here but there’s also a chance for Facebook to add scale and creative potential through investment dollars that may never have been achieved had they not come on board. The development units (even the new MkII) aren’t yet truly mobile. Freedom from cables and a computer will really move the game on, but we may need to wait for the second generation consumer model for this.

Instantly visit the four corners of the earth, relive history as you walk in the footsteps of astronauts, Presidents or dinosaurs or allow surgeons to operate from within a body. That’s progress.

No, the future’s not all white and shiny if many will sit in a darkened room in their underwear with a pizza on their laps, immersing themselves in virtual worlds... but the technology is undeniably awe inspiring.

Bring on the Social Oscars (The Shorty Awards)

I made it! Or rather, we made it! After a hard fought campaign, I reached the final of the Shorty Awards 'Apps' category at midnight on Tuesday. I'm still pinching myself as I thought I'd never fight my way past the One Directions and Justin Biebers of the world – the human hurdles in the social sausage machine. Here's my campaign video...

I have put myself through the pain of the chase for the past three years and always fallen at those aforementioned human hurdles. This year, that all changed as the organisers culled the irrelevant and banished the bands in categories where their presence wasn't welcome. Having said that, I'm still sharing the top tier of the Apps category with Cristiano Ronaldo's social network and Chay Suede, a Brazilian Idol 2010 finalist. I'm hoping the judges will take all our app credentials into consideration...

Speaking of which, as if the frantic nomination process wasn't stressful enough, the next phase of the Shorty Awards gets really exciting. The winner of each category is decided by the great and the good of the social media world. This doesn't mean they're all 'social experts' (beware of those), they are real people, albeit famous, that actually use Twitter, Facebook, Vine, etc to communicate with their audience rather than hold a one-way conversation with a random group of followers. The winners are announced at a glittering awards ceremony in New York on April 7th!

I don't base social achievement on the number of followers or 'friends' I've collected across my many networks. I have been on LinkedIn since the very early days, steadily adding depth and relevance to my profile yet my connections amount to a little over 600. I have exercised restraint and avoided connecting to my postman, my dentist or 100s of recruiters looking to plunder my network.

A similar approach applies to Facebook, where I reserve connections to friends for, well, friends – not someone I met once on a drunken night out, although I've shared a drink with most friends. There's also the Activrightbrain Facebook page, where the content relevant to this site lives.

Finally, Twitter and Vine illustrate my levels of restraint. I rarely follow back automatically as I either get to know or have a genuine interest in those I follow. When I dip into Twitter and Vine, I read every post, look at every video and hold actual conversations. Of course, I broadcast a lot but this tends to be relevant to my audience – and to be fair, I'm proud of what I and my Brandwidth team do so have plenty to say.

I'm not a fan of mass broadcast across all social networks, one message does not fit all and the language (and often content) needs to suit the audience. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn may well share network members but we're usually in a different state of mind when trawling each website or app. A scattergun approach with the wrong message can have the same effect as showing up to a job interview in a mankini.

Thanks again to my fantastic friends spread across many social networks and the Dadsaster audience. I touch on the Shorties in passing in episode 46 (Everything is Awesome) alongside LEGO Mindstorms and the new BleepBleeps range on Kickstarter.

If you're still confused about the Shorty Awards, I'll leave the last words to Ricky Gervais, Kiefer Sutherland, William Shatner, Conan O'Brien, George Takei and Grover...

The 2014 Shorty Awards: The Short Story

Every year I take advantage of my loyal Twitter followers – a mixture of friends, colleagues, clients, industry peers and generally a bunch of great people, then bombard you all with requests for votes in the Shorty Awards. This year, it all got too much for Apptain America...

If you've never heard of the Shorty Awards (and this is possible), they were set up to recognise excellence in social media by allowing leading Twitterati to canvas for votes... and ultimately acclaim. This resulted in an unfortunate number of award wins for Justin Bieber and One Direction and this annoys me every year when they finish ahead of me in the Design, Technology and Apps categories. I'd love to turn this around in 2014 so please consider my plight and release me from Apptain America's evil clutches. I love an iPad, but wouldn't want to spend too much time in here!

All good campaigns offer one main reason to vote so I'm hoping a hostage situation helps. If not, then my mix of industry news, design, tech, publishing and innovation insight and general irreverence keeps you entertained. My audiences at numerous conferences, on Nikki Bedi's BBC show and the amazing Dadsaster podcast add some extra spice.

Go on, you know it makes sense. Just follow the link, sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account, then add one more vote for @activrightbrain in #Apps, with one simple reason I should grab the award (good, bad or ugly).

Vote for @activrightbrain

Thanks

iVolution of the Species

Evolution, iteration, or however you want to refer to incremental development is essential for achieving design perfection. Not very exciting though is it?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I used to look forward to the 12 month cycle of mobile phone upgrades. The whole process doesn’t set my pulse racing in the same way it used to and as a self-confessed design, tech and Apple fan, that makes me sad.

The last non-Apple phone I owned was a Samsung Z720, because it was small, light and inoffensive. I bought this just before the first iPhone launched and by the time my one-year contract ran out, the iPhone 3G was poised to appear on the scene.

Smartphone ownership wasn’t unfamiliar territory thanks to my time spent with a Sony Ericsson P900 back when a stylus was the only available input device so I took the plunge and opted for a two-year contract on a 3G. The 3S arrived a year later, leaving me feeling suitably vindicated for taking out a longer contract – the big changes were under the skin.

And so the two-year cycle began. I purchased an iPhone 4, 24 months later a 5... and now I find myself confronted with two new Apple smartphones, the 5c and 5s.

Tech pundits and financial markets alike have chastised the Cupertino giant for not matching Android handsets punch for punch and saturating the free handset market. This isn’t where Apple plays, for very good reason – their perceived value drops, dragging higher spec hardware down with it and introducing an audience unwilling to pay for content.

Apple has successfully cultivated a level of desirability global competitors can only dream of and their hardware retains its aspirational glow thanks to superior material quality, reliability and premium pricing.

Apple’s rivals are consistently guilty of innovation for innovation’s sake, trying to second-guess the market rather than shape it. Samsung is one of the worst offenders, throwing as many digital gimmicks at their handsets as possible in the vain hope that consumers will buy according to checklists rather than useful features. Eye tracking and facial recognition sound impressive but once they’ve been demonstrated in the pub, how many users turn them off again?

Similar criticism has been leveled at Apple following the inclusion of their new fingerprint scanner, Touch ID. Statistics show that very few smartphone users set a passcode so why not make it as simple as possible to secure your handset? Yep, I’ve seen plenty of comments that laptops have had this functionality for years – but they never looked this good! There’s a level of theatre involved that sums up Apple’s appeal to its users and we want to use the hardware, we don’t just feel we have to.

So, has Apple done enough to stay at the top of the smartphone heap? Yes, for one more year. The 5s is a beautifully designed, beautifully made piece of technology that you actually want to spend time with. The 5c makes a great support act, helping its shinier brother appear more sophisticated, seem better specced and offer better value. iOS7 is the added ingredient that gives the evolutionary hardware a revolutionary edge.

Apple must return to significant 12 month product cycles if it intends to stay ahead of the competition. Early iMac updates changed the form factor significantly between the original Bondai, to the angle-poise, to the all-in-one screen but the profile has barely changed in the past 8 years, where design strategy has focused on perfecting the shape, essentially removing the computer and leaving us with the screen – the centre of our attention.

This approach works with larger hardware because of frequency of purchase. We don’t feel the need to renew an expensive piece of desktop equipment as often as a personal mobile device.

The phone market is a different animal where ownership is about features, reliability and user experience but more than anything, it’s about personality. Spectacular product design, ergonomics, weight distribution and use of tactile materials delivers this but we want to be moved emotionally and don’t like to wait two years to see any significant changes.

I’m one of Steve Jobs’ ‘Crazy Ones’ that queues up at 5am on release day, so I want to make damn sure it’s worth the effort every 12 months.

One more thing...

Well it’s a couple of things really – two new iPads. I wrote about new iPhones safe in the knowledge that, like busses, we’d see some Apple tablets come along in quick succession.

The faster and pixelier Retina iPad Mini and super-slim iPad Air are both superb examples of iVolution in action. I may have complained about the iPhone’s biannual updates but these devices illustrate the need for incremental development. When a product is all about the screen (and the content displayed upon it) nibbling away at everything but the glass is perfectly acceptable.

Making the device faster, thinner, lighter and clearer are all more important than unnecessary bolt-on innovation. By 2020 we could just be interacting with a sheet of glass or plastic in varying sizes but where’s the personality or the brand in that?

When your audience demands more and more from less and less, the design and innovation challenges lie in retaining some form of standout in a fiercely competitive market. Every mobile device manufacturer faces the same issue and focus will be increasingly on how and why something works and how it makes the user feel, not merely on how it looks or a long list of features.

Long live the smartphone revolution. Long live the tablet evolution.

Edited and updated from my column in this month's iCreate magazine.