Matt, on the teach team here at R/GA showed me this the other day. Being the freak about data that I am, I have found it super interesting. The online dating site, OkCupid, recently published some interesting conclusions they’ve found about the photos we use of ourselves (for dating, in this case). They base their findings on the info they’ve collected in their giant data-set (11.4 million opinions, to be exact).

For example, using the metadata contained in the photos that users submit, they can conclude which camera has been used by the most “successful” daters; in this case, the winner is Panasonic. Although camera phones tend to provide the most “unsuccessful” photos, iPhone is the winner in that category.

Other interesting facts: successful photos did not use a flash and were taken in the afternoon.

See the full report here.

Although I have not yet visited one myself, the Walmart-owned Sam’s Club, is planning to add mobile services to it’s in-store experience; cool! First, they will be adding WiFi into their stores (powered by AT&T), and then in September, they will be rolling out applications designed for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.

“Our goal for the apps is also to enhance members’ shopping experience,” he said. “Mobile is a bridge between our traditional dot-com site at home and the bricks-and-mortar experience, and these apps bring something new to members at their fingertips.

“Mobile is a fast-moving evergreen channel that is driven by what members tell us they want.”

- Jason Jackson, senior director of member innovation at Sam’s Club, Bentonville.

The apps will feature the usual: product information, reviews, store locator, and eValues discounts (coupons) which are loaded directly into a Sam Club member’s membership card – that is pretty cool. It’s nice to see this kind of integration between devices/systems.

It’s amazing to me that there are not more stores following this strategy. Personally, I do not enter any kind of store without my iPhone ready to pull up product reviews or search for better deals or nearby stores. I was in Blockbuster the other day, and used my NetFlix app to pick a movie!

Tab Candy is still in alpha, so the video below is just a preview of what may be coming to the browser some day. The goal is to help solve the problem of having an endless row of disorganized tabs within a browser session. Currently, tabs just appear one right after the other and there is no way to remember which tab has what inside, and certainly no why to organize the tabs in a meaningful way. As I watched the video preview, I couldn’t believe how close they have nailed my own challenges with Internet browsing. Particularly the “save for later” feature, where it allows you to store web pages that you want to read at a later time – but not before Firefox asks you “why will you ever look at this again?” How did they know that was what I was thinking? This is a great way to force us to only keep what we really intend to use. I wish I had that feature in my garage!

The preview does remind me of Apple’s Expose in terms of experience – it’s pretty slick. However, this Tab Candy demo is also a tad overwhelming, and it starts to turn a potentially helpful tool into something too difficult to understand or use – at least that is how I see it at this stage. For example, I’m not sure I’d be ready to invest the amount of time it would take to organize all my tabs for a given browser session. What an interesting challenge: on the one hand my tabs are driving me crazy because they are so random and I can’t keep track of them……but, I’m not sure I want to spend the time to clean them up because, to me, a browser session is more of a onetime, realtime experience; if I want to organize and store items for use at a later time, isn’t that what Favorites is for? If anything, I want my current browser session to be as clean as possible with just a few open tabs at a time (not to mention that too many open websites can often crash my browser!) Don’t I want to use my browser simply as a (relatively unintelligent) content container? All these features will just bloat my simple container and start to turn it into something more like an operating system.

But, perhaps I’m thinking too “old school” here? As the browser continues to become the “New OS,” I can see how these types of features will become more and more important. The ability to save, and then reload a current browser session, is already a common thing – so Tab Candy may be right around the corner. Interesting stuff to think about.

An Introduction to Firefox’s Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

What a cool idea! Flipboard, which just came out as a free iPad app, takes a user’s social content (from Facebook, Twitter, etc) and essentially creates a dynamic magazine-like experience – on the iPad. Although I haven’t used it myself, the screenshots and videos sure make the experience look beautiful. It almost looks like I can touch and feel a digital magazine that has been created just for me – using content from my own social networks. Flipboard also aggregates content from other sources, and creates it’s own curated hubs of data.

I’ve noticed a lot of mixed reviews about Flipboard. Some are saying it’s amazing, beautiful, easy-to-use, where others are complaining about not being able to sync up their Facebook content or getting errors (i.e. “over capacity”)  when trying to access data. Some of these complaints sound like some technical issues that may need some ironing out – so, I’m hoping that things will smooth out over time. (Remember: software nowadays is created in an agile process: we are always in a Beta!!!)

What I do question, however, is the need for yet another content aggregator. Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be so many of these out there that I can’t even keep track. Oh good: yet another tool to consolidate my YouTube videos and my Tweets? Do I really need this as an iPad app when I can get it easily through a website? It’s questions like these that make me see Flipboard is more about marketing hype and buzzwords (iPad, Social, big VC funding, etc) than it is about providing any useful tool for me. But, that is just my initial thoughts – I’d love to try it out as it looks pretty dang cool!

With the release of Google App Inventor, Google will be opening up it’s Android platform to non-developers with a friendly WYSIWYG-like tool that allows people to create applications without writing code. Apparently, Google has been testing this tool in school and kids are pumping out real, working Android applications!

I love the spirt of this, and can see how Google wants to promote their platform, and get people excited about creating applications for their app store – going right up against Apple.

The comparisons?

Apple iPhone

• closed environment
• app approval process for getting applications into it’s Store
• arguably complex programming language (Cocoa) – not trivial to learn to develop for (even for seasoned programmers)

Google Android

• open environment
• no app approval process for app store
• Android is based on Java – possibly the most popular programming language in the world

So, basically complete opposite approaches. There’s a lot more to say here, but this is the high level comparison and certainly paints an interesting picture.

Which is better?

While I love the sprit of Google’s open-ness, and I tend to disagree the closed approaches that Apple follows, I do worry about t over-saturation and dilution that could happen in the Google world – particularly now when anyone with an “App Inventor Kit” can throw together any app and give it away to the world. Again, the openness is cool, but it does come at a cost: quality. This is something Apple, with all their rigidness, refuses to let go of – and for good reason.

Perhaps, in the end, it could play out similar to how it happened in the 80s: Apple comes out first, with an amazing, inspiring product (the Mac), but refuses to open it up (in that case, refusing to allow the software to run on other hardware). Microsoft came along and created a cheaper product (Windows) that could run on any (lower cost) hardware, and they owned the market. As they say: “only time will tell.” With such totally opposite approaches to challenges that have already played-out in history, you’d think there’d be some kind of “magical” middle road to chose from.

I love apps that have a real utility and purpose. If they can “subtly” support the brand of the company providing the service, it becomes a great example of where a lot of the interactive/marketing biz is headed: creating service, utility and components of daily life verses passive, experiences and market awareness (pure advertising).

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/maybe-one-ipad-recipe-begins-dip-apple-in-kraft-caramels/

The app, which went live on Friday, is called Big Fork Little Fork, and is aimed at parents in their 20s and 30s with young children. The app includes more than 300 recipes, video clips and games.The iPad app costs $1.99 and is available at the Apple iTunes App Store at itunes.com.The interaction between Kraft and consumers with iPads is going to be “a lot more robust” than what took place in the days when consumers “would send away for recipe cards” after listening to or watching radio or TV shows like “Kraft Music Hall.”

All this is cool, but the big question I have is: When was there a TV show called Kraft Music Hall?

It looks like Nissan will be using Apple’s iAd platform to market their new Leaf electric car. There is already a video demo of the ad up on YouTube. I must say, the ad does looks amazing! However, I can’t help but question the uniqueness if this execution; it looks like a fancy Flash web banner to me (heck, it even reminds me of an old banner I built myself 10 years ago!)

There is not much about this ad that speaks to, or takes advantage of, the mobile medium. Instead, it appears to be another example of taking an experience designed for the desktop, and repurposing it for a mobile device.

Do users really want this type of distraction built into the apps they purchase? Personally, while I’m on my phone, I don’t think I want to be taken away from my current application process, and transfered (fullscreen) into a car ad where I’m suddenly busy exploring a new interface with a new objective (learning about a product). Although, to be fair, this type of explore and discovery experience could be nicely suited for the iPad (vs. iPhone in this example).

Don’t get me wrong, this is still really cool, and I’m sure that innovation will develop over time as designers become familiar with this new platform and what types of experiences work best for it. Thinking of this brings me back to those exciting, pioneering days of the early web. Nissan is one of the first to explore this new territory, and they deserve a lot of credit for taking the plunge!

I found this stumbling around YouTube and just had to share. So amazing to see how it all started. I love their idea for the original laptop. They called it a “portable computer” and it fit inside of a briefcase (or is that a suitcase?).

 And now there is a real name: Revue (code name “KA”). I’ve been waiting to see this! Now, I want one even more. Looking forward to seeing one in person, and looking even more forward to creating some apps for this thing! Note the use of iPhone for remote! The incorporation of Logitech’s whole Harmony remote, where a single device (in this case, an iPhone) could control all the devices in your entertainment system. This is pretty cool as it moves us in the direction of owning the whole digitally conntected living room!