There is an interesting Forbes article on using the power of the Crowd for developing mobile application ideas. As explained in the Nokia example below (which is similar to Nike+), it’s interesting to see how the company’s initial idea for the application was overshadowed by what the community ended up doing with it. Nothing too shocking there, but now many companies are approaching service/product ideation from the reverse: allowing the community to uncover and define the concept before fully developing it and “releasing” it to the masses. Similar to social networks, the Google approach to Software Development (permanent beta) and, in essence, kind of how the whole Internet itself was born. Makes me wonder if we all are just thinking too much.

How could this approach be cultivated to the point where it becomes a full fledge development process and business model? I wonder if the developers in the “old” days of shrink-wrapped software, ever could have imagined a company (like Google) who releases Beta versions of their products to world….often keeping them in “beta” phase for years as they work out the bugs with their customers. Perhaps a future of software development will push a large portion of the concept of the application out to the community: to work out the kinks of the idea. Wouldn’t the social network be the ripe place for this? Targeting specific applications to specific communities to help refine the final purpose. Of course you would really need to have your foundation together; it may be hard to secure VC funding for a bottomless idea. It would be like the Seinfeld of software: “We got an idea for an application that does nothing!”

“Crowds are now being tapped to develop mobile applications before they reach consumers.”

“Nokia’s Sports Tracker application enables runners and cyclists to record and share their workouts on a map-based software system. The initial concept, called “Personal Best,” aimed to allow individuals to track their sports performance for personal use. But athletes began using it to network with one another, creating more of a community feel. Since April 2007, Sports Tracker has been downloaded more than 1 million times.”

“The next step is to apply crowd sourcing to reservations, commuting and shopping–any activity that involves a shared resource. Crowds could share information about seating at football games, waiting times at airports and special sales at local stores. Once mobile payments become more popular, phones could even transmit sales data to let users know where they could buy a particular item for the lowest price”

http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/2008/06/16/
smart-mobile-apps-tech-wireless08-cx_ew_0616smart.html

Wow, just got back from almost a full week of hardcore Silverlight training and “geeking out” up at Microsoft. It was a tremendously valuable experience and I really appreciate Microsoft for inviting me up. I learned so much, not sure where to start. The C#/Visual Studio environment is absolutely phenomenal; working in it is a joy and saves so much time. The debugging control, the ability to hook up unit tests, quick connections to server side data (data binding, etc) are all powerful for development.

I struggled a little with Blend when I wanted to jump into the graphics and visual side. This may be because I am so used to the Flash IDE. I like the XAML bridge and the workflow and ease of editing that it provides, but I’m concerned about the enormous amount of mark up code it produces. Maybe it’s just me and I need to get used to it, but it seems as though even the smallest animation produces a significant amount of XAML mark up. It is genius to be able to get access to this code within the XAML layer, however, the amount of code can get a little overwhelming. I’m sure as I continue to work with the platform, I will lean how to best manage my workflow and optimize my outputs.

Really looking forward to putting this to use on a new project (which we have coming up for Xbox very soon!)

A few cool things from the Google I|O this week:

1). Google Earth now works in the browser and follows the identical structure as Google Maps. (Up until now, users had to download the Google Earth desktop app). Now you can quickly re-skin your Google Map creation with the full 3D Google Earth and it will retain all the same info (and it appears as though it only takes 1 more line of code!) You can create full interactive experiences within Google Earth that will map to real locations; and you can drop your own 3D models right into the Earth. The 3D is impressive; it would be really interesting to consider building an entire experience within Google Maps, i.e. instead of making another microsite, move the experience into Google Earth, or, create a more immersive and interactive “route finder”, a “real” store finder, virtual treasure hunt, etc…

2). Lots of Open Social news; somewhat overwhelming. I attended a great session from, Jeremiah Robison the CTO of Slide where he reviewed how they handle connecting profile information among all the various networks. I really liked how he explained the high level architectural concepts and then dug straight down into the specific lines of code that support it. I will follow up with more on Open Social soon….

3). New Support for Flash. For the first time ever (as far as I am aware), Google has released new support for Flash integration (previously just AJAX). So for example, Google Maps can now be done in Flash. Obviously there is great potential for creating sweet Flash applications and web experiences, but this is also pretty big news for Online Advertising because we have been previously held back by the fact that ad servers can’t easily serve up AJAX-based ads. Now, we can create some pretty amazing Flash ad units that sync up with Google tools/data.

4). Google App Engine. Very interesting stuff; I’m particularly interested in understanding more about how the database works. I’m working on my “Hello World” App right now…more on this soon.