Google Now, specifically released on the Android mobile operating system, and as an update to the popular Google Search app for the iPhone, is a Google homepage revamp that tries to give you all the immediate details about your schedule, personal interests, and immediate surroundings. It’s pretty genius, gathering data via access to your phone’s calendar, email, search history, and GPS location. Google Now combines your interests, upcoming calendar events, daily commutes complete with delays and detours, scheduled flights, and basic information like the weather, all automatically, without you having to fuss and customize the way it’s presented. It’s convenient, it’s aesthetically pleasing, it works flawlessly (as far as I can tell), and it’s gaining quite a bit of popularity in online forums.

According to one such forum, GoogleSystem, Google has live code that suggests it’s working on bringing its Google Now features to the internet, potentially replacing their iconic homepage, which is still, according to recent estimates, the most visited webpage on both PCs and mobile browsers. According to the popular tech blog gizmodo.com, the Google Now-styled search main page would be like your own little internet HUD, which would be customized specifically to your likes, and accessible simply by logging into your Google account.

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Unfortunately, as many interested tech bloggers (including members of the Toronto Web Development community) had come to expect, in January of this year, Twitter announced that it was going to shut down Posterous Spaces, the only remaining piece of the original platform left online. Drew Olanoff of techcrunch.com has taken particular notice of this event, and points out an obvious, yet important dilemma; if the authors of the blogs posted on Posterous intend to remain online, they will have to move somewhere else.

Olanoff spoke with Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, about the topic, and Mullenweg was quick to point out how WordPress.com has a simple import process for many of the popular publishing platforms online, including Posterous, which they included support for in July 2010.

According to Mullenweg’s estimates, WordPress easily surpasses all other major blogging platforms in Posterous imports, with over 2 million posts imported since 2010. Mullenweg also notes that along with Posterous, a significant number of imported posts are drawn in consistently from Blogger and Tumblr. From mid-February to mid-March 2013, a total of 15 million posts have been have been imported into WordPress from various other blogging services.

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Starting April 19, WordPress users registered with WordPress.com will be able to preview the newly designed dashboard, what WordPress developers are claiming is an attempt to radically modernize a platform that has changed relatively little since its creation. In a blog post written on WordPress.com (read It here: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/preview-our-future-design/), some of the ideas that went into the dashboard re-design are exposed:

• A simple, no frills,” uncluttered” design that puts content first.
• Webfonts that are consistent among all available internet browsers.
• A responsive design tailored to desktops, tablets and smartphones.
• The changes should be dramatic, but not in terms of the ease-of-use existing users have come to expect, and love.

What WordPress is trying to accomplish as an online content management system is exactly what major software developers like Apple and Microsoft have been trying to achieve with their respective operating systems: consistency among a variety of platforms. And in similar fashion to Apple, WordPress’s tablet and smartphone dashboard design has eclipsed the popularity of the desktop version. The dashboard I view through Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox will ultimately resemble the experience I’ve become accustomed to on the iPad. This is a very welcomed upgrade, and I’m sure it will impress many existing WordPress users, and attract numerous new users.

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Jennifer Van Grove, in an article written for Cnet.com on April 9, is a bit more critical of Facebook Home’s overall presentation and integration with Android, calling it “a visually arresting place where Facebook and Google split custody of your attention.”Van Grove makes it very clear that her experience using Home on HTC’s First left her feeling was her attention was necessarily divided, which inadvertently exposes weaknesses in Facebook’s stock networking and messaging applications. In a nutshell, she argues that the Facebook dominated homescreen and lockscreen locks Google out of sight almost completely, while the opposite is true for Google ignoring Facebook while browsing through the rest of the phone. Dieter Bohn of theverge.com agrees with Van Grove, maintaining that the overall design of Home is quite good, but that it is “almost entirely chromeless” in that there are none of the traditional buttons, sliders, and switches you’d expect to see on an Android phone. Facebook Home boils down to little more than a skin, which fades away the second you launch an application. The Chat Heads stick around, but it is not fully integrated with SMS, so stock Android notifications still appear.

The functionality of the Android spin-off aside, Facebook may potentially be causing serious damage to their product and brand in a larger sense. The fresh look of Facebook’s Cover Feed and Chat Heads, which again, everyone concedes are considerably noteworthy innovations, makes Facebook’s legacy product, its website and social networking app, look dated. Van Grove claims that Cover Feed is what the current News Feed would look like had it been built today. An unintended side effect of Cover Feed’s expected popularity is that it will make shortcomings of the web and mobile apps that much more apparent, as well as create an overall Facebook environment that is once again inconsistent among all platforms.

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At a press event held on April 4th at the Facebook Headquarters located at Menlo Park, CEO and Co-Founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg made two major announcements. The first is a new suite of apps, powered by Android, collectively packaged as “Facebook Home.” After noting in his presentation that smartphone users spend more than 20% of their mobile time on social apps, Zuckerberg stated, “We asked ourselves — if we’re already spending this much time on our phones, how can we make it easier? What if they were designed around people first, and you could also just happen to interact with apps?” This people-first, apps-second mentality became the guiding principle throughout Home’s design process.

The second major announcement was that a special version of Home would be available pre-installed on the new HTC First handset, available to US customers April 12th on AT&T. The device’s operating system will be “optimized” to give users unique experiences like notifications for email and calendars on Facebook Home. It will run on AT&T‘s LTE network and will cost a mere $99.99.

Among the preliminary reviews of Facebook Home conducted by bloggers who managed to get their hands on an evaluation HTC First handset, the consensus seems very clear that the two major selling points are Facebook’s “Cover Feed” and “Chat Head” design features. In a nutshell, Facebook takes over your lockscreen and homescreen by replacing it with a constantly rotating barrage of full-screen images and status updates that you can comment or “like” with a double-tap. Facebook also introduces their own app launcher, as well as a revamped notification system, which many are arguing could be the future standard for smartphone messaging applications. The floating “Chat Heads” appear at the top of the screen anytime someone messages you through Facebook (stock Facebook Messenger app is required for this to work). The bubbles show the profile pictures of those messaging you, along with a snippet of what the message says. Responding to the message is as easy as tapping on the bubble, and a window drops down on top of the app you are currently using; no app-switching required.

Mostly, I’m interested to see whether or not this idea – corporations designing and branding their own Android mobile OS that integrates into their own online platform – is adopted by other businesses. What’s to stop other major social networking sites, like LinkedIn or Twitter from doing the same thing? I think it almost makes sense. Could you imagine a BlackBerry Z10 powered by a LinkedIn branded-skin? More than likely, however, you will likely see existing competitors simply steal features that look appealing. I agree with the bloggers I’ve read from TechCrunch and The Verge, that Chat Heads are a step in the right direction for improving messaging across all mobile platforms, setting a new standard.

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Featuring art to fund art

Project Art is currently working alongside over a dozen emerging local artists who are equally dedicated to the platform and the initiative. We are proudly hosting our first ever Project Art Gallery Benefit on Thursday May 9, 2013 at the Burroughes Building (639 Queen St West). Proceeds from this event are being directed to the Sunnybrook Foundation for the purpose of creating art therapy developments at the Odette Cancer Centre.

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The company was founded by Portland-based serial entrepreneur Courtney Couch, along with jQuery Tools creator Tero Piirainen and Janne Lehtinen, both of Helsinki. The team had previously worked on popular web video player Flowplayer, which is what led them to the idea to create Moot in the first place. Tero Piirainen, in a blog posted on Moot.it, stateswith respect to the goals of the firm,“We wanted forums to be a seamless part of our site with complete control over style and behaviour. What’s more, the old solutions seemed outdated UI-wise. So we started developing Moot and took a radically different approach to this basic, yet fundamental need.”

Moot is a JavaScript application that can be integrated into practically any website. The process involved in getting the basic forum up-and-running involves logging in to moot.it and registering a forum name. Then it’s simply a matter of copy-and-pasting some embed code. Once that’s done, it works just like any other HTML element; and it’s fully styleable with CSS. The platform is still in beta, but the creators claim it is only because they need a bit more time to polish it before its official release

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Google has the potential to complete dominate this industry. And it’s got me hoping the technology is introduced in Canada sometime soon. As a comparison, the fastest speeds Time Warner delivers to homes in New York City is 50 Mbps (down) for $75 per month, versus Google Fiber’s 1Gbps (1024 Mbps) at $70 per month. United States FCC chairman Julius Genachowski recently issued a challenge to internet service providers to make Gigabit technology available in every state by 2015, and currently, 42 communities in 14 states offer ultra high-speed fibre connections, so maybe a movement north is sooner than I had hoped.

There are, however, a few sceptics that don’t believe there is a market for Gigabit internet connectivity. Irene Esteves, chief financial officer for Time Warner Cable, stated during the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference on in late February 2013, that only a sliver of TWC’s customer base subscribes to the ISP’s top-tier Internet speeds, and that, “We just don’t see the need of delivering that [gigabit Ethernet] to consumers.” The argument is fundamentally flawed, however, making a claim that because people aren’t interested in their current fastest speed, they wouldn’t be interested in something faster. I mean, who wouldn’t want ridiculously fast internet speeds in their home if the price was reasonable?

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Leah Mitchell, guest columnist for Forbes magazine, describes 3D printing as, “the process of making a three-dimensional solid object out of virtually any shape from a design created on a computer.” Most printer models essentially melt plastic (largely Lego-like ABS or biodegradable PLA), which is pushed through small extruder heads that operate along an X and Y axes. Objects are fabricated with small layers of plastic building on top of one another. The technology has already been around for a few years, with larger industrial applications spanning everything from jewellery making, architecture, and in the dental and medical industries.

What excites people the most is the very likely possibility of affordable home 3D printing solutions that will foster a new movement of inventors-turned-entrepreneurs. 3D printers for the home, used for a personal or small business, introduce an entirely new production and distribution method. Imagine being able to hire someone in New York to design pieces for a device, and have the specs directly uploaded and fabricated on your 3D printer located in your living room, to be assembled later in your garage. Manufacturing used to be a location-dependent industry. But 3D printing opens up possibilities for manufacturing to be conducted practically anywhere. Many people can participate in a production process along a supply chain that can be scattered to wherever is convenient.

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The problem is that the amount of data is piling up, file sizes are growing exponentially, and the utility of the information has a terribly short lifespan. Aside from continuing to expand your data storage capacities to the point of hoarding, many are heralding innovations in graphic design and visualizations as to the solution to the problem of big data. The idea is simple: large amounts of data can be condensed into complex diagrams that can allow for the original raw data to be deleted.

When I think of “visualization”, the first thing that comes to mind are Infographics; an effective tool for presenting essential information, derived from vast amounts of data, using an easy-to-understand illustration. Big data analysis is expected to become a booming industry for graphic designers in the near future.

And it’s actually a much harder job than it looks. Designing a visual representation of an aggregate of data requires a certain degree of analysis and research into the figures and information collected. For businesses, this analysis needs to translate in actionable insights that can help improve customer relations, and ultimately sales. And the visualization does not need to be strictly for executive viewing as part of their market research. Sharing the information with customers can potentially become a huge selling-point.

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