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YouTube Wants You for User Research

Paul Lilly — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:11:05 -0500

The future of YouTube could be left in your hands, as well as anyone else who participates in the video sharing site's user research surveys.

The latest user experience study asked YouTube users to depict their ideal YouTube layout using printed-out features glued to magnets. Most of the participants said they "just want to watch" and that an ideal layout would consist of little more than a player and a title. But a smaller group -- mostly consisting of those who upload videos -- craved a far busier design brimming with social features, comments, descriptions, and more.

This is where you come in.

"Sometimes having users come into labs is not enough, though; we want to understand how users use YouTube in their context, in their living room, with their laptop on their lap, sprawled out on the couch," YouTube wrote in its blog. "In this case we might have field studies where we interview users in their homes."

You can take a short user survey here, and if you're interested in participating in any upcoming research, YouTube has a form you can fill out here

How Much Disk Space Would Your Life Take Up?

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:44:02 -0500

Since 2001 Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has been compulsively tracking every bit of personal data that he generates in his daily life, in the interest of finding out just how much digital storage it would take to contain it.

Bell, who works at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Research Group and is calling his project MyLifeBits, has stated that “The problem isn't putting it all in. The problem is getting it out. When I started, I couldn't find anything!” Currently Bell has been able to track all the web sites that he’s visited (221,173), photos he’s taken (56,282), emails he’s sent and received (156,041), documents written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by a SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs he’s listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). In order to collect all this information he users a desktop scanner, a digicam, a heart rate monitor, voice recorder, GPS logger, pedometer, smartphone and an e-reader.

He does suspect that there’s some need to forget though. Being able to wipe clean difficult memories of the past could be some evolutionary trick. “If you think you should forget, you should,” states Bell. “But for God's sake, keep all the papers you've written and the photos you take. Sometime down the road you might be looking for something and you won't even give yourself the chance of finding it.”

Image Credit: MyLifeBits, Microsoft

Flexible LED Technology Breakthrough Allows Giant Displays

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:38:22 -0500

Ford’s quest for contour-hugging brake lights has led to a major breakthrough in the development of flexible LEDs. A group of international scientists has developed a new process for manufacturing ultrathin, flexible LEDs. The inorganic LEDs developed using this technique are not only slender and flexible like their organic counterparts, but just as durable and bright as inorganic LEDs are expected to be. Ford, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy jointly provided funds for this project.

The team behind this project consists of researchers from institutions in the US, Singapore and China. The new LEDs, though fully inorganic, possess qualities associated with both organic and inorganic LEDs. "We wanted to see if we could use inorganic LEDs in ways that exploit some of the processing advantages of organic LEDs,” John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois, told the journal Science.

LEDs can be made to be almost transparent using the new technique in which LEDs are placed at a considerable distance from each other. The technique can be used to make figure-hugging LEDs to be fitted onto buses. It could also make it possible to weave optical electronics into textiles.

Image Credit: Science

Liquid OLED Technology Brings Flexible Displays One Step Closer

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:20:21 -0500

Japanese researchers have made a major breakthrough that could prove to be a watershed in the development of flexible OLEDs. Scientists from the Center for Future Chemistry at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan have concocted a “liquid-OLED.”

They have detailed their innovation in the latest issue of Applied Physics Letters. The “liquid-OLED” is named as such on account of its use of a liquid semiconductor layer. This latest technology could yield more pliant and reliable roll-up OLEDs compared to other technologies currently undergoing the rigors of testing and fine-tuning in other part of the world.

Image Credit: OLED Devices

Study Finds that Netbook Consumers Unaware They're Buying Netbooks

Andy Salisbury — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:42:19 -0500

According to some resent research by The NPD Group, many of the people that are buying netbooks don’t know that they’re doing so.

Sure, the two names may sound familiar (notebook and netbook), but a whopping 60 percent of the people that purchased a netbook expected the same functionality as a notebook. Needless to say, the confusion has led to some irritation.

“We need to make sure consumers are buying a PC intended for what they plan to do with it,” stated Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. “There is a serious risk of cannibalization in the notebook market that could cause a real threat to netbooks' success. Retailers and manufacturers can't put too much emphasis on PC-like capabilities and general features that could convince consumers that a netbook is a replacement for a notebook. Instead, they should be marketing mobility, portability, and the need for a companion PC to ensure consumers know what they are buying and are more satisfied with their purchases.”

Image Credit: The NPD Group

Intel Visual Computing Institute Formed to Further Larrabee Research

Justin Kerr — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:02:25 -0500

Just in case you were worried that Intel wasn’t committed to it’s heavily delayed Larrabee platform, a 12 million dollar investment in a new Visual Computing Institute should help convince you otherwise. Located at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany, this is the largest joint project ever formed between Intel and a European university. The institute will help Intel explore advanced graphical computing technologies, which includes everything from more realistic gaming, to advanced 3D user interfaces.

The primary focus of the research will be applied to Intel’s terascalling program. This will help them better understand how they can apply Larrabees unique multi x86 core architecture to achieve sustainable performance increases over modern day GPU’s. Larrabee has been delayed until some unknown date in 2010, presumably because it hasn’t yet achieved the type of performance gains they were hoping for against Nvidia & AMD.

In addition to terascalling research, Intel will also work with other hardware design labs in Barcelona, Spain, and Braunschweig, Germany to help optimize the Larrabee design. Z-buffering, clipping, and even ray tracing are all promises made by the Larrabee team, but clearly the software needed to make all this happen still requires some work.

Want more details? Click here to watch the press video.

So is Larrabee really the future? Or does this only prove Nvidia’s case that its promise is overhyped?

Murphy's Law: Unfolding the Future of the Social Web with OpenID

David Murphy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:00:00 -0500

A large part of the Web as we know it today is built around independent communities. Think about it. You have a login for your Twitter account, a login for your Facebook account, a login for your [insert favorite Web site here] account. And while each of these independent entities can play with each other via plugins, coding trickery, or outright hacks... you're still stuck in three separate sandboxes at the end of the day. Does Twitter know what I like on my Facebook page? Can Amazon take a gander at my current interests and suggest related purchases? Do any of these sites know who my friends really are--not just the people I tweet, but the people I email on a regular basis?

While that's the current state of social affairs on the Web, it's not necessarily the future. Open-source projects like OpenID are paving the way for a new generation of connectivity, one where differing Web entities come to you for information and display it in a format and location of your choosing. Instead of jacking your life into the Web on a variety of fronts, you will have one point of interaction, one location to present your information. The litany of daily sites you visit will become more accurate, customized elements for your lifestyle. And best of all, you won't have to login to 85 different places to make it work.

OpenID is just one of the open-source Web technologies that are leading the charge into this new social sphere. In case you haven't noticed this little element appearing on sites like Wordpress, Livejournal, and Google -- amongst more than 25,000 others -- here's how it works. The basic approach of OpenID is centered on the login experience for Web sites. Rather than having to remember a login and password for the unlimited number of sites you likely visit in a day, OpenID allows you to choose a single provider as the source of your digital identity in cyberspace. Once you've selected a common user name and password, you can use this -- rather than a site's proprietary login/password specifications -- to interact with anyone who supports the service.

Technologies like these, and Facebook Connect, make up what Forrester Research's Jeremiah Owyang dubs the "Era of Social Colonization." Like the rise of humans from primates to people, Owyang has crafted up a series of timelines for the evolution of the Web's social experience. We're currently in stage two, the Era of Social Functionality, highlighted by a growth of interactive applications that transform social networks into more than just meeting grounds for talking parties. Or, to put it blandly, we've moved from a chat room to an interactive portal.

DestinationCRM.com does a great job of illustrating the differences between these eras, so I'm not going to lift their work in favor of pointing you to the source itself. Suffice, the light at the end of the cyber-tunnel is expected to start around 2011, when the power of online groups begins to replace the importance of top-down brands. Companies will engage communities to shape and develop their products, and the power of social networks and one's personal connectivity will be the driving force behind distributed content. Corporate Web sites will lose their relevancy, as companies will be forced to interact and engage customers based on their social identities, rather than waiting and letting customers "find them" or their products.

In essence, OpenID is but the first drop in the bucket toward a more connected Internet experience. As the walls between social networking and social commerce begin to blur, peer-to-peer trust is going to emerge as the ultimate arbiter of what's hip, what's hot, and what's horrible on the Web. I suppose that means we're all going to become a bunch of Newegg reviewers in the future. But that's the power of the community -- and it's a new force that companies are going to have to adopt and cater to, should Owyang's predictions hold true!

British Teachers Afraid WiFi Is Sterilizing Children

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:36:38 -0500

Teachers in UK are demanding the removal of WiFi from schools lest it may jeopardize the health and fertility of kids. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has become alarmed after a few studies claimed WiFi may cause loss of short-term memory, lack of concentration, cancer and sterility.

The issue was brought up by Colin Kinney at ATL’s annual meeting. He referenced a Swedish research and the findings of some other European experts to justify his sense of alarm. “Have we the right to avoid the moral warnings simply for access to a few more computers?” he asked the attendees at ATL’s annual meeting.

He wants a long-time study to probe WiFi’s impact on heath. The teacher’s body has espoused Kinney’s concerns and resolved to prod the government into action.

Image Credit: TechShout