Gilbane Conference 2015 dates & location
Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, December 1 – 3. New web site and call for papers will be live in a few days.
We Need to Break the Mobile Duopoly. We Need a 3rd Mobile OS
Andreessen Horowitz’s Peter Levine makes an interesting case. Note he is talking about an open OS – and what he doesn’t say is that right now the option is the mobile web, which is open, but also has difficulty replicating the same level of user experience of proprietary native apps. The historically dominant tension between open and proprietary is healthy, but proprietary is the natural lead in user experience.
It is an appealing idea that should be encouraged but who is going to create this mobile OS? How will it guarantee the openness described? Andreessen Horowitz could fund development, but how would it grow and survive in the wild? It would be competing with all open and and native OSes and fragments as well as the mobile web. Read more
Speaking of the difficulty of matching app experience on the web…
60fps on the mobile web
Flipboard engineers made some near-term compromises (including accessibility) to achieve 60fps on the web, and explain why and how. This article is a bit technical so you might want to skip if not a developer, but it may be useful just to know this can be done.
In the pursuit of 60fps we sometimes resort to extreme measures. Flipboard for mobile web is a case study in pushing the browser to its limits. While this approach may not be suitable for all applications, for us it’s enabled a level of interaction and performance that rivals native apps. … In a sense, Flipboard for mobile web is a hybrid application. Rather than blending native and web technologies, it’s all web content. It mixes DOM-based UI with canvas rendering where appropriate. Read more
And because we obviously still have the web to kick around…
Building a better web: The bare necessities
As with CMS-level decoupling, avoiding content-presentation coupling in delivery makes redesigning and rebranding the channel a lot easier. It also facilitates repurposing across channels and platforms… Most people believe this has already been solved. After all, that is the purpose of CSS. But decoupling HTML content from presentational descriptions is a tricky process. Read more
64 ways to think of a homepage
The focus is on a news homepage but anyone thinking about a site redesign or some tweaking will get some new ideas either directly or provoked by this piece. Something to share with your team to get their design juices flowing. Read more
Internet to neural net – Google search
If search or machine translation are important to you this is a must read since they may provide your first interaction with neural nets or deep learning. Neural nets had a bad rep for a few years because there was not enough processing power to generate the (big) data necessary to prove their promise. Soon neural nets will be behind many products from Google and others. You don’t need a degree in math or science to read this post and understand why. Read more
Additional reading: Facebook AI Director Yann LeCun on His Quest to Unleash Deep Learning and Make Machines Smarter
Bringing Up #Babycore
Cool “avant-garde marketing” for those who get it, or don’t but are curious. Should make you think. Wonder though, whether the self-selected demographic is big enough for them – perhaps the NY segment.
The media architecture of hashtags has always seemed a bit like mom jeans, a botched attempt at fitting in that just doesn’t fit right. So when one of the marketing geniuses who was able to convince the world that mom jeans were a good idea puts a giant billboard in the center of New York City without any of the technologies used to bridge online and off, what are we to think? … There are no hand holds, no footnotes revealing the message for those who don’t get it, and no hashtags guiding your confused IRL self into the oracle of digital space. Read more
Speaking of modern marketing…
Gut instinct marketing at Google
Say what? Is your marketing organization struggling with debates over how much to focus on hard data science or soft gut instinct? Lorraine Twohill, SVP Global Marketing at Google believes in both and what she has to say may help your internal discussions.
Google has a very data-led culture. But we care just as much about the storytelling and the brand… And with the use of the analytic tools we have, the storytelling becomes more important than ever. If anything, there’s too much talk about the science right now. I have a colleague who is writing a paper on the future of marketing: it’s data, data, science, science. I’m like, “It’s not!” Or rather, it is those things, yes. But if you fall down on the art, if you fail on the messaging and storytelling, all that those tools will get you are a lot of bad impressions. Read more
and now for something a little different…
Spurious correlations for fun and business meetings
Did you know that Apple iPhone sales correlate with people who died by falling down the stairs? or that total revenue generated by arcades (US) correlates with computer science doctorates awarded (US)?
Have a colleague who doesn’t quite get there is a difference between causation and correlation? Or maybe just forgets sometimes? Take them aside and show them some of the funny and nonsensical correlations on this site and have a laugh together – usually a better outcome than springing a few spurious correlations on them in a meeting. But hey, that’s your call. Read more
Links
WCM vs ecommerce platforms – it’s the integrations… The State of Content + Commerce via AlleyWatch
Not link bait… Spreading messages on Twitter: Research on best practices for wording and rhetorical craft via Journalist’s Resource
Is customer experience management a team sport? Is an integrated customer experience hub possible? via Gartner
When you don’t know what to do… Case Studies: Fixing Hacked Sites via Google Webmaster Central Blog
With some good examples… Data Scale – why big data trumps small data via Numeratechoir
The Marketing Tech Landscape isn’t as Scary as you Think via CMSWire
More nuanced views slowly emerging… People are finally worrying about online privacy—and tech firms are already cashing in via Quartz
About
The Gilbane Advisor curates content for our conference community of content, computing, and digital experience professionals throughout the year.
