Martin T. Focazio

June 5, 2010

The last great park. A great place that’s too wonderful to share the location.

May 21, 2010

Trust and Interoperability

We need a more modular, a more fluid digital identity system.

The enablers of “fluidity” are trust and interoperability. These two are the legs of the giant.

Digital lacks an effective trust mechanism. Yes, we have SSL and VPN and SSO and whatever other letters we pull from the soup, but we still have to get documents notarized in ink. The “Web of Trust” model crashed and burned. The nearest thing to a solid database of identities is - horrors - Facebook.

We still suffer the consequences when the ludicrous idea of “identity theft” happens because we have a model with two modes of access to information - all and none.

We have no process interoperability for identity management. Forget opening MS word documents on any computer, Interoperability is about more than the nonsense “semantic web” - it’s about being able to plug in my information wherever I go online as well as I can plug in my ipod charger - AND being able to unplug it. We have no working model for that today. Open ID is useless for strong identity management.

We have zip codes, area codes, country codes and more, but online we have Facebook for “people codes” and there’s no protections or practical provisions for how to manage your cloud identity - how to control it, revoke it, use it.

Who are you online? How do get to an irrefutable version of you online without you risking someone becoming you and draining your bank accounts?

Where’s the “read-only” version of ME online? What if I want be verifiably over 21 - but unknown by name, gender or age?

Say I need to snap together 20 people to make a company for 6 months, a company that I will only need long enough to get the project done (think film crew) Right now my biggest barrier to that is administration of the identity and payment of those people.

This - digital identity management - is something that is going to make the last 15 years of digitizing media and messaging - seem trivial.

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May 19, 2010

How do you draw a circle?

In the world of web development, there are many schools of thought on how to best get from the idea to the implementation. When you work at an agency, one of the more common processes is:

Strategic Plan - what do we need to do and why?
Creative Brief - what are some ideas about how to do what we need to do?
Information Architecture/Content Strategy - how would the idea function and generally be structured for the user?
User Interface Design - What will the user see?
User Interface Coding - Build the code needed to make the design into a web page
Integration - Connect the user interface code to the back-end systems
Testing - Make sure it all works
Release - Go Live!

There is much more to it than just these steps, and of course, it’s not quite as linear as I’ve described here.

However, with HTML5 - the most recent version of the code that lurks behind your web browser screen - there is an interesting and complicated question about what happens in steps 3 to 6.

First of all, HTML 5 is turning into the language of mobile - the first challenge is that for mobile devices with web interfaces, we can’t assume much about the screen size, the speed of the user’s connection or many of the other things we take for granted now. So as you plan out your interaction models and content plans, you’re needing to think about multiple instances of your interface, multiple use-cases and graceful degradation of the user experience when the device they are using can’t - or won’t - display content the same way you want it to on a desktop or laptop screen.

Next comes user interaction. Let’s take something as simple as a circle.

With the current model of web development, if I need a circle graphic, someone makes an image, usually with something like Photoshop, they save it as a web-compatible graphic, and then the user interface coder writes the code that fetches the circle graphic and places it on the screen. The designer gets the color, size and just they way they want and the UI coder has to make sure it is placed correctly and interacts correctly if the plan calls for it to be an interactive element.

However, in HTML 5, here’s how you can draw a circle:

  <svg>
    <circle id="myCircle" class="important" cx="50%" cy="50%" r="100" 
        fill="url(#myGradient)"
        onmousedown="alert('hello');"/>
  </svg>

The result (and I’m faking it for this post, but if you have a look at this demo in google Chrome or Safari you can see more like it) looks like this:

That is a circle that was never a graphic file on a designer’s Mac. It was rendered on the computer in response to the instructions of the source code - no graphics needed, In HTML 5, it’s not only possible to programatically generate simple images, it’s possible to programmatically generate much of what was the job of the graphic designers’ work. If you have the programming chops. If your design knows what you can and can’t do in HTML 5. There are many issues like this throughout the HTML 5 specification. A neat little ability called a “web worker” allows for what amounts to computer programs to run inside a web browser (sort of like Java Applets used to do) and there are ways to store data on the user’s computer. These are all capabilities that require a change in thinking about the process flow of web development. The advantage will go to companies that already have really strong front-end UI coders with a good sense of design, and designers with really strong understanding of UI coding. In other words, oh-so-rare individuals that are expensive. But even with the best UI coders and the best designers, none of it matters if you don’t have a good idea and a good strategy. Fortunately for me, that does not really change.

More on HTML (Use Google Chrome for best results)

API rocks HML 5 Slide Show Demo

Interesting Interaction Demo (Must use Google Chrome)

Animations without flash

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May 18, 2010

Key Trends in Digital Media 2010-2015

Here are some of the key trends in Digital Media that will affect anyone who does anything online.

Mobile - As 4G networks roll out, what we think of as “Mobile” will change quickly. Data/texting already surpasses voice use of wireless information networks, and we will see fewer and fewer homes with desktop/wired devices as the primary interface to digital media. Constant connectivity to wireless broadband networks will be a presumed feature of most consumer electronics from cameras to gaming consoles to eReaders, and some level of access to information via these devices will be expected.

Haptic – Touch interfaces will grow to dominance in mobile user experiences and will expand into the non-mobile device world. User experiences in a haptic interface world will be considerably more challenging to develop than the mouse/keyboard “hands off” world, and there will be more complexity and planning needed for success.

Continuous – Nobody will ever be fully “offline” except by conscious choice and with deliberate action to avoid being online. . For content and service providers, the idea of a “release date” or “publication deadline” will gradually decline as interactive services adopt a continuous implementation model to match the continuously connected user base.

Concurrent – Already, 60% of internet users concurrently watch television while using the internet. The idea of “my computer” gives way to “this device” and more people will concurrently interact with one another and with brands via multiple “channels”. Tracking metrics become incredibly complicated as it grows less and less clear which of many channels & messages is stimulating response.

Interoperable – Consumer data portability, data replication and data re-use will become key selling points for companies seeking to do business with consumers. As consumers switch from device to device and use multiple services, they will want – and expect their data to be usable and useful on any device and any service.

Identity Management - One of the biggest shifts, brought on by privacy issues and commercial concerns, will be in the area of identity management. Irrefutable legally binding digital signature schemes for consumers with interoperable heterogeneous network/platform environments will finally begin to emerge. There is a strong possibility of a national standard for states to issue and manage digital authentication as a revenue-generating regulatory body, similar to Department of Motor Vehicle Services.

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