FB in 3D

Now that we have 3D screens or sources, the only hitch for 3D to become mainstream is 3D viewers, right now you need glasses which are uncomfortable, but maybe soon the Source might change in a way that you don't require glasses at all. 

anyways i don't have a solution to that, what i do have is ideas around what FB will look like in 3D.

so when you log into FB, you will basically be entering a space. The space will have things or artifacts littered around. Just like you home and you room, there will be gaming zones, friends zone, communications zones, productivity zones et al. 

Friends will be littered around, the distance from you (or your eye sight as seen in many games) will determine their activity, and their closeness to you. This is very similar to the FB algo for status updates, just that the priority of the status update will be measure in terms of distance from you rather then the 2D how high it is on the list terms. 

So what happens when you go to a friend, yes, you will actually walk up to him / her. Well tap them and they a blog roll of their current activities will open up, tap twice and their pics will open up and so on. Gestures will be used for other things, like showing their linkages to their friends, maybe some kind of lines extend to other people in that space, again here, people close to them will have a shorter line ( i am actually imagining threads going out of this one person to other people in his / her friends list) and of live chat will be enabled.

Each zone will have a door, you open a door by providing credentials, by signing in some form. 

There will also be tunnels to let you import stuff into your FB account, tunnels are nothing but 3D representations of today's interfaces into other apps. 

Input methods, well notice i said tap and gestures, yep, has to be touch. how to turn, well think of a small imaginary wheel on the screen, rotating it clock wise will means you rotate clockwise and so on. How to move forward or backwards, well here's the trick, you don't move forward or backwards, the world moves closer or away from you, and that happens by pinching in or out (which is used to zoom today). what about looking down or looking up? well pressure on the wheel (ends of y axis) will enable that. press on -y and release +y and you look up, and so on!!!

and so on and so forth, all tech is already there, only needs to be implemented. 

take care

 

Future of devices...

already written about this, but refined it a bit more so putting it here again.

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Only three type of devices, one, central controlling machines (your present desktops with inbuilt processing and storage) and slate / iPad like devices which just give you a view into the cloud with only enough storage for caching / basic security storage like for passwords, bank details et al, and networking capabilities and a way to authenticate the user. Of course the third will be ultra-mobile devices like the iPhone. No laptops...they will die soon.

Devices will be general, that is anyone can make the device their own depending on the login information, which actually gets authenticated at the cloud level. Once the device authenticates you, then the device will log you on to the spaces you have access too.

Within your ‘profile’ you will have different spaces mapped in, a home space, an office space, a personal space, and  you will have different rights in each of these spaces. You might or might not be able to move stuff between spaces. You might Share spaces with other users.

Each of these spaces will have different services like FB, IM et all mapped in it. The Space will pass on the credentials and authorizations to the service.

So why the controlling machines, because will be a need for local clouds, I would call them hubs, which would be used for providing processing / storage but most of all control, to the appliance / machines within that physical area, like your TV, your music player, your washing machine, your AC’s et al. The controlling machine will provide a full interface to everything for everything, and not everyone will have it.

The tablet will be more of a device for entertainment and interaction with the rest of the world. Input methods will be change. Touch, Voice and Gestures will take over. Ultimately, the device will have a plug into your thought stream, but this won’t happen over our lifetime.

The mobile will be a communication device and a remote control more than anything else. Communication through integrated apps such as Wave, and Remote control for your fridge, washing machine and AC.

You will have to buy...the bandwidth to access all of this, the Storage / Service for each of your spaces, and subscriptions for services which plug into each of these spaces.  

More over part of the cost of the appliance will actually go into the service for that appliance, for example when you buy an AC, you can also subscribe to a service to change the temperature, or pre-cool the AC.

creating delight...

Sometime back, an old friend who today is confined to being a count in my friends list in FB wrote about creating customer delight, and gave an example of Apple, something about Apple have a big glowing Apple on one of its store to mimic the glowing Apple symbol on the front lid of its macbooks. 

Customer delight, as one of my favorite marketing profs, Chandan Chatterjee, had explained long time back is the top tier of customer satisfaction...give value which was not only expected, but not imagined either. Something the product or service did for you surprised you, shocked you even. "How can a product do this for me, why would it do this for me, what is the catch" are the things which come into you mind. 

and as you find out that it was just done to please you, you like the product / service, and you start adoring it and thats how obsessions like Apple are born. 

but lets take a step back, what is it in for the company marketing the product / service. They might or might now be loosing money on it, most of these features are innocuous little things, which don't cost a lot, but leave a lot of impact. But the main investment is in the creative part of it. Coming up with something that the customer might not even have imagined takes a lot of thinking or...

or maybe it just takes a love for the customer and the product. Yep, if you love what you are doing, if you are passionate about what you are building, then making sure that you customers also love your product becomes a bigger motivation then just selling the product, and thats kick in a natural cycle of creativity. you love the product, and you are so passionate about it that you want everyone else to love it, and so you put in those small litter additions which make people love it. 

btw as i write this, another thought, there are two levels of customer delights, one is a product which every time you use, makes you feel good, makes you feel like 'wow, this is a work of art' or 'this has made life so much easier' and the other is the surprise kinds, 'wow, i can do this as well' or 'how good of them'. An example of the first of course is the iPhone, and locally Airtel's service. The second would be Google's Pacman thingy. 

Another thought, why is the second kind so rare, well first is not seen too much either but second is just rare and so, why??  well me thinks people in large corporations don't love their products, they might love their companies, but they are not passionate about the individual ideas, individual products. and thats why most of the customer delight today comes from startups, or companies which run like startups or a bunch of startups...thats where google and apple come in.

agreed, some products are so old, its difficult to surprise the customers, like there are few things you can do with a car today, but then think again.