Spurred by the success of the Front Office suite of fantasy baseball tools for the 2011 season, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports have teamed up to release three new mobile apps, just in time for the fantasy baseball trading deadline.

During our first year working with Bloomberg Sports, we designed and developed an online suite of tools and a complementary mobile offering to help advanced fantasy baseball users manage their teams effectively. Beginning with the 2010 NFL season, we broadened the aperture of our fantasy advice to guide a wider range of user types, from novice through advanced players. These efforts resulted in the overwhelming success of the NFL Decision Maker applications, a multi-channel offering supported on NFL.com, and on the iPad and iPhone.

In our second season working together, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports focused on providing prescriptive answers to key fantasy baseball questions, such as: “Who should I draft?”, “Which free agent should I add to my team?” and “Is this a fair trade?” This focused perspective translates especially well to mobile offerings, which should aim to help users to complete a single task easily and efficiently. For example, the 2011 MLB Draft Kit, released during Spring Training, assists fantasy baseball players with ranking their players before the draft, and quickly identifying their next targets during the draft.

After fantasy baseball players draft their teams in March, they transition their focus from pre-season to in-season tools, such as the Trade Analyzer, Free Agent Finder and Lineup Manager offerings within Front Office 2011. Roundarch leveraged user research to discover the key tasks that users would be interested in completing on mobile devices, and examined the competitive landscape to identify gaps in fantasy provider offerings (i.e., Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball for iPhone) that Bloomberg Sports could address with innovative products. The result of our research, design and development are three new mobile apps: iPad Trade Analyzer, iPhone Trade Analyzer and iPhone Fantasy Scout.

iPad Trade Analyzer

In transitioning the Trade Analyzer from the online toolkit to the iPad, we reintroduced a baseball card metaphor that was an original aspect of the 2010 Front Office product. The user experience and visual design teams worked closely to create a realistic wood surface that serves as the canvas for building trades. While the online toolkit uses text fields and drop-down menus to facilitate player selection, the iPad experience is much more tactile, allowing users to drag-and-drop baseball cards on the table. Recognizing that drag-and-drop can lead to visibility issues on a touchscreen device, we complemented this interaction model with an icon on each card that the user can tap to add or remove the corresponding player to or from the trade.

An arrow at the top of the interface swings in either direction to provide immediate feedback on balanced trades, while a limited control structure offers a clear workflow for analyzing trades (i.e., select a trading partner, select the players on both sides and view the resulting analysis). Given the time-sensitive nature of the fantasy season, the design team identified opportunities to use out-of-the-box controls, while the development team highlighted built-in components that could increase the playfulness of the application (e.g., shaking the iPad to clear the trade, evoking memories of an Etch A Sketch).

iPhone Trade Analyzer

While the iPad and iPhone Trade Analyzers were designs and developed concurrently, the limited screen real estate on the iPhone required streamlining the user workflows even further. Early design concepts supported both landscape and portrait versions; however, we quickly realized that the position of the user’s thumbs while switching between their team and their trading partner was more naturally facilitated in the landscape orientation. The iPhone app maintains the table metaphor from the iPad version, but does not support dragging-and-dropping baseball cards, an interaction model that proved cumbersome during our prototyping stage.

Although screen size dictated that not all iPhone Trade Analyzer components could be displayed simultaneously (e.g., the three elements of the final analysis), we identified interface elements that could be supported on the iPhone and iPad versions with only minor changes, if any. For example, the processes by which users log into the applications and load their fantasy teams are virtually identical across both platforms. By devoting time to supporting a multi-channel strategy during the conceptual design phase, we were able to reduce development time and improve learnability for users that purchased the applications on the iPad and iPhone.

iPhone Fantasy Scout

Complementing the trading apps, the iPhone Fantasy Scout app provides users the ability to identify top free agents across all of the scoring categories in the user’s fantasy league. Starting with the interaction model from the iPhone Draft Kit, we replaced pre-season information such as player outlooks, with breaking news and analysis on every MLB player. Statistical leaderboards, based on year-to-date performance, proved more relevant than pre-season player rankings, although we did elect to include the groundbreaking Fantasy Factors, which spotlight key player attributes, such as injury history and schedule strength, that continue to provide value in-season.

Conclusions

One of our key design tenets was to ensure that the navigation remained consistent both within and across each of the mobile applications. Early feedback has shown that new users have found the interfaces to be intuitive, and easy-to-use, while returning Bloomberg Sports customers are pleased with the applications’ focus on simple, prescriptive guidance. We have designed a user interface model that is flexible enough to apply to future sports (e.g., NBA, NHL) with only minor adjustments, while the development framework can scale to support additional platforms (e.g., Android). As the fantasy baseball trading deadline approaches and users begin to divert their attention to the football season, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports plan to continue supporting fantasy players looking for the competitive edge, whether at home or on the go.

Each of the in-season mobile applications is available for purchase through the iTunes Store:

• iPad Trade Analyzer
• iPhone Trade Analyzer
• iPhone Fantasy Scout

For the past few years Roundarch has been partnering with Avis Budget Group to develop a consolidated digital strategy.   In June, Aman Datta, vice president of Roundarch, and Kathryn Kiritsis, director of online marketing at Avis Budget Group presented at the Association of Travel Marketing Executives (ATME) Travel Marketing Conference in Boston, MA.  AMTE, chaired by Henry Harteveldt of Forrester Research, is a non-profit, professional association made up of experienced and innovative travel industry marketers.  We were very excited to share our strategy and the success of our partnership with Avis Budget Group at the conference.  Roundarch and Avis Budget Group have partnered to focus on a “go to where the customer is” strategy for digital marketing/commerce including a redesigned Web site, mobile apps, fully-functional booking widgets and a comprehensive optimization strategy.

The first step in this strategy was to develop personas to serve as the foundation.

After developing the personas we worked with Avis to completely redesign the car rental experience on Avis.com.  The rental process was reduced from 5 clicks on different pages to 3 clicks all on one page while displaying choices and prices dynamically to improve conversion.  Then we expanded to the mobile space with the first-to-market iPhone app for Avis.  We continue to work with Avis Budget Group to grow in the mobile space with apps on other platforms as well as site extensions that allow Avis to take their experience to affiliate sites.  This mobile strategy has resulted in a 300% increase in mobile revenues.  We have also partnered with Avis Budget Group to focus on optimization including multivariate testing and improved organic search.  The case for optimization is compelling:

• Revenue from SEO has doubled each of the 4 years since Avis upgrades its SEO efforts with a 40% decrease in SEM costs.
• Together search makes up over 25% of online revenue for both the Avis and Budget Brands.
• Budget conversion rate more than doubles for incremental SEO traffic.
• Landing page conversion from search traffic increased by 30%.

Recently, Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester Research published a case study outlining how successfully Avis has used personas to drive SEO, specifically organic search, in the past few years.

“Over the last few years, we’ve invested a considerable amount of money on this SEO project, but it’s still less than 10% of what we spend on paid search.  SEO is more cost-effective than paid search, so we need to strike the best balance.”

John Peebles, vice president of Avis Budget Group

Our partnership with Avis Budget Group has shown that a comprehensive digital strategy is essential in the market today.  We are continuing to not just plan for the future of digital marketing, but evolve with new technologies and design the future of digital marketing to best align with the customer.

It’s been an interesting year for Bloomberg Sports. They introduced themselves in a big way to the world of sports after announcing partnerships with both MLB Advanced Media and NFL.com, and are out to prove they can revolutionize the way both fans and professionals consume statistics–just as they did when they introduced the “terminal” to the world of financial services.  In one short year, Bloomberg Sports has already been named one of the top 10 most innovative companies in sports by Fast Company and seem to be  well on their way to playing in the big leagues.

With over 10 million fantasy baseball players all fighting for bragging rights, enter Bloomberg Sports – Front Office 2011. Totally redesigned for this season, Bloomberg partnered with Roundarch to design and develop a suite of tools that gives fantasy baseball players an edge on their competition through a multi-channel digital experience.  With Bloomberg’s statistical algorithms and an easy to use yet powerful interface for the web, iPhone and iPad, fantasy managers are able to lead their teams to the championship from draft day straight through October.

A key feature implemented in this year’s version is the ability to sync Front Office 2011 directly with each of the 3 major fantasy providers (ESPN, Yahoo, and CBSSports.com).  Once synced, fantasy team managers can see news, lineup recommendations and player rankings that are fully customized to their team.  To date there are more than r 25,000 unique league settings synced with Front Office 2011, which means an equal number of different player rankings.  With this type of customized analysis, draft preparation has taken on a whole new meaning.

Traditionally, fantasy users are most engaged at the beginning of the season with post draft day user engagement falling precipitously.  For many, the adage is that the fantasy season is won or lost on draft day.  We believe that doesn’t have to be  the case when  a season is 6 months long and a host of moves can  win – or lose – that league championship between April and October.  To capitalize on this, Front Office 2011 aims to not only change the way fantasy players  prepare for their drafts, but to also create a market for a companion tool set that users rely on throughout the duration of the 162-game season.

Stay Engaged to Win

Through fantasy user research Roundarch has found a significant correlation between league standings and overall engagement level.   Analyzing league activity over the course of a season has shown that as teams fall lower in the league standings, users essentially stop playing. This reaction is sped up by a fantasy manager’s failed attempts to improve team performance. At the other end of the spectrum, managers of teams performing well will stay engaged, and actually show an increase in activity as the playoffs approach. One logical way  to keep users engaged all season long is to keep them  more informed and competitive throughout the season by  making information easy to understand and utilize to their benefit.

Manage Intuitively with Confidence

Once a fantasy league has drafted and the baseball season is under way, there are two management areas that impact a team’s performance.

1.       Starting lineup/Roster Management

2.       Procuring new players through Free Agency or Trade

.  The challenges in fantasy baseball are the frequency of the games, the uncertainty surrounding an MLB player’s availability to play and the amount of time a fantasy manager needs to focus on their lineup to ensure they are making good decisions.  This is compounded by the need to make decisions daily, rather than weekly.  For a fantasy manager this can be quite a time consuming process, especially if the user conducts his or her own research and player evaluation. To help combat this time consuming process, Roundarch designed Lineup Manager Tool to help the user answer all those questions quickly, easily, and with confidence.

Lineup Manager algorithms analyze the user’s roster based on the season to date by calculating daily projected performance to derive the best starting lineup for each day’s games. The Lineup Manager tool then displays easy to follow recommendations to Start, Bench, or Swap players in and out of the user’s lineup. Each recommendation highlights the affected players, explains the reason for the move, and the statistical impact allowing the fantasy manager to be confident that every decision made is well researched.

Lineup Manager

Free Agent Finder

The most difficult decision for a fantasy manager can be deciding to drop an underperforming player and replacing him with a new player. This is done in two ways:

1.       Adding a Player from Free Agency

2.       Trading for a New Player

Both transactions require the user to select departing and incoming players. Many users feel that like the draft, dropping and adding a player is a do or die moment in their quest for the title. From the fantasy players  we have interviewed, we understand that there is a tremendous fear of dropping the wrong player, dropping a player ahead of measurable improvement, or adding the wrong player. The Free Agent Finder was designed to help the user in each of these areas.

The Free Agent Finder is a tool to help the users identify players that can help their team in statistically weaker areas based on statistical splits, projections and side by side player analysis. This is not just a list of the best players available, but recommendations based on in-depth analysis of exactly what the fantasy player’s teamneeds based on their league standings

Free Agent Finder

Trading Between Teams with Trade Analyzer

An area that goes largely untapped by a majority of fantasy users is trading between teams. Roundarch has learned that users shy away from this strategy largely because they are unable to confidently evaluate trade offers. Trades that are accepted generally consist of players that are similar and ultimately do not improve either team, or worse, a user may accept a trade that is unfair and weakens their team. Once a user has been burned by a bad trade, the typical response is to reject every trade offer and utilize the free agent pool exclusively. Trades in fantasy baseball, just like in the majors, should be exciting opportunities to get players that will make an impact and help their teams.  Roundarch saw this as an opportunity for fantasy users to engage in every aspect of the game, and consequently created  the Trade Analyzer tool which allows users to easily view recommended trade ideas or evaluate any trade based on fairness and statistical impact.

Trade Analyzer Dashboard

Trade Analysis View

Trade Analyzer, like Free Agent Finder, will recommend trade ideas that will help the user’s team in underperforming areas. These trade ideas are based on past and projected performance as well as league standings. All trade ideas displayed are beneficial and balanced for the user and their trade partner. The Balance calculation looks at each player’s ranking and the value of the player to each team’s roster. A balanced trade involves players who are similarly ranked but are not necessarily similar players. A warning is displayed when an unbalanced trade is evaluated and the Trade Analyzer cautions the user against making the trade. Statistically, both teams improve from the trade idea, but each trade idea is customized to the user’s team needs. Beyond the recommended trade ideas, users may enter any combination of players from their roster with any other team in their league to evaluate the balance and statistical impact of trade offers. With these tools, users can now evaluate and offer trades knowing that they will improve their team.

Bloomberg Front Office 2011 featuring the new   Lineup Manager, Free Agent Finder and Trade Analyzer tools helps to keep  fantasy managers informed, competitive, and most importantly engaged through all 162 games of the baseball season, giving everyone a shot at fantasy baseball championships with just a few clicks.

Mobile Marketer highlights the mobile versions of Front Office 2011, a fantasy baseball draft kit that uses Bloomberg’s proprietary scientific algorithms, for users of Apple’s iPad and iPhone.

Powered by developer Roundarch, the application targets fantasy baseball players and fans, helping them to prepare for the start of the fantasy baseball season. The mobile draft prep app gives fantasy players up-to-the-minute projections and rankings, and is designed to help players get ready as the draft approaches and use as a resource during the draft.

Read the full article here.

MLB Advanced Media and Bloomberg Sports recently released a fan application called Front Office 2011 for fantasy baseball league players that utilizes much of the same information as the professional software. The tool, to be used in conjunction with existing fantasy leagues, directly syncs up with the major fantasy providers, including ESPN, CBS and Yahoo! Sports. It provides fantasy team owners with recommendations for trades and free agent pickups, which players to put in the lineup each day, and other tips based on league stats.

“When fantasy players look at sites for draft or research suggestions, everything is canned,” said Rob Bischoff, engagement director at Roundarch, which designed the Web and mobile application for Front Office 2011. “This tool instead specifically caters to what your team needs and gives deep insight and analysis.”

In addition, it provides real-time stats, local market news, and player analysis and comparisons from around the major leagues.

Squadron said Front Office 2011 is available for download at BloombergSports.com for $19.95 for the season and will be accessible via the Apple App Store for the iPhone ($1.99) and iPad ($4.99) starting in the next few days.

Read the full article here.

It seems like every day our clients face questions around the “next great platform” and the need to be a part of it.  Regardless of which platforms to pursue, an often overlooked question is:  How do you seamlessly extend your product experience into multiple spaces?

Recently we delivered a multi-platform solution for Bloomberg Sports’ NFL Decision Maker that illustrates some of the key points to keep in mind.

1)      Understand needs and context

2)      Capitalize on platform strengths

3)      Anticipate interaction discrepancies

4)      Leverage an extensible design style

Check out the ‘Best iPhone Apps’ review of Decision Maker by AppSmile.com.

A Little Background

Bloomberg Sports’ NFL Decision Maker is a revolutionary sports analysis tool that provides fantasy football consumers with weekly player analysis of unparalleled breadth and depth. 

Following the release of the original web version at BloombergSports.com we worked with Bloomberg Sports to simultaneously extend the product across iPhone and iPad devices.  The success rested on translating the application across different platforms while maintaining Bloomberg Sports’ cohesive brand identity and unique user experience.

1) Understand needs and context

Each new platform tends to be environmentally different requiring a more intimate understanding of what people do and when they do it for each platform.

As we translated Decision Maker for the iPad and iPhone we had to make choices about the quantity, style and structure of information.  Similar in focus to the web version, the iPad release includes the same layered analysis within a more visually immersive and playful experience for iPad users.

iPad app

This contrasts with the iPhone release, which is targeted at brief interaction and is correspondingly leaner and more focused on responding to incidental requests.  Less exploration, more answers, in an experience that while dynamic is fairly utilitarian.

2) Capitalize on platform strengths

Understanding what each platform and device excels at and ensuring your product takes full advantage is critical to meeting the specific expectations of target users.

A core market differentiator for Bloomberg Sports is rich and dynamic charting.  As we conceptualized the iPhone and iPad offerings, we considered Apple iOS’ strong support for charting with advanced styling and dynamic, haptic behaviors that are natively available.

For the iPhone we were more judicious with charting given the focus on essential information, with comparative and single side bar charts providing a uniform experience across the main application displays. In contrast, the iPad incorporates highly stylized charts and an additional interactive chart that is unavailable in the Web version (risk/reward chart).

iPhone app

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iPad app

3) Anticipate interaction discrepancies

Different platforms can have very different interaction models (e.g., haptic/touch vs. non-touch or picking items from a list).  Also, the scale of a given device can dictate a difference in focus that can have ripple effects across how a product behaves.  A multi-platform strategy requires both an understanding of these differences and an ability to tailor the design to the space.

Thankfully the Decision Maker web application was designed to work on haptic devices like iPad and iPhone, so many of the core paradigms translated fairly easily.  However, “passive” indicators needed to be rethought and interaction behaviors and controls needed to be redesigned to utilize Apple UI paradigms and components.  Additionally, because users expect the ability to interact with everything in a touch medium, we also needed to make the interface more reactive and responsive.

4) Create an extensible design

From the beginning, we ensured that the design for Decision Maker considered the need to deploy across different devices and products, and established a style that could be easily translated between different platforms.  Differences in tone and scale between devices require a degree of translation and rethinking to adapt for the space.

The entire family of Decision Maker platforms

While the iPad and iPhone have different interface styles (buttons, menus, etc.) and physical/proportional differences, they utilize a common visual language and tone that both marries with the broader Bloomberg Sports brand and establish a unified product experience. The extensibility of the underlying framework allowed us to insure that different capabilities felt like extensions of a single product.

Bringing It Full Circle

Pursuing a multi-platform product strategy isn’t inherently more difficult or problematic than designing a single product.  However, successful initiatives require that you think more broadly about your product and audience from the outset, establishing a vision that you can execute against a framework that can allow you to easily extend yourself into different spaces and experiences.

Last Month we had the chance to once again work with the Chicago band Wilco on updates to the successful iPhone application.  The updates gave us a chance to improve some of the features already in the application and add even more.  Wilco has always been dedicated to using new technologies to help the band connect to their fans and these improvements strengthen that connection.  The new version features an all new roadcase with live concert recordings from the Boston, MA and Madison, WI performances.  We were able to improve the photo and poster galleries and add a section dedicated to the upcoming Solid Sound festival.

I had a chance to discuss the app at last Month’s Mobile Monday Chicago Mobile Demo Showcase held in Chicago on June 21.  The presentation focused on some of the updated features of the app and highlighted the cloud based data integration with wilcoworld.net, the official Wilco website.

In addition to the iPhone app updates we also worked with the band to update the website’s discography using the latest HTML5 audio technology.  You can now enjoy the bands discography on your iPad and other modern web browsers like Chrome and Safari.

Stay tuned for future updates coming very soon that will enhance the Solid Sound section and allow you to listen to the concerts and album tracks while multitasking.

Last month we attended the third annual Google I/O 2010 Conference. The conference, held at the Moscone West Center in San Francisco, CA, was the largest yet with over 5000 attendees, 90 breakout sessions, and 180 demonstrations in the Sandbox area.

NYSTROM Herff Jones Education Division, Roundarch’s client, was invited to show StrataLogica in the Sandbox area. We were on hand to answer technical question while Don Rescigno demonstrated StrataLogica to the attendees. We are proud to say that StrataLogica was well received by the attendees and praised by Google’s developers.

The daily keynotes, breakout sessions and Sandbox demonstrations were interesting. However, the real benefit was two days of rubbing shoulders with Google developers and developers who use or are interested in using Google products—swapping stories, ideas, and generally talking shop.

The first day’s Keynote fired up the audience.

The main theme was open and inclusive technologies with unveiled shots at Apple for their decision to exclude Flash on the iPhone. Google made a commitment to HTML5 (and CSS3), Wave is opened and in Google Apps, Google Web Tools supports Spring. Also, Google announced Storage for developers and the Chrome Web Store: a single place to find Web apps.

HTML5 helps provide a desktop app experience to user’s of RIA and is supported by every major browser. (IE9 will support HTML5.) CSS3 transitions and font embedding were mentioned in passing. Google Fonts API will generate the CSS needed to add Google hosted fonts to a Web page using the @font-face CSS tag.

The HTML5 specification opens up access to the client system. There is still some foot dragging on access to system devices and areas of the specification that need to be clarified, but when available would make projects like Motorola’s easier. An example use was dragging and dropping email attachments where a file on the local PC can be dragged into the Web application.

With HTML5, came the announcement of a new video format named WebM. This is an open sourced format that runs in the HTML5 video tag and can be supported in other media players. Webm is based on Vorbis for the audio and VP8, by On2—recently acquired by Google—for the video.

Adobe announced HTML5 support in Dreamweaver and WebM support in Flash. Dreamweaver will have three different size preview panels so the developer can see how the Web page looks in a traditional browser, a mobile phone portrait orientation, and a mobile phone in landscape orientation.

There now is a growing need to create designs that are more fluid and can transform themselves to different screen formats.  The Sports Illustrated editor gave an impressive demonstration of a Web edition of the magazine using HTML5.

There is a lot of promise in the emerging HTML5/CSS3 standard to provide a rich interactive user experience. This is especially true in the mobile market where Apple and Google are already implementing HTML5.  GWT, Google Web Tools, was mentioned mostly for the new performance tracking tools and its tight integration with The Spring Framework.  GWT generates cross-browser compliant HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript from Java, allowing developers to rapidly create AJAX enabled Web apps with little client side programming.

Whereas Wednesday’s Keynote was all about HTML 5 and Video, Thursday’s Keynote was all about Android and Google TV.

Starting with the announcement of Android 2.2, dubbed Froyo (FROzen YOgurt), and then proceeding on to demonstrate a wealth of new features.

Froyo’s JavaScript engine, taken directly from Chrome, includes a Just-In-Time compiler improving performance by up to 500%.  Also demonstrated were improved application support features including installing to removable memory for portability between devices (if the app allows) and in the event of an application crash, Froyo can upload a stack trace to the developer’s account to assist with fixing bugs that have made it into the wild.  Many enhancements simplifying device to device and device to web communications have been added also.  In addition, keeping with Google’s focus on advertising, several new provider agnostic ad placement mechanisms have been added.

Following the Android demonstration, Google TV was announced.   Google’s goal is for the web to change TV as it changed computers and mobile devices previously.  I think the most important take away from the presentation, is that Google TV is:

1. An open specification that manufacturers can use to assure interoperability between their TV devices.
2. A hardware specification for those devices to ensure compatibility with Google TV.
3. An Android & Chrome based platform that can be deploy to any device that complies with the hardware specification.

The most compelling feature of Google TV is eliminating the concept of the Input Source.  Instead of changing inputs between Cable, Internet, DVD or Blue Ray and then using the available search features (if any), Google TV would instead issue a user’s search across all devices and the results will be displayed integrated together. The correct input source is then streamed according to the user’s choice.

Being Android, developers will be able to create/install applications. One interesting example would be to use existing services to translate closed caption feeds into languages that are not supported.  With all the improved device to device communications of Android, any Android device will be able to interface with any Google TV device.  Obvious examples: programming your DVR from anywhere with your phone or using it as the remote.  A more advance app would be watching recorded video from any Android device anywhere.

The NBA also demoed an application based around their content that demonstrated how a normal broadcast can be enriched with related content.  This leads to the implication that companies should consider including a TV presence in addition to Web and Mobile presences.

We think some of the most interesting insights that were very apparent at the conference are:

1. Adobe is on board with HTML 5 and WebM.  This makes HTML vs. Flash discussions somewhat academic or irrelevant.
2. Google clearly has Apple/iPhone in their sights.  There were quite a few shots directed at Steve Jobs in addition to numerous comments about his company and its devices.
3. Google has affirmed its commitment to open and inclusive standards.  They will embrace these standards where they are established and spearhead their creation and adoption where they do not.

I recently read an article exploring the idea that new tablet devices, including the iPad, will create a greater demand for SaaS and cloud storage.  This is an interesting perspective to me because I don’t think we’re too far away from the day when “iPod as a service” becomes a reality and there is no more need for DRM.  Paying $9.99 a month for listening to any song ACROSS any compatible device you have, and having the option not to “own” any of the albums or songs sounds good to me.  Rhapsody has an early model in place already that does this to an extent (it supports a few devices, but not ANY device). With the continued development of “As A Service” business models and frameworks I can’t think of a reason why iTunes or a future “Google Tunes” cannot do it tomorrow

What used to be called Storage Area Networks a decade ago and was intended to make enterprise storage more robust and accessible is now commoditized and called the Storage Cloud. Computation is also becoming an accessible commodity with the Elastic Compute Cloud. Access to applications and storage is now more consumer friendly and unlimited. If you think about it we’re in a sense going back to the Mainframe days. Only now you can access a “mainframe” with theoretically unlimited computing and storage power, for personal use, through your phone, sitting on a train and not just for dedicated scientific or business applications. Everything is becoming more seamless and transparent. For once we needn’t worry about operating environments, compatibility, or file formats. We can now focus less on the Information Technology and more on the Information.

The defining characteristic behind the adoption of any pervasive computing enabler (SaaS being the front runner right now) has been the degree of mobility of the associated commercially available User Agent (iPad, iPhone, HP Slate, Android devices like ICD Gemini etc). While it can be argued that these devices are still in their infancy, if Moore’s law is anything to go by, we’ll see significant improvements in associated enabling technologies, specifically connectivity and bandwidth, as these devices gain market share. As the enablers do more the devices themselves need to do less without overall loss of functionality. In other words pretty soon you will find fully functional clients getting smaller and thinner simply because the technology has matured to the degree that storage and computation is not a constraint anymore. Just so long as you are connected to a pipe that’s fast enough to shuttle data back and forth without latency (IEEE 802.16 anyone?).

Taking the idea of smaller sizes and integrated capabilities a bit further I can’t help but imagine what new possibilities nano-scale technologies and quantum computing will offer in the near future. For those more inclined towards theoretical computing foundations there seems a greater push to look beyond the traditional Church-Turing conjecture that all computing technology based on registers and pointers is arguably inspired by. What seemed like sci-fi fantasy 20 years ago is in our pockets today. Mark Weiser’s Smart Device is now a reality, the internet of things is probably not too far away. By all indications could “Hyper-computation” be doable in 20 years or less? Regardless with the advent of full virtualization, on demand licensing and increased bandwidth we’re in for some good times ahead!

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us at Roundarch went down to Austin Texas for the yearly new media conference, South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive. Although SXSW started out as purely a music festival to fill in the void in business during the spring break, it is now the highest revenue producing special event for Austin. It’s music festival has over 1,400 performers at over 80 venues over four days. The event now has an interactive conference and film festival all bunched up in the span of a bit over a week.

SXSWi seemed really big this year. It seems to be getting bigger and bigger every year and quickly becoming the “it” event for anyone in new media whether it’s digital marketers, social media folks, tech entrepreneurs, web technologists, bloggers, venture capitalists, publishers, agencies, etc. SXSWi is the one place where one can run into successful tech entrepreneurs and CEOs like Tony Hsieh of Zappos, famous authors like Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss, and twitter whales like Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Evan Williams of Twitter. It’s a really great conference for those interested in hearing what the thought leaders of the online interactive industry and the herd are doing. I recall last year I didn’t meet that many people from Chicago but this year it seemed like everywhere I turned I met someone from Chicago. Many of them were SXSW first timers. My overall impression was that companies are starting to have a social media budget and sending these people down here.

Panels at the SXSWi conference typically fall under business, web design and development, nonprofit, or emerging technology. I stuck mostly to the web design and development track. Some of the notable panels I went to include scaling web applications, iPad, designing seductive interactions, and game mechanics. One of the things I really enjoy about SXSW is seeing and learning how others are doing things and their willingness to share.

Two big themes of this conference were mobile and social media. Just the sheer number of people whether they be social media enthusiasts or professionals doing some sort of social media work for companies was astounding. The demographic is definitely skewed towards the people with iPhones and it almost always guaranteed to bring the AT&T network down. Last year AT&T had to have a mobile antenna nearby. Location based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla also made a big splash this year. Last year people were using solely twitter to find out where their friends were at SXSW. This year, one of the most useful tools was the trending feature of Foursquare that showed you which venues had the most checkins.

Some people come down to SXSW as much for the conference as for the parties. Companies ranging from big software corporations like Microsoft as well as startups like Gowalla make an effort to throw big parties in order to please the vocal and active online crowd. On any given night, there’s probably around 3 different parties going on and lines are usually ridiculously long. Personally I’m a bit too old for that and it’s not how I roll. I prefer a more intimate and quite setting so that I can really get to know and connect with the people I hang out with. One evening, a small group of us ended up in a Thai restaurant with one of the Backupify guys (another great midwest startup) Ben Thomas. One another night, a small group of Chicago folks met up with some Youtube engineers to have a great private barbecue. In this type of setting I am able to learn more about what they do, converse and connect. In short SXSW is a great way to develop connections you otherwise wouldn’t make. Your mileage may vary depending on your age and tolerance for alcohol. I personally like going to the sessions. I think the early morning sessions separate the men from the boys and you typically see some hardcore technical ones in the morning.

This year’s keynote with Evan Williams, cofounder of Twitter was a bit of a let down. The one big Twitter announcement of the new @platform was covered only very briefly. First of all, the person doing the interviewing is probably a better writer than a speaker and should have probably stuck to his day job. Many people in the audience complained and even Guy Kawasaki made a jab. Personally I think Guy should do all the keynote interviews. He is entertaining and gets right to the point.

The SXSW experience is what you make out of it. You can go to tons of sessions and learn a lot. You can make friends and lifelong connections at various parties. You can spend time with vendors and learn what their product roadmaps are. Five days is definitely on the long side and by the third day, I feel pretty exhausted but I recommend it if you are in the industry.