schematic

Clikthrough is an interactive audience measurement company that specialises in video encoding, analytics and metadata tagging. Clikthrough’s unique technology allows users to mouse-over and “clik” on anything they see in a video: products, people, places, and more. Once you’ve clicked on a hotspot you will see information about the product displayed in a pod on the right-hand side of the main video screen. Users can choose to purchase said item, rate it, leave a comment, chat about it, or save it to a wish list for future reference.

Clikthrough is not just a great asset for users – they’ve also developed a set of tools for content owners and advertisers to both monetise online content and increase consumer engagement for content owners and advertisers. Their proprietary analytics package, named Traffic Jam tracks over 50 unique in-stream and out-stream consumer video engagement behaviors and metrics, allowing content owners to drill down into, compare and cross-reference content performance data in more than 5,500 different ways. This provides content owners and advertisers with unprecedented opportunities to reach, engage, measure, and merchandise to a more engaged consumer audience without traditional commercial interruptions.

Clikthrough recently announced that it had secured $1 million in new financing from a host of stellar names in the music business. These investors include Max Martin, the Swedish Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter; Savan Kotecha, the hit-making songwriter whose skills have helped sell over 35 million records; Nicky Byrne, who has sold over 40 million albums worldwide as leader of the Irish band Westlife, and Wayne Wilkins, the chart topping UK music producer and writer. They’ve also struck deals with Sony Music, Universal Music and Slip N Slide Records to license content, and also recently added a customised iPhone site for mobile access.

By giving consumers a new way to explore and interact with the video content they watch, they’re not only providing end users with a deeper form of video engagement end. They’re directly assisting content owners, and advertisers, in monetising video content in an as yet unexplored medium.

IMO Clikthrough’s unique technology make it a prime candidate for acquisition in the hypercharged online video economy.

The battle for Olympic gold in the global video streaming event is well and truly under way. With Microsoft having a head start in partnering (*ahem paying*) with NBC to deliver 2,200 hours of live, interactive video, plus integrated broadcast coverage. Their NBCOlympics site will have massive spikes of traffic based on the hotly contended events, as well as peak viewing periods.

With the eyes of the world closely scrutinising their offering. It goes without saying, that what ever is produced needs to be designed for performance and deliver a brilliant user experience. This being the case, NBC and Microsoft have teamed up with UX glitterati Schematic to design the Silveright based NBCOlympics Player application. The application will offer users the ability to switch between multiple live streams (i.e. cameras), and multiple events simultaneously, as well as offer enhanced picture-in-picture, and interactive features for all users watching at any given time.

Whilst it has been widely reported that NBC will be forcing users to download Microsoft’s Silverlight player in order to see live and on-demand video. This is not necessarily the case. Of course Microsoft would prefer users to download Silverlight in order to get the best user experience, but users who don’t have the plug-in, or choose not to use it, will still be able to get stand alone video streams if they have the Windows Media player. Having said that, given that the market penetration of Silverlight is still pretty low, Microsoft are obviously hoping that the Olympics will be the face to launch a million downloads. In theory, this isn’t such a bad plan, so long as the technology actually delivers on the promises from from an end UX perspective (which unfortunately it didn’t in my small focus group).

Despite having Silverlight installed on our Macs, when we attempted to view/test any streaming content via the NBCOlympics Player our browser(s) continually crashed. Additionally, if you’re not running Windows Media Centre, or are on a Mac, you won’t be able to access NBC’s online Olympic video centre (NBC Olympics On The Go) either. According to TVTonics’ site if you don’t have the following system requirements (below) you can forget about any streaming (or on-demand) video.

System Requirements

• operating system — Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit currently not supported)
• Windows Media Center required — included with Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate
• processor — 1GHz 32-bit processor minimum
• memory — 1GB mininum RAM (2GB recommended)
• disk space — minimum of .5GB per subscribed channel + 1GB add’l
• video — 1024×768 minimum resolution; support for DirectX 9 graphics, minimum 128MB VRAM, WDDM Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, 32 bits per pixel

*Update* according to comments left over at TechCrunch – Comcast, Cox and others users whose ISPs throttle their downloads, or users on Timewarner and others who have metered bandwidth charges won’t be able to tune in either.

All-in-all, the fact that NBC, and Microsoft have seen fit to restrict the availability of a global sporting event in this manner is pretty disappointing from an end user perspective. Personal annoyances/disappointment aside, as an advocate of rich internet applications, and the genuine benefits they bring end users, I wish NBC/Microsoft every success with this endeavor – and honestly hope we don’t see a repeat of the Microsoft/Mosiac strike out earlier this year with the US Major League Baseball site.

The bottom line is that if users are required to make the effort to download/install a new run-time (regardless of flavour) to support the viewing of rich/digital media – anything less than a stellar end-user experience will do way more damage to the overall benefits of RIAs (as a whole) regardless of which platform they’re built on.

Odd sounding name, even stranger sounding definitions (especially when you check out the Wikipedia or German versions). Doof is a nice looking Adobe Flex based (“freemium”) social networking, casual gaming site.

After some initial sign-up problems, I found Doof to offer a range of stock-standard games – ranging from arcade and action, to cards and puzzles etc. With the typical gaming-fare of leagues, tournaments and competitions to keep the more competitive gamer entertained. Certain parts of the site, (i.e. the elite games or specific virtual goods), are locked down and require an ongoing (pay based) subscription.

You’ll also find a lot of the typical social networking site (i.e. Facebook and MySpace) offerings here, such as the ability to create profiles, friend lists, and update your status (as well as customised news feeds).

According to Social Networking Watch, Doof is privately-owned by the London based Money Gaming Corporation Ltd, which is headed up by CEO Liad Shababo. Shababo started his online gaming site career as an affiliate for online gaming companies in 2002, eventually starting up MoneyGaming.com in 2005. MoneyGaming.com allowed people to play games of skill against each other for real money.

Shababo’s plans for Doof include creasing the user base, enhancing the site functionality, predominantly around the interactive community features, whilst at the same time, growing the games, competitive options, player customisation features and integration options with existing social networking sites and platforms.

If you didn’t get a chance to make it across to Adobe MAX in Chicago this year, Adobe Australia are holding a “Refresh” event for the local developer communities. This is your chance to hear first hand the about latest news and announcements made during the keynotes of Adobe’s largest single developer event!

Over the last few posts i’ve looked at UX and SOA, SOC & Web 2.0 as motivators behind the recent adoption/popularity of rich Internet applications.

Another key motivator driving the adoption and development of Rich Internet Applications is Brand. To understand why brand would actually play a part in any RIA development process we need to step back a few years.

Back in October 25, 1994 HotWired (the online sibling of Wired Magazine) was the first web site to sell online advertising space in large quantities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. They were also the first company to provide click through analytic reports to its customers. This (sales) initiative was the brain child of Rick Boyce, a former media buyer with San Francisco advertising agency Hal Riney & Parnters.

In late 1996 Hewlett Packard partnered with San Francisco-based online agency, Red Sky Interactive, to produce what is now regarded as the worlds first interactive rich media banner ad (dare I say Advergame). The ad was developed by Red Sky programmer Chris Hurwitz (using Macromind Director) and allowed users to play the classic videogame Pong within a banner ad. Looking back, it seems quite poignant that the world’s first rich media ad was based on the world’s first video game, Pong.

So what’s all of this got to do with RIA motivators I hear you asking? Well actually a quite a lot. Ask yourself – which came first – the brand or the application? The answer (in most cases) is the brand. Sure there are a few brands that have evolved from an application (Microsoft for example) but, for the most part, a large proportion of all RIA’s are an extension of an organisation’s existing brand. As such, RIA’s are often referred to in advertising circles as ‘Branded Applications” (or Branded Utilities).

The guys over at Teknision are leaders in the branded application space, and are one of the few digital agencies on the planet who actually get the power of RIAs. A belief that Teknision have (that I whole heartedly share) is that “traditional campaigns focus on entertainment to deliver a message, while branded applications provide a valuable service in order to deliver an emotional connection with a brand.”

Unlike existing Flash based corporate web/micro-sites, branded applications offer organisations the opportunity to excel where other traditional (brand or web based) experiences fall short. Applications like Nike+ harness the power of the web, the idea of a (social network based) community, a smattering of innovative Apple hardware, all wrapped up within an intuitive application to produce an unmatched user experience that is engaging, useful, interactive and most importantly begs to be revisited time and time again.

Amongst all the other benefits that RIAs provide, branded applications add enhanced customer loyalty to the mix. By providing a tangible, longer lasting service to their customer, brands that choose this path dramatically set themselves apart from those that are still intent on interrupting the consumer wherever they are.

The introduction of new technologies like AIR and Silverlight will continue to speed up the proliferation of branded applications (AMP is a classic example of this). As such, companies need to spend some serious time looking at how they communicate, not only their offerings, but also themselves to end users. Old skool (branding) mentality is a thing of the past. Customers (aka clients) are becoming more discerning when evaluating brands (oraganisations and their offerings). They are are demanding longer lasting, more tangible benefits such as those provided by branded applications. Anything falling short will be seen as little more than noise.

I’m just about to hit the hay and thought i’d post some of the (now public) announcements which will no doubt be hitting the blogesphere tomorrow (or today) – depending where you are in the world.

For those interested i’ll be writing more detailed, and complete outlines of the following posts tomorrow (once i’ve woken up).

Adobe Acquires Virtual Ubiquity (Buzzword) – This is HUGE news as Virtual Ubiquity are the creators of ground-breaking online word processor RIA, Buzzword. Built entirely in Adobe Flex, Buzzword can run either in an online mode (via any Flash Player 9 enabled browser), or offline (from the desktop) as a stand-alone AIR application.

Adobe announces Share – Adobe announces new free online document sharing service, codenamed “Share”. Looking very much like an online version of Flash Paper, Share allows users to select, upload, and preview documents they wish to share with friends, colleagues, etc. Recipients are in-turn sent a message to view the document, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted. Built using Adobe Flex, the rich UI provides a smooth experience, integrating simple workflows to upload and share documents with high quality online previews to speed up finding the right document. Jump in and take Share for a test-drive here on Adobe Labs.

More than just hot AIR – Adobe has announced a swag of major organisations who have embraced the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and will be demo’ing applications at MAX this week. The companies include: Anthropologie, AOL, Business Objects, eBay, The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc., Nickelodeon’s Nick.com, PayPal, Philips Lighting, QVC, salesforce.com, SAP, and Yahoo!.

Adobe Media Player (AMP) – Whilst on the theme of major organisations adopting Adobe technologies. Major television broadcasters and leading content publishers including CBS, PBS, Yahoo! Video, Meredith Corporation, Blip.tv, Fora.tv, Motionbox, MyToons and StimTV are collaborating with Adobe to distribute video content via the new Adobe Media Player (AMP). AMP is a lightweight desktop AIR based application that offers viewers the ability to subscribe, and watch content online or download and view videos offline, all with full-screen hi-def playback. To download and try the demo version of AMP drop by Adobe Labs.

FlashLite 3.0 Announced – This is major news for developers looking to bring video to mobile devices. This latest upgrade to the FlashLite Player provides improved performance along with ability to embed or stream Flash video content to mobile devices.

Andrew Muller sours US/Australian relations by refusing to tip our taxi driver – In all fairness we can probably write this one off as a combination of jet-lag and naiveness. Luckily the cab driver in question had another fare jump in, just as we fled to the sanctuary of our hotel – so wasn’t able to pursue Mr Muller for his $2 tip.

If you’re playing a round of Web 2.0 Wankword bingo I guarantee that by the end of this post you’ll have a winning scorecard. All jokes aside, this second post in my RIA Motivator series aims to look at a few more of the main drivers (motivators) behind the recent popularity of rich internet applications (RIA).

Last week we looked at the UX Motivator, and this week we’ll be focusing on how existing (and new) application architectures, combined with the emergence of Web 2.0 flavoured applications, are directly playing a part in the evolution of the web application ecosystem.

In the following weeks i’ll be looking at some of the other factors i’ve identified as major contributors to the uptake of rich internet applications;

• Corporate Champions
• Brand Awareness/Enhancement
• Financial Benefits

OK, so i’m not about to wade into the whole ‘what is Web 2.0′debate. If you’re a little late to the party, and are still playing catching up, I suggest you start by taking a squizz (look) over Wikipedia’s definition. In a nutshell, Web 2.0 can be distilled down to a few key points/features;

• The “Network as platform” paradigm – i.e. delivering (and allowing users to use) applications entirely through a browser (mind you, AIR kind of skews this point a bit).
• Users owning the data on a site and exercising control over that data.
• An architecture of participation that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.
• Applications that have a richer, more interactive, and user-friendly interface – (read: UX Friendly).

So from the whole Web 2.0 concept we can see there are a couple of touch-points that directly relate to rich internet applications. Primarily the richer, more interactive, and user-friendly applications. Combined with the whole Network as platform paradigm. Both of which are core benefits of RIAs.

In addition to this, if you take a quick look over at Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch you’ll see how every day he critiques and profiles scores of new (and reborn) Internet products and companies. Hundreds of which fall squarely within the Web 2.0 arena. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of the UI’s of these applications have been developed using RIA technologies such as AJAX or Flash (this includes Flex). Further consolidating that User Experience (UX) is a major motivator in this space.

So now we can see the connection between Web 2.0 and RIAs, how do service-oriented architectures (SOA) and service-oriented clients (SOC) fit into the scheme of things? Once again, i’m not going to wax lyrical giving you a definition of SOA when Wikipedia already has a great definition that covers the basics. Fundamentally though, SOA is nothing more than an (architectural) model for taking complex legacy (or new) application architectures and simplifying/streamlining them into ‘loosely-coupled’, discrete pieces (services) that can be presented for consumption by either a client (i.e. a SOC), or other agent. If we break SOA down further we can see that it consists of;

• Data Model(s)
• Services
• Messaging
• Persistence
• Cross Platform capabilities
• Clean Patterns

So whilst SOAs are great news for the back-end, what about the front-end? For the most part, the front-end still consists of a Client/Presentation-tier model that’s comprised of browsers, applets, and fat clients. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take the (above) benefits of SOA and reproduce them in a portable, lightweight, ubiquitous service-oriented client (SOC)? Well i’ll let you in on a little secret – it’s already been done – and it’s called Flash Player. Thats right, Flash Player is a great service-oriented client.

Up until now, it’s been way too easy (for the uneducated) to write Flash Player off as nothing more than a purveyor of skip-intro’s and animated eye-candy. After all, thats where its roots came from – right? Guilty as charged your honour. So with that in mind – it’s easy to understand why there’s always been such a misunderstanding about the power of Flash Player. But love them or hate them (i.e. eye-candy & animations), these are what kick-started Flash Player’s global career. Funnily enough, it’s this rich media background thats given Flash Player a significant head start in the services-oriented client space. So whilst Flash Player can still handle motion graphics, audio, and full-screen video, behind the scenes, it has evolved into a robust, secure, ubiquitous cross-platform runtime. Containing 2 x virtual machines (VMs) and an ECMA-Complaint scripting language capable of handling a multitude of SOA based services.

Lets have a closer look at some of the main benefits of the Adobe service-oriented client (aka Flash Player);

• Ubiquitous – Installed on 98% of web enabled PCs.
• Lightweight – Weighing in at a featherweight (1884k) Flash Player is a true lightweight client when compared to the Java VM (7100k) or Microsoft SilverLight (~4200k).
• Cross Platform – Develop your applications once and Flash Player presents them consistently across browsers and across OS’s (Mac, PC and Linux)
• Persistence – Flash Player is essentially a state-machine that has the ability to maintain persistence on the client.
• Messaging – when combined with LiveCycle Data Services, Flash Player is capable of real-time pub/sub (as well push) messaging.
• Data Model – Leveraging Flash Player’s ability to maintain state, data models can be stored (and manipulated) on the client before being sent back to the server.
• Binary Socket Support – To leverage interoperability with existing custom protocols, and increase data transfer performance.
• Robust Security – Flash Player enforces security sandboxes for applications, content, data, and URLs to safeguard sensitive data.
• ActionScript 3.0 – A powerful ECMAScript complaint object-oriented programming language.
• Services – The crowning glory of Flash Player (in relation to SOC’s) is it’s ability to plug directly into a variety of SOA-services – whether they be HTTPServices, WebServices or Remoting (RPC) Services.

At this point, I think it’s about time I fess’ed up. I’ve been using Flash since before it was born in 1996 (as Future Splash). I’ve also been evangelising the benefits of the Player, the platform and rich internet applications for just as many years (way before Web 2.0 or SOCs were around). I now also work for Adobe. So one could argue that I have a slightly biased view on this particular flavour of SOC – and you’d be right. The reality is though, the only thing that i’ve seen that even comes remotely close to Flash Player as a true services-oriented client is JavaFX. Unfortunately, JavaFX is very much in its infancy (it was only born on May 8th this year!), and is not what you’d really call lightweight.

So as you can see, the concepts of Web 2.0, SOA, and SOC are all very much related to rich internet applications. Based on the touch-points outlined above it’s inevitable that they should play a role in motivating organisations, and stake-holders, to take a closer look at their benefits of rich internet applications as a whole.

There’s no denying it, the new found popularity of rich internet applications (RIA) has been bought about by the ability for users to interact with web based data in a more aesthetically pleasing, coherent, user-friendly, and intuitive manner. This fresh focus on the benefits of user experience (UX) is IMHO the main reason why RIAs exist today. It’s for this reason, that i’ve decided to kick off my RIA Motivators series on UX!

In the following weeks i’ll be looking at some other factors i’ve identified as key motivators driving increase of the rich internet applications;

• Corporate Champions
• Brand Awareness/Enhancement
• SOA & Web 2.0
• Financial Benefits

Over the past 10-15 years, the design of application user interfaces (UIs) has evolved from a focus on utilitarian to intuitive, as users have become more sophisticated (and aware) of how they interact within information spaces. As such, traditional applications have been required to evolve to provide richer, more intuitive, and user-friendly UIs to address the information navigation requirements of its users – enter rich internet applications.

In the past, application UI design was very much at the bottom of the priorities list when it came to developing web applications. It was a task that was handed to someone who had an eye for matching colour styles, and could perhaps optimise graphics for the web. Back then, the primary motivator driving application development was the technology or the architecture. Oddly enough, the (end) user experience was often a mere afterthought.

Fast forward to today, and the pendulum has swung completely back in the other direction. In a market overcrowded with failing, unattractive, unintuitive web applications (born from solely architecture or technology driven motivators). Organisations are finally sitting up and taking notice of what actually motivates people when they interact with application information spaces. What was once an afterthought is now a major focus. The light has finally come on regarding the impact, benefits and importance, user experience (UX) has on the overall success of a web application.

So what constitutes a good application UX? Let me preface this by stating that i’m by no means a UX expert, and the points i’m outlining below are simply my educated take on the subject.

A good place to start would be a clear definition of what exactly user experience is. The guys over at UX Matters. define user experience design as “the integration of interaction design, industrial design, information architecture, visual interface design, instructional design, and user-centered design, ensuring coherence and consistency across all of these design dimensions.“. What, so you mean it’s not just eye-candy and pretty animations

Using that definition as a foundation, i’m of the (educated) opinion that good RIA UX design should contain the following;

Design – It would be too easy to gloss over this point as simply the presentation design element of an application. In reality, as demonstrated by the UX Matters definition above, the ‘cover-all’ term of Design relates not only to visual interface design but also integration, industrial and user-centred design.

I could discuss the individual elements of UX Design for hours and not even scratch the surface. Needless to say, this simply further demonstrates the importance (and complexity) of these disciplines in relation to the planning of successful rich internet applications.

Personalisation – This refers not only to allowing the user to customise they way in which they interact with information within an application (i.e views), but also how the application intelligently ‘learns’ the requirements of the user and adapts accordingly.

Most user’s interactions with web applications revolve around the repetition of a similar task (such as; chatting with friends, checking account balances, paying bills, purchasing goods or services, or making travel plans). It is for this reason, that application UIs need to be intelligent enough to know what task the user is currently attempting to complete. When I refer to ‘intellegence’ i’m actually referring to the analysis of behavioral patterns. These paterns in-turn are used to present a more personalised set of options to the user based on the task they’re trying to complete (as opposed to presenting the user with all possible options for all possible tasks). This personalisation of data/options increases the value associated with each user interaction with the application. This is due to user gestures not being wasted on options that are irrelevant to the task at hand.

Productivity – Is closely related into the above point. There’s no point in having a UI that looks appealing if it doesn’t allow me to perform the tasks that I originally set out to achieve. The management of the usability of complex information spaces is another key factor in UX. The ability to understand, and cater for, the different productivity requirements of an application’s users is paramount. This is especially important for Super-Users (i.e. users who have a requirement to perform repetitive or time-sensitive tasks).

Another major element of productivity revolves around the streamlining of existing (complex) processes. This ‘enhancement’ of the way in which (large) complex information sets are interacted, with helps greatly reduce process abandonment (one of the major misgivings of todays applications). Take for example the humble online application form. Research shows that there is a 5% abandonment rate for each form page a user is required to complete online. Thus the benefit of simplifying a 10 page form (which traditionally would have led to a 50% abandonment rate) and distilling that down into a 4-5 page form results in at least a 25% reduction of process abandonment

The key take-aways regarding UX in relation to the motivators driving the increase in rich internet applications are as follows;

• UX is not just eye-candy to make the application look pretty. It is a critical factor in the overall success (or failure) of a web application. As such it should be treated with the same effort, and importance, as any other part of the project such as architecture, or code-cutting.
• Usability Experts and UX Designers are not second class citizens of your devteam. As such, they should be factored into the project skills/staff mix from the onset of project planning (and not simply thrown in afterthought). Despite general opinion – A skilled UX expert is as valuable a team member as an information architect, or a skilled programmer.
• Ensure that your UX team are continually upskilled/trained/educated. In doing so you’re guaranteed that they’re going to be on top (or ahead) of emerging usability/UI requirements and trends.
• It’s imperative that not only the devteam, but all key project stake holders, be educated on the importance of UX. Communicating the value of UX to stake holders gives them a clearer understanding of the benefits (and impact) that UX has on the success (or failure) of an application project.

I just finished reading an interesting article by Yakov Fain from Farata Systems on the relationship of service oriented architectures (SOA) and rich internet applications (RIA). The article is a great kick start if you’re new to the whole concept of service based architectures (especially if you have an interest in how SOA’s relate to RIA’s). On top of that, I’m always keen in hearing the RIA-related opinions from people/organisations that come from the Enterprise Java side of the fence. With Farata Systems definitely falling into this category.

Yakov’s initial comment in the article relating to “What is the driving force for implementing any technology or architecture in a decent size Enterprise?” aligns very closely to a post I made some time ago about “Who is actually pulling the RIA development strings”. Within the post I discussed the who within traditional IT based organisations are the main champions in driving the uptake of RIAs.

This got me thinking about the bigger picture. What (or who) exactly are the main drivers behind the surge in the popularity of RIAs. Is it the corporate champions within organisations raising internal awareness? Maybe it’s the technology thats trail blazing the way forward. If we look back at Yakov’s post, the architecture of the existing applications and infrastructure has a lot to do with it. What about the bottom line financial benefits of RIAs – surely they have a large role to play? Perhaps it’s boils down to a greater awareness of the benefits of user experience (UX) and how RIAs deliver this? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s something as simple as an organisation wanting to create a better, more widely recognised brand for itself. Personally, I’m of the opinion it’s a combination of all of the above. Individually, any one of the above points could act as a catalyst to motivate an orgnisation to roll-out the RIA red carpet. Realistically though, it boils down to a combination.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll be delving into each of the above points to flesh out the pro’s, and con’s of the main motivators behind the sudden popularity of rich internet applications.

Stay tuned