Hey everyone, it’s Thea here again reporting to you live from the valley of silicon.
Well, I’ve been here a week already and it’s been a non-stop trip so far. I’ll reckon I’ll need a holiday to recover from my holiday.
I’ll be honest with you, trips to California always sound much more glamorous than they actually are, for me it’s just going home. But home to a place where every other corner practically has a tech company on it and every daily car ride is, invariably, past at least one of the big names we’re all familiar with now, be it Yahoo, Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM etc.
Something in that still remains cool to my inner geek. It’s a little inspiring in some way to be surrounded by these global companies. It’s like the valley is steeped in an entrepreneurial spirit that isn’t quite the same anywhere else I’ve ever been.
Scotland, of course, has had its amazing contributions in terms of inventions (television; telephones; penicillin; antiseptics,…hello), but, arguably, not particularly in its global start ups.
Nope nowhere else on earth is quite like the valley.
ONE FOR THE BOOKS
My first weekend was spent in Santa Cruz at an intensive writing conference – discussing various project ideas with other would-be writers. Additionally, we heard experiences of authors, editors, agents and marketing experts.
Much time was spent going over the new paths for publishing (mainstream press, self publishing, different types of ebooks, etc), as well as the various opportunities used to promote works through different social media channels.
Over all I have to say that writing conference was an experience that managed to be both inspirational and deflating in equal measure.
WE CAN ALL BE JOURNALISTS THESE DAYS
The past two days were spent at Stanford University attending a conference: the Eighth Innovation Journalism – how innovation is affecting the business of journalism – from mobile publishing to collective intelligence.
At NSDesign we’re lovers of technology, trends, and of course social media so this conference, too, was right up my street.
There were students, technologists, journalists, and entrepreneurs from all four corners of the globe discussing the many ways we’re all connecting and changing history through stories. Not a new subject – it’s one we covered recently here on our blog and how journalists are using social media for news gathering.
Never has this all been more apparent than in the major global stories over the past year – from the Iceland Ash Cloud, to Japan’s earthquake and Tsunami, to protests in Egypt, to the floods and tornadoes across America.
These incredible events, coupled with today’s mobile technology (smart phones, handheld video cameras etc), mean that any one of us has an opportunity become a citizen journalist if we’re in the right (or wrong) place at the time of the event.
The whole landscape of news, publishing, and indeed interaction is changing and what can feel like break-neck speeds. It’s certainly been a thought-provoking and interesting time to be alive, has it not?
In part two of my Silicon Valley Diary, I’ll be sharing some of the latest hot sites and exciting apps that people have been talking about here in the valley.
Hey guys, it’s Thea here again at NSDesign, where we tend to love new things! New gadgets, new apps, new technology – you name it, we love it! So I was excited yesterday, when I discovered a Swedish VOIP company, REBTEL.
Now I don’t know about you, but Rebtel’s not a name I was familiar with, so I decided to investigate. a little further. It turns out they’re billing themselves as the second VOIP network after Skype. Or put simply, from their site:
“International calls for the cost of a local call from your regular mobile phone and landline – No Computers, No Downloads, No Internet Connections.”
Free calls? I’m in!!
That said, having used Skype for more than a handful of years, I was a bit tentative about it all, that is until my “early-adopter” side won, and I couldn’t resist trying it out.
I started with my best friend in San Francisco since I talk to him more than just about anyone else on the phone! It would be more-than-handy to be able to call from my Blackberry, not just when I am at home and able to use my “free calls” option from my landline. So this is what initially sells me.
GETTING STARTED:
So if you fancy getting in on this Cheap/Free Phone Call Action here’s what you do:
2) Next, add your friend’s phone number to your contact list on REBTEL (NOTE: It assigns them a local number to you, which in my case, as it’s Glasgow, they gave me an 0141 number for each contact.)
3) Rebtel then, immediately, texts you the local number, you save it to your phone and voila you’re good to go! (They also email you the number).
4) The last step, once you’ve saved the number to you phone’s address book, is hit SEND and call your friend.
You repeat the process to add other family and friends. That bit may be time- consuming initially, but once they’re stored in your phone, you can use them again and again.
This afternoon I added another friend (also in California) and since she was up at the crack of dawn, I was able to phone her straight away from my Blackberry. The call quality was totally fine – just like any normal mobile phone call. (NOTE: The first five minute call to them is free, after that there’s a fee. A list of pricing can be found on their site – choose which country you’re calling to/from.
NEW TECHNOLOGY
As I’ve just discovered them today, I am still trying to work out how it all works.
So far I’ve ascertained that they offer Cheap International Calls, FREE International calling, international SMS, and what I am presuming is an APP-to-APP feature (they do iPhone, Blackberry, Android thus far). I’ve added it to my iPod Touch which I am hoping will work similarly to the Skype-to-Skype feature and be free, but not entirely sure.
IN FOR A PENNY…
So to try out this service, I’ve added 10.00 dollars* credit to my account (*because my Paypal account is in dollars, but in the UK, your lowest credit deposit option is 7.00 pounds).
Over the next week or two I’ll test drive it, and I’ll report back to you on my experience of it.
To be honest, I am not sure it will lure me away from Skype, where I’ve been a (generally) happy Skype customer for many years, but in the spirit of loving new technology, I’ll give it a whirl.
TO SKYPE OR NOT TO SKYPE?
As I say, I already have a SKYPE phone which I am logged into nearly 24/7 – so why would I bother with this?
Well, the main advantage I see with having this Rebtel facility, is if I am ever out and about and need to speak to my dad, my sister, my aforementioned best friend and we’re not both on Skype, this means I can ring them straight up from my mobile and it won’t cost me an arm and a leg! Ringing anyone internationally from my Blackberry is not something I’d have ever considered before, but now I can and it won’t break my bank!
Oh and incidentally, through their website, I just sent a few text messages to my German friend (who is currently in Antigua) and my Australian friend and it doesn’t appeared to have cost me a penny. My balance is still $9.99.
This morning when arriving at NSDesign’s HQ, I did my usual routine of switching on my computers, making a tea and performing my morning perusal of a emails, blogs and the like – when one LinkedIn group post caught my eye. It was all about one of my favourite things in the world – Skype!
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am an absolute ambassador for the program. Truly. I’ve used for more than a handful of years to keep in contact with family in friends (periodically) and my dad back in the Silicon Valley daily. I love the program by and large. It’s on my Mac, my PC (which I seldom use anymore), Nokia phone, iPad and iPod, too. I am pretty much logged on to Skype 24/7.
Lately though, they’ve updated the Skype version for MAC version from 2.8 to 5.0 and ever since I’ve absolutely loathed the user experience. Well it turns out, I’m not the only one.
A whole blog this week was dedicated to the feedback they’ve been receiving on the latest MAC update.
Skype claims it’s trying to build for the Grannies in China to the students in New England and everything in between. Well, that’s, of course, fair enough. They certainly don’t have a “typical” user demographic.
But instead of being more streamlined and sleek, the new version was bulky and constricting. It was less easy (impossible?) to have multiple chat windows going on (and multi-tasker that I am, I often carry on several conversations at once). Instead of it being the “simple” program I’ve known and loved it became too complex and no longer user-friendly to be enjoyable.
Enough about my opinion on Skype’s update though, what was really interesting here, to me, is how the company has used its blog to address issues and feedback and then adapt to it. It’s arguably a good case study of the advantage for adapting customer feedback on a blog.
There continues to be an exhaustive amount of feedback on the subject continuing on:
“The new interface is horrible, frankly its down to where I only login if I know someone needs me otherwise I don’t run the app.” -alexrodriguez
“I have no complaints with 2.8. I’m not sure why you felt it needed such a drastic overhaul. I can multi-task, phone, IM and video just fine. So can my 70 year father and 90 year Grandma. Seriously. They tried Skype 5 and I had to revert it back for them. There is just too much going on there for it to be at all user friendly.” – selfpartwo
I am rather pleased to see that it appears that Skype is taking its criticisms on the chin and will hopefully go back to the drawing board with 5.0 and re-think it.
For those like me, who have been unhappy with this recent overhaul, Skype is now making the old version 2.8 available to download the foreseeable future.
As soon as I read it, I reverted and I feel like all is right in my world again.
Thanks Skype…
(Now if they could just sort out the recent upgrade on the Nokia handsets, I’d truly be over the moon. It’s as bad if not worse than the Mac upgrade.)
Hey it’s Thea here, reporting to you from London! Last night, I had the privilege of making the journey down from Glasgow for the RAR Awards.
For the benefit of anyone who doesn’t know, RAR – aka the Recommended Agency Register - was set up to help companies source, select and engage marketing suppliers. The newly-established RAR Awards honor excellence in service for all things digital and design. (This was only its second year running).
What makes these awards especially gratifying, to all nominees, no doubt, is that they’re voted for by the clients. I wasn’t at last year’s inaugural event but I can tell you, this year the competition was stiff – more than 620 companies had been rated.
NSDesign was rather blessed with seven nominations!
At NSDesign, we’re a decidedly-optimistic bunch, by nature, and thus suspected, (or at least hoped), we might win one. What I don’t think any of us were prepared for was the fact we scooped three,…plus a runner up (#3 out of 10) for the top price “The Grand Prix” – a Top Ten UK company.
That essentially made four, framed award certificates to lug back to the hotel (pic: right) after the festivities, but hey, I’m not complaining.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve met folks from a number of other web design firms – many who scoff at the idea of these awards ceremonies, but perhaps they ought to re-consider their stance.
As guest speaker, Chief Executive of Talk Talk, Paul Lawton said to the crowd “keep entering them” – because not only are they good for the PR angle, and lend a note of credibility to the firm, but they also entice potential employees as well. Salient points.
As the newest member to the NS team, (and as such feeling like the least qualified to accept the honours), what struck me most was how NSDesign won against companies who were often several times its size.
Honestly, we were just so proud to be nominated for one category let alone seven, and along side such an esteemed group of fellow contenders. I’m telling you, this room simply oozed talent.
Over all, it was a great night with plenty of food going, the wine flowing, and tweets tweeting to make it a lively and entertaining evening.
I think it’s fair to say that a good time was had by all.
Incidentally, the awards we ended up walking away with were:
Best in Client Service
Best in Digital
Best Value for Money
So finally, I think all of us at NSDesign would like to thank our valued customers for these accolades, as we’d literally not been able to do it without you!
If I knew the answer do you really think I’d be sitting here?!
But it’s a question I get asked a lot so I feel it’s my duty to speculate on the possible answers!
The truth is none of us really know where technology is going to take us next. Could anyone have predicted the dramatic rise of Facebook and Twitter? 3D’s taken much longer than expected to develop and still hasn’t caught on in a big way, and unless Google or Apple are about to reveal an incredible breakthrough then I am going to have to do something about that pile of ironing sooner or later. I shouldn’t have known not to pin my hopes on that edition of “Tomorrow’s World”!
It’s 15 years since I first ventured on-line and the successes and failures we’ve seen in that time give us some clues as to what might be round the corner.
One golden rule is that just because technology means you CAN do something, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD. A great idea doesn’t always translate into a great web-based business.
For example, motor dealers would save a fortune closing down the forecourts, paying off the sales staff and opening a virtual on-line showroom. A few of these actually exist and you CAN buy cars on-line.
But most customers still want to test drive vehicles, sit in the seats and run their hands over the steering wheel. I can’t see the physical car buying experience changing any time soon and even cheap deals and a heavy marketing shift won’t change human habits.
But on the other hand…there was a time when people said that about mobile phones.
There’s another lesson in the rise and fall of an unfortunate web based business called “Boo.com.”
This should have been a winner – a website where you could buy clothes – it was backed by a huge amount of money (they spent £80 million in 2 years!) and some of the brightest brains in the business. History shows us the concept was right (there are plenty of clothes available on Amazon.com and the like) but Boo bombed in spectacular fashion.
Why? Because they got carried away building an amazing website and forgot most people wouldn’t be able to access it properly.
This was 1998 when broadband wasn’t an option for most of us. A 56K dial up modem where a single picture took 20 seconds to load was considered cutting edge and there was still work to do persuading people that buy goods on-line was safe and secure.
In order to give customers a realistic shopping experience, Boo packed its website with Javascript, D images and Flash. There was even “Ms Boo” a virtual shop assistant who helped you choose what you wanted! I didn’t use it myself but I imagine the experience was something along the lines of this….
A classic example of a good idea being ahead of its time. The world wasn’t ready for Boo.com.
Interestingly, Amazon had actually launched and was selling products on-line 3 years BEFORE Boo. Why is it still here? Because Amazon was realistic about its growth potential. Its initial business plan stated there would be no profit for the first 4 or 5 years and its simple website met the needs of the people who were using it. It just worked.
So for something to succeed on-line it needs to be the right idea, at the right time, aimed at the right people and with the right expectations and business model behind it.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will very soon. It’s a “deal of the day” type website driven by community buying. (“Grou-p” and “Cou-pon” combined!). Analysts reckon it could make a billion dollars in sales quicker than any other company in history and it’s spawned more than a hundred competitors in different parts of the world.
It’s no surprise that Google was interested in taking it over and since no deal was done the internet search giant is getting ready to launch its own competing service called “Google Offers”.
So why is there so much interest right now in giving you discounts at your nail salon?
Something else I expect to be big is Augmented Reality. This is a fusion of the genuine, physical world with the virtual, on-line version of reality.
Imagine you’re on holiday in a foreign city you’ve not been to before. You see a monument but aren’t sure of the story behind it. Using the camera on your smart-phone you could take a picture and access information about it on-line. Or you might take a picture of a second hand car’s registration plate and have an app tell you how much the vehicle is actually worth! I wonder how some of these smooth talking sales men would feel about that?!
I’ve had some fun in shops recently with an app on my phone called “Red Laser”. You scan barcodes with it and it tells you the cheapest price that product is available on-line and you can go straight to the relevant page and purchase it if you want. You can see this could have a big impact on the way we shop.
Before I go, let me make a few predictions for the future and you can dig this out in a few years and remind me of how off the mark I was!
More Filtering! As more information is available on-line we’ll put more emphasis on tools (or even actual human beings!) that help us wade through all the irrelevant nonsense that gets in our way. www.helloday.tv aims to snatch some visitors away from You Tube who search for songs and find home made cover versions and poor quality videos cluttering up the results. It only hosts high quality, official music videos, filtering out the rubbish.
More Free! Personal recommendations and a large database of customers will become so valuable to companies that they’ll be willing to give more and more of their products away for free. Expect to see more restaurants and hotels offering a “You pay what you think we deserve” type service.
More sharing! Think about the amount of food we throw away every day. Or how many lawnmowers there are in your street and how often they’re all used at once? There’s much more we could do around sharing, reducing waste and working together to solve our problems. I think the websites of the future will help us with this.
Earlier this week “The One Show” ran a feature about a community down south where residents were bulk buying their own heating oil. It was saving them a fortune and the web will make this sort of thing much easier.
More ads? Personally I’d like to see a lot less and there will come a saturation point where we simply can’t take any more. They’ll become more relevant and targeted and might even be useful. As our resistance to them increases companies will have to get more creative in order for them to work. How long till we see a banner ad on the front page of google.com? Never say never. I’ll stick my neck out and say it’ll happen before the Commonwealth Games are in Glasgow.
Now you’ve read some of my ideas about what the future might hold – it’s over to you. What do you reckon is coming next? Share your thoughts in “comments”.
Did anyone notice….?
Some inappropriate Google Ads appearing alongside articles about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on the Daily Mail’s website?
No-one’s fault of course but it does demonstrate the risks with automated systems looking for key words and perhaps there are certain news stories that should run without adverts on-line.
Hey everyone, hope you’re staying warm this rather Baltic Monday afternoon…? Typing to you whilst my teeth are chattering – due to a heating malfunction in NSDesign’s headquarters!
Further to last week’s post, about our upcoming Twenty Four Days of Twitmas, there have been many exciting developments. I don’t want to give too much away, but…
I can now confirm that we have even bigger variety of freebies to giveaway! So far we have lined up a few fabulous, free meals from award-winning restaurants, a chauffeur drive night on the town, a festive pair of kid’s shoes, and some exclusive malt whisky too!
We promise you that there is something for everyone over the twenty four days! Stuff you can give away to someone else or keep it for yourself – we don’t mind!
Remember, it’s all kicking off this Wednesday, and to be in with a chance of winning anything, you need to follow us on Twitter. Look out for the hashtag: #24twitmas.
Last week a few of the team members at NSDesign met up at the Normandy Hotel in Renfrew for this year’s ROCCO awards.
It was truly an exciting time for me, as I’ve never worked anywhere that’s been nominated for one award – let alone two!
We were up for ‘Innovation & Technology’, which we won, and ‘Outstanding Performing Business <25 FTE’, which we didn’t. At least we kept it in house – as it went to our neighbours here in Hillington Innovation Centre, Bridgeall.
As if all this weren’t enough, a real surprise (for both Paul and myself anyway) was Paul’s nomination for ‘Employee of the Year’. A well-deserved nomination considering he’s often the last one out of here!
He didn’t win but did get this nice bottle of Champagne as consolation.
Awesome!
As I tend to go everywhere with my trusty little video recorder, I shot this little 2-minute ROCCOs movie movie of the festivities.
If you’re short of time, then might I suggest you watch the more abridged 30-second version of Gary On Stage (complete with blooper which we’re thinking of submitting to “You’ve Been Framed”. Do you think we’re in with a shot??)
What started out as a normal Wednesday morning resulted in being anything but.
Over our usual morning cup of tea and banter, the subject inevitably came around to the pending papal visit the following day.
Being web evangelists (aka geeks) here at NSDesign, we jokingly imagined creating an “alternative” version utilising the PayPal branding but without the distinguishing “Y”.
To be honest, that part wasn’t a terribly unique idea, people were already referencing it on Twitter, but on a whim, we took it that bit further. We decided it might be fun to do a little social media experiment where the objective would be to start with nothing and see how we could build awareness and generate interest in a site which was literally minutes old.
If it did work, then perhaps some of the lessons learned could be applied any online marketing strategy.
By eleven we’d registered the domain. After noon, we’d thrown a quick site together and started to promote the site via a few pointed “tweets” just after 1pm.
Below is how the site looked not long after launching: very basic but still funny enough to get people talking…
(Screengrab: www.paypalvisit.com)
Within minutes the traffic started to arrive and the re-tweets began…
(Screengrab: Real Time Google)
As the day went on, we added more content and images and posted the link on Facebook walls.
SOME 48-HOUR STATS:
The unique visitors were just short of 2000.
Page views came in around the 3500 mark.
Our whole point wasn’t just to drive traffic in a call-to-action format, it was to reach a s wide of an audience as possible thus building brand/site awareness.
Through tools such as TweetReach* – we were able to ascertain how far our “reach” was.
Tweet Reach: Nearly 75k
On Twitter, according to our full TweetReach report*, shows we had a potential reach around 75,000 people – which rather ironically is more than actually showed up to see Pope.
On the day of the Pope’s visit, “day two” of our humourous project, we posted various topical updates throughout the day.
The page grew and grew more graphics and with tongue-in-cheek reports.
(Screengrab: Susan Boyle Double Booked!)
Those, too, were tweeted and re-tweeted throughout the day. (We caught a few people out with that one…)
It was all done in good fun but yet there were things we could take away from this humourous experiment.
A FEW THINGS WE LEARNED:
1) Anything topical you can tie in with your own expertise, and be a part of the buzz creation by contributing something valuable to the buzz, you’re on to a winner.
2) Anything that is unique with humor (bearing in mind everyone’s humor is different) is also an added bonus in experiments like this.
3) We added the Facebook “Like” button and the “Tweet This” button – quite late in the game on day two – which indicates had we’d started off the project with that we might have pull back our marketing push and let the visitors of the website spread the message directly. Nearly a hundred people indicated “liked it” in just a few hours and thus spreading the message directly to their own wider networks.
4) Understanding who your champions are is very beneficial. For instance, you can see who’s mentioning it – using Google Real Time – you quite quickly see who the main influencers are.
In theory, you could almost be clever and target the people who you want to be spreading your message – and tweet them specifically in the first instance.
5) On the down side…while this experiment actually resulted in gaining followers, we’d be lying if we said we didn’t admit we’d have lost a few in the process.
After all, we broke the cardinal rule of overusing one subject in tweets – which, at times, may have been viewed coming across in an overly saturated and spammy sort of way.
Anyway it was a really fun and interesting project. We hope you who viewed the page enjoyed it as much as we did creating it.
On the 6th April, AOL publically announced it was looking for a buyer for Bebo, hinting it would be closed down if one wasn’t found. Or in their words, they are: “currently evaluating strategic alternatives, which could include a sale or shutdown of Bebo in 2010”.
The mentions of Bebo on Twitter that day and night came in fast and furious, with the majority of them from Bebo users, angry about the rumours of immediate closure (there seemed to be a belief it was closing that night). Many of them stated that they were planning on jumping ship to Facebook in advance of any termination of their BEBO accounts.
Having personally never been a Bebo user myself, I signed up! We’ll see how long it remains live!
Some Background Info
Bebo has a massively different demographic to the likes of LinkedIn and even Facebook. Bebo has (or had) the biggest share of the under 17 year old market, and was the 2nd largest social network in the UK (with an equally strong following in Australia).
But globally, and more specifically in the US, Bebo is, and has been lagging behind for some time – at it’s peak it had approx 40 million users, compare that to over 400 million active facebook accounts.
Up until early 2007, BEBO and Myspace had almost equal share of the social media market, but in the summer of that year Facebook almost came out of nowhere and established itself as the top dog. Ever since, Bebo’s numbers have been falling… and for a business that’s solely making money from advertising spend based on users and eyeballs, AOL has finally decided that enough’s enough.
Why did it fail?
I think Bebo’s problem was that it simply didn’t innovate. It started out as almost a carbon-copy of Myspace, and didn’t adapt when it needed to. Like Myspace even now, it’s a bit slow, a bit clunky, and still looks like one of the early social networking sites. In the meantime, along comes Facebook, with a real buzz about it globally, and it brings a a fresh approach to social networking with it’s focus on status updates and live news feeds. The result is a truly mainstream social resource, used not just by the schoolkids, but by everyone.
Which all leads to the question – why didn’t it evolve? I personally think that Bebo’s decline wasn’t helped by it’s acquisition by AOL (Time Warner). I think they were just too big, with too many fingers in too many pies, and Bebo was just something else for them to play with. They used their financial clout to jump on the social media bandwagon without the real investment and understanding of making it a long term success.
Look at other examples such as MySpace -acquired by traditional news man Rupert Murdoch (News Corp) in 2005 for $580million (now valued at next to nothing), and also Friends Reunited – one of the UK’s first social networking sites before any of us knew what social networking was. It was purchased by ITV for £175million in 2005, and recently sold for a mere £25million following a massive downturn in usage (although it does appear to have found some momentum again).
It’s no coincidence that the other big names in social media which ARE still performing – Networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – are all still under the original ownership of the then small startup companies whose passion and drive made them the successes they were and still are today. Unlike Bebo’s current owners, they included evolution in their strategies.
Future:
Despite everything, surely for someone, Bebo can be a success – it’s still the 4th most popular Social networking site, and 31st most popular website in general! (globally) – according to recent webstats from Hitwise. Just like the other main players, I don’t believe that Bebo should be written off just yet, and if your business or organisation wants to engage with a younger market, then Bebo is still (for now) a main player.
Unfortunately, I think the announcement regarding Bebo being up for sale, and the rumours that followed of immediate closure won’t help the decline in usage, which in turn doesn’t help the likelihood of a suitable buyer stepping forward.
I’m sure Bebo will find a buyer, and maybe even a UK one (given its popularity here), but certainly AOL will struggle to recoup anything close to the $850 million they paid just 2 years ago, and by the sounds of it – they’ll settle for almost anything. Quite tempted myself..
Back in the mid to late 1990’s I had the pleasure of working for a pretty cutting edge research group called ABACUS – part of the Architecture Department at the University of Strathclyde.
Much of the work we were involved in was focussed around the use of IT (and later the web) to Architecture and the Built Environment, and Abacus developed what was at the time one of the biggest 3D city models – 25 square kilometres of Glasgow City Centre.
In 1998, I was challenged with the task of making the model available online, and using new and exciting visualisation technologies such as VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) and QTVR (Quick Time Virtual Reality) – carried out a prolonged R+D period which resulted in a system we called “The Glasgow Directory”.
In short – An interactive Map/3D Model which accurately gave a true reflection of the real city with layers of data accessed on request. Our urban information system allowed web-based users to explore and “walk around” the virtual Glasgow model, highlighting areas of interest such as key city landmarks, tourist resources and more, with fancy 360 degree panoramic views of selected street-scapes… this sounding at all familiar yet?
When the Glasgow Directory was launched, it was very well received within the web research world, particularly those working in the field of VRML and city visualisation. As a result, I was fortunate enough to present a number of academic papers at various locations across Europe, highlighting our innovative system, and explaining our ideas to take it further in the future. Anyone know if Larry Page or Sergey Brin visited around that time?..
Ok – being serious – I don’t actually think that Google based their Google Maps (and more recently – Google Street View) on the VRML Glasgow Directory, but in retrospect, some of the similarities are astounding….
Above… George Square and the City Chambers… both systems have the ability to explore the “virtual space”, identify the street names, buildings of interest etc…
Glasgow Catherdral from the roadside…. left is the VRML Glasgow Directory, right is Google StreetView
Using the Map as an information system, searching for a good Bar in the Merchant City – in this case Bar 91
Unfortunately, much of the original source for the Glasgow Directory is now lost. Regrettably this includes a lot of the later research and development including embedding realtime audio, location specific navigation feedback (VERY similar in nature to Google Maps on the iPhone with GPS) and multi-user “avatar” based interactions.
Some links to material and examples that I did manage to dig up:
Research Stuff: Inside The Map – Academic Paper written by myself for a Cartography Conference Visit VR Glasgow – Academic Paper written by Myself and Prof. Tom Maver
So Google.. if you’re reading this… own up – was it me that invented Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Street View? I’ll assume that I did until I hear back from you. In the meantime, I’m off to dig out that primitive working example of an online video sharing site that I remember showing to some Paypal employees back in 2001…
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Hey everyone, it’s Thea here again reporting to you live from the valley of silicon.
