Teaching 5 years olds about Twitter

I tripped over this excellent TEDx presentation this morning... 2 enterprising infant school teachers embracing new technology to equip their charges not just with an understanding of how to use a particular platform, but rather more importantly about how to use the internet responsibly, whilst building their basic literacy and creative skills.  I'm sure there are many parents that would do well to watch and follow their example rather than remaining either ignorant of what their kids are watching / accessing /participating in on the web or are just fearful, often through their own ignorance, of what's going on and feeling swamped and helpless about what to do about it.

The video also talks of some of the parents' and the schools reactions to the initiative and the challenges these two smart teachers have faced.  Well worth the 19 minutes time investment, whether you have kids or not.

We can't change the digitally connected world, we can only embrace and adapt to what is happening, and more importantly society has a responsibility to equip the younger generations with skills to navigate it, which we should be pushing proactively.  Hats off to these two inspiring teachers at Meltham Primary School, great work!



Kids are growing up in a multi-device, multi-platform connected world. Fact. Tablets are growing in penetration fast... it's no longer a world with one device that can only be used in a supervised location. The recent OFCOM report on multi-screen / tv alternative choices refers to many parents being surprised that their kids could access the web on their iPod Touch devices.

iPad's are intuitive devices and incredibly valuable as an on the go entertainment/keep quiet solution - I was in a pub last Sunday sitting next to a table of 3 families, with 5 junior school-ish aged kids all sitting there on a device each (plus one with a book). My parents would never have allowed it, kids do need to learn how to behave in social situations too, but I can see and understand the trade off.

What surprised me more than that scenario though was a conversation earlier in the day with friends who were staying for the weekend with their train-obsessed 4 year old, who whilst we were chatting was happily watching one train video after another on YouTube on the iPad WHICH HAS NO EASY PARENTAL CONTROLS and you can't uninstall the app - sure there's some convoluted workarounds but....  Come on Apple - I was appalled.  The parents had tried hiding the app in folders, but to no avail.. and so they were stumped.. a child happily pressing "related video" train pictures to watch video after video, but no means to ensure that he didn't randomly stumble over something inappropriate.

Creativity, ingenuity & something very sticky

Sticky is good if you
a) have a story to tell
b) want to make great content people will want to share (needs point a) or
c) if you are Duck Tape or Velcro, which are both like good stories in themselves, one simple format, hundreds of ways to use them. Love them both for that.

I just found this short clip thanks to my friend Punesh, and it would be rude not to share. It makes some great points visually about the flexibility of the iPad / other micro-tablets (like the Dell Streak which launches in the UK on 02 tomorrow) if only the accessory packs catered for these many and varied possible uses.  Enjoy.


iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

iPad musings: the good, the bad & the ugly

I've now been using the iPad intermittently for a fortnight. I have played with apps, the AppStore, written a short presentation using Keynote and the medium of touch, taken notes in meetings, surfed the internet and watched some short form content. I haven't had a chance to watch the film I downloaded but can't see why the experience would be any worse than watching it on a screen on a plane. Albeit you'd also have to provide your own headphones as there weren't any in the box.

So my thoughts so far...

I am still loving the interactivity of the touch interface on the larger scale than the iPhone or iTouch. Adding touch into the way you can deliver experience adds a dimension that is incredibly engaging. But, you get used to it very very quickly and then find yourself disappointed very quickly too when other things don't deliver or offer that interaction. It adds a layer of curiosity, you jab fingers at the screen in places where you expect things to happen, and so far at least it is a bit of a lucky dip as to whether app developers have really thought properly about how touch can enhance the interplay.

Usability and experience architecture should absolutely become part of the brief for content going forward from NOW. Some people are already annotating and adding links to videos on YouTube ( I saw this great example from Berlei bras in Australia recently), and as we increasingly seek to navigate via touch rather than typing or mouse pointer I imagine this will become a default must-have. It will also have implications for how we search and the power of associated content suggestions for navigation around the web. Throw in Facebook Open Graph functionality and the game is very definitely changing. Let's save that for another day.

iPad ergonomics: definitely in the ugly category. In short pretty dreadful, for anything more than a casual -on-the-sofa dip in select and go activity. Even having bought a case which folds back to form some slightly angled desk,  I have neck ache already, several paragraphs into a post from having to peer at the screen from an un-natural over the top angle.

I will generously award marks for the keyboard interface overall, but do have a few niggles & observations: No delete key, just a back space which means you have to practice inserting the cursor carefully when you want to go back and amend things. Double tapping allows you to select, cut, copy and paste text readily though which is quite useful if you can get the cursor dropped down into the right place to move the selected text to it's new location. Arrow keys on the alt keyboard would help. Having to swap to the numbers pad for an apostrophe is pretty annoying too.

I can touch-type fairly easily, although points deducted for giving me a capitals keyboard just like a real physical one but with just a blue arrow shift key highlight when you ask for capitals, but because I have no choice but to look over the keyboard when I am using it, it feels that the interchangeability of the display of small or capital letters I get on my HTC Android phone is more natural, and having the numbers and punctuation on the same keyboard helps too.

All of those points continue to reinforce my opinion of this as a secondary device (for me and my needs I hasten to add), for quick and easy, touch based experiences rather than serious document writing. Although I admit that using Keynote to write a presentation was a hassle-free experience, and best still, due to screen size, and the fact that typing had to be done on the screen, and I was on the train with the iPad on my lap, it made for short punchy slide writing. No bad thing. I managed to insert, resize and rotate images easily (albeit only from the images I had already put on the machine, the lack of ability to multi-task or swap between programmes, to find and copy / insert images from the internet for example, is distinctly annoying), but as yet I haven't tackled making charts.

Lack of ability to switch between apps or applications is rather annoying although at least you can switch between virtual "tabs" when web browsing in Safari.

Moving on to apps then: iBooks - I talked about them in my last post on the iPad so let's skip on by with only a passing mention. Fine but personally unless it's in between time when I have finished a real book earlier than expected when a train got delayed or I am stuck on a plane with the iPad out and someone snoring next to me so I can't readily get to a book in my bag I think I will stick to paperbacks predominantly. I think I'll just add iBooks to my repertoire of options rather than give up on the physical format. I am seemingly in good company too.  I've always had more than one book on the go at the same time anyway. Usually in different languages. It keeps you mentally agile.

Comics however, are another story! The French and the Japanese with their love of the comic format are going to soooo love the iPad for that. Although top tip comic publishers, spend a smudge more and add that nice page turning feeling you get with the iBooks and you'll make the experience even better!  I've not read a comic since I was last living in France over a decade ago, (albeit for a while then I was a huge fan of Gaston la Gaffe,)  but I've downloaded Rex Libris (just can't supress my inner bookworm) and am quite enjoying flipping through that.

Magazines are a different story, or at least the ones trying to cross the divide from paper to e-Paper. 

Cool Hunting, a web based magazine type site has an app that really works, and caches some content so you can engage with it even when you are not connected to a wifi hotspot. I downloaded and paid for both Esquire and GQ, and to be honest the experience is a bit patchy.

I accept that the publishers had to turn around something in a hurry to meet launch timings, so no doubt there is a big learning curve and we will see big changes as everyone learns what works and what doesn't, but Esquire seems to be mostly a large PDF of the paper version. Or at least that is what it feels like.

GQ did better, albeit I was thoroughly confused for a bit as I was initially using the iPad in portrait mode, which feels more intuitive in relation to how I think about reading magazines, especially smaller format magazines like Glamour which are equivalent in size to the iPad, as used in portrait mode you get a very odd magazine experience in terms of scrolling between articles which feels rather unlike leafing through the pages of a magazine.

Let's face it, that's how magazines are read, not necessarily sequentially, or read cover to cover in one sitting. I was puzzled. I could only find one ad that seemed to be the digital equivalent of the inside front cover or first facing page. Weird. Especially as I knew that one of my clients had ads in there at I was specifically looking for.

Sometime later I went back to the GQ app, and must have had the iPad opened in landscape rotation, at which point all of a sudden my view and my experience completely changed. Here was the magazine I was expecting. The swipe interface makes leafing through pages a pleasure and being able to touch and go straight to a website for more info on an advertiser makes a lot of sense. It will be even better when advertiser start building richer iAds so you can deliver that depth of info without leaving the page, particularly until you can multi-task and switch between things more easily. Getting richer display ads formats right will almost certainly alter the role of created PPC search campaigns for certain ad campaigns too, depending on the media formats and touch points involved.

There's a Toy Story app which I love, it allows you to have the story read aloud to you, with the text highlighted as it's read just as you would follow it with a finger if you were helping a child learn to read. Or, you can record a version of you reading the story for the child to play back later. Virtual bed time stories for when Mummy or Daddy is away. How cool is that?

 The app has lots of other fun things to do too, and it was free, but I can easily imagine paying a small amount for similar content for a child's favourite character.

Then there's a whole pile of "just for fun"things to play with and talk about, but I'm now so uncomfortable in the pain-in-neck stakes that I am going to save that for another post when I am back at a physical keyboard.

I have also used 15% of the battery life in the hour it has taken me to write this post on the iPad, and I have yet to figure out how I add hyperlinks or insert images. Maybe it is time to get the extra widget I bought so I can take images straight off the sd card out of the box?. A challenge for another day. I will just add the images and links I want to put into this post from my laptop later.

Let's just finish this post with 4 key take outs:

1) think about how touch could enhance your experience and interaction with your app, website, ad or content. There might only be a million or so people with a touch interface tablet in the world at the minute but I am sure it will change fast. Apple have already announced that unless you have pre-ordered an iPad for the international release wave, you are going to have to wait another week to get one, such is the level of demand.

2) whatever you deliver app-wise make absolutely sure that it rotates properly and by that I mean not just landscape or portrait but also which ever way is up, make sure you can scroll whatever angle it's at too.. It must also deliver a good and relevant experience in both portrait and landscape modes, as what you intend may not be how the consumer picks it up and it just causes confusion / frustration or things to be missed.

3) Make sure whatever your app does it, it does at least provide some basic cached content / experience for when your iPad is not connected to the web. It's a big turn off to try to engage with something because you had a spare 2 minutes and then find there's nothing there. Not going to help postive brand scores for sure.  If the internet is a place where short attention spans already rule, and you are only one click away from something else, on a touch-based tablet the feeling is exacerbated thousand fold. One touch of the big round button and you are out of sight giving that time and experience to someone else who does deliver offline.

4) There is no "Back" button!  Remember this - unless you build in easy nav you'll end up being "exited" in just one touch of that oh so tempting big round button.

More to come as I continue to experiment.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

One in a million....iPads

Yup, I was in Chicago last week and managed to get my sticky paws on just one of the million iPads Steve Jobs announced he'd sold in just 28 days.  Apparently it took 74 days to sell 1 million iPhones from when they launched in July 2008.

So here's the picture to date:  1 market only (USA), WiFi only model, 1 million units, 12k apps downloaded from the 5k now available and 1.5k eBooks downloaded.

Quirkily, the free iBook the iBook app came with was AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh :-)

Ok, ok, I have to admit that it's not exactly mine, but bought for the office, but just for context, that meant I had this many options of internet connectivity and search / entertainment possibility to hand on Monday night.

And that's with my netbook out on loan at the minute. Too many devices, not enough hands, needs or eyes!

Full marks as ever to Apple for making the purchase process pleasurable. I logged in to the Apple concierge site, reserved my iPad, received a confirmation email and subsequently this notification that it was ready and waiting for me. Nice touch. (Forgive the pun).

The dude in the store was amazing, set it all up, gave me some cunning work around tips as obviously the iPad Appstore is currently only available to US users, and was genuinely passionate about the product, and the fact that I bought the USB and SD card adapter widget (separate, grrrrr). It was the first time they'd had them in stock / seen them at work. So enthusiastic was he that a pile of his colleagues appeared to check it out too. All adding up to a great purchase experience from reservation to leaving the store, new toy in hand and ready to play with as soon as I got to the airport.

So first impressions?

I'm not going to waver from my original position that it's primarily a coffee table device.

A damn sexy one, and you can't argue with the fabulous-ness of the touch interface on the bigger, more gratifying scale of the iPad over the iPhone or iTouch, but... it's a big, expensive, digital photo frame with lots of extra functionality.

Do I  love it? Absolutely!

For me, I need some work horse computing capability, and this isn't it, unless I'd gone to the lengths of buying the keyboard and stand-y thing or a separate bluetooth keyboard, it's not a device that would be comfy or practical for writing long emails, documents or blog posts on, but as an always to hand, totally capable of dealing with many internet requirements (let's not totally overlook the Flash / HTML5 war) device, it's perfect. Which goes back to the points I've previously made, if I was a primarily leisure user, was more style over price conscious and didn't already have a heap of other options, it's a serious contender.

I haven't had it for long enough to play with the more "work" related apps like Keynote (i.e Powerpoint) with the touch interface but watch this space....

iPad international launch put back

Apparently the iPad has been such a rip-roaring success in the US (500k units sold in the first week) that Apple's supply chain are having to eat humble apple pie. With demand exceding supply they announced today that they are pushing back the iPad's international launch / availability from the rumoured end of April to the end of May. More details including international pricing will be announced on May 10th.

Meanwhile UK newspaper The Guardian has had over 50k downloads for it's Eyewitness photography based iPad app, which is pretty interesting when you think the unit isn't even on sale in it's own market. Crudely that's 1 in 10 iPad owners having downloaded it. A big plug for it during last week's O/S 4 conference probably helped somewhat, and it's currently at #6 in the iPad app download charts.

And as I am talking numbers, I just saw a Tweet from TechCrunch announcing that there are now 105,779,710 registered Twitter users (not to be confused with active ones, not all of those users are active regularly / if at all). Twitter have also said that they are growing by 300k users a day too.

Interesting  numbers from a critical mass perspective given that Twitter are reportedly handling 600m search queries a day and have launched their equivalent of "paid search" this week known as "promoted tweets", which are currently sold on a CPT basis (cost per thousand for the non media luvvies amongst you) via TweetUp.  More on that another day.

Nice iPad Mock up tool

I love the interweb, and the fabulously speedy and creative people that make it such a fun space to work and play.

Here's a very nifty little tool that neatly mocks up how your website will look on an iPad. You can even rotate it to make it work landscape and portrait.  Nice.

NB, if you are one of the sinners with a site built primarily in Flash, as the iPad doesn't support Flash you'll have to disable your Flash plugin  to get a more true mock up. Might even make the point visually enough to get someone to think about the need for some site re-work!

I've got an iPad for that....but I'm not giving up on paperbacks yet

Yes,  although I saw Stephen Fry's "unbox-ing" videos on YouTube last week, the iPad reached the excited clammy clutches of the US consumer on Saturday. It's only the WIFI version for now, 3g will come later but....

Apple reports that they sold 50k iPads in the first 2 hours, and 300k on the first day.

There were over a million iPad app downloads from amongst the 3k apps available (circa 75% of those available are paid for apps, ranging in price significantly and many with special launch prices attached), and 250k books were downloaded.

iBook titles vary in price from $9.99 to $14.99, at which point I really do wonder other than for show off value why you wouldn't just pick up a paperback.  Arguably you can do more with the iPad than a book, choosing instead to watch or listen to content but it's a question of how much gadgetry we need to lug around? I've already seen some articles on jackets with a built in over-size pocket for the iPad!

For me personally, space and weight counts in terms of what I carry around daily. I've been patiently awaiting the paperback version of the 3rd installment in this brilliant Stieg Larsson Millenium trilogy, because it weighs less and takes up less space than the hardback.

I'm far from opposed to e-books. I've been happily reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn via the iBook precursor 59p-for-20-titles app on my iPod Touch for a while now. It's perfect for rush hour reading on the Tube; small, easy to hold device, nice page turning animation, and small pages / small amount of text per page isn't a problem when you are on short journeys and constantly being jostled about.

 
I may yet eat my words, but for now I'm not convinced about the iPad for reading because:

• if I am commuting, chances are I am already carrying my laptop +/or iPod + smartphone, another screen just adds un-necessary weight = shoulder ache
• I have yet to be convinced that you'd be able to see the screen lying on the beach in dazzling sunshine, and would you want to expose your $500 toy to sand and sunscreen anyway / go for a swim without worrying someone'd nick it?
• unless you take the example of the young Japanese girls who put their phones in ZipLoc bags so they can text in the bath, I can't see reading in the bath on an iPad being ideal either - the screen would probably steam up, the touch interface probably wouldn't work through the ZipLoc, and having dropped books in before, I'd be worrying about dropping it which would hardly be relaxing.

I see the iPad primarily as a "coffee table", sofa surfing device, and you only have to take the subliminal clues out of all the marketing to see the reinforcement of that.  Steve Job's original demonstration of it, saw him sitting in a chair, the ads, all show people kicked back with their feet up.



Perfect for quick searches because you saw an ad whilst watching TV, or you couldn't remember the name of that film that had so and so in, great for grab and have a go gaming, fine for a quick Facebook status update but not so easy to upload pics from your camera to, no good for video-Skype  (or chatroulette if that's your thing) as there's no webcam. Nor to surf any websites built in Flash.Won't work.

This might be a game changing device in terms of the increasing role of connectivity in our lives and more specifically our homes, but for me it remains a sexy looking, nice to use, handy home entertainment device. For now at least.  That's no bad thing at all, greater connectivity is a force we can't fight, it's happened, it's happening in more ways everyday, but the iPad,  it's just something else to add to the already significant collection of gadgets littering our living rooms, and one that duplicates functionality you are already likely to have to hand in the form of a phone or a laptop or digital photoframe.

Admittedly, coming from the Apple stable I am sure the user experience will change perceptions and expectations of computing, making it more intuitive, user-friendly and experiential than the keyboard and mouse world we've been used to.  That's a good thing. In a world where most of us have more than enough "stuff" providing brand experiences is going to be a big part of the marketing mix going forward and devices like the iPad with it's multi-touch interface, movement sensor etc will undoubtedly play a role in pushing the boundaries. Just as rhe BBC iPlayer dragged lots of older people into the VOD market by creating an easy user-experience, the iPad may push boundaries further. After all, even a 2 year old got the hang of it pretty quickly. Watch this...

As a home-centric toy I see the WIFI variant as valid as the 3g variant (who wants slow 3g entertainment out of home?), but unless someone wants to buy me one to play with, I'm in no hurry. Let's see if the 2nd generation iPad's include a webcam and some USB / SD slots. Then if my netbook dies I might think about it.

UK release dates TBC but there's speculation around the end of April. We'll see.

Meanwhile, you've got to give prizes to BlendTec for their speedy turnaround on a Will an iPad blend video, that's already racked up well over a million views since Saturday.

How the iPad became known as the iTampon and other stories...

(I refer of course to Rudyard Kipling's great story of "how the elephant got it's trunk")

The last week has flown by and somehow it's been a week since Steve Jobs announced the launch of the Apple iPad, and I've only just had chance to blog about it.



Yes, without question it's an interesting new toy, the reviews are many and divided.

Lots of ooooh, shiny new toy perspectives, lots of it's just a big iPhone / iPod Touch with bells and whistles and lots of but hmm, but it won't support flash, I have to plug in extra bits if I want to take pictures off an sd card, and fine if I'm vegging on the sofa surfing and watching the box, but could I use it sensibly on a train to commute?  If anyone fancies buying me one, I certainly won't object, preferably one with 3G v just wifi (for reasons I'll come on to in a post to follow shortly about mobile metrics), but whilst it will start at $500 for a basic one so it's not ridiculously unaffordable,  I do question whether I'd be popping one in my handbag for some extra work productivity time on the train?  I can see my osteopathy bills rocketing up if I have to try and write documents of any length on it, unless I go and raid a department store china department for one of those decorative plate supports my Grandmothers found so handy. Hmmm.

A great device for leisure use, but I'm not sure I've been won over from the netbook category for the in between my smartphone & desk needs.

For me what made the iPad launch so interesting to follow was to see how quickly the product name got lambasted for it's similarity to feminine hygiene products, and just half an hour into the launch event it was already beginning to be referred to as iTampon.

 

The idea caught, the jokes went on and on, constantly evolving, with enterprising swift to react people capitalising fast with mocked up creative and aggregating jokes.

 

Within 4 hours of the iPad's launch,  iTampon jokes were over-flowing (forgive the pun), taking the topic to the #2 trending topic on Twitter (and the first being an auto-tag so doesn't really count!)

 
I sat there captivated, watching the search results jump from nowhere to 15k in 4 hours, to 22k 2 hours later still. Just phenomenal evidence of how far and fast and idea that captivates imagination can spread, and how little control brands have over these things.  Although if I were Steve Jobs I don't think I'd be unhappy about that level of buzz connected to my product, even if it wasn't likely to have been anticipated. By harnessing the sanpro angle the joke reached further than the techy alerts ever would have done.

Within 6 hours of launch the iTampon topic was trending all the way around the world. Amazing.

Facebook groups sprung up, images on Flickr, the joke clearly appealing to a broad range of men and women around the world.

This spoof video made and posted way ahead of the iPad launch suddenly found new life, jumping from 54k views when it was first tweeted past my radar to over 1.5m view in a week, the vast majority of which were clocked up in just 72 hours.



Whilst the buzz died down again in 3 days or so it's a joke base that I know will never die. As the product comes to market, all the jokes will resurface, when the iPad 3 GS or whatever the next generation product will be called is released there will undoubtedly be another whole round of fun, probably not reaching the same intensity but this one is going to run and run.

If that story doesn't convince marketers of the value of listening, that they need to be in a position to react swiftly if they want to participate and derive benefit from these fast moving trends, I don't know what will.