Connected experiences and devices are finally starting to emerge. For me, it means that I’m starting to see a variety of great connected experiences using a variety of technologies, cloud services and providers. This has been Ray Ozzie’s vision for Software+Services.
“When you combine the ever-growing power of devices and the increasing ubiquity of the Web, you come up with a sum that is greater than its parts."
I’ve really be struggling to understand examples in the wild. The 2 best examples that represent for me connected experiences are:
- Exchange + Mobile + Desktop + Web: I don’t think I could live without Exchange. My email, my contacts, my calendar are integrated in a single online spot and it syncs will all of my devices. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close. I use my iPhone, I use my Windows Mobile phone, I use Outlook on 2 PCs, I use Entourage on my MacBook Pro, I use the web interface on my netbook. It doesn’t matter, I just connect to my exchange account using the device in my hands.
- iPod/iPhone + iTunes: This was a vertically integrated experience where Apple provided device, the rich client experience and a very limited web experience (it redirects you to iTunes to purchase Apps or media), which continues to shock and frustrate me. However, it does speak to the media management features of iTunes that we’re present long before the iTunes Store and the need for a rich application with hardware access.
The challenge for me is that both of these examples represent relatively vertically integrated solutions. That is, the ecosystem of devices, software and content is controlled by a few key players (Apple + record labels; and Microsoft and OEMs).
New examples continue to demonstrate solutions including:
- Kindle: Kindle is a hardware + content distribution solution from Amazon. It provides the device and content. (Too bad it’s not available in Canada!)
- XBox + XBox Live + Netflix: Being able to stream TV and movie content to my XBox is fantastic. XBox Live allows me to purchase movies to rent. Netflix allows me to stream TV and available movies. (Too bad it’s not available in Canada! Yes I’m familiar with workarounds 😉
I’ve been looking for other examples that show more diversity of the devices, the services, and the software experiences. And I’ve been looking for examples that move beyond media consumption. We’re all familiar with media portability, it is the history of 8-tracks, tapes, CDs, DVDs, BDs and moving between home stereo, portable music player, or car stereo system. While media examples like Boxee are important are great, i.e., more than 1 television per household is not uncommon, it was more important to find new examples to demonstrate the importance or power of both rich clients and web services.
- NewsGator + Google Reader: NewsGator had previously built NewsGator Online to allow customers to sync their feeds with NetNewsWire and FeedDemon rich clients. My biggest complaint with Google Reader (even with offline support from Gears) is that it never lived up to the rich desktop experience provided by NNW and FD. NewsGator apps now use Google Reader to sync to the cloud. It provides me great clients on each of my desktops, my mobile device and on the web.
- Twitter + TweetDeck + Sync: There have been a large number of rich Twitter clients for most desktop and mobile platforms. TweetDeck has continued to round out both their rich clients (desktop in AiR; and iPhone) but has added a compelling feature for users to sync their groups and columns (think TweekDeck customizations) across device. This recognizes the importance that a rich client experience customized for the desktop or the iPhone mobile experience and the importance of enabling users to configure once and run anywhere.
- Boxee + Online Video + Social Networking: Boxee is quickly becoming my software application of choice for watching television content. It aggregates online video services and social network for content filtering and recommendations. It hasn’t replaced my TiVO, but add XBox and XBox Live to this equation and it’s pretty close.
So who cares? There are a lot of applications that are just web based. But we’re starting to see devices as end points, i.e., the applications provide access to content and networks. Facebook is still Facebook, but when the experience is better on your mobile phone you use it more. The best option is to understand your users, to understand the context that they use their devices, and then try to build a friction free experience to get access to your application, content, etc. Users live in a world that is open and closed, connected and disconnected. It’s about access to markets, to content and building solutions that enable which is important. It really makes me need to spend more time reading and understanding the Business Model Innovation and business model template because they offer a great way to start to map the infrastructure, offer, customers and finances.