Innovation Update Oktober

Here at Boondoggle we have regular internal sessions in which we discuss the newest and most innovative stuff. From now on we’re going to try and make it a habit to post a short summary of the topics discussed.

Iphone APPs

I asked Wim to give a short summary of what kind of possibilities you have on the iPhone. Here is his presentation.

Google Android

All the big players are in the mobile market, we have Nokia with Symbian, Microsoft is pushing Windows Mobile, Apple with the iPhone and this week Google and T-Mobile release the first mobile phone which uses Android, the open source operating system made by Google.

All of those players have their own specific strategy and Google has chosen to go the open source way. That’s a pretty clever strategy if you ask me, adoption rate of the mobile OS will see a huge uptake. Because all mobile phone manufacturers are able to freely adapt and ship their phones with the OS.

First reviews seem very promising, I’ll take you through some of its functionalities.

• Lifehacker as an extensive review
  
• GPS and GMaps functionalities seems extremely cool, getting directions with Street View enables opens up a whole new experience in sattelite navigations
  
  
• The browser on the Android is made out of the same wood the iPhone Safari Browser: Webkit and seems to be working really well:
  
  
• The possibilities you have with applications really seem endless, following movie really shows me the power of the OS:
  
  
• Want more info:
  • http://code.google.com/android/
  • http://gizmodo.com/5067896/android-app-review-marathon-liveblog
  • http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/android-video-reviews-from-appvee/

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is another thing all the big players are getting into Amazon already has an extensive amount of cloud services, Google has its App Engine and recently Microsoft announced it is also getting into this space.

So why do we, as an agency, even bother? Well there are a few reasons:

• Server infrastructure is a pain, especially if it’s not your core business. It’s a big cost and needs constant maintenance.
• We want to be able to go further than bringing simple websites to our customers. We want to be able to provide them full flavored web services who can do more than simply bringing you content. Cloud Computing gives us the possibility to (almost) forget about the infrastructure part.

We just need to know that there are these kind of services and that they can give us solutions for an infrastructure problem.

Mobile Codes

I stumbled upon this going to the menu of my mobile phone. It’s very simple to use, it’s getting integrated in a lot of phones. But what is it and how does it work?

Well it’s a sort of bar code which the camera in your phone can interpret. The mobile code below is an example of how the code looks like. This code contains a link to this blog:

If I launch the code scanner on my mobile phone, he’s going to detect the code and launching my browser opening the link.

It’s very simple to use and works really well.

These kind of technologies have lot of potential because they are can link offline elements with a digital presence.

You can make your own code on the nokia site.

We’re going to see this mobile codes on business cards, flyers, bill boards, …

That’s it … next one coming next month !