dean terry

Here’s what it looked like in Pasadena, CA a week after the iphone went on sale.

Two weeks later, the iPhone is nearly sold out nationwide. So, if anyone still doubts that (a) were in a new era of mobile computing or (b) that it took a force from outside the telecom industry to make it happen you are (a) asleep or (b) hallucinating.

It’s a great start, but there’s work to be done. The device and the OS are innovative, but the ideas for applications lag far behind. Yes everyone is excited that we can actually do things at all on a mobile devide after years of stagnation and control by the carriers. Yes Evernote and Pandora on the iPhone are cool. But after this initial euphoria, we’ll see there are entire classes, worlds of applications missing. It’s a new media.

Right now we’re doing what we always do: dump old media in to new media to see what fits, what doesn’t, then adjust and eventually innovate. There are conventions to be developed. Genres to be invented.

Developers are generally thinking desktop-to-mobile or web-to-mobile rather than mobile-to-place & people. The mobile experience itself has not been thought through, so ideas for it are all adapted from the desktop metaphor. There are other, more appropriate metaphors. (I like the video camera metaphor personally. Looking up and out into the world rather than down and away from it into a 2D abstraction.)

It’s time to start thinking of fresh ideas for mobile applications. Mostly what we see now, and will continue to see for the near future, are desktop and web apps / sites made available for the iPhone. By definition this means the mobile experience itself is not primary, rather the emphasis is on fully accessing the existing web on a mobile device. This is to be expected, but there’s nothing holding us back but imagination, and to some extent hardware (but not for long).

Let’s start thinking about what what it means to have a mobile device that is fully connected and powerful and with us all the time. One that knows where we are, and who and what are around us. One that has not only media consumption capabilities, but media creation and participation capabilities.

How can we interface with the world around us directly? Must the information about something that is right in front of us have to come from a web browser? This seems strange. We’re leaving, in a way, where we are when we do that. We’re going to the net, in a browser. We’ve left the building , so to speak.

I think we should challenge ourselves to develop applications that allow us to interact directly with our environment and the people and things in it.

Making a Seesmic Video & Telling Lies with Brad Fidler from therefore on Vimeo.

I met Brad Fidler a.k.a. “fidler” or “psychiatry” on Seesmic where I found he made some of the most interesting videos. On my visit to LA this week I met with him and, after a long interview (which I’ll put up later) we did a joint Seesmic post from the minivan I rented.

This isn’t the reason I quit painting, but it could have been.

Part 2 of my conversation with Bret Taylor of Friendfeed at Supernova 2008 in San Francisco.

Bret Taylor of FriendFeed (2 of 2) from therefore on Vimeo.

At Supernova I got a chance to sit down and talk with Bret Taylor of Freindfeed, which, along with Seesmic, is one of the most interesting silicon valley web startups. Friendfeed enables conversations around media objects such as twitter messages, favorited news items, and blog posts. My friendfeed ID is therefore. Here’s part 1 of the discussion. Click here to view in HD.

Bret Taylor of FriendFeed (1 of 2) from therefore on Vimeo.

Which one will get us to Chinese food in downtown San Francisco faster?

Co-starring Dan Langendorf www.twitter.com/dlangendorf

Without a compass, mobile GPS is difficult. I can’t auto correct for orientation in my head and would like for the map app to do it for me. Hopefully we’ll have a in compass our devices soon, then the apps and eventually any virtual objects in the world will orient properly.

Supernova and TechCrunch were looking for the next great mobile ideas. They chose MobileLab.

My MobileLab research group at the university has been invited to present its work in the Mobile Connections: The Next Great Ideas? Panel, co-hosted by Tech Crunch, at the Supernova 2008 conference in San Francisco on Monday June 16.

Our work will be presented with several others whose ideas were selected because they represent “game-changing innovations that provide a glimpse of the wireless future”.

I will talk about our augmented reality work with Texas Instruments and Ericsson.

Real Time, the mobile video art show which premiered at the Dallas Contemporary, is playing the Pocket Films Festival at the Pompidou in Paris. The show had a great run here. Here’s a video of the show:

Real Time Mobile Video Art Exhibition from therefore on Vimeo.

What I’m talking about on Twitter. Interestingly (and typical), twitter itself ranks high. Can you say Echo (echo) ( e c h 0 ) chamber?

my favorite videos from the Real Time Exhibition.

I’ve been experimenting with Seesmic, which is a form of threaded video conversations. It extracts the kind of reply-to conversations that have sprung up on YouTube in the last few years. The environment makes me want to be absurdist and performative. This is because every kind of recording (audio or video) I’ve ever done has always been some form of performance, so the tendency is still there with Seesmic. Basically on this night, my first on the platform, I turned myself into a caricature or avatar. The full thread with responses is here. btw on the last video when the blue light goes out that was an accident. The light is my screen saver and it went to sleep mode.