The growing network of people, through telecommunications, smartphones and the Internet allows people to come together in many ways.  People share aspects of their lives in numerous ways and access unprecedented amounts of information, content and services.  In recent years, however, it has become apparent that this vast network of connected and on-line people are not just consumers, but a valuable resource. ‘Crowdsourcing’ is the term used for outsourcing tasks to large groups of people, and today’s massively connected world makes crowdsourcing more viable and powerful than ever before.

Recently, we have seen some fun and exciting applications of crowd-sourcing in scientific research.  Classification tasks, or repetitive tasks that cannot be performed by a machine are particularly suitable for crowd-sourcing.  The idea is that certain tasks that may usually be performed by teams of people or by computers can be broken up into many parts, so everyday people can offer a few minutes of their time for free.

MoonZoo is such a project (read an article on Wired), focusing on classifying features of the universe, such as the formation of galaxies and the surface of the moon.  The project aims to classify features in the gigantic archive of photos taken by astronomy satellites, thus extracting invaluable information.  Users of the site look at photos of the moon surface and identify and locate craters, boulders and other features by comparing them with examples provided.  GalaxyZoo uses the same approach to classify types of galaxies –   human input is invaluable, elegantly put ”Computers will slowly get better at classifying galaxies, but looking at an image and asking ‘what’s that odd thing?’ remains uniquely human.” - Galaxy Zoo.  Another interactive science crowd-sourcing project, Foldit, allows users to solve visual puzzles folding proteins to help discover ways of making chemical reactions more efficient.  For more examples of science crowdsourcing projects that you can try look here.

A more common example that you are likely to have come across is “captcha” the security check on many websites that asks you to spell out difficult to read words.  A basic nuisance to most, this process is actually helping the process of digitising books – words that cannot be correctly identified by the scanning software are crowdsourced by getting people to identify what they are.

But crowdsourcing has many uses beyond science and academia.  Mobile apps are emerging that can take advantage of their users, to help eachother, or to help businesses.  MapShare, Trapster, SubwayArrival and GoogleMaps all allow users to share information about transport and traffic to promote safety on the road or help others avoid congested areas.  LocalMind allows people to share information about what’s going on around them – such as whether a particular bar is busy.   Crowdsourcing is a great way to quickly  acquire up-to-date information about an area or situation, and has recently been employed in many humanitarian and natural disasters.

Businesses already value the extensive customer behaviour tracking that is now possible because of our extensive digital lives.  Facebook has become a useful source of information for businesses to perform consumer research, with many people wilfully publishing information about their behaviours and preferences that they would previously have had to go to great lengths to get via customer surveys.

Here in the Scribble offices, we’ve been playing the massively popular ‘DrawSomething’ app – a social game similar to Pictionary.  With millions of people drawing their interpretations of specific words, could this be an interesting resource: for example to analyse social trends, or to help train computers to recognize images?  Game developers have recently started to monitor detailed stats about game-player’s habits to inform design changes.

Crowdsourcing offers businesses and app developers a new way of looking at how they relate to their customers – users can be viewed as a resource and not just consumers.  Maybe the way people use their apps can offer interesting insights – so what exciting uses will we see for crowdsourcing apps in the future?

Mobile World Congress 2012

We are excited to be attending the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona.  As well as soaking in the joys of the beautiful setting, we are looking forward to seeing some great exhibitions and sharing ideas with attendees.

Scribble: are a digital agency based in Brighton.  We enjoy seeking out innovative solutions for our clients and for our own endeavours in the world of apps.   Some of our main interests include creating cross-platform solutions that integrate apps, web and social media, 3D graphics, augmented reality and social media integration.

We love augmented reality and are really excited about what the industry will have to offer in the coming years, so it is nice to see that the conference will be enhanced by a number of augmented reality experiences to show people about the conference and to guide people to different areas.

The conference will host a pretty comprehensive list of players in the mobile world and will include keynotes from Facebook, Google, eBay, GMA, Visa and many many more.  As well as major keynote speakers and exhibitions, the conference has ‘App Planet’ a large section dedicated to mobile apps, where developers, operators, manufacturers and service providers will be exhibiting and sharing knowledge.

This year’s conference will be split up into a number of different ‘zones’, all related to different aspects of the mobile world, here’s what we are most excited about:

Cloud technology has been taking off over the last few years, and with demand for mobile services surging and 4G networks just around the corner, cloud technology is set to become an essential technology in the mobile world, so we will be taking a great interest in the exhibitors on the “Cloud Pavillion”.

We’ll also be checking out m-Commerce developments in the “Mobile Money Pavillion” – the coming years will see many big changes in this area as mobile banking, NFC and the like start to take off.

The “mPowered Brands Zone” will be dedicated to mobile marketing, and we will be interested to see how companies are making use of mobile technology to spread the word about their brands.

We love to share ideas, so please get in touch with us if you’d like to meet up at the conference, we look forward to seeing you there!

If you’d like to meet up at the conference, drop us a line at hello@scribbleuk.com and keep up to date with our tweets @scribbledigital

Check back here soon for our report of the conference!

Technology on the move in 2012

2012 will see technology continue to become more mobile, whilst web and social media will integrate further into our lives and the devices around us.

Increased processing power for smartphones and tablets will see mobile devices moving closer to fully-fledged computers and super lightweight and portable laptops will make computers more mobile.  Cloud storage and sevice-based software will continue to grow, making less reliance on local storage, and allowing content to be easily shared and viewed across multiple devices.  Social media platforms will be introducing more apps to broaden their experiences and engage us for longer, and ‘clickstreaming’ will allow users to constantly log their activities, creating a seamless web narrative, while web and social media platforms will be spilling over into smart TVs and the upcoming next generation consoles.

SocialMedia

Predicitions are that social media adoption will begin to slow and level out in 2012.  The buzz word for social media in 2012 is “engagement”.  Instead of harvesting more users, social media platforms will be looking for new ways to keep their users interested for longer, with platforms like Spotify and Twitter introducing apps to broaden their service.  Meanwhile, Facebook will extend it’s reach to more rich media such as newspapers and video channels, with the aim of keeping people on the site for more of their web-browsing time.

Nokia Windows Phone

Microsoft have had little success so far with Windows Phone.  Perhaps this is because the Microsoft brand association is not particularly sexy.  But we like Windows Phone, with it’s colourful box menu, reminiscent of the Xbox live interface, it’s a refreshing change from the iPhone-style rows of icons.  Having joined forces with Nokia, many are predicting that 2012 will be an important year for Windows Phone.

 Ultrabooks

Netbooks received a lot of criticism when they were introduced due to the heavy sacrifices made to performance, memory and screen-size in order to make them portable and affordable.  Whilst sounding good in theory, for many, this was not an acceptable trade-off, a point that Steve Jobs emphasised when he announced the first iPad.

Intel has put a huge amount of effort into developing a laptop which retains portability as the focus, but without the sacrifice in performance, coining the term ‘Ultrabook’.  Intel are not alone in this category, with other PC makers producing thin lightweight models.  Apple clearly see that the future of computing is in portability and mobility, with their entry level range of Macbooks being replaced with the Macbook Air, arguably the first ‘Ultrabook’.

Storage

One of the key space-saving measures for these devices is the removal of the optical drive.  This comes as the industry continues to move towards digital distribution.  Digital stores such as Steam, Xbox Live, PSN, the Apple AppStore will become more dominant for software distribution, and Microsoft will release their own app store with Windows 8.  Cloud storage and services, and streaming media will also take the burden away from local storage.

iPad 3

Many competitors have jumped into the tablet market, notably Samsung and Amazon, bringing some choice and variety to the category.  But Apple still remain ahead by some distance, the iPad being the most desired.  The iPad3 will be announced this year.  Apple are fairly good at guarding the secrets of their products before they are released, but some of the most popular speculations include a higher resolution ‘retina’ display, possibly that runs right to the edge of the device (ie, there is no border around the edge of the screen), more powerful processor and greater graphics capabilities.

 Augmented Reality

Faster processors, graphics capabilities and better cameras in smartphones means that we can expect to see even more exciting augmented reality apps on mobile devices.  As more developers are being attracted to the technology, we will start to see more exciting and practical applications, such as virtually trying on clothes or makeup.  Here at Scribble,  we love to hear about new AR developments, and we can’t wait to try them outfor ourselves!

2012 is going to be an exciting year of Scribble, as web and social media evolve and spread onto more devices and platforms and as digital technology becomes increasingly mobile…. watch this space!

There are now so many different platforms that a business needs to manage in order to maximise connectivity with their audience, for example: web, TV, advertising, social media, smartphones, tablets, PC, the list goes on.  Managing the content across all of these channels is no easy task, but big brands are realising the importance of an approach that exploits the advantages of each platform.

This approach means that rather than treating each channel individually, with content mirrored across numerous platforms, a ‘big picture’ solution is created, with each platform or device playing a part.  Smartphones are increasingly used for search on-the-go, to enable people to find general or location based information, such as Subway’s use of QR codes and ‘geo-fencing’ to deliver vouchers and offers to consumers when near or close to Subway branches; whereas people will still usually prefer to make actual purchases on a computer.

The popularity of social media and mobile communications has made it more important than ever for brands to be able to react quickly, and to create a two-way relationship with their audience.  Linking to social media allows brands to manage their exposure and interact with customers, and allow customers to express and share their own views.  Big brands are taking a cross-platform approach to revolutionize customer service: ASOS, BT, Tesco and Vodaphone use Twitter and Facebook to interact with consumers, taking pressure away from notoriously irritating phone support.

But it’s not just about having the widest reach; a good cross-platform solution is about using resources efficiently.  At Scribble, we are seeing brands making the jump into the world of apps that want to streamline their approach – consolidating their content across apps, web and social media.  This means that these platforms do not need to be managed individually, saving precious time and resources.

Scribble are always looking for new ways to integrate platforms and create streamlined solutions, whether it is using new technologies or creating effective strategies for managing resources.

So as you are all probably aware the UK is currently in a state of mob anarchy with riots and looting taking place across the country but predominately in London.  There has been a lot of speculation as to what sparked this bout of aggressive behaviour from the youth across the UK but as we are a tech focused blog we will try to stay away from the social and political reasons and look at how technology and particularly mobile has influenced the last few days.

We have all seen how useful Twitter and Facebook has been at spreading news quickly but this is the first time that BlackBerry’s BBM service has been noted as a driving force.  BlackBerry handsets are the smartphone of choice for the majority of British teens due to the BBM service where users are able to send instant messages for free to individuals or groups.  BBM has been connected to the outbreak of riots allowing information to spread quickly about the locations and allegedly co-ordinate the attacks on London neighbourhoods.

So are these riots BlackBerry’s fault? the answer is definitely no but would they have been able to spread so quickly without this technology? probably not. There were calls for the BBM service to be been shut down forcing the rioters to use other forms of communication but i doubt this would have helped much.  I agree with a post on mobileindustryreview.com and think that if the authorities were aware that BBM was being so widely used that they could use and track this data as they would on Twitter or Facebook to pre-empt these strikes.

While this data wasn’t able to pre-empt strikes it does appear that RIM are fully co-operating with the police to hand over data that can help the police track down ring leaders using BBM services and make arrests so BBM does have its benefits.

So the question has to be asked, what role did mobile and technology have in the riots?  Yes it did allow easy communication between rioters, help co-ordinate attacks more effectively but that is an unfortunate by product of the technology.  Modern technology allows better communication and this is a good thing.  The benefit of these vandals using this technology is that being digital it is traceable and hopefully they will catch these awful human being that have been causing this destruction.