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« Gartner and the Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies | Main | Innovation Brief »
Olympics 2.0, Miss Bikini and the end of Operating Systems
There’s nothing like a catchy blog title. And some days the inspiration is – well - right there in your face. As we approach the end of the Olympic games, I am quite sure that many employees return to their offices as spoiled consumers of a highly interactive Internet experience. For the first time, we have been able to follow such a major event as the Olympics utilising all the capabilities of advanced, web-based technology. And it is creating a pent-up demand, as it further emphasises the often painful gap between what we already consider as 'normal' at home and what corporate IT can supply at work.
Many regions will have their own, excellent best practices (the NBC Olympics site for example), but in my home country – the Netherlands – the official Dutch Television Olympics website has drawn a lot of attention. Not only because people eagerly want to follow our nation’s neck and neck race with China in winning the most medals, but also because the site is an excellent showcase of how Rich Internet Applications and Web 2.0 concepts combine into a truly compelling result. Have a look yourself (I take it the Dutch language is self-explanatory to most of you) and see how many recent, good IT ideas fluently merge into one experience.
It’s all there: integrated video and audio – live streams plus an on-demand archive - and extensive background info linked to it, real-time schedules and results, catchy business graphics, many different blogs, RSS feeds, tagging, Googlified search, video ranking, polls, daily elections (‘Olympic moment of the day’), a fully functional mobile version and news widgets that can be used for personal mashups in iGoogle, FaceBook, NetVibes or the Vista desktop. A wealth of inspiration in many different ways, no matter what your own IT direction may look like.
What is remarkable, is that the entire experience is provided through the browser, enabled in this case by Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in. This is essentially light-weight technology which is independent of the platform (it runs perfectly fine on my Apple, for example). It puts all the discussion around which is the best operating system in a different light: who cares about an operating system if all you need is a browser to run the most attractive applications we have seen so far? Do we really want to dive deep any more into what Windows 7 should look like? Should we really be surprised that the new version of OS X will contain nothing more than stability and performance improvements? The future of applications is on the Internet and in the browser – we felt it more than ever this summer - and operating systems will be rendered into an Invisible Infostructure.
That said, we yet have to explore the real power of Web 2.0. And tapping into the wisdom of the crowd still releases the good, the bad and the ugly. The tag cloud of the Dutch Olympics site gives an excellent insight in what subjects are most popular on the site, so it helps others to focus on the highlights. ‘Paraguay’ however, appeared to be one of the biggest subjects. It puzzled me first, but then it turned out that one of Paraguay’s female javelin throwers is a former beauty queen and competed multiple times in a Miss Bikini contest.
Clearly a case of multiple talents, some people must have thought.
Posted by Ron Tolido on August 22, 2008 in
Technology
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Comments
# on August 22, 2008 2:47 PM, sig said:
Absolutely right... of course.
Loved the Dutch TV link as well, not as much as an example of good use of technology but as a perfect example as to how such good use is nicely torpedoed by rules, regulation and basic dumb-ass businesses: I'm outside the Netherlands, thus I get a "We're sorry" message instead of content :)
That's where the discussion must move, technology is rather moot if run by people who still live in a paper-based world...
# on August 22, 2008 3:45 PM, Jerry said:
Hi Ron,
Very well-written article. I particularly like the insight about the future of IT being dominated by Web-enabled services and web technology. Interestingly, these advancements in web technology are also considerably simple to use and fairly intuitive.
Typically, advanced technologies have been fairly complex to use (e.g., user manuals, labyrinthine menus, a field of buttons, etc.).
# on August 23, 2008 2:17 PM, Phil Blades said:
Hi Ron - as ever its good to stimulate the little grey cells - so thank you for that.
As "sig" says - the border issues of old media delivery are now slowing the expansion of new media delivery (look at any of the big media players, e.g. BBC are also obsessed/obliged with in-country only). This is a shame and needs to be addressed (note that on-line advertising has now overtaken on-screen advertising revenue for the first time this summer).
So the saying you, I and other past colleages at Cap created - "Global, Mobile, Always On" is true, we are just waiting for the content to catch up.
Phil
# on August 23, 2008 2:56 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@ "sig": I noticed the same with some parts of the NBC Olympics site: they claim that law prohibits them from broadcasting the content outside the US. This clearly is just a matter of time, as we quickly getting used to - and then demand! - an online world without boundaries. Thanks for your feedback.
# on August 23, 2008 3:00 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Jerry: indeed! The new generation of websites - and we have seen new incarnations this summer - are more simple than ever, also due to advanced in interactive user-interface technology. And who knows, 4 years from now many of us may be watching the olympics through our 'Wii-style' game computer, while doing our daily excercises at the same time, supported by the same screen. Talking about simplified experiences...
# on August 23, 2008 3:05 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Phil: nice to hear from you! As I said to "sig", this is just a matter of time. Just see where we are 4 years from now. We have made a big leap in new media content ever since Athens. I am sure we all will witness - from front row in your case - the result of many new breakthroughs in London. And 'inbetween' should not be too bad either...
# on August 26, 2008 11:51 AM, Mark Nankman said:
Nice post Ron. Yes, very interesting how web applications are indeed becoming truly platform independent. In fact, from the user's point of view, there is just one platform, and that is the web. The device used to tap into the web should simply be compatible. Common, non-technology savvy users won't care about the technology used, as long as the application is usable. They see the device they are using as a single thing and not a "blend" of technologies and standards. I recently posted an entry about this very subject on Capgemini's technology blog: http://is.gd/1PlY
# on August 29, 2008 2:51 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Mark: and indeed, we see many devices become more popular that are almost a 'denial' of technology. These are not only iPhone-like devices but also light-weight, simplified PC's that mainly provide Internet-access and browser facilities, e.g. the well-received Asus EEE PC (which may also includes 'Splashtop' functionality, starting up Firefox in just a few seconds from cold boot), the 'Jack PC' wall-socket computer, OLPC, etc. This really puts a pressure on the producers of operating systems - including Mirosoft, Apple, Open Source), who probably would like to add new functionality where they should really be tuning down their products.