Daydream: Google’s Push into VR

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

Two years have passed since Google’s humble entry into the virtual reality market with Cardboard, and time has come for the company to take their efforts a step further. Their vision for a VR ecosystem powered by capable mobile devices has a prophetic name: Daydream.

The idea behind the project isn’t to throw away Cardboard into the pits of technological obsolescence, but rather to offer customers the next logical destination on their journey towards an immersive VR experience. Clay Bavor, Google’s vice president of virtual reality, commented, “We knew that Cardboard would only go so far, because there’s only so much you can do in terms of immersiveness and interactivity with—let’s be serious—a piece of cardboard, and a phone that was really only meant to be a phone.”

Google is going to keep Cardboard around as a highly affordable way how VR newbies can get a glimpse of what the once futuristic technology is all about. When the same customers reach the limits of what’s possible with Cardboard, they will know exactly what to buy next: Daydream.

So, what is Daydream? According to Bavor, Daydream is about enabling very high-quality mobile VR.  The key word here is “high-quality”. Google is well aware that any truly immersive mobile VR experience will require a suitable hardware to run on. Not only that, but the entire ecosystem – apps, operating system, VR glasses – has to work in unison.

That’s why Google is working with their industry partners and in-house developers to create a VR platform the world has not seen before. The first Daydream-compatible smartphones – the ZTE Axon 7 and Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe – are right around the corner, and so are the other two pillars of Daydream.

Three Pillars of Daydream

During his presentation at Google IO 2016, Bavor explained the steps Google took to create “our platform for virtual reality.” To succeed, Google needs to have a total control over the VR experience. Customers must know that when they purchase a Daydream-certified smartphone, they won’t run into any compatibility or performance issues.

There’s simply no more room for guesswork like there was (and still is and will be) with Cardboard. Samsung, with their Gear VR, has shown that customers are willing to pay extra for a smartphone that does something extra. But Samsung’s problem is the inability to control the experience from top to bottom. Users have to fight an operating system not meant for virtual reality and apps developed with only a vague idea of the kind of VR headset the apps are going to be consumed through. But all that is about to change.

Smartphones

Google doesn’t want any redundancy in their platform. The company expects smartphone manufacturers to bake all the functionality and features necessary for a smooth VR experience directly into their devices.

This entails powerful hardware capable of pushing demanding graphics at 60 frames-per-second, low-persistence displays with little to no lag to eliminate ghosting, and high-quality, latency-free sensors to increase the sense of immersion when inside a virtual reality world.

Prominent smartphone manufacturers, including Samsung, HTC, LG, Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE, Asus, and Alcatel should have daydream-ready smartphones available this fall. The beauty of this approach lies in the fact that the whole platform can evolve in a similar way as video game consoles do. All that Google has to do to take Daydream to the next level is to bump up the reference specifications and call the result “Daydream 2.0” or something similar. With enough time, Daydream could start competing with PC-tethered headsets.

Headset and Controller

The current mobile VR experience is held back by the chaos that reigns among the headsets. The market is flooded with headsets ranging from a few dollars to few hundred dollars. Some are compatible with devices up to 6”, others can fit only smaller smartphones; certain models have a wide field of view and high-quality optics, but there’s a slew of other headsets that don’t even come close.

With Daydream, Google has taken their experience and created a reference design that others can use as a blueprint to come up with something of an equal quality. The sketch they showed at Google IO 2016 depicted a sleek, clean headset that should appeal to regular smartphone owners and tech enthusiasts alike.

To complement the headset, Google has also created a VR-optimized controller that’s both powerful and intuitive. Its DNA can be traced back to the Wii Nunchuk Controller, as a consequence of its minimalistic appearance and built-in orientation sensor that allows for intuitive motion control. A circular clickable touch pad is designed to bring touchscreen gestures to the virtual world, and two buttons – a home button and app button – provide all the essential functionality without overwhelming users with options.

Apps

The team behind Daydream has been working with the core Android team to include VR capabilities in the next version of the mobile operating system. Starting with Android N, users will be able to put their smartphones into a special VR mode, which will change the UI, making the device easily controllable even while still in VR. Substantial changes have also been made under the hood to allow for a very low latency of less than 20ms and increased performance.

Clay Bavor said that Google will take a strong stance on quality and not allow badly written, designed, or optimized apps to enter into the Daydream ecosystem. “We want to make sure that we’re representing good VR to our users.”

Google wants to lead by example with their apps. The Play Store, YouTube, and Street View are all going to be optimized at launch to deliver an uncompromising user experience. A new face among Google’s increasingly larger collections of apps is the Daydream Hub, a kind of home screen that acts as a gateway to all games and virtual reality apps.

More VR apps are expected to pop up in the near future, thanks to Google’s partnerships with the New York Time, WSJ, USA Today, Netflix, Hulu, IMAX, NBA, MLB, and many others. New VR games from EA, Ubisoft, NetEase, and OtherSide Entertainment are also on the horizon, so there’s no reason to doubt that there won’t be enough compelling content available when Daydream takes off.

It’s Coming

The release of Daydream is planned on Autumn 2016, shortly after Android Nougat is out. Given that Cardboard headsets hover around $10 and Gear VR currently goes for $100, Daydream will probably be positioned right above the Gear VR, in terms of its price.

Google’s vision of the future seems to involve ultra-powerful smartphones that act as keys to countless invisible virtual worlds around us. They recognize that once we reach the point where we no longer need to own a laptop or PC just to get more processing power, smartphones and mobile operating systems will become the only thing that matters.

Xiaomi as an Example of a Successful Post-Mobile Company

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

Xiaomi has seen an astonishing level of success, since the company was founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun, who was named Businessman of the Year by Forbes in 2011. The company is now the third biggest smartphone manufacturer and has 16.4% share of the Chinese smartphone market.

But this $45 billion company led by a man who happily admits that being greatly influenced by Steve Jobs doesn’t want to be regarded as a smartphone business. Xiaomi insists that they are an internet company – a new kind of company that deals primarily with rapid innovation, community building, and lifestyle.

They see that in our post-mobile, interconnected world, tech companies have become much more than providers of useful gadgets. Our entire work and personal lives revolve around tightly integrated ecosystems developed by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and, of course, Xiaomi.

But to understand how Xiaomi got there and where the company is going, we have to understand how they managed to sell over 70m smartphones in 2015 alone.

High-End Products Without High-End Prices

Xiaomi is often compared with Samsung and Apple, even though the company targets a substantially different market. Their bread and butter are devices with high-end specifications and affordable prices. Such products appeal mainly to tech-savvy people and members of the younger generation who don’t have enough disposable income to afford often obscenely expensive flagship models from premium smartphone manufacturers.

In India alone, there are more than 700 million consumers under the age of thirty. When Xiaomi’s devices go on sale in this market, the company often sells their entire stock in just a few seconds. For example, the entire first batch of Mi 4 smartphones in exactly 37 seconds, according to GSMArena.

A flagship device from, let’s say, Samsung is going to cost you around $600, but a device with similar or even better specifications from Xiaomi sells for just $400. And if you lower your expectations just a little bit and look at Xiaomi’s mid-range smartphones, then you are suddenly dealing with prices and value unrivaled by any established mobile manufacturer.

The younger market that Xiaomi targets is also a lot more passionate and vocal about their gadgets. There’s no need for Xiaomi to spend large sums of money on advertising – their own fans will spread the word out.

Lifestyle Company

In an interview for Wired, Lei Jun said, “Think of Xiaomi as a company that is bringing innovation to everyone. We put an emphasis on high-quality products that help to create a connected lifestyle for everyone as we move into a new era of technological innovation. This doesn’t only mean smartphones, tablets, TVs, routers — we invest in startups that form what we call an ecosystem. They make products that are sold on Mi.com, ranging from power banks to wearables to air and water purifiers, so we have hundreds of products that come together to create a lifestyle.”

This “lifestyle approach” could be the key to Xiaomi’s total dominance in the second part of this decade. As their core audience gets older, they are going to settle and shift their collective gaze from smartphones, tablets, and laptops to refrigerators, microwave ovens, water and air purifiers, air conditioners, smart light bulbs, smart weighing scales, and all those other products that Xiaomi is investing their time, money, and effort into.

In this new environment, a smartphone is going to be a sort of central hub that brings everything together. Similarly, a Mi account is going to be a form of personal identification that unlocks not just an online cloud storage – but the entire world around us.

Who Are Citizen Developers and Why They Matter?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

According to Techopedia, an IT education site that aims to provide insight and inspiration to IT professionals, “A Citizen Developer refers to an end user who creates new applications or programs from a corporate or collective code base, system or structure. In a general sense, this developer is not a professional developer who is paid to code applications, but an “amateur,” someone who uses the tools available to him/her for building applications that his/her team can or will use during the course of their work.”

In other words, Citizen Developers are problem-solvers with a varied set of skills, most of which don’t have anything to do with traditional coding. The term has been floating around for a while, but it’s only with the influx of modern rapid development tools that we begin to see how it will impact businesses around the world in a very near future.

Karen Devine, vice president of marketing at QuickBase, says, “There’s such a big skills gap in the marketplace and so much competition for the opportunities in the coding space. But what we were surprised to find is that only 8 percent of the respondents say they have formal coding experience, but nearly 70 percent develop apps as part of their day job.”

According to a 2015 Gartner report titled Citizen Development is Fundamental to the Digital Workplace, at least 70% of large enterprises will have established successful Citizen Development policies by 2020. That’s a considerable increase, given that only 20% had these policies in 2010.

The report also found that most organizations leveraging Citizen Development ranged from small and mid-sized enterprises. In fact, 37% were from companies with less than 100 employees, and 35% were from companies with 100 – 5000 employees.

The biggest player in this landscape is QuickBase, a low-code application development platform provider headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In her interview for Forbes, Allison Mnookin, CEO of QuickBase, went on to say that “The low code market has finally arrived.”

With QuickBase, non-technical business users are empowered to create and customize secure cloud applications that can solve unique business challenges without compromising IT governance and control. “92% of QuickBase Citizen Developers have no coding background,” said Mnookin.

The only technical skills Citizen Developers need is the ability to mix and match various existing technological solutions and use them to solve previously identified problems and inefficiencies. Typical problems that users of QuickBase solve revolve around Excel files and Microsoft Access databases.

Companies who encourage their employees to take a pro-active role in software development reap multiple benefits. “We don’t have to interrupt our IT department to build an application. We just need a good idea, collaboration from the end users and some productive quiet time,” says Bruce Squibb, senior director of program development, Sodexo. As such, the total operation efficiency greatly increases, boosting ROI and reassuring employees that their work produces noticeable outcomes that benefit the whole company.

Of course, larger enterprises don’t expect that employees without deep IT knowledge would build and maintain mission-critical applications or integrate their compartmentalized solutions into the company network. Trained technical personnel is still expected to assist with these tasks. According to Gartner Research VP Mark Driver, the sweet spot for citizen development is for simple applications that are stand-alone and not mission critical.

But in the world where the foundational infrastructure is often outsourced to third-party companies, it’s precisely the non-critical stuff that matters and influences how employees accomplish their daily goals and how the company as a whole deals with upcoming challenges. As such, the role of Citizen Developers will only rise in importance, as the technology behind it improves over time.

Gamification of Reality: Where Games and Augmented Reality Merge

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends, Uncategorized

Gamification is hardly a new concept. The term itself was coined back in 2002 by Nick Pelling, a British-born computer programmer and inventor. Nick defined the term as, “Applying game-like accelerated user interface design to make electronic transactions both enjoyable and fast.” Its popularity skyrocketed in 2011, when it was officially added it to Gartner’s Hype Cycle list.

At the core of gamification is game theory, a branch of mathematics that seeks to understand why an individual makes a particular decision and how the decisions made by one individual affect others. Using concepts and techniques from game theory, gamification aims to engage participants with activities they find appealing, in order to influence their behavior.

Common elements of gamification include various points, reward badges, and leaderboards where users can strive to outperform others. A properly implemented gamification has a lot of advantages ranging from an increase in customer engagement to higher customer loyalty and access to in-depth data that can give further insights into users’ interests and passions.

Let’s take a look at some real-life examples of gamification to understand just how omnipresent it really is.

Army

Conceived in 1999 by Colonel Casey Wardynski, the U.S. Army has developed and published a first-person shooter (FPS) game called America’s Army with a single goal: to support U.S. Army recruiting. The gameplay mechanics are very similar to other tactical shooters. Players are divided into squats and use realistic weapons as they fight against one another for a set number of rounds. Featured in the game is the HMMWV, Mk 19 grenade launcher, and Browning M2, among many other contemporary weapons from the arsenal of U.S. military. One game historian commented that the game has “grown in ways its originators couldn’t have imagined.” Indeed, its rating of 82 on Metacritic and the large number of industry awards confirms its great success among civilians from all over the world.

Learning

Learning platforms, such as Treehouse or Doulingo, revolutionize how people learn how to code, speak other languages, or how they gain professional knowledge and skills to advance their careers. Individual subjects and courses have clearly outlined paths for users to follow. For each completed lesson, users are rewarded with points and badges, which demonstrate their achievement. Points are usually multiplied if the user logs into to the side for multiple consecutive days in a row. This increases user retention and motivates people to keep studying.

Healthcare

Health insurance companies and health care providers are using gamification to stir people toward a healthier lifestyle. According to Gamification.co, United is working on an app called United Healthcare Motion. “People carrying insurance will be given wearable devices that will track their daily activities, including the number of steps they walk. Participants will be given financial incentives for meeting certain goals.” Other apps, such as Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, and Nike+ work on a similar principle. Nike+ allows people to track their runs and challenge friends – all to encourage them to top their personal records.

Shopping

Retailers have been using gamification for a long time, but they are only recently started to embrace technology to take it to the next level. Starbucks, for example, is now rewarding customers by giving them stars for their purchases. Each star fills up a virtual cup by a small bit. Once completely filled, the customer gets a free coffee.

Government Control

But perhaps the most sinister application of gamification comes from China. The Chinese government has created a social tool named Sesame Credit to gamify obedience to the State. Using this tool, people are given scores based on how well their actions align with the official government policy.

The tool pulls data from social networks and online purchase histories, judging if people share articles that praise the Chinese government, purchase domestic products, and many others.

The tool is currently in a testing phase, but it’s expected that it will become mandatory by 2020. When that happens, the rating given by Sesame Credit could have real world consequences. Users with low scores could have their internet speeds restricted, and those with good scores could gain access to more lucrative jobs.

NEW SMARTWATCHES FROM PEBBLE – TIME 2, PEBBLE 2, CORE

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

Pebble, the American smartwatch manufacturer responsible for the Pebble Classic and Pebble Time, is set to prove for the third time that their affordable smartwatches can easily rival the Apple Watch and Android Wear devices. The Kickstarter campaign for three new Pebbles launched on May 24, 2016, reaching its $1 million goal in the first hour and ultimately exceeding it by more than $11 million. What convinced 63,000 backers to pledge their money are two smartwatches, the Pebble 2 and Time 2, and one hackable 3G wearable, the Pebble Core.

Pebble 2

The original Pebble smartwatch was a black and white plastic device that was prone to scratches and for a long time lacked the ability to run third-party apps. Despite its flaws, a huge following quickly developed around it, proving that even unpolished products can be immensely successful if the underlying concept is interesting enough.

The Pebble 2 builds on the original idea but improves it in almost every way. The most notable addition is the ability to track heart rate. It took Pebble a long time to start taking health and fitness tracking seriously, only launching their own health-tracking application in December. According to The Verge, the company now believes that “fitness tracking has become the third pillar of smartwatch functionality, alongside notifications and basic communications.”

The smartwatch is also lighter and thinner than the original Pebble, and the still black-and-white display is finally protected with a Gorilla Glass coating. The built-in microphone extends capabilities of the Pebble 2. The show is run by an ARM Cortex M4 processor, which is a high performance embedded processor with DSP instructions developed to address digital signal control markets that demand an efficient, easy-to-use blend of control and signal processing capabilities, explains ARM on their official website.

Users should be able to get up to a week of battery life out of the smartwatch. It will cost $99 and is expected to ship in September of this year.

Time 2

The Pebble Time 2 seems to be the premium watch from Pebble that customers we waiting for so long. The main problem with the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel smartwatches was fundamental inability to justify their higher price. The Time Steel never really felt like a Pebble watch in the first place – not to mention that it was almost 4 times more expensive than the basic Pebble watch. The Time also sacrificed Pebble’s greatest feature, its long battery life, in favor of a clunky non-touch color display that was hard to read under direct sunlight.

So what has Pebble decided to do? They have decided to combine features of the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel into a single, highly-polished package. The new smartwatch can last up to 10 days and its 64-colour E-Paper screen with a 228 x 200 resolution now has more than 50 percent larger viewing area. The display is protected with Gorilla Glass 3, while the watch itself is made out of marine grade stainless steel. Not to lag behind the Pebble 2, the newly introduced heart-rate sensor and microphone are also present in this watch.

“We’ve been working with the display manufacturer to figure out a way of reducing border size which is one of the biggest pieces of feedback we got back from our customers. I think we’ve been able to crack it and get it down to this state,” says Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky. Indeed, the bezel is significantly smaller than the one found on the previous version.

Despite these improvements, the display still doesn’t support touch, and the entire watch is controlled with buttons – a back button on the left side and up, down, and select buttons on the right side. At least, Pebble has made some efforts to increase their usability by adding a new framework called Actions. With this framework, users can use the buttons to quickly access various custom-configured shortcuts. “We’re really taking a renewed focus on the health and fitness aspects of the watch,” Migicovsky pointed out when asked why the company has decided to use a silicon band instead of a leather band like the one found on Pebble Time Round, the company’s stylish smartwatch. “We wanted to make sure it was water resistant up to 30 meters like the rest of our products, but also added a rubber strap so you can work out or swim.”

The Time 2 is available in gold, silver, and black color version. The smartwatch is priced at $169 and should ship in November.

Pebble Core

Perhaps the most interesting of all new gadgets from Pebble is the Pebble Core, the company’s first non-smartwatch gadget. This small dongle can be attached to just about anything, using a magnetized leather clip.

The device came to life a direct result of the feedback Pebble received from their customers, who, while enjoying Pebble smartwatches, found themselves, again and again, wishing there was a convenient way how they could listen to music and track their location without hauling a smartphone with them.

The Core is a compact, square wearable device that can be connected with an iPhone or Android smartphone. But it can also be used independently, thanks to a Micro SIM card slot. As such, the Core is almost as if Pebble took all the advanced functionality from high-end smartwatches and stripped it to its minimal form. “Pebble didn’t have a way of accessing the Internet before without a phone. This gives us a bit of a pathway to get through to the Internet,” Migicovsky told CNET.

Inside is 4GB of storage space for use in conjunction with the dedicated Spotify support, which allows users to download music playlists for offline listening – either via a 3.5mm jack for headphones or over Bluetooth – in case they don’t want to take advantage of Core’s 3G capabilities. But the device can do much more than just replace your old mp3 player. The built-in microphone and GPS allow for voice messages, emergency SOS texts, quick Uber hailing, and the company has announced plans to integrate Amazon Alexa to access Amazon Prime Music, shop on Amazon, and even listen to news headlines and weather reports. The Pebble Core is said to last up to nine hours of active battery life. It can then be charged with any compatible Qi wireless charger.

The Pebble Core is also the first Pebble gadget to run on Android OS. The company believes that this will make the device more appealing to hackers and tinkerers, who could use it to do all sorts of wild things, including home automation.

Pebble plans to start shipping the core from January 2017 for $99 – only Kickstarter backers will get it for $69. It will be available in either black or white color.

Pebble’s Competition

The new versions of smartwatches from Pebble are certainly a substantial improvement, but are they good enough to compete with other major manufacturers of smartwatches and fitness trackers?

Apple Watch

For consumers’ point of view, the price of the Apple Watch is not easy to justify. The new Time 2 offers a similar premium design but for a much lower price. What it doesn’t offer is the same premium user experience. The somewhat clunky, button-controlled 64-colour E-Paper screen simply can’t compete with the AMOLED capacitive touchscreen found on the Apple Watch. It could, however, be redeemed by the amazing battery life and compatibility with both Android and iOS devices.

For developers, Apple’s ecosystem offers a lot of possibilities how to make a living with paid apps published on the App Store. Developers get 70% of sales revenue while Apple handles worldwide payment processing and distribution. That’s not to say that Pebble doesn’t have its own version of the App Store, but they don’t allow paid apps. As such, Pebble is likely to appeal more to the open-source crowd of enthusiastic tinkerers.

Android Wear Smartwatches

With new Android Wear smartwatches being released every month, customers have enough options to choose a watch that perfectly fits their needs; from sporty smartwatches such as the Casio Smart Outdoor Watch or Moto 360 Sport, to elegant timepieces such as the Fossil Q Wander or the Huawei Watch. But, at the end of the day, it all boils down to the philosophy behind the product. Pebble position themselves as manufacturers of everyday products that keep things simple and accessible. On the other hand, Android is known for its fragmented market that can be hard to navigate.

The one area where Android is the undisputed king is application development. Their comprehensive suite of development tools, low entry fees, and competitive revenue percentage make the platform perfect for seasoned and inexperienced developers alike.

Fitbit

Fitbit, the well-known manufacturer of activity trackers and wireless-enabled wearable technology devices, competes with Pebble with their only true smartwatch, the Fitbit Blaze. Since the Pebble 2 and Time 2 gained similar fitness tracking capabilities, costumes have to decide whether they want to spend their money on a single-purpose device that does one thing and does it well, or take advantage of over 13,000 apps in the Pebble app store that gives Pebble’s smartwatches a much greater variety of functionality. What’s more, Pebble smartwatches are also water-resistant and have a better battery life.

Summary

“I see a future where at some point you’re gonna have multiple wearables that all talk to each other, that connect through the Internet,” stated Migicovsky. This new batch of devices clearly points to the new direction that Pebble is heading. To get there, the company will have to work on their infrastructure, which is still lacking compared to other big names who compete with Pebble in the smartwatch and fitness tracking market. The fact that Pebble has decided to use Android Wear for the Pebble Core shows that the company is aware of the issue and is trying new ways how to solve it. It will be interesting to watch how they manage to position themselves on the increasingly more saturated market.