A buddy of mine posted on LinkedIn today an article from Forbes titled “Apps Are Over; Frog Design’s Scott Jenson wants to overthrow the Desktop Paradigm”. You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/7sxnfxy.

Most interesting to me is this:

Just in Time Interactions: What Jenson is envisioning is a world where our devices load applications opportunistically as we need them, in real time. The technological model for this, simply enough, is web pages. But these will be web pages with advanced functionality that can be accessed seamlessly from remote or local networks—and even from other mobile devices. He’s thinking about things like bus stops that broadcast the arrival of the next bus, movie posters that beam you a trailer or retail stores that load their app on your device as you walk in the door. “The whole concept of just-in-time interaction is structurally impossible with installed apps,” Jenson concludes.

Why I find that interesting is 13 years ago while working at Stellcom, I had a similar thought and wrote a white paper, WAYYYY before we had real mobile devices, or mobile apps, or the cloud, or 3G.

This is the excerpt from my white paper:

Entertainment and News

 

This can fall into two categories: The gaming industry and the motion picture/ broadcast industry.

In the gaming industry, streaming video is the perfect companion to creating a unique user experience for hotel and gambling guests (this also could apply to the hospitality industry, covered later).  One example would be through the use of portable hand-held devices (Pocket PC’s would work well in this scenario). In this scenario, a hotel/casino could have stored in a database numerous video clips of featured shows, rooms, dining, etc. When a hotel/casino representative approaches a high roller, various “comped” packages can be created on the fly and then shown to that guest, with each appropriate video clip being streamed to the handheld device in real time. This approach has certain advantages to the hotel/casino operators as well to the guest.

One, the hotel/casino can gather and create new video clips of attractions, rooms, dining, and keep the video clips archived in different groups or categories (family dining, casual dining, formal or romantic dining), keeping costs down in editing and post-production (imagine how many different variables there would be). These clips are then called upon once the hotel/casino representative has created a guest profile

Two, the guest can be instantly made aware of the many opportunities that the hotel/casino is willing to provide, based on his/her needs. This creates a unique user experience for that guest, as well as makes that guest’s experience more enjoyable, due to it being interactively tailored to the guest’s needs and preferences.  In some cases, a guest can be loaned the handheld device during their stay, allowing the guest to see what other attractions are available to them, and tailoring their own user experience.

In the motion picture industry, movie trailers have become commonplace on the web, through the use of streaming technologies such as QuickTime, Real, and the Windows Media formats. This provides the end-user a way to view upcoming films from the comfort of their desktop, whether it’s at home or the office. This technology is even finding it’s way into the presentation of full-length feature films streamed to the desktop computer, both as pay-per-view, as well as free viewings.

Through the use of wireless technology and streaming media, a new door opens to the studios and content creators by being able to provide their trailers to the mobile masses.  In this scenario, one would use their mobile device, whether that is a handheld PC, or a video-enabled  web phone. Through the mobile device, the user would be able to pull up information and listings of movies, times, and local theaters (GPS technology). Finding a movie that the user has heard of, they decide to watch a short trailer of the film on their mobile device. If they like what they see, they can even purchase their tickets for a desired showtime.

Keep in mind that this was written back in 1999, and any devices we thought of or dreamt of were handheld PC’s and or video-enabled web phones — years ahead of the iPod or iPhone.

The similarity to this and what Frog is thinking, what they call “Just in Time” is basically the same as the push technology (even though I focused more on video) when a user was within a certain location in order to get content that was tailored for where they were at.

In other words, this is really nothing new. Or I’m able to predict the future. Or I’m some crazy genius…

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