3PHealth Blog
Identity, Privacy, the Government & Trust
Friday, January 31st, 2014
I read a wonderful post today written by Ben Horowitz – The Little Country that Cloud. The post describes Estonia’s groundbreaking work to use technology in way that builds trust and communications between a government and its populace.
As noted in the post, everything has not been perfect, but it does provide hope – and a roadmap – for countries to productively engage its citizenry through the integration of technology and commercial infrastructure built upon trust and respect. While Estonia, through political upheaval had the opportunity to “re-invent” itself, think of how efficient just our healthcare system could be if we applied even a part of what they have put in place as we build out our e-health initiatives.
The future does indeed look bright!
Innovation doldrums
Monday, July 22nd, 2013
Is it just me or has the tech industry hit the doldrums? Are we now in a mature market for PC’s, Smartphones and Tablets? If this article is correct ‘Apple to report dismal results’ then it would appear so. On top of this Microsoft just wrote off almost a billion dollars of ‘Surface’ inventory – what’s going on here?
Well I think we’re just exhausted trying to keep up with the Jones’s and keeping track of where all our data is. I’ve been in the business now for over two decades and I’m trying to cut down to just two devices simply because it’s hard to keep everything in synch and know ‘whose on first’.
With almost a million apps to choose from on iTunes (or is that the iStore, or the App store (am I the only one who gets confused with this?)) what can possibly be left to build? And with the average price of an app now around $0.99 cents Apple has effectively driven software to almost nothing in an effort to support it’s own high margin hardware products.
Microsoft learned early on that it’s all about the developers, and they provided the tools and the ecosystem for developers to flourish with decent margins. Apple has wiped that out and in doing so have given developers no ability to make money.
So with no room to make money and a mature ‘form factor’ for tablets and smartphones we have a ‘more than good enough’ situation which explains the doldrums. More of the same won’t solve the problem – what we need is some good old fashioned innovation and in my opinion it’s not wearable (the last thing I want/need is more stuff to support with software updates).
What’s needed is a way for developers to make what’s there work better and generate them net new revenue. That will have the effect of driving more hardware sales.
What I call ‘upstream innovation’ is really hard, easy to ignore, laugh at, or outright dismiss. But as history has shown us, that’s what drives the next wave (pun intended) – not more of the same.
Responsive Web Design – The Wave of the Future
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013
Recently, I was contacted by a responsive design blogger. Apparently, a blog comment of mine rang true with him. So I started to do a little digging and found that the concept of Responsive Web Design (RWD) is picking up steam as noted in this recent Forbes article, Why You Need to Prioritize Responsive Design Right Now. The concept now has a Wikipedia page associated with it, which skews to the technical side of the movement.
It appears that the concept of RWD is attributed to Ethan Macrotte in his 2010 blog, A List Apart) may have been an extension of the responsive design architectural theory that outlines how physical spaces may respond to the presence of people passing through them. This is a sea change in design that impacts many industries.
While there are a few technical standards emerging around the responsive design concept, my interest lies around the goal – to make Web content responsive to the device that is accessing it. As noted in the Forbes article, responsive design (a technical term) has now made it into the Forbes E-Commerce Marketing Checklist for 2013. This is a relatively new technical concept and it is already making it into the marketing mainstream. That is a very big deal and a very good trend for increased relevance and personalization of Web content.
Location-based services were the first real step in RWD and now device detection and mobile content are taking hold. Take responsive web design one step further and content, including navigation options, may be modified in real-time, for each individual user. This is the marketer’s holy grail of one-to-one marketing – and it is available right now.
We here at 3PMobile are working hard to make the Responsive Web Design vision a reality. We believe that to truly be responsive, you must know the user’s preferences – and respect those preferences. Our Choice® software provides marketers and IT with the data they need to respond not only to the multitude of today’s devices, but directly to their individual customers’ needs and preferences. When you respect choice and respond with relevant Web content, you build loyalty and improve the bottom line.
Can your Mobile Browser do this?
Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
Hard to believe that it’s a browser that is doing this. All of those menus are nothing more than good old fashioned HTML. You can change them in real time to suit the user, the location, the days special. Basically it’s always personalized for ME in real time.
Re-Imagining the future of the Web
Thursday, January 24th, 2013
Hmmm…
What we do differently if we had the chance to do it all over again? There’s no question that the Internet has ushered in some of the greatest changes of the century. And yet as humans we should ponder the question – What if?
What if in the future, the Web could deliver a richer experience and respect my privacy?
Think about that for a moment. It’s actually a pivotal argument which appears to be an almost impossible problem to solve. The Web has always been synonymous with free. As in free content in return for using your private data to deliver advertising.
After 20 years of using the Web i’ve yet to see an advert that appeals to me on a Web page. It’s like they (the advertisers) know absolutely nothing about me. I’ve often wondered why there isn’t a simple menu option in the browser which allows me to ‘share my personal ad preferences’ with the content provider?
And yet to this day there’s nothing.
The question that no one can imagine asking is how can I share my private data in return for a better experience. There’s currently no ‘Internet of You’ (or Me) and yet with Advertising becoming a limited resource (there’s only so many Web pages for ads) why isn’t someone ‘re-imagining the Web’ to provide a richer more personalized experience?
I define Privacy as the ‘ability to control the collection flow and use of my Private data’. What I want in a re-imagined Web is the ability to control that collection, flow and use in a simple and easy to use manner. And in the act of sharing more value with the content provider in return receive more value in return.
If you go back in time (Innovation, The Internet, Standards And the Arrow of Time – Part I & Part II) you’ll see that the key to unlocking the future is to re-imagine the current. In the examples shown you can see how obvious it is as the arrow of time moves forward.
At 3PMobile we started out re-imagining the future of the Web. It’s one which aligns perfectly with the current Web, and then extends it into the future for those who want something better.