Windows Mobile

So You Want to Stop People From Texting and Driving.

This morning while I was drinking my coffee and watching the news, there was a story on Good Morning America about New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo cracking down on texting and driving. I say you go governor. The thing is, I think there is a much easier and cheaper solution to the problem. One that doesn’t involve law enforcement, and can be easily implemented by hand set manufacturers, and software developers.

Smartphones are rapidly becoming the standard in the United States. Every smartphone on the market has one universal feature. They know where they are and how fast they are moving thanks to motion detection, GPS, and any number of other hardware and software specific features of the handset. So, why don’t we simply require smartphone manufacturers to disable texting if the phone is traveling in any direction faster than 10 miles per hour? Now before you can say what about when I’m riding on a plane, or high-speed train? If the phone is traveling faster than, lets say 120 miles per hour, texting services work.

I think this is a fairly straightforward, easy to implement solution. It could be achieved with a simple software update to iOS, Android, and Windows mobile operating system, and it could be adjusted with updates in the future. It wouldn’t get every phone in use, but it would probably get about 80 percent or more.

So I’m thinking it could work like this:

If my phone is moving faster than 10 miles per hour in any direction I can’t text
When I get to a stop light texting remains inactive for 30 seconds (the typical length of a stoplight)
If I travel faster than X mph my phone lets me text again.

It might piss people off at first, but so did seat belts and other devices that have made driving a hell of a lot safer in the last 100 years.

Razorfish is Planning to Enhance Your Consumer Experience.

While parts of this video might seem like an impractical way to experience a shopping experience, I guarantee you this is in your near future. As smart phones, tablets, interactive signage, and devices like Microsoft’s Surface and Kinect become more ubiquitous, this kind of experience will be more common. The example below centers around shopping for clothes, and actually eliminates trying things on. I doubt that step will ever go away, but this kind of digital interaction combined with real world experiences is coming.

The Mobile Playbook, The Busy Executive’s Guide to Winning with Mobile.

I work for a 100 plus year old company, that is steeped in old school corporate culture. That corporate culture sometimes gets in the way of being able to see the future. It prevents us from knowing what to do. This isn’t a knock against my employer. I have a pretty good feeling that this happens with many companies, especially when you are talking about shifting technology spaces and emerging digital markets.

For the last few years, I have been preaching that my company, and frankly any business, needs to engage heavily in the mobile. With the introduction of the iPhone, and Android handsets, the way people engage with content has taken a dramatic shift. In the last 4 years, mobile has exploded in ways few people would have imagined.

If you are like me, working in a large company where executive management is having a hard time wrapping their collective heads around mobile, this might help.

Google has released a document that aims to help organizations figure out how to win in the mobile space. The document is free, and is being brought to you by a company that truly gets how to win in the mobile space. Click on the image below to go to the Google Doc.

Razorfish’s 5D Connected Retail Experience.

Razorfish is one of those companies that has been around long enough that when they prototype a possible digital experience I tend to take notice. This is no exception. It’s hard to tell how much of this is smoke and mirrors (I’m betting much less than half), but the end result of the video looks very possible.

Using the Windows mobile OS, Windows 8 with the Metro interface, and a Microsoft Surface table, you get a solid idea of where Razorfish sees the shopping experience going in the near future. Based on what they show in this video, I think all of it is possible, especially when you combine it with something like a Kinect.

The integration of mobile devices with a Microsoft Surface is nothing new. I saw this very concept being used at a Sprint Flagship store over a year ago. How Razorfish sees all of these devices interacting over the shopping experience is a newer and unique approach to the concept. Here’s to the future.

Fresh out of R&D from the Razorfish Emerging Experiences team is a product code-named “5D”. 5D started out as an idea to re-invent personal shopping. Our goal was to create a retail experience platform for both consumers and sales associates that enables multi-channel sales through immersive and connected digital devices in retail environments. And the only way to do it is to seamlessly integrate five key components – devices, content, experiences, analytics and CRM with a touch of digital magic!

The team announced 5D at the 2012 NRF Convention & Expo in New York City in partnership with NEC and Microsoft. Leveraging Windows Embedded, Microsoft Surface, MS Tag, Windows Phone and Kinect for Windows we created a prototype around a fictitious brand “Razorfashion” that demonstrates how various touch points along the customer journey can attract consumers into the store, drive product engagement and arm store associates with more contextualized digital tools.