To that end here are three screen shots of our intial wire frames: the front page, Credit card payment, and route scheudual with map. Feedback is welcomed to make this better!

For a class I'm developing a user interface for a PRESTO application for your smart phone. For those that dont know PRESTO is, its that neat looking green card that you tap to pay for transit on: GO, TTC, and Oakville transit systems, and presumably other systems in the future ( like Ottawa). The application ment to be your transit "command center" for all systems that use the PRESTO pass. heres the landry list of features.

Buying tickets/Toping up your PRESTO Card on your phone

Cross transit system route planing 

GPS tracking of buses and trains ( shown on an actual map for you to see while you wait)

Intagration of points and loyaty program for deals on transit as well as featured retail stores

So I've made a bit of a consept screen for you to kinda see where i want to go with this, however i will say this will change a TON before the final consept art is finalized in april. 

Also I am not programing this for real, this class project is to design what the user interface will look like. As far as I know Metrolinx, the company that owns PRESTO, is not developing a mobile app for the PRESTO system but if they would like to use some of my user interface for an app id be happy to talk to them about it 

Top 5 Star Trek themes/songs

Number 1

Enterprising Young Men ( Star Trek (2009))

Number 2 

Archers Theme (Star Trek Enterprise)

Number 3

Star Trek Voyager Theme ( Star Trek Voyager)

Number 4 

TNG Theme (Star Trek TNG)

Number 5

Main Theme ( Star Trek First Contact)

Your facebook profile will now be a timeline. 

Now for my review. 

Timeline is, in my mind, a fundmental shift in facebook, and heres what I mean by that. Timeline is the entire history of your life from birth to seaming your untimely demise. Your profile is designed to show off all your life milstones ( or as I come to call them achevments (a la xbox style)), so on my page you can see when i was born, when i entered school or graduated, when i moved, or something special happend to me, and each of these events are highlighted and easy to see when you scroll threw my timeline. 

So what does this mean for privacy? I'm no securty expert, and I wont pretend to be, but the level of access that your friends will have to your entire life history is unreal. Although Facebook as implmented some rather beefy privacy things in there so only spscific friends or groups of friends will have access to your entire timeline and heres where I see that fundmental change coming in.

Facebook, in the eyes of a good majority of the population, looks like a place for people to broadcast to the world, But its not anymore... if it ever was to begin with.  Facebook now isnt a soapbox for us to broadcast from, its a couch for us to share our lifes, photos, & events to use as if we are always siting around with our friends updating them on what we've been up to. We dont do that with eveyone in our lives so what i see happening when timeline drops is that our network of friends will get smaller, but our connection with those friends will get stronger. 

All in all Timeline is awesome, a few bugs here and there but they seam to be smoothing them out quickly. You will spend atleast an hour, maybe more, looking threw your own life on facebook when Timeline starts shipping on September 30th. 

Brian 

Back in the 90's media was hard, when I say hard I mean that media was actually something you could hold in your hand, give to a friend, return to a store, or simply destroy. A number of businesses & government institutions build them self's around this physicality of media, video stores(rentals), big box stores (ie walmart/HMV), Libraries & postal services.  In 2011 we have seen the biggest shift from this physicality of media then we have in the number of years.

Lets start with the above article.

The movie rental business has been said to be on the chopping block since the advent of online piracy. In recent years downloading movies and tv shows has been getting easier and more legal, we have seen the rise of services like direct mailing DVD services and online streaming services (ie Netflixs & states side Hulu). Now Blockbuster internationally has been suffering its share of wohs this past year, Blockbuster in the states filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this past year, Blockbuster Canada also put them self's up for sale but found no takers. As we have seen from the Globe & Mail article blockbuster is no longer able to compete in this age of intangible media, siting Netflixs as one of the reasons why they can no longer stay in business.

And just to point out, Netflix arrived in Canada on September 22 2010. So in less then a year Netflix steaming, a company that didn't even exist 5 years ago, kicks outs a former fortune 500 company.

In this year smart phones and tablets beat out PC’s and laptops in sales, our lives are becoming more mobile and more on demand. We have seen this change effect entire company product lines, example would be book stores. Kobo is what indigo books calls its e-reader and Kobo is one of the best examples of how companies have to move for tangible to intangible. Now when you walk in to a Chapters or and Indigo books store your immediately shown the books of the day beside and open product display of a Kobo e-reader that you can touch and play with. Now lets think about what will happen to Indigo in a year from now, people will still want books, yes, but will Indigo still have the books of the day beside the Kobo readers?    

I want to bring up this recent story about the newest tablet on the block Amazons Kindle
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/

Right now we're all used to heading to local department stores to buy furniture electronics the latest fashions etc, but what happens when this Amazon tablet comes out with the ability to fully furnish your home with one touch? Techcrunch is reporting that this tablet will come in at a relatively low price point compared to other tablets ($249.00USD) and is running full android OS. The curve ball to this tablet is, it will come with applications to buy anything from the amazon.com as well tablet buyers will automatically get access to free 2 day rush delivery via amazon prime. What will happen to your shopping experiences then?

Our media will become intangible and in this year we have seen the biggest shift to lead to that end. Each year from now on we will see more and more intangible media but what will this mean for the tangible stuff?

The last thing I'm going to post here is a video to Dave Evans, Cisco's Head Futurist, and his speech 10 in 10, or 10 tech changes that will happen in the next 10 years. Its an hour long but do yourself a favor and watch it.


Video streaming by Ustream

@BrianBest

#epic

Here's a piece I wrote for a radio research firm I really respect.  I'd be interested if anyone outside the business had anything to add.

I recently had lunch with a former Program Director who gave me an important early break by hiring me for his small-market FM rock station almost thirty years ago.  

“You know,” he said, “it’s amazing how many people from our little station went on to do big things.”  A long list of names followed:  major market PDs and personalities; a couple of GMs responsible for major-market clusters; a  national newspaper columnist or two; several national (and international) TV sports personalities—all of which passed through an obscure FM rocker in the middle of nowhere on the Canadian prairies.

“We always had seven announcers on staff back then.  Live people around the clock, seven days a week.  Now they operate with just three.  Three!  The rest is automation.”

He took a sip of his drink.  “That’s what’s wrong with radio today.  The farm system has been decimated.  There’s nowhere for young announcers to learn, make mistakes and slowly mature into proper broadcasters. They’re being thrown on the air in markets where they have no business cracking a mic.”

He’s correct, of course.  When I was PD at 102.1 the Edge—the second largest commercial alternative-rock station in North America—finding someone to fill an opening was often an exercise in despair. Where were the stars of small-and medium-market stations of years past?  The demos I received were technically competent enough but lacking in that something which makes your ears perk up.

The art of storytelling seems to be in danger.  The jocks I grew up with knew how to hook listeners into a story or bit so that they’d have to sit in the driveway to hear the end of it.  They’d tell me why I needed to know about a song/band/album.  They’d create context around music, events and information.  They taught me cool new words and phrases.  I learned why (or why not) I should pay attention to trends.  Once he/she was done, you couldn’t wait to re-tell the story to a friend.  

But now with automation, cost-cutting and the lure of other careers in media, the storyteller—the context provider—is an endangered species on music radio.  And the timing couldn’t be worse.

With services like Pandora, Last.Fm, Spotify, Slacker and Rdio available through smartphones and portable media devices, alarming numbers of two generations have abandoned radio to become their own program directors.

More available at Alan's blog

But the door opens, and there’s Darth Vader.

Han doesn’t look incredulously at Lando; he doesn’t duck or run away.

What does Han do?

He starts shooting at the mother effer

He starts shooting.

Be like Han.