Musings from the World of Consulting

The article is a good reflection on some of the current press around the impact of Google search on the ability for people to recall. Most people are equating that to intellect. I would disagree by stating that it is just a component of it.

In fact, as information becomes readily available and accessible (i.e., author talks about looking up trivia facts using his smartphone), the challenge will be discerning the authoritative sources, the relevant information and then the actual synthesis.

For let’s talk about distilling the sources. Apart from historical facts that one can validate from multiple sources, more commercial and valuable insights are more difficult to vet. In fact the more valuable the information nugget, the propensity of uniqueness is high enough that one has to indirectly vouch for its validity (e.g., validate the source versus the fact). One may argue that there is a premium associated with that. Ironically, in an age where raw data is plentiful, actual nuggets of insight will become more valuable and fewer in between.

Speaking of relevance, to determine what is worth the premium, it has become become incumbent on organizations and thus people to think evermore critically. In fact, the neurons freed up from the need to memorize factoids need to be put to use on more creative tasks. The pace of change is accelerating and the feedback loop for situational awareness is shortening rapidly. The challenge is that learning institutions have yet to consider the shifts that technology is imposing on society. Curricula focused on rote have to be revised to focus more on logic and critical thinking. In addition, adoption of technology has to go beyond the delivery mechanism that is being embraced. Kids and for that matter adults have to be taught in a manner where ready information is leveraged to gain higher level understanding and analysis.

The last point is around the synthesis. As is oft said, ‘practice makes perfect’. There has been a fair amount of research and discussion on this topic (ergo, ‘Outliers’) and it is important to note that there is a notable lag as society adopts new concepts. Having said that, most don’t appreciate that the period can span a generation or two, and in the interim state, there is an inherent advantage to those on ahead of the curve.

Society is truly at the start of some radical transformation - the impact of how humans learn and interact are just beginning to feel the impact of technology…

Interesting article on how the payments to British police made by News Corp would be in effect violation of FCPA statutes. As the article reminds the readers, the Act generally prohibits American companies and citizens from corruptly paying – or offering to pay – foreign officials to obtain or retain business.

Though the connection between the heir apparent (which is becoming less likely every day) James Murdoch and the actual payments is tenuous at best, any investigation would be pretty severe in terms of the publicity. It would also impact the recent bid to buyout the remainder of Sky BsB by the holding company.

It is going to be interesting if the DoJ delays initiation of an investigation given the actions noted to date. It is going to be interesting how the Murdoch properties in the US provide coverage of the ongoing trials and tribulations. And summers in Europe are idyllic? Pssh…

HP’s tablet launch finally demonstrates the monetization of its webOS investment in a public manner. That is great given that Android and iOS are already battling it out and Microsoft is thinking of how to get Windows 8 to work in this segment (tablet PCs don’t count). And oh, let us not forget RIM’s Playbook though it is perhaps further behind in terms of gaining market share than all the others.

At this stage, it is fair to say that dominant players are Apple and Google though as the number of tablet (subset of mobile) OSes increases, it poses some challenges to organizations seeking to provide their customers a consistent and exemplary user experience regardless of the platform.

So how would a large organization support a rich user experience on all these mobile platforms through a combination of mobile applications and mobile web sites? Some quick thoughts come to mind:

1. For content heavy interactions, such as informational / marketing content (e.g. product information), it is probably safe to use a mobile platform development tool, which then ports (aka ‘compiles’) to a platform specific binary. Though Adobe’s flash has gotten a bad rap in some areas, with Flash and Flex Builder, one can support multiple apps with fair ease. It also helps that their products tend to be prevalent in creative circles who tend to author such apps.
2. For content or applications requiring timely update, perhaps the best approach is to support HTML5 with appropriate JavaScript libraries to provide for a mostly consistent experience. Given the nascent state of mobile web browsers, it would not be surprising to expect a fair amount of custom platform specific scripting especially for pages supporting business transactions. A good illustration of the nuances is captured in this blog entry by a mobile application developer.
3. For business productivity applications (e.g., supporting field personnel or employees), though mobile application development suites (such as PhoneGap) can provide a level of standardization across the platforms, there is no panacea which provides for ‘write once, use anywhere’. Just as Java struggled with supporting native capabilities spanning the platforms, organizations should plan ahead to make sure that the appropriate capabilities are tuned to the platform specific nuances such as UI, app integrity validation and payment integration.

For the time being for complex applications, organizations would need to support two platforms natively, with more generic capabilities being managed through application suite rendered run-times or by embedded HTML5 code. 

Until the emergence of more consistent HTML5 support, the adoption curve by developers for new entrants (such as Windows 8 and webOS) is going to be pretty challenging. This will limit adoption in the corporate arena along the peripheral edges where timely access to rich content is a high priority and limited transactional support is needed.