Molecular Voices » Technology

Posts from Technology

Many make software… but far fewer make it well.

February 25

A Proposed Front-end Performance Policy

I’ve been using this when working with clients to come up with an agreement on how we handle older and slower browsers. I’m eager to hear your thoughts on it.

There are two major truths when it comes to in-browser experience:

Both we and the client want the most responsive experience possible.
Everything added to the page slows it down.

So with these two facts of life, what steps do we need to take so everyone is happy? Onward! (more…)

posted to: Technology | 3 Comments »

January 28

Paul Irish Joins jQuery Team

by Anne Curtin

We’re proud to announce that Paul Irish, a senior consultant on Molecular’s emerging interactions team, has joined the jQuery Developer Relations Team. Run by a distributed group of volunteers, the jQuery Project is dedicated to making jQuery the best JavaScript library possible.

Paul joined the jQuery team to help produce videos for the 14 Days of jQuery and to move the API documentation to its new home for the 1.4 release. As a member of the Developer Relations team, Paul will be responsible for ensuring that the expectations of developers are being met in jQuery itself, and helping the core team to communicate clearly and effectively.

Paul has been an active member of the jQuery community for 3 years, participating in and administrating the jQuery IRC channels and frequently blogging about jQuery and its functionality. He is also a frequent speaker at jQuery events, and the co-creator of the yayQuery podcast.

Congratulations, Paul!

Want to learn more about the jQuery project? Leave your comments and questions for Paul in the comments section below.

posted to: Molecular News, Technology | No Comments »

November 18

Java Becoming a Functional Programming Language?

by David Palmer

There is a formal proposal to introduce closures to the Java programming language. For those of us who have been in the Java world for a while (10+ years for yours truly) this could really open up a lot of interesting possibilities to express solutions to really complicated problems, the way the functional programmers have been doing things, which can mean, less and cleaner code.

For example, anonymous functions, and first-class functions would be introduced as well as incorporating some of the more interesting features of languages like ruby (think blocks and yield) and scala will make for more concise code and, as an example, provide the developer with the ability to write your own control structures.

From the (current) specification:

“Modern programming languages provide a mixture of primitives for composing programs. Most notably Scheme, Smaltalk, Ruby, and Scala have direct language support for parameterized delayed-execution blocks of code, variously called lambda, anonymous functions, or closures. These provide a natural way to express some kinds of abstractions that are currently quite awkward to express in Java. For programming in the small, anonymous functions allow one to abstract an algorithm over a piece of code; that is, they allow one to more easily extract the common parts of two almost-identical pieces of code. For programming in the large, anonymous functions support APIs that express an algorithm abstracted over some computational aspect of the algorithm.”

This is pretty exciting for Java, and as a fan of functional programming, this is a real bonus for the Java platform.

posted to: Technology | No Comments »

October 29

adidas embodies brand as a service with miCoach

by Dirk Reckerman

On Friday, October 23rd 2009, adidas launched the next generation of miCoach – the interactive coaching system that delivers audible coaching while you run. At its conception miCoach was a means by which to allow users to experience the adidas brand in their daily life.

Home

An innovative blend of hardware, software, and web experience – the system empowers users to set and achieve goals – being coached by adidas every step of the way. The system allows a user to manage their active life, and be motivated by seeing their workout results on a highly immersive web experience.

Workout

For adidas, the interactions that users have with miCoach reinforces the users relationship with the adidas. In other words, it creates time with the brand. This approach is a more effective investment of marketing money because of the depth and longevity of the interaction with the target audience. Moreover, the interaction creates valuable insights into customer behavior and allows adidas to market to the user in a more relevant way – in the context of the users life.

The service itself has been extended to allow users to take miCoach into the users social realm – namely Facebook. Users are now able to share their latest workout with their personal friends via Facebook or email. The benefit for the user is that they can share an important aspect of their life with friends. For adidas, this is an invaluable manner in which to get trusted referrals for their service (and brand) to a broader populous.

Molecular has been a key part of the realization of this adidas service from its conception. By partnering with Molecular, adidas has a partner capable of pairing insightful user experience design, stellar creative and deep technical expertise to bring miCoach to life. As the nascent marketing initiative transforms into an exemplary digital and business marketing stalwart, Molecular is enabling adidas to push the boundaries of interactions with its key audiences.

miCoach has successfully bridged the gap between the users analog and digital daily lives. By providing hardware to coach you while you run and then parlaying that information to the web where the users transformation is illuminated, adidas is establishing its brand in the users life. miCoach is the future of marketing and branding.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

September 24

Creating Waves – Google’s fix on communication and collaboration

by Dirk Reckerman

Google Wave Logo

I checked out the Google Wave preview that was offered up at Google I/O 2009 and I was impressed. The demo itself was an hour and twenty minutes long, and when you watch it, you know they were doing some rather clever and special things, but it is more powerful to think about what they are building in the context of your digital life.

For those of you who don’t know what Google Wave is, it is a Google Wave is “a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web”. Another one?! Yep, it is another one, but I appreciated their take on communication and collaboration. The go to market strategy for this innovation will be the key to its success, because I believe it is dependent upon proliferation to be successful – i.e. you and I both need to have one to unleash its true power.

Let me come back to the ‘powerful to thing about what they are building, in the context of your day’ comment – above. And here, the little things matter. I believe the Wave team managed to answer the following challenges -

Don’t you hate it when you get an email, or a post on Facebook and someone rattles off a bunch of questions and you can only reply to one of them? Or you can’t split the conversation so that you can insert your answers at the end of each question they asked?
Doesn’t it both you to get added to a group conversation (on email) late, and you need to decipher the context of the content?
Don’t you wish you can combine your IM and email clients into one solution? And more over, take the content that you might have just collaborated on and spit it out into a document or blog?
How about contextual spell checker so that you don’t get suggestions for spelling correction that have nothing to do with the content you are authoring?
Wouldn’t it be cool if you can convert a conversation or document into a Blog and then see and respond to the responses to the blog from one interface? And do so for all the external ‘publications’ that you might have?
What about collating pictures that five different friends might have captured from the same event into a single album?

And these are just some of the day-to-day things that they thought about. The technology itself is pretty darn cool – like the fact that multiple users can edit the same content at the same time, and they call see what’s happening in real-time, while the system also manages history, tracks changes and mergers these changes. Oh… and you can do this on a mobile device!

See how Google Wave might answer some of the small (and big) experience challenges in your digital life… (I promise Google didn’t pay me to say that – I just appreciate technology with purpose!)

posted to: Molecular News, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »