User Experience Design Blog

“Sexy Money:” Kleiner Perkins’ $100 million pledge for iPhone Apps

Last week, Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins pledged $100 million to fund iPhone software development. Though developers have been writing browser-based iPhone apps since the beginning, and more than that since the SDK release in June, Wired Magazine reports development may move to the mainstream because of the prospective pay-off this fund offers. In comparative terms, the size of the Kleiner Perkins fund is ten times that of the amount set aside by Bay Partners for Facebook apps, after Facebook had been established as a platform–the iPhone and the iPod Touch as yet “hold only promise.” Wired Magazine says the size of the fund is evidence that Kleiner Perkins thinks the iPhone and the iPod Touch may launch a movement like the PC did in the 90’s, in which software developers took on the new platform, creating some of today’s largest companies.

Adobe AIR

In an article in the SEO/SEM Journal, Tim Negris predicts that the unique capabilities of Adobe AIR position it to overtake Apple and Microsoft the same way both those companies overtook Xerox Parc. Negris quotes Kevin Lynch, the man responsible for Adobe AIR, as having said, “‘it represents the beginning of a new medium as the best of the web and the best of the desktop come together.’” Adobe AIR can produce Rich Internet Applications that can run off-line on a desktop, with its own runtime, independent of a browser, thus freeing RIAs from the disjointed and diluted user experience of the browser, and from the strictures and disparate user experiences of device-based platforms–Mac or PC (or smartphone). In doing so, Negris contends, Adobe AIR will deliver unified user experiences against which no other development’s efforts can compare–not those of Google Gears, Prism, JavaFX or Microsoft’s Silverlight–and presents a “push towards a massive context shift where device choice doesn’t matter.”

Web 3.0? Expert Generated Content

An article in Newsweek Online last week traced the trend towards a new “Web 3.0,” characterized by a resurgence of “experts” on the Internet. The article quotes consumer strategist Charlotte Beale saying, “People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information.” Additionally, “choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a ‘perfect storm of demand for expert information.’” Events indicating this shift include the testing of Google’s Knol in December, a site like Wikipedia but limited to content vetted by expert sources, the recent release of the final test version of Mahalo–a people-powered search engine, and the startling 80% jump in traffic to expert advice site About.com over the past several years. The business benefit to all this is the “potential for premium audiences and advertising revenue…’Nobody wants to advertise next to crap,’” says Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur.” Despite this apparent shift, “Web 2.0 Populism” may never go away entirely. Quoting Glenn Reynolds, author of “An Army of Davids,” the Newsweek article admits, “there’s always a Big New Thing, but the old Big New Thing doesn’t really go away…It just becomes another layer–like we’re building an onion from the inside out.”

Montparnas’ weekly news installment posts every Tuesday at lunchtime.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under All User Experience Design, Current Events.