Future of the Presentation Layer - NOW

Communication is defined and implemented by protocols that adopt a stacked, or layered,  model.   The standard framework, the ISO model, we have the presentation layer.
You could say this has evolved from

1. Teletype printout,    with input from punched-paper-cards,   to
2. Teletype VDU,     with input from keyboards,    to
3. Basic texts / graphics markup served up on web-pages,    with input from keyboards and mice,
   
             Frustration with the  http service model, not providing a very good interactive experience,
   
   
4. The promise of that concept / combination of technologies, "AJAX".
5. Hear ye, hear ye.   Waves and the GWT is comming!

Internet presentation is not going to be the same again

If you haven't' seen the Google Wave Developer Preview video, you must.  The presentation layer is not going to be the same again.  Our expectations of internet based applications, is never going to be the same again.

Goodbye email; Hello Waves

Also, email is not going to be the same again.  email was never very collaborative.  It's store-and-forward infrastructure was always clunky.  Moving email to the web, as webmail, the first killer cloud application, was a great improvement.  No delivery to my workstation was necessary, and it was available anywhere on the internet.  And it was early software-as-a-service.  They kept improving it for me, and I didn't need to install anything.  Great.  email has taken such a great leap forward with waves, Google have rightly changed it name.  I strongly believe that when I adopt waves (hopefully in the next few months) I will never use anything else.  I have been using web-mail for some time, and Google's is integrating better and better with their other systems. Waves/GWT will replace googlemail, and will be the hub of integration for many other applications.  I even think it will become a new platform in itself.  If not, the concept and technologies in Waves/GWT will be migrated to other vendor offerings.   In any case, well done Google for finally engineering a better internet architecture instead of knocking up another small scale concept application.  The world has hundreds of those.  What we have needed is the infrastructure of the internet re-engineering, and Google has delivered.

Higher Value electronic communication - The challenge of integration.

To achieve the higher value characteristics of electronic communication - that is users working less, and the "system" more - we need the various electronic services better integrated.

Here's a scenario:
I've booked an appointment for a business meeting, say, and the meeting has been cancelled.
What I'd like is :-

• The cancellation get's forwarded to my smart-phone, so I'm immediately made aware.
• Without any action on my part, my calendar for the day is automatically analysed, and some improvements offered me (perhaps by automated voice as I drive or stand up on the train), I accept them with a single button press.
  These might be the calendaring need I had programmed weeks before - of visiting an antique shop.  I  am now in it's vicinity (2 miles) with sufficient time to spare (30 mins).
• The shop's phone number is automatically looked up, and prompts me to phone to make the appointment (the shop doesn't use the inter-web thingy).
• The rescheduled appointment for the business meeting comes through and  I accept it. (They had the necessary viewing rights on my calendar to arrange a suitable time).  This causes my flight rescheduling to be automatically requested.  The systems automatically selects the best 3 options for me based on (and displaying) the details that matters most to me, viz flight-time, total time, connections, and window seating.  I accept with a single button press.
• My hotel and restaurant appointment adjustments are automatically handled.  Messages of the required type are sent to the appropriate booking systems.  The status is tracked and conveniently displayed on my smart phone.  All being well, everything will be rescheduled in the next 12 hours, which is OK as I fly in 3 days time.  If they aren't in that time frame, the system knows this and will continues to escalate to me, and/or my chosen PA/travel-agent, .  
• The new flight schedule will take me to a different city, that I have wanted to visit for some time to catch up with one of my business partners.  The calendar and associated systems knows this, and is prompting me to confirm a request to be sent out to that party.  All is needed is a single button press.
• And on and on it can go.....

This scenario is mainly centered around calendaring, with interfaces to email, booking systems, the phone etc. but there are many more scenarios with other electronic applications.

But how to achieve this?

The challenge is the integration, or interfacing, of the electronic services and systems.  This requires a number of things

1. Protocols to be established for the information flow.  
2. The accommodation in the various electronic services applications to handle these information flows, and provide management similar to those in the scenario above.
3. The actual infrastructure established between the various parties - perhaps simply internet connectivity, and a message broker service.

The protocols (1) have largely been established.  There are a number to choose from.  The accommodation in the applications (2) is an investment - worth it if it gets used, not otherwise.  The required infrastructure is there - more systems are now internet connected, and message broker services available.

The Challenge

We are not seeing the amount of integration that I would like, and I think the reason is human, not technical.  It's the challenge of two organisations being willing to make the investment in the integration when they cannot independently manage the success of it.  They need to partner.  Corporate Managers often prefer survival to risky innovative endeavours with partners, often  in foreign industries.

An Alternative - A Google universe.

The best integration I am observing is coming from Google.  Calendar, with cloud docs, with cloud email, with blogging, with RSS reader, with directory services, with photo publishing, with ....

OK it is not yet providing the value in my scenario, but with integration to Google mobile, location and presence information, and Google's continued march into new application areas, they can start to provide more and more of these higher value electronic communication services.  And they do not have to deal with partners in foreign industries - they just need to play nicely with other departments of the same Co.  The corporate motivation must be here, so we will surely see it.

It's not over

Once we achieve this integration, there are still challenges to improve further the value of electronic communication. We need a PA service, we need to rise to the challenge of the clash of cultures, anticipate it, and have it silently accommodated.  We need to effectively federate local knowledge, making it also silently, seamlessly incorporated into the services.   Electronic communication has very, very long way to go yet.

The Future of Electronic Search - 4 Challenges

Firstly, electronic search is a type of electronic communication.  A very important type.

The founders of Google couldn't get folk to see the importance of search, so they had to start the Co. themselves.  Now we all see it.

How is search evolving?

Initial generation - You index the web, and lay-out the matches.  Problem is the web is growing so quickly.

Google's innovation -  You use the information on the pages you're indexing to assign order to the results. More a page gets referred to, the higher it ranks: This really made web search a whole lot more usable.   But the whole web is no longer simple, plain html pages; often there's a web application using the web page as its interface.  So we have problems with information that doesn't get indexed - the dark web.

Challenge 1: Explosion of real-time, highly cross-referenced data. 

What else could we do? - How do we deal with the near real-time information being generated on the web?  This is today's challenge, and the internet growth continues, and will continue to, explode.

Challenge 2: Incorporating the dark web.

The dark web (the stuff that doesn't come up in today's Google search results) would be great to include. It's a world we can hardly imagine now, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.  Today's searching is too vertical.  You want to know the flights from Melbourne to Sydney tomorrow a.m.  You can' t get that directly from Google search.  It directs you to a vertical search engine of a travel agent, perhaps a few agents, and you search again using their forms.  Not great.  Want to know the best price on a new VW golf in Melbourne.  Again you'll get directed to a specialised site to return those results, not directly from Google.

Guess Google could recognise searches of that type and, with appropriate arrangements with the 3rd-party site, properly designed and configured, use an API to get the results, and display them directly.  I don't mind the single-click one needs to do for the best price on a retail item, but navigating travel agent / airline sites is a pain - and I think intentionally so.  Also, the 3rd-party wants you to use their sites.  This is their currency.  If they saw the value of exposing an API instead of their page, great.  But they don't.  Firstly, they would have to charge for use of the API, and I'm not sure Google is rushing to do that. Secondly they don't get advertising revenue from use of the API.  My advise to them is that their best strategy is to have the information available as a single click from the Google search engine, and I'll learn to use their site rather than their competitors.

Challenge 3: New paradigms for search.  New domains

Google search is searching for "the internet web page" where you can continue your search/reading.  It's domain is the entire (light) web.

Type in to Google "price ipod nano" and you'll get first the Apple web-site.  OK, the manufacturer should be first.  They'll have the most information, and the most references will be to their site.  Next though is the shopbot.com.au site, for me anyway.  And that site, one click away, has the prices from the major on-line vendors.  Then, Buyer Beware, it helps if you know a little something about the sites.

So we have

• 1.  Searching for "the most popular internet web-page".
• 2.  Searching for "the price of a retail item".
  Here is another, with another domain,
• 3.  Searching for "the quantative data" for mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, other sciences, economics,  etc.
  wolframalpha.  comes from the author of Mathematica.  But it's not just mathematical searching it provides.  More quantitative searching.  You want to know the statistics of a thing - a stock, a country, a place, it'll give you nicely formatted information. Give it two, and it'll compare them also.    Oh yes, and it'll digest just about any math you want to give it also.
  
  I reckon this site could nicely expose an API that could be accessed by Google.  Will it.  I don't think so.  Not unless Google buys it.  I hope it does, and it could be a great move for the Co.  

The Information a search engine returns

• Google:   The popularity of a web-page for a given subject
• WolframApha: The quantative information of a subject
• Shopbot:  The prices of a consumer item.

The information available from dedicated application (non-search) pages

• wikipedia:  The description of a thing.
• Qantas:   The prices and availability of their flights.

Challenge 4: Integration with Vertical Search Engines.

The challenge here is that mentioned in the other article on integration of web services (SOA):  Technically it isn't too difficult, but corporately, it has it challenges. Google is earning from advertising revenue now.  I reckon they'll stick with integrating with their own Co.s.  So if they want better integration with retail pricing web-sites, they'll buy one, and integrate with it.  A lot easier.

Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)

Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)

Sramana Mitra 2007 article on what's makes Web 3.0, Web 3.0.  Still good reading.

What is "Electronic Communication" ?

Well electronic, like the 'e' in e-mail. 

I like the original 'e' - but also include the 'n' in net- technologies, and the 'w' in web- technologies, and I guess will  also the 'i' in i-Phone technologies, but wait, that 'i' is proprietary.

Perhaps the letter 'i' shouldn't be proprietary, but even some numbers are now.

Anyway, we include them all.  They're all technologies used to communicate.

Who Communicates?

1. People communicate.  
2. Machines communicate - data  using protocols;   information;    and, some believe machine knowledge.  But that's another story.

What I mean by "electronic communication" though is people and human organisations communicating using electronic technologies. Eg. a group of folk conferencing using electronic devices and networks.

How do we communicate?

Using electronic technologies! - 3G phones, conferencing servers, SMS, email, web-email, waves, electronic documents, the "cloud",  message buses, publish and subscribe services, RSS feeds, B2B portals, presence awareness (SIP), cultural awareness, location awareness, Web3.0 services, etc. etc.

What do we communicate?

Information, points of view, greetings, requests, advise, warnings, bookings, transactions, ......

Ideally,

"Exactly the right information, in the right amount, at the right time, using the right medium, with the receiver's responses to that information predicted, prepared, and either actioned, or awaiting or prompting, their response to it, as desired."

This is the future.  I believe we are on the road.  Here we will be looking at the technologies and services to achieve this.