By Carlo Zapponi - Technologist frog Milan - August 12, 2010
How HTML5 can help you in the development of a highly-interactive and visual demanding charting application.
HTML5 is all the rage right now because of its amazing features, but when it comes to dealing with it face to face, the fun quickly becomes a challenging adventure in the realm of half-supported features, browser limits, and fancy codes. This post describes the process of discovering, designing, prototyping, and implementing a visually intensive application with the help of HTML5.
Last week was The Next Web conference in Amsterdam, and it was really a terrific event. It was held in a wonderful brick factory building which, despite getting very hot inside, was a spectacular space. The screen was a gigantic 70 meters across. But despite the showy scale, the vibe inside was friendly, enthusiastic, and down to earth.
After participating in frog's first Digital Brand Think Tank in Munich a couple of weeks ago (a lively discussion with 20 marketing executives from Audi, BMW, Google, Continental, and other top-tier brands), I must admit that I’m a bit tired of having to evangelize (or even justify) the value of brands using social media. It is astonishing to me that companies still ask for evidence when the tweet is on the wall. The event showed that there is a new Digital Divide that cuts straight through the ranks of the marketing industry – some executives get the Social Web, some don’t. No one has figured it out yet. Most would admit that they need to catch up and keep learning.
The tizzy created by Facebook's page design changes point out some valuable lessons that we should keep in mind as we head more into a SaaS and cloud-based world.
Social media strategist Shannon Paul, who works with the NHL Detroit Red Wings, said many good things on a SXSW panel this Sunday, but the one thing that stuck with me most was her assertion that brands need to become more “human” in order to connect with their audiences. She wasn’t referring to personifying a brand through a human face (be it an average employee or a charismatic leader), but rather to exhibiting ‘branded’ behavior that is truly human. What does that mean? What is the most human trait of all human traits? Shannon Paul posits it’s vulnerability.
The question which brands are the best at “socializing” with their audiences is often asked, but rarely answered. Now Vitrue, a social media advertising solutions company, has attempted to capture a snapshot by releasing a Top Social Brands of 2008 list. The ranking is based on the Social Media Index (SMI), a measurement system the company launched to help track brands' share of voice on the social web.
"The Mayo Clinic wasn't sure what to expect from social media when it gave it a test run four years ago. Mayo started with a podcast, largely unsure of what it was doing. There was no staff dedicated to new media, so a few of the public affairs employees hastily podcasted a 60-second broadcast radio feed normally provided to radio stations. Then they watched as a few listeners grew to some 76,000 in one month. They knew they were on to something."
While not a member of the Net Generation (the 88 million Millennials for whom social networking is a birthright) myself, I have many friends and co-workers who qualify, and I am constantly baffled by their ease and eagerness to narrow- and broadcast their lives through digital media and with post-privacy transparency. The audience size doesn't matter, it can be narrow or broad, but cast it must be, even if it is often mundane. And yet, it is one of the ironies of such "ego-casting" that the status updates, which become critical life signs, the activity metrics of one's public life, do not begin with "I" but mostly appear in third person on Facebook and Twitter and the likes. This is because all these outlets treat the amateur publisher as a dramatic person per se: "Anthony is happy." – "Tim is working on an economic stimulus plan." – "Sarah loves Tea Leaf Green." When the Net Geners aggregate their social media publishing output into one FriendFeed, the effect becomes fully obvious: here we have the constant flux, the permanent Now as manifest and yet as fragmented as it can be. "It ain't why, why, why, it just is," Van Morrison sang, and another famous Irish artist, James Joyce, based on the concluding free-flow monologue of his Ulysses, would likely agree with the inevitability of "the river of life" as a never-ending "stream of consciousness" that affirms nothing but the fact that one is alive: "Yes."
