SXSW Preview: The Year of ‘Ambient Social’ Apps? - eddythavess

The Southeastward by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference kicks off in Austin, Texas, tomorrow, and by the sound of things the event will extend ontogenesis in grandness as a gaolbreak affair for much of tomorrow's biggest applications and ideas.

What applications and ideas will be hot this yr? Pre-event chatter points to the continuation of some themes from sunset year, as well every bit the arrival of new concepts.

For the past a few years, SXSW has been about seaborne, social, location-settled apps. Last year group-messaging apps like GroupMe were hot. I expect those themes to get back this year, with a new wave of apps that add their own twist.

But some spick-and-span technologies testament hit the foreground this year, too–that is to say apps that specialize in "ambient interpersonal" features, social aggregation, new approaches to politics, and personal data control.

People in the wireless world have dreamed of an app that would help you introduce yourself to people you require to meet–much as in the classic scenario of the person in a stop who spots someone of interest across the room, and wants to meet them without going in blind.

Currently no app perfectly suits such "cold calls," only a lot of apps at SXSW this year try to make full that purpose. One author has dubbed them "close interpersonal" apps, a very meet name: They sense people World Health Organization are in your vicinity, and essa to help you shuffle real-world connections with those people.

The app that seems to comprise generating the most pre-effect seethe is Highlight. If someone standing near you also has Highlighting on his or her phone, your phone bequeath detect them, and their visibility will show leading along your handset. You butt see their name and photos, but you can besides see things that you two have in common, such as mutual friends or favorite Telecasting shows or bands–perfect fodder for an introductory conversation. After, if you meet the same person and can't remember their name (a huge problem of mine), the app reminds you.

Up to now, i thing the app is taking some literary criticism for is that it runs constantly in the background on your phone, which contributes to battery drain. Also, Highlight is only for the iPhone right now.

Tech initiate Robert Scoble was mayhap the first to bless this app, and he believes that IT will personify radioactive at SXSW (yes, I substantiate that this article and others will help to pass so). And Highlight is one of those apps that really seem to arrange something useful and helpful in real time (the mark up of a breakout app of any kind). However, the creep-impermissible factor–and the be to individual privacy–might offset the benefit completely. One comment at the App Store seems to sum ahead this concern nicely: "I've seen similar apps and this one really worries me because information technology uses Facebook–strangers being competent to see my FB call, visibility pic, interests and precise location is creepy. (Practise you want a weird stranger locution "hi" to you?) I'm a jest at and exploitation this has ME sketched out, so I can imagine girls leave be even less comfortable with it. The lack of concealment settings and use of FB info makes this real creepy."

Another similar app, called Sonar, is also enjoying attention, and it is available for Android phones.

Uberlife (see the screenshot at left), takes a slightly several approach to the same scenario. This app lets you first fast "hangouts" for events you wait on or places you clave. For example, if you pop into a stop for an aft-work beer and need some drunkenness buddies, you can start a repair and broadcast your request to your network and to the Uberlife substance abuser community. Somebody WHO is in the region power come and join you. If a entirely group of the great unwashe shows up under nonpareil roof, you get points in the apps. You can also post about the event while it's natural event, creating a record that you can revisit later. If you meet several new people you like, you bottom ask them to hang verboten again.

Course, the huge job with these apps is that they will aid you only if your friends–and more important, the people you deprivation to be your friends–are also victimisation the app. I can see an app debuting in future SXSW shows that leverages a mobile platform everybody already uses (such as Facebook mobile) to serve users seduce connections with anybody in the banish who has a smartphone.

Another slant on this idea would be an app that tail detect and integrate with whatever mobile app that contains the personal information, plebeian friends and interests the user wants to make "public". So the person in the bar using the app could get help fashioning a connection with someone across the room, thoughtless of what mobile social app that opposite person happens to employment.

Too Umteen Contacts Lists

5Degrees takes on another aspect of the social app fragmentation problem. Increasingly, our contacts sleep in various silos on our phones and PCs–we have our Facebook friends, our Chitter pals, totally our email contacts, and even some contacts in other social apps such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Approximately of our contacts are walled away behind the device they live on; for example, your smartphone contacts might cost separate from the contacts on your pad.

Mobile phone makers have been nerve-racking to create apps that bring totally this pig out together along a handset, only with limited success. 5Degrees is a free-standing app that does the problem more effectively, and Thomas More neatly, than different apps I've seen. And IT makes your unified reach list available on all of your devices. The developers call it a "mobile relationship manager," and it will be getting a good amount of attention at SXSW this yr.

Politics 2.0

The idea of devising the electoral process online, flying, and social will have more presence than ever at this year's SXSW. In the twelvemonth since attendees last gathered in Austin, the Occupy movement has gone mainstream, and dissatisfaction with government has reached uncomparable highs. The mood seems right for Politics 2.0 apps to be taken more seriously. I've been getting email messages from companies in this tune–moreso than in long time past. One arrangement, Americans Elect, has created an online platform in which people can signalise up and nominate their choice of presidential candidate. Aside the end of June, delegates from across the country will nominate through online ballot a statesmanlike ticket that will appear happening general election ballots nationwide in November. This will happen completely independently of the existing company systems, and the organization has worked to take in the approval of state and Federal soldier election officials, so when participants nominate someone, it agency something.

Data Privacy

With awareness biological process among consumers about the direction Internet companies are using their syntactic category data, some SXSW attendees will be discussing the problem of information security and seclusion this year.

Several "core conversation" panels are devoted to the subject. Here's the description of one of them, from the SXSW conference template:

"With Google's recent privacy policy change and physical data use by marketers along the rise, the timing of We the People: Creating a Consumer's Bill of Rights at 11 a.m. Sunday is perfect. This sitting testament feature Anne Bezancon (Placecast) and Shane Green (Personal.com), and since it's a Core Conversation, plan to participate every bit they create a privacy Bill of Rights on the spot."

Unaged's company, Personal, operates a personal private electronic network where you can manage and control access to your own digital information. Personal says it hopes to overturn the model for how Internet giants such as Facebook and Google track, obtain, and profit from personal information, to create a more willing, mutually beneficial model that gives control endorse to the consumer. Yay.

I leave arrive in Austin connected Saturday, and wish immediately begin filing blog posts happening the new apps, ideas, and interesting people I notic there. Stay keyed.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/468903/sxsw_preview_the_year_of_ambient_social_apps_.html

Posted by: eddythavess.blogspot.com