Brian Blau
Research Director
1 year at Gartner
12 years IT industry
Brian Blau is a research director in Gartner's Consumer Services group. He covers consumer services and applications as they relate to mobile devices and technology, social media, and platforms. Read Full Bio
by Brian Blau | May 1, 2011 | Submit a Comment
Its May again and at this time of year in the Bay area there are always many technology events on the calendar. I’ll be attending events every week in May and wanted to highlight a few of the more interesting gatherings.
Google I/O – scheduled for May 10/11 in San Francisco the tickets sold out in record time so I was very happy to get in. This developer-focused confab as has lots of tracks, too many for one person to take in so glad to see Google is giving attendees lots of content to choose from. Out of all the tracks and sessions I’m most interested in topics such as the new +1 button, ChromeOS, WebGL/3D, game development for Andriod, AppEngine, HTML5, maps and location. Not surprisingly there is an obvious lack of talks about things social as Google is still rolling out their overall plans in this area, but as this is a developer conference we will probably hear lots about Chrome, making apps, and Android.
ARE2011 - in Santa Clara on May 17/18 ARE2011 will be an opportunity to learn about and connect with those deep into augmented reality. I attended their first conference last year and it was an intense 2 days on many aspects of AR technology, products and services for consumers and enterprise. Some really interesting speakers lined up this year include Bruce Sterling, Vernor Vinge, Will Wright and many more veterans and current practitioners of AR. To support my research I’ll be at the sessions on such topics as the AR market, devices, mobile platforms, use in marketing and advertising, eCommerce, and user interfaces.
Should be a busy month! Watch my blog for updates and follow me on Twitter at @brianblau as I’ll be posting from these shows, and feel free to connect directly if you are attending.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Brian Blau | January 7, 2011 | Submit a Comment
I’m delighted to have Angela McIntyre, Research Director, Consumer Technology and Markets, Gartner, provide these observations from this week’s CES show, thanks Angela!
Tablets are king at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. The slick form-factors and touch interfaces caused constant swarms of curious on-lookers around almost every tablet device display. While the devices themselves initially attract, the applications are what keep consumers using them. Mobile application developers have released applications for smartphones and tablets by the hundreds of thousands. Many are planning development of their next round of applications. At CES I took the opportunity to talk with mobile application developers about what matters the most – how to maximize revenue from these applications. In the conversations, a couple topics seemed to bubble up as top of mind for the developers: how to monetize the applications, how to keep consumers using the app, and the role of viral marketing.
Monetization
Consumers are reluctant to pay for applications on their mobile devices. One developer explained that downloads of his mobile game were modest at the $4.99 price point. They occasionally gave limited time special promotions, such as for one weekend pricing the app at $0.49 or giving it for free. During the promotions, the downloads increased more than a thousandfold. So their lesson for their next applications is to “give away” the application and build in micro-transactions. Users could add features or capabilities one at a time. A different approach from micro-transactions, is to offer a free version of the application and in it advertise an enhanced version of the application that consumers could purchase for the $4.99. The beauty of micro-transactions, however, is they often fall beneath the consumer threshold for money they care about, the equivalent of a pack of chewing gum or a soda. In contrast it is a harder sell to get consumers to lay down even a modest chunk of change, the $4.99, for a fully loaded version of an application when the free version works fine.
Stickiness
Developers shared what keeps consumers using their applications: updating with new information and creating a seamless user experience when the application is used off-line. Incorporating an alert feature and RSS feeds provide the consumer with timely, pertinent information giving consumers reasons to come back to the application. For example, sending “real-time” traffic updates to navigation applications, or “breaking news” on topics of interest. Similarly getting status updates and messages from other people the consumers care about, those in their social networks, compels users to visit the applications over and over again. The “hubby has left work” on Neer, receiving a “Flirt” on Skout, or new photos of friends posted on Facebook.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing adds to revenue, but in many cases it is not as useful as hoped. Developers are finding that consumers who follow a link from social networking sites to their application web pages are much less likely to purchase it than a consumer who sought out the application on their own. The appeal of most applications varies greatly across members of a social network, from “love it” to “mmehh.” It is the exception instead of the rule for applications to take off in sales due to viral marketing. Still, if viral marketing raises app purchases by a few percent, hey, it’s still a positive outcome. The marketing skill to be learned over time by developers is how to target key early adopters of their applications, ideally those who have the admiration and trust of thousands. Hmm… Oprah has a book club that influences what many American women (mostly) read. Who will lead the mobile app club for the masses?
These insights from the developers are a snapshot of their key learnings. There are many approaches to monetization, creating stickiness and viral marketing. Gartner will explore these and other issues about mobile application development in more detail within our publications.
Category: Conferences Gartner Tags: CES
by Brian Blau | December 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
This past weekend I attended ARDevCamp, an “unconference” on augmented reality technical and business issues. It was a engaging and informative day and I wanted to share some of the notes on one session that was particularly insightful.
A quick side note about an “unconference” (wiki). At regular conferences, such as Gartner Symposium, there are schedules with tacks and topics and an agenda for the day. Not so at an unconference, the whole notion of who’s running the show is flipped. At this meeting it’s the attendees who set the topics and agenda. It’s a great way to have a whole day focused on what we wanted to discuss, and a great way to keep the attendees focused and interested. I’ve been to several unconferences and unevents, they are always fun and interesting.
Back to ARDevCamp. The inaugural event was in Dec 209 at Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, and there have been around 10 since in various locations around the world. All volunteer and the conference is open to anyone and its a free, makes going an easy decision. This weekend’s event was at GAFFTA (hacker/design/art collaboration space in SF) and was attended by augmented reality industry elite, business and technical leaders, artists and designers, software developers and film makers, students, job seekers and many more. It was great to network around the hot topic of augmented reality with some of the best in the business.
Given the opportunity to suggest topics I proposed and then moderated a session around making predictions about how augmented reality will be used over the next few years. I wanted to get the attendees to open up about the types of augmented reality applications they believe will be in the hands of consumers during the years 2011-2014. This target time frame is just close enough to now and just far away enough so we could have fun thinking about our future. The session ground rules were simple; brainstorm on a list of the top 5 augmented reality apps that would be available for consumers during the given 3 years. Those app ideas had to be realistic and have a more than reasonable chance of success given the state of augmented reality technology seen today.
After a fun rapid fire brainstorming session we came up with 30 app ideas, and those were boiled down and bubbled up into a short list of the top apps that we can expect to see, realistically, in the 2011-2014 time frame. Here they are in no particular order:
Augmented TV - imagine being able to not only control your digital living room experience, but with augmented television you could actually control the story, become part of the story, using AR tools and techniques. Immersion in interactive stories is now new, but its application, on a mass scale, and through devices suck as Kinect, you can imagine a new type of entertainment experience that is a cross between special effects movies and interactive video games. A real mashup that will bring a new type of experience to your hyper connected, multi-screened, and somewhat mobile digital living room
Retail – discussion was around using AR to help retailers with the shopping experience. AR can be integrated in many ways into retail, mainly as a monitoring tool, and given that analysis plays a role AR can help businesses determine what customers are doing, who they are, what they are purchasing and in some cases how they are using the products themselves. We all agreed AR has a big future in the retail experience.
Inside Outside – simple idea, AR systems now (mainly those AR apps/browsers on smartphones) use GPS for positioning but this really only works outside, and is only accurate to within ~50 ft. Within 1-3 years those apps will now be able to work seamlessly moving between inside and outside.
Travel - all agreed that the traveling experience will be enhanced by AR applications. Museums, parks, touring, navigation, nature and entertainment generally fall into this category. AR apps of the (near) future will be able to give you directed information in and around your travel needs. Having a companion travel guide on your AR enabled smartphone or tablet will provide interesting and deep content that is currently not available in any other form.
Facial recognition – we all agreed this was a sensitive topic, but it was agreed that facial recognition capability will be included in AR apps of all types within the given 3 years timeframe. Yes, everyone was concerned about privacy, but the technology is here today, its been deployed in controlled circumstances, and it will come to an AR app soon enough.
Maintenance - using AR apps to help people get stuff done, like changing the oil, repairing the dishwasher or framing a wall. This idea that multimedia documents could be in your hand, when you need them, where you need them, will become commonplace and will even spill over into other uses such as showing you how to put together your Lego kits.
And there was one more, and possibly the most important and/or impactful prediction ….
Gesture - there was talk about how devices like Microsoft’s Kinect will forever change how we interact with our computing environment. Gesture is the new mouse, waving is the new clicking, and just imagine an setting where Kinect-like devices can help you by providing contextual apps and displays in your every day life, on your street corner, market, theater, library, work, school or even in your car. AR and gesture will drive our new interaction paradigms (at least this crowd thought so), welcome to the world of augmented me.
In all ARDevCamp was really fun and I thought was a great success. Thanks clearly go to the organizers (@chris23 @anslem @paigesaez @genebecker) and sponsors Layar, Metaio, Qualcomm, GAFFTA and Makerlab.
Category: Augmented Reality Conferences Gartner Tags:
by Brian Blau | October 16, 2010 | Submit a Comment
I was just reviewing the schedule and agenda for the Gartner Symposium/ITExpo 2010 which started today in Orlando, FL. Symposium will be a great conference all around and while I’m not in Orlando this year I’ve been to many trade shows and understand what it takes to put on a great conference. My 15+ years volunteering for SIGGRAPH taught me in the value of gathering together, exchanging ideas, debating our future, and making those in-person connections which are all so important to today’s hyper-distributed world. While there are many great topics and events at Symposium I’m particularly interested in social media and interfaces so here would be my must attend session list at this week’s show:
Monday
Enterprise Software Scenario: What Happens When Social, BI, Application Development and Business Applications Collide?
Speakers: Yvonne Genovese, Valentin T. Sribar @ 11:30 AM-12:30 PM
Managing Social Software Maturity: Supporting Pioneers and Settlers
Speaker: Carol Rozwell @ 02:00 PM-03:00 PM
Tuesday
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2011
Speakers: David W. Cearley, Carl Claunch @ 08:00 AM-09:00 AM
Social Media Solutions and Management
Speakers: Mike Bracken, Mark P. McDonald @ 08:00 AM-09:00 AM
Roundtable: Developing a Social Media Purpose Road MapTuesday, 19 October 2010
Moderator: Carol Rozwell @ 08:00 AM-09:00 AM
Desperately Seeking Insight? Mine Social Networks
Speakers: Bill Gassman, Carol Rozwell @ 11:00 AM-12:00 PM
How to Develop a Rational and Realistic Social Media Strategy
Speakers: Anthony Bradley, Carol Rozwell @ 02:00 PM-03:00 PM
Magic Quadrants: Social Software
Speakers: Carol Rozwell, Adam Sarner @ 06:00 PM-06:20 PM
Wednesday
User Experience: It Takes a Tough Guy to Make a Tender User Interface
Speaker: Ray Valdes @ 03:30 PM-04:30 PM
Thursday
The User Experience Platform: The Next Big Step in User Interaction Technologies and Methodologies
Speaker: Gene Phifer @ 02:00 PM-03:00 PM
E-Commerce in a Socially Mobile World
Speaker: Gene Alvarez @ 09:30 AM-10:30 AM
The User Experience Platform: The Next Big Step in User Interaction Technologies and Methodologies
Speaker: Gene Phifer @ 02:00 PM-03:00 PM
The Next Frontier of Mobile Applications: Consumer-Oriented, Context-Aware
Speaker: William Clark @ 03:30 PM-04:30 PM
Seeing the World in New Ways: The Future of Contextual User Experiences
Moderator: Nick Jones @ 03:30 PM-04:30 PM
Have a great week at Symposium!
Category: Conferences Gartner Tags: symposium
by Brian Blau | September 27, 2010 | 1 Comment
Last week I attended NVidia’s GPU Technology Conference and there were several fascinating announcements and technology showcases that I wanted to share.
First was the Autodesk/Mental Images keynote demo of 3dsmax integrated with cloud-based realtime ray tracing (video of the keynote here). The 3dsmax PC software package has a decades long history of being a leading tool for artists, designers, architects and engineers who need to create realistic images and animations from 3D models and one of its key features is ray tracing, a technique which generates completely synthetic but nevertheless photo realistic images. Their announcement is a new product and technology initiative for GPU accelerated interactive rendering called “iray”. This cloud-based rendering was impressive for not only the visual quality but also for the ability to interactively adjust and fine tune the scene while its being generated on an GPU cluster located some 1500 miles away. Because the rendering is so fast on the cluster the results then sent back to the browser-based interface in smooth and glorious realtime.
Alone this would be a solid milestone for 3dsmax as it maintains its place as leader in animation, modeling and rendering, but my takeaway was something different. There have been realtime ray tracing demos before but what we are seeing with iray is a real shift in productivity and scale that will have effects in areas outside core computer graphics. As I continue to research consumers its clear that immersive experiences through 3D graphics systems such as games or interactive video will continue to drawn users attention. Consumers will directly benefit from this new type of products in the future as cloud-rendering will start to appear as new application and services configurations. Best example is the recently launched game service from OnLive. While the rendering in this case is from a warehouse full of virtual game machines the principal is the same; render in the cloud and deliver that interactivity over the net. Moving rendering to the cloud is a logical next step and once these systems are built and deployed we should start to see some really interesting applications and services that will want to take advantage of this type of very high quality graphics.
Another unique technology showcase came from Adobe where they demonstrated a new type of camera that can take still images in which the focus and other image-based adjustments can be accomplished in post-processing. To achieve this feat they used a plenoptic (or light-field) camera (info here, here and here), which is a relatively new type of system in which the imaging sensor is comprised of an array of 1000′s of tiny lenticluar lenses. Once the picture is taken and the image is downloaded to the computer a new set of algorithms can, in real time, adjust the focus, create 3D stereo images, and do a host of other image adjustments that is just not possible with a traditional film or digital camera.
As an avid amateur photographer I was beginning to wonder about the future of camera technology and how we all will be taking and processing pictures. For years I’ve seen the promise of low-light photography and we are now can purchase consumer/prosumer DSLR’s with very low light capability (ISO’s are reaching 102,400!). Another new feature creeping into the photography space is HDR, the ability to broaden the image’s color space so that pictures can contain shadows, brights and extreme color variations and contrast and it all will be represented in the same image. Making HRD using software is a known process (heck, even the iPhone has it) and some day we will have HDR LCD televisions too. And now with plenoptic lenses we can see how photographers in the future will simply take pictures, no settings needed, so you can concentrate on composure and substance, and then decide about focus and lighting during the final editing and sharing with your social network. Photography always seems like its been limited by the technology of the camera and film and maybe we are now on the cusp of the next leap forward.
Would be great to get comments on what you think about how consumers will use these future technologies.
Please follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/brianblau
Category: Conferences NVidia Photography Rendering Tags:
by Brian Blau | September 16, 2010 | Submit a Comment
At the Intel Developer Forum this week there was a focus on user interface technologies and while I wasn’t expecting this aspect to be important it makes sense once you see the new integrated graphics engine in Sandy Bridge. With the new focus on graphics there was a slew of interesting demos and announcements and I’ll highlight a few here.
Demos – During the Monday keynote from David Perlmutter were 2 examples of advanced user interface technologies and paradigms. Its interesting to note that both demos used a 2-handed interface, something that most consumers still have yet to try or master.
GestureTek, a company that makes computer vision control software and devices showed how you could use your hands to control various media tasks. To use this system you stand in front of a large flat screen tv and using hand/arm gestures you control some type of on-screen activity. In this demo users control a photo slide show where the gestures could be described as a “wipe and swipe” motion. Using one hand you wipe left-to-right to advance through the photos then swipe back to the other side to repeat the action. Or you could rotate the image using 2 hands combined in a similar gesture to how you zoom in and out on a multitouch smart phone screen.
The other 2 handed demo was from Sixense. Their technology uses a handheld controller-like device (think tv remote) and contained inside is a 6 DOF tracker so all movement and orientation is tracked. Their demo showed a very simple CAD environment which consisted of basic squares and spheres. The gesture interaction using those controllers was to use a combination of position, orientation and buttons to pick up and manipulate those objects to perform simple CAD operations.
Unfortunately both of these demos had problems, not only on stage but overall. While its encouraging that Intel is focusing on UI technologies I didn’t see these particular demos as revolutionary but forward thinking. As for the stage demo they were tough to see and describe, and at one point the GesturTek demo just wouldn’t recognize the hand movements. Fair enough and again its really encouraging to see UI be a focus for Intel and their developers. But its not hard to imagine that at a future IDF we could see demos that comes closer to Minority Report.
Finally, I attended a session and demo space for the new Intel Experience and Interaction Lab. Given that the new lab was announced only this summer they are starting off with a strong showing of new products and technologies. One notable demo was the automobile-based context aware facial recognition which could, after visually recognizing the driver, set the radio stations, seat positions and other environmental controls, but could be extended navigation or really any personalized aspect of driving. Another demo showed realtime ray-traced video games. Also there was a demo of surface computing for the kitchen and taken literally could be an indication of how future chefs will plan and prepare meals.
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by Brian Blau | September 10, 2010 | Submit a Comment
The fall time conference season has started here in the SF Bay area and I’ll be attending some shows as it will be a great opportunity to network and add to my growing agenda of consumer services and applications research. Today I’ll share a brief note on a several upcoming events and a summary of a chocolate factory viewed through the eyes of augmented reality.
Intel Developer Forum – For the first time I will be attending IDF and will be focusing my sights on whats happening with the next generation of goodness coming from Intel. During the show I’ll research consumer issues focusing on graphics, user interface and gaming and I’m looking forward to learning about how these new Intel technologies will emerge as consumer products and services. Seems like the overall theme of the show will be how Intel drives the constantly changing device landscape and how their new platforms will be integrated into tomorrow’s mobile computing and entertainment products. Please connect with me at the show if you are interested in discussing above topics or add comments to this post to discuss what you think is significant from this event.
I’ll also be attending the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference event later in September. This showcase will feature the new directions for developer APIs and mobile integration, some of my favorite topics! This is actually a fairly substantial show that will feature wide variety of graphics developer topics but of course I need to keep focused! It will be interesting to see how the platform strategies from both NVIDIA and Intel shape up this year.
The highlight from this past week (other than the beautiful Labor Day weekend) was my visit to FXPAL to talk with an old friend, Maribeth Back (cv). Her current research is on augmenting the reality of chocolate, really. The mixed reality research group that Maribeth manages has a partnership with TCHO, a chocolate company located in a warehouse on the San Francisco waterfront. Maribeth’s group has installed some 300 sensors in and around the factory to monitor the chocolate making process and those sensors feed into a realtime 3D augmented reality monitoring system. Imagine being able to take your media tablet through the factory floor and while holding it up in front of a running machine you will see various informational displays and overlays. They also have a fully functional 3D model of the factory for a completely immersive experience. Included in their research is an iPhone/iPad app that lets the chocolate maker control the test kitchen and factory. Right now they are using this AR system for monitoring and a few marketing functions and the hope is that future installations in other factories with more sensors will lead them to new insights into using tele-presence as a core interface and interaction mechanism.
I’ll post again with some conference updates but also follow me Twitter for up-to-date thoughts and tidbits.
Category: Augmented Reality Chocolate Conferences Gartner Tags:
by Brian Blau | August 28, 2010 | Submit a Comment
Hi. I’m Brian and I wanted to say hello, introduce myself, and let you know a little about what I’ll be up to as a Research Director here at Gartner.
I’m based in the San Francisco area and I recently joined the Consumer Services team doing research on technology and business issues that are directly related to how consumers use and interact with their software and hardware platforms of choice. Given that I have a somewhat unique background within our analyst group I feel fortunate to be able to use my software development and entrepreneurial experience in computer graphics, video games, social media and user interface as an integral aspect of my research. I’ll be covering some really interesting technology areas in addition to my core competencies and that includes mobile devices and applications, software systems and those related to developer platforms, imaging, gaming, location-based services, social networks, advertising, and a host of other topics that fall back into the core consumer applications and services area.
My interest in computer graphics started at 15 years old when I learned to code while standing up at my local Radio Shack (first program was a Snakes game). While working towards my MS in Computer Science I learned the art of learning and realized that my curiosity/obsession in and around visual systems software this was going to be the focus of my career.
I started off doing core computer science research in virtual reality and networked visual systems at the Institute for Simulation and Training in Orlando. After arriving in San Francisco in 1993 I developed first generation graphics API’s and I then quickly found roots in the startup community by helping create a 3D standard called VRML. As a software development manager at Autodesk I worked on several artist and designer tools including 3dsmax. I also helped launch a Flash-based (with plugins no less) social networking site and more recently I was dir. developer relations managing the integration of advertising technology into PC, console and casual games.
Also over the years I’ve spent a good amount of time volunteering for SIGGRAPH, the annual computer graphics conference and exhibition show. Over too many weekends that took me away from the family I managed and co-produce a large themed interactive exhibition called the Digital Bayou, and as executive producer I managed the computer animation film festival one year which included the storied Electronic Theater. I was also the co-chair of the DUX 2005 user interface conference and I’ve participated on many graphics film and art show juries. The SIGGRAPH community has been my main sandbox for innovation and invention and I’ve truly enjoyed the years spent giving back to the community that has helped me so much.
My goals for blogging and tweeting are simple; my writing will always relate back to my core research but you may see posts about favorite books, art, and I’ll even include some graphics history, architecture, design, tools, and other topics that I feel cross over and through some aspect of consumer technology. Mainly though I’d like to comment on a wide variety of graphics related topics that really should be brought into the thought process of how technology and service provider companies create and make consumer services and applications. I promise to do my best and be fair about site linking and referencing and in return I ask that the comments be thoughtful and respectful.
On the non-work side of my life I do photography, travel as much as possible, seek out great art and architecture and I also enjoy hiking, biking, scuba ….. and more too. Life is pretty full these days so I’ll wrap up by saying thanks for stopping by and hearing my story, and I hope to see you again here soon!
Please follow me on Twitter over here @brianblau
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