Facebook stealthily made two fairly big announcements yesterday afternoon—one is the launch of the long-awaited Facebook for iPad app and the other is the announcement of social apps being extended to mobile platforms. These two announcements seem to come hand in hand showing the network’s strong push to go mobile.

Just based on a glance at my Twitter feed and a few opinions from colleagues, not many really care about the new iPad app. I, however, am quite happy that it’s finally available. If you are a casual Facebook user and just need basic access to notifications and the News Feed, existing apps such as Friendly and MyPad should more than suffice your needs. But for someone who spends a considerable time logged in for both work and personal reasons, I often find that those other apps are not as easy on the eyes and to use as they could be. That is another story all together. The major difference between these apps and Facebook’s is that the native app is as robust (if not more with a few cool additional features) and easy to navigate as viewing in a browser. It mimics the browser experience which is crucial for me who manages a few pages and groups on top of a personal profile.

The left menu allows for quick navigation such as accessing Grafik's page

In light of that, the rift between the browser and mobile Facebook experience is further closing with the start of social apps availability on the iPhone, iPad, iTouch and the mobile site with Android coming soon. Facebook Software Development Engineer Luke Shepard wrote on the developer’s blog about using social channels such as Bookmarks, Requests, and the News Feed to propel the use apps and create a more seamless integration of both the web and mobile experiences. You can view which apps and games are now mobile ready here.

Invitations to third-party apps and games can now be accessed and opened via mobile

According to a new study from ComScore, U.S. mobile web traffic grew 19 percent from last year to 116 million people, almost half of the U.S. population. That number is just likely to increase and these steps by Facebook show that this is definitely a market worth watching out for.

Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman's quasicrystal

Dan Shechtman, an Israeli scientist, who’s this year’s Noble Prize winner in Chemistry, reminds me of Steve Jobs. In 1982, Shechtman discovered quasicrystals—matter that is made of atoms arranged in patterns that never repeat themselves. Prior to his discovery, it was thought that crystals could only be made up of atoms that are packed in symmetrical patterns that repeat themselves over and over. I won’t even pretend to understand most of the details, but there is a fascinating description on the Nobel site that describes this in detail.

2011 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry Dan Shechtman

However fascinating this is, it is not what grabbed my attention about the Nobel laureate. After his discovery, he found that instead of being honored, he was at the beginning of a fierce battle against established science. He recalls in an interview on NPR how he was booted from his research group. “The head of his research team said, ‘You are a disgrace to our group, and I cannot bear this disgrace.’ And he asked me to leave the group. So, I left the group,” said Shechtman. The double Nobel laureate of the time, Linus Pauling, led a fierce crusade against him stating, “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.” He was accused of a making a huge blunder and was the laughing stock of the scientific world for two years. He fought back, refused to take a back seat to his critics and the rest is history.

Steve Jobs is considered one of the most forward thinking individuals of our time

While many would argue that Steve Jobs is in a different league, I see similarities between the two men. They share a passion for their work, unyielding optimism that what they are doing is right, and the drive to continue despite their critics. Who can forget the years that Jobs was not everyone’s darling while Bill Gates was at the top of the heap? Or the fact that he was pushed out of Apple in 1985 because of disappointing sales? Or the early days of NeXT where the startup was close to bankruptcy? Many of the Jobs’ quotes talk about the necessity of marching to a different drummer and having the courage to follow one’s heart, brain, and convictions. And possibly, it is this personality that separates most of us from the enlightened.

Rest In Peace Steve

He changed the way we think, the way we work, and how we interact. Steve Jobs was a luminary of course, and a brilliant technologist, inventor, and thinker. But, he was also one of the most vocal champions of design. Steve showed the world over and over again that design matters.

I remember the first Macintosh that Grafik bought. At the time we thought it was only good to help render type. And our initial reasons for buying one were somewhat misguided. Not to mention the fact that the cost was astronomical for a small firm, all the components were sold separately and we could only afford to lease one. It cost about $12,000 and it was obsolete as soon as we paid for it. Over the years, I probably have easily purchased well over a hundred Apple computers of all sizes and shapes. Everyone knows that if you were a design shop Microsoft was the Evil Empire. And, we scoffed at the clunky world of PCs and the horrible interfaces and designs of any computer that was not an Apple product.

We loved our new toys, but what we loved almost as much was the packaging it came in—the clear simple instructions, and the well designed user manuals. No design detail was too small or overlooked. I know that I have always kept the packaging long after I have unpacked my many computers, iPods, iPhones, and my iPad. Who could throw out the beautiful white boxes?

Even the way Jobs dressed in his cool black turtle necks made the design community love him. He was one of us. He was not just any CEO—we felt like we could trust him to take our best interests to heart. And, he never disappointed us.

When Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO, like many others, I knew the end was near and I felt immense sadness. Tonight upon hearing of his death, I feel like I have lost a good friend and I know that the design community has lost a luminary that understood the power that design has to change the world.

Jobs’ first ad campaign was the brilliant “Think Different” series. And that is the challenge that he leaves all of us with: to continue to push the limits of design, to sweat the details because they matter, and to keep the faith that good design sells.

Steve, designers around the world thank you and will miss you.

First we all had to deal with finding embarrassing tagged photos of ourselves on Facebook for everybody to see, like that shot of you in a bathing suit when you were 14. PittPatt, a new application developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, makes all of that seem like child’s play. They have developed an app that can take a photo of a person, and through advanced facial recognition can find his identity by searching through the millions of images on Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, or Google.

Imagine that you are taking a walk through the park with your dog. A stranger approaches, snaps a shot of you. He can immediately identify you and find all of the publicly available images of you in less than a minute. It does not matter if you are wearing a mask, glasses, or a hat tilted at a roguish angle obscuring your face. PittPatt’s proprietary technology can still find your match. Even scarier—not only are you identified to total strangers, but the application scans public databases. It can take a pretty good guess at your social security number, if it can pick up your birthday from Facebook. Armed with your social security number it can get close to accessing lots of important financial data as well. YIKES!!

Is PittPatt a Pandora's Box?

PittPatt is not available to the public yet—for now, we’ll have to wait for a hacker, or leak for this to spread. The technology that powers PittPatt was developed in the early 1990s as a reaction to 9/11. Post World Trade Center, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was interested in investigating advanced spatial recognition and poured millions of dollars into R&D. So far the app has been kept under wraps, but it has just been announced that Google has purchased PittPatt in July. Google states that they do not know if, or when, they will make this application available, but they promise not to launch it unless stringent privacy protections are put in place. Given all of the recent “WikiLeaks” from supposedly secure sites, I wonder just how long before this application will be in the hands of the wrong people.

Technological advances can be wonderful if there are protections in place. It seems to me that we are facing a Pandora’s box where protection of personal privacy could be completely eliminated. Is this a box we really want to open?

The future of facial recognition online is here, now!

Driving into the office from the beach a few weekends ago, I was face to face with an eye catching Monsanto billboard. I wish I could have captured a photograph of the billboard but I was zipping along the road and there was no way to snap a shot of it. And, that is precisely the point.  Monsanto’s advertising and social media is well executed, especially for a behemoth corporation that is often in the crosshairs of environmental groups.

Their “America’s farmers grow America” is a smart, beautiful campaign that most advertising agencies would be proud to show. So I was surprised to see this billboard with a large QR code on the lower right-hand side of the ad. What ever possessed them to put a QR code on a billboard on a major highway? Was it to show that they are tech savvy? To demonstrate the latest “hip” technique? Whatever the reason, it is certain that almost no one, especially drivers passing at 55 mph are going to whip out their phones, center on the code, and then peruse a site while they are driving. Oh, and did I mention that it is illegal in the State of Maryland to use a cell phone while driving?

This is not to say that QR codes do not belong on billboard spaces. There have been QR codes used successfully on billboards notably, Calvin Klein’s billboards that were focused not on drivers in Manhattan but pedestrians. And in all of the successful QR billboards the code is very large allowing the pedestrian to easily get it into the crosshairs of their RedLaser application. In Monsanto’s case the QR code was very small and not the main feature.

On the other hand, that morning as I entered the elevator lobby there was a very poorly designed flyer taped to the wall advertising a free seminar offered by a law firm in the building. On the bottom of the flyer was a QR code. Standing there waiting for the elevator (we have the slowest elevators in the world), I did use the QR code to find out more information about the event.

The point? Appropriate use of technology always trumps early adoption. And employing technology without understanding how it will actually be used leaves you open to potshots from people like me. QR codes have their place, and we have used them successfully for many of our clients, but putting them on billboards on high speed highways is just plain silly, and I doubt that this was Monsanto’s intention.

Foursquare Speaks Five New Languages

Last Thursday, Foursquare expanded their language offering by adding five new languages to their app—Bahasa Indonesian, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, and Thai. With a reported 10+ million users globally, this is the second wave of language translations after the addition of French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese last February.

Given the recent introduction of Tip Lists and event check-ins, Foursquare is proving to be quite a power tool for brands. Now with the app available in numerous languages, this location-based social service has also, in my opinion, further increased its appeal to global brands. What do you think of the language additions? Which languages should they add next? Source

Crowdbooster Launches Intuitive Social Medial Dashboard

Yes, another social media dashboard has hit the market, but is it just like any other dashboard out there? Apparently not. Last Wednesday, Crowdbooster launched the public beta offering of its “intelligent social media optimization, monitoring and analytics platform.” Crowdbooster’s technology differentiates itself with its ability to understand one’s social activity and, consequently, suggest what to share, when and with whom.

A Y Combinator startup, Crowdbooster can make such recommendations by producing detailed analytics across Facebook and Twitter—evaluating the popularity of content based on Retweets, Mentions, Replies, Likes, Impressions, and Comments—among other key features. This can be quite revolutionary for social media marketers. Managing numerous social media accounts can quickly be overwhelming (believe me, I know) just because of its real-time nature. The ability to cut through massive amounts of information to the content that counts is invaluable to a marketer or anyone looking to have a meaningful social media presence. I am looking forward to giving this dashboard a try. Keep a lookout for my review. Source

Condé Nast Leverages “Tweets” and Facebook “Likes” For Online Magazines

Last Wednesday, Condé Nast kickedoff the Social Sidekick which aggregates content from Style.com, Glamour, Self, Teen Vogue, Lucky and W . This module allows readers click to view cross-publication content that have been popular across Facebook and Twitter, and gives advertisers additional space to advertise and promote branded multimedia content.

This feature, which is a floating bar at the bottom of each site page, may be new to Condé Nast, but the concept isn’t. Other sites, like Gawker.com and Wired.com, already have the option to view most popular and most shared articles, but Condé Nast is hoping to not only further promote already well-received content, but to also cross promote articles among their many publications with the consumer’s social media engagement in mind. As an avid reader of Style.com, I’d like to see if this new feature does, in fact, get me to read content on their other sites—sites I very rarely visit. Do you think this new feature is a game changer? Source

The Social Sidekick is a floating bar located on the bottom of each page.

Gucci is the first brand to advertise on the Social Sidekick module which expands to the menu shown here.

I got to experience the power of information twice last week through some different delivery mechanisms.

Episode one: Earthquake in DC. Grafik’s offices are on the 7th floor of a glass building that began to shake strongly as the windows started to buckle. We had no idea what was going on but ever since 911, terrorism tops the list. We evacuated immediately, running down the stairwell. By the time I got to the bottom, one of our interactive designers, Brandon, announced that it was a 5.8 earthquake centered 50 miles from our office. Thank you Twitter.

Episode two: As the hurricane started to barrel up the East Coast, I scanned the TV stations for any mention of Delaware and the Delmarva Peninsula. I own a old farmhouse about 7 miles inland from Lewes and Rehoboth—both of which were evacuated. Early on I gave up on the Weather Channel or any of the local stations as being too dramatic and sensational. Sitting at home in DC, I was frantically trying to find local data on the area that my farmhouse is located. While that hashtag #DELirene was one source of accurate local information, it still was not giving me the precision I was looking for.

Through one of the blogs, I was able to link to wunderground.com. From there I could get a Google map overlaid with the current weather system updated in realtime. But what was even more interesting to me was the ability to get even more granular. Weather Underground has tapped into private weather stations that are indicated on their maps by a series of icons.

Temperature is indicated by the color and number in the center of the icon, wind direction by the direction of the line coming out of the icon, and wind speed by the number of bars coming out of the the line. Just having this information helped allay my fear by knowing that my house was not being ripped apart by the 90 mph winds that were being talked about on every major network. But the magic does not stop there. By clicking on the icon you can get detailed data on that specific locale that is updated every five minutes. I could see wind speed, the amount of rainfall in the last five minutes, the total for the day, as well as the relative humidity and barometric pressure. This information is presented both in chart form and with all the raw data available.

I confess that there was way more information than I needed but it did have the result of calming my nerves considerably. So here I was, sitting in a house in Takoma Park, that was being battered by the hurricane, and I was able to get a very clear picture of conditions that were presumably far worse 120 miles away.

This is the first time that I have used the internet during natural disasters. It certainly gave me a feel for which platforms were the most effective at delivering different kinds of information. Twitter, for a quick response—containing both man-on-the-ground information and official information from the state (kudos to the official Delaware Twitter feed). Websites, for delivering more detailed data from weather conditions to when I lost power in Delaware to how long it took to get it restored. Oh—and the last mechanism? A call from our friend and gardener, Orlando, to tell us that our house was safe and sound.

YouTube Hangouts On Google+

Last Thursday Google+ rolled out a new feature — sharing videos directly from YouTube onto Hangouts. Google+ users must be thinking “that’s not new!” Yes, you could already share YouTube videos over the Hangouts feature, but you could only do so from your Google+ account once you start a Hangout. According to Brian Glick, YouTube’s product manager, this new option allows you to directly launch a Hangout from YouTube via the “Share” option located under each video. Further, this shortcut makes it easier to share videos and it applies to all videos even live-streamed and rented ones. This feature will help videos become viral a lot quicker and on Google+ with the option to live chat a discussion with those you’re “hanging out” with. It makes me wonder how this will change the way we consume online videos. What do you think? Source

Social Media Finally Meets Golf

This past weekend the big news in golf was that 26-year-old Webb Simpson won his first PGA title at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C. — but that wasn’t the only news. Last year, the Wyndham Championship was known for being the first PGA event that allowed patrons to use their mobile phones on the course, and now this year, it was the first event to incorporate Facebook Places and Foursquare “check-ins.” Tournament attendees unlocked tips, trivia, discounts and even contributed to Wyndham charities by checking in at holes, tents, and other locations throughout the course. As an avid golfer and follower of the sport, I was especially excited about this. Golf has been behind in adapting social media practices simply because of the “no cell phones” policy at most tournaments, but I’m hoping this will continue to change and encourage more spectator interaction at these world-class sporting events. Source

Follow President Obama As He “Checks-in” On Foursquare

As President Obama set off on his three-day bus tour of the Midwest last week, the White House announced that it now has a Foursquare account. Foursquare is a location-based social networking site where users “check-in” to different locations, leave “Tips,” and compete for “Badges,” and “Mayorships.” Users can follow the President as he “checks-in” to various stops on his trip as well as subscribe to his “Tips.” Foursquare is the latest in the White House’s social media push that already includes accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I applaud the administration for fully embracing the power of social media (also check out Brandon’s post on the first Twitter town hall) and I’m quite eager to see what they have up their sleeves for the 2012 campaign. Source

Foursquare Amps Up Lists

Last Monday Foursquare announced the new and improved “Lists” feature or “Tip Lists” which allows you to aggregate your and your friends’ tips, share them with your followers, and follow others’ lists. Similarly functioning like Twitter lists, this option allows tips to be curated according to a specific topic such as “Best Golf Courses on the East Coast.” (I told you I was a diehard golf fan!) This can be a very useful tool for branded pages encouraging more interaction among its followers by giving free advice. I can imagine this feature becoming almost review-like and could potentially be a resource similar to Yelp. One good example of a brand leveraging “Lists” is the Travel Channel and it’s Man v Food Tips. Source

At the end of our fiscal year, I was pleased to give everyone at Grafik including myself, an iPad. At first I was not sure why I really needed one or how I might use it. After all, I have an iPhone and a MacBook Pro. I also have an iMac at my house so I really felt like I had all bases covered. Now I am an iPad convert.

A few months ago, a good friend and colleague, Cathy Austin happened to mention that she was at a TED conference. I had no idea what she was talking about and she reacted in horror when I admitted that I did not know what it was. Cathy gave me the URL with the explicit direction to getting myself educated. I went to the site and was absolutely blown away by what the organization is doing. TED — which is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design is a nonprofit devoted to “Ideas worth spreading.” It is an organization that believes in the power of ideas to change the world, and it acts as a clearinghouse pulling together thinkers, scientists, practitioners, environmentalists, designers, and entertainers from all over the globe.  From the co-founders of Google, to Meg Ryan the actress, to Stefan Sagmeister the designer extraordinaire, their board of advisors reads like a Who’s Who list of everyone important or should I say interesting in the world.

As a TED ingenue, I naively told one of my colleagues that I really wanted to be a speaker at one of the conferences (HAH!) and then proceeded to look at the roster of speakers. Made me look positively bush league. So I lowered my sights and decided that an attainable goal might be to actually attend a conference. HAH again. Not only is the price range a little out of my comfort zone, but they are held all over the world.

Luckily, most of the speeches have been captured in video and are available on their site. And, even better, there is an iPad app I downloaded that can search all the videos by keyword, subject matter or speaker. So far I have watched Mathemagic, where Arthur Benjamin astounds the crowd by computing the square root of five-digit numbers in his head! I have learned how the Stuxnet virus was tracked down and I have seen beautiful photographs of how flowers attract pollinators. Every night my husband and I pause for a half an hour after dinner, and before we scurry away to take care of different tasks, we sit down and watch one or two videos. We’ve learned how linguists are trying to decipher the Indus script and listened to a Yemeni female activist talk about what it is like to be a woman in her country. I have even watched a spot on quantum physics — and enjoyed every minute of it even if I did not understand every second.

So why does my iPad matter? I think it is the intimacy of sitting on a couch with my husband sharing different ideas. I don’t feel like I am sitting at my work computer, and that in itself transforms the experience from workplace learning to recreational learning. TED is interesting enough that we have at least three years of videos we could watch. And the iPad is portable enough that we can continue to share those 20 minutes together even if we are traveling.

So perhaps for me the iPad fills an entertainment space that my laptop or iPhone lacks. Sure I play Angry Birds on my iPhone and both platforms send me way more mail than I would care to receive. But, for me, the iPad is my intelligent recreative device that makes me feel like I am not wasting my time.  I guess it will be the closest that I ever get to being near that TED stage. I can only imagine the creative ways my staff, friends and clients use theirs. Care to share?