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Adobe's CTO Pitches 'Apps Near You' Concept
angry tapir writes "Next-generation applications will be location-specific, offering users information and features related to where they are at any given moment, Adobe Systems CTO Kevin Lynch, said at the Open Mobile Summit conference. 'Apps near you,' as he called the idea, would pop up on mobile screens when a user is close to a specific location. Lynch showed the example of someone with a Samsung tablet visiting a museum and being able to download a guide application."
Whilst there are useful examples for local apps, the most common thing is going to be advertising brochures.
I can easily imagine an example of someone with a Samsung tablet visiting a museum and being able to download a 'guide' application, despite the fact that the museum doesn't actually offer one.
I refuse to use
From flash ads on browsers, Adobe offers a vision of you walking and an ad ringing you every 50 ft.
Thank you Adobe for this great IT innovation. Now we have to wait for a another smart Russian to offer tools to remove your pre installed "Kevin"ware from our telco locked phones.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who misread Adobe as Apple.
How about they just focus for a little while on flashplayer-that-doesn't-suck.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
It's interesting to me how much location-aware and social are being pushed out as features for users. Interesting in that it seems to me like very little value is being created for the user. Maybe it's just me, but social and locatioan aware stuff seems so lacking in innovation despite being billed as such. I'm honestly not sure why I should +1 something for Google, or "Like" something for Facebook, or "check in" to foursquare. And I feel like it's hurting real innovation. As an example: I've been waiting for Google Maps to be able to save the route I chose on the desktop Maps and sync it with Android for two years-ish, but with every update all I see is "new Latitude features!" And this is far from just a Google thing, I'm sure someone could find examples of Apple/MS/Facebook/HP/Whoever doing the same things.
So, I dunno. Is this just clueless middle/upper managment seeing dollar signs in buzzwords? Will this social/location bubble pop like the tech bubble did? Or am I just not seeing the innovation happening behind, or in spite of, the hype?
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
"Will be possible soon", TFA says. How is any of this not possible now? Local wi-fi can happily direct you to an internal web page for app download. Wifi/BT signal strength can determine position within the given building/area.
The entire article reads like something a visionary might have said a few decades ago. Saying it today, just shows you don't actually have anything interesting to talk about.
The BBC news website really went downhill when it was no longer possible to tell it where you were.
When I'm at work it's now convinced I live in the US. Even on the UK specific page it now tells me when the page was last updated in ET time.
I also get a "US view" of the world on the front page which is less than ideal.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
We found that, for reasons we just can't wrap our heads around, the phrase "Gilded Benthamite labyrinth from which there is no waking" just didn't resonate with the focus groups... After that setback, we had to go with "social". Only losers with no friends can be against "social".
Awesome, sounds like a great idea. So does country recognition for browsers... until you are in a country whose language still gives you headaches. You might be surprised at how very unhelpful it is to someone struggling with the language to have everything popping up in Czech. Perhaps a flag to turn this off? Like google's secretive /ncr, only one that works a little more globally? I have no problem ignoring the ads in any language, but when shotwell tries to log me into facebook, I don't want the username/password prompt in Czech. Prosím? Maybe there's a case where I might fscking want to know what cars a company offers, so that when I get home I can buy one... instead of automatically being offered what is for sale in the city I happen to be logging in from. No?
I remeber travelling to Spain last year and visiting a historic site which had posters at the entrance to download an app through wifi which was a virtual tourguide, qavailable in various languages etc...
The location-based push of data would be bad enough, but executable code is very bad. Human psychology says that people will not want to "miss out" on whatever is available and will turn off validation and other inhibitors to access these things.
Before long, rogue "location pushers" will be out there pushing things to devices and people will simply accept them to their doom.
It won't matter how many discussions slashdot and similar groups will have on the subject. It is demonstrably true that people will ignore and bypass any warnings presenting to get at anything they want regardless of how stupid it is. People do stupid things all the time for lots of reasons. This idea from Adobe is a dangerous one that can and will exploit more human stupidity.
And let's not forget that to make this happen, some sort of client or modification to the OS of various devices will have to be installed to make it possible. I guess Adobe and all simply haven't learned their lessons after all these years.