Most web sites and applications were conceived in a world that positioned site visitors as “users sitting at a static device with a mouse and a keyboard”. How wrong is that assumption nowadays and how quickly has the transition occurred. It’s the norm now to use touch devices in every setting, place and environment.

The growth in portable touch usage linked with the growth in online booking is leaving huge gaps in the market. Most standard web-site are mostly unreadable on smartphone and the applications on those sites are even worse making the user journey impossible to complete.

This represents lost revenue, wasted advertising spend and negative engagement (push). All the things the digital channel was developed to defeat. Time to get on the mobile drive, if you need help on your web site and strategy then start off talking to our parent company, Connected, who’ve been developing in this space for 3 years.

If you specifically have online booking on the agenda then speak to us; either to migrate your existing online booking or develop a nice new shiny one. No obligation. Just a chat to get us started.

If you’re not thinking mobile you’re probably in trouble … do you know what percentage of visitors to your site use smartphones and tablets?

I can’t help think that as Google struggle to move away from a search advertising model they run the risk of losing the very high adoption rates they historically have achieved. Maybe even leaving space for new and innovative products to fill the gaps. I also suggest it’s not good for the image of Google providing everything for free which may hurt the brand.

I’m a huge Google user and also use Sparrow, which they acquired back in the summer, so I’m not sure where that leaves me longer term.

or alternatively, as a SlideRocket presentation:

or, finally, as a SlideShare presentation:

It’s been a pretty arduous task getting these published cleanly, we needed to share a small demonstration presentation across the web, it was none too heavy, 5 pages but we had some specific needs.

Didn’t think this would be too difficult but it is not as simple as you’d have hoped. The idea was simple, a short introduction slideshow that could be shown on mobile/tablet devices and then at the end it would jump off to a specific web address so the live demo could start in earnest. We also had some nice to have features that would enhance the experience. The brief then:

• Can translate Mac Keynote presentations
• Will host a basic, non-animated, slideshow
• Deliver neatly and simply on a IOS device, preferably in portrait mode (the subsequent demo uses portrait)
• Ability to point our short URL (B00k.com) directly to the presentation
• Make clickable areas on a slide so it can jump off to a web address

Everyone has heard of Slideshare, it pretty much owns this space. Excellent, sorted. Maybe not, 23hrs after uploading the first presentation and it’s still not finished processing a poxy 5-slide presentation. FFS, we can’t wait days in between changes as we plan to tailor these presentations to individual clients. (Note: there seems to be a problem uploading Keynote stuff, when I switched to ppt format the upload was quick and easy, pah!)

Time to see what else is out there? In a world filled with post-it note sized business plans, slide-decks and elevator pitches surely there must be a plethora of choices. Surely?

SpeakerDeck

Nice, looks good and keeps it simple. Fast account creation and really fast upload and creation of presentations but is critically lacking in a few areas. The mobile web-site is awful, too small, unreadable and unusable. Quite clearly Speakerdeck was not designed for a world that includes mobile or tablet, this seems a major oversight. Also, you have to upload PDF and whilst that is ok it’s never going to be able to support proper presentations longer term. In fact, it closer resembles a simple PDF publication website. Finally, it doesn’t support clickable areas so we can’t easily spring-off onto the demonstration site. Fail.

Projeqt

“Dynamic presentations for a real world” loudly proclaims the tag line. Does it work on a mobile? No, not properly, no usable portrait mode, no zooming using pinch and the slides are tiny, unreadable thumbnails. Didn’t even bother signing in so maybe I’ve done it a dis-service so happy to be corrected. Hmmm, this is proving to be a tricky proposition. It did look very pretty though.

Maybe it’s time to go and build my own; they (whoever they are) do say that great inventions are created from frustrations!

Note and Point

Now this looks better; “Killer Slide Decks”, it even mentions Keynote on the home page. Maybe not, it’s just a gallery site with links to, yup, Slideshare.net or lets you load a PDF. In reflection is more a curated gallery of “killer slide decks” rather than a way to host and present them.

Reel

Loving the simplicity of this and the best of the bunch so far. No native support for Keynote so I need to upload the PDF and lose the clickability at the end of the presentation. Mobile is what we’re after here and this is much better than than what we’ve seen so far. There’s not support for touch so we’re back to pressing arrows or slides to go backwards and forwards and the slides are a little small to be readable but we pinch or double tap to get the right size.

So far, Reel is sitting in pole position and with Slideshare.net now up to 25hrs running and still not published my slide-deck it’s getting my vote; the first viable alternative.

Slideboom

Another one that only supports Powerpoint; nothing wrong I suppose with that but (using a huge generalisation) with most creative and inventive type favouring the fruit-based platform it seems an omission – or maybe an opportunity? Thinking I’ve short-changed the team at Slideboom I spend 10 mins looking around the presentations which seem ok but then get nail the coffin shut when trying it on both a mobile and a tablet. Bloody awful sums up the experience. Unreadable pages, not even a vague nod towards mobile or tablet, shocking. “Professional Grade Solutions” – but only it you don’t use tablets or mobile devices. That’s it, I’ve decided I’m going to create a new start-up to fix this problem. Grrrr!

On this journey I’ve come across a good many recommendations and suggestions to use services and apps that just don’t exist anymore. Either the service shuts down or is bought. I’m not sure if this is an indicator of the demand for such services or more a function that they often seem to be secondary offerings by software development houses.

Either way, if the service is just a publishing house then I’m not stuck in the same way as we are with, say, Linkedin or Facebook in terms of emotional and time investment but its still a major consideration if you ran a large library of presentations.

SlideRocket

An old friend, in 2007 we moved from Microsoft Exchange Server / Outlook to Google Apps and SlideRocket was chosen to replace the (at the time) heavy dependance on Powerpoint and, to be honest, it really wasn’t good enough as well as mullering most of our existing presentations (we named it SlideFockit for a while). Time has move on and the product seems really rather good, although we moved to using Apple’s Keynote so it sort of fell out of favour. Re-acquainting myself with SlideRocket took a few minutes, it seems – if anything – to have moved to being a much closer clone of Powerpoint.

My current Google Apps account got me logged in in no time and uploading was really quick. The output also worked really well on mobile and touch devices and support embedding (as above). The only downsides was its lack of attention to the original layout in terms of fonts and layers, I had to spend a few minutes changing font sizes and promoting/demoting layers to make the presentation render as intended.

In summary

SlideRocket and SlideShare then take the honours from the (small) selection above but what seems to be clear is that the presentation world works better when starting with Powerpoint rather than Keynote. I can’t help thinking that there is a market for a simple slide deck that support mobiles and external links; it just feels a nice niche solution and must be a web app rather than a dedicated app as you’d want your slide-deck to go viral and that really only works when web hosted.

Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image.

It’s a pretty exciting time at the moment – the wizard’s sleeve is at full stretch – as some of the staffers would say.

*Note: the gratuitous use of under construction. Not so common now, but a hat tip to the incomplete web of the late 1990s.

Outside of general tidy-up there are some major enhancements to the product. We’ve listened to our clients and tried to build upon the strengths and also address some of the weaknesses. Online Booking is going to become easier, faster and so much better than before.

All clients will be automatically updated as part of their contracts in early 2013. Beta clients will get this a little earlier. As v2.1 is now well into production we’re assembling the list for v2.2 so this is a good time for you to add to the wish list. So what have we planned for delivery?

Embracing Facebook

Specifically targeted at the 16 to 21 yr old marketplace who regard FB as the web and, often, don’t have an active email address. To address of number of critical opportunities; a) simplified login process to encourage your customers to login using Facebook, b) sharing of online booking on the customers’ walls and c) use of mobile which, usually, stays permanently logged-in. 25% of first-time web accesses now come from mobile devices.

Improved Tablet Support

New, different sized and shaped tablets are popping up all over the place. v2.1 will better deal with the differences in sizes, resolution, aspect ratio and (most importantly) orientation.

Maps, Navigation & Directions

Targeted for mobile devices but available across all platforms we’ll see improved mapping support (including IOS 6), navigation and web-base mapping.

Improved Scaling

How we use the Amazon cloud has changed over the last year and we’ll be adapting it further to include automated scaling and faster delivery of content.

Design, UX  & UI

We’ve already won plaudits and praise for the clean design and simple UI so we’re not messing with a good formula but we are tidying up some of the oddities and inconsistencies. More of a tidy-up than a make-over.

Support

Unchanged. Note that iPad 1 and iPhone 3 will not be supported in the design changes and will be phase out by the end of 2013.

As a web-app developer we are less reliant on Apple than if we built native versions as we rely on the browser core functions and can write-around the problems, not something that you can do easily in a native application. Having said that, we still need to operate an Officially Supported Platforms list for Apple products as this is what we test and validate against.

Below is the current compatibility list for all current Apple-supported portable products for myBookingWizard v2.0.

iPad Retina

Both versions (30 pin and Lightning). Fully supported in portrait mode, optimised for the retina screen (2048×1536). Landscape mode supported but not optimised.

iPad 2 & Mini

Fully supported in portrait mode, optimised for the screen (1024×768). Landscape mode supported but not optimised.

iPhone 5

Fully supported in portrait mode but not optimised for the larger (1136×640) screen. Landscape mode supported but not optimised.

iPhone 4/4S

Fully supported in portrait mode and optimised for the (960×640) screen. Landscape mode supported but not optimised.

iPhone 3S

Fully supported in portrait mode and optimised for the screen. Landscape mode supported but not optimised. Must be running

Discontinued equipment

Apple no longer support older equipment including the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch from 3rd generation backwards. Depressingly, they also no longer support the iPad 1 as a current product as that got it’s last update back in May to IOS5.1. As a web-app myBookingWizard will continue to support iPad 1 and iPhone 3G at least until the summer of 2013, after which the longer-term support plan will be reviewed.

It’s important to note that an unsupported device doesn’t necessarily not function. In fact, it frequently does work but some functions may be limited by partial support. Typically, Javascript support is poor in IOS4.x so some advanced functions do not work as intended. IOS 5 and 6 are fully supported.

Here is a good history of IOS supported devices.

myBookingWizard v2.1

This is due to full release in January 2013 and has the same support plan as the current (v2.0) version.

• Removal or reduction of upfront hardware costs of deployment
• Scaleability, both upwards and downwards, based on demand
• Simpler sizing and capacity planning
• Tick-box management of everything from backup to content delivery
• Reduced complexity of de-commissioning and porting
• Ease of learning, the curve is flatter and less skilled than traditional hosting methods

So it’s not just about the cost of deploying traditional applications and frameworks, it gives smaller companies access to the kind of computing power that wasn’t commercially available or viable just a few years ago. Every day, a start-up called the Climate Corporation performs over 10,000 simulations of the next two years’ weather for more than one million locations in the United States. It then combines that with data on root structure and soil porosity to write crop insurance for thousands of farmers.

This is one of a thousand examples of new start-ups that carries out computing tasks that a decade ago would have been impossible without a major investment in computers. Most, however, own little besides a few laptops.

Thousands of other companies now rent data storage and computer server time from Amazon, through its Amazon Web Services division, for what they say is a fraction of the cost of owning and running their own. We have something rather similar with myBookingWizard.com, the application service is hosted using a range of Amazon Web Services and although it can deal with up to 1,000,000 concurrent booking requests the service spends much of it’s time in an idle state burning little in the way of cost and virtually zero management effort.

Launched almost exactly ten years ago, AWS now comprises seven major data center complexes across three continents, serving billions of pageviews per day (the sort of scale that, unfortunately, becomes most obvious when one of these “Availability Zones” goes down). But what’s most interesting is the company’s continued ambitions. AWS is estimated to bring in $1 billion every year, and the division’s head, Andrew Jassy, says he expects it to grow by a factor of ten. The AWS website currently lists more than 600 job openings, giving some idea of the growth that Amazon is planning in just the immediate future, with its size far outstripping competitors such as Microsoft’s Windows Azure and Google’s nascent Cloud Storage and Compute Engine.

Related articles

• Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing
• Amazon Web Services: Big, getting bigger
• NASA Use Amazon Web Services
• Amazon Launches Low-Cost Glacier Cloud Storage [Updates]
• Instant expert – Cloud computing
• A Quantitative Comparison of Rackspace and Amazon Cloud Storage Solutions

I imagine you will be aware of NASA’s recent extraordinary success of landing Curiosity on the service of Mars. They knew that they were going to have huge global demand on their web services at the time of Curiosity’s landing, as people clamour for videos and updates on how Curiosity was doing.

So in a matter of 3 weeks NASA set up a large robust architecture to deliver video from Mars to the whole world. Here is the article.

Related articles

• How Amazon Web Services Helps NASA’s Curiosity Rover Share Mars With The World
• Cloud in action, in a cool way: NASA uses Amazon to stream Mars video
• Rover Curiosity Streams Live from Planet Mars with Adobe Media Server and AWS
• Going to Mars With Amazon Web Services

Customers are human so therefore capable of making mistakes and illogical reasoning.

We should all be treating customers with respect and we certainly should listen to them but we need to do so with an eye on the bigger picture. Famously quoted, Henry Ford supposedly said something like, “If I listened to my customers, I’d have built a faster horse.”  Quoting Hank is usually used as a club to bludgeon a discussion about doing customer research or researching and falls deep in the zone of HiPPOs which, anyone who knows us, is our pet hate.

Customers should be used in a feedback loop that continually circles for mutual benefit. We once had a sales guy working here, quite senior, and his answer to sales was to simply provide exactly what the customer wanted … or more accurately, exactly what the customer told us he or she wanted. Sounded great on the surface but frequently we shipped half-assed products, late, to customers with changing minds. Surprisingly, this approach didn’t generate great sales figures. Not surprisingly, we created a group of unhappy customers that didn’t stay with us and didn’t really get the best from us. We don’t do that anymore and we’re much richer for the experience.

The lessons? Listen, listen really hard and get to the bottom of what customers really want, not what they say they want. Then spend the right amount of time kicking around solutions, do this stage properly and you’ve got a good chance of over-delivering. The relationships you have will also be smoother, mutualised and long-term.

Every cloud has a silver lining though so it’s a great excuse to go over Bradley Wiggins (Wiggo) Tour de France GC win on Sunday (Saturday if you are slightly pedant). The first Brit to win the TdF in it’s 100+ year history, he was so dominating he held the Yellow Jersey from day 2 all the way to the end and smashed the competition, grinding them into a fine paste. He’s truly one of our outstanding athletes but what really makes it for me is the absence of ego. He conducted a fantastic interview on Saturday evening where he really realised what he had achieved. Well worth watching, I can’t embed it here due to ITV so you’ll need to go to the ITV site and click on “Wiggins: It’s just incredible”.

Want to read more? Go visit his Wiki page.