Macadamian Blog

[CEO Insight] WebRTC: Why You Should Care

For the past several months the Macadamian team has been busy travelling around the world to stay on top of all the coolest new technologies. I can tell you from what we’ve seen and heard that Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is the hot topic that has people talking.

You probably know WebRTC enables instant video, voice and text communications, as well as screen-sharing, between Internet browsers – without the trouble of proprietary software plug-ins. This is great news for Macadamian and anyone else like us who’s in the business of building amazing customer experiences. I believe WebRTC has the X-factor that’s going to shake things up. It’s going to humanize Web software and enrich the nature of interactions between people online and on mobile. 

(Left to right) Hugh Finnan, director of product management, Google Chrome, and Todd Simpson, chief of innovation, Mozilla, demo the first WebRTC video chat between Firefox and Chrome. Watch the video.

We are much more visual than we think. Before I expand on that thought let’s consider the 7%-38%-55% rule. Back in the late ‘60s a smart guy named Albert Mehrabian discovered that only 7% of people’s perceptions of you are based on the actual words you speak. The other 93% of people’s perceptions of you are formed from your tone of voice (38%) and body language (55%).

Why is this important and what’s in it for you?

WebRTC is all about creating more meaningful and authentic experiences. Since experiences are about feeding input to our senses, visual interaction potential is about to be unleashed with the accessibility of WebRTC. It’s inspiring a culture shift where people connect easily, spontaneously and naturally, and free of barriers, in ways we never dreamed. Imagine consumers browsing your company’s website and activating instant chats with you or your staff. The best customer experiences will result from your ability to convey awesome verbal and – you guessed it – non-verbal communications, especially in light of the live video chat capabilities of WebRTC.

The bottom line for businesses is that this is a chance to build stronger relationships with customers and gain an advantage in today’s competitive marketplace.

If you happen to be in Ottawa on May 23, we’re hosting an event in collaboration with the Ottawa Product Management Association titled, WebRTC: Transforming Enterprise Communication. I encourage you to learn more and register at www.WebRTCOttawa.com.

It’s going to be very interesting to see how WebRTC pans out in the years to come. One thing is for sure: you can count on Macadamian being in the know and ready to offer insights on this innovation.

Here are some great articles and links on WebRTC along with a story describing Mehrabian’s study:

• WebRTC - official website
• WebRTC Conference & Expo, June 25-27, 2013
• Businesses need to explore Firefox, Chrome's WebRTC to bolster services and cut costs
•  5 Threats that Could Derail WebRTC
•  A wakeup call for start-ups: WebRTC video built into the Web
• WebRTC, Online Code Editor Team Up for Real-Time Coding
•  Macadamian WebRTC Media Release
•  Macadamian May 23 Event Registration in Ottawa - WebRTC: Transforming Enterprise Communications
• Psychology Today - Is Nonverbal Communication a Numbers Game?

Name that App

Let’s play a game: I took screenshots of some apps on my phone and I removed pretty much all the content and other identifying marks. Can you still identify the apps?

App A

App B

App C

App D

Did you guess? Here’s the answer in case you didn’t:

Evernote

Facebook

Twitter

Yelp

All those screenshots were taken on iOS. In this familiar, consistent environment, the 4 applications are easily recognizable as their own individual brands.

What happens to that brand identity when you start moving the applications to different platforms? What do you preserve?

Let’s see:

BB10

Web version

Windows 8 Version

Android

From those screengrabs, we can see that the Twitter look and feel is very consistent between the web version, the iOS version and the Blackberry 10 version. When we move to the Android and Windows Phone 8, the choice was made to move closer to the platform look and feel and a little further away from the twitter look and feel.

When you choose to do that, You have to use a more subtle way to express your branding. You have to be consistent with your color schemes, typography, icons and hopefully, you can squeeze your logo in there. But is that enough?

Looking at the Android and Windows Phone 8 applications, would they still be as recognizable if I went into photoshop and did the same thing to them that I did to the iOS app?

Why did they choose to stick to their iOS branding for BB10 but not for WP8 and Android? Is it because the platform is so new? Is it because Android users get upset when you give them an app that looks like an iOS app?

[VIDEO] Electronic Healthcare Records - Vitera Intergy Solution

Vitera Intergy is an iPad based electronic health record application that enables physicians to spend more time on patient care and less on paperwork by enabling medical staff to access patient information throughout the course of their day without being tied to a desktop. The mobile version of Intergy transforms the desktop experience in to an intuitive, interactive, easy to use application with the same functionality as the desktop version without the complexity.

Macadamian’s Second Annual MacHack a great success!

This past weekend Macadamian held its second annual MacHack competition. MacHack is a competition designed to challenge Macadamian employees to produce a quality application in just 24 hours.  It's open to everyone who wants to participate including full time or part time staff, coop students and contractors from all four of Macadamian's global offices.

After 24 hours of nonstop coding and designing some amazing applications were created.

Others

Macadamian’s Second Annual MacHack

No boring training days here...

We're currently ramping up for the second annual MacHack, our intense 24-hour application development marathon. It's a great way for us to have fun and stay current on the latest development and design techniques and trends. This year a total of 60 Macadamian staff members are participating simultaneously from our four global offices located in Gatineau, California's Silicon Valley, Yerevan in Armenia and Cluj-Napoca in Romania. The event kicks off Saturday, April 13 at 8 a.m. ET.

Follow us on Twitter  to get live updates as our teams dream up, demo and deliver a slick pack of drool-worthy apps -- from scratch, in just 24 hours. Each product must be themed on at least one of these categories: BlackBerry 10, big data and the cloud. All the apps are judged and winners get some cool prizes. We'll be tweeting with the hashtag #MacHack.

Tell us what kind of apps you'd like to see!