Continuing the discussion from “Developing “personal APIs” will be the key to scaling collaboration.”, “Filtering firehoses, embracing constraints and sparking creativity.” and Michael Lewkowitz’s “The real-time web. Game on!” …

Aaron Chua asked: “…filtering is always valuable but does it need to be real time? When does real time make a big difference in the value?”

Data frames future decisions; Realtime data shapes realtime decisions.

We live realtime online and offline lives; realtime data will ultimately drive use cases and business models in mobile, fixed, online and offline environments.

For example, powerful, timely, structured data available in realtime has been the long-lost key to many proposed mobile application products and business models. While the only successful mobile applications using realtime information exchange to date are a) voice and b) text/SMS, key changes in device user interfaces, upgrades in device processing power, faster data transmission speeds over mobile networks and the increasing availability of personalized structured data are starting to provide users and developers a taste of the possibility.

Continuing the thought: Jan Chipchase, The End of Form / The Beginning of Form:

The world around us contains many computationally easy-to-recognize, known-location, pre-defined shapes waiting to be augmented – street signs, street furniture, and yes, advertising hoardings – which is where the fun begins.

… Just as the battle for ‘control of the internet’ centered (for a while) on the consumer’s means of access – the web browser, so the battle for our ear-drums and eye-balls will hone in on the source. The company that provides the primary filter through which you view and experience the world will have incredible amount of power.

Mobile application developers have struggled with wireless telecom operators for years over operators’ tight control of the “deck” of applications on people’s phones; operators built “walled gardens” and controlled the presentation of applications on the limited screen and storage space on mobile devices to attempt to control and monetize a scarce resource. Application developers locked out of the prime deck real estate struggled to survive on “off-deck” mobile business models.

But that’s changing; while the various mobile app stores aren’t entirely open, their popularity is demonstrating that “open beats closed”.

Continuing with Jan:

… But is there sufficient pull for mainstream consumer’s to turn to some form of nearly-always-worn data glasses? Imagine knowing the tax-bracket of everyone around you – drawing on publicly available tax records and the means to identify an individual in near to real time. Imagine this from the point of view of a would-be lover, a salesman, a charity worker. Extrapolate with mash-ups with Facebook profile, knowledge about your last vacation; previous convictions. Now imagine the advantages you get from access or subscriptions to ‘premium channels’ – data only available to the select few: from the realtime cop feed; to the wolfpack view of the city; to real-time, real-space casual encounters.

A generation hooked on real-time data so compelling that heading out on a friday night just ain’t the same without the buzz of a good feed. It’ll never happen? How many times a day do you check your email? Facebook? Your phone? Your twitter stream? People addicted to data? Of course not – it’ll never happen.

How will this change our urban landscape? Advertising hoardings, entire buildings, indeed entire cities that are computationally more or less desirable to augment. It might be the end of form as we know it.

It might very well be the beginning.

As devices, networks, applications and structured data all continue to develop, the failure of current methods for filtering and processing realtime data will become more evident; but problems create opportunities…

@aaronchua, you’ve now been tagged…