Trying to assess Google+ (G+) in relation to some of its other more popular (currently anyways) predecessors. I sense that there is an element of time that pervades each one of the networks: both immediate and distant. I liken Facebook to your past, Twitter to your present and Google+ to your future. We connect with our past on fB through high school BFFs, college sisters for life and Ex-es that should have probably stayed in the past (some sort of self-gratification to show them what they missed out on). We tweet to make sure we still have a pulse—a digital pulse that is. We want to know that people are listening and that we are plugged in to what is cutting edge. Google+ has a super opportunity to allow its users to dream, create and then experience their own future all in the context of the social media realm.

I spent the a few hours this evening discussing the better parts of google+ with my brother. It didn’t take much convincing to get him excited to participate. He clued me into the communications challenge that must be going on for G+s audience: user are experiencing this G+ through the same lens that they that they use for other social networking sites. G+ can’t be appreciated if experienced though the perspective of fB or Twitter. Users must rid their minds of any preconceived notions of how networks are suppose to operate and simply embrace it and learn. 

For google+ to cross the chasm of consistent usage from early adopters to the masses it will have to communicate its attribute rich benefits to the masses over its current feature-based approach. Those that have tried the migration from fB to G+ are in search for the same connections and possibly a better experience (similar, but better) to what it is they are experiencing with their “friends” on fB. They are astonished at the idea that G+ can actually help them create friends, become an online expert in their life’s passions, experience the world around them in a new way and connect with people that they could only once admire from a far. It is similar to the early days of MySpace. Before the perverts, the scammers and the just plain weirdos forced user to privatize pages and make visibility options to only those that users knew in the real world. (As if knowing folks in the physical realm somehow precluded these same folks from being total whack-jobs…) 

Google+ is the next frontier. It is place where users can build a community of like-minded individuals and follow them in more depth than can typically happen in 140 characters. Essentially, people start to become much more interesting and interested… 

If there is anything that I have missed in this assessment, would you please offer me some feedback?

-Mindscion

Conception!!!

The rumored features of the iPhone 5 are so futuristic that it may have made the grade for the Droid and other mobile systems.

Discovered this company poised in building buzz, a brand and a better way to dream; i simply smiled.  Lytro reminded me a bit of Apple circa 1984.  Review the story they tell, watch there leads and let me know if you aren’t left smiling at the end.  

“The only camera that captures life in living pictures.”  If a picture is worth a thousand words, what happens when you can shift, morph, rotate and otherwise defy 2D?  The camera has entirely shifted the paradigm for all of us who love looking behind the moment and honoring that single experience for what and whatever it is.   Camera 3.0. Actually, not certain that I would call it a camera any longer as it is so much more advanced.  A camera in my mind denotes focusing— this is everything but.  One more amazing feature, it goes from off to ready to capture in less than 1 second.  Certainly you can capture any image that may only last for a second such as like the Epiphany of Jesus.

I could see a million and one campaigns that were and still are running through my head when I think of this brand and product.  

Price Point: Just below that of the iPad 2.  
Target: If exceptional photo quality - photographers. If good - the masses. 

Is anyone aware of software applications currently under development to support the Lytro?  Can the Light Field Technology be fit and used within other devices such as our phones?  

Implications for people’s lives: you get to capture, embrace and exist in the moment.

Implications for the industry: Expect the look and feel of “cameras” of the future to be decidedly different than the 35mm looking SLR bodies of the past.  Also, with a little tweaking, one image can be entirely in focus from front to back.

Implication for Lytro: Lytro must everything right.  Canon, Fuji, Nikon and Minolta watch out!

Naturally, I wondered… What happens to the great photographers of our time if Lytro can make even the most novice of us all into the likes of +Trey Ratcliff?
What will human kind now capture?

-Mindscion