I think back to the first time I experienced the internet. It was the early 90’s, I was sitting in a classroom at VCU. The room was full of Macs with, what was at the time, rather large screens. After the basic class intro, I began clicking on the icons on the desktop to see what they would open. I saw Quark Xpress, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and one I didn’t recognize… it was what turned out to be a web browser. It opened what appeared to be a simple document. I thought it was some sort of a text file reader. It had an animated gif on it and that was the subject of the page, the idea of animation on the web. That moment changed my life. I realized that these documents were not originating from the machine at which I was sitting… they were somewhere else. Where? How did they get in front of me?
I knew this was BIG.
It is big. It gets bigger all the time. Not just bigger as in more stuff… bigger as in better. More useful. More interactive.
I love finding new things that make me say “WOW!”. Each time I find the wow, it raises the bar. The next wow must be more useful, easier to use, quick and lastly, it helps to look good.
Today’s wow was found at http://www.animoto.com
Here is an example if what it can do:
<object id=”W473e069e7b6b31d3″ quality=”high” data=”http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/473e069e7b6b31d3″ pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”opaque” height=”250″ width=”432″><param name=”wmode” value=”opaque”><param name=”movie” value=”http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/473e069e7b6b31d3″><param name=”scaleMode” value=”showAll”><param name=”allowNetworking” value=”all”><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always”><param name=”flashvars” value=””></object>
There are technical boundaries with any media. I expect the technical boundaries on the web to be hurdled in short time… sure there will be more, hurdle those too. The only real boundaries are the ideas. These are not an exact science. These are the domain of whatcanbe.
