At the left you can see the exclusive screenshot of Google Presentations which CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt announced at Web 2.0 Expo today and about which virtually everyone else has already blogged (I was being social and having fun and just got back to my hotel).

In keeping with Google’s minimalistic approach to design that is "clean" and "ensures fast loading",  Google has opted to go with a white-on-white theme with no controls or other elements to slow presentation parsing via the Internets.

(That blank-n-fake screenshot is just hilarious Borsch and you’ve just proved the point as to why there are no technoweenie, propellerhead or geek comedians).

All kidding aside, it saddens me that Google focuses almost solely on keystrokes vs. brushstrokes (a focus on the technical function of the software over form and the user interface). I use several of Google’s services (Gmail, Analytics, Calendar, Doc’s & Spreadsheets, AdSense) but am consistently stunned by how well the software works, is usually blazingly fast and obviously scales…but how Google designs like a blind architect born without arms.

Like most software engineers I know and have worked with in past lives, these engineers are justified in the knowledge that great software wouldn’t exist without their expertise and engineering acumen. A user interface that’s beautiful and engaging? It’s usually an afterthought and the last thing seriously considered or where energy is focused.  In addition, the brushstroke folks who DO build what all customers see and use get short shrift from the engineers as their effete and girly skills are seen to add little value compared to the awesomeness and God-like qualities of a talented software engineer. 

No question that simplicity and fast rendering is key in an Internet age and Google has stated publicly many times that speed is their #1 goal.  But gradients, color and most pattern doesn’t take anymore time to load than black and white or that God-awful pale blue they use everywhere. Perhaps the absolute necessity and intrinsic value of design will rub off on Dr. Eric Schmidt as he’s exposed to Apple as a board member since no one does it better than Apple.

Tens of millions of Mac OS X users would agree — most of whom don’t even realize that the elegant, beautiful and engaging user interface they’re using sits on top of an operating system (BSD unix) formerly the exclusive playground of geeks.

Today was a busy day with a few good sessions and personal, lengthy meetings (with nothing I can disclose at this time) and I wanted to jot down some thoughts before heading to an event this evening.

The image at the bottom left is a crowd shot of the exhibit hall this evening. It was SO PACKED you could hardly move, let alone talk to anyone at booths. What a home run for CMP Media, O’Reilly, the exhibitors and attendees. The human connections made at venues like this is where good stuff happens and I was amused that CMP had to announce the show closing not once…not twice…but three times and people kept on talking with one another. You could tell people were hungry for more time on the exhibit floor.

My exposure tonight was cursory and I’m planning more in-depth booth discussions tomorrow. But I was impressed with four vendors:

1) Curl: Web services (e.g., widgets, gadgets) are the lifeblood of composite applications. Their value proposition in a nutshell is, “With Curl, developers can implement a new class of enterprise-grade, complex Web-based applications that cannot easily be developed with other RIA technologies. Additionally, corporations with legacy client-server applications can move to Web-based delivery, increasing reach and reducing cost.” They’ve got a huge opportunity with both new delivery and, most importantly, to repurpose existing datasets and application functionality. This re-launch in North America is going to be really interesting to watch.

2) Viddler: Happened to by the Long Tail pavilion and stopped by a laptop showing a video. My instant thought was, “Oh….yet another video site” until a guy asked me if I was interested to learn about Viddler. He proceeded to show me several of their competitive differentiators and here’s ONE to whet your appetite: at any point in a video, you can add a tag and select an embed code.  The kicker? While YouTube and others allow you to embed an entire video on your site, Viddler allows you then to embed the video but it starts from that point in the video!

You can also set multiple points and, for example, be able to have navigation links on the page where the video is displayed for people to immediately go those various points in the video. I’m NOT doing this justice…but this is very cool and if I was delivering video content other than Mentos shooting Diet Coke high in the air…I’d use these guys.

3) Egnyte: is a collaboration and sharing application that I happened to be standing by talking to someone else. While I stood watching them, I was stunned by how they actually do what they describe, “Egnyte delivers a web based application that uniquely combines sharing, automatic organization and a powerful search capability. Use Egnyte to store and organize your documents, emails, IM and to share this with others.“

4) Yugma: These guys were my client in 2006 and I am so pleased that they’re here *and* that they’re getting so much traffic. They did something pretty fun in that they have a schedule up in their booth calling it Stage 2 (as in another stage besides their booth stage) and others who didn’t come to the Expo are delivering content, via Yugma, during the event! Clever and a great showcase for their technology.

As I’ve studied the shifts occurring due to our increasingly connected world, I’m primarily focused on disruption, removal of inefficiencies and, most importantly, on new ways to create and innovate.

Of the 90 or so thought leaders whom I read daily in my news aggregator, one such group of thinkers is at Futuretext led by founder, Ajit Joakar. On April 5th, they’d pointed to a McKinsey and Co. brief report online entitled, “How
Businesses are Using Web 2.0. A Global Survey” and I flagged the article…which I just got to reading this morning. I’d heartily recommend you register and read it (free reg) or subscribe to the entire McKinsey Quarterly site ($150 per year).

But in my typical parallel thinking and associative neural pathway adventures (i.e., Attention Deficit (ADD)), I saw a link to, “Creation nets: Getting the most from open innovation“. Reading it I had an “Aha!…I’ve read this before” moment and it led me to this post from May of last year by John Hagel on Edge Perspectives…one of the thought leaders I follow.

In that post is a link to a working paper (PDF) entitled “Creation Nets”. Penned by John Hagel and John Seely Brown, it will give you a solid understanding of the same themes running through Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and one of my favorites A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Though the term “creation nets” hasn’t really become the meme that people point to, I love it. Why? Because creativity most often comes from careful analysis coupled with flashes of brilliance, the taking of risks, or having something completely unexpected or accidental inform or guide the outcome.

From the post by Hagel:  There’s a lot of talk about product innovation and there is some attention to process innovation and business model innovation.  But most executives do not fully understand the institutional innovation that explains the emergence and growth of creation nets.  We hope that our article will make a contribution to building that understanding. As usual, we have developed a more detailed working paper (PDF) that amplifies the themes introduced in the article.

What are the implications of this for you and why should you care?

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