• by David L. Smith , May 2, 2003

Sometimes it is fun to get past the day-to-day problems and think about the future. I find that with E3 coming up, the video game business has been front and center for us. Software development in general and the Web specifically has benefited from the leading edge development that goes on in the video and PC game marketplace. On-screen games and applets that were fun to play with just a few years ago turned out to be the precursors of today's rich media like EyeBlaster.

Based on what I see today, and with the help of the perspective of my in-house researcher (my 13 year old son Dale), it appears that a whole new wave of customization is going to be available "real soon now". In Stewart Brand's seminal book, The Media Lab, he talked about Nicholas Negroponte's vision of the information page of the future. (Neither one knew the Web was coming, they just knew that somehow we would get there). This page is not unlike what we can get today from My Yahoo, although there is so much more that can be done. For example, wouldn't it be nice if the weather section of My Yahoo was tied into your Outlook, and knew that you were traveling to Arizona this weekend? In addition to your local weather, it would tell you about the Arizona weather so that you would know to get out your short sleeve shirts that have been sitting in the back of your closet all winter.

I believe that this wave of customization will be so engaging that it will, once again, give another reason for individuals to spend even more time on the Web.

Customization started out with the screen saver. It was really cool when we got to the point where we could have a screen saver on our computer that differentiated our look when we were away from our desks. That quickly morphed into the custom desktop itself, where almost any content could become your desktop background. Skins became big in everything from MP3 players to IM. Now, the video game industry is doing more and more relative to the next step in customization.

For example, in the game Animal Crossing for the Gamecube, you can create whatever kind of clothing you want. In Elder Scrolls III: Morrowwind for the Xbox and PC, you can literally choose what your person wants to look like. You can take a picture of yourself and use that image in games like Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament as your face. You can download skins for certain games like The Sims (for the PC, not PlayStation2) and use them on your characters. You can create whatever type of skin you want in The Sims and put it in the game.

So it seems like only a matter of time that this technology will be available on the Internet. We will not only have the ability to customize our Web pages from a graphic standpoint, (giving the Web developers a whole new challenge), we will be able to bring in data from other sources like our calendar, cell phone etc. and have it impact our default page. Imagine the utility of having the key aspects of your Outlook main page be on your default browser. Wouldn't you spend more time with your browser as your default screen? In addition, html email could take another leap if our own personal avatars carried the message, an extension of both the video games development and what goes on with IM already.

One thing we can be sure of, the Interactive medium will continue to evolve. I can't wait to see what's next.

David L. Smith is President and CEO of Mediasmith, Inc. Dale Smith is his chief researcher in areas concerning next generation computing and Web interface.