As my focus has shifted from Marketing to User Experience Design over the last year, so too have my needs for a personal website.  Ergo, I'm currently working on putting together my new home on the web, NewmanUX.com.  When that site is done, this site will cease to exist.
In the meantime, though, why not follow me on Twitter to get the latest and greatest?

Firstly, I apologize for the protracted downtime of my site... For all it's strengths - power, extensibility, etc. - Drupal is inherently weakened by it's reliance on its reliance on plug-ins (modules) to provide many major features.  Something had gone wonky with one of my plug-ins, causing the entire site to crash.  I've gotten it resolved now, but I'll probably be looking to migrate to a different platform in the near future.

Secondly, I apologize for the lack of updates.  I took a full-time position with Wolfram Research during the month of March as a User Experience Designer, and it's been a whirlwind two months.  When things settle down a bit, I do intend to pick back up with my personal blogging, but in the meantime, please enjoy my tweets.

Many, many pundits have predicted that this will be the year that location-based apps (and, implicitly, location-based marketing) will hit the mainstream. It's understandable to see why they would think that - people are sharing more and more information on Facebook & Twitter, GPS-enabled smartphones are becoming nearly ubiquitous, and popular location-based games Foursquare and Gowalla are rapidly growing.

Still, I don't believe that location-sharing will become truly mainstream within the next 11 months.  Indeed, I think that most experts and pundits are underestimating the privacy and security concerns that will come to the forefront as location-aware services get more popular.

In my last post, I discussed some ways that the theater industry can redefine itself in order to stay competitive with peoples' home theaters.  One of the most lucrative current strategies has been the rapid introduction of 3D screens, which command a higher price point ($2-3 surcharge per ticket) and make moviegoing more of an "event" - i.e. "You've gotta see Avatar in 3D; it just won't be the same on DVD".

The future of 3D, however, is not limited to the movie theater.  Home theaters will begin to be 3D-capable within the next few years, but that's only the beginning.  Eventually, I have no doubt that we will get to a Minority Report-like point, where every display in the "real world" is in 3D - though hopefully, not so creepily.

Not too long ago, 3D was hailed as the savior of movie theaters which were losing ground to the "wait 'till it's on DVD" crowd.  In 2005 through 2007 (preceding the wide scale roll-out of 3D cinema), attendance was either down or flat.  Something had to be done to recapture those people who were watching less movies in the cinema, and more in their home theaters.

For the last few years, it seems that the industry's push towards 3D has been justified.  Attendance and revenue are up as 3D films become "must see" events.  Avatar, James Cameron's space epic, credits a full 75% of its domestic revenue to 3D screenings.

However, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, one of biggest trends is the announcement of 3D televisions for the home market, coupled with the introduction of the first 3D television networks from ESPN and Discovery.  Obviously, 3D won't be the exclusive province of movie theaters for too much longer.