There is an incredible amount of potential stored within social networks and the Internet of Things.

On projects at Odopod, we've scored site contributors based on their social activities. We've provided tools for our clients to hold conversations in Twitter and bring those conversations into their sites. We've generated countless shares and likes. And we've only begun to scratch the surface.

With the continued growth of data available to us via APIs and increasingly sophisticated open source tools, we're looking forward to more and more opportunities to skim a little data and shape it into something both fun and useful.

I recently presented some related research during a brown bag lunch discussion. Here are some highlights.

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On Wednesday, Microsoft released additional information about their upcoming SDK for the Kinect. However, if you don't want to wait for that release, there are some great alternatives available already.

To better understand the potential Kinect holds for retail and other installation work at Odopod, I've been exploring different ways to integrate Kinect into Adobe Air applications. We're using Air because it allows us to quickly build prototypes and explore this exciting new technology.

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Most conversations about mobile strategies include the following two perspectives: limited resources of devices require new technical approaches, and mobile use cases are different and demand unique content and application features.

As we’ve settled into our new multi-device lifestyles, a new perspective has entered into these conversations: finding different content at the same place on different devices is a problem and flies in the face of web accessibility and common sense.

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IWC.com features a great deal of content which includes some amazing videos. Two great examples of these videos can be found on the Aquatimer family page. Galapagos is an eight and a half minute video highlighting IWC's longstanding relationship with the Charles Darwin Foundation and includes some really incredible cinematography. Don't miss the footage of iguanas foraging underwater. A little further down on the Aquatimer page is a short animation demonstrating the engineering behind the depth gauge within the Aquatimer Deep Two. It is an example of how IWC uses video to educate customers about their watches.

Galapagos video on the Aquatimer page

As the second installment of our series on building IWC.com, we're looking more closely at how this video is delivered to both desktop and mobile browsers.

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IWC.com and the publishing system powering it are a new cornerstone for IWCs digital strategy. Given the goal that this system remain relevant for a minimum of 10 years (and what can happen on the internet in 10 years) technology choices were particularly important.

How do you future-proof a development like this?

For us, the logical place to start is...

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Google’s new Web Store offers themes, extensions and apps for Google’s web browser, Chrome.

Themes and extensions are not new to Chrome; the store simply brings them together with apps to provide improved discoverability.

Outwardly, the applications might not seem all that different, but for those using the Chrome browser, Google has added a layer of functionality that app developers can take advantage of.

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As a follow-up to my earlier post on Flash and Web Standards, I put together a presentation about how these evolving technologies can be used in our work. By looking more closely at the boundaries of what each technology is capable, we inform our decisions about the experiences we can create for different platforms and how to build them.

The slides are now available here and my notes for the presentation can be found here.

The pendulum has definitely swung. Flash is the new F-word and HTML5 is everyone's best friend.

Apple, Google and Microsoft have showcased HTML5 experiments and projects demonstrating how dynamic and interactive experiences in their browsers can be without using Flash.

At Odopod, our teams are well versed in both Flash and open Web Standards development. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and, in order to make the right decisions about these technologies, we need cut through the hype and weigh the options as objectively as possible.

Following are some of the questions that we have been hearing and debating at Odopod. The responses are intentionally high-level, intended as an overview. If you are looking for more exhaustive details, you will find some links at the end that will help you along.

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What is the Open Graph Protocol?
The Open Graph Protocol specifies how to provide structured data and turn content into objects recognizable by Facebook. The goal is to make consistent information available to Facebook’s software so that it can understand how to organize and present the content within its platform. As a result, content that lives on any website can become part of the Social Graph.

While there is a good deal of debate about what this protocol means for the open web movement, it is difficult to ignore a protocol that will affect the presentation of content to Facebook’s massive user-base. Among other things, integrating this data within a site will improve how content appears within users’ newsfeeds and their profiles as well as likely boost the content’s ranking within Facebook’s search.

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David Bliss, Partner and Technical Director of Odopod, documents some of the outstanding bits of Adobe MAX sessions day 1 including publishing Flash for iPhones, Flash Player 10.1 Improvements and the Flex Mobile Framework.

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