“Your phone should be a personal assistant. That’s clearly where we’re going,” says Chris Cox of Facebook. ‘Ambient awareness’ was used multiple times to describe device relationships (rather, the necessity thereof) in our near future. But when quizzed on specifics for what phones of the future will look like and how consumer interaction will differ in the coming years of innovation, Cox had this to say:

“People overestimate what’s possible in a year, and underestimate [what's possible in ] 5 years. These devices are going to be magical in 5 years.”

Some even speculate that ‘mobile’ will be come a meaningless word soon because we are inherently always connected. “The real frontier is what’s local,” speculates one commentator, citing the popularity of groundbreaking platforms like FourSquare. “I think Foursquare has done some amazing work with check-ins, but it’s early,” says Gundotra when asked if there is a clear winner in the location game.

“I think we’re building great stuff — there is no winner,” pipes FourSquare’s Crowley. “Think of where we are now to where we were 2 years ago. We’ve made the space more interesting. We’ve pushed things in a different direction. It’s experimenting in the space.”

Speaking of experimentation, Gundotra was asked what he thought Google TV will do what for mobile apps and his answer reads a bit like an upsell, stating that “the most exciting thing about it is that the same Android apps you use will work on the TV. Like Pandora, play it on the TV.”

Facebook’s Chris Cox got a little heat regarding the ever changing privacy controls pleging the platform. He was happy to report, though, that this week, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” privacy controls in an attempt to remedy what Facebook CEO Zuckerman has publicly called “missed marks.” Facebooks next challenge? “It’s hard to know what to invest in — a better Android app or Facebook Zero.” Facebook Zero is their new, “fast, free, global and mobile” data service.

Certainly one of the most difficult parts of communicating the findings of a handful of data is finding the best way to represent it.  Certainly, the right type of graph will make the insights leap out to the reader, while the wrong representation will smother the findings in complexity.  Our team picked up a bunch of great tips from Juice Analytics to help the presenter display their findings in the best light.

To start, you must determine exactly what metrics you are showing and where the emphasis should be (relationships, values, change over time, etc.).  Next, you need to assess your options and determine which one is most effective at emphasizing your chosen data.

For example, represent data over time with a simple line graph, and display comparisons of two different results on related values using variations of the traditional bar graph. Lay out unrelated values in a simple table, and the distribution of an aggregate amount (sales for example) looks clearest in the universally-understood pie chart.

These rules aren’t in stone, of course, and a certain level of judgment must be exercised in different situations.  However, use a chart like the one below (we did mention there are a lot of styles to choose from) from www.extremepresentation.com as a good jumping off point to wade through the many options for graphical choices.  Also, visit Juice Analytics’ breakdown of this difficult topic for more tips on selecting the ideal graph.