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Augmented reality in 2010 is a typical technology in the "incubation" phase. The technology is there, the basic building blocks (e.g. GPS-enabled smartphones cum camera) are already widely diffused... but it is now necessary to find a real application that people will be willing to pay for.

It seems that someone around the world has come up with some interesting applications in the field of gaming! Check out these links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZvxIjdyyII, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lHOHYhp6b4. Simply …uaohhh!

An article on competition in the smartphone industry. Nokia is the market leader thanks to its brand and grip on the Symbian OS, but competitors like Apple and RIM are growing quickly thanks to superior product concepts. It is interesting that Nokia is teaming up with Microsoft in the area of Office applications, in order to increase the appeal of its products.

Nokia and Microsoft, who have always been at odds in the battle for smartphone operating systems, have now formed an alliance for mobile applications. The idea is to bring personal productivity (Office) tools on Nokia (Symbian) phones and fight against growing market share by RIM (Blackberry phones).

There is another paradigm shift that is currently coming out. Incandescent lamps are getting to the end of their lifecycle, and we are observing competition between low-power fluorescents and LED lights. If progress in LED lights will be fast enough, it is likely that they will become the dominant technology. If not, they might remain confined to niche applications.

Interesting take on open vs. closed operating systems. Apple's iPhone is a strange mixture that - though technically open - is however subject to close control over which applications are allowed to run on it. This raises some issues over openness of markets, well beyond the issues that people had with the monopolistic temptations often observed with Microsoft

Some years ago the operating systems challenge for smartphones seemed to be a Microsoft vs. Nokia affair. Then Apple and RIM - and Google later - stole the march and Microsoft somewhat disappeared from the field. But now they are back, and will probably use their usual tactics to gain dominance. But the real issues is: in a world where most applications run "in the cloud", do users really need "one" standard operating systems any more?

An interesting perspective on the smartphone business model. Given that success of an operating system is tightly connected to the availability of applications, what will happen if the cost of porting an app to different platforms is low? Will this reduce the economic reason to standardize and lead us to a world where a number of such platforms exist?

Apple's iPad has opened up yet another element of uncertainty on the future "dominant" IT device. In addition, given that a major application of the iPad is likely to be book-reading, uncertainty is there concerning file and DRM formats for e-book. What will the prevailing strategy be? Proprietary formats, or open formats with proprietary DRM systems, or completely open formats? The problem of course is portability of content, which may or may not be valued by consumers. However, given that I currently can lend a book to a friend, what will happen when a Kindle-using friend will want to borrow my iPad-based novel?

The iPad has finally been launched. It will be interesting to see whether this new type of product will carve itself a niche along to existing products (smartphones on the one side, PCs on the other) or whether it will become a substitute to them. Of course, this doesn't only depend on its own merits, but on features like connectivity, availability of applications and content and - not to be neglected - performance of the supply chain.

Mobile devices, social networking applications and other consumer-related innovations have gained notoriety and generated significant revenues for high-tech, communications and content companies in recent years. These devices and applications are dramatically reshaping the way consumers communicate, learn and entertain themselves.

Microsoft is trying to claw up market share in the smartphone industry. Really not an easy task, also because the traditional strategies used by the company are not so applicable in the current "cloud-based" paradigm, and would also bring close scrutiny from public authorities

An interesting comment on the up and coming "cloud computing" paradigm. Pros and cons of this technology are clear, but the way with which these are weighted by customers strongly depends on their age. Which broadly means that the younger generation has definitely embraced this paradigm, even when dealing with corporate and mission-critical applications.

Nuclear technology is a strange beast in the field of innovation. Based on science and complex technology, characterized by huge advantages but also marked by huge disadvantages, it has never gained widespread acceptance in the market. Now there might be a new application, in the field of civilian shipping.

Since decades, diffusion of operating systems depends on the avilability of the complementary asset called "applications", and allowing independent developers to work on them can help a lot. Now Samsung is realizing they are late to the game and are going to open up their OS. However, they might still have a chance because they are competing on the still uncrowded low-end segment.

Mr. Joshi (the head of Hewlett-Packard's $24 billion printing empire) has spent years disputing the notion that people will print less as they do more on their hand-held devices. This week, he will see his ideas put into action as H.P. introduces a fleet of printers with Web access, their own e-mail addresses and touch screens. These products should open up new ways for people to print from Web services like Google Docs, and from smartphones and devices like the iPad from Apple. Mr. Joshi is going back to his roots as an engineer - as a young H.P. researcher, he figured out a way to make ink cartridges fire 45 million drops - and relying on new technologies, not slick marketing. But still, he will have to prove that customers will change their behavior and print more if given the right tools. That, Mr. Reitzes said, is crucial to how investors will evaluate the long-term prospects of H.P. "Investors are worried about printing," he said. "It's really important that they get this right." As the world's largest technology company, H.P. sells a wide variety of products but got much of its profit from printers and their pricey ink. More recently, H.P. has built up a large technology services arm as well, which has helped round out its business. But the printing division accounts for about a fifth of its revenue and a third of its profits. The new printers - which build on a limited experiment last year - will range in price from $99 to about $400. Every one will come with what H.P. executives billed as a breakthrough feature - its very own e-mail address. H.P.'s engineers hit on the e-mail address as an easy, familiar way for people to send print jobs to the Web-ready printers. You can, for example, take a photo with a phone, e-mail it to your printer's address and have the printout waiting for you at home. Or, you can share the printer's e-mail address with family and friends. This means that someone can buy Grandma a Web-ready printe

What will paradigms for TV sets after HDTV is a bit of a question mark. On the one side, it might be 3D technology. On the other, it might be convergence with the Internet. TV-set makers are playing big bets on both possibilities, and convergence is of course dependent on the existence of content and software that can make it interesting in the eyes of customers. As is currently happening for smartphones, content need not be generated internally, but through app-store mechanisms. Will this strategy pay off?

A few examples on the eternal dilemma between being leaders and followers when a new paradigm arises. Not a deep analysis, but it does appear that immature technology and liquidity problems are often dangerous for leaders.

Yesterday in Cupertino, CA, the Apple's CEO unveiled at the developers the new iPhone OS 4.0. The new OS is available to iPhone developers today, while the general public will get the update sometime this summer. Apple uses innovators and then early adopters to improve the product, leveraging on their enthusiasm. "We are not the first to offer this service, but we are the best" : Steve Jobs doesn't know moderation and understatement. Some of the OS 4.0 features, as the multitasking, doesn't represents that kind of radical innovation, just because Google did it first. But Apple is aware about giving those features to its product in the right time, according to Jobs. By the way, multitasking is only 1 of the 100 new user features announced and thanks to the early market the OS 4.0 could potentially represent the birth of new paradigms in the operating software market.

Advertising agencies and software developers also welcomed Apple's new iAd network as a potential breakthrough that could give an important boost to the small but fast-growing mobile advertising market. iAd is an OS 4.0 built-in app, which could be the starting point of a new generation of mobile adverts that would be far more engaging than current formats, which Jobs said "suck". Thanks to his company's control Apple's network would be able to serve up more creative forms of advertising to run inside the "apps" users download on to these devices. Advertising inside apps, although still small, has become the hottest corner of the mobile advertising business, prompting a race between Google and Apple. In fact, earlier this year Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $270 million signaling its intention to enter the advertising network space. Quattro is an ad network that spans both mobile websites and smartphone applications. It seems to develop a new strategy and paradigm for the advertisement and a new battle field for the two giants Apple and Google. Which will emerge?

Some examples of how tecnology could help groups of employees make better collaborative decisions, in terms of information channel's improvement.

In order to provide a better communication between the corporate seat and the foreign branches in Germany, and to manage the whole organisation and data, FIAT adopted a new Corporate Planner. The strengths of this application are the compatibility with the older ones, the flexibility of the system and the real time management. Actually, this can be a starting point to solve the huge internal communication problems of the Fiat Group Automobiles, created by the new alliance with Chrysler. If it works correctly,it will be extended to the whole company.