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D'coda Dcoda

10/4/19 Forget Social Networks; Enter Social Force Fields - 0 views

  • A new phase in social media underway.
  • Force Field Analysis in Social Sciences analysis reflected on how things are accomplished or hindered by the way that people internalize external experiences in the process of their own psychological development.Now, suppose that an individual goes out and influences social situations in their community.  Also suppose that social media could amplify the persons exterior impact – this would likewise impact internal psychology, etc., setting up a form of polarity between two positions.  The greater the difference (diversity) in those positions, the greater the potential (energy state) of the outcome.The “Local Social” Force FieldSocial media is about to enter a new phase called “local social”.  The hyperlinks that bind the web will become the hyperlinks that bind a community.  The difference is that hyperlinks in “Global Social” environment converge down to specific information, Hyperlinks in Local Social will diverge up to diverse knowledge assets.Read more at www.ingenesist.com
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    A new phase in social media underway.
Dan R.D.

Forget wallets. What else is NFC good for? - Tech News and Analysis [16Dec11] - 0 views

  • Near-field communication (NFC) has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But as we’ve pointed out, NFC is just a technology that can applied in a lot of different ways, apart from the digital wallet framework through which many people understand it.
  • Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations. This not only indicates how flexible the technology is but also could help propel the overall technology in adoption, as consumers become aware of NFC and learn to use it for a variety of reasons.
  • Right now, NFC is still below the radar for most U.S. consumers, and the slow roll out of Google Wallet or the pending launch of Isis next year are, by themselves, only going to accelerate NFC adoption by so much. But having a host of uses for the technology could open people’s eyes and push them past any usability or safety concerns.
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  • San Francisco announced earlier this week it was partnering with PayByPhone to enable 30,000 parking meters with NFC support. 
  • Intel and MasterCard have teamed up to enable future Intel-powered laptops to work with PayPass enabled MasterCard credit cards.
  • Personal contact and content sharing has become one of the emerging uses for NFC.
  • Access card maker HID Global announced a trial with Arizona State University in September in which students were provided NFC-enabled phones, enabling them to gain physical access to buildings.
  • The Museum of London and its sister institution, the Museum of London Docklands launched a project in August that allows visitors to tap their NFC-enabled phone at exhibits and gain more information, buy tickets to future exhibits or check in, follow or “like” the museums on social services.
  • T-Mobile partnered with Meridian Health and iMPak Health in October on a new SleepTrak sleep monitoring system, a wearable device with an NFC-equipped card.
  • Many of these things can be done through QR codes, bumping, Bluetooth or other methods, but NFC provides a very simple and often elegant way to get through the process.
  • We’re still very early in the NFC game and the phones are just now trickling out in the U.S. But there’s going to be a much bigger flow of NFC-equipped phones starting next year. It’ll be these broader applications that might convince users that the technology has merit.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Forget wallets. What else is NFC good for? [16Dec11] - 0 views

  • Near-field communication (NFC) has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But as we’ve pointed out, NFC is just a technology that can applied in a lot of different ways, apart from the digital wallet framework through which many people understand it.
  • Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations. This not only indicates how flexible the technology is but also could help propel the overall technology in adoption, as consumers become aware of NFC and learn to use it for a variety of reasons.
  • Right now, NFC is still below the radar for most U.S. consumers, and the slow roll out of Google Wallet or the pending launch of Isis next year are, by themselves, only going to accelerate NFC adoption by so much. But having a host of uses for the technology could open people’s eyes and push them past any usability or safety concerns.
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  • San Francisco announced earlier this week it was partnering with PayByPhone to enable 30,000 parking meters with NFC support. People can tap their phone against a parking meter and call up a parking application that identifies the parking location and allows the driver to enter his or her desired parking time and complete the transaction. The actual payment happens inside the app with a stored credit card, but the technology provides a short cut to the transaction.
  • Intel and MasterCard have teamed up to enable future Intel-powered laptops to work with PayPass enabled MasterCard credit cards. Users will be able to enter in their payment credentials for online purchases by tapping their card on their computer instead of storing the information on their machine or entering it manually.
  • Personal contact and content sharing has become one of the emerging uses for NFC. RIM in October introduced BlackBerry Tag, which will enable users of NFC phones to exchange contact information, documents, URLs, photos and other multimedia content with a tap of their phones. Google has enabled a similar a solution with Android Beam, which will work on NFC-enabled phones. This can serve as a Bump-like way to pass back and forth information quickly.
  • Access card maker HID Global announced a trial with Arizona State University in September in which students were provided NFC-enabled phones, enabling them to gain physical access to buildings. All the participants were able to enter residence halls with their phones, and some were also allowed to open individual room doors using unique digital key and PINs.
  • The Museum of London and its sister institution, the Museum of London Docklands launched a project in August that allows visitors to tap their NFC-enabled phone at exhibits and gain more information, buy tickets to future exhibits or check in, follow or “like” the museums on social services. It’s part of Nokia’s NFC Hub effort to help businesses set up NFC campaigns.
  • T-Mobile partnered with Meridian Health and iMPak Health in October on a new SleepTrak sleep monitoring system, a wearable device with an NFC-equipped card. Users can upload their sleep data to an NFC-enabled Nokia astound with a tap.
  • Nokia and NFC Danmark launched NFC-enabled smart poster campaign in Telia stores in Denmark, enabling Nokia N9 users to download mobile apps by tapping on a poster. The two companies also introduced what Danmark called the world’s first NFC-enabled vending machine.
  • The winning application of the WIMA NFC USA conference in San Francisco earlier this month was a project called Think&Go, which is being tested by French supermarket chain Groupe Casino. Think&Go allows visually impaired and elderly shoppers to call up large text information on products by tapping NFC tags on store shelves.
  • These are just a sample of the projects and real applications leveraging NFC. As you can see, none of them are actual mobile wallets. The biggest thing they provide is a real short cut to information and actions that can happen without much work. Many of these things can be done through QR codes, bumping, Bluetooth or other methods, but NFC provides a very simple and often elegant way to get through the process.
  • Also, in some of these cases, what’s also nice is that since they aren’t trying to conduct sensitive transactions, they don’t need to access the secure element inside a phone. That could be a limiting factor in the roll out of NFC, because the owners of the secure element, often the carriers, don’t seem to be in a hurry to enable a lot of other NFC payments systems. But with a host of other non payment uses emerging, users won’t have to wait to find out if their digital wallet is enabled on their particular phone. There might be other ways they can experience the power of NFC first. That will help in just teaching people the practice of tapping for information, transactions and access.
  • We’re still very early in the NFC game and the phones are just now trickling out in the U.S. But there’s going to be a much bigger flow of NFC-equipped phones starting next year. It’ll be these broader applications that might convince users that the technology has merit.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

The Fragmented Future of Mobile Payments - Technology - The Atlantic Wire [07Dec11] - 0 views

  • As with all things Internet, the future of mobile payments is going to be fragmented, making the promise of a digital wallet on your phone a lot less exciting. Having a phone act as a credit card makes things faster, more convenient and might even lead to more bargains. But the way things are panning out, only people who meet very specific cell phone, bank, and credit card company criteria can join in on the fun. Just today, Verizon blocked Google Wallet from its phones, reports The Wall Street Journal's Amir Efrati and Anton Troianovski. So for those with multiple credit cards, or without a Citi Master Card, Google Wallet can't replace a wallet, giving it a major utility handicap.
  • As of right now, Google's mobile payment tech only works on Sprint phones with Citi Bank Master Cards. That applies to a very specific set of people. Of course, Google doesn't have the only digital wallet replacement out there. For everyone else, there's Verizon, who has teamed up with T-Mobile and  At&T to work on its version, Isis, which will begin trials next year, note Efrati and Troianovski. And Visa too is apparently in the works for its own mobile payments system, they add. We also can't forget third party apps like Square, Venmo and ZipPay, which allow users to pay others who have the app using stored credit card information. This almost works as a replacement for the wallet, and would theoretically work better than Google Wallet, if only every single place everywhere accepted Square payments -- but they don't. 
  • So we have two types of fragmentation happening in the mobile payments world. With these "wallet" payment systems, like Google Wallet and Visa's mystery service, the service is only as useful as having that single credit card. And then the system is fracturing on a retailer level. Even with Google Wallet, only stores with the compatible card reader accept it; same with the Square-like services. While the number of retailers accepting Square has grown, as this chart posted by The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal shows, it can't become a wallet replacement unless every single retailer has it. The same applies to Google Wallet: Not every retailer has the capabilities. Like we've seen with Netflix and streaming movies, the services are nice supplements to cable. But not yet a replacement because they all have somethings but no one has all things. The same can be applied to mobile payments. They all can be used with some credit cards and at some retailers, but we won't leave our wallets at home until we get a cord-cutting equivalent. For now, users either have to load a smorgasbord of mobile payment apps, or settle for the current half-hearted solutions. 
Dan R.D.

Coming Soon to a Coffee Shop Near You: NFC-Powered Foursquare Check-ins [28Nov11] - 0 views

  • To enable NFC-powered check-ins, establishments need to display a sign or poster containing an NFC tag that points to their venue's Foursquare listing URL. Nokia's developer blog has some resources on getting started with NFC tags. Signs like this not only enable people to check-in with less effort, but can also provide a visual, real-world call to action. For non-power users of location services like Foursquare, it can be pretty easy to simply forget to check in to a restaurant or other local business. Having that sign hanging there can provide a mental trigger. Business owners can also use the opportunity to push promotions and deals, offering discounts or free products to the mayor or anybody else that checks in. Admittedly, the average person has no idea what NFC is right now. But it's almost universally predicted to reach mainstream adoption within a few years, quite possibly replacing our wallets and keys at some point in the future. NFC is already included on a number of Android-powered handsets and is rumored to be coming to the iPhone 5 next year.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Top 7 Mobile Commerce Trends in 2011 - 0 views

  • 1. Just Gimme My Mobile Wallet, Man There are a lot of deviations of a mobile wallet, and everyone does it differently. Essentially, the mobile wallet is exactly what it sounds like: A service that stores everything you would normally put in a physical wallet, including debit and credit cards, coupons and loyalty cards, in a mobile wallet. Not all wallets store data on the phone itself; SCVNGR's LevelUp and PayPal, for example, store data in the cloud. Your mobile wallet arrives empty, just like an wallet. You decide what goes in it. Google's mobile wallet works off of an NFC chip called the Secure Element, which acts like a secure wallet and differentiates this product from being just an app. It's also separate from the phone's main operating system and hardware.
  • Google launched its Wallet program in late May. The official launch (yes, a beta) happened in September. Google chose MasterCard as its official partner in the realm of mobile payments using near-field communications (NFC). At the time of launch, Nexus S 4G on Sprint with Citibank and payment network MasterCard was the only phone compatible with Google Wallet. The industry is preparing for Wallet, but the consumer side isn't quite there yet. In September, however, Visa also signed a licensing deal to include credit and debit cards in Google's Wallet program. MasterCard's has begun its shift toward technology innovator thanks to its new partnership and investment with mFoundry. This solidifies MasterCard's commitment to the field of mobile payments. PayPal has a slightly different vision for its mobile wallet. With a wallet in the cloud, consumers can select a payment instrument (credit card, debit card, bank account) and then use any Internet-connected device to enable that purchase. Really, PayPal wants to be technology agnostic, meaning that its mobile wallet should work on any device regardless of the operating system. In mid-November, PayPal unleashed its mobile wallet that features a card and a smartphone app that lets consumers store credit cards, gift cards, frequent flier miles and more. Speaking of mobile wallets, whatever happened to Apple's iWallet? NFC never did come to the iPhone4S.
  • 2. Where NFCs Will Go, Few Do Know NFC (near field communication) enables the exchange of data between devices (typically, mobile devices) that are in close proximity to each other. NFC devices are used for more than just payments, though - they can be the link between real world actions and consumer-facing or back office systems. While card issuers love NFC options, they would force payment processors to radically redesign. Are consumers ready to trade in the swipe of a credit card for the tap of an NFC-enabled device? NFC may never be widely used as a form of payments, writes RWW mobile expert Dan Rowinski. While the technology around NFC is ready and being widely adapted within the industry, the actual infrastructure is not there yet. But the NFC hype is here. Since Google's Beta Wallet launch in September, it has partnered with Mastercard, CitiBank, Sprint, FirstData, Verifone, VivoTech (NFC partner), Hypercom, Igenico and NXP (NFC partner). On the opposing end, NFC mobile payment solution ISIS is poised to attack Google's Wallet; it recently partnered with Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T.
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  • In 2012, there will be more NFC-enabled Android devices. For now, only the Samsung Nexus S and a few others have mobile wallet capabilities. Lest we forget PayPal, it is important to note that it recently launched an Android app that allows for money transfer via NFC. 3. Carrier Billing Is Alive And Kicking Carrier billing allows users to pay for apps on their mobile phone bill instead of using a credit card or a third-party mobile payments service to pay at the time of purchase. This payments system is moving right along. In April, Spring joined T-Mobile and AT&T to support carrier billing in the Android Market. Mobile payments company BOKU went live for Android app developers in June. It began offering carrier billing on 230 operators in 56 countries worldwide. eBay purchased mobile payments company Zong in July, and integrated it into PayPal. Zong allows users to make mobile purchases through carrier billing. PaymentOne, another leader in carrier billing, lets users pay with their phone numbers, and validates transactions via text.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Top 7 Mobile Commerce Trends in 2011 - 0 views

  • 4. Offers, Offers and More Offers With the daily deals craze dying down post-Groupon IPO, mobile offers are springing up. Google Offers, Google's response to Groupon's daily deals, continues to expand and personalize its deals. It recently stepped into the mobile commerce space with an Android app. Amazon entered the daily deals space with Amazon Local. Mobile commerce isn't a part of the story, but with Amazon's hefty investment in Living Social and an infrastructure far more mature than Groupon's, Amazon may be waiting for just the right moment before really making its move. Meanwhile, daily deals superhero Groupon moved further into the location-based mobile commerce space through a partnership with Loopt. Soon after the Loopt announcement, Groupon launched Groupon Now, which inserts real-time, location-based offers into the daily deals game. Such offers are usually only available for a few hours, do not include the typical Groupon tipping point and are meant for impulsive mobile users.
  • 5. Shop Till You Sit: Tablet Commerce Tablets are all the rage this year. A recent study by eMarketer.com predicts that one in three online consumers will use a tablet at least once a month by the year 2014. Appel iPads are positioned to dominate the tablet market until 2015. So what are people doing on their tablets? Shopping, naturally. And thus the boom of tablet commerce. Amazon.com, the top revenue-producing Internet retailer, naturally leads the pack with a strong tablet-optimized site. Couch commerce, the act of sitting on one's couch and shopping from a smartphone and tablet, saw a strong increase this year - especially after Thanksgiving dinner and on Black Friday. Amazon launched its Kindle Fire tablet on September 28. ReadWriteWeb Writer Jon Mitchell calls it a store with a screen, quite literally suggesting that its sole purpose is to be a media consumption device. As the Kindle Fire continues to gain consumer mindshare and more developers flock to the Amazon Appstore (don't call it the App Store, OK?), we expect more tablet commerce growth in this area. Shopping catalogs designed specifically for tablets will add to the tablet commerce experience. Google launched a shopping catalog app for tablets back in August. Google Catalogs, as they're called, are like "window shopping with your iPad and Android tablet." The only potential problem for retailers? Now they won't have catalog readers' home addresses on hand.
  • 6. Location and Local Groundswell: Chicago to Des Moines to Boston and Back Again The partnership between daily deals service Groupon and location check-in Foursquare was a big one. The two got together and made it happen. Or, as the Groupon blog says, "when we think of mobile addiction beyond Now! we think foursquare, and many of you guys do, too." The idea of positioning daily deals on Foursquare as an "addiction" doesn't exactly insure longevity; rather, it signals imminent burnout. But hey, we'll forgive Groupon's marketing team - with Groupon's stock prices slumping, the company is needs to keep looking for new ways to hit up consumers. Dwolla, mobile payments system based in U.S. mobile payments capital Des Moines, Iowa, seeks to completely sidestep credit cards. Unlike its main competitor PayPal, Dwolla does not snag a percentage of the transaction; instead, it asks for a shiny silver quarter, regardless of the transaction amount. LevelUp from Boston-based SCVNGR brings location-based gaming to the daily deals space. The idea is simple: Users will receive better deals the more they use the system. Much like the "unlocking" of Foursquare badges, LevelUp users will unlock new "levels" of awesome deals with particular merchants as they continue buying. Like its competitor Dwolla, SCVNGR recently began building local mobile payments into LevelUp.
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  • 7. Don't Forget The Dongle Dongles refer to a device that is connect to a computer to allow access to wireless or protected software. In the case of mobile commerce, a dongle would be a mobile credit card swiper that attaches to the mobile device. Square, Verisign and Intuit lead the way in dongle innovation. But with Google Wallet and NFCs (near field communications) on the move, do dongles have a future? Square's Card Case digital wallet is a dongle. It lets you pay by saying your name and only your name - if the merchant you visit is in the Square directory. With its dongle reader, Square aims to make mobile payments mainstream. Intuit's recent mobile payments innovation introduce the dongle-to-debit-card. The company wants to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to accept transactions on the go. While Square is the leader in the dongle world, Intuit offers QuickBooks, tax refunds, bank partnerships, health check-ins and other management systems. Dongle providers such as Verifone, Intuit, Erply, ROAMPay, TRUSTe and PayAnywhere will continue to push their products as the space evolves.
  • Conclusion Mobile commerce is at a tipping point. It has not hit a critical, mainstream mass, however. First, the battle of NFCs vs. mobile wallets vs. dongles will need to settle, with one emerging and the others either following and finding their niches, or disappearing completely. Carrier billing will play a crucial role in how consumers start easing into the idea of mobile commerce. The daily deals space will become more focused on mobile, particularly in the ares of personalization and location-based targeting - people who use their phones are glued to them, naturally, and they must start receiving time-sensitive offers at exactly the right moment. Tablet commerce will continue to expand, as more people buy tablets and engage in "couch commerce." Catalogs, tablet-optimized websites and fast conversion rates make this the perfect platform for capturing consumers who already feel devoted to their tablets. In the dongle space, Square will continue to position themselves as the thought leaders, though they will face a fierce competition from Intuit.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

PayPal pitches its wider vision for mobile payments - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • PayPal has been a powerhouse in online payments but it hasn’t really cracked the much bigger market for payments for goods in the real world. Now, the company is starting to show off how it can put all of its components and recent acquisitions together to form a broad tool for mobile payments.
  • PayPal hosted a partner event for retailers yesterday and began explaining how they’ll be able to implement its tools for in-store payments. The big reveal will happen next month at PayPal’s developer conference in San Francisco, but the company showed a glimpse of how it’s marshaling its resources. It’s important for PayPal to step up with a compelling offering because the mobile payments market is getting crowded with options like Square, Google Wallet and upcoming services like Isis from the cellular carriers and digital wallets from credit card companies.
  • Scott Thompson, president of PayPal, said in a blog post the company is looking to be a one-stop shop for merchants to help them address every part of the shopping lifecycle. OK, that’s a bit of jargon, but it means PayPal is going to help push out targeted advertising, help with in-store discovery and improve transactions with a handful of options.
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  • In a video provided by PayPal, it shows how users will be able to walk into a store and check in to a location to unlock discounts and coupons. When a consumer goes to check out, he’ll be able to pay by entering his phone number. That leverages eBay’s purchase of Zong and its carrier billing capabilities, though it’s not clear how much easier or more convenient that is for consumers who pay with a credit card swipe. But it does open up the option to use carrier billing for physical goods in-store, which is good for people without a card, though the question of how large the transactions fees will be is important. Right now, carrier billing fees are still much higher than credit card fees, which might deter some merchants.
  • Users will also be able to scan items in-store and pay for them with PayPal without having to get in line. Customers can just flash their phone to an employee who will confirm the purchase. This is very much like AisleBuyer and it sounds like PayPal is looking to bring this to restaurant bills as well, something Thompson hinted at in his blog post. This is a cool step that makes sense for people who want to get in and out quickly.
  • Customers will be able to apparently pay ahead for coffee ahead of time and pick it up. Users will also be able to choose how they pay for something after the purchase with PayPal Credit, which seems to leverage eBay’s BillMeLater. All of this appears to work through PayPal’s mobile application and doesn’t seem to require any new investments by merchants. That’s a big concern for mobile payments built on near field communication, which requires many businesses to upgrade their point-of-sale terminals to handle contactless payments.
  • The new mobile payment tools don’t appear to include NFC payments. PayPal recently introduced person-to-person payments using NFC on Android devices, but the company told me at the time it was just focusing NFC on P2P payments. It sounds like PayPal is trying to work around the hardware constraints of NFC payments at point of sale.
  • Other shopping features on display included the ability to get push notifications for discounts that can be shared, which appears to build off eBay’s acquisition of WHERE. Consumers will also be able to scan an item in store and find inventory at other locations, something eBay got from its RedLaser and Milo pick-ups.
  • It’s unclear how soon all of this will come together and how many merchants will sign on. But providing a complete service for retailers and businesses to not only push out offers and discounts but also complete the transactions makes sense. Merchants can close the loop on transactions and understand how their marketing is doing. This is essentially what Google is trying to do with Google Wallet and Offers though it’s focusing primarily on facilitating targeted marketing, rather than taking a cut of transactions.
  • PayPal’s payment initiative is part of eBay’s broader commerce platform called X.commerce, which it’s building off the acquisition of Magento.
  • But there’s also a lot of questions to be answered. For instance, will consumers find this more convenient than a card swipe? Will PayPal make it any easier for people to set-up and manage accounts? Do all of these parts work well together in one solution? And how aggressive will PayPal be in selling this to merchants and consumers? I’ll be interested to hear more and I think PayPal can be a big contender if it gets its execution right. This is going to be a big market but it will require not only great tools but a lot of smart selling to consumers and merchants.
D'coda Dcoda

How Do Social Networks Make Money? [30Apr10] - 0 views

  • Social networking is a daily activity for most of us. Anyone paying attention knows that sites like Facebook and Twitter have hundreds of millions of users and are extremely popular. But one thing I think we all forget from time to time is that these social networking sites are businesses. They do have employees and they do have costs. So I ask again, how do social networks make money?The short answer is that they don’t, not on their own at least – at first. There are a few different ways social networking sites earn money, with more on the horizon. This article aims at uncovering a few of these methods and answering the questions that many of us are asking.Read more at www.makeuseof.com 
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    Venture capital gets them going, then, besides the expected ads and premium services, there are some other creative ways...like Facebook gifts.
D'coda Dcoda

The top 10 reasons your mobile learning strategy will fail [13Apr11] - 0 views

  • While the focus of this post is not specifically Apple or the iPad, it’s almost impossible to talk about successful mobile strategies without recognizing that the iPad has created a transitional moment for the Learning & Development world. The reasons why have been the subject of countless blog posts, but I think DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, in this video from TechCrunch, says it best:
  • “[The iPad] it’s the first device that actually is a reflection of me – or us. It’s so revolutionary that it’s no longer about me adapting myself to somebody else’s set of programmings or the way in which a device is going to engage. It is the reverse. It is as though I’m looking in a mirror.”
  • While it took the iPad to make learner-controlled content a reality, this level of flexibility is now the gold standard for delivery to any device, be it tablets, smart phones or any number of performance support devices.
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  • For learning organizations, the clear challenge to meet this gold standard in their frenzied rush to mLearning will be to NOT repeat the mistakes that were made in the move from classroom to on-line training.
  • here are 10 repeat offenders
  • 1. Don’t assess how mobile fits in your blended learning strategy.
  • mobile workers are not committed to any one mobile device, leveraging notebooks as much as they do smartphones and more than tablets.
  • Keep mLearning content development tactical.
  • still early days for mobile learning
  • 9. Don’t write granular content.
  • For mobile learning it’s not about rapid authoring, it’s about rapid reuse
  • 4. Forget about your classroom materials
  • 5. Build your mobile content from scratch.
  • 6. Be proprietary:
  • 7. Believe that learners really want PowerPoint on their mobile.
  • 8. Forego XML – again. If you don’t believe that open, platform-neutral XML is critical for mobile learning, I’m not going to try to convince you. Instead, take a look at this TED Talk clip from Richard Baruaniuk, the founder of Connextions.
  • Use rapid authoring tools.
  • Richard Baruaniuk
  • Richard Baruaniuk
D'coda Dcoda

Your favorite gadgets are threatening the planet's future [18Jun11] - 0 views

  • Earth is expected to be home to over nine billion people by 2050. That’s a lot of people for Mother Nature to manage.
  • Space issues aside, the biggest concern on an over-populated planet is whether or not there will be enough resources to go around. Last week, British investor and Co-founder of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo (GMO) Jeremy Grantham offered what Business Insider called a “startlingly depressing outlook for the future of humanity.”
  • the purpose of this piece isn’t to tread well-worn ground about the planet’s perils. So forget about fossil fuels, drinking water, crops, ice-caps, trees and animals for now. What we’ll be looking at is all those elements that go into helping you do what you’re doing right now. Whether you’re reading this on your laptop, smartphone, tablet…or any other digital device, the natural environment has had a huge part to play in this experience.
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  • Ethical electronics
  • Tantalum
  • Besides the direct environmental impact of mining the Earth, there is a more immediate threat. You’ve no doubt heard about conflict diamonds or ‘blood diamonds‘, which are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, invading army’s war efforts or a warlord’s activity. Well, your mobile phone contains a similarly valuable commodity that’s been at the center of controversy in recent times
  • Tantalum is one of the best superconductors on Earth, and it’s used to coat capacitors to obtain more power from less energy. This basically means that laptops and mobile phones don’t need batteries that are larger than the device itself – so this is one of the chief reasons why you can slip your iPhone in your pocket rather than carting it around in a wheelbarrow. In central African countries such as The Democratic Republic of Congo,the mining of the mineral coltan – from which tantalum is extracted – it has often been argued fuels wars and encourages child slavery. And these arguments are well-founded.
  • However, the majority of tantalum production shifted to Australia, and Western Australia became the world’s largest source of mined tantalum concentrates. The mine closed in late 2008, and has only recently reopened.
  • In 2010, major concerns were raised as to the availability of tantalum and the effect this would have on the supply chain. “The impact, the real concern, is actually obtaining the metal,” said Dennis Zogbi, CEO of Paumanok Publications, which researches the component industry and the tantalum markets. If the stockpile of tantalum ever runs out, this could be disastrous for the electronics industry.
  • Tantalum minerals are also mined in Canada, China, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, and mass reserves were found in Venezuela in 2009, and in Columbia a year later.
  • Bloomberg reported a couple of weeks ago that the first conflict-free tantalum has recently been certified by The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and Global e- Sustainability Coalition (EICC/GeSI), an initiative backed by companies such as Apple and Intel.
  • Indium
  • Then there’s Indium, a rare chemical element you may or may not have heard of. Zinc ores are the primary source of indium, which – when isolated – is then used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and touchscreens.
  • China is a leading producer of indium, whilst Canada and Bolivia are also large producers. And Cornwall, England, was also found to hold significant indium deposits earlier this year too, something which could prove massively beneficial to the UK economy
  • Last year, 85% of all indium was devoted to making indium tin oxide for use in LCD products, and the demand is predicted to grow at 15% a year over the next few years
  • A UN report published last month found that there are virtually no recycling initiatives in place for indium, and Thomas Graedel, one of the report’s eight authors, warned that a failure to re-use metals such as Indium doesn’t bode well for the future
  • “If we do not have these materials readily available at reasonable prices, a lot of modern technology simply cannot happen. We don’t think immediate shortages are likely but we are absolutely unable to make predictions based on the very limited geological exploration currently conducted.
  • The case for recycling
  • Your old mobile phone has circuit boards, batteries and an LCD screen – these all contain harmful materials that, when dumped in landfill sites, eventually break down and leak into the environment.
  • Over time, the likes of lead, cadmium and mercury pollution can be hazardous to the environment and to our health. It was for this reason that, in 2006, California became the first US state to make it mandatory for all mobile phone retailers to establish a collection and recycling program for mobile phones. The law also prevents residents from disposing of old mobile phones.
  • It’s very difficult to reclaim tantalum once it has been transposed onto an electronic component. For this reason, it’s important that you choose how you dispose of old devices carefully. Some organizations will promise to ‘safely’ recycle your handset, but this is very vague and may not mean the components are being reused. Given the amount of effort and strife that may have gone into producing it, you should ensure that it is actually reused. But this is something governments and industries need to help consumers achiev
  • The UN report analyzed the recycling rates of 60 metals, and 34 of these have recycling rates of less than 1%. Among the least-recycled metals were tellurium and gallium – which are used in solar cells – and lithium, a key element in your phone and laptop batteries.
  • Despite the best efforts of environmentalists, governments, businesses and consumers, there could be another ‘small’ obstacle to contend with if we’re to protect the Earth’s natural resources. And that is China
  • As reported recently in National Geographic, China supplies 97% of the world’s so-called rare earth elements, elements we all rely on for all our high-tech gadgetry, including mobile phones and laptops. And in 2010, China gave a hint of what the future may hold for the rest of us, when it stopped shipments of rare earth elements to Japan for a month following a diplomatic dispute. This had a big impact on the price of rare earths on global markets. China is expected to reduce its rare earth exports to help protect the country’s own rapidly growing industries. Indeed, it’s worth noting that almost two-thirds of rare earth metals produced in China are already consumed ‘in-house’, so to speak.
  • If China does decide to cut back on its exports, global prices will sky rocket. Dysprosium, for example, is used in hard-drives and it now sells for over $200 a pound (roughly half a kilo), but the disturbing thing is that the price was only about $7 eight years ago
  • It’s thought that the global demand for many rare earth metals could exceed the supply as soon as the end of this year.
  • So how serious is this? Well, China has almost half of the planet’s rare earth reserves. The US holds about 13%, whilst Russia, Australia and Canada also has some stockpiles, so we’re not quite at the critical stage yet. But the writing is very much on the wall for many industries, not just electronics.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Gamification on intranets: the risks of playing along « Adoption « ClearBox C... - 0 views

  • But points and badgest are a very basic “carrot” approach. Pink says that in the main carrots and sticks don’t work except for basic repetitive tasks where there is little intrinsic motivation.
  • For anything involving knowledge or creativity, what matters is: Autonomy – deciding how and when to do things Mastery – the reward in gaining a skill and learning Purpose – the sense that the task is part of a greater goal.
  • What concerns me is that points and badges are none of the above, they are just  extrinsic motivation.
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  • Generally, when simple rewards are offered in return for acts that should have intrinsic rewards, people start to forget the real reason they are sharing and optimize their game-based scores instead. For example, instead of giving 1 comprehensive answer, they give 3 partial answers for 3x the points. Or people may withhold answers until they can maximize their points – ceasing to co-operate.
  • 2) Where mastery developed in the game is a re-usable skill.
  • Usually games are rewarding for a while and then people tire of them – they hold limited appeal for mastery. If you’ve made it central to your collaboration approach and this happens, then what?
  • 1) Making intrinsically dull tasks more interesting.
  • Differentials in reward can de-motivate the many to the benefit of the few. Just as high salaries for the top 5% can breed resentment in the other 95% and make them less productive, so can an element of competition can switch off the masses who feel their efforts won’t make a difference to the leader board, even if it would have made a difference to  the real-world problem on the Q&A forum.
  • 3) Where the only purpose you can offer is recognition
  • I hope as the field matures some good case studies emerge, but for now  if you want employees to share knowledge or collaborate more effectively, then games are low on purpose, irrelevant at best to autonomy (and at worst they may get in the way) and may also suppress creative thinking.
Dan R.D.

If you could replace the content of your wallet with apps, would you? [03Oct11] - 0 views

  • In an age when everything is going virtual and digital, we could be looking at a future where wallets may be as uncommon as Filofax organizers and paper address books.
  • While loyalty cards should be baked right into Google Wallet, the chances are not every single retailer will be included in the equation. The cross platform app Key Ring is the perfect solution to get rid of all those loyalty cards crowding your wallet (or key chain) and put them all on your phone.
  • Rather than use traditional business cards, there are several virtual options that can replace the need to print out a stack of cards. It’s more environmentally friendly and you won’t have to worry about forgetting your cards. CardCloud, which we’ve written about in the past, is available for both iOS and Android and allows you to email your business card to users who don’t use the app, and record the location where you exchanged business cards – making it the most well-rounded app of its kind.
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  • Expensify is a good option to scan receipts, and additionally allows US users to link credit card and bank information to the app to record their payments as they happen. Available for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Web OS, the app allows you to scan receipts on the fly, by simply taking a photo of the receipt.
  • Although there is nothing currently available, Google Wallet isn’t the only app vying for your attention in the mobile payment space. Isis has AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile backing its mobile payment system so it could prove to be competition for Google in the US. Zoosh, a service created by Narette is also aiming to turn your phone into a replacement for your wallet. Banks are also catching up with the times, with Movenbank, dubbed “the world’s first cardless bank” launching its Alpha site, just this past weekend.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Recent Swype Purchase A Game-Changer For Nuance Communications - Seeking Alpha [16Oct11] - 0 views

  • Nuance Communications (NUAN) CEO Paul Ricci must have taken copious notes in class because his company's recent purchase of Swype has catapulted it from a voice recognition company to an input organization.
  • I think this is a big move for the company because it expands what it, as an entity, does.
  • To "swype," a person traces across keyboard letters in a continuous motion to comprise a word. Swype says its input method lets people do more than 40 words a minute, and says the application is meant to work across not just phones and tablets, but also game consoles, kiosks, televisions and other screens.
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  • Swype is licensed by a number of Android-based device makers, and that Swype has signed with 15 manufacturer partners and is on 50 million devices shipped in the last 18 months.
  • That's a lot of smartphones, and let's not forget that Apple (AAPL) is a player in that arena, too. In fact, it recently released its much ballyhooed iPhone 4S with the usual media circus in tow. The technology and investing press have written extensively about the device, and the big selling point of the communicator is its voice-recognition wizardry, more commonly known as Siri. Nothing has been confirmed, but Nuance Communications purportedly has the technical know-how that is the backbone of this game changer.
  • Dragon (the Nuance voice engine) happens to be almost universally regarded as the best voice recognition software.
  • As we've moved from predictive text to voice activated mobile computers, one thing is apparent - not one company can do it all alone. These wireless communication devices are a symphonic whole of many efforts. "The nature of the Mobile business is changed to one where our engagements with a number of important partners has become more extensive in co-development.
Dan R.D.

Glitch developer says mobile gaming is dominating the games industry [24Oct11] - 0 views

  • Forget consoles and PCs -- mobile gaming is prepped to be the number one gaming platform for the next decade, according to Glitch developer Tiny Speck. Vice President of Product and Operations Kakul Srivastava says we're already seeing it everywhere: "It is what is happening right now. I think the killer console is going to be your mobile device. That is absolutely where people will play more rich and involving, and even graphically intensive games."
  • With the newest editions of smartphones outpacing their predecessors and coming out much faster than the next console generation, Srivastava thinks it's not surprising that mobile gaming has momentum in the industry. "That pace of change is why mobile devices are going to be the console of the future. The way player interaction and player needs are changing, it's much faster than the five to seven years [of console development] that we're talking about," she said.
Dan R.D.

The Internet in Africa - still an alien concept - 0 views

  • With the excitement surrounding the arrival of undersea cables in Sub-Saharan Africa and the prospects of the smartphone revolution in bringing mobile connectivity to most parts of the continent, it is easy to forget for instance that the continent still has 1 domain per 10,000 users.
  • In education, there are the vast prospects that e-learning provides for students, but doing this in a way that scales is difficult in Africa’s low bandwidth environment. There are also prospects in various sectors ranging from agriculture to finance each with its own unique set of challenges.
  • Amidst this backdrop, the obvious respite for bridging the access gap appears to be through smart phones. However, majority of Africans can only afford the cheapest of phones which are typically low end phones. To truly expand access, smart phone prices will need to crash drastically and rural connectivity would need to expand dramatically. Save for these two actions, revolutionizing the continent via the Internet will continue to remain a pipe dream.
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  • Blackberry. Though the brand has faced declining popularity in countries like the United States, it is facing rising popularity in Nigeria and South Africa where its youths voted it as the country’s leading smartphone brand.
  • However, venturing into the continent to make the next multi-million dollar web company is not for the faint hearted. How do you market your products online in a continent where the vast majority of people have never experienced the web? There are ways around this such as through SMS based services but even this is challenging given the low literacy rates in many African countries.
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