Group items tagged

Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction?

Facebook isn’t the whole of contemporary friendship, but it sure looks a lot like its future. Yet Facebook—and MySpace, and Twitter, and whatever we’re stampeding for next—are just the latest stages of a long attenuation. They’ve accelerated the fragmentation of consciousness, but they didn’t initiate it.

The modern temper runs toward unrestricted fluidity and flexibility, the endless play of possibility, and so is perfectly suited to the informal, improvisational nature of friendship. We can be friends with whomever we want, however we want, for as long as we want.

“You know,” said a good friend of mine last week, “there’s really no such thing as big data.” I sighed a bit inside. In the past few years, cloud computing critics have said similar things: that clouds are nothing new, that they’re just mainframes, that they’re just painting old technologies with a cloud brush to help sales. I’m wary of this sort of techno-Luddism. But this person is sharp, and not usually prone to verbal linkbait, so I dug deeper.

And this was his point about big data: that given how much traditional companies put it to work, it might as well not exist. Companies have countless ways they might use the treasure troves of data they have on us. Yet all of this data lies buried, sitting in silos. It seldom sees the light of day.

Small, agile startups disrupt entire industries because they look at traditional problems with a new perspective. They’re fearless, because they have less to lose. But big, entrenched incumbents should still be able to compete, because they have massive amounts of data about their customers, their products, their employees, and their competitors. They fail because often they just don’t know how to ask the right questions.

Of the 65.2 million tablets predicted to be shipped in 2011, Apple will continue to dominate the tablet market with 40 million iPad shipments and hold a 61% share of the market, a new research report from Digitimes reveals. In the first six months of 2011, tablet shipments increased more than 420% from the previous year, with sales expected to increase into the second half to boost the number of shipments by 150% from a year earlier. Apple is expected to contribute more than 25.5 million iPad shipments in the second half of the year alone, up 76% compared to the first half of the year.

Google made a $12.5 billion bet on Monday that its future — and the future of big Internet companies — lies in mobile computing, and moved aggressively to take on its arch rival Apple in the mobile market.

The Silicon Valley giant, known for its search engine and Android phone software, rattled the tech world with its announcement that it would acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, allowing it to get into the business of making cellphones and tablets.

The deal, which requires regulatory approval, would also give Google a valuable war chest of more than 17,000 patents that would help it defend Android from a barrage of patent lawsuits.

there are very few executives, only a fraction, who are actually creating next-generation social experiences for their companies like Jeff Schick. The IBM executive doesn’t just leverage social business solutions, he and his team create them. “We started well over 15 years ago. We’ve been thinking about how to better connect people with people and people with information in terms of IBM itself,” Schick says, “the idea of getting the right person over the right opportunity at the right time to yield the right result was genuinely a business imperative at IBM.”

At Big Blue, the company encourages the use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs to support their sales, communication, marketing and recruiting efforts.  While employee’s social interactions are not under a microscope, the experiments in social on a massive scale have led to a set of social business conduct guidelines that govern their employees’ social interactions. Schick advises that you need to establish behavior standards for employees to follow.

So why do they do it? Since they are both an early adopter and creator of social technologies, they’ve learned that content management, business process management, collaboration, commerce and analytics must all be combined with a social layer to create a universal and unified solution.

Motivating Gen Xers

Room to grow. Offer Gen X employees clear statements of goals

Opportunities to make choices. Since this generation has become accustomed to "fending for themselves," provide options--options for task selection, options for challenges, options to formulate new processes, and options to develop creative yet appropriate conclusions.

In 2010, $8.1 billion was spent globally on smart technology in cities in the US, and within the next five years, that number is projected to jump to $39.5 billion, greatly expanding the capacity for smart city projects around the world. Currently, there are 102 smart cities in the world. Europe has the most at 38, with North America following closely with 35. Asia has 21, the Middle East and Africa combined have six, and South and Central America have two. The “smartness” of a city is determined by these aspects: economy, environment, government, lifestyle, transportation and community.

When trying to piece together the devices that we use to connect to each other, it’s easy to see that it’s going to take a piece of paper the size of Texas to feature them all. Even if we manage to do so, we will be far from connecting them all in whatever way they use the Internet. So what do we do? Well, we do it anyway, and on a computer of course. Intel put together a really interesting infographic that lines up all the devices (breeds) that we use to connect to each other. For the first time (I guess), we can get a clear view of how the technological infrastructure was built and to what extent it reaches out. As you can see, the numbers represented get multiplied with each major technological milestone, and it’s easy to see that we’re heading for something really interesting in the future. Whatever it will be that will beat the Internet will be major, and even though I can’t imagine what that will be right now, it’s still exciting to know that we always come up with something to beat the previous technology. What do you think will be the next big thing in technology that will top the Internet?

In South Africa, the continent’s strongest economy, mobile phone use has gone from 17 percent of adults in 2000 to 76 percent in 2010. Today, more South Africans – 29 million – use mobile phones than radio (28 million), TV (27 million) or personal computers (6 million). Only 5 million South Africans use landline phones. Nielsen’s recently released Mobile Insights study in South Africa, which examined consumers’ usage of and attitudes toward mobile phones, networks and services, reveals a number of interesting insights such as: -- Nokia rules: More than half (52%) own that company’s handsets, followed by Samsung and BlackBerry, and 56 percent of those currently using other brands indicated their next handset would likely be a Nokia. -- SMS text messaging is practically ubiquitous among South African mobile customers, and is used by almost 4.2 times more people than e-mail. More than two-thirds (69%) of consumers prefer sending texts to calling, in large part because it is less expensive, and 10 percent believe texting to be a faster way of communicating.

In the next decade, we’ll see more change in the commerce landscape than in the past 100 years combined.

Mobile

by 2020 and each consumer will have approximately seven devices connected to the Internet.

UW researchers say this new type of transistor could one day understand or even control body functions.

Materials scientists are looking at these proton-based microscopic transistors for future advances in prosthetics and biological sensing.

In the body, protons activate “on” and “off” switches and are key players in biological energy transfer. Ions open and close channels in the cell membrane to pump things in and out of the cell. Animals, including humans, use ions to flex their muscles and transmit brain signals. A machine that was compatible with a living system in this way could, in the short term, monitor such processes. Someday it could generate proton currents to control certain functions directly.

A recent interview takes a look at what Facebook’s recent platform changes mean for businesses. It begins, “Recently at f8, Facebook’s developer conference, the company introduced a series of action verbs into its social platform. ‘Read,’ ‘Watch,’ and ‘Listen,’ Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, were added to help build a ‘language for how people connect.’ The one missing word, of course, was ‘Buy.’ That’s really why Facebook and its army of content partners from news, publishing, music, and film and TV are rushing to set up shop on the famous platform with 750 million users.”

The interviewer “sat down with Gi Fernando, an expert on social-networking data, to help explain what Facebook’s platform changes mean for brands, consumers, and marketers.

When asked about the single biggest change that Facebook is making, Fernando replied, “The biggest change is Facebook driving toward becoming the semantic web. The semantic web is making sure that the Internet has a dictionary and a grammar that can be understood by consumers, yes, but also by advertisers and brands. It’s also understanding how people behave on the Web rather than just clicking on stuff: what are they actually doing? You read, watch things, you get instant feedback, your friends can read and watch with you, but then the brand knows what you and 13 others are reading, watching, listening to as well, and you can target advertising based around that. It’s a beautiful feedback loop both for the consumer and the brand.”

Of course, oftentimes you don’t really want to tell all of your friends where you are, and even then you may only want them to be able to see your whereabouts for a short while. That’s where Glympse comes in. The service, which is based entirely around ‘sharing your where’ with select friends a few hours at a time, has just raised a $7.5 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures and Ignition Partners.

Say, for example, you were running late for a meeting and wanted your coworkers to have a sense for when you’d be arriving at the office. Instead of having to send a series of text messages (“15 minutes..”, “traffic bad, make that 30 min”, and so on), you could just send a Glympse that let them track your progress on a map. Then, when you arrived, you could turn the Glympse off and the map would stop updating.

So where is Glympse going next? The company isn’t sharing much about its future plans, other than to say that they’re working with partners to integrate the product into “the everyday life experience”. In other words, expect them to move well beyond their own iPhone and Android apps in the near future.

New technical standards and consumers’ extensive use of mobile media put us on the cusp of an explosion in mobile payments.

Long rumored and heavily used in Asia, mobile phones have the ability to be used as payment devices similar to credit cards.

Now, the growing penetration of smartphones, the widespread use of phones to comparison shop, share price or product features or accept discount and coupon offers makes mobile payments the next high demand phone function.

The idea of a making payments via your mobile has been a slow adoption in Canada, mainly due to the lack of devices with NFC capabilities. A report last week noted that 10% of Canadians currently use a “mobile wallet” to pay for select items and bank via their cellphone, but 40% are interested in using it in the “future”. The Big 3 carriers (Rogers, Bell and TELUS) joined together to create Zoompass, Visa and MasterCard are conducting trials and a mobile payment trial is underway in Montreal called “MoneyCell”. So the ability to pay by your phone will become second nature over the next year to two years in Canada. PayPal Canada recently hired Leger Marketing to conduct a survey to see how comfortable Canadians were with the idea of a “digital wallet”. PayPal noted that they have “always provided digital wallet functionality” and 1,512 Canadians took the online survey between May 9th – May 12th. The survey revealed that 34% would rather carry a mobile phone to make a payment than a pocket full of change. 36% stated they would make mobile payments that range in all price points, such as an iPod ($272.30) or a latte ($5.50). 38% believe that paying from a mobile device is more convenient.

Augmented reality has been touted as the "next big thing" for a while, yet mainstream success has proved elusive. So what can be done to turn it from a gimmick into a commercial necessity?Imagine being able to watch miniature versions of Kings of Leon or Lady Gaga play on a table right in front of your eyes.

One company - String, in partnership with tech firm Digicave - has developed and demonstrated a system that creates the impression of a 3D figure mapped onto, for example, a book shelf. Such technology opens up the possibility of having a pop star appear in your bedroom, performing as if they were on-stage.

The idea of augmented reality was first mooted as far back as in 1965, with Ivan Sutherland's now famous essay Augmented Reality: The Ultimate Display. In it, he said that "with appropriate programming… a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked," stating that digital handcuffs would be able to actually restrain users, and those shot by digital characters would be killed in real life.

Third Eye, a new free Android game from Viewdle, uses a combination of augmented reality and facial recognition technology to make a whole new kind of mobile game.

Basically, everybody is either a Vampire or a Slayer and this "relic"--the Third Eye--can tell you which category you fall into by reading your "faceprint." You might be familiar with Viewdle's other Android app, SocialCamera, which uses facial recognition to automatically tag photos of your friends. The objective of the first part of Third Eye is to build your army and establish alliances. The second and third parts, which will come out later this year, pits your assembled clans against one another in all-out war.

Next, you'll want to start recruiting people for your army. Third Eye uses the same facial algorithm on your friends (or random strangers, if you're bold) to identify if they are a vampire or a slayer. You simply hold your phone up toward their face and the app will scan it to determine their fate. If they're a slayer and you're a vampire, you can either "Feed" aka suck their blood or "Ghoulify" and make them join your army.

Mobile payments have taken off in the last few years, and are now poised to grow from $240 billion this year to $670 billion worldwide in 2015, according to Juniper Research. Fueled in part by the nascent near field communication (NFC) market, which is expected to be worth $50 billion by 2014, the overall mobile payments market is also expected to rise quickly thanks to mobile ticketing, money transfers and purchases of physical goods. Mobile payments are more reliant right now on digital goods purchases, which is expected to double by 2015 and will account for 40 percent of the market. But the faster growth will occur with NFC, which can be used in retail and merchant locations to buy physical items. Juniper said 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months.

The game’s basic concept may sound familiar: you are trying to help your team take over the world. But we’re not talking about some fantasy realm or alien planet here. In Shadow Cities you’re trying to take over the real world.

Right there on the screen you will see other nearby players in real time, and not all will be friendly. When you start the game, you must choose between two factions, the Animators (nature lovers) and the Architects (technologists).

when you read an alert from another player that a big battle is brewing in, say, Paris. You jump to a friendly beacon and the next thing you know, you’re lobbing spells against enemy players from all over the world for control of the Champs-Élysées

A 2009 analysis from Juniper Research (News –Alert) of the $110bn NFC opportunity forecasted that one in every six mobile subscribers (about 17 percent) globally will have an NFC enabled device by 2014. Adoption was expected to be highest in the Far East,with use very limited outside of that region.

By 2014,Juniper now predicts that North America will account for just under half of NFC smartphones,followed by Western Europe.

The latest forecast from Juniper Research suggests that at least 20 percent of smartphones will support NFC by 2014,about 300 million phones.