Facebook is still growing towards 700 million users, having reached 687 million monthly actives by the start of June, according to our Inside Facebook Gold data service.
Most of the new users continue to come from countries that are relatively late in adopting Facebook, as has been the trend for the past year.
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Facebook Sees Big Traffic Drops in US and Canada as It Nears 700 Million Users Worldwid... - 0 views
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Most prominently, the United States lost nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of it. This is the first time the country has lost users in the past year. Canada also fell significantly, by 1.52 million down to 16.6 million,
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The moral of this story is that you can make a business out of simplifying what is chaotic and confusing, but only at the outset. As people become habituated to what at first was scary and headache-inducing, they will move away from controlled experience to more personally managed negotiation of the world.
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'Ultrawideband' could be future of medical monitoring - 0 views
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New research by electrical engineers at Oregon State University has confirmed that an electronic technology called "ultrawideband" could hold part of the solution to an ambitious goal in the future of medicine -- health monitoring with sophisticated "body-area networks."
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Such networks would offer continuous, real-time health diagnosis, experts say, to reduce the onset of degenerative diseases, save lives and cut health care costs. Some remote health monitoring is already available, but the perfection of such systems is still elusive
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"This type of sensing would scale a monitor down to something about the size of a bandage that you could wear around with you," said Patrick Chiang, an expert in wireless medical electronics and assistant professor in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "The sensor might provide and transmit data on some important things, like heart health, bone density, blood pressure or insulin status," Chiang said. "Ideally, you could not only monitor health issues but also help prevent problems before they happen. Maybe detect arrhythmias, for instance, and anticipate heart attacks. And it needs to be non-invasive, cheap and able to provide huge amounts of data.
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Why Russia's Social Media Boom Is Big News for Business [19Jun11] - 0 views
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By nearly every indicator, Russians are embracing social and digital media in ways deeper and more impactful than most other countries around the world. For those looking to do business in the former Republic, significant opportunities now exist to leverage this new wave of social adoption.
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Consider that in the first four months after its January 2010 launch in Russia, Facebook use grew by 376%, and today more than 4.5 million people use the site regularly. Nearly three-quarters of those making the switch from homegrown social platforms such as Vkontakte (with tens of millions of members) to Facebook are under 27, signaling a generational desire to engage in global communities and interact with brands, celebrities, friends and politicians in decidedly new ways. Twitter usage, while still in its infancy in Russian, grew three-fold in 2010.
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And while it should come as little surprise that nearly 80% of the Russian population owns a mobile device, the dramatic adoption of smartphone technology and advanced mobile usage are beginning to change the way in which businesses — and the government — communicate. According to Nielsen, Russians under 24 are the third-largest users worldwide of “advanced mobile data,” behind only China and the United States.
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While interesting in the macro-sense, these broad numbers paint an incomplete picture of the complex future of social and digital media in Russia. The real story behind the social revolution lies less in the initial platform adoption we are witnessing and far more in the sheer volume of engagement occurring within them.
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Your favorite gadgets are threatening the planet's future [18Jun11] - 0 views
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Earth is expected to be home to over nine billion people by 2050. That’s a lot of people for Mother Nature to manage.
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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.”
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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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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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It’s thought that the global demand for many rare earth metals could exceed the supply as soon as the end of this year.
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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.
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Why Social Accountability Will Be the New Currency of the Web [29Jul11] - 0 views
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Focus has been largely placed on volume and reach of an individual’s ideas versus the implications of their actions. We’re so focused on growing our own brands that the megaphone has become more important than the message.
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The Whuffie Manifesto further states that “when reputation is wealth, only those who do good and well unto others are the richest.”
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Sites like DailyFeats have created models in which people self-badge positive actions that then aggregate their overall “Life Score,” which CEO and co-founder Veer Gidwaney says “is a reflection of the good that you do every day.”
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The notion of “good” is defined by an individual, and then supported via the closed-loop context of a person’s social graph. This “accountability based influence,” or ABI, is complementary to current measures, but evolves the idea of reputation based on action in communities where a closed-loop context makes sense. And it’s in these contexts that social capital is most easily converted into the virtual currencies moving to the forefront of the new digital economy.
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. Positive reputation within the community could translate to increased credit and benefits outside of Empire Avenue’s social stock market.
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Connected devices to save our resources [25Jul11] - 0 views
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The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects having an Internet presence. We're not just talking about your computer, laptop, cellphone or even your TV here - we're talking about everything. This includes your light switches, your fridge, even your toilet.With an Internet presence, all of your devices can start talking to each other and reacting to each other.Imagine a house that detects that a toilet hasn't been flushed for two days. It uses this to assume that the owners must be on vacation, but notices they left their heat cranked up to 22C, their TV running and all their lights on.Automatically, it adjusts all of these to an appropriate state (that might have pre-defined for being on vacation), and sends a text message, tweet or email to let the owners know. A text from the owners in return, or a tweet with #LightsOn, and the house will respond.
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A lot of what is being done right now is by interested DIY (do-it-yourself) programmers and hobbyists through sites such as ThingSpeak.com and Pachube.com. It's a world of experimentation, twittering toilets, and home energy monitoring.
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The Physiology of (Over-)Sharing [05Aug11] - 0 views
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In his latest study, Berger measured how various emotional and physical stimuli designed to activate the autonomic nervous system affected the likelihood that subjects would share emotion-free news articles. In one experiment, he primed 93 respondents with pre-tested video clips to produce emotional states associated with high arousal (anxiety, amusement) and low arousal (sadness, contentment). Then, in what participants were told was an unrelated trial, Berger presented the respondents with neutral articles and videos, and asked them to rate how inclined they were to share these news items with friends, family members, and coworkers. The result: "Situations that heighten arousal boost social transmission," Berger concludes.
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Video-Sharing iPhone App Limits Users to 1-Minute Clips [22Sep11] - 0 views
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If mobile video sharing is to follow in the footsteps of its more desirable mobile photo-sharing cousin, which application will users want to use to shoot, share and discover video clips? It’s too soon to tell, but startup Klip joins the fray and is now vying for your video attention. The startup released its application for iPhone on Monday with a focus on letting users share super-short 1-minute video clips — on Klip or with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube — and helping users discover clips from friends or other users based on topics of interests. “Klip re-invents the way consumers experience the world by organizing mobile videos in real time and by connecting consumers with the people and the topics that interest them,” the company says.
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Gartner Questions Near-term Adoption of NFC Mobile Payments [12Sep11] - 0 views
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I don’t disagree with the headline (see full article here). The problem for NFC payments has little to do with the state of NFC technology, or the road-map of NFC-enabled handsets, or the POS integration required at merchant sites. Those issues are either solved (or solving).The main hurdles for NFC payments are twofold:a highly complex payment ecosystem of banks, merchant acquirers, and payment processors who must demonstrate regulatory and PCI compliance, flawless security, and adequate payer authenticationand customers’ proclivity to adopt a new mode of payment, e.g. from ‘card-swipe’ to ‘phone-touch’Ask yourself – would I have to use my phone to complete a payment vs. my credit card? Personally, I think the experience will be novel but only really offer nominally more convenience.
11More5 Ways QR Codes Could Shake Up the 2012 Election [22Sep11] - 0 views
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With millions of potential voters using mobile devices, strategists would be remiss to write off QR codes as a risky early-adopter consumer trend untranslatable to the political space.
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“One of the exciting things about 2012 is that we have the opportunity to close the loop between online activities and real-world events,” he adds. “We’re seeing individuals rely on their phones, and QR codes present an optimal framework for that. There’s an opportunity for campaigns to reach out to mobile-savvy individuals and transmit a message that will lead to an activation.”
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There is great potential in branding candidates, fundraising and collecting supporters’ data using QR technology.
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This cycle, QR codes could serve as an on-the-street campaign that instantly recruits supporters to rallies, speeches, visibility events and canvassing.
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The key is to make sure the QR code allows for action – such as connecting with a supporter in another state, pledging to canvass or phone bank, engaging candidates or celebrity surrogates, or receiving cool merch.
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QR codes could be a chance to get creative: Provide access to exclusive content, such as funny or moving videos, tweets, pics and merch from a celeb. With more codes emerging that integrate specific design art, celeb supporters will also have access to tailor-made QR images specific to their sentiments and brand identities.
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Like past inclusion of Twitter and Facebook handles on promotional materials, by election day 2012, QR codes will be a cultural norm.
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By regionalizing the QR code’s look and the reward, the merch turns making a statement into a measurable social action for like-minded individuals
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QR codes could be a valuable tool for campaigns looking to tap into voting blocs once thought difficult to reach.
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5 Ways QR Codes Could Shake Up the 2012 Election: http://t.co/flQHfQzd
1MoreMozilla Open badge Infrastructure project kicks off [19Sep11] - 0 views
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Badges for Javascript courses are currently being developed at the School of Webcraft by Mozilla. It also plans to rope in diverse groups such as P2PU, 4H, NASA, PBS, US Department of education and Intel to develop badges. This new process claims to be of advantage to learners as they will be given an opportunity to collect badges from any internet website. These collected badges will reveal the learner’s proficiency in various subjects. And that’s not all, it is believed that open badges may prove beneficial for users to build online reputation, look for collaborators and find jobs. “Open Badges is a response to this trend: an open specification and APIs that provide any organization the basic building blocks they need to offer badges in a standard, interoperable manner. If we’re successful, the benefits to learners will be tremendous. Open Badges will let you gather badges from any site on the internet, combining them into a story about what you know and what you’ve achieved,” states the Mozilla blog.
1MorePayPal says a "mobile transaction in Canada happens once almost every minute". [28Jun11] - 0 views
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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.
4MoreBBC News - The promise of augmented reality: Gaga in a living room [25Jun11] - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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His vision bears uncanny resemblance to the Matrix, although it is far from the world of AR that we currently inhabit. Nearly 50 years after that prophetic work, computers have advanced beyond comprehension. However, commercial developments in AR have been slow and the buzz that surrounded the technology a couple of years ago seems to be waning.
3MoreMobile Industry is Now 2% of the World's GDP, Analyst Reports [07Jul11] - 0 views
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Researchers for the Chetan Sharma Consulting group have put together a 2011 State of the Global Mobile Industry mid-year assessment and have come up with some very interesting results. The entire global mobile market weighs in at about $1.3 trillion or close to 2% of the world's gross domestic product. Of that giant $1.3 trillion pie, about $300 billion is expected to be through data revenues. That means that people are starting to use data at much higher rates and Americans are on the forefront of data usage even as India and China are the fastest growing mobile markets in the world.
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"Mobile is fundamentally reshaping how we as consumers spend from housing and healthcare to entertainment and travel, from food and drinks to communication and transportation. Mobile not only influences purchase behavior but also post purchase opinions. When the share button is literally a second away, consumers are willingly sharing more information than ever before. Mobile is thus helping close the nirvana gap for brands and advertisers who seek to connect advertising to actual transactions. The long-term battle is however for owning the context of the users. Having the best knowledge about the user to help drive the transaction is the simply the most valuable currency of commerce."
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There will be more than six billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2011. According to the report, it took 20 years of mobile development to reach one billion connected devices. The jump from five billion to six billion took 15 months.
3MoreConductive nanocoatings for textiles could lead to thin, flexible electronics [08Jun11] - 0 views
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Not long ago, we reported on a prototype thin, flexible smartphone known as the Paperphone. While it isn't actually made out of paper, the success of a research project at North Carolina State University indicates that phones in the future could be. Scientists there have been able to deposit conductive nanocoatings onto textiles, meaning that items such as pieces of paper or clothing could ultimately be used as electronic devices.
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"Research like this has potential health and monitoring applications since we could potentially create a uniform with cloth sensors embedded in the actual material that could track heart rate, body temperature, movement and more in real time," said Dr. Jesse Jur, NCSU assistant professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science, and lead author of a paper on the technology. "To do this now, you would need to stick a bunch of wires throughout the fabric - which would make it bulky and uncomfortable."
5MoreSpecs that see right through you [05Jul11] - 0 views
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Boring conversation? Accessories that decipher emotional cues could save your social life – or reveal that you're a jerk
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The glasses can send me this information thanks to a built-in camera linked to software that analyses Picard's facial expressions. They're just one example of a number of "social X-ray specs" that are set to transform how we interact with each other. By sensing emotions that we would otherwise miss, these technologies can thwart disastrous social gaffes and help us understand each other better. Some companies are already wiring up their employees with the technology, to help them improve how they communicate with customers. Our emotional intelligence is about to be boosted, but are we ready to broadcast feelings we might rather keep private?
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In a 10-day experiment in 2008, Japanese and American college students were given the task of building a complex contraption while wearing the next generation of jerk-o-meter - which by that time had been more diplomatically renamed a "sociometric badge". As well as audio, their badge measured proximity to other people.
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Some of our body's responses during a conversation are not designed for broadcast to another person - but it's possible to monitor those too. Your temperature and skin conductance can also reveal secrets about your emotional state, and Picard can tap them with a glove-like device called the Q Sensor. In response to stresses, good or bad, our skin becomes clammy, increasing its conductance, and the Q Sensor picks this up.
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Physiological responses can now even be tracked remotely, in principle without your consent. Last year, Picard and one of her graduate students showed that it was possible to measure heart rate without any surface contact with the body. They used software linked to an ordinary webcam to read information about heart rate, blood pressure and skin temperature based on, among other things, colour changes in the subject's face (Optics Express, vol 18, p 10762).
5MoreThe Internet in Africa - still an alien concept - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
1MoreUS Trails China In Almost Every Mobile Usage Trend [24Oct11] - 0 views
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Mobile device usage has spread across the globe. In terms of mobile penetration, the United States is actually on the lower end of the worldwide spectrum, with only 77% cellular device ownership. That seems counterintuitive to the way the U.S. views itself as the heart of mobile acceptance and innovation. It is China and other Asia-Pacific countries that really lead in mobile adoption. Research firm Forrester released a study last week showing global mobile usage trends. In almost every mobile usage aspect, metropolitan China and other Pacific Rim countries lead the way. That includes mobile social usage, work usage and multiple device ownership. Mobile is near an inflection point, changing the way people interact with information around the globe.
5MoreBeyond GPS: your phone in 2015 | KurzweilAI [01Nov11] - 0 views
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Attention smartphone users: the recent launch of the first two satellites for Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system (GNSS) could make things a lot more interesting in about four years.
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Galileo will deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to one meter range, compared to 10 meters for GPS, the European Space Agency (ESA) states, and it plans to give non-European users access.
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Meanwhile, Apple’s new iPhone 4S has a chip that will be able to access Glonass (the Russian version of GPS), Engadget reports. Other manufacturers, including Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics and Texas Instruments, will also support Glonass — and Galileo as soon as it is operational — with new chipsets and software able to receive and integrate all three main GNSS systems.
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So we can expect an explosion of next-generation location based services and apps and a race between GNSS providers, chipset makers, handset manufacturers, system integrators, app developers and carriers to deliver better position accuracy and reliability, led by Apple, Microsoft/Nokia, and Google/Samsung/others.
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What will that mean for you? Imagine messaging a nearby unknown person by just pointing your phone, or driving in a unknown city with the help of the geo-located augmented-reality overlays shown in the Microsoft Future Visions concept video, which would require very accurate positioning of moving targets in real time.
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