Open Intelligence / Web 3X (Social + Mobile)

Boring conversation? Accessories that decipher emotional cues could save your social life – or reveal that you're a jerk

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?

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.

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.

"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."

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.

With big bets by the titans of technology and consumer finance, 2011 is becoming the year that American business got serious about jumpstarting the “Internet of things“—a broad web of digitally enhanced locations that consumers can navigate the same way they now use smartcards to pay their bus fare or open security doors at work. For Seattle startup Iota, that transformation isn’t happening fast enough. This team of former T-Mobile employees is aiming its considerable experience in the mobile sector at a new type of device that it says is ready to go right now. They believe it can be made cheaper, easier, and more open than expensive new radio frequency ID-enabled smartphones controlled by the big market players. Their mission is to put the futuristic promise of what’s called “near-field communications,” or NFC, into the hands of anyone who doesn’t have a smartphone, or wants to spend less time digging around in a field of apps. The company, based in Seattle’s hip Capitol Hill neighborhood, has raised $1.4 million so far and is currently about $600,000 of the way through a $1 million convertible-note round, founder and CEO Russ Stromberg says.

a new study conducted and released by Latitude, a technology research consultancy, published in collaboration with ReadWriteWeb. The study’s main takeaway message: “kids are predicting that the future of media and technology lies in better integrating digital experiences with real-world places and activities. They’re also suggesting that more intuitive, human-like interactions with devices, such as those provided by fluid interfaces or robots, are a key area for development.”

Researchers scored the kids’ inventions on the presence of specific technology themes, such as type of interface, degree of interactivity, physical-digital convergence and user’s desired end-goal.

The Digital vs. Physical Divide is Disappearing: Children today don’t neatly divide their virtual interactions from their experiences of the “real world.” For them, these two realms continue to converge as technologies become more interactive, portable, connected and integrated.

Powering remote sensors, which are seen as the key to the future “Internet of Things”, is a problem. Given that sensors may well be embedded, long-life power sources are essential; you don’t want to be changing AA batteries every few months on the predicted 50 billion devices that will be connected to the net. Now U.S. researchers have devised a way of tapping into the energy found in the fog of electromagnetic energy that envelops us all; a fog caused by radio and TV signals, mobile phone transmissions, even domestic WiFi. The researchers have already successfully operated a temperature sensor, according to reports by PhysOrg.

Alcatel-Lucent Geo-Location Mobile Game "Acquisition" On top of our platform and supported by our community members, Alcatel-Lucent ran an innovation & development challenge to bring new mobile applications and games to life. A TopCoder member came up with the idea for Acquisition, which leverages network-based API's for automated geo-checkin, SMS, subscriber identity, call control and player presence. It pairs it with game mechanics similar to a traditional game of Monopoly. In a game of Acquisition you are competing against a set of friends to amass the most wealth and you do so by physically checking into a variety of localities, trading properties, developing on top of owned properties, earning dividends and expanding your empire.

The event, held on 27 June, showcased the latest research on next-generation body-centric communications – wireless networks worn on the human body. Future communication systems will be worn on clothing rather than held in the hand as smart phones are nowadays, and will be made possible due to cutting-edge advancements in wearable electronics. Dr Paul, from the Centre for Communications Research (CCR), specialises in the design of antennas that can be integrated into textiles through electromagnetic numerical simulation. Applications range from smart clothing for sportswear, to soldiers’ and emergency workers’ outfits, and to monitoring devices for healthcare and telemedicine. Professor Joe McGeehan, Director of CCR, said: ‘We are delighted that Dr Paul has had the opportunity to present an invited paper on her novel research is this key area. Wireless networks worn on the human body will become more pervasive, particularly in applications such as medical sensor networks for an ageing population and healthcare.’

Without so much as a whisper from the retailer itself, Amazon’s Android tablet is heading our way. Rumoured to launch at the end of the third quarter in time for the holiday season, Amazon is hoping it can steal a little of Apple’s thunder and steal a little of its market share.

Amazon’s decision to launch an Appstore was a surprising one, especially because there was no shortage of alternative Android marketplaces at the time. Incorporating its patented recommendation system and its “Free App A Day”, the third-party application store won many fans in the US primarly because it has been providing customers with downloads of some of the most popular Android apps and games.

Amazon is one of, if not the world’s number one Cloud storage and service provider and is seen by many to have led the march towards the Cloud, with affordable and reliable online services that even the most bootstrapped startups could afford. Asserting itself in the hosting market has helped the company make the best of its other web-based services, namely online music downloads and its new Android Appstore.

The Lab’s first game went live this week, called Ball Invasion (here’s a link on iTunes). It’s a shooter in which the world around you becomes a canvas for playing: hold your iPad 2 in front of you, and it becomes a window on a world that fills with targets that you can chase and shoot. The game’s fun enough, but really the excitement is all about the technology. While you’ve no doubt seen augmented reality before, the difference here is 13th Lab is using a complex computer vision technique known as SLAM — that’s Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This is a system developed in part by NASA for use in robotics, which allows an object (like, say, a drone) to look around, build up a picture of the world and then understand where it is.

More and more social networks are offering geolocation. How does a person keep up without joining every service under the sun? A Palo Alto, CA-based startup called Ban.jo hopes to become geo-location central by allowing iPhone or Android mobile users to see who’s nearby, no matter what social network they may be using. Ban.jo founder Damien Patton, who launched the free app at the end of June, says it has already been downloaded in over 100 countries. He wants to make all geolocation services more useful to more people by eliminating the barrier of having to sign up on a case-by-case basis. So far, Ban.jo users can see the locations of people who have declared their locations via Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook.

PayPal has shown their new peer-to-peer NFC payment system at MobileBeat 2011 today, using two Android powered Samsung Nexus S phones.  The premise is simple -- open the app on both phones, enter the payment amount on one, and bump them together.  After the buzz, enter account details, and the payment is processed.  Afterwards, the normal email receipts are generated and sent out, just like we did it in the old days.There's no firm date when to expect this, but PayPal says "late this summer".  Another compelling reason for manufacturers to put NFC capabilities in their new models, or just a security concern?  Either way, we'll find out soon enough.  Hit the break to see a demo video.

Turning to the crowd has proven pretty popular with security types. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, recently began work on a prediction market aimed at forecasting computer security events. Darpa, the nerd cousin of Iarpa over at the Defense Department, tucked away some cash in its budget last year to farm intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data out to the crowd in search of better analysis. The Navy has even turned to crowdsourcing via online multiplayer games in order to hunt for better ideas against piracy.

If there’s one thing Twitter users know, it’s that advertising is coming — and not just a few “promoted tweets” or “promoted trends” here and there, but actual branded advertisements appearing right in a user’s real-time stream. There have been several recent reports that ads will be rolling out soon, including a Reuters report that says Twitter is planning a trial of “self-serve” ads for major corporations. There’s no question that the company needs to do bring in revenue, but how will users of the service react to the sudden appearance of advertising in their streams? At least one analyst thinks that Twitter is making a big mistake.

Imagine getting points in an online game each time you drink more water, floss your teeth or take a step toward some other healthy lifestyle goal. That's the promise of Green Goose, a company that uses tiny sensors and accelerometers on stickers or credit cards to track everyday behavior and record it online.

Two members of the panel of investor judges put $100,000 into the startup on the spot while the company was still on stage. A third, Bill Warner, had already invested. "It's amazing and there's so much more you haven't even heard," he said about the company.

All thanks to a simple sticker or other attachable sensor. It's the simplest and most pleasing example we've seen yet of the widely anticipated trend called The Internet of Things.

Here is a guest post by futurist Walter de Brouwer: We want our health to become a number. That is one of the reasons why we seem to be at the beginning of a real Cambrian Explosion of ‘Health Internet Things’ and tracking gadgets. Everything in our bathroom or pharmacy will soon have a display and a WUSB or Bluetooth connection because all of these displays will want to connect, thereby producing a real-time, ever-changing picture of our ambient health.

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

Last year, he co-founded (with Ed Lucero) a company called Tackable to develop his ideas, and in February, we described here Tackable’s first product: a pair of iPhone apps that Tackable envisions as the basis for a social network that “organizes media on a map.” Now Tackable has rolled out, in partnership with the newspapers of the Bay Area News Group, something much more complex and ambitious: an iPad app called TapIn BayArea, which Stangel describes as “the world’s first location-aware digital newspaper.” TapIn, at launch, is already an impressive, sophisticated product that shows potential to evolve in multiple ways. And its ability to engage users at various levels bodes well for its capacity to generate revenue.

Looking for new ways to make money? Checkout the new trend of “Crowd Commerce”; this new concept is driven by the smart phone technology, mainly iPhone and powered by Gigwalk Inc.Just 10 weeks after they first launched their app, Gigwalk Inc. was able to capture over 116 thousand gigs on their network (and rapidly increasing). Gigwalk connects companies in need for location-specific tasks with freelancers (called Gigwalkers) willing to take on gigs in that location. Gigwalk currently operates in, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and South Florida.

Google News has recently rolled out its Badges program and entered the world of meaningless digital rewards. Get excited. From now on, if you have a Google account, log in and enable your web history before reading articles on Google News, you will accrue what are basically experience points (my words, not theirs) which will unlock badges and eventually cause those badges to “level up” (their words, not mine) from bronze to silver, gold, platinum and finally “ultimate.” Badges are related to certain subjects and level up based on articles read about that subject. For instance, to use the example from the instructional video, if you read articles about basketball, you will level up your basketball badge. While you might expect a news-site achievement program to stop there, Google has gone the extra mile to implement a balancing effect. Gorging on a whole bunch of articles in one day won’t earn you as much xp as reading a moderate amount on a regular basis. Pavlovian conditioning much?

There is also, of course, a social networking application to be had here. Badges are automatically set to private but can be shared with friends.

There is something slightly juvenile about the concept of giving away badges for reading the news, and something condescending about Google giving you gold stars for browsing their websites, and you know what? I don’t care.

American Express' new digital payments and commerce platform Serve has just announced its first carrier deal since its launch in March of this year. The company's new partnership with U.S. operator Sprint will allow Serve's mobile wallet application to be made available in the Sprint Zone for customers using select Android phones.

Serve, which can be funded by a bank account, debit or credit card, or from another Serve account, does not require users to be American Express card holders. Instead, it's aimed at those who don't rely on credit cards. With Serve, customers can shop both online and offline, anywhere American Express is accepted.

In the future, Serve will also be used for redeeming offers on goods and services, too, by way of a Groupon-like program.