Open Intelligence / Web 3X (Social + Mobile)

Google CEO Larry Page trotted out an impressive statistic during last week's quarterly earnings call: Google+ now has 90 million users, double what it had three months ago. Even better, 60 percent of those users are engaged daily, and 80 percent weekly.

But those users aren't necessarily engaging with Google+. Any action taken during a logged-in Google session—whether it be searching the Internet, checking Gmail or using Google Docs—counts as engagement under the statistic Page used. Google has refused requests from journalists and interested bystanders to reveal exactly what percentage of those 90 million signed-up Google+ users actually view Plus content each day, week or month. Instead, Google is arguing that it doesn't matter: Google+ is so integrated into the overall experience that what matters is the number of users interacting with any Google site. Combined with other steps Google has taken to integrate Plus into search results and other Google properties, the message is clear: Eventually, Google Plus will just be there whether you want it to or not.

On Friday, the Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google) wrote a post titled "New Google Accounts Require Gmail and Google+." While this isn't strictly true, the blog demonstrates how Google is making it difficult for new users not to sign up for Google+.

Despite all of this 99% of brands and businesses are ill prepared for this new flood of mobile tech. They literally don’t have a clue where to start. Most brands think that building an app is the solution to all their mobile problems but with over a million apps across the various platforms they are notoriously hard to promote and rarely get cut through. Many businesses have started implementing mobile sites but that is only really the tip of the iceberg and the vast majority of businesses wouldn’t even know what a mobile site was (have a look at some of the biggest businesses in your country to see how bad it is). The simple reality is that brands and businesses don’t even know that they should have a strong mobile presence yet and that presents a huge opportunity to a new breed of entrepreneurs willing to provide solutions.

Digital agencies will still be pumping out apps for the next couple of years to support campaigns and PR firms are not even at the races. Most importantly you would have to focus. Focus on nothing but mobile. As tempting as it would be to build websites and carry out traditional advertising that will just bring you down to the level of your competitors. The opportunities are immense though because mobile is not something that is just going to go away. It would take you 2-3 years to position yourself correctly but if you started now you would be miles ahead of the curve when this stuff really hit the mainstream from a marketing perspective.

We are adding our own mobile capabilities to compliment social because the two go hand in hand but there is plenty more room for agencies all over the world to spring up who are purely focused on mobile. It will without a doubt be the next big marketing frontier. That is my free business idea for the year so just send over the check if you do go ahead and give it a go and it turns in to a huge success

Today we’re announcing our new open-source wearable electronics platform and series of accessories. We rarely announce something until it’s shipping to customers, but you’ll see a lot of these out in the world from our testers as they show off some projects – so we wanted to post about this now.

For the last few years Ladyada has been thinking about everything she wanted in a wearable electronics platform for Adafruit’s community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers. After months of planning, designing and working with partners around the world for the best materials and accessories, we can share what we’re up to. The hardware is now in the hands of our staff and testers!

We call it the FLORA.

The first of these changes is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) computing. BYOD is a much better term than “consumerization” and really portrays the meaning that many of us are buying smart phones, tablets or laptops to use them on a work network. The tension this creates is predictable.

In 2012 and beyond, we’re going to see more and more different devices coming into the workplace.

If you use PayPass, Tap & Go, or other contactless credit cards, that’s NFC. In fact, NFC hardware already is appearing in smart phones and tablets. There are relatively few devices with NFC today, but there will be more in 2012.

The business climate, it turns out, is a lot like the weather. And we've entered a next-two-hours era. The pace of change in our economy and our culture is accelerating--fueled by global adoption of social, mobile, and other new technologies--and our visibility about the future is declining.

Uncertainty has taken hold in boardrooms and cubicles, as executives and workers (employed and unemployed) struggle with core questions: Which competitive advantages have staying power? What skills matter most? How can you weigh risk and opportunity when the fundamentals of your business may change overnight?

Look at the global cell-phone business. Just five years ago, three companies controlled 64% of the smartphone market: Nokia, Research in Motion, and Motorola. Today, two different companies are at the top of the industry: Samsung and Apple. This sudden complete swap in the pecking order of a global multibillion-dollar industry is unprecedented. Consider the meteoric rise of Groupon and Zynga, the disruption in advertising and publishing, the advent of mobile ultrasound and other "mHealth" breakthroughs (see "Open Your Mouth And Say 'Aah!'). Online-education efforts are eroding our assumptions about what schooling looks like. Cars are becoming rolling, talking, cloud-connected media hubs. In an age where Twitter and other social-media tools play key roles in recasting the political map in the Mideast; where impoverished residents of refugee camps would rather go without food than without their cell phones; where all types of media, from music to TV to movies, are being remade, redefined, defended, and attacked every day in novel ways--there is no question that we are in a new world.

SOLITUDE is out of fashion

Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. 

there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

Graham Fisher, a Director at Cambridge Wireless, welcomed the efforts made by the Technology Strategy Board.  He told TechEye that there are plenty of opportunities to be had with an Internet of Things, though there is more that needs to be done in terms of infrastructure in order to create the ecosystem the TSB is striving for. “Rural connectivity could be an issue as it is necessary that ubiquitous internet is available in order to create efficient systems,” Fisher told TechEye. “For efficient telehealth and smart metering this all falls down if you are not able to provide ubiquitous connections.” Then again, there are "problems with a lack of full connections in many parts of the country,” Fisher says. “We need to push forward with the roll out of LTE and use of white spaces as soon as possible to support this.”

If everything is traceable, that means that we’ll be more aware of the entire life cycle of our stuff — even once we’ve given it up willingly. This means that when, say, the laptop bag you gave to Goodwill ultimately ends up in the landfill a few weeks later (like a reported 40 percent of things that go to Goodwill do) it will be hard to ignore your role in polluting the world. The old green axiom of “You can’t throw anything away, because there is no such thing as away” will become very real to everyone.

The Internet of Things will also play a crucial role in making systems and the consumption of resources much more efficient, too. Putting a chip and wireless connection on lighting, heating and cooling systems, power grid devices and cars could lead to better management of resources, including energy, electricity, heating and fuel.

Increasing the role of governments in cyberspace could spell disaster for the free nature of the Internet, top American officials and analysts said on Wednesday. Rather than seeking expanded government control, countries, companies, and other organizations should seek to strengthen a "multi-stakeholder" approach that allows input from everyone, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Larry Strickling told an audience at the Brookings Institution.

"Each challenge to the multi-stakeholder model has implications for Internet governance throughout the world," he said. "When parties ask us to overturn the outcomes of these processes, no matter how well-intentioned the request, they are providing ammunition to other countries who would like to see governments take control of the Internet."

He said efforts to more strictly control cyberspace will only lead to stagnation.