b l a s t u l a reblog++

Over the summer my brother had a friend visiting from Japan. Erina – this petite, normally quiet and demure Asian had a good hearty laugh at the fact that our major Canadian electronics retailer fancies itself as the store of the future. Personally, I always find a visit to the electronics shop to be quite exhilarating. I enjoy perusing the new gadgets, hanging out in the speaker room, and fantasizing about the sweet 52-inch Sony flat screens. But then again, I’m male, I’m 30, and I’m a Canadian. To a Japanese native whose expectations are clearly far more demanding, our entire technology industry is a bit comical. The futuristic gadgets that we find ourselves drooling over are already two or three generations old in Japan. In fact the digital camera that Erina walked into the store with was the latest model… too bad she bought it in Japan five years ago. To her, our technology was “soooo 2003.”

I bring up this little anecdote because it is relevant to some research I’m contemplating about Asian business revolutionaries and, in particular, the mobile industry. The issue is that, despite our global business environment, the disparity between North American and Asian product innovation and consumer expectations of innovation is, honestly, quite shocking. The electronics industry in this continent is a great example of the “culture of legacy” that we North Americans complaisantly support.

Our diminished expectations extend to the technology we accept from service providers like cable and cell phone companies (anyone use on-demand cable lately – the interface is circa 1985), from our governments (still waiting on that electronic ballot, e-polling, and efficient online service delivery), and from our corporate work environments (still operating on the assumption that 3- to 5-year lifecycles for employee workstations are acceptable and that iPhones aren’t “enterprise technology”). We do not demand better technology, and so we do not get it. It’s simple supply-and-demand; Economics 101.

Three-year contracts for cell phones are standard – the assumption being that our current technology is ‘good enough’ for at least that long. Flat panel TV’s are “all the rage” right now, but if I were to poll my own group of friends, fewer than half of them have made the investment. In fact, we in Canada are, to a certain extent, proud of being luddites. We exalt our “retro” technologies and some even pine for the ‘good old days’ before the hum-drum of always-on BlackBerries, satellite TVs, laptops, and instant messaging.

When two of my colleagues decided to wait in line overnight to get the latest iPhone, the response was a mix of jealousy and incredulity – that anyone would want to pay a premium for the latest and greatest technology, and to demand it so early is still seen as somewhat geeky and eccentric.

The culture of legacy extends far beyond consumer electronics. It’s a deeply-routed cultural problem we as North Americans have. Our business assumptions are based on it. Take for example the Hype Cycle – now an industry standard technology lifecycle model. Nothing is more damaging to the psyche of the corporate technophile than Gartner’s Hype Cycle which makes it not only okay to be a technology laggard, but in certain circumstances, actually preferable. Gartner has made a business around mitigating the perceived risk of being on the leading edge of technology adoption.

But, it all starts at home. My TV is seven years old (and I still don’t have a PVR), my home computer is getting on four years old, the three-year contract on my cell phone is almost up but I probably won’t renew anytime soon, my CD player is a relic of the 90’s, and the newest electronic device I’ve purchased is an iPod. We perpetuate our own culture of legacy by refusing to update. We generally feel that, even if our technology is behind the rest of the world, it’s still good enough for now. In the end, whose fault is it that our technology in North America sucks? Clearly, it’s our own.

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Naumi Haque


reBlogged

on Sep 15, 2008, 2:39AM

Originally by Naumi Haque from Wikinomics on September 15, 2008, 4:39am

Posted under reblog wikinomics

I was surfing the web trying to figure out the best way to connect my laptop to my TV (in my defence - I had an idea of how to do it in theory… but wanted to find out in practical terms) when I came across an interesting YouTube video.

It was created by a young, talented kid who lives in Japan called Adrian, aka kidguru. With a straightforward, easy to understand video, kidguru very articulately explained how someone looking to connect their laptop to a tv would go about doing it. Going to his YouTube channel I discovered that he’s been doing this for almost a year now and has turned his site Tech-World into a blogging, vlogging, podcasting, twitter site/community. He’s managed to turn a hobby into a paying job, with sponsors and understands the value of creating community around his videos. He does product and app reviews, and tutorials among other educational things.
KidGuru’s YouTube channel now has over 1,500 subscribers and over 47,000 channel views, and he is now an official YouTube partner. The YouTube partner program is an ad revenue sharing program to reward users that frequently post original content and who have a steady following of thousands of viewers.

If you have any tech related questions I suggest checking out Kidguru’s channel or sending him an e-mail!

If you go to the YouTube partner sites you’ll see all the different YouTube partner channels, the vast majority of which are Net Gen (Net Generation – The children of the baby boom; the generation that has grown up with the Internet) using YouTube to express their creativity and build a community around something they love. Some great examples are KevJumba (#6 most subscribed of all time with over 285,000 subscribers and close to 9 million channel views); HappySlip ( #11 most subscribed of all time with over 205,000 subscribers and close to 7million channel views); and VenetianPrincess (# 17 most subscribed of all time with 153,000 subscribers and almost 2.5 million channel views).

These aren’t small numbers, they are reaching a huge number of people and are influential in their own way. The best part is that from what I can tell, they’re not doing it for any particular reason other than to have fun doing something they love and sharing it with the world. Literally. If they can make money at the same time, that’s even better.

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Ming Kwan


reBlogged

on Sep 15, 2008, 8:58PM

Originally by Ming Kwan from Wikinomics on September 15, 2008, 10:58pm

Posted under reblog wikinomics

I think one of the most remarkable things about the web over the last 5 years or so has been Google’s continued dominance of the search space… and how such a dominant company has emerged from a patented algortihm system called PageRank. What makes it so remarkable for me is this nibbling feeling is that Google search isn’t really that good. That’s not to say there are other search engines out there that are far superior, but rather that I just feel there should be far better search capabilities available to us by now.

To give an example of what I’m talking about, I’m a pretty big basketball fan. I also know a lot of other pretty big basketball fans. Over the years I think I’ve probably been to every basketball related news site that exists, and I have a pretty good idea of which ones seem the best, and a lot of other people seem to have similar ideas. If I was to give a short list off the top of my head, InsideHoops, HoopsHype, and RealGM are among the better daily news aggregation sites, sites like ESPN and Yahoo! remain quite strong, some blogs like True Hoop on ESPN are particularly good as well, and of course NBA.com is the primary site for the world’s dominant league. I could go into far greater detail, but you get the idea. At minimum, I think I can tell a good and popular news site from a bad one.

In turn, if I type the term “basketball news” into the Google search engine, I expect to be directed towards these type of sites in one order or another. Instead, here is what I get on the first page:

1. CBC.ca News - Basketball. I guess that because I’m searching from Canada, the basketball news site tied to our publicly subsidized (cringe) news outlet gets an extra bump… because while there is some news here, and can’t for the life of me figure out how/why it would come up #1.

2. Slam: Basketball News. Yup, I guess there definitely is a Canada bias - this one’s tied to Canoe.ca, and I can’t see any reason to rank this site anywhere near the top-100 basketball news sites out there. Not a nice site at all. On this Canada thing, note that I get defaulted to Google.ca at the start, and have the choice between searching “the web” and “pages in Canada”… and if I wanted to focus on local, I’d pick the second. I didn’t.

3. Basketball News- Pro Football Weekly. Oh we’re cooking with gas now - I’m on link THREE and I’m sent to profootballweekly.com. Key word: football. The basketball portion is trying to sell me an NBA preview magazine, and if you click on the only available link you are taken here. Note the content for 2008 is blank.

4. Google news results for basketball news. The requisite link to Google’s news stories page. I can understand this one I suppose.

5. Inside Hoops. Finally - a pretty good basketball news site! Maybe it was just bad luck near the top, and I’m going to be overwhelmed by the great basketball content to follow.

6. Broadcast-Live.com/sports/basketballnews. I’m underwhelmed. What a truly awful site. Would anyone ever go here twice? It appears to use moreover technology to pull stories from all over the web… but it’s just awful. I particularly like how if you click on the NBA standings link, or the NBA scores link, you are taken to…  nothing.

7. Douglas College Women’s Basketball News. Now I have nothing against the Douglas College Women’s Basketball team per se. In fact, I congratulate them on their 7-3 season last year, and wish them the best for the future. But #7 on the basketball news search? How? How does that happen when you are using the best search algorithm in the world? Among others, we haven’t seen ESPN, or any other major sports site for that matter, yet!

8. ESPN NBA Site. Ah, there it is. Note to ESPN NBA Editors: to improve ranking, increase coverage of Douglas College Women’s Basketball.

9. The Toronto Star. Oh Canada, our home of relatively poor basketball coverage, is now on here three times and I haven’t seen a major U.S. paper yet - and their coverage is generally much better. Note again to Google - I will take better over local every time.

10. Carleton Women’s Basketball. Uh oh- I see a rivalry brewing here between Carleton and Douglas College. Goooo, Ravens! But seriously - we’re still in the top-10 here. Two somewhat random women’s college basketball news pages?

11. Frozen Hoops. I guess us Canadians like our basketball cold, eh? Just another bad site.

So there we are - the top 11 from the world’s most powerful search engine, and I would argue an impartial analysis would indicate that maybe 2 of them SHOULD be on the front page of a basketball news search, and at LEAST five should be nowhere near the top-500 or so.

Of course you might argue this is just a quirk in the system, but I find it’s a pattern that repeats itself. I have a pretty good idea of some of the top sites I would expect in a search for “online videos“. Maybe even Google’s very own YouTube, the #3 most popular site in the world based on traffic. It shows up only in the paid ad. I have a pretty good idea of some of the top sites I would expect in a search for “pictures“. Maybe even Flickr (Share your photos. With the World), which has a global traffic rank of #33. It’s not on there, but Icanhascheezburger certainly is. In fairness, if I search “photos” Flickr does come up number one… but again, you’re telling me that the best search engine in the world can’t figure out someone searching for pictures might be interested in the top photo site?

Anyways, you get the idea. Am I the only one that just feels that there should be a far, far better search engine by now? And if one does ever come along, what would it mean to Google and it’s $135 Billion market cap?

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Denis Hancock


reBlogged

on Sep 16, 2008, 11:53AM

Originally by Denis Hancock from Wikinomics on September 16, 2008, 1:53pm

Posted under reblog wikinomics

Portal is my favorite videogame, it came out just about a year ago. For the uninitiated, the game is built around a new gameplay mechanic: portals. In a twist on the standard First Person Shooter (FPS), instead of having a bang-bang gun, you have a portal gun. It shoots two things, a blue portal and an orange portal. The portals form on any flat surface and anything that goes in one instantly comes out the other. Here’s the trailer:

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Valve, the company who developed Portal, has a long history of openness with their games. With their first game, Half-Life, Valve released a Software Development Kit (SDK) that allowed amateur game designers to build their own games on top of the existing engine. Counter-Strike, arguably the most popular FPS game ever, was the result of a fan-made project built on top of the Half-Life engine. Valve ended up hiring the team behind Counter-Strike, and eventually made a sequel.

Staying true to form, Valve released an SDK for Portal. So far as I knew, it was mostly used to make new levels with new challenges. Monday, it was announced that for the past eight months, a fan-made prequel, Portal Prelude, has been silently under development. It serves not only to add content to the existing game, but also greatly expand the scope of the story. In fact, Valve has even approached the team to offer their support and congratulations.

The team released a trailer for their project:

It’s tremendously professional.

Valve has done a fantastic job of building a loyal community around their games, and they’re very relaxed about amateur teams using their characters and settings to tell new stories, it’s very reminiscent of the Japanese manga culture. But instead of just providing their fans with material to adapt, Valve also gives them first-rate tool to work with. Based on the Portal: Prelude trailer, those tools look to be usable to great effect.

Valve, and other companies that open their games, are providing their consumers, and potential employees, with far more than a game, they’re selling a platform (and access to a loyal and enthusiastic community). It’s a fantastic example of openness and prosumption, and with benefits shared among everyone involved. This fan made extension of the story is fitting, given that the original development team was a bunch of students who caught the eye of Valve at a trade show, they were brought on board. Maybe the same thing will happen to this team…

Prelude is due out this month, here’s to hoping that my excitement isn’t misplaced!

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Jeff DeChambeau


reBlogged

on Sep 18, 2008, 4:13AM

Originally by Jeff DeChambeau from Wikinomics on September 18, 2008, 6:13am

Posted under reblog wikinomics

If you’re anything like me, you tend to enjoy things that may be a little beyond your budget. And if you’re really like me, you tend to enjoy them far more often than you should. But I’m going to avoid any discussions of my own indulgence, but use them as a segue to mention Wesabe. It’s an open source community that tracks your spending habits and shares them with the group. If prediction markets are for harnessing the “Wisdom of Crowds”, this truly does try to capture the “Frugality of Crowds”.

Here’s how it works: you sign up for a new account on their website and select the method you wish to use to upload your transaction information. There are a few to choose from, ranging from a handy Firefox extension to a manual uploader application. After that, you select your bank, point it to your financial statements, and let Wesabe to the rest. Wesabe then creates charts and transaction lists for your earnings and spending. I found out that my afternoon Starbucks habit averages only $2.05, which isn’t bad considering a significant number of people are closer to $5.

Each of your transactions are tag-able, and each of the places you spent at are reviewable. Most of the popular places (like Starbucks and Chipotle) have a huge number of useful user comments. Some range from how to maximize Peet’s Coffee’s discount when you buy beans to tips on saving money on a healthy lunch instead of inhaling that double cheeseburger. The user groups are also interesting, as you can find out about smarter ways to shop for car insurance to Household Budgeting 101.

The neat open source aspect of Wesabe is that it has a robust API which allows Wesabe enthusiasts the flexibility to develop whatever their cost-conscious minds can dream up. Wesabe has an articulate stance on how having better information about your spending habits is the first step toward reining them in. There are widgets for Vista, OS X, and even your iPhone.

Looks like those GI Joe cartoons from the 1980’s were right! Seems like knowing is half the battle. Keeping your credit card in your wallet is now the tougher other half.

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Patrick Harnett


reBlogged

on Sep 18, 2008, 7:08PM

Originally by Patrick Harnett from Wikinomics on September 18, 2008, 9:08pm

Posted under reblog wikinomics

Back in January, nGenera colleague Derek penned an interesting post on the Eco-Patent Commons, a consortium of large private sector organizations each of whom pledged to release a portfolio of dozens of environmentally focused patents to the public domain. As many of these patents have been lying dormant in the R&D labs of these companies, releasing them to the public as a means of seeing whether outside experts might be able to do something with them carries little risk. But it does mark a departure from the usual process of monetizing unused IP/patents. In fact, given the thrust towards green-tech and environmental sustainability you might question why you’d give up valuable IP in this space, and subsequently one might question the quality/value of these now available patents.

That notwithstanding, the good folks at IBM (one of the founders of the consortium) sent us through a little update on the project that I thought was worth mentioning here:

“I wanted to give you a heads up that later today we will announce that Xerox, DuPont and Bosch have joined the Eco-Patent Commons, a first-of-its-kind business effort to help the environment by pledging environmentally-beneficial patents to the public domain. The newly-pledged patents include:

-A Xerox technology that significantly reduces the time and cost of removing hazardous waste from water and soil;

-A technology developed by DuPont that converts certain non-recyclable plastics into beneficial fertilizer;

-Automotive technologies from Bosch that help lower fuel consumption, reduce emissions, or convert waste heat from vehicles into useful energy;

-Technologies developed by founding member Sony that focus on the recycling of optical discs.

The new pledges more than double the number of environmentally-friendly patents available to the public. They are available on a dedicated Web site hosted by the WBCSD (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc). Many of the original patent holders have been contacted directly about their patents and we know of at least three patents that have already been used by others since the January launch of the Commons.”

Now regardless of my pessimism around the quality of these patents, the fact that they’re being made available is a significant depature from the usual monetization route and acts as a rather astute form of CSR. Moreover, for developing country research labs this offers a pretty amazing short-cut route to potentially valuable technologies and thus might mean that they gain the ability to produce rather than purchase these new tools. But perhaps where this model is most valuable is the potential that other industries might follow suit….. is anyone in health care and pharma listening?

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Dan Herman


reBlogged

on Sep 19, 2008, 9:07PM

Originally by Dan Herman from Wikinomics on September 19, 2008, 11:07pm

Posted under reblog environment, reblog wikinomics

Think of any television program you’ve watched recently, do you remember all of the commercials? I didn’t think so, these largely commonplace 30 second commercials are what I like to call “Advertising 1.0” since, similar to the definition of Web 1.0, you can observe the information but you can’t interact with it. It is the marketing equivalent of the one way street, where the rules are rigidly defined, the advertisers speak and we the consumers must dutifully listen. However, LiveHive Systems of Waterloo, Ontario is breathing new life into television advertising and changing the way we the viewers watch, and more importantly engage with TV. The company’s system is based on a two-screen digital advertising platform, and allows the TV viewers to interact online (via phone, laptop, desktop, or PDA) with their favorite TV shows –and with each other- as they compete for points and prizes.

This system is based on LiveHive’s idea of NanoGaming; fear not because prior to writing this blog I was not familiar with the details of NanoGaming either, so I have included a brief summary taken from LiveHive’s website to explain the basic process:

How NanoGaming™ Works

Behind the rich NanoGaming experience is a very sophisticated combination of technology, people and processes. All players need to experience NanoGaming is a TV, computer and an Internet connection. When their favorite show is about start, players go to their NanoGaming site of choice and select “Play Now”. Players choose their show from the “Events” list, and when the event begins, so does NanoGaming.

• The Control Center translates game-state information into relevant prediction propositions and automatically generates context-sensitive odds for each event or “NanoEvent”.  This information is sent to the Fantasy Site and available outcome possibilities are then broadcasted to all NanoGaming players. Players make their predictions on the presented outcome possibilities. Some examples of possible questions include: Predictions, which ask fans to predict the outcome of future television events during an episode, such as “How many yards will the next pass be?” or “What will Simon say about Jordin’s Performance?” Trivia questions, which test fans’ knowledge of a show and its contestants, such as “What is this contestant’s home town?” or “Who was last year’s winner?” Instant recall challenges, which require fans to recall specific events that occurred in the current episode, such as “What did the judges say about the last contestant’s performance?” or “What color were the contestant’s shoes in the last scene?”
• The outcome of the event is determined by operators at the Control Center and then broadcasted directly to the player.
• All player points are updated and players are notified of their win/loss in a matter of seconds.
• NanoGaming also provides the opportunity for social interaction between viewers. This can take the form of chatting or polling during a live episode. Here, the viewers create content and conversations relevant to the show they are currently watching on TV.

Using NanoGaming, LiveHive is essentially creating a new environment for the television viewer. The shift from traditional one-way communication is underway as this Waterloo based firm promises to take viewers (and advertisers) to a place where the viewer can now actively engage with the program, ultimately creating a stronger connection. NanoGaming is more than just a fun way for the viewer to become involved, it also introduces opportunities to create a more effective advertising campaign than traditional television commercials offer. By sponsoring NanoGaming sites, firms can access audiences from some of the highest rated TV shows (such as the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards) and because TV and Internet are combined, consumers’ levels of attention, association and recall are increased. Consider the following statistic pulled from LiveHive’s website:

80 percent of NanoGamers reveal that NanoGaming would decrease the amount of channel surfing that they would do while watching an NFL game.

So not only are viewers actively engaging with programs, but with the help of NanoGaming are also less likely to stray during commercials, while also cultivating greater levels of advertising recall. Increased loyalty, greater recall, and voluntary engagement in advertising; clearly broadcasting stations and advertisers alike recognize the potential of this technology in capturing an increasingly fickle audience.

NanoGaming is also a useful tool for collecting market research. It gives advertisers access to individual player demographics, behavior, playing habits and preferences. This valuable information can then be used to correctly match the marketing message, approach, ad placement, and products featured with the most responsive market segment(s).

Last week LiveHive Systems announced a major update to its Facebook application tvClickr. This application is built on the NanoGaming platform which lets viewers interact with each other as they watch a program live on television, and is available exclusively to the Facebook community. This application is developing a strong following, with over 8,000 monthly users and was recently featured in a Tech Crunch article

New to the world of NanoGaming, I have decided to add the tvClickr application to my Facebook profile and test it over the next week while I tune into my favorite TV shows. I look forward to writing a follow-up blog next week to review my tvClickr experience. For anyone who has tried NanoGaming or tvClickr I encourage you to post your thoughts and comments about this new way of watching television and the state of “Advertising 2.0”.

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Andrea Bettello


reBlogged

on Sep 22, 2008, 10:20PM

Originally by Andrea Bettello from Wikinomics on September 23, 2008, 12:20am

Posted under reblog wikinomics

Not any time soon, I think — but it ought to. How many phone numbers do you actually know? Beyond my own, I know maybe half a dozen, the rest are stored in my phone. A quick survey of my friends tells me that I’m not alone in only actually remembering a small handful of numbers. But really, why should we bother?

Back when I was first logging on to the Internet, ICQ was the protocol of choice, another communication system wherein you’re assigned an arbitrary number that you use to uniquely identify yourself and others. ICQ was pretty quickly overtaken by AIM and MSN, and is today essentially dead (though it lives on in some capacity as an addition to the AIM network). MSN and AIM were better than ICQ in two important ways: they let users pick their unique usernames, and they had contact lists that were stored in the cloud, so that users could log in from anywhere and have immediate access to all of their buddies. (I believe that ICQ later implemented this second feature, but it was already too late.)

So what’s preventing phone numbers from being replaced in a similar fashion? Are there any reasons why we would want to avoid such a transition?

Broadband penetration rates are rising, but aren’t yet universal. Once they are, it seems to make a lot of sense to have phone service be another data service that disappears into the data you pay for for internet connectivity. As soon as this happens, the phone is just an application using connection, it just happens to be a physical application. Once the phone is just an application, it becomes pretty trivial to “sign in” to a phone address, much like an instant messaging client. Visiting a friend who has a spare phone in their guest room? Just sign in to their phone with your account, and have your calls routed to your physical location. By the same token, you could sign in to your phone address on your laptop, or on your mobile phone.

Such a transformation is already underway with mobile:

A few weeks ago, a friend told me about a service called iSkoot. iSkoot claims to bring Skype to the mobile phone; essentially, to let users use their data plan to make calls rather than their talk plan (which would be nice to drop). It works… kinda. I only have a few friends on Skype, and calling them took a few tries, each of them taking significantly longer to make than a normal phone call. Once I got a connection, the sound was delayed and of pretty low quality. This probably has more to do with the quality of the Bell/Telus data network than it does with the soundness of the iSkoot idea — I think they’re on to something.

I can, unfortunately, think of a few barriers that stand in the way of a change like this one. First off is money. If telcos can charge you twice, once for phone service and once for Internet access, they’re naturally going to be resistant to simply dropping the former from their revenue streams.

Second is safety. Whenever there’s a power failure, the phones still work, the same is far from true for internet connectivity. Even if all houses had power-on-lan, it isn’t much help for any devices that access the net through a wireless router, which likely will be powered by the electrical grid.

Third is annoying segmentation. In Canada, everyone uses MSN. In the states, it’s a mix of MSN and AIM. If we were to move to a speech as an application model, there would need to be a single standard. The instant messaging giants have not made any consumer friendly moves to use one standard protocol (though Google gave it the old college try with the Jabber-based GTalk protocol, but MSN and AIM already reigned supreme), I imagine the same problem would happen with phones-as-applications. Given that a phone is only as useful as the number of people you can use it to call, having betamax vs vhs battle every time you tried to call someone would become very tiresome very quickly.

So, for all of the great strides that we could enjoy by disconnecting the telephone system from the telephone system, there seems to be too much in the way of hurdles. Given that Skype can already interface with existing phone systems easily enough, I’m sure that some sort of hack-solution will come about that gives us  legacy support with the added benefits of the fully digital new generation. Unforuntately, even a solution like that seems painfully far away.

Originally
from Wikinomics

by Jeff DeChambeau


reBlogged

on Sep 22, 2008, 10:38PM

Originally by Jeff DeChambeau from Wikinomics on September 23, 2008, 12:38am

Posted under reblog wikinomics