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Archive for the ‘Wireless’ Category

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Live Streaming at Web 2.0 Expo (Does this Help or Hurt Conferences?)

Categories: Conference, Web Tools, WirelessPosted on April 16th, 2007

The modern Boyscout
Mario Sundar took a picture of me Live Streaming the Conference (pic via Mario Sundar)

The modern Boyscout
5 Foot tripod and 2 inch camera (pic via Mario Sundar)

I asked in the chat room during the live stream if hurt or helped Tim O’Reilly by me streaming the conference. For a lot of folks, paying $1500 is certainly expensive to attend (I think that’s the cost, I’m not sure) when you add in airfare and hotel and other travel bills, going to conferences can sure add up.

There were 30-50 people that were on the live cast at any given time, and I’m sure it will be more tommorow. Folks recorded it and put it on Google Video in near-real time, so the event was casted live. For those folks that were not able to attend, did this help or hurt the conference organizers?

I say help, the buzz and reach that the speakers and sessions got from this live streaming helped to carry it farther.

If anyone thinks it hurts, it sure is disruptive, because the whole setup is about 200 bucks (100 for camera, 100 for Wireless 3G card, but future laptops will have these built right in.

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Web Usage: 1/3rd of Internet Users in US use Wireless

Categories: Web Usage, WirelessPosted on March 21st, 2007

Pew Reports that the ubiquity of the Internet continues to grow as Internet users continue to adopt wireless access:

“34% of internet users have logged on with a wireless internet connection either at home, at work, or someplace else.”

Of those above, the report indicates that most usage is checking news, and using email. The trust or adoption of accesing the internet not just at home (the coffee shop perhaps?) increases:

“27% of adult internet users have logged onto the internet using a wireless device at some place other than their home or place of employment.”

As this continues forward, more individuals will not be bound by physical boundaries or cables at home or work to access information about weather, traffic, stocks, email. All sorts of interesting targeted information will continue to be focused to pinpoint and triangulate information for individuals.

For the web strategist, one must consider the value of developing for WAP vs mobile that can handle more data, as well as starting to think about contextual, location based advertising or marketing. I’ve been getting some reports in via email and word-of-mouth of several companies working on just this.

To read the full report access Pew’s Internet Access Report (PDF).

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Mobile Phones in Japan

Categories: Mobile, WirelessPosted on November 10th, 2006

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Japan is frequently several years ahead of the states when it comes to mobile infrastructure and devices. I’ve taken some pictures of a few phones at a mobile phone store in Okayama last night.

My cousin (he lives here) has friends with phones that have 5 megapixel onboard cameras, my puny brand new mobile phone from US has only 1.3, and that forces me to take my Canon Camera around, hopefully in a few years, convergence will let me only take one device: Phone, MP3, and Mobile Communicator

These were ‘demo’ devices, but if you bought it you would get the real authentic one. As I mentioned earlier, mobile technology is still very strong here in Japan.

 

 

 

 

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Wireless Internet Access still strong in Japan

Categories: Asia, Global Web, Mobile, Web Usage, WirelessPosted on November 9th, 2006

I’m in Okayama Japan, (edit: a cool website that shows some of the highlights of Okayama, or see wikitravel) the sister city of San Jose! It’s more of a suburb with a population close to SF. It’s not as dense but it’s a great place to view and visit japan in easy to swallow doses.

Just about everywhere we go, I see individuals on wireless or portable media devices (PSPs seem popular). I see folks using cell phones to do a lot of texting, to use to take pictures and videos for instant publishing.

Many folks use mobile based email to communicate, more so than Instant Messaging, my cousin tells me. There are numerous wifi hotspots as there is little infrastructure for a wired network. My cousin ‘borrows’ other wifi signals in his building sometimes their a little spotty he says.

Considering we’re taking the train and public transport quite a bit, (and I see many folks are on the trains) having access to information from wherever you’re at makes sense.

This research from Ipsos indicates that Japan has the highest adoption rate (95% of all households own a mobile devices) of all countires for wireless devices, and it has a high percentage rate that use the web (40% in 2005 browse the web for news). Ipsos also indicates in this report that next to China, Japan has the longest weekly duration of users online, (13.9 hours a week).

I stumbled upon this blog and research site that focuses on the Japan Mobile Revolution, Wireless Watch Japan, if you’re into this amazing usage trend, I would check out this site/blog.

I was supposed to meet Coach Wei at the Ajax conference in San Jose (I covered the keynote only, due to time restrictions) he’s been watching the Web 2.0 space in Japan. Perhaps I’ll meet up with him at a future conference.

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Wiki Showdown at Web SIG

Categories: Enterprise Web, Events, Social Media, Web Marketing, Wireless, Word of MouthPosted on October 25th, 2006

I’m blogging live from Hurricane Electric, a web hosting company in Fremont CA who is hosting this Oct meeting of Web SIG. There are four wiki companies here; JotSpot, Socialtext, Atlassian, and Wetpaint. I was very happy to finally run into Zoli, I’ve admired his thoughts and viewpoints from his blog for quite some time.

Moderated by Peter Theony
Twiki.org and Structuredwikis LLC

  • Audience Poll
  • 80% are using wikipedia
  • 50% are wiki editors
  • Ward Cunningham was founder
  • A wiki is always in motion
  • Wikis have been around since 1995

Ben Elowitz from WetPaint
Rich user experience, niche communities, aimed at consumer space.
Many of the wikis encourage embedding of images, and code snippets to YouTube and other video sites

Jon Silvers: Atlassian Software Software
First: The Ending

  • Sharepoint is the leading indicator
  • Believes that open source will continue to grow
  • Real time collaboration
  • Consumer social networking
  • Evolve or perish

Why is everyone talking about Wikis?

  • Thousands of organizations now use them
  • Before Web 2.0 there were wikis
  • Traditional enterprise software models are broken
  • Killer App

Primary Product is called Confluence

  • 18000 customers (correction: 1,800 customers)
  • IBM Developerworks runs on confluence, SAP Network, Accenture
  • Growing at 20%

Dr. Jonas M Luster: SocialText

  • Downloaded model to download from sourceforge.
  • Gave kudos to the other wikis on the panel
  • Metaphor of Cars and Wikis. Like cars, wikis help to power movement and transportation.
  • Social text is trying to be the car, the middle ground of really good collaboration.

Scott Johnston: JotSpot

  • Purchased by Mercury Interactive (Update: This is out context, Scott’s previous company was acquired by Mercury, thanks Scott for the comment)
  • How to make a mainstream wiki
  • The core principle is the edit button!
  • Office 2.0 = Collaboration
  • Has page types/templates
  • Has a family template (I’ll have to check that out)

*Panel Discussion*



Discussing Challenges: Wikis in the past, a shared workspace

Ben: Consumer Space challenges: Awareness is an issue, which is the foundation for adoption

Jon: Workplace issues: the challenge of getting wikis adopted at the workplace is key as you may need privacy and permissions. They discourage folks from segregating information as it’s not natural to the whole purpose.

Barriers is that IT must install it. Now with this bottom up install approach, is that anyone can get involved and start it.

Jonas: Discusses how awareness has arose from etech article. Relates to linux strategy.

Where are we on the hype curve for wiki adoption?
Most folks in this room are wiki savvy. By general business users awareness is low. Where there are self claimed wiki experts suggests hype.

What are the reasons for wiki consolidation?
When wikis are small it’s easy to garden them. As wikis grows moderations will be needed.

What challenges can wikis fix?
Email is an awful way to perform collaboration. Version control is a standard feature., tracking makes it easy. The next evolution will be putting workflow into wikis

Case study for wikis are used to replace wikis

What about wikis for the intranet?
Wikis enable anyone to contribute value without being a developer or coder. It can self regulate

What kind of challenges need to be solved in the future
Awareness is now an issue but websites now can change. Great experiences need to happen.

Question and Answer

1) Discussion about legal usage of changing webpage.
2) how many wikis vendors will survive? It’s unknown.
3) Outdated information is out on the web, and overflow of information.
4) Group participation to define a “Wiki”. The best answer, as voted by the 4 panelists was the answer involving “by the people, for the people”. My answer would have been “Community Knowledge

Event Format
I would love to see the next web Sig have more focus on web presentations with a richer and deeper involvement with the vendors.

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IMG_1979Scott Johnston
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Google Wireless in Mountain View

Categories: Web Tools, WirelessPosted on September 11th, 2006

Yesterday, at the Mountain View Art and Wine Festival, I ran into the Google Wireless booth. For those that don’t know, Google is providing ‘free’ wireless to all of the city of Mountain View. They’ fixed routers around lamppoles all over the city. Below you can see the repeaters you can buy that will boost your signal inside your house.

Of course, I tested it out on their laptop and accessed techmeme.com with rapid speed. To me, this makes living or working in Mountain View more desirable.

More details:

Google Booth
Google Booth

Wireless Gear
Wireless Gear

Home Repeater
Home Repeater

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Marketing Reality Check: Social Media Emerging and growing quickly

Categories: IPTV, Social Media, Web Marketing, Web Usage, WirelessPosted on August 22nd, 2006

The Social Media Adoption Curve (and the changes on marketers) quickly comes, are you ready?
We’re just at the start of the curve for social media adoption as mainstream medium. I would predict techogeeks and younger generations are the primary adopters.

Just saw this article by Advertising Age regarding Marketing Reality Check: Blogs, Pods, RSS.

It suggests that social media is not yet mainstream, is totally hype, and for many folks, awareness is low –I agree, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare.

9 Points of supporting evidence, Social Media is coming: (add your own)

1) Web is the number one medium in the workplace in North America

2) TV is the number one medium at home in North America, trailed by Internet. This will change as they will soon marry.

3) Consumers use Google to find content (that means podcasts, rss, and blogs will get served up)

4) Online Consumers are talking to each other using the web and internet shoppers read consumers reviews before making decisions! (Also from Jupiter Research)

5) The internet is growing globally, soon markets will extend past physical borders (Shel Israel told me he and Charlene Li agree that Borders no Longer matter “Update: borders are becoming irrelevant”)

6) A decade of adoption: How the internet has woven itself into American life (Pew)

7) Soon new ways to discover information about products and markets will occur, Cell phones that bar scan products and get ratings from a trusted network of consumers

8) Mobile devices that tell consumers when products that they love are on sale and bundled with other products

9) The next generation of workers, buyers, and leaders will be internet savvy, and will be bringing their social networks with them. The MySpace generation cometh

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Vigilance and Patience required during Air Travel

Categories: Ruminations, WirelessPosted on August 12th, 2006

One of our respected leaders at Hitachi Data Systems is our CTO, Hu Yoshida. As a blogger he’s shared his experience traveling through London’s Heathrow, one of the hot zones in the recent concerns over terrorism on international airlines. It’s one thing for a leader of a company to help show how storage technology can help companies and customers, however to show a first hand viewpoint to dealing with real world issues is another. His message to the world:

“We certainly need to be more vigilant and patient, but we shouldn’t give in to fear and frustration and doubt.”

Have you seen Ze Frank’s recent videoblog? His message is also clear, don’t succumb to terrorism by being terrorized. (link via Martin McKeay, and Dave McLure) It’s also interesting how all laptops will be checked in, passengers will not be able to bring them on board reports Jeremy Kirk of Computerworld:

“U.K. authorities banned passengers from taking electronic items into airplane cabins following the arrests of 21 people today in connection with an alleged plot to blow up aircraft midflight en route to the U.S.”

I’m visiting the Boeing plant next weekend for friends and family day, I’m curious to see how this will impact their plans for wireless access aboard flights, perhaps onboard browsers in seats could be made available.

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