Ian Goldin at TED - The decade ahead

A seven minute video that quickly, succinctly (and perhaps scarily) outlines the biggest challenges of the next decade.



Technology will drive development around Miniturization and Nanotech to regenerative medicine. Population growth and longer living populations will change social dynamics. "Systemic risks" of interwoven, complex systems (financial, weather, biological) will make managing that risk "the currency of the next decade."

@ev on the BBC

Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, interviewed by the BBC. He states that London is the top worldwide twittering city... And BTW for all you fans, Demi Moore's Twitter account is mrskutcher

15 seconds of fame... in Slovenia

My 15 seconds of fame on TV... Slovenian TV. Video starts around 21:30. This was from the Seedcamp in Lubjiana.

Facebook Investment from DST: A new Potsdam?

[Update 2: So it's true, Facebook has just formally announced that DST will invest $200M on a $10B valuation and make available up to $100M to buy employee options. No mention of any side deals around Vkontakte]

Over the weekend, the WSJ reported that Digital Sky Techologies would invest up to $200 million on a $10 Billion valuation plus the rumored $150 million to buy out internal shareholders at a $6.5 Billion valuation.

I will put aside the valuations or the benefits of insiders cashing out part of their options and focus instead on what I think are some social network geo-politics at play.

DST has an impressive portfolio of Russian internet properties including Mail.ru and, more importantly VKontakte, the leading social network in Russia. Valleywag had called VKontakte a Facebook clone and yet if you look at a map of the global social network world, a whole swath of it is covered in the light blue of Vkontakte.ru.

A post last March on Window on the Media had argued that russian users were switching to Facebook at a greater rate and that if it continued, Facebook would surpass VKontakte by November, 2009.

So this is where my Potsdam theory comes in [Using the WWII conference at Potsdam - where the allies defined "Spheres of Influence" and the post-war world - as an analogy]. I have to wonder whether, in an effort to both defend, and perhaps even exit their investment in Vkontakte.ru, DST has not done some sort of deal through which the investment in Facebook also comes with some provisions around defending Vkontakte's control in Russia.

This could come in the form of a commercial agreement or a JV between Facebook and DST properties in Russia. With the Russian President formally calling the Internet space a "strategic" area and warning against foreign investments, one might wonder whether Facebook just saved itself a battle, gained market share and won itself some cash for both itself and its employees.

Looking forward to further details of the DST-Facebook deal. Keep an eye out for any announcements of a Facebook-VKontakte deal in parallel...

[Update: It seems TechCrunch posted a similar theory last night also specifying DST's requirement for a Board seat along with the investment]

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Tesla test drive

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Tesla Roadster...

• 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds
• Max speed of 125mph
• 220 mile range on a charge

AND a beauty to behold.

Test Driving the Tesla Roadster from America.Gov on Vimeo.

Now the question is whether I would willingly fork over $100k for a 2-seater or wait a few months, pray for the Obama stimulus package subsidy and go for the family-friendly 4-door, 7-seater Tesla Model S instead with an expected base price of $50k.

0-60 in 5.6 seconds...is 1.6 seconds worth 50k???

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Using Google Lattitude to Catch a Thief

Interesting news report of a woman who used Google Latitude to track down the thief of her phone. Smart user, smart technology:

Video is here

(sorry for the link... the CBS affiliate won't allow embedding)

New role, new markets

Some big news on the job front:

I wanted to share with you that as of April 1st I have transitioned from Google’s Strategic Partnerships group into a new role leading Google’s expansion across EMEA as our Head of New Markets.

I am very excited about the entrepreneurial nature of building out Google’s presence from scratch in over a dozen countries (or as “from scratch” as a $20B company allows), of leading a diverse and distributed team of country managers and account executives, and of the amazing upside in terms of revenue but also in terms of adoption of Google services and properties. This, combined with the ability to travel and do business across various emerging markets, made this an opportunity very attractive.

For the past 11 years I have had a job in which the primary focus has been the development, marketing or sales of mobile and wireless technology. I have seen the space mature from the days of WAP 1.1 to pure HTML 5, Blackberry going from a two way pager to the addictive e-mail business fixture it has become, Microsoft CE evolving into Windows Mobile, Palm being bought by USRobotics which became 3COM which became Palm, which became PalmONE, which became Palm and Apple finally getting rid of the Newton skeleton with the resounding success of the iPhone. As many of you can attest, I am passionate about mobile and, for the past 10 years, have been claiming that “this” was the year of mobile.

I do believe that 2008 was a transformational year in mobile as the iPhone, Android and mobile advertising all came of age. While this new role expands my scope across all of Google’s products, it will still allows me to continue evangelising mobile as wireless becomes a primary access point to Google across emerging markets.

As I return from my first trip to Croatia in my new capacity, I am amazed about the opportunity that lies ahead in these markets where users actively choose Google search, Maps and Youtube as their preferred properties, but where advertisers have yet to embrace digital marketing as a significant tool to reach the consumer.

Planned trips to Ukraine, Slovenia, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria are already in the works.

Kennet puts €6.5 million into GoViral's branded video network

Go Viral, a social video network that happens to hire very, very smart people (including my friend Rene) has received funding from Kennet.

This is a very interesting space... a bit like SEO for the beginning of search, handholding advertisers and linking them up with the networks...for a fee. As the Brits say, "watch this space."

Kennet puts €6.5 million into GoViral’s branded video network

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Tencent in the news

Most folks outside of China have never heard of Tencent, or their hyper-popular service, QQ.

Tencent is the most sucesful Chinese internet firm with a market cap of $80 BILLION (4x Yahoo!'s current value).

In terms of value to investors Oliver Wymann recently ranked them as the highest value creating firm in the Telecom and Media space, followed closely by the South African Media conglomerate Naspers...which happens to own 40%+ of Tencent.

Their success comes not only from their massive number of users, (355M according to this recent post by Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital) but more importantly by the revenue they generate per user ($3.38 in real dollars, which Bill equates to $17 on a cost-of-living adjusted basis).

Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe it's an education thing, but QQ's over the top, in your-face selling of Avatars, gifts, virtual goods and cute penguins... but it works! Tencent's mobile deals and ability for users to extend their network from PC (internet cafe as primary PC based access point) to mobile with significant success.

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Evan Williams of Twitter on Charlie Rose

Interesting vision of the "human need" for communication driving Twitter and, 5 years from now "normal people" using Twitter like "normal people" use Facebook and MySpace.

Looking at "normal people" around me (wife, father, non-techie friends) I accept the notion of a need for communication and a general acceptance of social networks as a way of sharing more than we would have been comfortable with 5 years ago... The evolution from a phone call to an email to a text message to a facebook wall post to a tweet does sound natural. The question is whether the platform for that outreach will be Twitter or not.

Eric Schmidt seems to believe that GMail could take that place.

You know [the economy] is bad when...

The Economist, Facebook and the Dunbar number

The Economist has an article this week entitled "Primates on Facebook" which talks about the size of the average network on Facebook (120 "friends") and the connection to the often quoted (mis-quoted perhaps?) Dunbar's number in which British Anthropologist Robert Dunbar claimed that the human brain (more specifically the size of the neocortex) could only keep track of 148 connections in its network.

The question raised by the article is whether mediation of these networks by a computer makes the "cost" to keep each relationship alive lower. I might be dating myself, but in my early teenage years, I still wrote real actual letters to my friends across the world. My group of "friends" therefore was lept fairly small due to the cost of staying in touch.

Email lists allowed me to employ one-way communication and share my life with a much broader group (some were avid readers, others considered it spam). Now with Facebook, I feel that I have two networks: My friends (those that would have been on the one way email blast) who now have a 2 way dialogue thanks to wall updates, pictures, and social apps, and my "other" contacts, people that I would never add to my email but whom I am OK having on the periphery of my social network (they can consume but it is unlikely to be two way).

So, yes the article is correct that "people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are 'broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,'" but I still disagree with the notion of a static number... and believe that social networks, twitter and the like do allow us to have less costly (and thus more frequent) interactions with a greater number of people.

A great book on some of the science behind social networks, made consumable for the common man, is Duncan Watts Six Degrees. Duncan had joined Yahoo! Research...I wonder whether he is still there.

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Top highlights from Mobile World Congress 2009

 

47,000 of us from 189 countries (down over 15% over last year) gathered in Barcelona last week for the 2009 version of the Mobile World Congress, formerly 3GSM. The tone, as many have stated, was muted relative to past years and there was certainly a different kind of buzz this year. Then again maybe it's just me being cynical after so many of these shows.

Looking back at the event I wanted to summarize my perception of the "Top 10" from Barcelona. in no specific order:

1. Nokia Ovi store 
   Yes, Nokia launched a store... no surprise there. Promise of personalization and cross selling makes it a bit more interesting than the other 1/2 dozen app stores launched in the last months
   
   
2. Skype – Nokia deal 
   Skype has been talking about mobile in a big way as of late, and made some noise at CES launching an Android app. The Nokia deal gives them the potential of large distribution but how Nokia and Skype's incentives align, and the role of the operator in all of this is still TBD.
   
   
3. Palm Pre GSM
   Despite expectations, Palm did not announce a GSM version of the device, but leaked videos did show a Pre running on a Vodafone SIM. 
   
   
4. Palm Pre supports HTML 5 (Google Maps demo)
   My personal (very biased) favorite was Vic Gundotra showing off Google Maps running directly off the Palm Pre browser on full AJAX with panning, two-pinch zooming and all of that... without a single line of on-device code. Again: The browser is the platfom.
   
   
5. Android for Vodafone (HTC Magic)
   A lot of expectations about the "G2" were finally realized when Vodafone and HTC announced the HTC Magic, the second device running Android. The key here is the marked difference between the G1 and the Magic as far as design and the ability to innovate quickly on the platform to incorporate new usage profiles (touch-pad keyboard rather than physical one). 
   
   
6. Nokia ad layoffs
   Not announced at MWC but it did hit the news last week and I found it particularly important...as Nokia spoke at MWC about the importance of services, it also sent a clear message that it was regrouping and refocusing on what it does well (shipping millions of phones) and stepping away from an over-crowded mobile display ads space.  
   
   
7. INQ1 wins GSMA handset award
   Impressive that a relatively unknown "ODM" would win the GSMA award for best handset but a testament to the success that a simple consumer value proposition ("skype phone") can have in driving sales and adoption.
   
   
8. Microsoft myphone 
   Badly leaked prior to the show, Ballmer did announce MyPhone and promised the integration of services along with OSs (see below)
   
   
9. Windows Mobile 6.5
   No comments on my former colleagues. 6.5 was announced and will be seen live "in the near future." Unfortunately, still the same old browser.
   
   
10. Sol Trujillo vs Google and Skype
    Sol seems to have something against services and hasn't been Google's biggest ally in the past. His quips and discussion with Josh Silverman from Skype was particularly sharp (and amusing?

Vic demo @ MWC 09: The browser is the platform

I will post more on my thoughts on the Mobile World Congress, but I did want to share this video of Vic Gundotra's demo of Google Maps on the Palm Pre...



Google has been talking for a long time of the browser as the platform... Wekbit + HTML 5 plus millions of iPhones, Android, Pres (and yes eventually Nokia's) make this statement a reality.

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Dear Nokia: Servers fail, get used to it

I will first state that I admire Nokia and that it is one of the few companies that has managed to reinvent itself so many times in the past 100 years: From lumber to rubber boots, radios and eventually mobile phones and mobile networks.

It is currently in the midst of its latest transformation evolving from a hardware manufacturer to a service provider via its new Ovi brand. In a late night conversation with a Nokia executive last January a Google colleague made a bold statement about how Nokia would quickly realize that being service provider is harder than just launching a website and how we would realize that being in the phone business is harder than just launching a phone.

The statement seems to be holding true, as Nokia learnt yesterday when its Ovi Contacts system crashed because of a broken cooler. Folks, its not like just getting rid of defective phones.. ... build redudancy and backup capabilities. People might forgive a dropped call here and there but they will not forgive you loosing their contacts database!

Maybe Nokia will want to co-locate their data center along with Google's supposed new data center in Finland.

In any case, I look forward to having a front row seat to Nokia's latest evolution.

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Google eye tracking study

At Google everything relies on data... so what better way to understand how users scan a page than to analyze it...

Pretty cool insight into how your eyes will track across a page. Most interesting parragraph:

"Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query. The heatmap below shows the activity of 34 usability study participants scanning a typical Google results page. The darker the pattern, the more time they spent looking at that part of the page. This pattern suggests that the order in which Google returned the results was successful; most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page."

Favorite job titles

There are some job titles that I have always thought particularly attractive including

Supreme Allied Commander
Generalissimo
Master of the Universe
"Duncan Mcleod of the Clan McLeod"
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Grand Poo Bah

Any others come to mind?

Prof. Clemons follow up from Davos

Following up to the link of the Davos Panel with Prof. Clemons from Wharton, he just posted his thoughts on TechCrunch.

Panel on mobile at Davos: Facebook mobile, LBS, video uploads

Some interesting folks, Chad Hurley of YouTube, Zuckerberg, Craig Mundie, Shananu Narayen of Adobe, Hamid Akhvan VP at T-Mobile and my former professor at Wharton Eric Clemons got together to discuss mobile at Davos.



Techcrunch's Arrington moderated the panel and followed up with a post.

During the discussion Zuck mentioned 25M users of the apps (does not include browsing to x.facebook.com or facebook.com) a month... and Allfacebook posted that it was close to 4M a day with 1.6M from iPhone alone.

The real thumb culture: Obama's "special" Blackberry

It's been dubbed the Obamaberry...Given his addiction to the machine we all know and love and that glitter of hope we get every time the little light goes red... as the leader of the Free World, Obama has convinced the secret service that he needs to keep his Blackberry.

And it seems that the new symbol of power in DC is not invitation to dinner and Camp David, but access to Obama's super secret new whitehouse email address (wouldn't it be obama@whitehouse.gov???)

And apparently, contrary to rumors, it is not a special WinCE device, the Sectera EDGE but rather an actual Blackberry.

Snowed under in London

Mobile in Japan

An interesting presentation by Christopher Billich on why the mobile web works in Japan...

My general take is that Japan is unique and gives us some lessons to emulate but what happens in Japan and stays in Japan...we cannot cut and paste to any other parts of the world!

Why People use the Mobile Web in Japan...and some Really Crazy Stuff

View more presentations from Christopher Billich. (tags: japan mobile)

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Superbowl 2000 Ad

9 years ago this weekend, surrounded by a massive winter storm, several thousand people made the trek to Fedex Field in Washington, DC to watch the Superbowl at a private party hosted by MicroStrategy

It also represented the unveiling of MicroStrategy's superbowl ad and the MicroStrategy pre-game show. Us, the Pets.com sock, lemurs... It came to be known as the dot-com super bowl. After searching for many year, I finally found that ad...A symbol to the "good-old days" of what could have been...of billions of dollars of "paper money" lost in a single day.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness" (Dickens)

People don't buy phones in bad economic times (duh)

Filed under "obvious" Techcrunch reported that (Gasp!) mobile phone sales are down. 

We have just surpassed 3 BILLION mobile subscribers, some countries have over 125% penetration (multiple phones per person) so yes there is a saturation issue. Add to that the replacement rate being affected by the economy (you don't go buy a new phone when you don't have a job) and the vocal statement by operators to reduce (ie make harder for you) the subsidized phones (marketing or customer retention expense for them, cheap way to get the latest gadget for you)..

Obama's speech

Amazing technology coverage of the inauguration between CNN and Facebook, Google Earth, Twitter etc.

Since I was most inspired by his speech, however, I wanted to share the word cloud of Obama's first inaugural speech and point you to the word clouds for Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Lincoln.

Japan mobile ads and Location Based Services

A great primer on the success of Mobile in Japan and opportunities in Location based ads from Cirius Technologies

Location-based Mobile Ad: A Lesson From Japan

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: lbs local)

Screenshots of Obama CNN livecast

Some screenshots I took from the Obama livecast with the Facebook integration. Unlike others, I had zero problems watching it from London on a home broadband connection.

History of the Internet in 10 min

Cute but super instructional 9 min video on the history of the internet...ARPAnet, TCP/IP and all that.


History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

15 seconds to get a social game on the blog

Awesome experience... 15 seconds flat for Heyzap to put a social game widget on this blog. Venturbeat had just covered them last week.

Apart from the cool idea of extending social games beyond social networks (and using ads to fund it) I was most impressed with the ease of use as a publisher. Sign in, define Blogger site, get code...automatically link to Blogger (Thank You!)and publish.

A nice rev share model would be welcome, but hey, in the meantime play some games and have some fun.

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Robin Williams on Obama

Absolutely hillarious... some love for GW Bush and some rara on B. H. Obama

Android rules...because of the apps

I have been meaning to write my thoughts on my 2 months with the G1 but today's post in Gizmodo helps to summarize my thoughts.

Android is an amazing platform in its first try (as compared to some of the hiccups with Windows Mobile in its first and second iteration) but it still has some issues (not least of which is the ability to only associate it with one Google account).

I do love the ability to customize my "desktop" and make the experience my own and I do love the openess of the platform.

There are, however, a few things I dislike ...

• Battery life: can't make it through 1/2 day with WiFi, email sync, MyLocation turned on. Miss the battery life of my BB.
• Contacts: I live by my contact database. I have 1700+ contacts. I have finally let go of Outlook and posted all of them to the Google cloud to enable sync with the G1. When I start the Contact application it takes 10 SECONDS for my contacts to load, then I have to open the keyboard, then it takes another 10 seconds, then I can finally search for a contact.
• There are a series of actions (lets say 5) that I do multiple times a day (call wife, sms wife, look up contact, turn off/on wifi, call boss). I don't want to click 3 times to do them.

The beauty of Android and its open platform is that each of my complaints below has been adressed by an independent developer and the application published to the Android Market.

• The battery life issue is still an issue but Locale lets me make rules such as (if not at office turn off wifi) and Power Manager help me take control.

• The contacts issue needs some serious fixing. I still think Windows Mobile is the best platform for a large contact database (Palm a close second) but in the meantime SpellDial allows me to quickly search for a contact without having to flip open the keyboard

• The repetitive action issue is addressed by AnyCut with which I create one click shortcuts for each of my actions and place them on my destop.

This is the power of an open platform.... to foster innovation by making it open source, and thus making the user happy rather than (as closed platforms like RIM and Apple) hoping/praying that their developers will get around to it someday.

Loving Android...because of the Apps!

My life in gadgets 1995-2004

As a way to get the year started right I figured I would do a recap of the last 14 years of my life ... in (memorable)mobile gadgets. Lets start with a some of the ones that come to mind between 1995 and 2004.

1996 Motorola Star Tac (TDMA) (courtesy of Mom)




1997 Palm Pilot (courtesy of 3COM/US Robotics)




1999 Neopoint (with WML 1.1 broswer!!) (before the company went under)



2000 Palm VIIx (with GPRS support... and ASK search preloaded)



2002 Compaq iPAQ with WiFi (Notice "Microsoft Mobile" branding)



2002 the first PocketPC with a mobile radio (called the 2020 by Orange in Europe)





2003 Motorola MPx200 (first Motorola Smartphone)



2004 MPx (never launched... the marketing campaign was going to be "Swings both ways").



2004 TMobile SDA Music the first "consumer-centric" Windows Mobile device (identical to the other HTC Smartphones launched...except for...wait for this... music control buttons! It was the first Smartphone I ever had that made it through a full day on a battery with heavy email use).



(need to go through my gadget box at home tonight to come up with some more...)