Live MobVideo Streaming... Mobile Web2.0 Here?

Yep it's all coming together, with more and more «relatively» in expensive multimedia mobile phones that do video, photo and much more (hint hint Apple) such as the Nokia N95 as well as a myriad of smartphones like the HTC P3600. We are starting to see some serious attempts to bring web 2.0 and make ubiquitous in the sense available anywhere and at anytime.

My mate monkeyleader is trying one of the latests solutions called Qik. Check out his blog post on the subject here. Unfortunately I can't join the party as the site currently only supports Nokia type phones... Can't wait till they open up to the HTCs!

This brings to mind that Nokia recently launched itself into the content arena as well with OVI.com. Nokia is announcing it as the «mobile social networking experience that encourages collaboration, creativity and communication»! Definitely something to keep a watchful eye on...

Localization Beyond GPS

GPS is quite common now and is found more and more in mobile applications via the integration of a unit inside smartphones (such as the HTC P3600). GPS for the moment is seen as the better technology for localization for mobile phones versus its alternative which is to use signal noise ratios combined with the cell the phone is registered on (BTW this is how the My Location option works in Google Maps on mobile when no GPS is available).

A Utah based company, S5 Wireless aim to change this dependence on GPS by introducing what they call a new disruptive technology in the localization domain. Their technology is based on a set of proprietary wireless emitters and receivers that can be deployed anywhere (both indoors and outdoors). They claim that they will be able to achieve a 10m to 15m accuracy! Nice!

To be honest, there is nothing really new technology wise in what they are doing. It is still a type of triangulation (using multiple radios sources, time to receive and signal noise ratios) to determine the device location. However what seems to be innovative is that they will be distributing/releasing the radio components for very little or zero cost. Their business model is that they will provide and resale acess to the back-end database that controls and ensures data integrity for the location data! A sort of federate or trusted data model, or as the company says the equivalent of Lojack or Onstar.

More information in this CIO Today article.

Game Publishers Need to Treat Europe More Seriously

The X-Mas Season is upon us and over the past few weeks, I have been looking at which games to purchase as gifts for my son and myself. Now outside a few good titles like Guitar Hero 3, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games and others, it would seem that most of the games that are of any real interest won't be coming out until mid January. In fact there doesn't seem to be any new good releases for December in Europe while in January we will see Rock Band, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Geometry Wars: Galaxies, ...

So I just don't get the marketing principal on that one! It's not like the games are not ready (most of these have been released in the USA already). As a consumer why would I want to spend any money now on crap or games that I am not interested in when I can wait two or three weeks and get what I really want!

So come one you game publishers... Wake UP! Europe is a serious market... give us the games!!!!

Why So Little Tech News...

So postings have been sparse on my blog unfortunately. There are a number of reasons for this sparsity which includes just a complete lack of time. I have had too many things to do and issues to resolve both at home and work. Plus my son has been racking up the hours on World of Warcraft barring my access to the computer.

To be fair though, I am not convinced that me rewrite technology articles is really useful or relevant. I use Google Reader as an RSS aggregator and reader. It allows me to share articles that I am interested in or find relevant. I decided a few months ago to use that as my platform for sharing articles I feel merit highlighting in technology (and other) news. [OK I' m sorry forgot to mention this before...]

So If you want my hot items on technology either look at my Google Reader Share page or subscribe to the feed.

Are Facebook Apps the New Chain-Mail Syndrome?

I have had a profile on Facebook now for quite a few months (lost track to be honest). At the beginning my activity was simple enough, it consisted of just friends and posting from wall to wall.

After a few weeks, I started getting Facebook App invitations from all over the place. Some even multiple times as different friends invited me to use the same applications. The natural thing to do is to accept those invitations and add the new App to your profile. Now here is the interesting part, and the rant.

The system is conceived in such a way that when you add a new App, it automatically asks you to share it with your friends. You can of course skip this but the natural tendency is to send the new found App to your friends on your list. Now it dawned on me, yesterday, while chatting with some colleagues in Cambridge that this is almost like viral marketing or messaging (or whatever you want to call it). I would even go as far as to say this is almost like the old chain-mail, and chain-email stuff from the 80's and 90's! Remember those things, where you would receive them and in the message it would say, please forward this to your friends and colleagues etc etc etc! I am sure that this was not the original intent of the Facebook creators when they created an API and there are some good things about the extensions that Facebook supports. But...

Think about it! Facebook Apps are doing exactly the same thing right now... Some are even monetary chain-mails (yes some Apps allow you to opt into giving the creator money)! So what, well:

• My question is will this explode into the new viral marketing of the decade...
  
• Are we as humans still not evolved enough to be gullible like that (I am guilty of this)...
• Or do we just need to have this affirmation of our power to share new things and new information with our firends