Technology, Marketing and Beyond

IE7 Beta 2 released

2006-02-01T09:53:00.000+02:00

The awaited IE7 preview just released yesterday (31-Jan-2006), note it is still in beta, but hey - early adopters will like to give it a try anyway. You can read about it @ slashdot or download the installation directly from Microsoft (this is what I'm just going to do).

TOP Search results for 2005

2005-12-30T10:58:00.000+02:00

The top news search for 2005 of both Google (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2005.html) and Yahoo! (http://tools.search.yahoo.com/top2005/) has already published.

It is Interesting to see the difference between the two. The question now is who will investigate it to tell what these differences in the lists tell about their users?

The MySpace Generation

2005-12-27T00:59:00.000+02:00

An article under that name was posted two weeks ago in the businessweek magazine http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963001.htm. Reading this article I realized that my youth days are definitely over. The youngsters today are getting used to the technological progress much better that we do (oopps, talking on myself, you can join me if you feel the same), and many of them (my 2 y/o son for example – who already know to use most of the TV remote keys) have been born into this digital world and therefore feels much more comfort with it than we do. Rapid growth of Internet communication and the potential of exponential growth of social networks are the seeds for establishing better ways for collaboration and information search in a way that will reduce operation time and time to market of whatever we the human produced dramatically.

Creativity & Innovation link

2005-12-27T00:35:00.000+02:00

I have found the following link http://www.corante.com/ideaflow/ to be interesting and refreshing.

It deals with ideas, innovation, strategy, marketing and whatever goes with it – very interesting

Source of information that can fits to this blog.

Enjoy!

Del.icio.us have been bought at the right time

2005-12-14T11:05:00.000+02:00

http://del.icio.us
Earlier today I could not get any response from deli.icio.us servers. It was frustrating mostly due to the fact that I already used to that service so that some of the URLs that I recently used have been kept there and are now captured in an unfaithful service. Moreover, after several minutes I finally got a response from the servers which were wide open, showing the world errors and lines of code (see attached).
Due to the recent sale of del.icio.us to Yahoo! on Dec-9, all I can say is that its about time. You have been lucky to be purchased by a giant and have the option to continue working on your dreams, but hey, don't leave the boat!!! We, the supportive users are still expecting to get our service, and Yahoo! guys, I know that you are not underestimating the crowd.

Ha - Its happened to be that http://del.icio.us/{login name} works fine. It is just that after I'm logging in I can't see the initial page. I have sent an email for support, hope to see it back to normal soon.

After several more tries, the servers are dead again, with a different error...

HELP !!!

Technology Gadget: BlueTooth Jacket

2005-12-12T21:25:00.000+02:00

Burton Snowboards announced on a joint venture with Motorola for the development of a series of technological cloths, among them the BlueTooth Jacket that is expected to be available earlier next year (2006). The BlueTooth Jacket under the name Audex Jacket is expected to function as a media center, enabling collaboration between BlueTooth devices such as Cellular Phone, MP3 Player, PDAs and more. A control panel is stitched to the left sleeve of the Jacket along with embedded microphone and earing in the Jacket's cap.
Price is expected to be around $600.
Information Source

Globalization: Western Culture, Democracy and Interests Paradox

2005-12-09T14:04:00.000+02:00

We might think that globalization and trade activities between countries are a key factor for making a meaningful progress in the overall health and wealth. Is it right? Rest assure that this debate can not be covered in this short column, there are too many complex factors involved, among them traditions, cultures, religions, economies, geographical structure, politics, ego, interests and much more. However, I wanted to point out one factor that build up a paradox that the whole world will have to deal with, and from my point of view, it better be soon.
Don't Be Naive !!! The western culture, although being built of democracy, is also built of rules. Our education is based on the common understanding that says that people should act based on a global and mutual social interests, and by applying to the rules we will live peaceful and can expect for having the tools and capabilities to gain more progress in our life, either it is financial, spiritual, educational, or other. It is also common to think that this is the right way to live in order to increase the overall satisfaction and efficiency, just by being collaborative and conforms to the common rules. The democracy gives us the right to choose between alternatives and the ability to show our individualism, as long it is being based on the common rules. This is nice, as long as we are all sharing the same faith, common understanding, and similar education. What happens when we don't? Well, I want to tell you that in the global world this just don't work and that we are all naive (yes, me too. Well - not any more). The western countries are currently facing a critical challenge, their own rules putting them in dangerous and it is time to understand that yesterday's rules does not apply to the future, and domestic rules are different than exterior ones. Also, there must be alternative rules, or better say alternative ways for dealing with situations that your rules does not thought about.
You might ask yourself what am I talking about. I'm talking about terror, terrorism, terrorists and the way the world is dealing with them. I'm talking about the long processes that we have to comply with when we are dealing with evil enemies, those that are not sharing the common understanding with us and are using our own rules cynically to work for them. We give them the tools to publicly judge us under soft eyes of bleeding hearted public, whilst our enemies are not judged at all. Our democracy enforce us to allow open communication even in critical situations. The reporters that can not enter into the other lines and show their actual evil, are busying in showing our own acts with much more criticism that we deserve, leaving no place for doing the "right thing" since everything is under everybody's eyes. - This is naive I must tell you. Some saw says, "When you are at Rome, act as a Roman" - are we?

The "flattening of the world" makes us more vulnerable for being the victims of evil forces since there are much more alternatives for small groups to organize plan and move from one place to another, using basic low-cost tools. Decisions can be made in a distance, and it is relatively more difficult to track such organizations today due to the mass means of message deliveries that exist - this is one of the major cynical ways of using our own tools to attack us, the Internet which was built in the USA is now used against it, and against the modern world.

The United Nations organization supposed to be the competent authority for solving problems such that. So does (maybe) the international justice court in Hague. The problem from my point of view is that both organizations are either using double standards, or not familiar with the situation they are facing with. When each of these organization condemns Israel for its some kind of reaction, and cannot do the same for a suicide bomber, I see it as a brute double standard (without getting into the question whether Israel is right or wrong). If this is the case, how can we expect the suicide bombers to stop doing so? Isn't it supposed to be a trivial act to condemn such kind of "solution"? - When the evil is condemned, it is basically done through a long process. Take the Iraqi crisis for example. Is the long "play" of Saddam Hussein with the UN observers sound reasonable? It took them years to understand that collaboration will not be made. Another sample, the Palestinian authority. Israel through Osslo's agreement started to "pay" by providing its share of the agreement. The Palestinians from the other hand are keeping to educate their children for war, and building a new generation of fighters and suicide bombers, instead of sticking to their side of the agreement - which will bring them new opportunities, prosperity and much more joy and potential.

Call for action: My call for action is to form a new agenda in the political life. A one that is much more responsible and less hesitant. One that will put the interests of well being at the top, and will not use double standards. One that can be controlled and criticized, but not by the overall public in a way that gives ways to the civil enemies to use it cynically. A special body should be built in order to perform such control, but also to enforce proper education that will maintain the overall integrity. Our rules should be apply to anyone that participate in our culture and act under the same rules. All the others, should be treated by a different set of rules, in some cases even with their own rules.

Internet Bubble 2 - Is it here already? Passing through...

2005-12-08T00:49:00.000+02:00

The internet market today is acting as in the good old days, and in some cases even better. Big Internet companies already show profits, whilst traditional companies increasingly invest in the Internet and relying on it in their core businesses. New internet bazzwords are getting into our life, this year it was the word 'podcast' who won the 'word of the year' of Oxford's dictionary. Earlier we 'googled' the net while we searched for new stuff, and during all that time the market value of Google's stock (NASDAQ: GOOG) soared to levels that does not put to shame any company that has been with us in the 'bubble 1' days. Podcasting raised the demand for flash memories, increasing interests in companies such as M-System (NASDAQ: FLSH), SANDISK (NASDAQ: SNDK) and lately also from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and others. Apple computers (NASDAQ: AAPL) revived due to the success of their iPod devices and their music commerce methods. This is only a portion of this evolving industry, but put it all together you will see the re-shaping of this industry, which urge new companies to enter with little barriers. For this particular supply-chain, iPod deamnds increases flash memory production and presents new challanges for innovation. It brings more vendors to the market either for production or to the development of new accesories. These Companies better learnt than before to collaborate in order to stay focused and in order to stay together in the market. Globalization causes for movement of compnaies and development into new countries. This by itself causes for a knowledge spreading all over the world. Companies need to better integrate their systems, and for that reason they are more opened than before.... This scenario, although being more hardware oriented, influences on the whole hi-tech market, among many other factors and samples.

You might be asking yourself 'what is the result of all this?' - this is simple: people are getting used to collaboration in business and therefore are able to produce better products. As a result, productivity increases and the good companies benefits by rapid growth. Investment companies looking to put their hands inside new deals and Suddenly, it is not forbiden to get into a VC hall and talk about new innovation strategies. Suddenly, the VCs are even willing to hear you even if you have only an idea (hmmmm...), and yes - suddenly they are not alone. The bubble days have been characterized by both software and hardware expensions. This is also the case now.
The price tags for some of the companies are again seems to be out of proportion, at some point (maybe even now?) Baidu china which develops a chineese platform for searching was valued at more than $5B with an earning of $1.4 million a year, that is right, amazingly non-realistic, or at least might seems so.

So what am I saying actually? Nothing really. I just wanted to point out that we are already in the next bubble. I didn't even mentioned the gllobalization transformations that involves India and China, maybe in a future post.

Technology Gadget: Motorola Razr V3

2005-12-03T18:59:00.000+02:00

Motorola Razr V3
My Brother switched his 3G Nokia mobile phone to this new fancy look mobile flip phone from Motorola. The device is very attractive and comfortable as of being thin (1/2 inch), lightweight, strong and have a fully functional built-in camera. It operates in the GSM network, supports high-speed GPRS data transmission, works perfectly with my Bluetooth earphone and exposes an easy colorful user interface for applications.
I remember the good old days when Motorola had the StarTac device and before Nokia dominated the mobile market. Are we seeing a wave of change?

Technology Gatdget: MP3 Sunglasses

2005-12-01T23:17:00.000+02:00

Oakley Thump Sunglasses
Just put my hand (for a try, could not afford to buy it at the $516 street price) on the lovely Oakley Sunglasses that incorporates MP3 player and an earplug. I could not think on a better way to handle the earing's cables, except for bluetooth of course. I find it very convinient and easy to carry - highly recomended - hope to find a matching iPod in the market soon, or a similar invention.

Marketing Tool: Social Networking

2005-11-27T18:50:00.000+02:00

Linked
A new mathematical theory around the issue of networks evolved by the late 90' and one interesting instance of this theory can be found in the book Linked: The New Science of Networks. The theory created a new mathematical profession that brings with it a new set of thinking that enables the development of many new implementations that could not appear before.
Networking: The term is used for describing the act of managing your contacts. 'Networking' meetings are conducted today by most high prestige universities and other marketing and non-marketing managers who understand the advantage of it. The more connections you have in your network, the more people you can potentially have business with.
Concentrators: This are the most connected people in your net. Connecting to such person will potentially bring you much more connections now and in the future.

Information sharing is some kind of social behavior. 'Sharing' means not just files, music and movies, which is illegal, but rather share your ideas, share your doing, share your knowledge and connections, etc. The basic idea of the sharing model is that the more you give to the society the more the society will be able to give you back, due to the fact that massive cooperation and acts under this mantra will lower the entry barriers for acquiring knowledge. This principal can be rationalize through the understanding of globalization, as I described in the post The World Is Flat, but we will not discuss this issue again here. However, I would like to show some application examples that are using the globalization.

Sharing and Networking complements each other. We can not make an effective share unless we have a network connection, and from the other hand, our network will not be strong enough unless we have something in common to share. The theory can goes on and on, but I would like to show some applications. The one that I liked most is LinkedIn, but there are many other social networks (Plaxo, hi5, Ask My Network, ecademy and more) out there. LinkedIn for example is a network of connections between people that enables leverage the connectivity for business by finding connection shortcuts with people through friends and friends of friends, or even find a job and locate a relative someone that you can approach through the mutual connections that you have in the linked network. Using the network for business extremely enables the transformation of "cold calls" to "worm calls". Since the linked theory is new, I expect more and more applications to rise in the near future. Another example of networking and linked implementations is the Tagging and social bookmarking phenomena. These will be dealt in a future post. Meanwhile, start to build your LinkedIn network, you'll never know what fortune it might bring you back...

Technology: Internet Based TV and Video Over IP Services

2005-11-21T22:19:00.000+02:00

The new AT&T company (Ticker: T), that has been established through the merger between the two american telecom giants AT&T and SBC, decided to focus on TV, Cellular and computer technologies that are based on the Internet. The merged company is going to offer (based on WSJ) a TV service with more than 1000 channels within 18 months.
In a previous post I mentioned Cisco's acquisition of Scientific Atlanta to have better technologies for TV distribution over IP. This by integrating with SA's set-top-box.
So the food-chain in the TV/Cables market starting to be clear. A big provider using infrastructure from a big manufacturer will provide new services to an hungry audience.
Seems like the market for TV/Cables service is going to be wild in the following years. 1000 channels over the internet raises a challenge to the hardawre and software companies to build better PVRs. The possibilities might lead the open market to enlarge the current sharing internet services in a way that we could not have before, new ways for data and video consumption may be raised, now that we have the vehicle for such enormous capacity of information.

Globalization: GM to cut 30,000 jobs by 08'

2005-11-21T16:23:00.000+02:00

An increase competition from Asian (mostly Japan) auto makers reduced GM's market share and cause it to loose $4.8Billion so far. Meanwhile the sales continue to drop and rumors says that the company might bankrupt. Today GM announced on a plan to cut 30,000 jobs by the end of 08', a higher number than the early expected 25,000 as reported on June this year. Most of the job cuts will be based on retirement plans and the company plans to reduce its production capacity by 1 Millions from 6 Millions vehicles today.

GM find it difficult to continue the competition with Asian auto makers. The company confronts with high health-care expenses that can not be reduced without negotiation with the United Auto Workers union. The company also intended to purchase a larger portion of components from suppliers out of the US.

Analysis: Globalization condition hits GM with little chance of the last to have the right card in hands. The healthcare contracts does not give the company the required flexibility to get ahead with its business slowdown, a situation that reduces the company's strength even more. The competitors from the other hand are not tied to any union, and side by side with producing more cars and trucks they are increasing their productivity and getting help from their governments (See:GM Says Japan Helps Its Automakers Illegally). Although we are living in an open market and raised to believe that the market forces will set the pace, I believe that the US government should not be naive and make sure that all the players in the market are playing with the same rules, otherwise, US might loose its leading position for stupidity. Worthless to say that this might be a non-reversal condition.

Technology & Strategy: Cisco acquires Scientific Atlanta

2005-11-20T21:34:00.000+02:00

Cisco acquires Scientific Atlanta:At last a possibility for a one box that will do it all, a one-stop shop as they say. TV distribution over the internet becomes a reality. Cisco's technologies when combined together can provide a single (!) box that will manage all home networking requirements: VOIP, Internet for PCs and laptops, Video over IP (TV), remote cameras. The infrastructure combines data voice and video, to provide services for wireless tools, PVR, DVD/R, Digital Music and Video servers, and home automation.
Cisco's power in selling to carriers is now moving to a consumer electronic zone, giving new possibilities under a new platform. Media server providers, both hardware and software, (Microsoft's, D-Link, and others) should reconsider the existence of a new player that can make voice, video and data convergence a commodity

New Technologies In the Block - 1

2005-11-20T12:48:00.000+02:00

Recent trends in web development point out for the existence of a new era in the internet, the trendy phrase that describes it is Web 2.0 and it seems that for more and more techies there is something to say about it, so why don't I?
What is Web2.0? It is many things but not a new technology, However, recent development in social behavior and advanced internet related networks enabled its development. In short - It is a new way of thinking and a development of new ways for marketing your ideas. Key factors for the change are: [1] Internet Bandwidth. [2] Social connectivity tools - the sharing approach. [3] Maturity of old methods.
In the last 5 years, rapid growth in the internet bandwidth infrastructure enabled more internet subscribers to consume better services. As a result, web-sites today are less focusing on ways to reduce data size for each HTTP hit, but rather focusing on enriching the user experience to be as much as possible close to desktop applications. Flash and more recently AJAX technologies are used to generate dynamic pages. Needless to say that DHTML was available already at the end of the 90' but not used, mostly due to traffic considerations.
The sharing approach started in the 70' with the open software foundation. Later on it was developed and one of the most known outcome is the OS competition and the distribution of Linux. Several domains in the web are responsible for helping the open source community to manage their projects, SourceForge, FreshMeat and the Open Directory Project to list a few. A social movement of developers that wanted to help each other and the world by sharing their knowledge freely emerged afterwards. They generated a more advanced form of community for the sole purpose of sharing and cataloging information by using tags.
Social Bookmarking emerged and new free services such as del.icio.us and Flickr started to feed the imagiation. New web methods such as Wiki and the Wikipedia continued to gain power and raised more users and subscribers in a way that started to convince even VCs that there must be a money in the Web2.0 application, otherwise I can't understand why would anyone want to invest in Web Calendars, a service that considered to be available in the old Internet days. Bill Gates himself started to talk about the future of software engineering and gain for companies in the form of software for service.

More to come...