Universal Convergence

Robert Scoble forgets he’s a filter, but so do businesses

September 28, 2006

I noticed Robert Scoble lamenting on his Blog that the technology world can get so overwhelming that it is hard to keep up, especially when you are an A-list Blogger. Scoble gets so much attention that his inbox is full of companies saying stuff like "blog about me! blog about me!" as they know getting "Scobalised" means huge hits to their online presence.

Scoble therefore is looking for filters, or "human filters" as he calls them. What he fails to register is that he is a human filter too!

One of the powerful aspects of the technologies behind Blogging is that they help with creating a human filter system for information. Companies can gain huge benefits by implementing Blogging technologies that can store what I call the Business Memory, permanently on their network for future access by their employees or partner organisations.

How many times have you started a new project or research into something within your own company where you thought "Maybe someone else has already done this?" The problem is that a lot of that information is either backed up and unsearchable, segregated away on a unreachable hard drive or walked out the door with the employee when they changed roles or changed companies.

Basic Blogging helps humans filter information. Of course there are many Blogs out there regurgitating so much crap to maintain the status quo that you need other Blogs to filter them too. In the end it’s all about trust. You trust a source for information until they do something that losses that trust. Blogging is the human face of Internet search engines.

Blogging is not just about the Internet and personal opinions. Blogging is about accessing filtered, relevant, trusted information that is permanently stored, update-able and search-able.

Dell releases HSDPA notebook – Latitude D420

September 28, 2006

Laptop & Notebook Reviews has a detailed article on the new Dell Latitude D420 that has built in 3.5G HSDPA support. According to the article this is Dell’s first HSDPA enabled device.

The Dell Latitude D620 has the following specs

1.49Kg
integrated RF types:

HSDPA 3G module
802.11a, b and g.
Bluetooth

Intel Core Duo U2500
60GB hard disk
12.1in screen with wide-screen aspect ratio display

The review is supported well with lots of pics, so head over and see what mobile broadband is really about.

Technorati Tags – notebook – 3.5g – HSDPA – mobile web – convergence

Engadget gets it right for mobiles

September 27, 2006

The development team over at Engadget have done the right thing by mobile readers of their site by "sniffing" the browser and delivering the appropriate XML to it via their main domain. So, all the hype and hoo haa about what mobile domain to use are gone.

Get on to your mobile, point it at http://engadget.com and try it out.

Well done guys.

UPDATE: I noticed on the CEO’s Blog from Weblogs that there are quite a few Blogs using their technology to do the same thing.

Technorati Tags – mobile web – mobile – mobile Internet

Nokia N95 spotted in the wild

September 26, 2006

Allaboutsymbian.com has a nice review of the Nokia N95, which is Nokia’s first HSDPA device.

The beastie includes a 5 megapixel camera and a TV out connection….. nice!

Technorati Tags – 3g – nokia – hsdpa – mobile – camera phone

Nokia deploys Microsoft Live Search

September 22, 2006

Nokia has a press release regarding implementing Microsoft Live Search directly onto their Nseries & compatible S60 devices. What they have done well with this is made it backward compatible with earlier versions of devices and not just the new ones.

Other details from the press release,

Available on the Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and other compatible Nokia S60 devices
Advanced web search results in 14 languages
Map viewer integrated
Microsoft will provide advanced search results for web search, as well as quick and easy access to information such as stock quotes, movie times, and common facts via Encarta Instant Answers (Encarta only available in certain locations)

For those of you with compatible Nokia devices head over to Nokia’s mobile search site to download the application and try it out.

Technorati Tags – nokia – mobile search – mobile web – mobile internet – mobile

Spring in Sydney

September 19, 2006

Ahhhh! Spring is here!

Pictures taken with the Nokia N90

Flickr Stream of pictures here.

.mobi – what’s your opinion?

September 18, 2006

I posted this response to a discussion on .mobi domains on The University of Oxford’s Next Generation Mobile Applications Panel forums today and wanted to use the opportunity to extend an invite to readers of this Blog to come over and join Forum Oxford and join in on this and many other discussions on everything mobile.

.mobi domains

I’m split either side on this debate, but I believe the overriding issue is the user experience. One question that needs to be addressed is, will .mobi domains help users or confuse them further with accessing the Internet via mobile devices.

People are frustrated/confused at having to remember many different ways to access a mobile version of a website. But why? This doesn’t happen in the PC world for the major web browsers as it is one URL for all browsers as far as people are concerned (NB: Remember that URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator or should this be Google now? 🙂 ).

We are still in the the early stages of people accessing the Internet with mobile devices. Until this activity becomes mainstream for companies (Sorry I meant to say "show me the money") people will be flailing about with poor usability issues such as pulling down full websites that don’t view properly in mobiles, getting lost with broken navigation and having to pay for all of this too.

Will .mobi open the flood gates to mobile users accessing the Internet? This will completely depend on the content accessed via the .mobi domains. What good are .mobi domains when companies only put on restricted services and content due to the low traffic?

A debilitating aspect of the mobile realm that is strikingly different to the PC one is that customers on mobile are billed for use. Bill shock is still an issue that must be resolved through simpler billing plans involving data costs.

I really hope that companies back ANY initiative to make it easier for people to access the Internet, no matter what form this takes. If people do not have a positive experience with accessing the Internet via mobile devices then no one wins.

On an aside note, does anyone else see the irony of a mobile domain name being longer than the standard domains? Whoever invented this doesn’t use text entry on mobile devices – it should have been .m ! 🙂

Technorati Tags – 3g – .mobi – mobi – mobile web – mobile internet – mobile – www

Citizen Journalism 9-11 Video

September 13, 2006

Steve Rubel of Micro persuasion has a link to a very personal video recording of 11th September 2001 from a unique perspective. That perspective was one of overlooking the North tower from a building 500 yards away, 36 floors up.

The video is titled September 11, 2001: What We Saw

Lest we forget.

Technorati Tags – 9/11 – 911 – september11 – worldtradecenter

Time & space shifting media on mobiles

September 8, 2006

Finally some news that shows a path to my time and space shifting mobile beastie becoming a reality. Infoworld has this report from the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam regarding Texas Instruments demonstrating Personal Video Recorder (PVR) functionality on mobile devices. Called "Hollywood mobile Broadcast solutions" the chipset allows the following functionality,

Live television programs
Pay-per view
Interactive TV
Packaged services for sporting events
Personal Video Recording (PVR)
Digital radio services
Picture-in-picture (PIP)

TI is currently releasing 2 chip sets in the Hollywood Mobile Broadcast Solutions,

DTV1000 – DVB-H (digital video broadcast – handheld) which is being deployed world-wide including Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia
Operates at 470-750 MHz (UHF) and 1.670-1.675 GHz (L-band) frequency ranges
DTV1001 – ISDB-T (integrated services digital broadcast – terrestrial) one-segment which is being deployed in Japan
Operates at 470-770 MHz frequency range

TI has more information on their site here as well as a demonstration video showing the technology in action.

TI’s Hollywood products site – http://www.ti.com/hollywood

TI’s MobileTV site – http://www.ti.com/mobiletv

Technorati Tags – 3g – mobile tv – mobiletv – pvr – mobile – time shifting – space shifting – dvbh – convergence

Mipcom MobileTV awards!

September 5, 2006

Well this is exciting stuff, as Mipcom’s MobileTV awards are on again this year at Cannes.

Their 2006 award categories are:

Best Original Made-for-Mobile Film or Video Content
Best Re-purposed Content from existing Film or TV property
Best Made-for-Mobile TV Channel
Best Format for Interactive Mobile TV
Best Mobile Format for User-Generated Content

There will also be a Grand Prize for Innovation, so if you have any cool MobileTV content to submit then get cracking as entries close 12th September 2006.

Mipcom’s MobileTV award site is here

Technorati Tags – 3g – mobile tv – mobile