The connected world we live in
With my notebook hooked into the Internet, blogs, IM & Skype etc, I can choose any place in Sydney to have a seat/coffee and connect to the world…. oh great another call, or that email first…stuff it, I’ll have another coffee.
Great Australian Blog seminar
Just got back from a great Hill & Knowlton Breakfast Bytes seminar on Blogging (Sydney Australia). H&K did a great job on this, highly commendable.
The session was a panel format and had a great attendance. The panel members were:
-
Mark Jones, Deputy Managing Director, IDG Communications, who pioneered the use of blogs in IT journalism
-
Frank Arrigo, Group Manager, Microsoft Australia, and a prominent corporate blogger
-
Andrew Kirk, Associate Director, Hill & Knowlton, and an ex-Channel 10 and radio reporter
-
Mick Stanic, proprietor of Principius, the mind behind Splatt, and a ‘podcasting’ pioneer
Some tid bits from the session:
-
Blogging, mobblogging & podcasting definitions & examples
-
The new paradigm of timeshifting media content (example of podcast being depolyed on mobile devices)
-
AK: "Every 15min, 300 new blogs are created"
-
Blogging is a about relationships through conversations.
-
FA: talked about the issue of having multiple blogs, personal, work and persional interest.
-
Question from audience about bloggers being fired. FA responded that business blogging should be about common sense. "At Microsoft we refer to our unwritten set of guidelines" 🙂
-
Blogging is about moving the "power" from mainstream media back to the people!
-
MS: The ol’ infamous Kryptonite bike lock incident was discussed in depth.
-
2/3rds of the way through Frank finally mentioned Cluetrain & Markets are Conversations.
-
FA gave a great non techy example of a Saville tailor in the UK and his blog called The English Cut
-
FA: " Blogs are great for internal use in companies to keep track of information, even if the people who created it leave"
-
FA: "people who are reading blogs are "sneezes" . They pass it on to whoever they talk to, spreading it around 🙂 (credited to Seth Gobin)
-
FA: closing remarks – "Be a consumer of the technology first before using it yourself"
Oh and H&K had a real coffee service for cafe Lattes & Cappuccinos, so even bigger brownie points!
@ The Hill & Knowlton blog seminar
Great Machinima!
Machinima is the ability to use mainstream gaming engines to create your own story/adventure/comedy or whatever. The gaming engines are becoming so feature rich now that they are bordering on becoming full movie production systems. While there have been some great early concepts, it is only recently, with the higher end graphic engines and fully featured off the shelf level editors, things are getting very grey as to what is amateur and what is professional.
Check out this music video utilisng the Half Life 2 engine and music from one of Halo2’s finest soundtrack artists, Breaking Benjamin.
Great stuff!
Virgin Radio on 3G!
Virgin Radio on your 3G. Nice implementation guys!
I really like the great app these guys have created that is both simple to use and has good branding too.
You get to choose from 3 radio stations from the Virgin Radio network in the UK in stereo.
FYI: Data rate is around 7Mb per hour.
First real world trial of HSDPA?
I think this is the first real world usage of High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) by a commercial carrier, T-Mobile in Germany. The great news about HSDPA is that the majority of 3G networks can be software upgraded to use this technology.
"I feel the need, the need for speed!"
2005 is the year for 3G.
Network IT has an interesting article titled "Will 2005 be the year for 3G?". Some great statistics and commentary, primarily on the mature European market.
I still think the US market will be an accelerator for the technology as large US software companies will begin to develop specifically for the technology. This will create a large increase in the non-voice usage of the networks for mobile solutions.
Â
Great quote from the article by Sanjiv Ahuja, chief executive of Orange Group:
‘The customer wants a seamless experience that is technology agnostic, taking them from home, while mobile, and to work,’ he says.
Hands up who sees that with their 3G carrier now……. Well I’m still looking.
We are not quite crossing the chasm yet…
Alcatel’s vision of the Evolution of 3G
This is a great white paper by Alcatel on the evolution of carrier technology from 3G. They emphasise the importance for carriers to evolve their networks into multiple RF systems.
A great failure of many telcos is not recognising & therefore not focusing on, what their core competencies as a carrier are, that of carriage.
I think Alcatel’s paper shows the power of creating vast seemless interconnected networks utilising different RF types.
Impressive notebook gaming.
I always said notebook gaming was an oxymoron, but the new DELL Inspiron XPS Gen 2 has some impressive stats:
- 2.13 Ghz processor
- 1GB RAM
- 80GB HDD
- nVidia GeForce 6800 Go with 256Mb
- 17" widescreen
It even has MOD lighting and soon to be released MODable covers.
Doesn’t look like it’s available in Oz yet.
Ahh convergence! It’s everywhere including your car.
One of the best ROI’s I’ve had on a piece of geeky equipment was an ol’ tape cassette adapter that originally came out for portable CD players. The cassette tape adapter device fitted into your car’s tape deck and a cable attached from it into the headphone jack of your portable music device. I’ve since used it for MP3 players and other mobile devices. It is great for travelling as it universally works on any car in the world that has a tape deck.
So, it is great to see that the trechnology is still bumping along with 2 new iterations.
1. The Bluetooth Cassette tape – Listen to your podcasts & digital music via the Bluetooth connection to your deivce (notebook or mobile)
2. The MP3 Cassette tape player – A 256Mb MP3 player/recorder in a tape cassette adapter form factor. It even comes with it’s own carry case for when you are sans-tape deck! Dan’s overly in-depth review is extremely informative.
Universal Convergence 