“They stole our revolution. Now We’re stealing it back”. So runs the tagline at the end of the weekly email newsletter for technology geeks, NTK.net. And although the slogan has been running since 1997, in 2006 the slogan has never been more appropriate. Standing outside a cold London town hall, watching hordes of mostly fresh-faced young men (I counted six women among 800) file in to a conference on the
Returning from the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona, I couldn’t help wondering if all the hype was really missing something important – why we love SMS. So let’s review that hype. Basically the “Mobile World” thinks it’s going to move towards a totally Internet-based future, where every phone is IP-enabled and we all roam around, using voice and data on the move. A vast new world of video and music downloads
Check out MocoNews for my blog coverage of 3GSM.
The Inquirer is reporting on some Strand Consulting research which says: While many players are focusing on the growth markets like India, Brazil, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh – countries where cheap handsets and SIM cards will attract millions of new customers – that’s not the interesting bit, Strand says. The real challenges are markets like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, where mobile prices are plummeting at the same
I’ll be at 3GSM in Barcelona next week. See you there if you’re going!
It was a warm day in Helsinki. Minus five. And I found myself walking beside the city’s frozen lake, talking about Web analytics. Jouko Ahvenainen heads an analytics firm which has hit upon an idea. Over lunch beside a wintery, but beautifully sunlit setting, we talked about the dramatic changes which are about to take place in the mobile industry. Jouko runs Xtract which has traditionally been a high-end anlytics
There’s nothing like being surrounded by 800 Geeks. You start talking in code – Ajax, RSS, tags, XUL.
In late February I’m launching a series of weekly podcast shows in Central London. “Bitecast” will be a half hour show looking at interesting new trends in the digital media business, covering mobile and the web. In particular the show will look at the shift to digital music, entertainment and the impact on mainstream media. We’ll review the week’s news, check out the latest mobiles, shoot the breeze about the
Here in Helsinki I met up with Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, Researcher, at the University of Helsinki. She has some fascinating ideas about the “Long Tail“. In part because of creating Hobbyprincess.com, which was about how you get girls developing technology and blogging about crafts, she got interested in the idea that the stuff which people make – perhaps a coat or a sculpture – will drop off the ‘long tail’ because
Pissed off that Google is censoring results? Then start typing badly. Blogger Paul Boutin found that image searches for Tiananmen throw up innocuous images of fountains and temples. But type in Tianenmen, or some other close mispelling and you see tanks and protesters… With any luck Google will be able to argue that it doesn’t have to control or censor mispellings. Well, I hope it takes that line, but these