Category: Technology Mega Trends

24
Jul

Amazing Robot Technology

Boston Dynamics just released a new video of the Big Dog on ice and snow, and also demoing its walking gait.

During our Manager Tour through Japan we saw a lot of Robo-Lab and amazing things, but this is really fascinating. I found this video on Shai’s blog today.

See the Video of the “Robo-Dog”?

10
Jul

Captured on Google Street View in Germany today

Google Camera CarWhile I was riding with my bike to work a “Google Camera-Car” passed me. Google is preparing to launch the “Google Street View” in Germany soon and is capturing german cities right now.

I am looking forward to see me on Google Maps 🙂

First Examples for Street View in Germany are already online: Google Releases Street View for Tour de France in Google Earth/Maps.

09
Jul

Google starts 3D Virtual World

Lively Google Google launches a 3D Online Virtual World called Lively.

After many rumors, it is now public. Google starts with a Massive-Multiplayer-Online World and targets the users and audience of Second Live.

A great feature is the ability to produce, publish and even sell virtual products on Lively. This might even give companies the opportunity to offer their real products, as virtual products, too. After our projects in Second Life for Deutsche Bank and Axel-Springer, we might do some Lively projects soon.

In its latest quest to expand beyond its main mission of organizing the world’s information, Search engine leader Google is entering into the virtual world business Tuesday with the introduction of “Lively,” a product that lets users create highly personalized 3-D virtual rooms on the web.

Continue Reading..

03
Jun

Speech: “Mobile Media Revolution” at Internet Congress in Berlin

Ahead of Time - Speech Today I hold a speech at the Internet Congress IICO (www.iico.de) in Berlin.

My topic was “Mobile Media Revolution – The change of the Media Landscape”.

I talked about the general shift in media behaviour, starting a digital conversation. See the article on Ahead of Time about Corporate Conversation.

Furthermore I mentioned how important it is to watch the global hotspots to keep up with innovation and trends. How you keep up with Innovation and how to be ready for the future.

The main part is about key trends in mobile media with cases from South-Korea, Japan and USA.

Here is my presentation:

25
Mar

In-Car WiFi

WiFi will be your Car in the future.
But why would I need WiFi in my car?
In Car Wifi
Martin Varsavsky and I were discussing this issue at DLD’07 with a manager working for an automotive company. There are several reasons why consumers would love to have WiFi in the car:
1. You can connect all devices in the car to the web via one WiFi router.
2. You can create a Private Area Network (PAN) and share P2P Games or any content (e.g. streaming music).
3. You can connect you car WiFi with your home station when you park in front of your car.
and many more idea…

There is already one company focusing on in-car wifi technology called Automobile. Their technologie will be used by Avis.

Furthermore Chrylser announced to implement in-car WiFi in all new cars. Via WashingtonPost.

The feature will be added to existing vehicles by dealers beginning this year and later be installed on the assembly line, said Frank Klegon, Chrysler’s product development chief.

The technology will allow passengers to search Web pages using signals from mobile phone towers. Consumers initially would need a subscription to a wireless phone carrier to ensure uninterrupted coverage.

“We want to make the radio itself a WiFi port,” Klegon said.

The announcement came the same day that chief executive Robert Nardelli said Chrysler planned to expand sales in its Mopar parts division by targeting owners who want to customize their vehicles.

Chrysler will initiate the effort by offering an off-road navigation system, chrome grille, heavy-duty bumper and a special sound system for its Jeep Wrangler, Nardelli said at the New York International Auto Show.

The emphasis on Mopar, which provides dealers with replacement and accessory parts, is a turnabout for Chrysler after it considered selling the unit last year.

“We’re aggressively moving to capture more of the customer service and parts business by focusing on what dealers need to increase their profitability,” Nardelli said.

11
Feb

Start of the VDZ Online Publishers Tour

Today is the first day of the VDZ Online Publishers Tour in Asia organized by CScout. The program starts in Seoul, South Korea. Here are just some notes about the morning.
VDZ Online Publisher's Tour, Asia 2008
Danny Kim did a great kick-off about the web 2.0 scene in South Korea. Danny is famous Korean Web 2.0 Blogger and is a TrendScout within the CScout Network. He has just finished his book “Meconomy” and talked about cool new services from openmaru. One service is called springnote. Springnote is a wiki-based online notebook platform first developed in korean and now rolled out in english. He used sprindnote to write his book in close cooperation with the editors. He said it was a really great working experience and made the wirting process very time efficient.

Our local TrendScout John Rajeski gave an introduction to the internet and mobile media market in South Korea. With roughly 10 Mio. inhabitant in Seoul, compared to 49 Mio. people in the country, the city plays a major role in digital media. John explained that you can get a 100MBits Internet connection at home for around 30 Euro per month. Via Wimax you have access to 3Mbits per second on the move within the City. GPS, 3G (UMTS) also play a big role for the korean market and is available since almost a decade.
The reason why South Korea has such a powerful infrastructure is due to the consistent development by the korean government. Another important factor is that the korean consumers are very early adopters, they just love to try new services and applications. Furthermore the mobile phone is the most important access to the internet for the consumers. Therefore it is not surprising that there are 9 million mobile TV subscribers in South Korea, that is 18,75% of the whole population.

S. Korea is the leader in Mobile Banking, Japan is a leader in Mobile Payments. Mobile banking in S. Korea has about 5 million active subscribers. The growth of the mobile banking market is very impressive.

Further meetings today are for example Cyworld, LindenLab Korea.

More pictures about the trend tour at my Flickr account.

11
Feb

Around the World in 14 days

On Friday, Feb. 9th 2008, I left for a trip around the world: Seoul – Korea, Tokyo – Japan, New York – USA and then back to Munich – all within 14 days. I am supporting our Team with the Trend Tour for german executives from european publishing companies, called the “VDZ Online Publishers Tour Asia 2008”.
World Map - Around the world in 14 days

The Trend Tour is focusing on emerging media trends in Asia with company meetings and expert presentations in Seoul and in Tokyo. The program includes visits to Cyworld, the leading korean virtual worlds platform and ohmynews, the first consumer generated online newspaper founded in Korea, just to mention two examples.

If you want to learn more about the VDZ Publishing Tour just visit the VDZ Website or contact our CScout team.

15
Jan

4 Mio iPhones sold – Apple Stock looses over 10% of value

Steve Jobs just hold his MacWorld Key-Note. He presented a brand-new MacBook called MacBook Air – the thinnest notebook ever.
Steve Jobs and the MacBook Air
Furthermore he said that the iPhone was sold over 4 Million times since the launch 200 days ago – that’s 20.000 iPhones a day.

I think this is great news, or what do you think?
But what happened with the Apple stock?

Apple lost during the Key-Note of Steve Jobs over 10% market share.
See picture below:
Apple Stock Value on MacWorld Speech

Here is a good explanation I found online:
“Outside of last year, which was pretty special, the stock has typically moved up on rumor and down on news. It has followed this pattern as long as I can recall.
Folks are really setting themselves up for disappointment anymore with these things. Apple can’t meet everyone’s expectations and rumors.”

18
Dec

The digital plaster

Today I found the digiatl plaster.
An Innovation made in England by Toumaz.

Digital Pflaster 2

Toumaz Technology believes that demands on healthcare throughout the developed world are changing. The combination of the global demographic trend towards an ageing population coupled with a sedentary western lifestyle and poor diet is leading to higher probability and earlier onset of chronic disease. Factoring in the growing patient demands for personalised treatment, medicine and services, the result is huge cost pressures on healthcare.

Healthcare information systems in use today were mainly designed to manage acute illness, such as infections and injury, making them ill-equipped to cope with the growing requirement for pervasive monitoring of long-term conditions. With healthcare budgets already overstretched and fewer carers – professional and non-professional – available to meet these increased needs, the forecasted additional demands are simply unsustainable using current practice. A new paradigm is required.

Digital Pflaster 1

Read more…

20
Nov

The End of Publishing…

…as we know it.

Amazon introduced a new hardward to read eBooks on the go: Kindle.
Amazon Kindle

Guy Kawasaki was writting about the device today:
“Today Amazon announced its foray into selling hardware with a data service. The device is called “Kindle,” and it represents a daring move for an “online bookstore.” You’re going to see two kinds of reviews: bad ones from people who haven’t used it and good ones from people who have. It’s that kind of product—plus Jeff Bezos’s reality-distortion field isn’t as large as Steve Jobs’s. I have used it and if someone gave me a choice of receiving an iPhone or a Kindle, I’d pick the Kindle.”

Product Description on Amazon:
Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
More than 88,000 books available, including 100 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
New York Times® Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes—all auto-delivered wirelessly.
Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times.
More than 250 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post.
Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
Holds over 200 titles.
Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones—so you never have to locate a hotspot.
No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments—we take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.
Includes free wireless access to the planet’s most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia—Wikipedia.org.
Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing.

20
Nov

Baidu beats Google in China

Our Team in China just published a great Trend-Abstract about Baidu and Google in China:
China Search Engine Snapshot.
Study Baidu - Search Engine
“…According to online market research company iResearch, Baidu now aacounts for nearly 61% of search engine traffic in China, followed by Google with nearly 24% and Yahoo China just over 10%. Quarter after quarter, Google and Baidu have both been exceeding their China-based earnings targets, sending analysts scrambling to predict new ones. Over the past three months, Baidu’s 2008 forecast has gone up from USD 3.60 to USD 4.02 a share. Google’s 2008 consensus has risen from USD 19.49 to USD 20.59 a share….”

05
Nov

Open Social – Google’s Online Social Network

Open Social - Google’s Online Social Network
Google launched its counterproject to facebook – it is called Open Social.

I found a great Review on Marc Andreessen Blog. Here are some quotes:

Open Social is an open web API that can be supported by two kinds of developers:

  • “Containers” — social networking systems like Ning, Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, and Friendster, and…
  • “Apps” — applications that want to be embedded within containers — for example, the kinds of applications built by iLike, Flixster, Rockyou, and Slide.

Open Social takes the Facebook platform concept and provides an open standard approach that can be used by the entire web. Open Social is an open way for everyone to do what Facebook has done…

…including Facebook itself, potentially — more on that below.

30
Oct

Car 2.0 – The new Boom of electric cars.

Reimagining the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity.
Software industry hotshot Shai Agassi has a well-funded plan to shake up the auto industry with a new approach to the electric car.

Via Business Week and AlarmClock.

Shai Agassi startled everyone at SAP when he left the company. Only 39 years old, Agassi was expected to some day take over the helm at SAP. At his departure from SAP Agassi indicated that he would be focusing on alternative energy in Israel.

The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits.
“We’re basically saying this is just like the cellular phone model,” he said. “If you think of Tesla as the iPhone, we’re AT&T.”

Shai AgassiNow news is breaking that Agassi has raised $200M for his startup called Better Place. The startup has raised $100M from Israel Corp. as well as funding from VantagePoint Venture Partners, a large New York investment bank that wasn’t immediately identified, and angel investors including Edgar Bronfman Sr.

Agassi plans are to shake up the business model for electric vehicles. It will sell or lease electric cars to consumers in packages with monthly service fees (Agassi uses the cell phone plan as an analogy). Better Place will also operate networks of charging locations and service stations. One of the problems with electric vehicles is that you can’t make it too far from your home base before you run out of juice. Better Place stations will just replace your battery so you can get on your way. Agassi plans to pilot the project in a few countries next year and begin mass deployments in 2010.

09
Oct

Google acquires Jaiku

Gratulation and my best wished to Jyri !

Jyri commented the deal:

We’re joining Google because we see big potential in what we’re doing – potential that we want to realize as services that our Jaiku users love, and other mobile and Internet users too. We’re not planning to disappear: you know we use Jaiku to communicate with many of the people that are personally dear to us. While it’s too soon to comment on specific products and our development plans, we honestly believe that together with the engineers who we’ve befriended at Google we can build great new things that we couldn’t do alone.

Via Jaiku:

Google acquires Jaiku.

Jaiku is joining Google. While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now.

But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku. We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition.

Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders.

04
Oct

Introducing SMS 2.0

3jam SMS 2.0 USAChanging a global market worth 60 billion USD – “SMS 2.0” might be right application to rock the market.

Via Diana and Rocco from PavingWays.

Last week 3jam and Virgin Mobile announced their partnership. That’s really amazing news! Virgin Mobile is promoting that deal heavily, e.g. on their homepage and via messages to subscribers.

What is 3jam?
In 2005 Andy Jagoe and Enlai Chu started developing a new way of text messaging communication. Let’s name it SMS 2.0. It improves the basic text messaging by allowing friends and family to stay connected with group communication. The 3jam service is free, only SMS charges may apply. But the cool thing is that each text message you send or receive through 3jam is counted as 1 standard text message, even when your message may be received by multiple recipients in the 3jam conversation.

How does the 3jam service via Virgin Mobile works?
The Virgin Mobile customers have first to sign up on the menu of Virgin Mobile’s WAP deck or at www.3jam.com/virgin.Then they can start sending SMS to any number of friends simultaneously. The receipients of the SMS can reply to all at once.

How big is the market for SMS?
For this year Informa analysts suggest the value of global SMS traffic at 60 Billion USD; Gartner forcasts 1.8 Trillion USD by 2010.

In the US we already talked to some carriers and most of them are pretty interested in partnerships with service developers, since they can help them to attract more customers and also increase their ARPU.

Currently, 3jam is building a global service for transiting, billing and clearing multi-party SMS messages. They are also working on some new features.

26
Sep

We want the Transrapid!

Transrapid
In Munich there is a big discussion these days about the Maglev-Train from the airport to Munich-Downtown. I don’t understand the issue. It is a german technology and the train is much more cost- and energy efficient than any other train.

High Speed Transrapid
The german ICE is much more expensive due to the high repair and maintenance cost, but the big cooperations want to make money and do not want to kill their own money machine.

Due to the lack of physical contact between the track and the vehicle, there is no rolling friction, leaving only air resistance.

The Transrapid technology is already many years old and it the best example how slow Germany can be. So don’t discuss about it – we want the Transrapid!

The Shanghai maglev cost 9.93 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) to build. This total includes infrastructure capital costs such as manufacturing and construction facilities, and operational training. While high-speed maglevs are expensive to build, they are less expensive to operate and maintain than traditional high-speed trains, planes or intercity buses.

As Marcel Reichart also described on his latest trip to china: “Germany is slow, China is the future.”

23
Jul

Behind the Scene of the RedBull AirRace

A behind the scene look at the Red Bull AirRace in Interlaken, Switzerland in July 2007. See the professional HD TV production crew with the latest mobile communication equipment provided by Thomas’ Team at Riedel Communication.

19
Jul
26
Jun

Automatic Generated TV Show

News at Seven is an automatic generated TV Show broadcasted online.

Have a look at this great format and imagine what will happen in a couple of years. An automated News Show is also a great idea for Google News and even for TV Stations around the world. This might change the future of TV dramatically.
Do we still need human TV-Presenters at all?

News at Seven is an automatic system that crafts daily news shows. It finds the news you are interested in; edits it; finds relevant images, videos, and external opinions; and then presents it all using a virtual news team working in a virtual studio. News at Seven is a uniquely compelling experience that can present traditional news–augmented with supplemental images, videos, and opinions from the blogosphere—all without human intervention.

Link: http://www.newsatseven.com/

15
Apr

Google Acquires Internet (2017)

MAY 12, 2017 – BUSINESSWIRE. Mountain View-based search giant Google Inc today announced they’ve acquired the internet for the astounding sum of $2,455.5 billion in cash. The deal had been rumored in various search blogs since the beginning of the year and was now confirmed by the company’s CEO. “This is in line with our vision to make information more accessible to end users,” says Eric Schmidt. “With the acquisition, we can increase the speed of indexing as everything will already be on our servers by the time it’s published.”

In a conference call earlier today, Larry Page explained the strategy behind the acquisition. “We realized it’s not very cost-effective to buy the internet in smaller portions.” During the past two decades, Google had acquired YouTube for $1.65, DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, AOL for $12.5 billion, and last year, Microsoft for the record sum of $120 billion.

Questioned on the first steps the company would take integrating the internet onto their servers, Eric Schmidt announced immediate plans to redirect Yahoo.com to Google’s own search engine. “From an end user perspective, having two search engines is just bad usability, and [causes confusion]. While we appreciate Yahoo’s recent advances in search technology, we felt this move is best aligned with the interests of our advertisers, users and shareholders.” Eric added, “By leveraging third-generation mobile platforms in sustainable verticals, new monetization opportunities can manifest into an improved web experience, greatly benefiting investors and digerati alike – a true paradigm change synergizing the Web 6.0 framework on the enterprise level.”

Accompanying Google’s acquisition revelation, privacy groups today released a paper criticizing the move. However, Larry Page argues that privacy is improved by Google’s acquisition, explaining that “[the] main privacy issues for users today are data leaks to third parties. By eliminating all third parties, we closed this hole.” Eric Schmidt adds that Google intends to replace their current privacy policy with a “privacy scale” which better balances necessary compromises. “When you can improve the privacy of a large group of people by violating the privacy rights of a small number of people, in the end this improves overall privacy.”

The Chinese government in the meantime congratulated Google Inc on their move. Regarding the potentials of expanded censorship, Sergey Brin told members of the press that Google would now drop all search results filtering and instead “address the root problem from a publisher perspective” by directly blocking certain keywords the time they are entered in Google-owned tools such as Blogger, Gmail, Page Creator, Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders were not available for comment at this time due to temporary technical problems with their web-based email clients.

Via: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-04-14-n32.html