Category: Articles & Press

23
Mar

Visible Banking Interview with Matthias Kroener, Fidor AG

Christophe Langlois of Visible Banking interviewed Matthias Kroener during a conference in Paris. The event was focusing on Social Media and its impact on the financial industry.

Matthias Kroener, CEO of Fidor AG, talked about their Social Media Marketing Strategy realized in teamwork with Ahead of Time.

09
Mar

Zimbra better than Gmail?

Zimbra 1VentureBeat has written about Yahoo-owned email and collaboration software Zimbra before, but it looks like they’re far from being the only fans. In fact, Zimbra announced that has crossed the 40 million user mark. And those are paid mailboxes, not free accounts.

Zimbra has flown a bit under the radar — it’s not exactly obscure, but I don’t watch it as closely as, say, Gmail. It turns out, however, that Zimbra actually has 31.4 million users in the United States, squeaking by the 31.2 million unique monthly visitors Gmail received in the US during the month of January (according to comScore). And while we’re beating up on Google, we should also note that Google recently reported having 10 million users for the free and pay versions of its business application bundle Google Apps — again, well behind Zimbra. These numbers also imply Zimbra might soon pass other popular webmail services like AOL Email and Windows Live Hotmail.

Zimbra 2

Granted, you risk entering “apples and oranges” territory when you compare a consumer-driven webmail product like Hotmail with something that’s more focused on businesses and institutions like Zimbra. (Update: A lot of Zimbra’s growth was likely fueled by the big deal it struck with Comcast in 2007, as several commenters note below. A spokeswoman says deals with Comcast and other service providers “represent a large number of Zimbra’s user base” but adds that the company isn’t at liberty to offer details.) Throw in the fact that we’re measuring Zimbra’s self-reported numbers against numbers from comScore and Google, and things start looking pretty dodgy. But even if we stick to Zimbra’s numbers alone, the growth is quite impressive — a year ago, it reported less than 12 million paid mailboxes. Let’s hope Zimbra continues that growth despite the departure of founder Satish Dharmaraj.

Zimbra 3

The news also ties into a blog post by Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins earlier today. Pointing to new Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz’ remark that email is becoming “increasingly critical” to the struggling company, Hopkins notes that email accounts for more than third of Yahoo traffic. Of course, Yahoo Mail and Zimbra are separate products, but Zimbra’s numbers underline Hopkins’ and Bartz’ message — if there’s a way for Yahoo to get out of its current mess, email is going to play a huge role.

12
Feb

CCTV Tower in Beijing is Burning, News are censored

The images by citizen reporters from beijing are damatic. The burning CCTV Skyscraper reminds me of New York’s 9/11.
What happened? No News on CNN, NBC etc.?

cctv hochhaus brennt

cctv hochhaus brennt

cctv hochhaus brennt

cctv hochhaus brennt

Via: “Beijing CCTV Building On Fire, News Censored”

09
Feb

Why is Zappos so successful?

Here is a great Interview by Loic with Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos.com.
He talks about their Consumer Centric Strategy, Customer Service and how they made 1 Billion US Dollar in revenues in 2008.

02
Feb

Unleashing the power of an Open Mobile Internet

Philip Olla just wrote an interesting article for the MOCOM 2020 Project about the power of the Open Mobile Internet (OMI).

There are phenomenal implications of combining “open” software, “open” hardware on an “open” network? The current traditional closed mobile Internet could transform into a vibrant ecosystem in which the network operator, content provider and application developers, operate together with revenue sharing business models. There is no technical reason why a large media or entertainment organization cannot enter this market as the barrier to entry has been flattened with the open source platform called Android, which is similar to the I-Phone platform. The Android platform is a platform that will see an abundance of programs which will evolve into a profitable marketplace for developers. The other factor is the open network availability question, and there are strong positive moves from network operators and the US regulators with this regard. The future looks bright and it seems that an Open Mobile Internet is about to be unleashed.

Read more at mocom2020.com

29
Jan

Remix: Lawrence Lessig on the Colbert Show

I think it was not easy for Lawrence at the Colbert Show. But he did a great job and explained what a hybrid economy is. Colbert also had to realize what it means to “Remix” the copyright. Great Video!

Fantastic!
See what happened on the next Show:

29
Jan

The future of Digital Newspapers in 1981

Very interesting Video about the future of digital newspapers filmed in 1981.
My favorite quotes are:
“Imagine turning on your home computer to read the daily newspaper – it’s not as far fetched as it may seem.”
“The Download of the full-newspapers takes over 2 hours.”

Via Techcrunch.

20
Jan

Analyzing Barack Obama’s Inauguration Speech

I took the full-text of Barack Obama’s Inauguration Speech and used Wordle.net to analyze his speech. The most-used words in each address appear in the interactive chart below, sized by number of use

See the result here. Enjoy.

Barack Obama’s Inauguration Speech analyzed

07
Jan
22
Dec

Davos Debates: The Power of My Generation

The World Economic Forum started “Davos Conversation” a few years ago and now expanded the basic idea to integrate the online community within the dicussion to “Davos Debates”.

“Davos Debates” gives everybody the opportunity to take part in key-discussions and reach out to the leaders at the WEF. At Davos Debates 2009 there are four major topics: Economy, Ethics, Politics and Environment. The best answers will be shown at the WEF Sessions.

I recorded a Video as an answer to the question: “Will the environment lose out to the economy in 2009?”.
I believe that the “Power of My Generation” is essential to answer the question. The Environment will not lose out to the economy in 2009 and ongoing, if we use this “power”.

“The Power of My Generation” is attention. Due to the new wave of the web, with Social Networking like facebook, Online Video like Youtube or Micro-Blogging like Twitter, we have the opportunity to change the world to the better. We can turn Social Media into Social Activism, we can bring “green” products from niche to mass market and we can convince the leaders of today to be pro-active aswell.

04
Nov
13
Oct

“Monty makes the extraordinary look simple”

THANK YOU Charles, for writing this eloquent recommendation for my LinkedIn Profile.

Dr. Charles Savage wrote:

Monty makes the extraordinary look simple. If the Future has significance for you, he has his finger on the pulse and knows how to help others see quickly the important trends that will impact all our business lives. In addition, he has an ability to take international groups of CEOs and other executives to other parts of the world, and in a relatively short time, give them a deep understanding of the dynamics of this part of the world. How he does it, I am not sure, but after seeing him in action, I know it’s real.

06
Oct

The Future of Tennis

Great Viral Video by Lacoste:
The future of tennis?

18
Sep

Share Economy

How open is our economy? Are you willing to share information online? Is Social Media really important for the internet users?

Here are some interesting facts recently published by ShareThis and Forrester.

  • Email is still primary channel for sharing – 69% of adults cite email as the primary source of sharing information.
  • Less than 1/3 of online adults said they learned about the new content from generally shared content sources such as YouTube, a wiki, or social networking sites.
  • 84% of people still use the traditional cut and paste method to share a URL or information
    Though the primary motivation for sharing differs, 81% of adults claim that they share to help others – believing that a person will benefit from the information they share.
  • Sharing increases site traffic 2x, thus increasing ad dollars or revenue for publishers
    Men are more likely to share recommendations and videos than women; 77 percent of adult males and 74 of younger males shared news and web links.
  • Women are more likely to share products or ideas they like via easy or direct sharing methods (ie texting).
17
Sep

Bill Gates in Pyjama

Bill and Jerry

Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in a great Video Marketing Campaign for Microsoft Windows.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

17
Sep

The Top 20 of Social Networking Platforms

Top 20 Social Networks - August 2008

Here are the latest numbers of the Top 20 Online Social Networks.

Besides the well-known platforms like MySpace or Facebook there are some important trends and changes happening right now.
Elsewhere in the social networking space, Facebook continued to narrow the gap on MySpace, a trend we also noticed last month. Unique visitors to the site grew to 38.2 million, representing a more than 10% month-over-month increase and a 100% jump year-over-year. MySpace saw 61.3 million unique visitors – up slightly from last month, but still essentially flat compared to the same period last year. And business network LinkedIn grew 146% year-over-year to 10.8 million unique visitors.

Twitter is apparently growing rapidly. According to stats just released from Nielsen Online, Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique visitors in August (US-only), an increase of 422% from the same period last year. Moreover, visitors to Twitter spent 55% more time on the site on average – a total of more than 7 minutes per user. Those numbers point to rather robust growth for the site, especially considering many of its most rabid users access it through a third-party client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck.

09
Sep

Corporate Social Map of LUMIX Panasonic

Check out the Corporate Social Map of Panasonic Lumix created by Ahead of Time.
In 2008 the term „Social Map“ was highly discussed among bloggers worldwide. Here are some Examples of personal Social Graphs. Since then visualizations of personal Social Maps have been published, shared and discussed by individual Bloggers within the Blogosphere. These Social Maps created an intense discussion about digital reputation and digital identities. For companies a so-called Corporate Social Map is still very new and an unusual methodology, but also very effective and meaningful.

Your company, brand or product is already present in Social Media. You will find customer reviews, voting, rankings, comments or recommendations on different opinion-portals, blogs or social networks. Often people are sharing their positive or negative experiences with your product in public and even send their thoughts to their peer groups, friends or colleagues. A Social Map shows where these conversations take place, how intense the discussion actually is and how you can actively participate.

Social Map

Definition Social Map:
A „Social Map“ is a visualized Analysis of a digital identity of a person, brand or company. A „Social Map“ shows exactly where a digital identity is created, formed or discussed and sets each element in context and proportions.

Download the full Whitepaper and the Social Map Illustration here:
Corporate Social Map

10
Aug

Corporate Twitter Index

Many corporation use Twitter to get their messages out and to start a corporate conversation.
Even Arnold Schwarzenegger is using twitter: http://twitter.com/schwarzenegger

Here is an overview of Corporate Twitter Activities (Via Fluent Simplicity):

Media
ABA Journal http://twitter.com/abajournal
About.com Books http://twitter.com/aboutbooks
AdAge http://twitter.com/adage
AL.com (Alabama News) http://twitter.com/aldotcom
Alltop http://twitter.com/guykawasaki
Ann Arbor News (Ann Arbor, MI) http://twitter.com/AnnArborNews
Asheville Citizen-Times (Asheville, NC) http://twitter.com/asheville
BBC http://twitter.com/BBC (Full list: http://menti.net/?p=17)
Birmingham News (Birmingham, AL) http://twitter.com/birmingham_news
BusinessWire.com http://twitter.com/tradeshownews
CBC News http://twitter.com/cbcnews
Continue Reading..

07
Aug

Companies are getting Carbon Neutral

Dell started an very radical approach to become a carbon neutral company and they have reached their goals 5 months ahead of schedule.

Dell has set some pretty aggressive green goals for itself in the past few years, and we’re happy to learn that it wasn’t just talk.

How Dell Became Carbon Neutral
The big one is that they are now completely carbon neutral when it comes to their energy use, and 5 months ahead of schedule to boot! They even did things in the right order. First, they started with efficiency measures in their operations around the world, then they purchased green power (which can sometimes be limited by local supply, Dane Parker, Dell’s director of global environmental health and safety programs, told us on the phone yesterday), and then purchased verified emission reductions and renewable energy certificates for the rest.

Read on at: Treehugger

05
Aug

Mercedes sets up sustainability strategy

Mercedes Benz set up a global sustainability strategy and is supporting several projects for a “green” future. According to their german website this strategy is called TrueBlueSolutions – the way to an emission-free mobility. This challenge and goal is integrating all departments of the company from production to marketing.

Mercedes is supporting one very cool project, the Pangaea Expedition. The experienced sailor Mike Horn has build a special ship (see below) to sail around the world to create attention for environmental issues.

TrueBlueSolution Mercedes Mike Horn Expedition Yacht

The Pangaea Expedition is a four year journey, which will enlist a total of 144 young people from around the world in a variety of projects, including ocean clean-up, biodiversity World-Seed-Bank Nov-07 monitoring, and improving the sanitary and hygiene conditions in villages.

Here you can see a video about the expedition:

Related Article: Gizmag.