Monday, September 29, 2008

Mobile Use Transformation


Proof that mobile phones are becoming smart phones.

If text messaging is overtaking voice, what companies win, and what companies lose?

From N.Y Times

In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile.

Nicholas Covey, director of insights for Nielsen Mobile, attributed the spike in messaging to the spread of QWERTY-style keypads, whose users send 54 percent more text messages than those with ordinary keypads

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Samsung Camera Phones To Be Pre-Loaded with Scanbuy’s 2D Barcode Application


A major win for ScanBuy to get Samsung to embed their mobile bar code reading application.

Scanbuy, a global leader in mobile marketing solutions, today announced that it has secured a global agreement with Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. to preload the ScanLife mobile 2D barcode application on Samsung’s camera phones.

Samsung will begin selling these phones in Spain, Italy, and Denmark starting as early as next month. Availability will quickly expand to other major markets including Mexico and the United States.

ScanLife technology uses camera phones to connect the physical world to the digital world. The application reads EZcodes and other major 2D barcode formats designed to quickly recognize and process information. Marketers and content providers use the ScanLife Code Management Platform (www.scanlife.com) to extend brand engagement onto mobile devices, while end users scan EZcodes to get information quickly and easily.

The ScanLife solution gives consumers and code publishers both national and international interoperability for the use of 2D codes.

Samsung is the second largest phone manufacturer in the world, and is expected to sell over 200 million handsets in 2008. Samsung’s extensive line of popular phones include the Blackjack, Glyde, and the recently released Instinct.

“The 2D barcode solution delivered by Scanbuy is a valuable technology, making phone navigation simpler and more effective for end users,” said Wonsik Lee, Vice President of R&D Planning Team, Samsung. “We are dedicated to continually improving our customers’ experience using Samsung mobiles, and the ScanLife application allows them to instantly access information anytime and anywhere.”

As part of the global agreement, Samsung will pre-load camera phones with the ScanLife application for each new country rolling-out Scanbuy’s complete solution.

Samsung will also use EZcodes to promote and market their extensive portfolio of consumer related electronics.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Who Saw The Collapse In Oil Prices??


A great trend service explained how and why oil prices would collapse.


These guys were spot on when they said "oil prices will fall sharply in the next year to 18 months, leading to huge losses for many speculators"

Why?

the aggregate value of oil futures contracts rocketed from $13 billion in 2003 to $260 billion today. That’s a 20-fold increase in contract value, while the underlying price only quadrupled. In essence, the number of contracts quintupled, and with it their impact on the market

after the tech-bubble crash, and especially after the sub-prime market crash, the risk capital that sought out dot-com stocks and traded mortgages moved over into energy

hedge funds have gone into commodities as investors, rather than arbitragers.

Like real estate, commodities permit a high degree of leverage — typically 10 to 1 — compared to stocks margined at 2 to 1. Because of this ability to “leverage-up,” and the fact that the supply-demand equation has been unusually attractive over the last two to three years, these “new speculators” have been encouraged to bid up prices to extraordinary and unsustainable levels.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

White Space Offers A Tremendous Opportunity


white space
Google calls the spectrum Wi-Fi on steroids, saying it could provide cheap broadband wireless services to underserved rural areas and enhance public safety communications.

According to a Microsoft statement, use of white space spectrum "could enable many technological advances and bring consumer benefits, including the greatest improvement in Internet access since the advent of Wi-Fi."

In short, access to white spaces offers "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans."

From Investor's Business Daily The White Space Lobbying Race Pits Internet Vs Telecom Firms

A coalition of tech companies is promising a new generation of wireless offerings and faster, cheaper Internet services if the government frees up chunks of radio-wave spectrum being abandoned in the transition to digital TV.

After nearly a year of research, the FCC is set to define how wireless networks and devices can tap into the spectrum without messing with TV signals and other communication systems that use nearby frequencies.

The spectrum has been largely unused for decades; it's the static that appears when clicking from channels 2 through 52 on old-fashioned over-the-air TV sets.

"Opening up unused TV spectrum might be one of our best remaining chances to address the digital divide by creating affordable and truly universal broadband wireless coverage in the U.S.," A Google petition states.

One Silicon Valley Player is already receiving White Space radio orders.

More about how White Space represents a White Hot Opportunity

Ponderings about White Space

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Cleantech Pioneer Khosla Calls Picken's Plan A Dead End


Cleantech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has been bullish on biofuels to power vehicles, but he called wind wildcatter T. Boone Pickens’ plan to power our cars with natural gas a dead end.

"because it’s a fossil fuel and emissions reductions are just around 20 percent, it’s still an interim, dead-end solution that we should not pursue"

Could this be the solution?

$100 Billion Renewable Energy Plan Could Create 2 Million Jobs


A report from the Center For American Progress outlines a $100 billion renewable energy plan that would create 2 million jobs.
Green Recovery Report

This $100 billion initiative is part of a comprehensive low-carbon energy strategy and could be paid for with proceeds from auctions of carbon permits under a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. This fiscal expansion would create 2 million jobs by investing in six energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies:

-Retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency
-Expanding mass transit and freight rail
-Constructing “smart” electrical grid transmission systems
-Wind power
-Solar power
-Next-generation biofuels

This economic recovery program combines the $100 billion fiscal stimulus with an additional credit stimulus—through a federal loan guarantee program to boost private-sector investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Air Canada Adopts U.S. AirCell's In Flight Internet Service


Will airline passengers want a Prodigy, or true broadband for in-flight Internet?

From The Canadian Press: Air Canada will be offering some passengers the chance to surf the Internet, check e-mail and watch videos on their laptops or personal electronics devices on a limited basis on flights to the U.S. West Coast, starting next spring.

The Internet service is being provided to Air Canada under an agreement with U.S.-based Aircell, which also counts American and Delta airlines among its customers.Aircell's Gogo service provides broadband Internet service to aircraft from a network of cell towers based on the ground in the United States. As a result, flights over Canada won't be able to use Gogo until the network is expanded.

My take on AirCell's growth and the aviation broadband space in general.

As users start using AirCell’s service and the company has to share their limited bandwidth across several planes at once, we suspect that the connection will start to feel like old-fashioned “dialup,” and consumers will quickly voice their disappointment. Their solution can't scale.

Another aviation broadband service is just starting to get headlines.

Voyant Aviation Broadband can provide up to 35 Mbps to EACH aircraft in a full fleet. This compares to AirCell's 2 Mbps

Voyant offers 10 times the capacity of other terrestrial-based solutions at a similar cost. It’s also about 10 – 100 times cheaper on a per-bit basis than satellite-based systems.

Voyant has a partnership with Harris, and Harris is the largest supplier of communications equipment to the FAA. Harris’s software-defined radio works well with Voyant’s super-advanced modem technology.

Voyant promises biggest bandwidth yet.

We aim to deliver 10-35Mbit/sec to every aircraft in the fleet, at a cost per bit at least ten times less than that of a satellite-based system,” Steffen Koehler, chief marketing officer of Voyant Aviation Broadband

The company has begun to generate evidence to back up its claims.

It says that in flight tests during July its pilot-production software-defined radio and production-standard modem supported data rates of up to 50Mbit/sec over a range of 100 miles between the aircraft and a ground station in Florida
.

Voyant's Aviation Broadband service...cleared for takeoff.

aviation broadband

Headlines To Ponder


Congress questions wireless carriers about high costs of texting as it hits all-time high

Solar panel prices might not decline as much as thought

Google to digitize newspaper archives

VC money shows maturing of cleantech industry

Court bans VoIP on iPhone

What is "wideband"?

Low energy communities or transition towns

Countries that lead in broadband adoption

Censorship already for Internet aviation

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Another Opportunity Like The Internet?


Eric Schmidt of Google states "The opportunity to remake the (power) grid is not unlike the opportunities of the Internet and the PC"

Read the full story.

Headlines That Will Make You Ponder


Headlines that make me ponder.

Google enters TV ad space

1500 Unmanned ships spray salt to offset global warming

U.S. bottled water market slowing (economy to blame or something else?)

Google floats idea of water powered data center

More than 30 utility scale solar plants in the US (see where they are)

Google invests in satellite broadband startup

How delivery firms are saving fuel

Build your own cloud

4 creative solutions to energy problems

Netflix prepares for shift to streaming

EPA approves stricter air quality requirements for lawn equipment and boats.

Justice Department mulling antitrust suit against Google

Two major movie studios help US theaters go digital (how will films be delivered?)

Could newspapers get a second life?