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

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.

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.

White Space Offers A Tremendous Opportunity

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

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.

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.

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

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?

More Reasons Why The Power Grid Needs To Be Upgraded

The Public Record highlights why the Power Grid is in Dire Straits

“Electricity generation and consumption have steadily risen, placing an increased burden on a transmission system that was not designed to carry such a large load.”....




Another reason why the grid needs to be upgraded, it's an easy target for hackers.

The US power grid - three interconnected grids made up of 3,500 utilities serving 283 million people - still hangs together by a thread, and its dilapidated state is perhaps one of the greatest threats to homeland security, according to Bruce deGrazia, the president of Global Homeland Security Advisors and a former assistant deputy undersecretary for the Department of Defense

Headlines For The Week Worth Pondering

Headlines this week that were deserving of the title "Daily Disruptions"


GE Reshapes Wind Power

Comcast Limits Monthly Download Cap

Microsoft To Tag Conference Attendees With RFID

Latency Plays Big Factor With Cloud Computing

Intel Unveils Wireless Power System

Energy From Human Motion Powers Small Devices

Roads And Parking Lots Could Be Inexpensive Sources For Electricity And Hot Water

Google Adds Asia To Underseas Cable Network Africa next

Google, Verizon Sued Over Voicemail Patent

Ships And Planes Going Solar

Solar Sunroof Can Cool Or Heat Parked Car

Handheld Breath Sensor Could Detect Cancer

Artificial Wind Coming For Wind Power

Latest Microsoft Browser Challenges Google

Startup To Store Electricity In The Air

Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret

Experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.

From NY Times Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid's Limits

Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

What is the problem?

The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles

How can it be solved?

“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” Gabriel Alonso said.

In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market

Comcast To Slow Web Traffic And Redfines "Unlimited" Bandwidth

"Penalty goes to IP address number X, 10 minutes for high bandwidthing"

From Bloomberg Comcast to Slow Some Web Traffic for Up to 20 Minutes

Comcast Corp. plans to slow Internet service to its heaviest users during periods of congestion, after regulators ordered the company to devise a new method for managing its Web traffic.

The top Internet speeds for targeted customers will be reduced for periods lasting 10 minutes to 20 minutes, keeping service to other users flowing.

See what speeds your ISP is really giving you (as opposed to what they advertise).

Do a SpeedTest.

It's free and takes less than a minute (no registration req'd) and will give your download and upload speeds. Find the closest server to your location and give it a test.

My closest test server is less than 50 miles away and this morning my download speed was 2.6 Mbps and 854 kbps upload. That's a far cry from the 6 Mbps Comcast advertises.

Intel And Yahoo Merge the Internet And TV

What happens when Yahoo and Intel make TV interactive?

Could TV ads as we know it be over?

Instead of a TV channel being a one-way passive content "website", it becomes a dynamic information delivery platform. Ads can be inserted as hyperlinks in tv programs,that match viewers interest and viewing habits.

TV programs turn into quasi websites. TV networks have multiple revenue opportunities. Viewers click on "hyperlinks" inserted in TV shows for more info.

If hyperlinks are inserted into any TV program and the typical 30 second ad is eliminated, does this solve the problem of DVR skipping?

Media disruption ahead...for advertisers, consumers and innovative companies. The Next Google is the ability to monitor viewership and deliver ads/content to any screen.

Intel® And Yahoo!® To Bring The Internet To Television

The Widget Channel will allow consumers to enjoy rich Internet applications designed for the TV while watching their favorite TV programs.

The Widget Channel will be powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, a fifth-generation applications platform that will enable TV watchers to interact with and enjoy a rich set of "TV Widgets," or small Internet applications designed to complement and enhance the traditional TV watching experience and bring content, information and community features available on the Internet within easy reach of the remote control.

TV Widgets will enable consumers to engage in a variety of experiences, such as watching videos, tracking their favorite stocks or sports teams, interacting with friends, or staying current on news and information.

Makes a lot of sense considering Nielsen said Americans are watching more TV than ever.

Have to factor in the Mister Softee too. Microsoft announced their intent to cash in with click-on ads.

Advertisers pay top dollar to place products in popular television shows and movies.

Microsoft is hoping to expand on the concept with a new technology that allows viewers to click on cars, clothing or other products that appear in online movies or TV shows. For example, viewers of "Sex and the City" could click on Carrie Bradshaw's designer shoes or Kamali sweaters as she walks down a New York street and immediately be transported to advertisements for those products.

What is produced from all of these partnerships? The Next Google.

Why?

The Next Google will be able to collect data, second-by-second, from all services/devices connected to the broadband pipe and deliver relevant advertising to ANY display.

This company has the distinct capability of tracking all data activity from the nation’s 110 million television set-top boxes.

They are capable of measuring with incredible accuracy and precision, every view of a television program or advertisement and every click of a remote across all networks and all programs. Pretty big huh?

All screens, all networks, all programs and all advertisements...yes that's the Next Google

Know what company this is?

American Airlines Kicks Off AirCell's In-Flight Internet Service

The "Prodigy" of aviation broadband service is taking off.


It's great that we are getting some type of Internet service on a plane. However, due to Aircell's limited bandwidth and scalability issues, I think we will see a much faster aviation broadband service leapfrog Aircell. We all know what happened to Prodigy.

From Reuters American Airlines kicks off in-flight Internet service.


AMR Corp's American Airlines began offering Internet access on long-haul domestic flights on Wednesday, making American the first U.S. airline to offer full in-flight broadband. The world's largest airline said its passengers on Boeing 767-200 aircraft can pay $12.95 for Internet access on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami.

American's mobile broadband service, which is called Gogo, is provided by AirCell. Each Gogo session includes full Internet access.

Why Prodigy?

There are approximately 2000 planes in air at any one time in US or Europe and Aircell couldn't accommodate even a fraction of these planes.

I would keep an eye out for Harris Corp and their recently introduced aviation broadband service.

Harris, which does a ton of business with the FAA, recently announced an Air-to-ground solution (ATG) that has 10xs the capacity at same or lower cost. In most cases they offer 10-50x more bandwidth, 5-100xs lower cost per bit, and speeds up to 35 Mbps.

More discussions on aviation broadband.

Mayor Bloomberg Wants New York City To Go Green

Cleantech
Mayor Bloomberg has a green energy plan for the City of New York.

Bloomberg proposed putting windmills on top of city bridges, and skyscrapers, and turbines in the Hudson and East Rivers.

In terms of offshore locations, aides to the mayor told CBS 2's Magee Hickey, the city is looking at the generally windy coast off of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island for the turbines, which could provide 10 percent of the city's electricity in just 10 years.

The plan also includes the use of solar panels, possibly on the roofs of public and private buildings:

To show how serious he is, the mayor had lunch with T. Boone Pickens - the oil baron trying to build the world's largest wind farm in Texas - to talk about possibilities for such technology in New York City. Bloomberg gave companies until September 19 to submit innovative proposals to make the city "greener" by 2030.

More info on the The T Boone Pickens Plan

Cloud Computing...Evolutionary Or Revolutionary?

Cloud computing
ZDNet has a great story that asks Is The Enterprise Ready For Cloud Computing?

Some snippets from the story.

Cloud Computing is the most disruptive technology that has come along in a very long time.

Respected technology analysts say it will be bigger than e-Business and it’s potentially a quarter of a trillion dollar market. So, is Cloud Computing a revolution or an evolution?

If you woke up in the morning and read in the Wall Street Journal that an eCommerce company like Overstock.com had stopped using the USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. to deliver their goods and, instead, leased airport hubs all over the world, bought a fleet of jets and bought thousands of trucks and started delivering the stuff themselves, you’d think they were out of their minds.

So, why is it not equally insane for financial services companies, health care institutions, manufacturing companies, bio-tech companies, pharmaceutical giants, etc. to be spending a billion dollars or much more every year on information technology infrastructure?

run those applications on massively scalable infrastructure that scales up and down dynamically as needed, using resources on demand, always there when needed and only paying for what is consumed

A Cloud infrastructure done right, behind the corporate firewall, enables the enterprise to run their data centers as metered utilities.

Google Invests In Breakthrough Geothermal Energy Technology

CleanTech
Google.org invests in breakthrough geothermal energy technology

Through its philanthropic arm Google.org, announced $10.25 million in investments in a breakthrough energy technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).

EGS expands the potential of geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.

A recent MIT report on EGS estimates that just 2% of the heat below the continental United States between 3 and 10 kilometers, depths within the range of current drilling technology, is more than 2,500 times the country's total annual energy use.

For more information on the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative, including $30 million in investments to advance solar thermal and advanced wind technologies, see http://www.google.org/rec.html.

ScanBuy's ScanLife Now Available for Download through The iPhone App Store

The leading physical world connection player is now also available on the iPhone.

Scanbuy, a global leader in mobile marketing solutions, announced today that its ScanLife 2D barcode application is now available for free on the iPhone App Store. Scanbuy's technology uses the phone’s camera to give users an instant connection to information, without needing to search by keyword or type in a lengthy URL.

Individuals can also create and scan Personal EZcodes as links to their blogs or networking sites by registering an account at www.scanlife.com.

ScanLife can launch any URL address and with Wi-Fi access, the application can also send a user directly to an iTunes page to preview and purchase a specific song or to watch a video on YouTube™.

iPhone users can download the free ScanLife software from the App Store, while users on other phones can text SCAN to 43588 or go to www.getscanlife.com on their mobile browser.

In addition to the iPhone, the ScanLife handset software is compatible with hundreds of other phones on every major mobile operating system including BREW, Java, Symbian, Palm, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile.

How does ScanBuy's ScanLife compare to NeoMedia's code scanning application?
According to Scanbuy:
From a code creation standpoint:

- Unlike Scanbuy, a Neomedia user cannot edit the code at a later time – if they want the code to link to something different, they have to make a new one

- The longer the URL, the bigger it needs to be (takes up more space) or the more dense it needs to be (which limits how many phones can read it). A Facebook URL is about 35 characters long. EZcodes can always be the same size – ½ inch.

From a scanning standpoint:

- Do you want 10 million people to be able to read your code, or do you want over 60 million?
ScanLife can be downloaded on 75 other handsets (beyond the iPhone) and the Neoreader mainly works with Smartphones only – and does not work on the Blackberry.

- The ScanLife iPhone app also has a History and Favorites function so people can go back to previous scans.

Want to see how ScanLife works?

Founded in 2000, Scanbuy has a strong and growing intellectual property base in 2D barcode technology. The company's investors include Longworth Venture Partners, Masthead Venture Partners and Hudson Ventures.

More on Scanbuy.