This post is not for the faint of heart…it will take you straight into the heart of darkness a la Joseph Conrad… ok, maybe not that dark. So remember this is the end of a trade show week.
1. An attempted mugging is not a great way to start off the week, it makes you feisty and ready to punch anyone that crosses your path. It also makes you stereotype which makes you feel dark on the inside. Fortunately, a good block and tackle plus a punch in the ole kisser of any would-be attacker makes you also feel empowered.
2. Most people suck and trade show people suck even more. I don’t care if you are in a hurry cause you stayed out too late, hit your snooze button 4 times and are now late to what you think is the most important meeting with RIM you will ever have in your life, there is no excuse for being rude. Good manners cost nothing. Oh and your tie sucks.
3. Swedes rule. Period. Never in my life have I met a collective group of smarter, nicer, sexier, innovative people in my entire life. Yea and dont even try and argue with me on this point, I will punch you.
4. Never miss a party, no matter how tired you are.
5. Still, as predicted, devices and operators will always take center stage at big trade shows. Save your news for after unless you are a novelty or in clean tech.
6. Coffee dealers should be roaming about the show in abundance like they had 5 years ago. People with backpacks of coffee roaming the show floor bringing happiness to everyone.
7. Mostly, mobile folks are uber geeks with no ability to talk about anything other than platforms, AR, operating systems and devices. Get over yourself. Save a life or something.
8. I’m still in love with mHealth, cleantech and any other mobile technology that is good for me and the planet
9. High heels at a trade show still rock. I will never give them up, so for all your 20 somethings that think you are so cool in your flats, you can bite me.
10. Booth babes or guys, big oversized fuzzy animals with humans inside and tacky marketing chicks dressed like cops handing out citations cause you have more than one mobile phone, are stupid. Just a plain old waste of marketing dollars. Oh and BTW, nice job printing all that paper that just gets thrown away or blankets the ground. Very eco of you. (oh and what IS the point of asking grown ups to collect Android pins?)
11. Eric Schmidt had NOTHING to say, he simply vomited up words that said nothing. Give us someone else next time.
12. The coffee and sandwich lady in Hall 2 at Medus is super nice. She smiled and called me guapa every time I greeted her. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy all over. Gracias.
– JH
Tags: Barcelona, Joseph Conrad, Medus, mHealth, mugging, Research In Motion, Sweden
Posted by Tattletech on Feb 20, 2011 in
3GSM,
Conferences,
MWC,
New things,
Renewable energies 
Sure. The show was massive, 50,000 phone nerds roaming around. It had all the things you have come to expect from Mobile World Congress – daytime cocktail receptions, night time cocktail receptions, late night parties and generally more networking than ever before. The biggest talking points of MWC 2011 was which parties were where and when, and all the muggings that took place nightly.
We decided to do a quick wrap up on what we think should have been addressed better at MWC along side the over-present and over-covered Android news. Here are our highlights from what we hope will be the last MWC in Barcelona, ever:
- Femto cells make it back into the limelight. Not sure why this isn’t bigger news, but in the end it should be. Network Norway, Orange and A T &T are high on them with research and roll=out plans underway, but Germany’s T-Mobile remains ambivalent.
- Portable fuel cell chargers from MyFc. Last year, MyFC was in attendance in the Swedish Pavilion to talk about their fuel cells for mobile devices and other consumer electronic devices. This year, they have a commercial product, PowerTrekk, that is ready for the market which is great news for the growing clean tech and renewable energy movement within the mobile market.
- According to their charismatic CEO, Björn Westerholm, he claims that PowerTrekk has a competitive edge over traditional portable chargers because fuel cell power is charging and generated immediately and isn’t impacted by weather or the position of the sun like it is for solar panels. Compared to battery powered travel chargers, PowerTrekk offers reliable charging as the fuel packs do not deplete as batteries do.
- Even though MyFC is way out in front here, there are others. Signa Chemistry says it has created a special fuel for mobile chargers that’s made out of sodium and silicon. Anyway you slice it, the industry should be looking to renewable energies to power these devices rather than continue down the path of resource consumption and waste.
- Mobile Health - this was in a small Pavilion in Hall 7 which was almost totally overlooked. A shame really because mobile health is going to be one of the ways that we use our phones to enhance our lives.
- Companies such as AlcoSystems, have created a mobile device-connected alcometer that measures alcohol content to enable people to keep a balance between an active life and alcohol consumption. They are using BlueTooth to connect the device to your mobile, which in our opinion is the best use of BlueTooth over social interaction.
- One rather overlooked piece of news from MWC was Vodafone’s announcement about its alliance with the UN & the mHealth Alliance on a new initiative will assess potential ways of connecting indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil with health information, such as vaccination scheduling and maternal health guidelines.
- NFC (Near Field Communication) phones – for regular people this means secure mobile payments using your smartphone. Pretty much every device and operator claim they are on it — Blackberry, Orange, LG, etc., and I guess this means that finally there is some consumer trust or that we are all just getting lazier and lazier or maybe we just want things to be a bit easier with the chores in our lives and mobile payments via our phones just make life a little bit simpler. And, on that note, here is a list of all NFC phones you can buy today.
- Barcelona is not a good city for MWC anymore — just about everyone we know got mugged or had an attempted mugging. Move the show to a city where you feel safe walking around at 23:30 and for Barcelona that is not even late. Please move the show GSMA.
- Waterproof. How come it has taken this long to come up with this? Very cool stuff, let’s get this waterproof party started. Krussell had a waterproof phone case, Fujitisu has waterproof technology it can put into smartphones, hurry up please.
- Mobile behind the scenes just got sexy. Ok follow me here. Traffic goes up as more and more folks (like billions) use mobile networks and the cost goes up for mobile operators. They gotta keep up with the demand but they also need to make money. Simple. Two companies, from Sweden, are addressing these issues, Teligent and Birdstep. Teligent says it wants to “move the power” to the subscriber so that mobile operators can boost their revenues and do away with that pesky churn (if someone can resolve churn, there would be nothing to write about). Birdstep is focused on data off load and maximizing the switch between 3G and wifi networks. They have a unique approach via EasyConnect 3.1 for operators and by also offering consumers a widget/app-like view to monitor their usage.
- The country Pavilions are massively under reported. I mean if you want to see innovation at a uh, glocal level..then you should be watching what goes on in those pavilions – Spain, Germany, Ireland, Sweden (28 exhibiting companies ranging from mHealth to LTE to renewable energy and infrastructure), Israeli – amazing stuff and most of those companies in the Pavilions have partnerships with big operators or device guys that enable them to roll out their products and services. Don’t over look the small guys, there is a lot going on in those Pavilions.
- Mobile marketing. The coolest mobile marketing company at the show was not at the show but was roaming around the show – aFrogleap out of the Netherlands. Even though their website is in Dutch (it should also be in English), the team there is doing some innovative things in terms of concept and development for mobile web and applications. The company was founded by Naos Wilbrink and Bart Fussell who have an uncanny vision for the future of mobile and web apps and are creating some interesting apps for the big boys like CapGemini and ABN Ambro. You can follow them both on Twitter: Naos @Sprize and Bart @bartfuzzle.
– JH
Tags: afrogleap, Alcosystems, Android, Bart Fussel, Birdstep, Bjorn Westerholm, Bluetooth, Easy Connect, Fuel cell, fuel cells, Fujitisu, Glocal, Hydrogen, Krussell, mobile marketing, Mobile World Congress, MyFC, Naos Wilbrink, Near Field Communication, Network Norway, PowerTrekk, Signa Chemistry, Sweden Pavilion, Swedish Pavilion, Swedish Trade Council, T-Mobile, Teligent, vodafone, Waterrpoof
Mike Martin from eCommerce Times wrote an article about President Obama’s new Start up America initiative that examined the program’s impact. And at the same time, Steve Case was out stumping in BusinessWeek about its not just “start ups” but “speed ups”.
ink Communications founder, Jennifer Hicks was referenced in the article by the reporter on her opinions on the initiative. [this is the complete Q & A which was excerpted in the article here]
eCommerce Times: Working with start up companies, what do you think of this initiative? Is it needed? Or is it a gimmick?
Jennifer Hicks: As a niche global PR agency that works with start ups around the world, we think it is a great idea. In many ways, Europe has been doing this on a country by country level with their incubator programs through the governments with small seed funds that provide both cash and resources. Silicon Valley is purely driven by the next big thing, but this program is a good way to continue to foster and grow the entrepreneurial spirit not just with start ups but with small companies with revenue that also need to push into regional or international markets.
The more global a company can be from birth the better. Finland is a great example of a country that despite its small GDP, puts a large amount funding, both private and public, into innovation programs for start ups or small companies across ICT, Clean tech, Life Sciences and eHealth.
ECT: Lots of tech giants have signed on. What might that say about it?
JH: I think that tech giants today are struggling to find their relevance with innovation. I mean to say that the standard methodology is to just acquire and absorb, but what if they have the opportunity to foster and incubate without a tie back to their own company? I think the world is global and tech giants still search for that next big thing. Microsoft invested a lot in outside vendors to bring Kinect to life and that investment for the first Kinect boxes came from a start up out of Israel that supplied the natural interface technology. So I think that in many ways, they need the agility and innovative thinking that comes out of start ups.
ECT: The Obama Administration has been criticized for being unfriendly to business, and for having too few business people in its ranks. Do you think this foundation will help raise awareness — a key public relations endeavor — in the Administration about the needs and importance of entrepreneurship?
JH: All change requires time, but I do think that any initiative a government or administration can take to back innovation will only help the country in the long term. When you think about change in terms of technology, we should be looking at investment into technology that feeds the sectors most likely to affect us in the long run – health, clean tech, services – and the application of innovation into those markets will, over time, affect citizens and how they interact with their environment, their health care providers and the businesses they interact with.
Tags: AOL, Barack Obama, ink Communications, Jennifer Hicks, Kinect, PrimeSense, Silicon Valley, Small business, Startup company, Steve Case, White House
Posted by Tattletech on Feb 1, 2011 in
Green technology,
Telecoms
Image via Wikipedia
Maybe it is because this week feels like it is 10 days long already and it is just Tuesday, but this is a great article from Katie Fehren who covers clean tech for GigaOm. The article, called 10 Smart Grid Trends from Distributech hits the bulls eye on so many levels, we won’t re-hash the whole thing here, but will point out a few trends we think are worth noting as Telco relates to the smart grid.
Telcos are essentially legacy based companies moving into a futures market and you have a lot of start ups (not big corporate entities) driving the home market growth. Note the disparity between those two. if you had to draw any parallels, could you say Telcos that are re-inventing themselves as start ups are pushing their innovation into a market that has long arms. Maybe.
So here are some areas we think you should watch:
- Telcos are moving from security to smart energy – they are interested in offering a combined home energy and security product.
- Behavioral science meets energy efficiency – this one is the kicker, transforming the technology behind how Amazon or Netflix gets you to “click” to how you use energy. The start up company referenced in the article is Tendril which to date has raised $73 M in funds.
- According to the article, Start ups like OPower and Efficiency 2.0 built their services around behavioral science — the idea is to research how people behave and target energy-efficiency recommendations that actually work to customers.
- The home energy market is on the rise. According to the article analysts are still bullish on home energy networking but also making some big predictions for it.
- GTM Research predicts the market for home area networks and home energy management will grow almost 90 percent between 2011 and 2015, resulting in a $750 million market by 2015. That growth will be due to the fact that many utilities will install this type of gear as part of their smart grid strategies and will use backing from the DOE’s smart grid stimulus program.
- Pike Research has predicted that by 2015, 28 million homeowners around the world will be using some kind of high-tech tool to manage their energy use.
Tags: GTM research, Netflix, OPower, Smart grid, Technology, Telco, Tendril
