Managing Multitasking

Acentic’s Vice President Business Development, Juan Aguirre, wrote a post on the Acentic blog addressing today’s multi-device, multitasking environment from the point of view of hoteliers. More broadly, his article speaks to a need in every sector to manage around modern technology culture both in our expectations of consumer behavior and in the way we structure communication in the workplace.

In his words, “As our devices connect, share purposes and build on each other’s strengths, so should we.”

Read the rest of Juan’s article here.

Tags: Acentic, Business development, Colleges and Universities, Computer multitasking, Education, hoteliers, hotels, IPTV, Linda Stone, Mobile phone, synergy, Technology, United States

The Rise of the Knowledge Market

Our own Jennifer Hicks, who recently started what promises to be a consistently entertaining and informative column at Forbes.com (Dante’s Soma), wrote a great article on the “Rise of the Knowledge Market” yesterday that profiles two new companies we absolutely love, Mancx and Acabiz. Together, these companies are helping to rewrite the way we think about knowledge.

“Fresh off their second investment round of $1.1 million from two prominent Swedish investors, Mancx is proving their concept of an online knowledge market to exchange personal information for money is a reality. They have set out to create a new set of standards in social search and global trade of knowledge…Think of it as Quora that you pay for, the mature Quora.”

“The idea behind Acabiz is brilliantly simple. They created a platform for academics, which they call knowledge holders, to connect with businesses, known as knowledge hunters, who are interested in their specific research expertise or knowledge. The Acabiz platform allows businesses to easily and directly tap into the knowledge network of thousands of academics worldwide who all have highly specialized knowledge in fields such as architecture, engineering, law, medicine, science, financial, economics, and others.”

Read more about these companies and the knowledge market in the rest of Jennifer’s fantastic article here.

Tags: Articles, Business and Companies, Charlie Cheever, Chris Dixon, Dante, dante alighieri, Facebook, Forbes, Jennifer Hicks, Knowledge, Knowledge Management, Knowledge market, Quora, Soma

Guest Blogger: Geoff Casley on the Mobile Operator VAS landscape

As the battle for the end user rages on, competition and innovation within Mobile OS and Application ecosystems has never been more intense, with Mobile Operators increasingly finding themselves caught in no man’s land.

In this article I will attempt to set out a personal perspective of Mobile Operator VAS landscape which outlines three main discussion topics:

• A snapshot of how the ecosystem is evolving.
• The threats and challenges faced by Operators and why fresh thinking is urgently needed in Operator VAS innovation strategy.
• An objective vision explaining how Operators can address some of these challenges through collaborations with Over-the-Top (OTT) providers.  To provide a smart and logical solution to save cost, increasing agility, subscriber value and revenue.

Following Steve Jobs’ announcement of iOS 5, a radical OS evolution that neatly commoditized an impressive array of features and services like iMessenger and iCloud within the OS itself, much debate has surrounded this latest OTT disruptor of the mobile segment, fueling widespread speculation on who will be the biggest losers from the launch of such services.

As you would expect, Mobile Operators were quick to ring the alarm bell demonizing such services as a threat to precious SMS revenues–some felt this was more likely to threaten application and platform service providers like WhatsApp, Camera+ and DropBox, others felt such services would merely threaten the increasingly popular BlackBerry IM market share. With rumors of similar OS based services coming soon to Android only time will tell who will feel the pinch, but ultimately it will be the users who will decide.

Whichever way you look at it, OS platforms encroaching further into the App ecosystem is big news and will have wide-ranging implications for the industry as a whole. Perhaps more worryingly for Operators, it shows how quickly the world of mobile VAS is changing around them and reveals once again their vulnerability to being undermined by OTT players–which further exposes their inability to connect with the ecosystem they power, let alone tap into the vast multi-billion dollars being generated.

Mobile messaging and communications is a perfect example and provides an explosive and controversial flashpoint where Operator’s and OTT services frequently collide. Global fixed line VoIP revenues alone are expected to generate $40 billion a year by 2015 and you can’t help but wonder how much of this and other core IP-based communication VAS will bypass Operators completely.

Three years as VP Global Business Development with Nimbuzz has given me a first hand perspective on the profound changes that have impacted this segment and the challenges faced by the platform developers, Operators, Regulators and OEMs who drive this segment.

If an entire vertical market can change in the blink of an eye through the launch of a disruptive new market entrant, M&A activity, or strategic shift from a major player like Apple, only the smartest, strongest and most agile innovators can hope to survive. So where does this leave Operators whose in-house VAS development programs often have extremely long and complex project life-cycles? How can a program so far removed from its origin possibly expect to have the same impact and relevance when it is finally launched some 12-18 months later?

The classic Operator “Field of Dreams” doctrine (build it and the users will come) may have worked 5 years ago but is a very risky strategy these days. The mobile industry is in a renaissance period–unpredictable and evolving in all directions with alarming momentum. Vodafone 360 proved this in spectacular fashion and showed us how dangerous an Operator’s obsession with “owning everything” can be. You have to respect Vodafone’s ambition, but unless propositions are mass market addressable, are instantly understood, and provide “must have” differentiation to the subscriber, these mammoth initiatives prove to be little more than a hole in the balance sheet into which you pour money.

RCS is another fine example of this. Whether RCS will work (or even happen at all) is a subject for great debate. Stakeholder complexity aside, my greatest concern about RCS is that nobody yet has been able to explain to me how this will be packaged to the user, monetized and scaled. If it is questionable whether a major Operator VAS program like this can compete and achieve the most basic success elements (i.e. differentiation, subscriber value, rapid/viral adoption and ROI, etc.) why commit millions to do this in the first place? Especially when there are already numerous agile, quality, “rogue” OTT alternatives that collectively deliver an equal or greater profile of services, and are freely available App Stores–many of whom have “hyper viral” growth and registered user base’s stretch into the tens of millions! Personally I really don’t believe that consumers care too much about the technology used to deliver these services as long as they are easy to use and reliable. If true, surely infrastructure platform services delivered through partnerships with best of breed OTT’s is a more sensible and cost effective way to go.

Based on this, I have often asked myself the hypothetical question, “If Venture Capital investment was the only way programs like RCS could be delivered, would the business case be strong enough to convince specialist telecoms VC’s like Accel Partners or Bain Capital to bankroll the investment?” The jury is still out on that one.

It is a simple fact that Operator ARPU is declining. Successful VAS innovation and monetization is a vital area that must realize its potential to fill this gap. The problem is that for Operators, the window of opportunity is shrinking fast and if Operators don’t adopt fresh thinking and act now it will be too late and mobile VAS will shift almost entirely to leading OTT players, and Operators will be left behind.

I have heard this same repetitive and rather odious conclusion drawn at almost every mobile event I have attended over the last couple of years, along with this rather cutting footnote: how can we feel sorry for Operators when they own the keys to the castle and won’t share them with the developers?

The outlook for Operators VAS need not be all doom and gloom; there are many positive rays of light out there. But for Operators to provide subscribers with a truly enriched VAS experience, strategic partnerships need to be smart, cool and equally valuable. They need to go way beyond commoditized alliances with the likes of Facebook and Twitter!

The positive news is that Operators shouldn’t have to look too hard for the answer. App Stores provide a goldmine of intelligence for Operator VAS teams as well as providing an invaluable source of information on the hottest apps and emerging global trends based on pure end user democracy. It would make sense for Operators to identify a select group of popular OTT “sweet spot” apps (especially those that reach the most popular Smartphone and Feature Phone OS) and think hard about what Operator resources could be leveraged to further enrich this product as an exclusive differentiated service for subscribers.

Don’t forget that Operators have a great many valuable attributes that developers would kill to get their hands on: distribution, brand credibility, marketing muscle, billing and location API’s to every mobile number in existence. I am pretty sure many larger developers are willing and able to extend their service’s capabilities to evolve beyond their current D2C models to exploit the immense opportunities to be found within the Operator distribution channel.

Such innovative thinking would provide an environment where Operators can collaborate with an extremely broad cross-section of leading, financially stable OTT players to quickly roll out a multitude of differentiated, even exclusive services, localized around current subscriber needs.

By saving money by removing the high in-house development cost and future-proofing product roadmaps (established by way of zero CAPEX revenue share models) and achieving quicker time to market with a high ROI for both the Operator and developer, everybody wins, especially the subscriber. Make sense?

While such partnerships already exist as ad hoc collaborations, I see no reason why this model shouldn’t be extended on a far more ambitious scale, even providing an attractive alternative to large enterprise programs like RCS where currently Operator mandate only permits in-house developed services to be deployed. In theory, the sky’s the limit.

Investment in non-Telco sector personnel who “get” App culture combined with a strategic vision like this would finally allow Operators to target and exploit the many variable revenue streams and communication channels enabled within partner applications (e.g. advertising, virtual goods, gaming, location and subscription services) and deploy these services on a significant scale. This would allow Operators to not only put value back into the pipe but start to cash in on the vast spoils to be had within these channels. The future here may be much closer to reality than many realize.

Telefonica already sees the value in this thinking with the announcement of BlueVia, their global developer platform which opens up a host of valuable API’s (including Location), allowing developers to innovate services to over 100 million Telefonica subscribers based on an API for revenue share model. While still in its early stages, my only hope is that this program will be extended across the group, and that many other Operators follow Telefonica’s lead, embrace this strategy, and herald a new era in OTT/Operator collaboration based VAS.

Geoff Casely is the VP Global Business Development and Nimbuzz. You can follow him on Twitter @GeoffCasely

Tags: BlackBerry, DropBox, iOS, IOS (Apple), Mobile computing, Mobile network operator, Operators, Telecommunications, VAS, Voice over IP, WhatsApp, Wireless Data

Calling all cars – Taxi apps disrupting dispatching

A friend recently got back from a visit to Cairo. We had both spent time there during the past regime and I was curious. “So, no more Mubarak. What does that feel like for Egypt,” I asked. “Yeah, the democracy thing. Its cool,” she replied. “But dude, check this out: Cairo cabs use meters now!”

When Cairo taxis start using meters, something seriously strange is afoot at the Circle K. This was a harbinger of change for sure.

The cab industry is too often an adherent of “the only thing worse than employees are customers” school of business. Worse, it is actively resistant to change. Across the planet, industry friendly regulation, unionized myopic self-interest, and consumer apathy conspire to make getting a cab the one travel service you can’t do on the internet.

In Cairo, the whole “no meter” thing allowed taxi owners some flexibility to adjust to the vagaries of the market: exchange rates, fuel price, a passenger’s ability to pay (read: tourists ability to pay triple).

In Copenhagen, the cab situation is straight up medieval. A finite number of taxi licenses are owned by a concentrated group of individuals. The result, feudalism. A handful of lords rent their licenses to vassals while pledging fealty to a particular cab company king.

In San Francisco, a notoriously taxi challenged city, cab companies rent the cars to drivers and control the dispatching. The result, cab companies get paid regardless of their dispatching service quality, hence, well, try calling a cab in SF.

The technology undergirding – nay, facilitating – this consumer-be-damned system is unashamedly 20th century. It is circuit switched centralized dispatching.

Control the radios, control the cash.

But the smartphone is allowing a batch of new apps makers to go straight for the industry’s femoral artery.  Android and iOS may soon be making all of us our own Louie De Palma. Hopefully not in form but definitely in practice, we will all be Danny DeVito, dispatching our own cabs in disheveled suits.

As of publishing, I count 12 apps in the US iTunes store alone and know of two in the UK and a brand new one in Sweden.  Their general proposition is straight forward, distributed dispatching, bypass the central and get the request and the exact location out to nearby drivers. And the business model is a no-brainer – tap directly into where the cash is, dispatching.

Each app varies slightly. The more interesting apps allow you to send a car request to multiple companies simultaneously, for example. But all of the apps pose potentially serious disruption.

Inexpensive software (and hardware) would, in theory, lower prices. Distributed dispatching would also facilitate every Wired reader’s internet fantasy, democratization of the market, putting drivers directly in-touch with their customers. Democratization being a kinda grad-school way of saying: better service, less driver downtime.

Of course, the logical conclusion would be cutting out the dispatching middle-man entirely, creating an effecient packet-switched grid of passengers and drivers.

Some taxi apps to check out:

Cabulous – Seems to have OK traction – in California

Taxi Magic – Solid US presence

Uber – All over the US, limo service

One Click Cab – Service throughout the UK

Grabacab – Malmo, Sweden

Occasional contributor, Josh Mortensen was last seen saying a bunch of stuff about foursquare.

Related articles

• SFMTA’s Taxi Reform Plan Incites Shouting Match Among Cabbies (blogs.sfweekly.com) – editor’s note: a perfect glimpse of the industry at the height of dysfunction.

Tags: Cabulous, Cairo, democratization, disruption, grabacab-app, Josh Mortensen, San Francisco, taxi apps, Taxi Magic, taxis

Dump your brain, use an app

It’s finally happened, we, as humans, can not even imagine what a tattoo will look like on us. So someone had to invent an app for it. Not much to say here other than if you need to get feedback from your Facebook friends on your tattoo design/positioning you might not need a tattoo.

Anyway, this new iPhone & Android app called The ink: Tattoo Simulator from Cat Head Studios is officially billed as a tattoo stimulator with a social component. Yaaay!

Wonder what the talented & extraordinary tattoo artist, Phil Kyle would have to say about this?

– JLH

Tags: Android, Facebook, IPhone, Phil Kyle, Tattoo

What Goes Around

Sometimes those with altruistic spirit need a bit of a nudge. ‘Twas ever thus, but recently the Internet has emerged as a powerful tool for nudging. With each success (the micro-lending site Kiva comes to mind), a blueprint is emerging on how best to provide assistance to those who wish to do well unto others.

The building and maintenance of community is strongly tied to our inclination towards kindness, and the Internet is certainly up to the task of community building. It’s probably fair to suggest that the Internet is currently obsessed with it.

Here is an idea heavy on idealism, that might have seemed a long shot five years ago, but whose time may have come: ComesAround.

ComesAround is a rescue tool that turns ordinary people into everyday heroes with the help of a smart phone app.  It is a crowd sourced security solution banking on one’s willingness to reach out and help.

Basically, ComesAround takes the way people look out for each other in the ideal small community, refines it, adopts it to all communities and takes it online in smart phones. It then adds this community to traditional emergency response channels in an effort to get help to those who need it more quickly than any one channel on its own can manage.

ComesAround is a profile-based service used to alarm the official emergency center instead of calling them. It holds the user’s relevant health data and current position to be accessed instantly, and while contacting the emergency center (and through it, police, fire and health rescue workers), the app simultaneously send a help request to the 15 nearest civilian ComesAround users. These users can come and help if the official rescuers ambulance/police/firefighters are delayed. This way, civilians who are in a position to be of more immediate aid can come to rescue before professional rescuers.

ComesAround also pairs users healthcare data with instructions for civilian helpers. When helpers arrive emergency staff will guide them—the helper can film with his/her smartphone, which transmits to the emergency center, and receive instructions relevant to the user’s health situation generated from users profile. E.g. If a user suffers from a bad heart, civilian helpers will receive simple instructions in heart massage that might keep the user alive until professional rescuers appears on the scene.

ComesAround is not yet on the market, but it is an interesting idea and step forward in leveraging community for the greater good.

A word people hear little of today

Thank you. Thanks. How hard is that?

Things we learned week ending June 10

Here’s the thing, learning never ends. It’s true what they say, the more you learn the less you know and this certainly applied to this week. We were in Luxembourg this past week interviewing David Schreiberg, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist, former Bureau Chief of Newsweek in Buenos Aires and digital media expert and the man that pretty much has been instrumental in the migration of print to digital media. It was mind blowing.

In an article in Paperjam.lu (in French only) Mr. Schrieiberg says (translated from French): “New media were defined as a reaction to traditional media: it is first media that are delivered in digital form. We are in a transition phase, which will continue for many years, a transformation phase in which businesses must reinvent itself. We are still far from what we see at the moment is that the early stages.”

So after sitting in his grand, post-war four-story brownstone-style home office decorated with a stunning art collection from Argentina, Colombia, Italy and all the places he and his wife (also a journalist) have put pen to paper, I realized that here is what I learned this week.

1. Smart people ignite me. Writers even more so. Being in awe of someone’s ability to put together words that move you is a superb motivation.

2. Content rights will, for the forseeable future, will continue to keep us watching in a walled garden and on the hunt for shortcuts and work arounds. We just wanna watch stuff.

3. Everyone loves to hate the bad guy – Apple is pushing, we bitch about it and yet we don’t stop buying Apple products or using iTunes. We just want content and cool stuff. Humans are that way.

4. Running a company is hard work, getting your work done at the same time even harder. Pushing the envelope so organic growth keeps happening, the hardest.

5. EIB bankers from Finland are negative, closed-minded, this-can’t-be-done know-it-alls. Control – Alt- Delete.

6. Italy’s clean tech scene is rich with technology and innovation that no one really knows about, it’s not all Berlusconi here in Italy.

7. HBO nailed it with Game of Thrones. Sean Bean. Check.  Just call me Khaleesi.

Tags: Buenos Aires, David Schreiberg, Digital media, Game of Thrones, HBO, iTunes, Khalessi, Luxembourg, Pulitzer Prize, Sean Bean, South America, Vital Briefing

Catch a Bully Award – Entries Now Open!

It’s time again – and the second time is a charm. The call for entries for the Bully Awards for the White Bull Summit held October 3-5, 2011 in Barcelona, Spain.

If you are a emerging tech company in Europe, this is the event to submit to see how great you really are. The first deadline is July 31, 2011 at 11:59 (or 23:59) GMT and a shortlist of winners will be announced on Tuesday, August 16, 2011. Then on October 5 they will announce the winners live, onsite.

Now, let’s take a look at where some of the winners are from last year’s Bully Awards. It looks like the winners were well chosen, their progress includes an exit for Q-Go (Netherlands), Epuramat out of Luxembourg was named a Bloomberg New Energy Pioneer for 2011 and BuyVIP, Spain was acquired by Amazon for $96.5 M. For a full list of what some of the winners have done since winning their Bully Award in 2010, go to the White Bull site here.

You can also follow White Bull on Twitter @whitebullsummit

Tags: Barcelona, Bloomerber Clean Energy Pioneer, Bully Awards 2011, Emerging tech, Epuramat, Exits, Q-go, White Bull Summit

Things we learned this week ending June 3

We didn’t learn much this week. Actually we were reminded the same stuff keeps happening over and over again with slight variation. In fact, the entire human race is like a scratchy old record that keeps getting stuck on that same spot where you scratched it after dropping it on the floor when your parents came in and busted you playing the Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass album with the woman covered in whipped cream as the cover art. Phew. That was a long sentence; also, too much?

Here’s what we learned.

1. There is no satisfying some people. So sometimes walking away is the best option.

2. Things are never what they seem and then they always are.

3. Our new favorite start up is www.mancx.com cause their tagline is this: Information will be free. At a price. Check them out, it’s the simplest of concepts  – information, who has it, who wants it, what will you pay for it? Follow them on Twitter @mancx.

4. ink’s Alexandra Crabb ran her first marathon and that impressed us. Send her a note to say congrats on her First.

5. Still trying to get our heads around intelligence versus wisdom.

6. There are too many holidays in Sweden (and Europe for that matter).

7. Organization makes you agile.

8. Gummi Bears are really good warmed up in the sun and even better when trying write witty blog posts.

-JLH