Category: Business Strategy

Topics that have to do with business management such as how to position a product or service, mergers, partnerships, acquisitions, marketing or sales, reports about market size, anything having to do with money (investments or making money)

Categories
Augmented Reality Business Strategy

Frog Design’s Top Tech Trends in 2012

Frog Design's post on top technology trends for 2012 is highly insightful. First, the graphic. It's Alice who just can't resist a peak into the future!

Then the list of trends begins with the trend on which I spent considerable time with in 2011 and see expanding in 2012: using mobile AR and similar interfaces to engage with the data available (published by) Smart Cities.

Although many others saw its potential a decade ago, and numerous cities have been working on it since this decade began, there's still a lot of research to do before a basic formula emerges, a set of best practices or guidelines shakes out. Here's how Frog Design's Chief Creative Office describes the modern city:

"The modern city is becoming a pointer system, the new URL, for tomorrow’s hybrid digital–physical environment. Today's Facebook will be complemented by tomorrow's Placebook. Explosive innovation and adoption of computing, mobile devices, and rich sources of data are changing the cities in which we live, work, and play. It's about us, and how computing in the context of our cities is changing how we live. A digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever-richer experiences that complement, and in emerging cases, replace the physical experience. In the meta–cities of the future, computing isn't just with us; it surrounds us, and it uses the context of our environment to empower us in more natural, yet powerful ways."

This description assumes, thought isn't explicit about having a sensor-rich environment (aka Internet of Things). Isn't the "digital landscape overlaying our physical world and expanding to offer ever-richer experiences" a beautiful image?

Many of the other 14 trends are also well synchronized with the topics of this blog.
I hope you will find this presentation as valuable as I have. I recommend that you view in full screen mode.

Tech Trends 2012  

 

Categories
Business Strategy

Making 2012 Count

Although anyone can say they will, in practice, it's not easy to change–yourself or others. Today provides an opportunity to examine how we would like to change. One of the great marketing bloggers, Chris Brogan, began 2012 by announcing his three personal words for 2012: Temple. Untangle. Practice.  Here are his three words for 2011. The problem I have with the Brogan approach is that it's difficult to determine when one has completed these!

Experts agree that the idea is to develop good habits and to stick to them. My new professional goals for the next 12 months can be expressed in declarative sentences that will require my acquiring new knowledge (some of it through repetition) and applying it, habitually. In addition to maintaining the most fruitful of my current activities, in 2012, I will:

  • learn conversational German sufficiently well to be able to understand when people are speaking about a topic that is of interest to me
  • learn how to manage Word Press themes according to community best practices and, using this new skill set, improve this and my other sites, including a complete redesign of my professional Web site
  • add three new companies to any of my digital industry landscapes per week
  • author (or collaborate on) at least one position paper (or other similar in depth, thought-provoking work) per month and,
  • post to this blog at least four times per week.

Aiming for these goals and keeping to these habits in 2012 will be valuable in both my professional and personal life, and the world will smell like this bouquet of roses. Happy 2012!

Categories
Augmented Reality Business Strategy

The Top Mobile AR Regions in 2012

Due to a variety of factors, including the fact that the two biggest manufacturers are not publishing these figures, no one knows precisely how many smartphones shipped in 2011. Smartphone shipments are just part of the data which would be useful to guide where mobile AR efforts could have the highest impact in 2012.

Let's assume that only iOS and Android users could have mobile AR experiences. Those who have smartphones need to know how to use them and see some benefits as regular users. Running apps at least once a month is a strong qualification. Take a look at the figure released by Flurry on December 23, 2011 (below) at the current total addressable market (TAM) for iOS and Android apps.

The largest chunk of the world’s active installed base is in the US, with 109 million out of 264 million, or 41%. But, the US is not the geography in which we have the greatest number of AR experiences available (experiences are more heavily concentrated in Western Europe). And, considering the conditions put on providers of geospatial information and the nascent state of that market, smartphone users in the next largest market, China, are unlikely to have a proliferation of AR experiences in 2012.

Now, look at the other Top 10 addressable markets in the second figure (below).

In addition to boosting the opportunities to engage users in the US, developers of mobile AR should be seriously expanding their AR publishing reach into Japan, Germany, France, UK and Italy.

Categories
3D Information Business Strategy News Research & Development

London’s Imperial College

On July 27, 2011 the UK Research Council awarded a £5.9m grant to the “digital city exchange” programme of Imperial College. According to the press release, the funds are to be used to establish a new research center focusing on “smart cities” technologies.

A multidisciplinary team, involving businesses, public administrations and academia, is being put in place to use the city of London as a test bed for emerging smart cities hardware, software and processes. The article in the Financial Times very perceptively puts the focus on the following statements issued by spokesperson, David Gann, the head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at Imperial College.

"New sensors and real-world monitoring can be combined with “cloud computing” to bring greater efficiency and new services to cities. For instance, data about peak traffic periods and local sensors could be used to avoid congestion for supermarket deliveries.

“London, with all its economic and social diversity, will be a very good place to launch some of these capabilities into new cities around the world and create new jobs and growth. The act of invention is at the point of consumption.”

Another article about the grant emphasizes, as did the press release, more of an urban planning angle.

It's very exciting to have this center establishing itself, although the size of the grant does not seem in line with the ambitions and objectives as they are described, and there should be others of its kind connecting to it as well.

Categories
Business Strategy Internet of Things Social and Societal

Shaspa-Shared Spaces

Oliver Goh of Shaspa Research said in an interview with Into Tomorrow during CES2010 that "smart technologies" should solve real world problems we experience. That oversimplifies the situation a bit, I think. The types of problems we as individuals want technology to solve will be different based on our circumstances (age, home vs business, country of residence, culture, etc) and the challenges facing businesses also vary widely depending on the domain, currency fluctuations and so forth.

So how could one device detect any circumstance and be ready to respond? Good question! One which I hope to be able to ask about the Shaspa Bridge.

According the Shaspa web site where I found this diagram, their technology connects sensors, gathers data and supports software for decision making and management of resources. Their applications are focusing on shared living and working spaces–hence the name "Sha" for Shared and "Spa" for Spaces.

Sounds remarkably reminiscent of the applications built on the Pachube platform using sensors in the environment or on a smart phone to inform decision making.  But the companies with which Shaspa seeks to do business are quite different and, although there is reference on the site to open and interoperable solutions based on standards, the concepts of Open Source and building communities of users and developers are noticeably absent from their positioning.

Shaspa has some points in common with WideTag in that there is a social media component to the platform. And, similarly to WideTag over the past year, Shaspa does not appear (based on its web site "news" section) to be making much noise. The most recent posting on SlideShare is already over 24 months old. The company could be conserving resources for when there are greater opportunities for businesses serving the developers of solutions based on the Internet of Things, or busy actually doing projects which are too sensitive to make public.

Could Shaspa be one of the companies which will get a positive boost from the recent acquisition of Pachube?
 

Categories
Business Strategy Internet of Things

WideTag too?

With the dust settling around the Pachube acquisition, it's important to consider other companies that might be out there in the same category and impacted by the change in the landscape. One of these companies is WideTag. Although it is technically based in Redwood City, California, the company was founded by three Italians and I believe that the "heart" of the project was in Northern Italy.

WideTag's angle on the sensor data aggregation problem was to provide a software platform that has a social media component. Aside from the emphasis on social media, WideTag and Pachube are very similar. Compare with the Pachube mission, this text:

"The WideSpime framework for massive data collection applications allows for the rapid development of highly scalable, and robust vertical applications in the areas of energy, environment, industrial monitoring, and others.

The OpenSpime development libraries have been put in open-source in order to spur the growth of a healthy community sharing the spime-based vision of the forthcoming Internet Of Things. In addition to this, Roberto Ostinelli, WideTag’s CTO, released in open-source Misultin >-|-|-|<>, a high-performance http server."

The major differences between Pachube and WideTag today are that WideTag is no longer an active business, while Pachube has a major sponsor and deep pockets from which to draw.

It was clear from the declining level of newsworthy activity and developments throughout 2010 that the company was not growing. In March 2011, a post by WideTag CEO, Leandro Agrò, on the site announced that the three co-founders had gone their separate ways but were thankful for the opportunity they had to work in the exciting field of the Internet of Things. What was the difference? Was it a resource limitation?

So now, with the Pachube property valuation in mind, is there an opportunity to pour a little cash in and revive WideTag? Is there a WideTag Phase 2? Or is there a fresh, new company, like Open Sen.se, coming in to fill the void?