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Mobile social semantic web evolving - it is so 3.0!
Today I want to start a series around the emerging issue “web 3.0″, the controversial buzzword with its dazzling meaning. Like with the forerunner “web 2.0″ sober clarifications will help us discerning hype from reality. Today we start with three seemingly unjoined signals from the domains of consumer electronics fairs, web debate and killer startups .-)
Things are networked and start to speak - Nabaztag rabbit
SIGNAL 1: IFA fair opens up to household appliances – maybe they are preparing for the internet of things
Today the IFA fair is starting in Berlin. The first time the worlds largest consumer electronics fair will be sharing the spotlight with household appliances like washers and dryers. Two facts from the market trends department:
- Trend: From “passive cocooning” to “active cocooning”, e.g. having guests and cooking at home. Funny symptom: A lot of shows around flat, garden, house and … the kitchen. You will hardly find a minute in German tv these days, when there is no cooking show running on one channel or the other.) As a consequence of this “active cocooning / social cocooning” trend there is a growth market for household appliances.
- Growth market household appliances: Market research firm Freedonia Group forecasts an increase by 3.1 percent each year through 2011 (redOrbit)
But there should be an other good reason for IFA fair to open up to the wider spectrum of devices. In the next years we will see a jump in the ict evolution. Maybe it will be more radical than the innovations brought by web 2.0 with the blogosophere, youtube, social networking, Google maps etc. that changed lives and business. Read the rest of this entry »
No surprise the iPhone 3G reviews of the last days show a lot of enthusiasm and indicate that the iPhone with geo intelligence and cool mobile social networking apps will become the “social web device of the year”.
The iPhone, with cult-like users and location aware technology, is the perfect social networking device. Earlier this year we speculated that someone would emerge with a killer social networking app for the iPhone. It turns out that there are lots of contenders. Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch
Today Michael Arrington looks at the barriers:
MySpace and Facebook are sitting on the sidelines while these new networks try to get a foothold. And it’s all because of privacy concerns and fear of litigation.
Here I would like to add that the privacy issue and “social noise” concerns have to be taken seriously. It is time for a more systematic approach. The iPhone, Loopt etc. are only little pieces in the big picture, i.e. the coming “moss web”. The what?!
What is the moss web?
Some time ago, when I thought about the trends and emerging technologies in the very near future I was looking for a concept that could express the coming fusion of the trends to one integrated new environment of devices and applications – and social activity patterns. There was none, so I abbreviated the monstrous wording “mobile social semantic web” to the acronym mo-s-s web, that’s all.
Characterstics and challenges of the moss web
In the user perspective the user experience will be characterised by ubiquity, continuity and transparency of the surroundings – geo, social, business, events. Ok, ubiquity and continuity mean just convenience and a lot of new valuable services (take the iPhone apps as a reference). But with transparency (and possible asymmmetric transparency) there comes the challenge. Michael is mentioning the lawyers concerns but they
are just the effect, not the cause of the challenge which comes with the new transparency features and tools.
Certainly privacy rights need to be considered, (..). But they can be addressed by allowing users to opt out of showing others their location, or only showing it to certain types of people (by age range, sex, friends of friends, etc.). And minors can be permanently segmented from older age groups as well. Michael Arrington
The quote shows that to “address the privacy rights” is not that easy and the demand for smart “social identity management” and “privacy business” will open up some possibilities for new services. There will be some companies out there delivering apps with the right balance between the complexity of the moss web (dynamic social graph, contextual semantics) and the needs of users for smooth and unobtrusive “social navigation”.
iPhone timeline 1999-2008 (iphonegold.org)
UPDATE 2010-10-09: My prediction was rather risky in July of 2008 and it has been proven correct. In April 2010 I even have been taking part to organize the “1st European Augmented Reality Conference” ARBcon.eu. If you are interested in AR/MR and a contact just join the Linkedin group or the Xing Augmented Reality Group (350+)
Future fact: Super convergence of mobile connectivity, the social web and contextual intelligence will create an eco-system of mixed reality applications.
Well, the iPhone 3G just has been released. Not the quantum leap hysteria like in the release of iPhone 1.0. But what comes to my mind is the wellknown quote of the cyberpunk author William Gibson: “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.”
There is a “digg of the day” for me showing the iPhone timeline starting with Dec 15 1999 – the day when Apple registered the domain iPhone.org. Means: (i) Steve Jobs keen vision started in the last century, I never doubted that he is ahead of times, (ii) progress needs a bit of patience too. Now, what will we see on this timeline in 2010/2011? I am quite sure that augmented reality stuff is leaving the labs in the very near future. Here is a short trip into one trend vector of the future mobile device – mixed reality.
Check the nutrients of your food (Mac Funamizu 2008)
View the past history of a place (Mac Funamizu 2008)
SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR THE MIXED REALITY SCENARIO: Since Feb 2008 Mac Funamizu created a cool design study, Read the rest of this entry »
This is a post in honor of Charlene Li, who is a researcher at analyst firm Forrester and is leaving the company this month.
Forrester has bent over backwards to be accommodating and flexible, but in the end, I have decided that I need to have greater control over how I allocate my time between work and family. As any working parent knows, there’s no such thing as balance – only a series of compromises (…)
The title of this post is the subtitle of the book “Groundswell“, Charlene has been writing with Josh Bernoff. From the short introduction at fastcompany.com:
[S]ocial media — blogs, wikis, Facebook — has impacted the way customer’s interact with your brands. These elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat. You can see it as an opportunity. (The Future of Groundswell)
FORECAST: Gartner Says More than 1 Billion PCs In Use Worldwide and Headed to 2 Billion Units by 2014 Two billion PCs sounds a lot, but think about the billions of embedded chips, the consumer electronics and the mobile devices esp. the mobile phones.
FORECAST: IDC’s new whitepaper offers updated growth projections and new findings expected to impact business and society based on new data and analysis that indicate:
- At 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes), the digital universe in 2007 was 10% bigger than originally estimated
- With a compound annual growth rate of almost 60%, the digital universe is growing faster and is projected to be nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes) in 2011, a 10-fold increase over the next five years
- Your “Digital Shadow” – that is, all the digital information generated about the average person on a daily basis – now surpasses the amount of digital information individuals actively create themselves
- … eWaste … Electronic waste is accumulating at more than 1 billion units a year (emc.com)
Amazing data, not to mention the standard and new sources of spam and distraction, email, im, microblogging etc.
RELEVANCE: There is a physical ecological aspect of the exploding it universe – energy consumption of the billions of devices and mountains of electronic waste, mostly containing some toxic components.
There is a social / cultural / psychological ecological aspect too. The stream of data and growing speed and complexity.
It is time to think more seriously about this avalanche of technology and the resulting environmental and “psycho-ecological” effects. Ecology in IT is ment as a holistic term and means more than “greener chips”.
