I just visited Apple in one of their buildings in Cupertino and they have some fun names for all conference rooms, they were using either recent TV series (Lost, 24, …) or music related names (U2, Coldplay, Sinatra,…), pretty cool.
CD
Out of all the invited guests and speakers to last week innovation event at Telefonica, the one that I liked the most was Aram Bartholl. He is a media artist from Berlin that specializes in real world installations that manifest things that happen in cyberspace. So now that there is so much talk about convergence, he is actually making converge the cyberspace back into real world by taking some things that are familiar in the online world like chatting, the red pins from Google Maps, the names on top of characters that appear in games like World of Warcraft so you can identify the carachter (my favorite) or 2d tags that are very popular in some countries like Japan to use with your mobile phones, and then manifest them back into real, everyday life situations. I recoded part of his presentation that you can see below as a YouTube playlist (there are 6 clips) but just search for Aram Bartholl in YouTube or go to his Web site here. His work is very interesting because it makes you realize how some of the online conventions that we are so used to look totally out of place in real world (the WOW naming) while some others actually make a lot of sense and can be quite useful (the West/East Berlin for example).
CD
The picture on the right is from a sticker I found in a toilet at the Grand Hyatt Hotel while attending the Mobile 2.0 user conference. 
In case you cannot read well the text, the sticker advertises a mobile web site where you can check where is the closest clean toilet The sticker was literally in the wall of the toilet (which was pretty clean, btw) so you could see it while you were peeing. Probably a bit too late to use the service but certainly a good place to promote your service since anyone there, will, eventually, go again to a toilet in some other occasion and might decide to use what I think is the silliest location based service I have ever seen. Not surprise to see this startup being acquired by Google to add to their local offering…Seeing this is what makes me think that anything is possible in Silicon Valley.
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Enjoy!!!! Go Telefonica!!!!
http://www.kyte.tv/ch/18059-tef-ambassadors-for-innovation/63481-web-show-2
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Brian Fling moderates and does a very good job to give turns to every speaker and to keep the topics moving (prior to the panel we discussed the risk of only talking about the iPhone…). Here are some random notes, unedited notes about what each panelist said (I was typing as I was speaking so this is very incomplete…):
Risto: IPhone is flow based versus task based. Do not ask users what they want or what they like but find out what they need. What they want is not to think and express their emotion through their device. Charles Revlon quote: we fabricate cosmetics but we sell hope.
Christian: Focus on the seems and if you get that right you will improve UX (example.- Shozu). Risk of handset makers focusing on who has the ability to put a bigger screen in the pocket? Super small notebooks are the future? Google apps is liberating us from the desktop and computer paradigm. Only important question: Is my service relevant on users life?
Kelly: Is the iPhone a phone or a mini computer? She loves Helio. Ford quote: if you ask people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse, we need contextual behavior analysis. People want to play and have fun. Doing just one thing well is a proven model, iterative development model with user interaction is the way to go. People are going feature crazy with their mobile apps and that is a problem.
Carlos: iPhone will raise the expectation of what mobile user experience is and that will drive innovation across the industry. Device and application framework fragmentation is a big issue to improve user experience, carrier desire to make money in each application/services drives them to support as many phones as possible lowering the overall user experience. Iterative development does not fit well with carriers and data is still not their core business so their focus on mobile apps is relative. Convergence is important because it will force people to think about the context of an app and not the device it goes into.
Q&A session:
What about convergence: Brian, mobile browsers supporting web standards helps convergence. Kelly, you need critical mass so big events are the opportunity (eg. Olympics). Carlos, carrier convergence helps to think about the app. Christian: find the sm and persistence storage (Web mail with partly cash content). Risto: find apps that people love
What about emerging markets (China and India) and how to deal with 2.5G and SMS based applications. SMS based apps are important. Emerging markets are important.
Who is going to own the UI? The Browser? It matters who owns the UI because UI consistency will improve user experience. The browser has probably the bigger chance to provide UI consistency and not the handset makers or the carriers.
What feature will you remove from a phone? Carlos: remove the distinction between SMS and MMS (applause from the audience!!). Christian: data cost. Kelly: keyboards (she mentions Zenzui)
CD
Here are some unedited notes from Toni´s keynote (btw, he is a great and entertainment speaker):
Don´t try to copy the Internet and squeeze it on the phone
Mobile is the 7th mass media (print, recording, cinema, radio, …, Internet)
Mobile can do anything that the previous six media can do, no other media can do that
Mobile media is unique because of always-on, personal, always carried, built in payment, creative, accurate audience info
Example of Docomo QR code as example of new apps that are useful
Talking about the 4 Cs (the flower diagram as he calls it): Connectivity, culture, commerce, community. Argues that Second Life is in the center of these 4Cs. The new mobile community and social networking opportunity is at the intersection
Talking about SeeMeTV: UGC for users with revenue sharing for the creators, role out by 3 in thre European countries, very sucessfull
Talking about Blik and how they are inventing mobile advertising and also providing examples of the success of mobile advertising in Japan
Innovation ping pong: Haboo hotel (they make $35MM a year, $5 per subscriber a year), according to him, CyWorld copied their business model in 2003, (check out “Digital Korea” by Ahonen and Oreilly). 30K business are active in CyWorld, 43% Korean population, Flirtomatic.com sold 3.5MM virtual roses (1.6MM$ revenue in a year), they have dropped subscriptions because they make money with virtual presents and advertisment.
CD
Esta semana fui invitado a dar la charla invitada en el evento de inaguración del curso de la escuela de telecomunicaciones de la UPC en Barcelona. El tema que escogí es sobre el futuro de la Internet móvil ya que quería algo facil de entender (la charla es bastante sencillita) y que motivara a los asistentes (en su mayoria, alumnos que se graduaban y recogian el diploma ese día) sobre su posible futuro profesional. No pude evitar hacer una pequeña broma sobre el intrusismo profesional en nuestras profesiones ya que yo tengo a muchos telecos trabajando de informaticos y a mi, que soy informático, me habían invitado a dar la charla de inaguración del curso de telecos.
He colgado la charla en Slideshare que hacia tiempo que quería probarlo. Aqui la teneis.
CD
I just realized that the last few weeks I have been posting things to Facebook that naturally belong to my blog but since I am spending a lot more time there and I already got more than 100 friends in just four months (it took me more than 3 years to get to 300 contacts in Linkedin so definitely Facebook growth seems to be faster) so I am reaching most of the people I want to communicate with that way. Moreover, I keep my Facebook profile open so you can check my Facebook posts here .
I am also sort of randomly updating Twitter and I got a plugin into my blog that posts my Twitter activity. I do not know of a Typepad plugin to add my Facebook posts into my blog but if I start doing that, why do I want to continue using my blog?
CD
Just arrived to San Francisco to attend the Mobile 2.0 conference. I am at a panel on mobile user experience with Brian Fling from Blue Flavor (Moderator), Kelly Goto from Gotomedia, Risto Lahdesmaki from Idean Enterprises and Christian Lindholm from Fjord. With all these quality speakers the panel is going to be great, user experience (not just necessarily mobile) has been a big topic since I joined Telefonica R&D and we have set up a UX team in Barcelona to focus on this very important issue where, to say the least, there is room from improvement on what Telefonica is doing. Obviously, the iPhone is going to be a major topic but I hope that we discuss other things as well.
CD
Early this year I had a chance to visit the telepresence system that HP has set up near by Barcelona and later in a trip to Tokyo I saw the one that Cisco had in a NTT showroom of their new generation network. Both systems are very similar, you have a room with a table in a semicircle and in front of you there are three huge (60 inches, probably) plasma screen where you see the other side of the videoconferencing. The speakers are at full size at the screen and they are sitting in a room exactly like yours (their table seems to complete the semicircle of yours), video quality is great as well as audio. The rooms are somehow set up like movie studios, where the lighting and audio conditions have been carefully set so that you get a very good image and sound. Compared to commonly used videoconferencing systems, the notion of reality is way higher and therefore it is more useful than a regular one. However, the cost is huge, they required dedicated fiber connection to each room and as I mentioned, the room itself has to be decorated in a particular way to increase the sensation that you are with the other people in the same room. At work we are prototyping a videoconferencing system using 3D screens from Philips to increase further the perception of reality. I think that we are seeing the beginning of one trend that will develop during the next ten years, telepresence, videoconferencing were the notion of reality and of being in the same room is much higher and therefore, eventually substitutes face to face meetings. And some of the makes are making sure that you do not miss this trend. Check out the season six of 24 where the president of the United States talks to the president of Russia via a telepresence system from Cisco.
