Can Motorola be the Game Changer?

Seems as though Motorola is intent on reclaiming some lost ground with the modular smartphone concept that it is developing. From the looks of it, there is every possibility it can become a gamechanger or at the very least change the way we think about smartphone components. Read more from the Newstatesman below.

www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/10/motorola-has-been-secretly-planning-ambitious-modular-smartphone-concept

Apple Keynote 2013 = Mind Blown

Tech behemoth Apple unveiled a slew of technologies and upgrades that will keep the most loyal of Apple customers happy and make believers out of skeptics. What on the surface seems like a typical keynote address gave insight into the deep comittment to design excellence and technological innovation. Apple has reinforced its superiority in hardware and software integration and demonstrated once more how simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

With their advanced supply chain Apple announced for immediate shipping the new iPad Air with 64bit infrastructure and upgraded MacBook Pro as well as the iLife suite & OS X Maverick both of which are available free. The last part about it being free will probably not sink in until other Software companies have no choice but to follow. The Mac Pro will be out in December 2013 and promises to be the most advance Apple product yet.

http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2013/

One of the more exciting product introductions was the ANKI Drive which marries real world gaming with AI using IOS devices

Google Glass Apps Race

As Google glass gathers momentum (try saying that 10 times fast), the app developers have been trying to develop apps that will match the hardware's mobility. One such app is race yourself, which is currently going through the rounds of crowd funding .The app allows the user to see how well they are doing versus themselves from previous attempts at running/walking/cycling/driving the same route.

Looks quite intuitive and should appeal to your inner competitor when launched.

Everything you need to know about Google in one place

The folks over at entrepreneur.com have been so kind as to post an amazing infographic about all things Google

Have fun

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228156

Reinventing a giant, well maybe.

Yahoo! may be turning the corner. With new leadership in place, they have been able to create an exciting story in the last year that points either to a great comeback in the making or the most reckless of corporate spending sprees in. 

Observing Marissa Mayer's impact on the sleepy giant Yahoo! for the past few months is a sight to behold. In comes this experienced and clearly driven ex-googler and new life seems to have been breathed into the former child star of the tech industry. The stock price is now at a five year high with all of the growth taking place in the last year alone. 

The market seems to be extremely encourage by Mayer's aggressive strategy of tech acquisitions and acqui-hires which are aimed at transforming Yahoo! into a mobile ready technology firm.

For some more interesting articles on the turnaround at Yahoo and their M&A activity have a read of the following web articles.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Yahoo!

http://mashable.com/2013/07/31/yahoo-marissa-mayer-20-startups/

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-01/can-marissa-mayer-save-yahoo#r=hp-ls




About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational Internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is globally known for its Web portal, search engine Yahoo! Search, and related services, including Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo!

Convergence driving more changes at Microsoft

It has been reported that Microsoft will be reorganising the company to move toward "One Microsoft", a structure that aims to remove product silos and unify all of the product development and advertising efforts. This hopefully can improve Microsoft's ability to take on Apple and Google who already offer products that integrate hardware and software seamlessly. This comes as PC sales has recorded yet another quarter of declining sales and is seemingly struggling to keep up in the mobile market. 

The shake up is not without management casualties, as some very senior managers are reportedly packing up for greener pastures. It is early days yet to understand what this means for Microsoft's approach to product development and innovation but one thing is for sure, they won't be rolling over anytime soon.

What's Yahoo! up to?

The first line in LL Cool J's now famous track "Mama said knock you out" states "Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years!". I imagine this would be the best song for Marissa Mayer, the new CEO at Yahoo!, to pipe through their headquarters to amp up the staff to get through the day. Once the go to place for web content and web innovation, Yahoo! barely manages a mention in today's webesphere. However ex-Googler Marissa has been leading the comeback effort that has seen Yahoo! complete 15 acquisition for 2013 alone. From the looks of it, Yahoo! is building a portfolio of mobile ready technologies that already have a network of users locked in to their ecosystems. Arguably, they are acqui-hiring new blood as well as a way of breathing life and energy into the building. The hodge-podge of companies point to the intent to build platforms that take advantage of the smartphone revolution with a focus on consolidating content and providing recommendations to users. I guess you can call it a "portal 2.0" strategy. 

Microsoft positioning itself for the mobile platform

As the battle wages for marketshare in the smart phone market, a battle is being waged for the mindshare of developers, those app innovators that enable the entire ecosystem to work. Microsoft has made a surprise announcement at its builder conference that Bing, known to most as a search engine aiming to compete with Google, is now also a developer platform. 

What this means is that the "appmosphere" will likely become a very interesting place as 3rd party developers begin to churn out apps that will run on windows 8, 8.1 and Xbox. This is great news if you own a Microsoft enabled product or if you operate within the Microsoft ecosystem. 

This is consistent with the changes that most of the established tech companies have been going through as they reorient themselves for the mobile convergence that is taking place. (Like Yahoo, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry etc)

For more see this link here.

Discovering webcontent

If you are already in your 30s, then chances are one or more of the following apply to your use and impression of the "interweb"

• You have one main password that you use to log into everything that doesn't ask you to change passwords regularly and a second one for those pesky websites that do, like internet banking.
• You have five (5) maybe six (6) websites that you go to routinely for news and email. If it's not on there, it doesn't exist.
• You rely on your friends' Facebook posts that appear on your newsfeed to find new content 
• You know that twitter is supposed to be this big deal but you still can't figure out what all these hashtags and @ signs are trying to say
• The interwebesphere can seem boring most times, so when bored go to youtube and search for kitten videos

I too have found that finding new content is tedious and I realised that unless content is delivered to you that has been curated, the internet may as well be a slab of concrete. Here are a two great websites that deliver content to you. All you need are these two to start.

Stumble Upon Something New 

www.stumbleupon.com - Sign up and select your preferences and stumbleupon's engine will deliver fresh new content that match your selected preferences. If you don't like what they suggest (which is very rare seeing that the sites are ranked by user satisfaction) just click next and they will suggest another, and another and another and another. The interwebesphere just keeps going with this one.

www.mashable.com - bye bye Facebook newsfeed! Mashable provides you with trending topics, technology, apps, reviews and viral videos. The world just got a little more interesting. Now you can counteract all those kitten videos by sharing the more interesting content you have found here

Happy Hunting!

What Privacy?

The revelation of the PRISM program over the past few weeks brings into question this entire notion of having the right to privacy. It also brings into question the extent to which we have, by our actions and behaviours, given up that right anyway. What do I mean by that? Well consider that the chances are that you, yes you, have never once read one of those legal statements that comes up when signing up for an email or social media account. If you are like me you click "Yes I agree" without so much as scrolling down. When taken together with the amount of openness we display on the various social media services i.e. liking, commenting on the posts of others, posting our own comments and rants, uploading pictures of ourselves and others etc, it is clear to see that we aren't so much concerned with privacy per se. Instead it seems we are concerned with people and organisations accessing our already public information which we voluntarily shared from the sites and apps we've shared them through.

This is an interesting dilemma because I didn't read the user agreement, remember I just clicked the "Yes I agree" button without reading it, so I have no way of knowing if I agreed to my information being passed to third parties, well, unless I go read them all now anyway. As the tech companies try to make sense of what is happening, it is not yet certain how this will change how much we share about ourselves voluntarily and how we would alter how we use the internet to transmit messages and transact. It presents a dilemma for social networks and email providers though as they would fear the fallout of losing their user base due to a loss of trust in them. One thing is for sure now. They will change the user agreements to ensure that they are not exposed legally, we will not read them when they pop up, and we will live happily ever after. Until we find ourselves being interrogated because of comments made online or because of a picture or video shared on instagram.

Web 2.0 has brought with it some new dilemmas and is pushing the boundaries of the definition of what is private and public. It is now very conceivable that one day everything will become public and open. Accept it and be responsible with the information you share. Orwell's Big Brother has arrived I guess. 

Facebook is up to something today!!!!

The big brain at facebook have been working away at a big idea. There aren't any insight just yet into what is going to be unveiled today but the tech world is eagerly awaiting their keynote.

Given the convergence that has been occuring driven by smartphone/tablet technology, perhaps this is facebook's foray into hardware. We understand that Zuckerberg was spotted visiting Samsung's office earlier this week so can we expect, if not today, some time in the future, an announcement that involves a Samsung product running facebook software of some sort?

In the context of the prevailing technology strategy which seeks to marry a platform that provides utility to a network of users with a common hardware platform, (a la iTunes/iphone and Google/Samsung), any attempt by Facebook to replicate and move into a partnership with Samsung will be yet another example of this strategy at play.

Stratasys did what? And on Labour Day to boot!!!!

If like me you are super excited about 3D printing, and by excited I mean wet your pants at the thought of it excited, then news like this is blow your brains out news. Stratasys buys Makerbot .... whaaatttttt???!!!!

It is clearly a very strategic move on the part of Stratasys to acquire Makerbot to ensure they cover the consumer market and not compete in the industrial user segment and the resulting combined technology base means that 3D printing is coming to a desktop near you.

Buzz Butler had no idea this was the world he was creating!

A Brand Management lesson from Elon Musk

Managing a brand is a real challenge in today's ultra fast social media driven world. Make a mistake and the world knows in minutes and you spend the next six months doing damage control. 

Elon Musk, one of the super innovators of this generation, shows the right way to avert a brand meltdown. Part common sense, part social responsibility, Tesla motors recently issued a voluntary recall of some of its Model S after becoming aware of a structural weakness in one of the seatbelt brackets that is welded to the body of the car. His company blog points out that this was entirely voluntary and was not as a result of any regulator directive. Instead it was out of a concern for the customer safety and the desire to do what is right.

Customer safety preserved, check!

Danger averted, check! 

Brand image enhanced, check!

For more on Tesla Motors visit http://www.teslamotors.com/ or check out some of their videos at http://vimeo.com/teslamotors

Getting left behind at 30something is not an option

Making sense of technology is at times the most difficult thing to do. I consider myself enough of a millennial to be open to new technologies but I have found that as a veteran 30something my willingness to explore new ways to do old things has materially reduced. OK yes I may have asked a few ignorant questions to "The Google" but certainly that doesn't means I am any less tech savvy. Or does it?

Something we should all be fearful of is that we become our parents; suspicious of new technology and pop culture and insistent on using the line "in my day it was much better because ......". If like me you are new to being 30something then chances are you have already attended a back in time party and you swear that the music from the 90's was the best everrrrrrrr. Chances are as well that you may have said that "a phone is just to make and receive calls and text messages". If you have, please put the gun down and step away from the ledge!

Make no mistake, we live in exponential times, so my lecturer reminded me yesterday, and it is important that we understand that we are in the midst of a massive technoeconomic paradigm shift. This shift is based on the convergence of technologies which were each revolutionary at the time of their introduction over the last few decades and doubly even triply so as they are shaping and are shaped by us millennials. If you cannot see it or if you are not aware of it then the bad news is that it is almost too late but the good news is that it isn't yet too late.  

Stay tuned and I will share what I learn as I seek to drink from the digital fountain of youth.

PS: Go see The Internship and have a read about Google's recently announced project Loon 

Dusting off the cobwebs

Writing can be a chore and I haven't written in such a long time. I have been re-inspired lately to revisit this process of translating thoughts into written words as I go through my Masters Program. I am not sure where this will lead but I will be trying to adapt this blog a bit to curate content that reflects my new experiences and my own discovery.