Why Nokia should wink at thunderbird

Nokia is moving steadily on a wholly new terrain, that of Mobile Internet Users.
MIUs are not business people. They don't use blackberry. They do have some sort of business to do of course, but their usage of mobile phone is a mixture of work, family, love, friends, games.

People will have different profiles of their digital lifestyle.
They are TV consumers, on the couch, with their media center.
They are news consumers and producers, at home, with their internet tablet or laptop.
They are dwellers of an on-line village, and they send messages, write scraps, do some twittering, participate in a chat and, last but not least, they read e-mail.

Therefore, people have many devices and use them to do many activities. Sometimes you need to switch from a device to another, and you need your activity to be transported on the other devices. Then, you need synchronization so as to keep the same information in more places.

Just think about all the various kinds of information you produce/consume on your mobile phone:

• addressbook
• agenda
• notes
• messages
• photos

Nokia is already doing a great job with Lifeblog, which allows me to sync my SMS, videos and photos on the PC and online, in a true mobile blog. Even the sync conduits that are currently present on PCSync work well, but the point is: where is Thunderbird synchronization?

Trying to flip the question: why Nokia is not focusing on the eldest and the more widely spread internet communication system, e-mail? Why Nokia is not working on a PC calendar system that integrates with Lifeblog?

My digital life would be marvellous if I could sync my contacts, their photos, the conversations I've had with them, the dates I planned to see them?


Nokia has acquired intellisync (enterprise mail and PIM synchronization), avvenu (remote locker), navteq (navigation technology), Loudeye (digital music aggregator), Twango and recently Trolltech (widely used GUI technology).

Therefore, Nokia intention is clear: "put contents online, use Nokia mobile computers and live with them".
OK, fine mr Nokia, but I also want a docking station, a bigger monitor and a full size keyboard :) And that's my PC, and my PC has thunderbird, and -guess what? Thunderbird is powerful and open source...

SPOCK - Social network Mash Up

It's natural. One is not enough.
Having one TV channel or one political representative or one idea or clothes of one color is not good.
Having kazillions of everything is worse. When it comes to information management, you feel lost.

• Kazillions of websites
• Kazillions of blogs
• Kazillions of Newspapers
• Kazillion of business directories

Now think about social networks and communities:

• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Orkut
• Badoo
• Hi5
• Yahoo360
• Live

OK, don't pretend I write a complete list here. Ask Mashable for that :)

But this time we have a collector. A gatherer. Something really interesting.
It's called Spock.com and it's the "Who's Who 2.0".

Basically, it's an Identity search engine. But this is a simplistic definition.

Spock is actually innovative, and these are the most intriguing features:

• tag yourself, tag other people
• spock robot auto-tags you. And it is usually good!
• build a trust network over more social networks
  
• vote whether a tag is relevant or not for that person
  
• review and mark relevant/irrelevant tags attributed to you
• link people by adding tags to the link: "Bob is Alice's [friend/colleague/boss] That's semantic folksonomy!

My advice? Give it a try now!

What's missing? A click-to-call application, like Sitòfono :)

Google Android for Italy? It seems so

It seems that there is a feeble possibility that Google Android Developer Challenge will be for Italians as well.
The news, in Italian, has been published also by Repubblica.it, the most read Newspaper and the most visited news site in Italy.

Guido Scorza, a researcher in the IT field of law, suggests that Google can work around the limitation, because the Italian norms and rules for prize challenges allow easier set up for creative and engineering challenges.

What Guido Scorza worries about is that neither Google, nor the Italian government took a clear action upon the matter, giving the impression of superficiality and talking the talk without walking the walk.

Of course his blog writing is done during commuting times, therefore is approximate and partial (so it is mine). He states clearly this fact in a post scriptum, because he talks the talk and walks the walk. And, anyway, nobody pays him to look for alternatives and workarounds in this matter.


Technorati Tags: cernio, android, italy, innovation, Guido Scorza,

iPhone PTT - NikoTalkie

Now iPhone has its VoIP application ready. It's called "nikotalkie" and works like a walkie-talkie or any other PTT (Push To Talk) software.

Now what I am wondering is:

• Is there a plan to make it work on other phones OSes, like Symbian (it makes me think of Nokia E65, for instance)?
• Is there a Utility in walkie talkie feature "as is"? How many people have PTT installed? How many do use it?
  
• Is there some plan to extend the "walkie" function like, uh, ya know, mobile micro-video-blogging?
  
• is it complicated to install the iPhone "installer"? It seems it is not that straight
  

(My source: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/ )

Technorati Tags: cernio, voip, iphone, nikotalkie, push-to-talk

VoIP as emerging technology-AGAIN?

Hey, VoIP is going to be the technology behind Unified Communication, one of the 10 emerging technologies to keep monitored -AGAIN!

I've been playing working with VoIP since 2001 and each year was the year of VoIP. Now journalists cannot use it once more, so they changed the term in "Unified Communication".

Well, the best unifying communication device is still the telephone. It's working well and it does all it's needed to communicate.

Why should I change it? Why do I have to install a new box, new power plug, new wires, new installation problems?

Why should I bother with instant messaging? Why should I write messages when I can talk?

Why should I be blamed by an acquaintance for not disclosing my "online status" to everybody but only to some friends? Why do I need to state "hey I am here" and "hey I am disconnected". If I am always connected, why do I have to say that I am "disconnected" or "away from pc"?

Why do I have to trust your VoIP thing is the data network (on which the VoIP service is based) is not sufficiently reliable?

Please answer these questions before thinking of crossing the chasm.

Technorati Tags: cernio, innovation, voip, unified communications,

Push or pull?

Seth Godin talks about push and pull methodologies. Apart from the marketing considerations, I see that push and pull are fundamental tasks in the work process and both have to be balanced well. But what captured my attention is this sentence:

I can't use internal wikis. "It's on the wiki" is a dumb thing to say to me.

I expect my team to check on the wiki because it's not useful to broadcast each information to everybody. Except when needed, information has to be stored on a "pull" mechanism. Luckily, most of the wikis provide a RSS feed on the latest changes.

Usually we forgive someone's lack of discipline if the element has some creative behaviour, in this case we justify everything with a sentence: "he's a genious, you cannot trap his mind in this or that process". Most of the creative people I've met are totally inept at managing simple tasks like:

• retrieve a document previously stored in the document management system, however it is categorized or tagged, even by means of the custom search engine
  
• complete tasks in an ordered way and notify the rest of the team
• remember decisions and keep coherent behavior when analyzing scenarios. If you've changed your mind, notify others that you've changed your mind and why
  
• before answering "it's not my duty" think. re-think and be completely sure that it' not your duty
  
• make a move before someone asks you about the status of a project,
  
• avoid replying that you're waiting for X or Y to complete a task when somebody questions about the task status you're responsible of (That's what I call cockdodging!)

That's something that you can balance with a smart, ingenious mind, charisma and a really good idea that makes the rest of the team happy to work with...
But if you're not that kind of person and you just behave as "creative", you're just a dead corpse on the boat.

Since good ideas do not happen here and there, I advise the reader to do the best to behave well in a team, be cooperative, and organized.

Technorati Tags: cernio, creative, push-or-pull,
cockdodging,

Sitofono at the EADP Paris Congress

We are presenting the Sitòfono product at the EADP Congress, the international conference on Phone Directories and Yellow Pages, held in Paris at the Westin Hotel.

The place is fantastic, luxurious furniture and great staff.
I've taken some pictures, have a look on my Flickr EADP tagset

Just a note: yesterday we were looking for a good, cheap restaurant. We looked at the Pages Jaunes, the printed version. As an "always connected" person (sort of), I've missed several things:

• Customer rating: how can I judge the quality of the restaurant? At last, we had to personally check with a stroll to the place
• Enhanced details: opening hours? Available places? Does it provide vegetarian diet?
• Promptness: look for the street address in the list of streets, get the map page number, x and y coordinates, look for the street in the square, elaborate directions
• Check with a phone call: in this case, since I don't speak french I hadn't called but I usually call the restaurant and ask few questions if I cannot get all the information presented above, and eventually I book a table.

What if all this happens in a single web page?


Technorati Tags: cernio, eadp, yellow pages, directory

Call me free, Call me free, Call me free...

In implicit reply to Imran Ali's article "Phone from HERE", Luca Filigheddu presents a practical use of Sitòfono in the two most active social networks: LinkedIn and Facebook.
I've posted a comment on Imran Ali's article, but it's still under approval, and it says something like this: I do not see anything new in the Corraleta move, since Sitòfono (and other web based click-to-call services, to be honest) can be embedded in every HTML page by following few, simple instructions. I mean, it's good that "Phone from Here" provides a link to be placed on LinkedIn, but to be honest I see that as a "me too" move, something like "jump on the social network hype".

Besides, Jaxtr, which just raised 10M$ of funds, is providing a call me free button that clearly aims at social networks and which targets people with low or zero knowledge of HTML. Indeed, Jaxtr provides a "wizard" to ease the publishing procedure for the most famous web sites and applications, like:

• Facebook
• Orkut
• MySpace
• Hi5
• LinkedIn
• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• Xanga
• Flickr
• Craigslist
• eBay
• AIM (away screen)

Moreover, it presents a simple step-by-step instruction to embed the "call me" code in your e-mail client. That is really a fantastic user experience!

What's different in the Jaxtr move? They are targeting the community users, the millions of users that cannot speak HTML, by providing an it-cannot-be-easier procedure that hides all the techie stuff.

I consider it a really good move, as far as the quality of user experience is concerned. However, I pose a question: what will be the "returning value" for such a nice feature? Will it be money (it actually captures paying customers), reputation (it strengthens the corporate identity), experience (it's the starting point for future, better services)?

Other thoughtful questions are hidden in Luca's comment on the Jaxtr funding in his article "Challenge: make pay for a valuable service"



Technorati Tags: cernio, jaxtr, venture, capital, VC, sitofono,

Evaluating a software start-up

Following my previous post on "The Business of Software", I would like to introduce an interesting "checklist" that helps evaluate the potential of a software start-up, from a VC's point of view.
A good start up should be measured on these points

1. Management Team: they should be competent and experienced professionals with sufficient background on the technology/product to be marketed
   
2. Market Attractiveness: high entry barriers to keeps out competitors, negotiation power for suppliers/buyers, no good substitutes, could be a complement to dominant products
   
3. Compelling offering: it has to be a "must have" product, service, or solution
   
4. Customer interest: evidence of a large willing-to-pay user base
   
5. Credibility: a case history, a reference client, a testimonial gives credibility to the product and the technology
   
6. Business model: VCs want early growth, rapid break-even
   
7. Flexibility: strategy and product offering must be adaptable to new inputs from competitors, new technologies, new user needs
   
8. Payoff potential: the ROI must be high (>25%). It usually forces the start-up to develop a product, which could be risky but more profitable than providing solutions and software services.
   

The author, Michael A. Cusumano, explains the meaning of each point and applies them systematically on real-world companies like Numega, Cybergnostic, firstRain.
Even if it is an a posteriori analysis, it gives a clue on how to evaluate a potentially explosive startup.


Needless to say, I suggest a deep and reasoned reading of his book.

Technorati Tags: cernio, cusumano, startup, innovation, product

Nokia on mobile advertising: next google?

Nokia announced recently on its forum developer network that two new mobile advertising services are available for developers.

Learn how to implement targeted mobile advertising

Programming for Nokia devices is changing the mediascape. Two new mobile advertising services are transforming the way people use their phones: Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Connector. Nokia Ad Service is a fully managed service for advertisers to conduct targeted advertising on mobile services and applications. It consists of a group of mobile publishers forming a mobile ad network and a platform to deploy, manage and optimize mobile advertising campaigns. The other service, Nokia Advertising Connector, accommodates third-party publishers and advertising aggregator companies that want to extend to relevant mobile advertising. Nokia Advertising Connector operates as an intelligent switch, selecting between text, visual, audio, and video ads — depending on the user's context — and feeding the ad to the device.

For more information, check the official nokia press releases

Is Nokia going to compete with Google in what has been the only steadily growing revenue stream after the dotcom bubble?



Technorati Tags: cernio, nokia, ads, mobile

We're Pulver100!

As Luca announced today, Abbeynet, the company I work for, has been awarded with the presence on the Pulver 100 listing 2007

The Pulver 100 is the first and foremost listing of privately held growth companies that represent the future of IP communications. Originally introduced in 2002, the pulver 100 recognizes companies that have substantial real-world deployments and enjoy significant growth rates. The pulver 100 has become an indicator of the leading edge in IP communications, and the companies named to the 2007 Pulver 100 represent the future of the IP communications industry.

One more thing is worth to be mentioned. Luca notices there is a big name that is missing:

The big absence ? Skype. Skype is not a Pulver 100 company this year.

This fact confirms, somehow, the idea that Skype(1) is not(2) doing(3) innovation(4)

Technorati Tags: cernio, pulver100, Luca Filigheddu, skype, innovation, voice20,

Click to call drives the automotive innovation

What's better than calling the Restaurant nearest you've booked a table for two to tell them you're a bit late, while still driving on the highway heading to the restaurant?

Google partners with BMW and together they release a really innovative application:

[..] users in Germany can send a business listing found on Google Maps Deutschland directly to cars enabled with the BMW Assist service. Drivers can then set it as the destination for the in-car navigation system, or they can call the business from within the car. No more having to write down the address and re-enter it in the car -- now you can just click and drive!

Check the whole news here:

Technorati Tags: cernio, click-and-drive, google, BMW,

Innovation Resistance (Part Three)

Following the previous posts a bout Innovation resistance Part One and Part two, here is the third and last part.

As I already said, resistance to any form of change is a natural reaction. I tried to classify the first three forms in this "post trilogy", here is the last and more general one.

The third form of innovation resistance is the lifestyle lock-in.
When we propose innovation, we are always replacing or modifying someone's habits and way of thinking. We are removing the safe harbors of being acquainted, accustomed to this or that behaviour.
When we find someone that has made the first step to change (the so-called early adopter), he/she finds often stuck in a dilemma: "if everything has been working fine so far, why do I have to change?". People go back to their habits at the first "serious" difficulty. What's never clear is how to quantify the "serious" value. People tend to change lifestyle only if they see that there is a net advantage in changing.
Example. The video recorder allows timeshifting, so that you are not put into slavery by TV schedules: how many times you hear people saying "Sorry, today I can't go out because I have to watch the latest XYZ episode"? The timeshifting "feature" came up only after some early adopter put it in practice, in real life. Word of mouth did the rest.


Technorati Tags: cernio, innovation, marketing,

Innovation resistance (Part Two)

In a previous post I started talking about Innovation resistance (part One). In this post I presented the first (and the most common) type of resistance, which comes in the form of "Truth" by Conventional Wisdom.

The second form is the lack of necessity.
One of the most common sentences is "640 k ought to be enough for anyone". Even if it's a false Bill Gates Quote, it resembles the main idea of being satisfied with the things you already have.
Do you remember people speaking like:
- "Why do I have to bring a telephone with myself? I don't need it. If I cannot be reached right now, I'll be available at home, or at work."
- "I don't want to spend 400$ for a GPS navigator: my tourist guide and driving map are enough, for 7$ each. Anyway, I never get lost." :))

The Lack of necessity is a form of "luddism", that is to say we are skeptical about the fact that we may need something new.

An "old" story about a fisherman and a businessman describes the situation in which we find a typical "resistance" from lack of necessity. It's worth a read: even if you disagree either with the fisherman or the businessman, you've got the hint to think about it...

[Continues...]

Technorati Tags: cernio, innovation, marketing,

Innovation resistance (Part One)

The main foe a start-up company has to face is innovation resistance.
Resistance manifests itself in various forms, and in different moments of the product lifecycle.




The most common form (and the first to come up) is the Truth of Conventional Wisdom.
This form of collective knowledge, sometimes misidentified as "common sense" does not take into account new, previously unknown knowledge.
Anything that goes against the CW is slowed down in its race. Any technological innovation had to slowly permeate the collective thinking, to create awareness and confidence in order to overcome this problem.

[Continues...]


Technorati Tags: cernio, innovation, marketing,

Web design is CRAP!

First of all, I want to thank Giacomo for citing me as a source of book titles :)

He points out what is the Zero principle of design: "if you want to break the rules you first need to know the rules to be broken".

And the rules are CRAP :)

That is to say, Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity.

1) Contrast
The idea behind contrast is to avoid elements on the page that are merely similar. If the elements [...] are not the same, then make
them very different.

2) Repetition
Repeat visual elements of the design throughout the piece. [...] This
develops the organization and strenghtens the unity.

3) Alignment
Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarly. Every element should have some visual connection with another element on the page.

4) Proximity
Items relating to each other should be grouped close together. When several items are in close proximity to each other, they become one visual unit rather than several separate units.

Rules, conventions, and the "common sense" build up what is a good design.
The thing is, what makes a "good design" is not what makes an "excellent and innovative design".
What makes an innovative design is something that goes beyond common sense, rules, conventions.
It is about creating something really new, something unprecedented.

We all know that, the Web is an infinite source of designs and attempts of establishing a new way of communicating "things".
Most of them are just failures. Until you find something that is really capturing, it stimulates your neurons in a positive way, it programs your will to go on, to follow the Cheshire cat...

[Continues...]

Technorati Tags: cernio, Giacomo Vacca, AIW, Robin Williams, CRAP,

Where are the Voice2.0 developers? Partying somewhere else, I think

Mr Blog recently published an interesting post about "Where are the Voice 2.0 developers?"

He quotes one of my posts, and I needed to stop and open my dictionary because I didn't know the idioms "Talk the talk, walk the walk".

PhoneGnome has offered a free API for almost a year now. But where are the innovators? We even offered to provide a free PhoneGnome box to those publishing apps to the User Contributed Library.

People say they want this stuff. They can talk the talk, but can they walk the walk?

English language improvements apart :), I want to clarify this point: my company released a "Voice Over Web" SDK in May, 2006 right during the VON Europe conference in Stockholm, and I was happy to see that Phonegnome has been following a well beaten route[1], and that we were heading the same direction.
That is to say, it wasn't my intention to say "I wanna play with that toy".
I was just so delighted that I "placed some bets" after a glance at my crystal ball.

Unfortunately our SDK has been coldly saluted: even if we received praises and some good technical feedback, we haven't seen experiments worth noting -yet.
My opinion is that we came to the party earlier than expected, and the place was nearly deserted. The party people was feasting somewhere else, with widgets, gadgets, del.icio.us ajax scripts and rails, maps, identity and Single Sign On APIs, and so on. Now they finished building their websites, and found themselves in an embarrassing silence. Websites are mute. Websites need Voice.

In fact, during the last two months we've been contacted by a wave of independent developers, entrepreneurs, old friends, all of which are interested in building a "website with Voice in". All of them need to provide a communication tool to their community, all of them need a turnkey solution because they don't want to bother with the "telecommunication matter".


Opening up (or licensing) your technology (or product) to make it as widespread as possible is a strategy that's been historically used to impose well known dominant designs: VHS (over Betamax), Google maps, Intel Centrino (over Transmeta), NTSC in USA and PAL in Europe. It's a combination of open architecture and bandwagon effect.
Everybody wants to ride the tide.

Technorati Tags: cernio, mrblog, voice20, community,

Fast Second: book review

On the verge of writing my previous post I started writing a review on a very interesting book. I was "frightened" of being rough, impolite, offensive somehow to the readers or to the authors.
Then, I had the occasion to read a really crude and earth-shattering review by Joel Spolsky on "Dreaming in Code" (Yep, I read his blog).
All of a sudden, my worries vanished :)

So, here is

My personal review of Fast Second (by C. C. Markides, P. A. Geroski)

It is a really interesting book, where "interesting" is twofold: the ideas expressed are interesting, and the writing style is interesting too, for it provides information by repeating the same concept in different ways. It seems to me that the most interesting thing in this book is the repetition scheme in itself.

In fact, it helps the reader by just writing the concepts twice or more, in order that the reader doesn't need to re-read the same sentence more than once. Memorization is easier because information is redundant and presented from different viewpoints (like 2D and 3D representation).

That is to say, it could have been written in half the paper, but it wouldn't have been such a light reading on such a complex matter. Books like this can be read on a noisy flight near the turbines, with a crying baby on your side, without the need to concentrate on the topic.

Uhmmm, what's missing here?

Oh yeah, I forgot the topic on which this book is focused on! The book is about competitive innovation in the mass market, it clearly advocates the strategy of waiting for a settlement of the technology evolution, then enter the mass market (well, actually it is "build a rather inexistent one") just before (or shortly after) a dominant design appears, and when most of Startups are running out of fuel.

What I don't understand is how such an ecosystem can sustain itself, and how can I estimate such a high risk (technical and financial) of entering in a typically narrow time window with big investments, which are needed to consolidate the product and create the market.

My Advice

Similar "redundant" books have been written and edited by Kathy Sierra and are called "Head First": they are far more capturing and interesting than Fast Second, and I advice to buy them if you want to stuff more things in your brain with lesser effort.

Technorati Tags: cernio, fast second,
Joel Spolsky, Kathy Sierra,