Inspire

Whrrl: Mobile Social Networking Using LBS, Reviews and Recommendations

A great new app for mobile social networking, LBS and recommendations in this post on Technology Review (MIT). I love Magitti even more than Whrrl as it is a more integrated and holistic way to give more relevant recommendations using social network analysis more elaborately.

Furthermore, the below quotes touch upon the importance of lifelogging using mobile phones as a way to authenticity, self awareness and filtering. In my view clearly the way forward, followed up by tight integration of key life goals and aspirations in the long run.

"The idea of community-generated reviews is, of course, not new. The popular recommendation service Yelp, for example, is already integrated into Google Maps. And the concept of locating friends using a mobile phone has also been around for years; Loopt, a service that runs on Sprint and Boost Mobile phones, is one of the most common examples. Whrrl, which can also be downloaded onto BlackBerry Pearl, Curve, and Nokia N95 smart phones, is commonly compared to both types of service. But it differs from either in that it combines aspects of both. In addition, Vengroff explains, Whrrl has collected details on establishments in 17 cities, which allows the service to provide fine-tuned local search, letting the user narrow down the hunt for, say, a café to one that has outdoor seating and vegetarian options and is recommended by at least one friend.

In the future, she suspects, location-based services will include more predictive features. For instance, instead of explicitly requiring you to write a review, the software might recognize how often you visit a restaurant and infer that it is a favorite. "Eventually, I think that a whole lot of exciting technology will emerge that figures out how to reduce the burden on the user," Choudhury says. "There will always be the case where user input will be important, but when we find the sweet spot, that's when I think it will take off."

My Personal Vision on Mobile Phones, Mobile Internet and Authenticity

Connectivity breeds positive outcomes.

I would like to extend this idea a little to a possible logical (positive conclusion). At first for the rich countries, later on for underdeveloped countries as well. Here goes:

The overarching theme of our times in my view is authenticity and self realisation. The mobile phone and mobile internet in this respect is a key driver and enabler/facilitator. Why ?

1) The more we share (the more open we are), the more transparent we are. Open APIs, GPS data, photos, videos, blog posts, tweets, clickstream data and increasingly attention data concerning what we read and watch (see APML) are examples. This sharing (increasingly using our mobile phones) stimulates authenticity and honesty as inconsistenties and lies are exposed to ourselves, our family, our social network, our peers and even the market/public as a whole.

2) Information overload begets us the question of what is important to us ? Choices… Choices are based on your identity (who am I ? what are my values ? what is core to me ?). Filtering (using our mobile phones) based increasing identity awareness stimulates authenticity. If we are overwhelmed with options, possibilities and choices, we are drawn to ourselves.

3) Change is everywhere and seems to speeding up. This creates stress in people. In most cases, people can find their core personality in these circumstances as it makes us naked in our needs and wants. As a result, authenticity comes to the fore. As a mobile phones is present with us almost all the time, it seems likely this will be a key gateway to learn about ourselves in these circumstances.

4) Increasingly, (mobile) technologies are on the market for the automated detection of deception and lies. Examples are Facial Coding techniques integrated into and applied to videos and presentations. If you lie, certain particular facial expressions are salient. These expressions can be logged and analyzed using technology. Increasingly, these techniques will be incorporated into mobile phones. As a result, authenticity becomes not only a valuable choice (see point 1, 2 and 3) but also a necessity in certain instances.

5) Mobile phones transform conversational techniques due to ‘presence’ capabilities. If my loves ones and social network can follow all my updates and actions on Twitter, my blog, Facebook etc…this transforms my real-life interactions. The basic questions are skipped as they are already clear using mobile phones and mobile internet. In the past, the basic questions were a necessity due to the lack of the mentioned apps. As a result, real-life conversations focus on more deep questions related to emotions, feelings and intimacy. Shallow, factual questions are more unnecessary. All of this might stimulate authentic conversations and authenticity.

In short, the mobile phone is not only a fantastic connectivity and thus productivity, growth and empowerment tool but also increasingly IMO a tool for higher levels of trust, authenticity, self realization, transparency and honesty.

This is not a sure scenario, just a likely scenario IMO. It is evenly possible to construct an opposite case/scenario with fear (instead of hope and trust) as a key theme as a result of using a mobile phone and mobile internet (including Internet of Things/UbiComp). Fear due to increasing control by classic institutions and even ordinary people. Fear -> more closed systems -> negative outcomes across the board including Less authenticity. Yet again, I am an optimist :-)

Stats on Digital Media - A Global View from Morgan Stanley by Mary Meeker

Great overview, recommended viewing. Watch the part on China and mobile. I was recently in China for one week with 40 Dutch entrepreneurs and innovators in digital media. It was my highlight of this year so far. Impressive stats on the Chinese mobile market like 550 million mobile phone users, 56 million mobile internet users (while 3G services are just one month active in this huge market) and China Mobile is 4 times the market value of Vodafone and thus the largest mobile operator (MNO) in the whole world. Clearly, in a few years most mobile innovation will come from China due to their incredible ambition, growth (potential), economies of scale and availability of hundreds of thousands of highly educated and eager mobile/IT graduates across the whole mobile ecosystem. Yearly, that is ;-) Think about the implications of these numbers for a few minutes...

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Tim O'Reilly on The Future of Web 2.0 during the Web 2.0 Expo 2008

Within two weeks my new startup company will be announced. It is about mobile internet. Why ? Tim O'Reilly shows some reasons in his presentation below. Web 2.0 will extend its life on mobile and will include all mobile sensors. Great presentation with new case studies, passion, drive and enthousiasm.

A Search Engine for Virtual Worlds by Google and Linden Lab

Search within Virtual Worlds is reaching the next level in post from Technology Review on searching more effectively and socially within Second Life. Tagging is useful but fallable. Long term, objects in virtual worlds will in my view be recognized just like in (Mobile) Augmented Reality.

"In addition to being able to search for objects, residents can now look for information--about hobbies, for example--in each other's profiles. Dzwigalski says she expects that being able to search profile information will improve Second Life's social features.

Before Linden Lab announced its new tool, third-party companies, such as Electric Sheep, were working on their own to improve search in Second Life and other virtual worlds. "The search capability in the worlds has been historically quite basic," says Giff Constable, who leads the Electric Sheep's software business unit. Constable says that his company was sending bots into Second Life to pick up virtual objects and extract data from them in order to compile search results. "The analogy would be to Alta Vista in the early days of the Web, before Google came around and became able to rank things for popularity," Constable says. He adds that his company hopes to take advantage of the new search tool from Linden Lab and will focus on providing additional tools for social networking and e-commerce."

Event Update: Second Mobile Monday Amsterdam and PICNIC07 / Cross Media Week Amsterdam

Just finished my favorite week of this year encompassing two key events : Mobile Monday Amsterdam (MoMoAMS) and PICNIC / PICNIC07 (also known as Cross Media Week Amsterdam). In one word: inspiring ! Both were in the second edition. Below some recommendations and sharing from my side...

Mobile Monday Amsterdam : Mobile Communities
As one of the founders and organisers I found it very thrilling to see around 230 internet, mobile and marketing professionals in one room. Among them many of the leading twitterazi, thinkers and innovators in the Netherlands. The presentation by Tomi T Ahonen - author of Digital Korea and Communities Dominate Brands and leading mobile thinker (Mobile as the 7th Mass Medium) - was impressive. You can find in presentation and video format on our blog : presentation and video by Tomi T Ahonen on Mobile Communities. Some take-away case studies: Kart Writer, Flirtomatic, CyWorld, Any Question Answered (AQA), mobile idle screen tickers and OCR recognition/translation software for mobile phones. The presentation above contains more mobile community examples than the video. It also includes the best mobile internet sources around as recommended by leading thinker Tomi T Ahonen.

PICNIC / PICNIC07

• Presentation of Jyri Engestrom from Jaiku the next stage for social objects/networks/graphs and FaceRank instead of PageRank. FaceRank is based on social proximity (same connections), physical proximity (offline closeness), shared social objects and shared taste/values. Jyri was our first keynote spreaker at Mobile Monday Amsterdam. I was enthrilled by his deepening of his vision in just a few months. Definitely, one of the leading thinkers on social networks in my view.
• PhotoSynth with a incredible zoom-in and zoom-out function with breathtaking beauty and precision. Good to combine with Pixsta and Etsy.com
• Pablos Holman with a terrific and funny talk on different practical hacking stories and cases
• Stefan Sagmeister with an outstanding and highly creative overview of his work, just stunning !
• Alex Steffen with heartfelt stories on the environment and practical and positive case studies helping our world to be a better place. This video from TED by Steffen shows us the way
• Polar Rose for content analysis and searching photos
• Jack Meyers on branding and marketing in virtual worlds. En passant he gave a terrific overview of digital marketing trends worldwide, even on behavioral targeting !
• David Burden with a sublime presentation on the Metaverse Roadmap, Second Life, Augmented Reality, Mirror Worlds/Google Earth and Lifelogging. And how they interact and converge. One second favorite speech of this great week. Thrilling ! Soon you can download his presentation in this link from Platform Virtuele Werelden (PVW) and Jack Meyers prezzie is already here. Staggering to see a live presentation of real-time flight information fed into Second Life from Google Earth, opens up huge possibilities. Also, communicating with your 2L avatar using RSS. David will speak later this year on the Metaverse Summit where I can see him again :-)
• Portable Social Networks: a great workshop with Jyri Engestrom, Marc Canter, Dick Hardt, Biz Stone, Yme Bosma and many other leading thinkers. This was highly content driven (moving/synching/federating social networks, Identity 2.0, microformats, openID, lock-in, business models) and inspiring. I felt like witnessing the leading edge worldwide in social networking brainstorming for yet unknown solutions to complex, urgent and important problems and issues. No final answers as yet while I left the room but it was very special. I really hope these kind of sessions will become more commonplace going forward.
• Dennis Crowley on social networks, tagging the real world with cases like Sharkrunner and Plundr. His prezzie resonated strongly with the one from David Burden integrating real time, real data within games, virtual world and alternate reality games. 
• Nicolas Nova on augmented reality and twittering with your cat :-D  Here you can see his blog
• Adam Greenfield on Urban Landscapes, Gaming and Computing. Mobile Devices + Shared Visualisations+Tagging = Social Object = Jyri's presentation :) Extending the insights of Jyri Engestrom on social objects on location as a social object. More later in my blog and presentations
• eLens from MIT as an insightful example of city guides with personal and social overlays
• The Urban Garden: self organised bus stop with user generated content/tagging, craigslist data, narrowcasting and feeds from ubiquitous computing
• Emotion Maps and Biosensing
• Ben Cerveny on serious gaming, game culture, simulations, multidimensional and visual representations of pervasive and ubiquitous computing combined with augmented reality and GeoWeb. This was my ultimate highlight of this week. Shivers all over ! Complexity Science applied to games and real life. An extension of David Weinbergers' presentation on Everything is Miscallenous integrating different external data sources and categorizations on real life and serious gaming case studies. Here your can see his video from the LIFT Conference this year. His talk on PICNIC07 was different however, in my view even much better.

And of course all the dinners, talks and networking before, in-between en afterwards. Thanks to all who contributed, helped and organized ! See you soon at another inspiring web 2.0/3.0 or mobile event. I am planning to go to the next Mobile Monday Amsterdam (november), LeWeb3 (december) and Metaverse Summit 2007 (december; as a speaker, my first international speech on an inspiring event on lifelogging, augmented reality, web 3.0 and virtual worlds together with a.o. Jamais Cascio and David Burden).

Book Recommendation: Theory U from C. Otto Scharmer from MIT

I am reading a remarkable, high-impact, deep, original, inspiring and profound book from MIT called Theory U written by C. Otto Scharmer. It is difficult to summarize this outstanding book due to its enormous richness but in my view and experience it is in the league of the works from Jared Diamond, Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold. It is a spiritual, personal and business journey combined. Very special indeed. And it resonates with an incredible amount of my own experiences and observations, especially within my intensive Twitter community as a transformative, open ended journey since March this year.

I just can't stop reading it, every page is so full with ideas. Some hints on topics: blind spots, growth, spirituality, innovation, creativity, leadership, change management, web 2.0, globalization, communities, learning, smart mobs, evolution of organizations, democracy, capitalism, open source, emergence, complexity and many examples from private life, politics (Iraq) and business.

Referenced leading authors are among others (be prepared for a long shot): Brian Arthur, Argyris, Senge, Brand, Carr, Castells, Christensen, Coase, Collins and Porras, Dalai Lama, de Geus, Florida, Friedman, Fukuyama, Gladwell, Goethe, Habermas, Hagel, Hamel, Handy, Hawken, Heidegger, von Hippel, Maslow, Minsky, Mintzberg, Morgan, Nietzsche, Nonaka, Peters, Prahalad, Putman, Sen, Sheldrake, Soros, Steiner, Tolle,   Sun Tzu, Varela, Trompenaars, Weick, Wheatley and Wilber. And all combined in a structured and new way...amazing.

Highly recommended ! This clearly is my favorite book of 2007, no doubt about that :-D

The Impact of P2P and Peer Production on our Economy, Society and our Digital Media Future

Just discovered a new inspiring speaker via the blog Smart Mobs called Michel Bauwers. Below his presentation with a 50 minute timeframe on P2P, peer-to-peer networks, communities, co-creation, mass collaboration, open innovation, FabLabs, wikinomics and peer production.

Highly recommended as this is one broad overview of key trends in our economy, society and digital media infrastructure. It is all-encompassing and thought provoking in many many ways. And it is clear. It integrates the views from Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, Howard Rheingold, Kevin Kelly, Don Tapscott, Henry Jenkins, Neil Gerschenfeld, Chris Anderson, David Weinberger and Alex Steffen in a new way. However, I do miss the impact of biotech and nanotech on his vision of peer production.

My 2 cents concerning this video:
- I do believe that open source, commons-based, non market peer production will grow the coming decades, both in the immaterial as well as material world (using Web/FabLabs).
- I like the distinction between hierarchical systems, decentralised systems and distributed systems and its impact on self organisation and fluidity (reminded me of David Weinbergers' latest book on categorisation). As the world clearly is moving at the speed of light towards to innovation, agility and flexibility, the distributed (web and P2P) model seems to become the dominant model, both organisationally as well as technically.
- I support the idea that the increasing autonomy and empowerment of individuals and their social networks/peers will reverse the power balance. Sources of trust are in peers, no longer in key institutions. Strong institutions with power are relevant and effective in situations where individuals are not empowered (enough), these are increasingly a thing of the past. Indeed, Eamonn Kelly - CEO of Global Business Network - wrote a piece on the impact of the emergence, self organisation, bottom-up culture on global issues. Additionally, Paul Hawken recently made the growing impact of NGOs explicit in this book Blessed Unrest.
- I dig the idea that peer production is about intrinsic motivation, authenticity, love and passion. And that's precisely why these initiatives thrive, both economically as well as ethically. If you self-select a project, YOU are in there with your whole mind and heart, including all your social and ecological values and norms. This means in my view that key improvements in our ecological and social agenda worldwide will be driven by these peer produced projects and not primarily by for-profit organisations (e.g. WiserEarth, WorldChanging etc.).

My Own Presentation on Trends, Digital Media, Marketing, Digital Marketing and Communication: Why Identity, Authenticity and Creativity Will Dominate Our Lives

Here is my presentation on different trends, digital media, web 2.0, web 3.0, marketing, digital marketing and communication/branding. Dutch only as yet, English one will follow soon. Focus is on different technological, environmental, economic and political views (macro perspective) as well as psychological, social and cultural views (micro perspective) and how they intersect, converge and reinforce in many different ways on different levels of analysis.

Key take away: Identity (knowing your intrinsic motivation, purpose and talents), Authenticity (being) and Creativity (doing) as reinforcing themes and values in the emerging and increasingly open space of the next web(s), biotech and ubiquitous computing where the all-encompassing and increasing availability of more granular and personal data of all sorts make the invisible visible and explicit to the benefit of ourselves, our social network, our peers and the market/global brain/humanity as a whole. The essential used to be invisible to the eye....until now and it will bring about massive transformations for the benefit of us all.

Hope you'll enjoy it.

Bruce Sterling on Spimes, the Internet of Things, GeoWeb, RFID, Cradle to Cradle and the Future of the Web

To me Bruce Sterling is one of the most inspiring speakers around. In September, 2007 his latest book will be released called Ascendancies - The Best of Bruce Sterling. I pre-ordered it. Here you can watch his presentation and powerful vision during the LIFT Conference on different important emergent trends like GeoWeb, RFID, Augmented Reality, mobile search, mobile social networks, Internet of Things and sustainability.

Highly recommended as this is in my view one of his best presentations I have seen so far.