Monthly Archive for May, 2011

Nokia plunges into emerging markets with Series 40 platform

Published on May 30, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Mobile technology is spreading like wildfire in developing markets, and application developers often find themselves scrambling to keep up.

In Asia, mobile subscribers are growing at by 20 percent every year, and will total more than 3 billion by the end of this year.

Cue Nokia’s Series 40 Web App platform, the company’s bid to nail down emerging markets early in the game, while extending news, entertainment and information services to millions of new mobile users. Series 40 phones may look outmoded in Silicon Valley, but given their adoption in developing markets throughout Asia and Africa, they just might be the world’s most relevant handheld device. Nokia certainly thinks so [Source].

These markets in Asia, in particular, have embraced the platform’s functionality. Developers across the continent are using Nokia’s web tools to build diverse apps for the masses. Highlighting these success stories, Nokia has created a web video series featuring developers talking about how the Series 40 platform has extended their reach.

New Apps Aim for Social Serendipity In Real Life

Published on May 25, 2011 in Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

People have created a web of connections online through social networks. But a new wave of apps aim to help people create spontaneous connections when they arrive at specific locations, giving rise to temporary social networks that are built around a place and a time.

LoKast, a proximity-based media sharing service, is updating its mobile app today to enable local chatting among strangers and other social tools. Two of the start-ups at TechCrunch Disrupt this week Karizma and Sonar showed off the ability for people to connect with others right around them for video chats or live interactions. A couple of months back, Color made a splash in the photo-sharing app space with the promise of letting people share pictures with the people immediately around them.

We’ve already seen some of this momentum with apps like Yobongo, a new chatting app that brings people together in one area. Local question and community-assisted recommendations sites like LocalMind and CrowdBeacon help get answers for people from the nearby community. Gay dating app Grindr also works to bring people together locally. But many of those are targeted on a larger area, not just built around one specific location [Source].

Google drops another $55M on Calif. wind farm

Published on May 25, 2011 in Greentech. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Google has invested $55 million in a wind energy farm in southern California that will generate up to 1,550 megawatts of power — bringing the search giant’s total investments in clean energy up to $400 million.

The farm is located in Tehachapi, Calif., “where the Mojave sands meet the Tehachapi Mountains,” according to a blog post by Google’s renewable energy guru Rick Needham. The deal does not involve a power purchase agreement — meaning Google is only investing money in the project because it believes it will generate some kind of financial return. The first several projects in the Alta Wind Energy Center are already complete and the wind farm is generating 720 megawatts of power [source].

YouTube hits 3 billion daily views on its sixth birthday

Published on May 25, 2011 in High Tech & Media and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Proving yet again that it’s an unstoppable video juggernaut, YouTube announced today that it surpassed 3 billion daily page views this past weekend — a 50 percent increase over last year.

That’s a pretty good birthday present for the company, which launched six years ago in May 2005. On its fifth birthday last year, the company announced that it had hit 2 billion daily views, which was just six months after it hit 1 billion daily views.

With the rise of 4G networks and faster smartphones this year, I suspect YouTube will hit 4 billion daily views before its next birthday [Source].

Facebook reportedly partnering with Spotify for music service

Published on May 25, 2011 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Facebook plans to launch a new music-streaming service powered by Spotify in as little as two weeks, according a report by Forbes. The partnership will only be in countries that already have a Spotify presence, which excludes the U.S.

When launched, Facebook users in Spotify-enabled countries–such as Sweden, France, and the U.K.–will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeeds. Users that click on the Spotify icon will first install the service on the desktop and then allow users to stream millions of songs for free through Facebook.

Another interesting aspect of the service is the ability to let a user and his or her Facebook friends listen to music at the same time. It could be pretty neat to listen to new music and talk about it in real-time with multiple friends in one online spot [Source].

Twitter officially acquires Tweetdeck

Published on May 25, 2011 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

After plenty of speculation and reports, Twitter announced officially today on its blog that the company had acquired popular third-party client Tweetdeck.

“This acquisition is an important step forward for us,” the company wrote. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about. In order to support this important constituency, we will continue to invest in the TweetDeck that users know and love.”

After Twitter’s purchase of iPhone app Tweetie and its partnership with TwitPic, it wasn’t exactly shocking to hear the company wanted to buy one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, which has versions available for desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android. The company has indicated in the past it wanted to better control the user experience, and such, acquisitions like this are the easiest way to accomplish that goal [Source].

Leading Across Borders? Don’t Change a Thing

Published on May 17, 2011 in International Business. 0 Comments Tags: .

The assumption that people are motivated differently around the world — especially in Asia — and that leaders must adapt their behavior accordingly is wrong. Having led and managed people in eight countries across three continents, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Regardless of geographic location or culture, what drives people to the highest level of engagement is innately human and universal. Thus, great leadership looks the same wherever you are.

Around the world, the most effective executives are the ones who draw energy from a clear sense of purpose and a set of deeply held personal values. They also energize their employees by ensuring that their expectations about three overarching elements of work — the nature of their role, the work environment, and their professional development (RED) — are in line with the organization’s purpose. These are central themes of my new book, Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders [Source].

Visa Is Making The E-Wallet Real

Published on May 12, 2011 in Global Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

We’ve heard a lot about the notion of a digital wallet, but the tech itself seems slow to arrive apart from one or two regional experiments, and the promise of more exciting tech in the future. Now Visa’s changing all that with a new plan to make the e-wallet, including wireless payments, a reality–and soon, too.

Visa, which calls itself a “global leader in electronic payments” has just announced what it’s calling the “next generation of payments solutions.” It means, quite specifically, the technology and financial data infrastructure that’ll supplant the little card payment machines we’re all used to swiping our card through to pay at a checkout or restaurant–a tech that’s being swiftly overtaken by digital commerce, mobile commerce, and “burgeoning social networking commerce environments.” Basically Visa’s seen the writing on the wall for the way its credit card systems currently work, and is planning to reinvent everything into a “secure cross-channel digital wallet” and a “range of customized mobile payments services” tailored to local markets around the world. This is a good thing for us consumers, and probably a shrewd business move by Visa itself.

The new digital wallet will arrive in the U.S. and Canada in the fall of 2011, and it’ll work by storing Visa and non-Visa payments data. It will support NFC payments through Visa’s payWave system and it’ll cover all sorts of payment situations, including e-commerce, mobile commerce, micropayments, social networks, and person-to-person payments. A long list of financial institutions are already on board, including U.S. Bank and the Royal Bank of Canada–indicating this really is a thing that’s happening, rather than a far-fetched patent [Source].