This was a post I started to work on over a year ago. As always, other things comes in between and not being paid to blog real work have priority. However, this subject proved to be really interesting and I could see how the wheels of time where moving in direction of my assumptions. The only problem was difficulties in how to illustrate it in a good way, being the main reason for the delay.

Anyway, when I started I defined how access to online content is something that could be done from different layers; the desktop, mobile, social and app layer. I took the three players I felt was most important to illustrate it – Google, Facebook and Apple – all with different approaches to it.

At that point Facebook was the ruler of the social layer, both Google and Apple was on the other hand in the mobile and desktop, although in different forms.

Google managed to control Internet content access through Chrome, Android, Android Apps and Google services online.

Apple, such as Microsoft although not being in the comparison, has both its own desktop OS but also itunes which works closely with its mobile devices. So access could be controlled from the desktop, iPhone and with a not so successful attempt in the cloud, mobile.me

What happened then was a clear indication from both Google and Apple to strengthen certain fronts. Google launched Google+ and Apple launched iCloud. Apple is also making Mac OS moving closer to iOS, which makes me believe we will only have one OS in the end from Apple and one from Google. Integration is key and Apple is the one to look to. Google has made it work from the other direction, integrating Android with the Online Google Services removing the need to connect it to desktop for synchronisation. The addition of Google+ makes it even better where photos taken on the phone is immediately uploaded (something that starts rivaling my use of Flickr).

This forced me to rethink my layers and I changed the order as I realised also Chrome has entered into the apps layer.

So the change became that Android covers Mobile and Apps, Chrome covers Desktop and Apps, iOS mobile and Apps, and Facebook Social and Online content.

So how about facebook? Controlling social is no long-term position. I have claimed before that I don’t believe in them and I stick to that. From my point of view Facebook needs to do one of the following, move down and control another layer such as mobile (which makes more sense then desktop as developing nations such as China, mobile access is growing faster), or join forces with someone not present in social such as Apple or Microsoft. With mobile OS such as android they have all opportunities to get control of the OS, and it is probably just a matter of time before it becomes as easy to change mobile OS as it is to install a new browser on your desktop.

If for a quick moment take in Microsoft, which has not been mentioned, they have a similar situation as Apple. The completely dominate desktops, they have for a long been in mobile and now re-invented their presence, they have a dominant Instant Messenger (IM) that can relate to social, and they have MSN.com. Problem is they have not done it well or even to early so they lost momentum. They are already involved with Facebook which shows they are aware of what they are lacking.

I would dare to say that we are now approaching a scenario where we only have two layers to talk about, an access layer (access to online content) and a social layer. Google is currently the only one covering both.

So what to expect next? The traditional layers, where there is no integration between devices as in the good old times (Nokia are you listening?) will be gone and devices run the same OS, social is going to be an integrated part of access to online content, no matter from what device it is being done.

Each player needs to decide if they want to be part of setting the rules creating the eco-system or offer services and content on it and compete for the space. A scenario painted up is with Facebook moving down establishing itself as a “Face OS” side by side with Google and Apple.

An interesting aspect of thinking in these terms is that the game has changed. Previous rulers such as Nokia, Motorola etc has lost dominance for software companies. But, I do think that old content providers such as Yahoo could have a comeback if playing their cards right. No matter how good the services are, content is king and Google has come to power by making others content accessible. Someone like Yahoo has the users and the content, both external but also created by their own in contrast to Google. Yahoo also has a social service that is not used to its full potential, Flickr and the previous Delicious. So, Yahoo has all the assets but is lacking the vision.

Microsoft is currently creating the right alliances so they are to be watched. If joining forces with both Facebook and Nokia (remember Connecting People?) they would immediately grab a stronghold, and then cementing the desktop position with MSN moving closer to social interaction and Facebook integration (think Tencent’s QQ).

Players such as Sony also seems to think in the same terms but take another approach, the househould appliances approach. they are integrating TVs and other stuff with Sony Ericsson phones and Playstation. It could be an interesting way too but the social layer is missing? And this is something that Google is doing right, they are not establishing Google+ as a new walled community, instead it is put as a layer on top of all their services and slowly being integrated.

I still believe that Openid will be the key going forward, something not requiring you to establish new accounts, instead use an existing membership to interact on new ground. However, we are entering exciting times!

The change in mobile usage and access to online services made we to play with what to expect next. Words all around us today are: cloud, android, iOS, apps, widgets, tablet etc etc. Google is an interesting company to look at and what they have done. Their latest developments are especially interesting, the launch of Android and Chrome OS. Coming back to that later, I looked at the technology side. Services such as Oauth is gaining ground and it makes a lot of sense: “OAuth provides a method for users to grant third-party access to their private resources (e.g. photos, videos, contact lists) stored somewhere without sharing their passwords. It also provides a way to grant limited access (in scope, duration, etc.). For example, a web user (resource owner) can grant a printing service (client) access to her private photos stored at a photo sharing service (server), without sharing her username and password with the printing service. Instead, she authenticates directly with the photo sharing service which issues the printing service delegation-specific credentials.” (clipped from Introducing OAuth 2.0.)

All these things shows a trend how the web access is being decentralized, meaning you are not only using your computer and a browser to access an online service. You might be using an app on your phone to add a todo on rememberthemilk.com or a widget to follow your twitter feed, or even an online photo service to access your photos stored on flickr. On the other hand, a development I hold my fingers crossed for is the consolidation of ownership for you own content. Why keep differ friendslists/addressbooks on different services when you instead can decide on one, say Google Contacts, and let all other get restricted access to it in order to match you with friends. So no more need to create new accounts and share information about yourself. I have for a long time used openid but it never really got traction but offered a single sign on solution and automatic registration at those services supporting it. Same thing happening with photos and music with what is called “the cloud”. Where your resources are located in one place and then shared with the devices or services who need to access it.

So, what does this take us in the future? One company to not underestimate is Facebook. Have a dominating control of your social network you are forced to be there in order to connect with them. There is probably no way Facebook would happily opening up the gates. This is shown by Google’s recent decision to turn of the connection that allowed Facebook to access Google Contacts in order to match you with friends. Reason? because it was only one way with Facebook giving nothing back. Facebook has moved from a closed community to an open where everyone can join and practically all information is accessible to anyone. At the same time they have managed to make sure there is only a one-way flow in, nothing going out to any other services. Facebook gained popularity as you could connect with your friends and play games and other stuff. They are now moving include communication introducing “a new way” to communicate by combining all mediums so that you can from “inside facebook” communicate also with people outside and not members, making sure you don’t leave for some other service.

So, what can threaten them? Well as always, the turn of time…What is happening today in normal usage? As mentioned above, online services is increasingly being accessed through applications. If you have tried out the Facebook application it is nothing close to the same user experience as the website. It is merely for reading status updates from friends. This I see as their biggest threat and why they probably have already passed the summit. What to expect if not doom? That the Facebook platform moves out from the browser in the same way as Google have acted. A Facebook browser or even a Facebook OS. That’s the only way they will keep people inside Facebook, continuing to do what they have done before. Take Flock as a good example, it enables you to stay in contact with Facebook and Twitter while surfing the web. M

The scary part, do we really want to be in the hands of companies such as Google and Facebook? Maybe even Microsoft is a better alternative with no hidden agenda of monitoring and tracking you, or? Is free always better when you take the privacy intrusion into account? Spyware has now the same status as virus, but what makes them different from for example Facebook that can spy on your and your friends actions all over the web?

There is one thing for sure, the majority of computer and internet users have no clue of what is happening after they log on and what kind of information they share, what kind of companies that monitor them or why.

The economist posted a few good articles about the data mining/tracking industry that has sprung up, where companies mine and track website visitors and sell information about them to advertisement firms or other companies. One of the biggest bad guys online? Facebook…

Let’s take a look at Facebook and their approach to privacy. According to the time-line provided by EFF in “Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline” , the latest privacy policy you agree to includes this: “When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.” With other words, Facebook started as a closed community and has developed into a global one where your information is freely shared with other companies and ads.

People find what Google knows about you to be scary, how about Facebook? Accessible is:
- Your name
- Location
- Relationships
- Friends (and their friends)
- Interests and hobbies
- Photos
- and then everything outside connected to Facebook as what you Like etc.

With its partners, who implement Facebook connect, you are constantly being monitored and content tailored for you according to everything Facebook know about you. And for many there is not much left to disclose…

WSJ posted one article recently, “Facebook in privacy breach“, where they showed that “Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.”

There has been lof of attention to the subject lately:
The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry
A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name
On the Web’s Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only
What They Know
Watchdog Planned for Online Privacy

Another interesting discussion is about geolocation services. Why do you want to let people know where you are?
Foursquare is a popular one where people check into locations. This means a list is stored of where you often go with the following loopholes: Foursquare’s privacy loopholes.

Most people might not care about it as who would like to do them something bad? Well, think about an angry ex-boy/girlfriend, or some bad people when you get famous or successful. The article How Privacy Vanishes Online touch on an interesting thing, ” “Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,” said Harold Abelson, the computer science professor at M.I.T. “In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.” “

To add to this, don’t forget all the monitoring that can be done by spyware or in your own company (Is your PC watching you? Find out!).

The technology offers so many opportunities, but unfortunately are users still on square one moving forward blindly with closed eyes and at the same time fully embracing the online world and move more and more of their daily business as well as communication and information online.

That’s the thing, Internet feels more secure as you cannot physical see anything threatening, instead it goes on behind the curtain and compared to the issues advertising firms have to target you in the real offline world, online you are completely in their hands, as well as the other ones who are familiar with the dark side…….

Maybe what we need is a simple button on the browser where you can chose 1) “Yes, I want to share my information in order to have content tailored for me on websites I visit”, or 2) “No, I don’t want to share any information about myself.” And maybe will the trend be that services start charging for offering a service if you dont agree to them collecting or using your private information in order to finance the service through targeted advertisement. Just like ad-based business planes before, with the difference they have become a lot more efficient as your information is “all out there”.

The last decade has been Apple’s. It started with the Ipod and then the snowball just got bigger. They are being dubbed and made role-model for innovative companies all over the world. Sometimes I though believe media is the biggest reason they sell as good as they do. So what happened? I have not really put the time and effort into making a serious analysis, instead I am just grabbing a few thoughts that have hit me regarding the latest news such as an App Store for Mac. Few things Apple do are really new, but what they do they do well and they managed to position themselves as a life-syle company so people are blindly buying whatever they throw out! Is that to be innovative? Maybe within branding, in which they excel! Grab some good ideas from small companies, package it nicely and then use your muscles and channels to make people buy them.

One thing is for sure, iPod was never the best MP3 player, neither was it the first. iPhone was not the first smartphone, the first generations was absolutely not very good. But what they did was to take a new approach to cellphones which I give them a lot of credit for. But were they first? iPad was not the first tablet computer, many have tried but not really managed to get through. Apple rode on the iphone hype and delivered an enlarged iPhone in nice package that all Apple wannabe had to buy. Amazon and a lot of other companies have been selling e-readers for a long time and when Apple launched the iPad media started talking about a new way to deliver news(?). Well, no reason to go into media’s incompetence and lack responsibilities. There is a Chinese word I have started to appreciate with the latest technology hype: GenFeng (follow the wind, follow suit) and describes all the people who try to get an identity by buying expensive stuff from for example Apple where you proudly show off the logo to get status. It started with the ipod earphones many years ago. In Shanghai it is especially now about Apple products but also professional DSLR cameras.

With the new OS, blogs and sites are full of praises for Apple’s new approach with an App store for Mac. See for example “Apple’s Mac App Store: This Changes Everything” . Let’s take a break and zoom out. Is this something new? Every heard about Linux and Ubuntu? They have their Software Center where you can download all software you need and also keeps it updated + its for free! Heard about Jolicloud? This is a “cloud os” and the only way to install software is to use their “software center” for downloading apps. And these are a mix of normal stand-alone software and website apps. I think a comment on an article about Jolicloud sums up what I want to say: “With its simple interface, Jolicloud lets you run a web browser and use applications like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Skype, Boxee, Meebo, Dropbox and hundreds of others from one webtop-type interface. Unfortunately, so will Google Chrome OS – when it launches, that is. And unlike Jolicloud, Chrome OS will have the power of the Google brand behind it, not to mention the marketing power of a company so profitable that it’s literally creating new services just to have more places to advertise on the net.” (full article here)

As a conclusion, the most important question I find is if Apple is stimulating innovation in the industry or are companies just playing catch-up with media’s hunt for the next ipod/iphone/ipad killer?

The latest development is now telling me that that the mainstream users and “laggards” and getting into high-tech devices and now is probably the time when we will see more questioning of standardisation and new demands come up in areas such as privacy online! The adoption of Facebook shows that people dont mind settling in to one platform and this seems to be what drives Facebook to take more and more of “internet” and now even offer their own email domain.

Some disclosure:
I started early with the first PC, moved all they way up through the versions until Windows XP where I made the transition to Mac. Extremely satisfied, and I still see Mac Os as the most beautiful and user friendly OS, but the whole media circus is now making me sick. So a few years ago I also bought a cheap laptop and installed ubuntu (which is now my main os). With Ubuntu I can do everything I did with Mac OS and Windows, but it is for free and has been so much more convenient as all software is accessible through the software center. I bought the HTC Desire half a year ago to get a chance to play around with it, and I see much more potential for it than for iOS, both technology wise and from a business perspective. The UI is more attractive with its widgets, and I can imagine tablet manufacturers to have a good chance to compete using Android.

Playing around with Google Apps Market place I am positively surprised. Previously, I have been forced to use services such as Basecamp and Highrise from 37Signals all stand-alone. Now I found apps so they can be fully integrated into Google Apps and Gmail. There are many other useful apps that enable you to add for example fully functional project management tools, either for for free or for a small cost, to your domain.

This is a great way to collaborate online and to cut down on IT costs.

Below is a screenshot of the market place:

Wrote an article recently at my private blog about time for blogging to evolve?. The idea behind is the fact that I have just resumed my private blogging and I realised it is not that convenient when you have gotten used to facebook and twitter. It can all be linked of course but only by those who care to spend the time to do it and find out how to. It is not as easy as pressing the “follow” button on twitter if you want to follow a person.

So the conclusions is, maybe it is time for blogging to evolve and be more user friendly.

I haven’t been blogging for a long time, mainly du to a change of industry but it also since I have had less time to share my thoughts about technology. There was though one post that I started to write on in february and I decided to post this weekend. It is about privacy online and the development of what can be argued to be integrity intruding technologies, in this case the development of facial and pattern recognition technologies.

There was several articles in february that I planned to comment regarding people being tracked down online, but so much time has passed so I don’t even remember my point anymore.What I do remember, which might be old information now, is my thoughts around facial recognition and the recent development in these area that we have seen. What facinates me with these technology developments is the value the bring and the potential to change behavior online. That technologies can change normal usage is of course nothing new, but there is an aspect of it when it could as well have a negative effect on usage. Facial recognition is not new, but the fact that it is becoming available for everyone is an interesting development. That means the ability to find and recognise anyone online. Image search today is very limited and pictures are only found if the have been tagged or contains the used keyword in the name or description, which of course seldom is the case. This is the problem a growing number of facial recognition companies are aiming to solve.

Polar Rose is a browser plugin that lets you discover who is who in any public photo. Photos are tagged by using facial recognition and by assigning a tag to a photo, other photos with that person can be recognised.

Picollator has been in beta mode since january and is a multimedia search and indexing engine. It scans Internet, collects digital pictures and makes the index, matching visual objects in the images by pattern recognition. You can simply upload a photo with people to launch the search process.

TinEye was launched recently and is an image identification-based web search engine, that doesn’t do any facial or pattern recognition, instead it enables you to find matching pictures. This one I have heard was useful on flickr in a case when someone suspected his pictures were used without permission.

There has been reports about Google trying out facial recognition where the tag face is added to show pictures with a face, so it still offers very limited functionality. Reuters has also been testing facial recognition in video search. Another player is Riya. They started out with facial recognition and visual search, but then moved into object recognition by launching Like.com that allows you to find similar looking products.

Among these facial recognition products – Riya is trying a business model where they utilize their technology for ecommerce. Polarrose I don’t know, their technology is open-source (which of course is great) but as a browser plugin I cannot understand how they will make money from it. Maybe from the integration into different services such as flickr and facebook so the tagging becomes better or similar. Technologies like Picollator (part of recogmission.com) is a technology that is possible to integrate in to search engines, beefing up the existing image search.

There is though an interesting issue coming up, and that is the fact that what is put up on the web is often available to the public. In the good old time, users have lived in a pleasant belief that what is put up will most likely not be found since the web is so vast -  now with better search engines and better pattern recognition services everything can be found easily, a face on a party picture, a presence in a video clip etc. It is just like being tagged on facebook but it covers the whole web and it is automatic. If someone just once have said a person is you, or use a picture of you, they will be able to find you in every media from pictures to videos.

How will this work with copyright and integrity when a previously anonymous person you took a photo of on the street suddenly has a name and identity? Could have interesting complications….

I have always promoted open communities since I wanted what I share to be accessible for friends without the need of being members. But with a technology such as Polarrose offering something like facebook tagging for everything that is public there might be a move towards more closed sharing where you decide what you want public and what you want to only be accessible for friends and family. Projects like open social and single sign on will of course make closed networks easier to access for friends without the need of additional memberships.

So apart from the integrity issue when it comes to widely deployed facial recognition and tagging I do look forward to pattern recognition that enables you to find similair looking objects and photos. That could be very useful when you for example want to find more photos of a car – you can just search for similar ones.

Interesting applications of facial recognition is the two entertainment services provided by Optical Recognition Obectives; Play-Analogia for finding celebrities lookalike and IconDate that is a dating site where you can find a date that looks like a certain celebrity you chose or any other person you want your date to look like. That has to be value adding for dating

The reason I came into the privacy issue was due to an experience in february at an event in Shanghai. It was an afterwork and one guy walked around taking photos, encouraged by the organiser and the people who posed. But there were also a few people starting to question it and didn’t allow him to take photos of them, asking if they would be put up on facebook. It was clear that they were worried about having the pictures tagged on facebook. I talked with the photographer and heard that it happened at a house-party in Sweden as well, people started to talk about their legal rights and that he is not allowed to take photos of them. An interesting development of how social networks is affecting peoples real life behavior such as photographing a at a party. Which of course is good since it is related. Swedish organisations have published official warnings to people urging them not to tag or comment friends on Facebook due to the implications it can have at a later stage job interview etc.

Despite the privacy implications the discussed technologies have it is not necessary bad. The online behaviour today is not always normal and well thought through, and a change in it will be good for people that for example put up less suitable pictures of themself without realising they easily can be found. At the same time are laws sometimes not adopted to the changing society in all and we have seen this regarding filesharing, music and movies…..maybe we will now enter into the discussion of sharing private information.

Online Marketing is taking over traditional marketing but still suffer from the lack of good metrics and measurement. At the same time is Mobile marketing growing promising thrilling opportunities to reach the customer even more direct and personlised. And it is an attractive option if you look how the cellphone is used and present all the time – no need to emphasize on that.

Scott Shaffer at the Pondering Primate talks about "Mobile Bar Code Reading as the Next Technology Wave". He brings up the idea of how billions of hyperlinks can be created over night by just assigning one to every existing 1D barcode on product packages.

CamClic is a strong entrant focusing on helping companies to create interactive communicaiton with their customers via product packages. This is done via the 1D barcode and a java software on the customers cellphone. On CamClic’s blog it can be read how CamClic together with global leaders in the Pharmaceuptical Industry have identified the needs and the applications for "The Real World Web" that will be attractive and a value for patients/consumers interacting with pharmaceuptical products with their mobile phones. The platform for patient "Real World Web" services is now beeing created.

Mobile Marketing and Barcodes are moving into an exciting era now. Several companies are into 2D barcodes – mainly as technology providers – which has alread been adopted in Japan some time ago. Other solutions are utilising picture recognition of product packages and rfid and NFC (near field communication) that enables the phone to act as a wireless reader. The only problem I have seen with mobile marketing is the promise and future possibility but no real practical opportunity that can deliver value today (maybe until CamClic?). 2D barcodes that recieves the most publicity is not standardised and is yet not in the value chain making it a good large scale solution. It has to be put on every product separetly if to be used. And how do you know what reader to use when there are so many different? Another threshold is the mobile industry itself. There is a large amount of platforms and models so applications has to be customised for each handset and network.

CamClic’s idea make very much sense using existing standardised identifiers such as the 1D barcode to deliver content to the user. Using a barcode on a package doesn’t even need any training, everyone knows it can be scanned to get information such as price.

I believe there will be an interesting development of the mobile industry and that we will see a consolidation of platforms; symbian, linux, windows and openmobile. Nokia is as usually ahead of the competition realising they have to move higher up in the value chain offering value added services and content. 

So even if mobile marketing has a great promise I believe it to be more critical to really be able to measure it. Online marketing still has problems because it cannot be measured accurate enough which barely makes sense since it ought to be the perfect medium for metrics and measurement.

Wireless City

Originally uploaded by Andreas Sigurdsson

Hong Kong is a fascinating city in many ways. Living in Shanghai it is often a kind of relief coming to Hong Kong. There everything is working effectively, it is clean, nature is very close, its international, and they make use of technology in good ways. Google Maps is working great on cell phones, especially using HSDPA with speeds around 3.8 mbps. Metro cards can be used in convenient stores to shop with, and on the bus I even saw people using their watches as Metro cards.

Walking around in the city I ran into two phone booths that offered wireless access. These can be found all over the city and many stores and places offer wireless access as well. They are even doing campaigns right now in taxis where you can plug in your computer and enjoy internet access. Last time I were in Hong Kong there was another campaign offering wireless access in certain taxis.

Google’s latest move announcing the Open Social Project is a step towards standardising social networking online. To briefly explain how it works: by having a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds. So project developers can build a single social networking application for multiple networks rather then the current model of building multiple applications based on each network’s unique API. This will cut down on development time and costs. Companies who already have decided to support it are for example MySpace and Plaxo.

There are though other similair moves, such as Facebook that recently announced their plans license their platform to other social sites. The idea is similair and builds on that developers will only have to write their widget or small application once if there is a common platform for structuring how the applications integrate with site. According to New York Times (source)Bebo has already decided to use Facebook’s standards for its own Open Application Platform, however, it will eventually support Google’s OpenSocial too.

Another one just entering social networking platforms is Cisco. They will offer the Cisco Entertainment Operating System that is a hosted software-as-a-service platform that Cisco will deliver to various media companies in 2008 according to New York Times.

The whole push for standardisation is good and needed. I have myself just started to try out a service called lifestrea.ms, which offers an attractive way collect all of your online content that you create but also from different networks and feeds. You have five different profiles allowing you to decided to what network of friends you want to post what, for example; public, friends, family and professionals. It is all based on standards and integrate perfectly with a bunch of services. I can for example post blogpost to wordpress, update status at twitter and upload pictures to flickr. It will at the same time be posted in the lifestream of the profile i prefer e.g. friends.

I am not fund of inviting people to different new networks every time so that is why I also am hoping on a standardised solution such as openid to enable people to easy join and be part of multiple networks. The open social project where you easily can import your friendlist and details are a step in the right direction but a big threshold is still the need for registration.