Archive for 'Emerging Technologies'
Digitrad Launches Yes.tel, Digital Business Card Service
Digitrad, a company specializing in unified communications, launched Yes.tel today in the U.S. Yes.tel provides instant access to a person’s contact information from any PC or mobile device.
Using one user-friendly platform to manage a multitude of digital identities, consumers can seamlessly access and update their personal information consolidated into one domain from their laptop, desktop or their mobile phone.
A subscriber based service, costing $19.99 annually, Yes.tel allows registrants to select a user .tel name of their choice, which includes a local phone number with a unified voicemail, an integrated email re-direction system, anti-spam and antivirus services.
Yes.tel user records are consolidated and stored within an information-encrypted Domain Name Server (DNS), allowing a certain level of access to the public. Once a user registers a domain and distributes it to friends, family and colleagues, other users will be able to look-up the domain and have full access to all of the information associated with that domain, which will be immediately re-directed to the device and saved.
Disclosure: Digitrad is a sponsor of the Traveling Geeks blogging tour to London.
Reaching Theoretical Broadband Link Speeds (in the US)
I’ve just spent 48 hours “beating myself up” over the Comcast (cable) high-speed Internet system here in San Francisco. I say beating myself up because I was so convinced the problem was Comcast that I spent hours on the phone with them, but ultimately most of the problems were in my own network. [Not all, but most.]
In US cities, the license to install and operate cable television networks is a city-granted monopoly. When cable TV was first being installed, each city opened a bidding process, and cable operators bid to be granted the franchise to install and operate the cable system in that particular city. If they won it, they then had exclusive rights. So in San Francisco, we have telephones provided by AT&T (which originally was Pacific Bell Telephone Company) and we have cable TV provided by ComCast (only – no other provider). Satellite TV lies outside this structure and is available everywhere on a competitive basis, but that’s a different issue.
Comcast also delivers Internet connectivity (and telephone service) via their cables. And that’s the rub.
Comcast suggests they can deliver broadband speeds of up to 12mbs (megabits per second). This kind of speed is pretty good, actually, and is lots higher than I can get on shared office connections at my client sites. It’s also faster than wi-fi can provide, so if you’re using wi-fi on your computer, the Comcast speed is kind of a moot point…it only affects me if I’m plugged into an Ethernet connection in the wall.
The thing I wanted to point out is the graph above showing (left to right) that Comcast give you huge speed when you first connect and start downloading a file (for example) and then it slacks off to a slower speed. It gives you the impression of quick download by starting the transfer really quickly – and if the file is small, you‘ll get it quickly, but the rest of the file comes in at a more leisurely rate, although it is in fact pretty close to the advertised rate. In my case the rate was just under 8mbits/second.
Digitrad Simplifies the Way People Communicate
Digitrad is a sponsor of the upcoming Traveling Geeks trip to London. The concept is easy. They simplify the way people communicate by using their name as a single point of contact. All you need to do is to type a name within your web browser.
No matter how many different digital IDs you have.
No matter how many different social networks you use.
No matter if you change address, country, phone number or job.
Digitrad’s goal is to help people to find the best way to reach you. Their new service, Yes.tel, provides you with a unique .tel name, a first top level domain name dedicated to communications. I plan to play with it over the next few weeks.
Nokia’s Ovi Maps for Mobile and Web
As part of our prep for London, we met with the Nokia Ovi Maps team late last month to learn a bit more about their mobile and web apps. Ovi maps allow you to see the world in new ways with 3D, satellite and terrain views, weather, information and more.
Features include collections, which allow you to collect and store your favorite routes or destinations for quick and easy access. You can also search for new places from restaurants to remote towns and the service helps you with routing prior to your trip as well as navigation on-the-ground.
You can do all your pre-planning on the desktop if you’d like, save your favorites into collections, and then sync up with your mobile device so you can later navigate using the same information when you arrive at your final destination.
They currently have 216 cities worldwide and 30 landmarks per city. “If you do a really deep dive into the maps, you may not really want to see labels, but its something you can turn on and off easily depending on your preference,” said Berlin-based Jörg Malang, head of Ovi Maps for Nokia.
There’s also a very cool terrain view which gives you views of mountains and landscape.
Maps 3.0, the latest version, which came out in the first quarter of this year, includes hi-resolution satellite and terrain maps in 2D and 3D views and you can walk with enhanced pedestrian routing and features.
You can download updated maps for free anytime from over the 200 countries and of those 200, roughly 74 are navigable today (meaning you can do real-time pedestrian and car navigation in those countries).
You can also share locations with your friends but you can’t yet export or have multiple profiles, that is if you don’t want those two profiles to be synced with each other. Sharing features are coming in the not too distant future however.
A vision of 2019: Interface eye candy
It’s a vision of the future from Microsoft Office Labs. If you’re into interfaces and devices — and how they may look in the future, you’ll love the video below:
(You can watch a crisper version too)
tags: future interfaces, interfaces, Microsoft, Microsoft Office Labs
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Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
The meaning of it all, in XML
Here’s a relatively new web service for publishers and developers that’s a different spin on the semantic web. Amplify is mostly a semantic web service, although it tries to differentiate itself from other semantic services by saying it focuses on understanding content rather than classifying content — which is what the semantic web has been […]
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Amazing keyboardless laptop introduced by Apple
tags: apple, Mac, onion
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Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
‘Imagine being able to read a newspaper on your computer’
A report from the 80s. Really funny.
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Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
Mobile, social media & what’s next
Here are some answers to questions in a recent Moneyweb interview Mandy De Waal did with me a while back.
1. What role does social media play in 24.com’s strategy?
Social media plays a key role in 24.com’s strategic thinking. Internationally, it’s the social media sites like You Tube and Facebook that are dominating the web rankings […]
Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
South Africa’s Joule Electric Car
Optimal Energy CEO Kobus Meiring Presenting the Joule Electric Car
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary which shows the roles of American automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, and the US government in stopping production of electric cars in the US, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s. That turned out to be bad news, both for General Motors and American consumers, but it also opened up opportunities for electric car manufacturers abroad.
Optimal Energy, a Cape Town-based company, is trying to position itself as a leader in the field with its Joule all-electric vehicle, which was first unveiled two months ago at the 2008 Paris Motor Shop.
We visited Optimal Energy’s offices – scattered throughout an upscale shopping plaza – earlier this week to see a business presentation by CEO Kobus Meiring. He made a convincing case for the Joule, which was summed up nicely by fellow blogger Chris Morrison.
The car itself didn’t really do it for me – I am a much bigger fan of public transportation projects, like South Africa’s 2010 public transport plan, than any mere personal automobile. But what did fascinate me is how Meiring’s career evolution – from developing military helicopters to telescopes to electric cars – is representative of the evolution of South Africa’s engineering field. Now that South Africa is no longer ruled by a White nationalist government focused on strengthening its military, the country’s engineers are able to work on projects and start companies that make a positive social impact.
Going back to my question of trade versus aid, what is the social benefit of investing in a company like Optimal Energy? On the surface such an investment seems promising. Nearly 100 engineers are given jobs to design the cars. South African construction companies are employed to build manufacturing plants. And hundreds of semi-skilled workers are given decent paying jobs to manufacture the vehicles. This largely explains why Optimal Energy’s largest investor is the Department of Science and Technology of the South African government.
But a question by Graeme Addison, a veteran science journalist and one of the organizers of our tour, revealed an obstacle to South Africa’s multicultural integration of engineers and other professionals. In not so many words Addison essentially asked Meiring how many of his engineers are Black South Africans. We didn’t get a figure, but I would assume only a handful. The Black Economic Empowerment program of February 2007 set a quota system which ensures that a certain percentage of managerial and directorial positions are given to non-White South Africans. Addison later told me that this often means that young Black South Africans straight out of university are given managerial positions without ever going through the apprenticeship and training programs which lead to real skills development.
Meiring, however, said there has been a recent increase in the number of Black engineers graduating from universities and thinks that integration in the field of engineering is progressing. Still, I think that so-called philanthro-capitalist foundations could do a great thing by investing in Optimal Energy, but with the clause that they must hire and train more Black and female engineers. Such an investment could derive both a large social and economic return.
And Optimal Energy sure wouldn’t mind the extra capital. A post written last month by Domenick Yoney says the recent financial collapse has stalled the Joule’s launch and that Meiring and company will need to raise another $130 million before they are able to build an assembly plant and get their product on the road.
You can listen to an MP3 of Meiring’s entire presentation on the Brand South Africa Blog.
