This is one. Its not from me but I found it useful to understand the industry issues around connected TV one of my top trends for 2012 http://www.opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2012/01/technology-predictionstrends-2012.html
as below

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Having spoken at many events globally, The Digital media forum in Dubai was special because it created unique blend of innovation by combining global ideas with local innovation.

The event was the second highest trending topic on twitter on the day, which shows that there is potential for much more unique innovation in this region

So, what was the most interesting idea I saw at the event?

Speakers like Osman sultan of DU networks and Khalifa Al Shamsi of Etisalat had excellent and inspiring presentations.

My panel was about mobile applications – which threw up some interesting insights.

My overall impression of the event was: innovation in various parts of the world will follow unique local flavours and will adapt global ideas to the local ecosystem.

The management thinker C K Prahalad and others have spoken of this phenomenon before.

One of the more interesting applications I saw at this event was a social learning application based on Facebook.

Social Learning application is like any other facebook app.

Conceptually, this works like the Khan academy but leveraging the power of facebook as a social platform.

The open nature of facebook leads to greater potential for harnessing collective intelligence, which is one of the main foundations of web 2.0.

The lack of collective intelligence is one of the shortcomings of enterprise 2.0 because the enterprise firewall restricts diverse viewpoints by confining to the enterprise.

It will be interesting to see the uptake of the Social learning application based on facebook but it demonstrates the principle that innovation will have a local flavour – which is good news globally and locally

When:

March (27-30) at the RAI (one of Amsterdam’s largest venues)

Where:

The apps for Smart cities event is chaired by me and organised by the World Smart Capital initiative (I am on the advisory board of the World Smart Capital). The event is a part of series of related events on March (27-30) at the RAI (one of Amsterdam’s largest venues). The ‘anchor’ events on these days are intertraffic) – which relates to traffic management and Cevitts which relates to charging of electric vehicles. The apps for smart cities will be in the Perfect Storm pavilion (which relates to IT related events) and held at the RAI at the same time as Intertraffic and Cevitts

What do we mean by ‘apps for smart cities’ – Diagram

Here is an equation for what I mean by ‘apps for smart cities’ – I explain each of these terms below

Who we are looking for: We are looking for innovators/speakers who are working on some really cool applications. These should broadly conform to the idea of ‘apps for smart cities’ + themes elaborated here. We cover travel and accommodation to Amsterdam in most cases for speakers.

Pricing is free for developers: for other tickets please contact me at the email address below. Since the event is also cross promoted with other events on the day, we expect the tickets will sell out very soon.

Booths : We have some space for booths demos. Please contact me at address below

Sponsorship: We are already grateful for the support from organizations and also from various bodies in Amsterdam including the City of Amsterdam. However, we welcome sponsors. Please contact me at address below

The vision behind apps for smart cities : The Chinese premier Wen Jiabao recently said that: Internet + Internet of things = Wisdom of the earth. From Boulder in Colorado, Wuxi in China, Sondo in South Korea and even Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, cities are vying to be ‘Smart cities’. Mayors are becoming entrepreneurs (A City Is A Startup: The Rise Of The Mayor-Entrepreneur). In Europe, Amsterdam already has a mature program for Smart Cities.

The Apps for Smart cities event aims to accelerate that thought leadership position by building upon Amsterdam’s existing foundation by unleashing the creative potential of developers. However, I believe that to harness the true potential of Smart cities, the city must become a platform i.e. an enabler for developers, creativity and applications. In that context, Apps for smart cities could be defined as: Apps for Smart city  =  Intelligent places + Data + Mobile apps + Community + Services = City as a platform

Thus, Smart city applications are similar to conventional mobile applications, but with the following additions:

-      Apps for smart cities would include hardware – typically open source hardware – which enables ‘intelligent data’ spots in         the city

-      The apps are typically oriented towards empowerment of citizens and to enabling Smart city applications

-      Apps for smart cities could use many existing and new mobile technologies including augmented reality, Android and other platforms but they also include hardware technologies like Arduino, BUG, Funnel  ,  Gainer  ,  Make controller    , Wiring ,  Sun SPOTs   , Pinguino  , Firmata  and others

-      They could also integrate with Smart city initiatives from existing vendors and new vendors like Cisco, Pachube,  IBM and others

-      Community would be an important part of apps for Smart cities

The result is: the city itself mirrors the behaviour of the Internet i.e. it becomes a ‘platform’ an enabler for Long Tail applications created by its citizens.

From a governance, investment perspective, the world smart capital initiative offers another definition: A city can be defined as smart when investments in human and social capital and traditional (ex: transport) and modern(ex ICT) communications infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and a high quality of life with a wise management of natural resources through participatory governance

A smart city application could have the following 7 elements: (Source: Xi She)

1)      Sensible - sensors sensing the environment

2)      Connectable - a networking devices bring the sensing information to the web;

3)      Accessible - the broader information of our environment is published on the web, and accessible to the user in web, (web);

4)      Ubiquitous - the user can get access to the information thought web, but more importantly in mobile any time, any place (mobile);

5)      Sociable - the user can publish the information though his social network

6)      Sharable – The object itself must be accessible and addressable (not just the data) in a true peer to peer networked manner.

7)      Visible/augmented - to retrofit the physical environment, make the hidden information seen not only through mobile device by individual but seen in naked eyes in more border range of the physical places like street signs

Themes (apps based on these themes)

-       Smart Manufacturing, New production tools(home produced food, energy, micro manufacturing, 3D printing)

-       Collaboration / sharing of resources via the Internet

-       Urban farming

-       Apps relating to Open data

-       Apps relating to Smart energy

-       Apps relating to Smart transportation

-       Smart health

-       Technology(especially related to open source hardware and s/w)

-       Culture(hacker movement)

-       Sustainability

-       And Art

-       If you think there are any more themes we should include please send me an email ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

Why is all this important? Chris Andersen said  in Wired : Lower the barriers to entry and the crowd pours in. and Thus the new industrial organizational model. It’s built around small pieces, loosely joined

So, we could be on the cusp of something new and innovative

What kind of applications are we looking for? I gave some examples related to healthcare and smart meters in  webinos – sensor based scenarios – managed service scenarios for sensor networks ..  and also in The silence of the chips and the forget me button for smart venues through ‘webinos in a box’

Please contact me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com for more details

The ‘forget me button’ idea Inspired by an idea from John Lyle

As of last week, proposed new regulations by the EU give web users new privacy rights – specifically a ‘forget me’ or the ‘right to be forgotten’ functionality

I had explored this idea under a blog post Mobile devices and privacy: Should we focus of changing behaviour of people OR changing behaviour of devices? – Which referred to the Silence of the chips regulation. Extending last week’s ‘forget me’ regulations to sensor networks, currently there is a discussion in the European parliament around a paper called The Internet of Things – An action plan for Europe (pdf). The document outlines a concept called ‘The silence of the chips’. In a nutshell, in a world of sensors, RFID chips etc, an individual should have the right to effectively disconnect from their networked environment at any moment.

Now, this idea is more relevant in a sensor environment.

How could it be implemented?  I give an example using webinos

I explained the basic architecture of webinos in a previous post webinos – sensor based scenarios – managed service scenarios for sensor networks ..

So, to implement a right to be forgotten functionality at a sensor level, webinos could provide a ‘right to be forgotten’ button at the PZH level. Application developers would not retain the data since the data is at PZH which is owned and managed by the user and users make their own decisions about sharing information.

So, you could conceive of the idea of ‘webinos in a box’ which would cater for the functionality of ‘the right to be forgotten’ at a venue. The product would contain sensors and cloud based software that could be installed at a venue (which could be a university, a café, a museum etc) and possibly managed by third parties on behalf of a venue

You could have many devices within the venue each running a PZP connected to a PZH which runs on a PC or a home gateway (or the Cloud)

The steps are: (in this case, a managed third party could perform all the steps instead of the venue itself)

1)  The venue installs PZH

2)  The venue installs PZP for one or more of their devices monitoring the customer

3)  Link between PZH and PZP is secured by webinos

4)  each webinos API at PZP could be used in conjunction with household devices

5)  there is no ‘widget’ – client interface except for a management interface

In this case, the venue stores data on behalf of the customer and the customer (through a mobile app which contains a ‘forget me’ button?) has the ability to manage the data held by the venue on behalf of the customer.

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget-me-not

http://www.policybloggersnetwork.com/archives/2012/01/policy-update-jan-2012.html

Looking forward to speaking this morning on a panel at the Digital media forum  alongwith Richard windsor of Nomura securities
Dubai, Andre Popov of peppers and Rogers and Jassim Ali of Omnicom #DMF2012. 

Hope to learn a lot more about the exciting developments in this region

heard that Judy Breck passed away last autumn

Judy called me her ‘soul mate’ and we shared a similar philosophy and I loved her vision and love of life. I celebrated her 70th birthday on my blog