BizDev & Program Management

Nokia Comes with Applications

2009-05-09T08:59:00.010+02:00

Nokia offers a range of services that are very interesting to its community. There is the award-winning Nokia Sports Tracker, a GPS-based activity tracker (cycling, running etc.) that runs on Nokia's S60-powered smartphones and simplyfies to track training-relevant information such as speed, distance and time - with the appropriate Polar wearlink transmitter even a new dimension monitoring one's heart-rate. It visualizes workouts and routes and makes this information sharable over the Web and on Facebook - even live!

And there is Nokia Photo Browser that offers a picture viewing experience on the move wherever and whenever featuring visual 3D effects like an intuitive touch UI, a magnifying glass and face browsing. And there is even more apps available on Nokia Beta Labs.

Nokia is the world's largest handset manufacturer and still holds a marketshare of 40% in both, traditional cellphones and modern smartphones, however its share in smartphones dropped rapidly more than 10% over the recent time. Nokia lost big to its competitors.

The ongoing success of Apple (IPhone, ITunes App Store) and other wireless products and services provider like the Blackberry manufacturer Research In Motion (AppWorld) have set the current trend in the telecommunications sector and deliver a world-class mobile and internet experience featuring a triple play of hardware, software and service while a global series of Googl's Android-powered smartphones (HTC) distributed by the members of the Open Handset Alliance has accelerated innovation in mobile and has given third-party developers a platform to sell their applications and on which they can build the next wave of killer applications (Android Market).

What a surprise now! After introducing a couple of new strategies like 'Ovi' and 'Comes with Music', Nokia announced a giant AppStore called Ovi Store.

A few quots from the Forbes article:

'it will debut with a catalog of 20,000 items'
'it will ship pre-loaded on the company's new flagship handset, the N97 in June'
'has a custom-built "recommendation engine" that will recommend content based on users' preferences and those of their friends and family'
'thanks to the GPS chip in most Nokia phones, the store will also find content based on users' locations'
'Nokia also plans to use it as a distribution platform for other services, such as pushing software updates to users'
'won't block services that compete with its own products'

So Ovi Store is open to registered third-party developers, comes with active selling features, which underline the commercial character and a push mechanism for software updates, that the user is notified once an update is available. Excited whether it can compete with Apple's ITunes App Store and how mobile oprators think about it!

Mobile Terminals Set as a Primary Internet Device

Forget the Most of Now!

2009-03-04T09:05:00.003+01:00

Mobile Fire Boat Cruising on River Rhine, originally uploaded by andreasengel.

Mobile Terminals Set as a Primary Internet Device

2009-01-03T10:56:00.011+01:00

According to Pew/Internet 'the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020' and 'voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.'

Cellphone manufacturers were long time not capable to offer a convincing user experience, there is millions of products and services on every cellphone, but unfortunately beyond SMS nobody really uses them so far.

The Apple iPhone attacked exactly that weakness and provided a superior and clever UE in terms of quality, video, photo and audio capabilities, leveraging a larger screen (320x480), omitting the physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on a touch screen and providing generous built-in memory (8-16GB) setting the trend for next-generation cellphones.

Next-generation cellphones such as the upcoming Nokia N97, the iPhone 3G, the Blackberry Storm, the HTC Touch Diamond, the Sonyericsson X1, the Samsung SGH-i900v OMNIA and several Android powered devices caught up this trend and come now with touchscreen, QWERTY-keypad, GPS und GByte drive, multi-megapixel camera, compass, and accelerometer as well as with consumer-centric GSM, Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi capabilities and converge more and more into hybrids combining voice-centric and data-centric services

I think that cellphone manufacturers were catching up and offer a better UE and technology to receive and deliver services via the ever sophisticating Internet Protocol (IPv6) through several communications structures with a great opportunity to create a personalized informations and communications strategy.

eBay and Amazon on Collision Course

2008-10-12T14:45:00.002+02:00

There was a time when eBay created a brand new business model, one of the most successful business models (Auctions) on the Internet, leading to high cash flows (eBay) with a very strong market share in their respective core market and with an image that was superior to any other business in this market segment.

It was possible to make a bargain superior to any other purchase: High quality combined with an excellent price.

Today making a purchase at eBay is no longer the same as it was a couple of years ago. Taking part in an auction has become a more and more frustrating experience resulting in high prices, low quality and an uncertain result - in my opinion it's just wasted time.

But over the time eBay has amassed a variety of products that is superior to that of Amazon. It's good fun to research products and even the most fancy product can be found at eBay. Bargains are still possible, espacially through sellers that offer a fixed price model.

This is at least one reason why the fixed price model is the fastest growing business on the eBay platform.

I found an excellent article on the NyTimes (Amid the Gloom, an E-Commerce War), that describes the current situation and collision of Ebay and Amazon.

And there is at least one other competitor in the market: Google!

Google eBay Collision after eBay Live!

From a consumer perspective I appreciate this kind of collision competition, because usually it leads to better prices, higher quality and a better customer experience over all.

With the holiday season ahead and the ongoing financial crisis in mind consumers are becoming increasingly web-savvy in the way they look for bargains, as a current survey form Harris Interactive shows:

'Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to do their shopping. The majority of online adults (83%) are willing to make online purchases. Of those who make purchases online, the most popular items included:
Books, 71%
Music, 62%
Electronics, 55%
Gift certificates, 53%
Clothing, 51%
Travel, 50%
Office supplies, 39%
Health and beauty products, 34%'
'Eighty-five percent of online shoppers use tools or websites to find good deals online. Predictably, 56% of online shoppers are using search engines to find bargains; however, online shoppers have found many other ways to save, including:
32% use price comparison websites
25% use online coupon websites
23% use online advertisements
12% use bargain tracking websites
5% use shopping-themed social networks'

Assuming that just 7% of all retail purchases are made online there is plenty of room to invest and expand into eCommerce. I still think that eCommerce is moving "full steam ahead" and is years away from saturation.

Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

Passion for Speed: Google Chrome

2008-09-02T23:39:00.004+02:00

The stunning new open-source browser Google Chrome

What a sudden surprise, it looks like the world has been waiting for Chrome! Obviously it renders a lot faster than any other browser. A few quotes from their new blog:

'Open source projects like Firefox and WebKit have led the way in defining the next generation of web technologies and standards'.

'Because of Chromium's unique multi-process architecture, the integration of the V8 JavaScript engine, and other factors, we've built a fairly significant port of WebKit on Windows, and are developing the same for Mac OS X and Linux'.

'The cornerstones of the V8 design are:
Compilation of JavaScript source code directly into native machine code.
An efficient memory management system resulting in fast object allocation and small garbage collection pauses.
Introduction of hidden classes and inline caches that speed up property access and function call'

Turning the Wheel - Observing the World

2008-08-11T21:50:00.007+02:00

Ferris Wheel by andreasengel

Leveraging YouTube's Data in the Cloud

2008-08-05T01:01:00.000+02:00

YouTube dominates the Online Video market with an attractive user audience loving Internet-based clips and videos they can view, listen, interact with and participate when, what and how they want.

YouTube is already among the top 3 global assets in terms of minutes spent online. A recent statistic of Hitwise shows, that YouTube is also current marketleader in terms of visits in the US:

Top 5 Online Video Websites ranked by Market Share of U.S. Visits

Rank	Name	Domain	May-08	May-07	Percent Change
1	YouTube	www.youtube.com	75.43%	59.95%	26%
2	MySpaceTV	www.myspacetv.com	9.01%	16.06%	-44%
3	Google Video	video.google.com	3.73%	7.80%	-52%
4	Yahoo! Video	video.search.yahoo.com	1.92%	2.77%	-31%
5	Veoh	www.veoh.com	1.13%	0.86%	32%

Currently I wouldn't know a better place to search for a video - even the most exeptional content can be found in the cloud. Recently I heared that the IOC will broadcast a selection of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games clips as Video On Demand to countries where digital VOD rights have not been sold.

There is many creative ways to integrate YouTube via API with a site or application:

According to Google one can:

Create a web front end to let people view videos about specific topics.
Create a desktop application or plugin that plays videos in a customized environment.
Add related, dynamic video content to your website or application.
Customise the Flash player to fit the look and feel of your site, device or application
Add feeds of videos from each of YouTube's international domains

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been one of the fastest growing trends in software over the past years. The new Google App Engine makes creating tools quickly and effectively and provides an opportunity for users to leverage the data that live in the cloud:

Next generation asset YouTube is becoming an increasingly relevant distribution and monetization channel for video enhancing the customer experience distributing video clips and other forms of video over the Web anywhere and anytime, while traditional media have content still embedded making it only consumable at a certain time.

Looking Forward to See a Mobile Web 2.0 Revolution!

Combining Blue and Green: Telefónica

2008-08-04T11:46:00.002+02:00

Roller Coaster Alpina by andreasengel

I think, it's just a question of time.

Vodafone.de not Capable to Deliver a Stunning Web-Layout

2008-07-30T16:45:00.007+02:00

Vodafone.de under Linux/Firefox

Once somebody must have told them that boxes are a good thing to grab a user's attention, unfortunately implementation lacks a bit of professionality - their promo-boxes slipped off the bottom-line.

The sun is not really shining on Vodafone.de: Missing the whole Private Tab under Business:

Vodafone.de Business Tab under Linux/Firefox

Barcelona Olé!

2008-07-30T11:50:00.003+02:00

Barcelona, Spain - Always Worth a Weekend-Trip (June,2008)

Major economic center, international airport, mediterranean climate, Montjuïc, 1992 Summer Olympics, Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família, Casa Milà (La Pedrera) and Park Güel, La Rambla, Puerto Olympico, Plaça Catalunya and of course Barça, the FC Barcelona football team, just to name a few highlights.

Enjoy excellent food at the terrace of Ciudad Condal with excellent tapas, Rambla de Catalunya, 18, Barcelona, Spain and Mitsui, Japanese buffet, Carrer d'Aribau, 112, Barcelona, Spain. Both are located near Plaça Catalunya, but I'm posting their addresses since they are hard to find without.

Looking Forward to See a Mobile Web 2.0 Revolution!

2008-07-30T10:52:00.006+02:00

Gadget World!

Anytime, anywhere access to any multimedia services is already in progress and addresses current trends in the telecommunications sector and a shift from a network-centric to a user-centric approach can be monitored within the fastest moving market in the world today. But sometimes I get the impression, the telecommunications sector has completely lost - just wondering why!!

Web-Apps Evolution in the Cloud

2008-07-23T16:10:00.002+02:00

Golden Rain by andreasengel

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been one of the fastest growing trends in software over the past years. The new Google App Engine makes creating tools quickly and effectively and applying new Web-standards like OAuth provides an opportunity for users to leverage data that live in the cloud with the purpose to

take advantage of the new social trends
lower costs and improve functionality
embrace innovative new products, services and applications
increase knowledge and capability

Google with its mission 'to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful' has its strengths in market & brand leadership in online search and in an ever expanding online product portfolio with a great potential in cloud computing and synching services via Gears.

Here some useful GData APIs including YouTube:

An excellent ressource for mashups, APIs and the Web as platform can be found at the ProgrammableWeb.

Setting a New Web-Standard with OAuth for Secure API Authentication

2008-06-28T11:23:00.000+02:00

Current trends in information architecture, the development of user-provided information and the use and combination of single function focused applications show that the Internet is shifting to a medium that is more and more structured with a decentralized authority.

TnT 2.0 - Exploiting the Limits of Traditional Media

Instead of using a single site for all online needs users use different sites and services to manage their online experience applying state of the art Data APIs allowing aplications to access their data. Making use of a Web-standard like OAuth for secure API authentication gives your users access to their data while protecting their passwords and other protected areas. From OAuth:

"Many luxury cars today come with a valet key. It is a special key you give the parking attendant and unlike your regular key, will not allow the car to drive more than a mile or two. Some valet keys will not open the trunk, while others will block access to your onboard cell phone address book. Regardless of what restrictions the valet key imposes, the idea is very clever. You give someone limited access to your car with a special key, while using your regular key to unlock everything."

Here is a short demo of what it means to end users:

While reviewing one of the latest Google innovations, Google App Engine, which lets one run Web applications on Google's infrastructure with no servers to maintain I found it worth to mention OAuth as an open standard for secure API authentication - OAuth is now supported on all of the Google Data APIs. Being familiar with UML or sequence diagrams it's easy to understand the Google data API authentication process. More on Google Data APIs blog.

Resources:

Into the Cloud with Google App Engine

2008-05-28T11:53:00.005+02:00

Managing information becomes more and more important for individuals and corporations that want to use the web strategically to build value - in these days it's trendy to collaborate, share data and information over the Web.

If somebody asked me what kind of Google Apps I'm using regularly, well, there is award winning Gmail, Reader, iGoogle, Blogger, Docs and of course the most important: Search. Without search no information, without information no action. Google's automated search technology enables me to obtain nearly instant access to any relevant information.

One of the latest Google innovations is Google App Engine, which lets one run Web applications on Google's infrastructure with no servers to maintain. Currently it supports the Python runtime environment using Python version 2.5.2 and provides APIs for the datastore, Google Accounts, URL fetch and email services.

Although Python is not my speciality and my time is very limited, I found it quite comfortable to step into cloud computing with no servers to maintain, to follow the examples and create a first App with Google App Engine. It's early stage, but I think this service is very promising. It's not made to host any SAP datacenter, but it's made to extend the Google experience building modern applications on top of a worldclass datacenter with reduced maintenance costs and the purpose to

create new opportunities for self-expression and collaboration
complement and compete in products and services
leverage network effects and monetization

The tool-kit includes the Django web application framework with form validation, version 0.96.1 or newer, supporting Dojo as state of the art AJAX incarnation.

Latest APIs allow to do image manipulation and caching through memcached, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system to speed up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load as I noticed through several blogs.

It encourages to make use of Web-standards like OAuth for secure API authentication, JSON, a lightweight data-interchange format based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language and and OpenSocial, to create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds from Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

The rapid adoption of broadband has made it possible to move more and more applications to the Web.

More on Google

A Competition Powered by Nature

2008-05-04T22:22:00.001+02:00

Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 Promo

Looking forward to see the teams of one of the most challenging races of the world sharing some challenging moments of this outstanding race featured in spectacular video clips.

The quest for victory in the hardest competition around the world, the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009: Balancing speed and safety in a competition powered by nature.

First offshore leg will start in Alicante, Spain, on October 11, 2008

Brand Awareness: Ocean Racing at it's Most Exciting

Facebook Delivers an Outstanding Performance

2008-04-10T15:38:00.002+02:00

In these days it's trendy to collaborate, share data and information over the Web and the big differentiator of Facebook came when Facebook opened their platform letting information structure emerge instead of imposing structure.

Facebook does not impose any limitations on how services show their value proposition and make money. It's like an operating system, businesses can run full applications on top of Facebook leveraging the social graph or just connect with their customers.

With 7.5% time spent in a community, communities capture a respectable share of user's overall online time. From the OPA:

There is several ways to get orientation, currently Facebook leverages 21.428 additional applications. They can be selected from several categories and sortet according to selected criteria like 'Recently Popular, Most Activity, Most Active Users and Newest' and of course they can be searched.

There is Adonomics™, Facebook Analytics and Developer Service. I'm quoting from their site: 'There are 930,295,450 installs across 21,492 apps on Facebook with over 200,000 developers currently evaluating the platform.' They offer free services like 'Top Applications, Top Companies and Top Developers' and help to grow engage and monetize an application as well as to track application growth, activity, and valuation.

Of course there is also a typical Web 2.0 app rating style called AppRate, a Community-Driven Facebook Applications Reviews and Ratings site with daily reviews and ratings of Facebook applications.

Overall, Facebook and its community provide excellent services, transparency and an outstanding performance with business models for an open Platform and applications like:

Contextual, displayed, targeted and linked advertising
RSS advertising
Sponsoring and donations
Affiliate programs and merchandising
Social Commerce (recommendations, reviews etc.)

Hard times for competitors!

Turning Towards Two.Zero eCommerce

2008-03-05T22:00:00.001+01:00

The most influencing factors for online shopping are still convenience, trust and quality of information.

Characteristics of today's Web 2.0 architecture allow better communications and data exchange resulting in improved social networking technologies, service orientation and cinematic user interfaces based on AJAX and Flash complementing modern SOA's and Web-services. Web 2.0 features increase brand loyalty and customer retention.

Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

It's a very early stage, but innovative services on the horizon already leverage human intelligence filtering content by trusted friends and community features applying technologies such as the Semantic Web and FOAF which will enrich today's Web technologies and allow even better collaboration online and improved search results for products and services.

It's not the big guys who drive this evolution, it's smaller but smarter social commerce sites like Kaboodle, ThisNext, Wishpot and StyleHive that have triggered an unprecedented social commerce phenomenon 'customers communicating with customers' and a resurgence in the Long Tail economy.

But also the big U.S. retailers like Wal-Mart, HomeDepot, Kroger, Costco and Target, expertise providers like iVillage and WebMD and of course the great online shopping portals like eBay, Amazon.com, BizRate.com, MySimon.com, YahooShopping, NexTag.com, Overstock.com, Shopping.com, Pricerunner.com, PricingCentral.com, MSN Shopping, Shop.com and Shopzilla and B2B eCommerce portals like the Chinese Globaby.com and Alibaba.com have started to apply Web 2.0 features and most of them are known in Germany and Europe, too.

Time for eCommerce to meet two.zero now.

Targeting Well-defined Audience Segments

2008-02-17T19:41:00.003+01:00

contra los elementos, originally uploaded by luzdelsur.

Accessing the Internet at high speeds has several positive effects on Internet usage resulting in higher connectivity and new sorts of services.

Due to better transparency today its possible to reach one's audience when they are searching online, while researching a product or service and when they are spending time online on activities like social networking or watching videos.

I'm expecting more new touch-points in 2008 due to an evolving digital landscape, just thinking of innovative messaging services...

Phantastic capture, taken at Playa Chica, Tarifa, Spain, southernmost point of Europe.

Trends in Online Shopping

2008-02-15T12:08:00.000+01:00

Keeping myself informed about the American market the Pew Internet & American Life Project is an excellent independent resource to gather trusted, high-quality information. The key findings of a recent publication (PDF) were:

'American internet users have embraced online shopping because they say it is convenient and a time-saver.'
'At the same time, most online Americans have high levels of concern about sending personal or credit card information over the internet.'
'More than half of internet users encounter frustrations and other frictions in the course of online shopping.'

So the most influencing factors for online shopping are still convenience, trust and quality of information. However people's behavior in researching buying related information and decision making has changed during the last months:

eCommerce maturing in the US is moving "full steam ahead" and is years away from saturation, with double-digit growth expected for several years. As experience showed easy to use tools do have a huge impact on the way people and companies interact in communications, digital media and business. Web 2.0 features give control to the user, increase brand loyalty and customer retention and can make products and services benefit from a word-of-mouth.

Brand the most Valuable Asset of a Global Company

Handling Open Web Application Security

2008-02-14T12:24:00.000+01:00

As the market dynamics change digital business is quickly becoming the method of choice for any enterprise to offer products and services on-demand to their market applying next-generation information infrastructures with AJAX as an ideal partner to complement modern SOA architectures.

But moving applications to the Web also brings up a lot of questions how to deal with security issues. The OWASP is an open project and a community to help make informed decisions about Web application security risks. In 2007 the most serious web application vulnerabilities (as PDF) were:

Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
Injection Flaws
Malicious File Execution
Insecure Direct Object Reference
Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Information Leakage and Improper Error Handling
Broken Authentication and Session Management
Insecure Cryptographic Storage
Insecure Communications
Failure to Restrict URL Access

For the most prevalent Web application frameworks and especially for open source development, where open source software became the most prominent face of open source the OWASP project represents an excellent ressource to stay informed and make decisions about application security.

The project also provides a comprehensive guide to build secure Web applications and Web services and many recommendations also for projectmanagers, application owners and of course C-level executives.

Google Reader Does not Like Special Characters

2008-01-20T10:31:00.000+01:00

Making extensively use of Google services Google Reader has become one of my favorite applications. But it seems like sometimes even Google launches with bugs :-)

Google Reader Interpretation

Feedburner Interpretation

Original Blogger Content

Google Reader represents a big step forward in terms of user friendliness improving one's digital lifestyle and simplifies the personal information management process centralizing and storing information and information history across several website feeds for users and extending reach for distributers.

Google Reader Blog

A Favorite Ski Resort, l'Espace Killy, Val d'Isere

2007-12-16T11:55:00.001+01:00

DSC01505, Originally uploaded by chevaliermorgan.

Val d'Isère is known for its charming "chalet" architecture and the "l'Espace Killy", one of the largest ski areas in the world reaching from 1785 m–3599 m of altitude offering 300km of piste plus breathtaking off piste skiing.

This year's season started already with lot's of snow beyond 100 cm, the photo shows the center of Val d'Isere in Dec/2007as an amazingly quiet winter idyll covered in deep snow. Excellent precausions for the coming ski season, and of course an excellent photo.

View WebCams

Perfect Open Source Project Management on a Linux Box with OpenProj

2007-10-11T15:49:00.000+02:00

While setting up a list of useful open source applications for my Linux laptop I found a very advanced project management solution provided by Projity incorporating both, a web-based project-on-demand service (SaaS) and an open source desktop alternative to MS Project. The latest version requires Java (JRE) and is available as .deb, .rpm or platform-independent source at Sourceforge.net.

'OpenProj shares the industry's most advanced scheduling engine with Project-ON-Demand and has Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.'

Being familiar with MS Project it's easy to switch. Just create a work breakdown structure, add time and dependencies, OpenProj will construct a project model applying CPM ready to prioritize activities for the effective management of project completion.

OpenProj on a Linux Laptop

Probably the best solution I've ever seen, just got used to it.

Consumer Recomendations more Influencing than ever

2007-10-09T00:18:00.000+02:00

Trends and consumer reactions in terms of communications and marketing can best be monitored in blogs and other consumer-generated media like web pages, newsgroups, emails sent-to companies, chat lines, forums and message boards.

A recent study from eMarketer showed that consumer opinions are no longer a local phenomenon: Word-of-mouth works worldwide and is more effective than traditional forms of advertising.

'Yet more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed worldwide find that consumer opinions are the most effective form of advertising, according to a Nielsen study.'

Web 2.0 features give control to the user, increase brand loyalty and customer retention and can make products and services benefit from a word-of-mouth.

Here are some more significant success factors:

Strong brand
Highly automatized work flow
Media-compatible staged content
Low problem cases
Mastering rapid changes in technology
High stability at payment solutions and CMS

As experience showed easy to use tools do have a huge impact on the way people and companies interact in communications, digital media and business. Putting increasing efforts into successful website operations with a focus on making consumer opinions an essential part of a website can result in making a profit, generating significant online revenues, developing online branding, creating successful online products or attracting subscriptions.

Vodafone UK Part of Google Checkout Network Now

2007-10-03T00:39:00.000+02:00

Just before the Q4 shopping season Vodafone UK opted for Google Checkout to see more visitors to their site, higher conversion rates and an increase in the return on investment for their AdWords spendings as well as helping Google’s Checkout service gain new users.

I'm just wondering when GC will arrive at Germany, rumors say 2008...

(Via Google Checkout Blog)