The rumors published last week may be true after all.
Google is testing a new search interface on random people, as these screenshots confirm:
Like the Google Wave-inspired interface for Gmail, the new user interface is cleaner and bolder than the current version, offering more options to the user. It may still be far from deployment, however, but it’s good to see some changes after so many years of same all same all.
Hype around augmented reality, a technology that can superimpose graphics or information over the real world in your phone’s viewfinder, is at a fever pitch. But can it deliver the revenues?
I believe so.
Around two dozen applications like Layar, Junaio and Wikitude have burst onto iPhone and Android devices as smartphones with GPS, a compass and Internet access have finally made it possible for the technology to go mainstream. (If you’re curious about how augmented reality looks and feels, see the videos I’ve embedded at the bottom. It’s kind of like looking at the world through Terminator vision.)
Now Juniper Research is saying the market could grow to $732 million in five years, from just under $2 million next year. ABI Research has a more modest estimate: $350 million in annual revenues by 2014. That’s on the back of three primary revenue models: upfront payments to buy an app, subscription fees or paid premium versions and advertising.
The first two are self-explanatory, and might work well with augmented reality games. Advertising could take several forms. You might see augmented reality coupons or sponsored information tags as location-based services become more adept at serving ads based on your historical search needs and where you are. A couple augmented reality browsers like acrossair’s Nearest Tube or Layar could incorporate sponsored layers. For example, Starbucks could pay to add a special augmented reality layer to an existing browser showing nearby coffee spots. Or they could buy access to the technology to build their own app.
But there are reasons to remain skeptical. Venture capital firms have been relatively reluctant to back these young companies — Amsterdam-based Layar is the only company in the last three months to announce a round of venture funding. The larger and older businesses, Metaio and Total Immersion, are launching mobile products on the back of the businesses they’ve already built through augmented reality marketing and factory layout projects from the past.
There are still also a number of design issues to overcome. The use case is physically uncomfortable. It can be easier to look something up in a conventional map application than to constantly hold your phone at eye-level to see augmented reality tags.
The second issue is that augmented reality is still a bit of a novelty or a gimmick (see Metaio’s app to the left where you can insert 3D objects into your camera viewfinder).
And then of course there’s the business hurdle of reaching critical mass so that an advertising model can sustain the company. That said, Layar is boasting some promising statistics. The company said it has close to half a million downloads and the app is sticky with users logging in about 6.7 times a week on average.
So if their adoption (and those of their competitors) continues accelerating upward, stay tuned.
Since I live right above the tunnel, in Crozet – France, when I am running outside during the week I often think about what is going on, 100m under my feet.
The world’s biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is in full operation after a year of repairs.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, said in a statement on Friday that particle beams are once again circulating in the LHC, and that a clockwise circulating beam was established at 10 p.m. in Geneva.
According to the CERN Twitter feed, an anticlockwise beam was also successfully injected, and both beams have completed many thousands of turns of the LHC.
Let’s hope CERN can take a step further the experiments that took place a year ago now.
Google demonstrated Google Chrome OS for the first time on Thursday in Mountain View:
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
Read the full post at Google’s blog. You can also download Chrome OS in VMWare, VirtualBox or USB-installable at gdgt.
10/GUI has a great concept on a possible multi-touch system by R. Clayton Miller.
The concept re-imagines the desktop UI by proposing a multi-touch system that doesn’t rely on the screen, but adapts a multi-touch replacement for a keyboard.
I like the idea, and I think that the proposed linear model of “stitching” windows together is the best way to organize lots of windows. I can see that working well if I’m researching a topic, doing communications, or surfing the web.
Recently there’s been a debate about why larger firms can’t innovate. Perhaps they are too comfortable. Perhaps they are too afraid to cannibalize their markets. Perhaps they are afraid of risk and uncertainty. Perhaps, Perhaps.
Or maybe they operate under a management model that rewards compliance and punishes creativity. Now I think we are getting to the crux of the problem.
I’ve had the opportunity recently to hear Gary Hamel speak and see Dan Pink’s new Ted Talk. Both are compelling, and somewhere between Hamel’s discussion about management innovation and Pink’s thoughts about compensation and incentives lies the real issue that challenges many larger, and especially entrenched, firms.
We structure our organizations (Hamel) and reward structures (Pink) to reward consistency and compliance, when what we really need is experimentalism and creativity. Think about it. Most of the management practices we follow are based on management models put in place by Taylor or others modelled after GM in the 30s and 40s. Many of the employees at that time were uneducated or undereducated and their value proposition was in labor.
The goal of the organization was to send down management’s goals and break them down into work units for simple tasks. The goal of the organization was top down, consistency and compliance to orders and tasks. As Pink points out, the compensation models that accompanied that structure made sense as long as the tasks were simple and clear and can be executed following a very specific process. Now, most of the work we do is knowledge work.
It is difficult to place specific outlines or processes around the work, and can be difficult even to define the end products. If I can outsource a steel factory and make semiconductors overseas, the premium on labor and compliance is gone. What differentiates a firm in this environment is not compliance and control, but creativity and engagement. I need an organizational structure that attracts people to work on products or services they believe in, and are engaged in, and I need different compensation models.
Pink talks about Autonomy (choice), Mastery and Purpose (engagement), the words in parenthesis being my interpretation. Knowledge WorkerSo, many firms, especially older firms are built on hierarchical models that are top down and organized for compliance, not creativity. As I blogged earlier, they are well designed to meet the operating needs and realities of the mid 20th century, just as labor and compliance were becoming less of an issue as a management consideration.
We have entered a completely different environment, which calls on organizations to be nimble, able to adjust rapidly, call on the best insights of all employees and create a meaningful relationship and experience with customers.
Virtually none of those attributes are prevalent in older organizational models. Many firms can’t innovate because their structures, processes and compensation models are rigidly organized for the work world of the 1950s and 1960s and haven’t shifted the organizational structures, processes and compensation models to reflect what’s necessary today.
When a firm like P&G is heralded for taking ideas from its customers as if that is a novel concept or something no one else could foresee, or when WL Gore is held up constantly as a management icon because of its “Lord of the Flies” organizational and management approach, you can see that many theorists in academia and many executives in larger organizations can’t quite grasp the changes that are necessary for many businesses to innovate successfully. It’s not the people, it’s not the “culture”, it’s not the compensation, it’s not the management hierarchy, it’s not the fear of risk or uncertainty that holds back most larger firms. It’s all of the above, and being willing to make a clean break with the past.
By: Jeffrey Phillips
Putting the talk in Twitter
Yet another service that is not from Twitter. This beta application will allow calls for a maximum of 2 minutes, and its only available in the US!
JAJAH gives short messages a voice. With the new JAJAH application, Twitter users can make free phone calls on their favorite microblogging service. Now in Beta, JAJAH@Call allows you to make a free two minute call (the verbal equivalent of a tweet) to other JAJAH@Call users. It’s free, it’s easy and works no matter how you use Twitter, whether it’s on your cellphone, via Seesmic, TweetDeck, or any other way.
To make a call, simply send a tweet with “@call @twittername” where “twittername” is the username of the person you wish to call. Your phone will then ring and the call will be connected. All contact details will be kept private, so you can use JAJAH@call without giving your phone number away. For the call to be successful, both you and the person you wish to call must be JAJAH members.
Let other people know they can @call you: send a tweet “call me free – reply with @call”. Or add “JAJAH@Call” to your account info so people will know you are part of the beta. To protect privacy, calls can only be made to people who follow you.
No headset, no download, no software, no hidden costs. Use the phone you already have.
Now its time for you to ask for a beta account – send an email to twitter@jajah.com.
Personas is a new project by the Sociable Media Group from MIT Media Lab and is currently showing at the MIT Museum and online.
It uses sophisticated natural language processing (PDF link) and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity.
In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.
To create a portrait, you simply enter your name and the site searches the web for content related to you. The visualization of this search process is well-designed, but it’s also frustrating to see articles come up that you know aren’t related to you. For example, if I enter “Cheikh Stephane” I see posts and content about me.
The project creators acknowledge this in the description of their philosophy, saying:
In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.
True, but it would have been a fun interaction to be able to just click “not relevant” on those mis-characterizations, and fascinating to see a more relevant portrait of oneself. I tend to think my persona snapshot (shown above) would not have such high weights for “religion, politics or medical.” But I am glad that sports has the biggest percentage.
Try your own online data portrait at Personas.
Want an inside look into what VCs are doing and thinking? Wish you could get into their heads to know what they’re actually looking for so you can tailor your pitch “just so?”
Here’s your chance. Twitter provides a way to follow and communicate with many of the startup world’s top funders – and the social warmth it provides in being able to hear their insights and ask questions is terrific.
Larry Rubin posted a list of top VCs on Twitter. You can view his original post here. Some of the VCs listed aren’t very active Twitterers, but many of them are.
I am following them all!
1. Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures @guykawasaki
2. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures @fredwilson
3. David Hornik, August Capital @davidhornik
4. Brad Feld, Foundry Group @bfeld
5. Marc Andreesen, n/a @pmarcablog
6. Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital @joshk
7. Ed Sim, Dawntreader Ventures @edsim
8. Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures Partners @jeremysliew
9. Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital @bgurley
10. Jeff Nolan, SAP Ventures @jeffnolan
11. Christopher Allen, Alacrity Ventures @ChristopherA
12. Seth Levine, Foundry Group @sether
13. Jeff Bussgang, Flybridge Capital Partners @bussgang
14. Mike Hirshland, Polaris Venture Partners @VCMike
15. Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC @Jeff
16. Mendelson/Feld, Foundry Group @jasonmendelson @bfeld
17. Paul Kedrosky, Ventures West @pkedrosky
18. Jason Caplain, Southern Capitol Ventures @jcaplain
19. Nic Brisbourne, Esprit Capital Partners @brisbourne
20. Jason Mendelson, Foundry Group @jasonmendelson
21. Ryan McIntyre, Foundry Group @ryan_mcintyre
22. Howard Morgan, First Round Capital @HLMorgan
23. Raj Kapoor, Mayfield Fund @Rajil
24. Christine Herron, First Round Capital @christine
25. Fred Destin, Atlas Venture @fdestin
26. Saul Klein, Index Ventures @cape
27. Vineet Buch, BlueRun Ventures @VineetBuch
28. Andrew Parker, Union Square Ventures @andrewparker
29. Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital @bijan
30. Rob Finn, Edison Venture @robfinn
31. Marc Goldberg, Occam Capital @MarcGoldberg
32. Daniel Cohen, Israel Venture Partners @coheda
33. James Chen, CXO Ventures @cxo (not very active)
34. David Aronoff, Flybridge Capital Partners @dba
35. Max Bleyleben, Kennet Partners @mbleyleben
36. Jeremy Levine, Bessemer Venture Partners @jeremyl
37. Jason Ball, Qualcomm Ventures Europe @jasonball
38. Mark Peter Davis, DFJ Gotham Ventures @markpeterdavis
39. Rob Hayes, First Round Capital @robhayes
40. Michael Eisenberg, Benchmark Capital @mikeeisenberg
41. Chris Fralic, First Round Capital @chrisfralic
42. Sagi Rubin, Virgin Green Fund @sagirubin (not very active)
43. Richard Dale, Sigma Partners @rdale
44. John Ludwig, Ignition Partners @jhludwig
45. Dan Rua, Inflexion Partners @danrua
46. Steve Brotman, Silicon Alley Venture Partners @stevebrotman
47. Larry Cheng, Fidelity Ventures @larryvc
48. Martin Tobias, Ignition Partners @ministeroforder
49. Matt Winn, Chrysalis Ventures @mattwinn
50. Sarah Tavel, Bessemer Venture Partners @adventurista
51. Stewart Alsop, Alsop-Louie Partners @salsop
52. Rich Tong, Ignition Partners @richtong
53. George Zachary, Charles River Ventures @georgezachary
54. Rob Go, Spark Capital @robgo
55. Rachel Strate, EPIC Ventures @WasatchGirl
56. Sid Mohasseb, Tech Coast Angels @sidmohasseb
57. Mo Koyfman, Spark Capital @mokoyfman
58. Rob Day @cleantechvc
59. Marc Averitt, Okapi Venture Capital @OCVC
60. Michael Greeley, Flybridge Capital Partners @FlybridgeCap
61. Ted Driscoll, Claremont Creek Ventures @easydjr (not very active)
62. Santo Politi, Spark Capital @santopoliti
63. David Dufresne, Desjardins Venture Capital @DavidDufresne
64. Todd Klein, Legend Ventures @tdklein
65. Max Niederhofer, Atlas Venture @maxniederhofer
66. Vinit Nijhawan, Key Venture Partners @vinit44
67. Multiple Authors, Brightspark Ventures @MarkSkapinker @Sophiebspark @antman102
68. Rob Schultz, IllinoisVENTURES @crobtri
69. Ouriel Ohayon, Lightspeed Gemini Internet Lab @OurielOhayon
70. Brian Hirsch, Greenhill SAVP @hirschb
71. Kent Goldman, First Round Capital @kentgoldman
72. Larry Marcus, Walden Venture Capital @cyberlar
73. TechCoastAngles @techcoastangels
74. Bryce Roberts, OATV @bryce
75. Howard Lindzon, Knight’s Bridge Capital @howardlindzon
76. Sequoia Capital @Sequoia_Capital
77. True Ventures @trueventures
78. Founders Fund via Dave McClure @davemcclure
Americans spoiled by $99 iPhones may not realize there are other phones that, in some ways, are better social tools than Steve Jobs’ touchscreen supergadget. But having handled INQ’s spanking-new Chat 3G and Mini 3G, both of which lucky Brits will probably get for free with a service plan, I’ve raised the bar on the iPhone in my pocket. INQ, the London based handset maker whose slogan is “Social Mobile,” has crafted Facebook and Twitter apps — plus others for other social networks and Web 2.0 services — that sit onboard, always running, and have none of the slow responsiveness of the downloaded Facebook and Twitter apps I use on my iPhone and BlackBerry.
INQ’s clever trick with their first model last year, the INQ1, generated this rave review at TrustedReviews for its hardwired social network apps:
Facebook, Skype, Twitter, YouTube, Bebo, eBay, Last FM, Microsoft Instant Messenger, Gmail, Google Maps are not only available on the handset but they run full time in the background, pre-fetching data and keeping users continuously connected. All run thin clients which can be accessed with or without signal (such as when on the Tube) and any notices written offline automatically sent when reception returns.
Taking this to the next level is a game changing contacts database where the INQ1’s contacts are seamlessly combined with those detected from these services. This means FaceBook, Twitter, Skype, Gmail, Yahoo, WLM contacts and more are merged grouping contacts with the same name or those with similar (ie, ‘Gordon Kelly’ and Gordon K’ would cause a prompt asking whether they should be merged or not). Consequently select any contact and you’ll have the option (where applicable) to either call, text, email, Facebook, IM, Twitter or Skype call (but not eBay) them, even their avatars and statuses are transposed. Brilliant.
The Chat 3G and Mini 3G have an improved version of the same system.
It’s too bad these phones haven’t made their way into America yet. Flipping through the latency-free menus on INQ’s Facebook app surprised me until I realized: Of course a phone should be able to run this app this fast now. We’ve had our standards lowered by the inferior performance of apps that weren’t tuned for speed.
Both phones are buffed up with what feel like ruggedized keyboards compared to the tiny keys on a BlackBerry or Palm handset. An INQ exec described the design as “bloke-proof.” If you’ve got workingman’s hands, the Chat will feel less fragile under your thumbs. And just like a Pre, both models will sync to iTunes to let you play any of your own tunes that don’t have iTunes digital rights protection on them. (Engadget writer Paul Miller argues that this is still “only dipping their toes into the media playback pool, with hardly any onboard storage, empty microSD slots, and the ever-annoying USB-to-3.5mm converter headphone jack situation.”)
But for an addicted Facebook or Twitter junkie, INQ’s instant response, always-on operation, and careful integration of friend networks with its address book are quite possibly a better deal than a more powerful phone that has 100,000 apps. Sometimes, one good app is enough.
Dear Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T: When will they be available?
From: INQ releases super-bargain “social” phones — when will Americans get them? | VentureBeat
