Snowcrashing

Is it The disruption that starts a new era in mobile innovation, or is it just another Iphone clone? Whatever you think of the NexusOne, all has been thought and said in the last 12 hours.

My “keywords”

- Phone Store as opposed to App Store.  The implications are vast: these are two totally different business models with different targets and user experience.

-Unlocked. …An innovation only for the US…

-A New Web Model. Advertising (not limited to local search) will be the revenue driver as in everything Google. Not apps. It’s not ad-funded yet. But it could. You have to have a Google account to get the NexusOne….

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Social Media Marketing has often an ambiguous fascination for the neophyte. On one side, there is the happy face that promises free viral promotion, on the other a darker and scarier world, where success is an obscure secret for the few. Both faces are false. There are no mysteries to be unlocked, no gatekeepers with a superior knowledge, no secrets. Once you understand that, you’re already ready for success. And luckily a few new start-ups are emerging, which promise to take social media beyond the obscure buzzword fascination, and help make it a profitable channel.

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Even if you’re not an Apple fan boy, you have to admit that Steve Jobs is one of the most captivating speakers of our days. He has been able to attract a cult-like following based on his public speaking abilities.

In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience , Carmine Gallo slices and dices Job’s presentations to reveal the “secret”  techniques of his storytelling. Gallo’s main message is that anyone can deliver an “insanely good” presentation: or for the average presenter, at least one that is not deadly boring.

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2009 has been a turning point for the Internet of Things, as ReadWriteWeb names it, a revolutionary ecosystem of permanently connected “sensors” which promise to make our lives better, more “intelligent”.

Mobile phones and new devices have emerged which could change our behaviors in disruptive ways. Here’s a few of them designed to support our efforts towards a better lifestyle.

Chose a Quiet Place – WideNoise

WideNoise is an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels, displaying them on an interactive map. With WideNoise you can monitor the noise levels around you, and map it to see the average sound level of the area around you. Readings can be shared online with the WideNoise community and tweeted.

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It’s been the Year of the Apps.  There’s an app for everything:  from the alarm clock to running trackers to maps and shopping engines, going through e-readers, music players and restaurant finders. For every minute of your connected life, for every activity there is an app.

Each app is a new world of ubiquitous possibilities. But as with everything, there is a price to pay: fragmentation and closeness. Each platform has its own store, and owns your apps.  Add that app stores have been built without much of an “intelligence”, besides the top and new charts.

So what are the alternatives?

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According to new figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, U.S. online ad spending in the third quarter was down 5.4% from the same period a year ago.

Is the economic downturn the only culprit? It might.  But it is also a testament to the failure of online advertising to deliver innovation, which leaves the web powerhouses scrambling to find effective ways to monetize their traffic.

So what happens when all Beacon-like models fail? If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed. Wave your Online Privacy Good-Bye.

The facts.

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It used to be that if you wanted to pick a place for eating out, a fair amount of planning had to be factored in. You had to find a connection, check Yelp or Zagat, sift through the results and try to find the right inspiration among hundreds of reviews. Let’s even pretend that all this excruciating research payed back and it helped make all your dinners-out a fantastic, or rather a predictably fantastic experience.

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There are services and products that radically change our experience. Google. RSS. Twitter. The Iphone. The Kindle. FourSquare… But there’s also another category of less hyped, but not less relevant services, that help make our lives better. Think Dropbox or Evernote. Instapaper is one of these wonders.

What is it? The idea is simple: we all find ourselves in a situation where we really want to read something, but we don’t have the time. Some of us will keep 100 tabs open, in the hope to find the time later, others will bookmark it. Either way, that post is gone. Chances are you won’t read it.

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FourSquare, SimpleGeo, Layar, Junaio are the start-ups of 2009. Amen! This is good, this is beautiful, and this is the promise of mobile coming true.

But there is an area that is still under-rated and under-hyped, and that is as needed as geo-location and mobile augmented reality for mobile to come full circle. That area is Speech Recognition. 2010 could be the year when it eventually hits mainstream, the year when voice becomes the “next touch”.

Why would that be?

The foundations have all been laid out: advances in speech technologies, speech recognition APIs, faster networks, broadband, cloud computing, better devices with user-friendly interfaces, compelling applications.

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You might not love Ikea’s furniture, but you can’t deny that Ikea’s marketing strategy is nothing but brilliant: a cutting-edge blend of mobile, emerging technologies and social media.

Mobile Augmented Reality App
You see something, you like it. You don’t buy it! Why? The most common reason is that you can’t picture it in your own house. Visual memory is not a common talent, planning by the sheer power of imagination is even rarer.

The Ikea mobile application, dubbed Portable Interior Planner, is your new bionic eye. With a very clean and easy-to-use interface, it gives customers the ability to see exactly how the new designs will look in their home. And to do this, it uses mobile augmented reality features.

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