Snowcrashing

About The NexusOne

Posted on 06. Jan, 2010 by Antonella Stellacci.

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….

Continue Reading

Wireless Sensors For A Better Life

Posted on 02. Jan, 2010 by Antonella Stellacci.

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.

Continue Reading

Firefox Mobile Is Almost Here.

Posted on 23. Dec, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

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?

Continue Reading

FoodSpotting. Put Your Gourmet Goggles On!

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

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.

Continue Reading

Why You Should Love Instapaper.

Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

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.

Continue Reading

Location and Mobile Augmented Reality Are The 2009 Game-Changers. Will Voice Be Next?

Posted on 01. Dec, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

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.

Continue Reading

The Promise Of Mobile BarCodes Apps.

Posted on 20. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Traditional advertising is becoming increasingly ineffective. And so much we all know.  But there is a new wave of mobile apps, which has the potential to accelerate its demise: Mobile BarCode Readers.

The first examples are two apps, now both available on the Iphone: RedLaser 2.2 and ShopSavvy. What they do, is allow users to scan a bar code (UPC code) and retrieve real-time data on the product scanned. The main features, common to the two apps, are:

-Price comparison through online shopping engine.

-Map of nearby stores that offer the same product, with relative pricing info.

Continue Reading

The Power Of Mobile CrowdSourcing. Waze and CitySourced.

Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

According to the Wikipedia definition, in a crowd-sourced model, problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—i.e. the crowd—form communities and submit solutions. Individuals, who participate, are rewarded economically (think of the Netflix challenge) or by means of social rewards (think of the Ted Open Translation Project, where translators are allowed to have a prestigious Ted profile).

There are various examples of companies, that have been entirely built on crowd-sourcing. Wikipedia itself is one. The Internet has provided us with an unprecedented ability to create networks of previously unreachable experts and connect their brain power.

Continue Reading

The Future Of Payments: Who Will Be The Winner?

Posted on 15. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

In our connected ubiquitous future, what role will cash have? Are we moving towards a cash-less society, where payment will happen through your mobile device? PayPal, Amazon and Google seem to think so.

PayPal was the first to move into the space with its 2006 launch of the PayPal Mobile Checkout. But it’s only a few weeks ago that it unveiled its real ambition to become the payment method of the future, with its PayPal X platform – a set of API that lets third-party developers incorporate its online payment system into their own applications, online or mobile, Iphone included. PayPal X’s ‘enhanced’ pricing structure – a 50-cent flat-fee price point for a 3-day settlement, and a 75-cent fee for an immediate settlement – is also a direct shot at Amazon, the most direct competitor in the space.

Continue Reading

How Many FourSquares Do We Need?

Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

It’s the promised Mecca of Mobile: Local Advertising. Companies of various sizes are all scrambling to create the Killer App, that will allow users to search for surrounding businesses and events from a mobile phone.

FourSquare paved the way, by creating a disruptive user-driven ecosystem that combines:

• Local discovery
• Social filters
• User engagement

Check-ins and Badges, with their basic simplicity and social reward dynamic, have been a social revolution and a turning point in the local advertising industry. Still, FourSquare is a young model with many unanswered questions:

Continue Reading