Web2.0 ideas

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Whiteboard 2

social surfing & snail trail.

Snail trail – a app that logs all the sites you visit and time, moves your site history to the web. so it’s not on just one computer but lots..so it’s for history what delicious is for bookmarks.

Social surfing – this is instant messaging for surfing. you use netmeeting tight software to allow you to see what your freinds are surfing to and writing/doing. so you log into a site and see which friends are on and you can see what they are doing…allows you to share youtube videos together etc.

too late

and here too

As you can see from the text above, a friend and I had been discussing Web2.0 ideas that we hadn’t seen and that we would expect to see as the web2.0 world expands. I thought that the social surfing idea was a good one and one that would have legs as they say, but today’s post on GigaOm indicates that there’s already one similar application on it’s way and that there already is swarm in the wild from a comment.

I just wanted to throw the other idea ‘snail trail’ out there and see if there already is such an app. If not happy to take someones venture funding to turn it into a business 😉

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Pressure is on NTL/Virgin Mobile

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With today’s news of TDC’s earnings from it’s involvement in EasyMobile being only £12.8m and Keith McMahon’s prediction that MVNO’s are going to get squeezed out of the Market, it’s going to be a tough start for NTL/Virgin.
I don’t think the name of the new business has been announced yet, but the new business is currently going through a rebranding excercise,”Virgin:Connect” that’s my guess at what the new company will be called. But both Virgin and NTL have suffered poor customer relationships over the recent years and I’m not sure a name change will shed the poor reputation overnight.

It’s getting tougher in the mobile space week by week, but it looks like NTL paid way too much for Virgin mobile at $1.62bn.

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3 up for sale

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Guy Kewney has a great post on the rumours that the 3 network is up for sale. I wonder exactly how much of the network is up for sale. The actual 3G peice only and the high street shops I’d imagine. The backhaul peice of 3 is done by Geo and you guessed right Geo is a Hutichson company. So I think Hutichson has been sinking cash into 3 in more ways than is obvious at first. [via]

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TalkPlus – two reviews – two different pictures.

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TalkPlus announced today that they received $5.5m in funding and there was tow reviews; Om’s and MobileCrunch’s.

Here’s a snapshot of Om’s – he gave us a demo of the service, which is essentially a “virtual number” on your mobile phone.

Here’s a snapshot of MobileCrunch’s – TalkPlus, which refers to their advanced suite of telephony services for mobile devices as Voice 2.0 brings VoIP call management tools to mobile phones. customize the behavior [sic] of the phone on a per-caller basis, Using the call management functionality that is accessed online you can also control voice messaging providing a different outbound message for each number as well as controlling quite specifically options for reviewing messages.

Om’s post missing the point, it’s not essentially a virtual number that does such a injustice of the TalkPlus product it’s untrue. Om’s post hints that it’s more than that by linking to GrandCentral etc. But when I first read the post I thought five million bucks for a second number what is the world coming too!

GSM allows you two have line two on your mobile and you can control that as you please. Orange has this feature and has had it for years. But it’s the other management information that’s the key to this service, the added functionality and control. You could use SkypeIn for another number and divert it to your mobile if you needed a quick number that you could ditch later.

If I was TalkPlus I’d be linking to the MobileCrunch write up and I’d leave the ill informing Om piece alone.

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5 Million Skype Mobile downloads

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Om has a post on the news that there has been 5 million Skype Mobile downloads. He’s right to point out that there’s a huge difference between download and actual usage. I wonder how many of those downloads were done by people thinking it’d work on thier bog standard mobile.

Anyway, I’ll still stick to my point that Skype mobile isn’t intergrated into the fabric of the phone and therefore will require choice, button presses, delays while networks connect before a call can be made. This means it’ll only be used by those desperate to save money.

Now if Truphone did a deal with Skype I think we’d be on to something huge.

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Video Conferencing… Its’ luke warm again

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You have to look at video conferencing from two angles. The first is its ability to increase someone’s revenue through the sale of new kit and a requirement of extra bandwidth which will result in network upgrades and the sale of network hardware. Which is all fine and admirable, but the second angle is productivity and probably the reason that video conferencing will get branded as snake oil.

A couple of years back during an audit of our services to an account, we were struggling with meeting room space for impromptu interviews. As a last resort reception at the IBM office offered us the ‘video conference suite’. We tramped off to find this room; nobody knew where it was, so it took a little time to find it. We pushed the door open to an audible creek and ventured inside. It was like stumbling into someone’s unused attic, there was dust covering all the surfaces. There was a huge old tele and a sign on the wall behind declaring the IBM location, which had partially fallen off the wall.

Now this was after IBM had started its efficiency drive and attempted to cut the unnecessary travel for stupid meetings. So it was in a period when you’d imagine Video Conferencing to have experienced a new lease of life but it clearly wasn’t.

It’s the same old problem that video conferencing faces, people aren’t bothered about seeing the people that they are talking too and they don’t want to be seen themselves as they reply to email and chat on instant message back channels. I’m not alone in wanting to do two or even three things at once when on calls, replying to emails, using instant messaging, answering the mobile, doing two conf calls at once (this one takes practice!).

I did a video conference once during a wash up of a project. We just hit the mute button and smiled a lot while having our own conversation on some other subject. It was a crap experience and totally unproductive as I could only do the one thing, sit there or two if you count smiling.

You have to go to a special room to do it, you can only do one thing whilst your there, so this news gets a lukewarm reception from me. So if you’re selling this stuff, good luck and if you’re using this stuff bad luck, I’ll stick to conf calls and real meetings for the time being.

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