Now we have Google, del.icio.us, Digg and Blogs. Infomation is explosionary on the net. By subscribing the RSS, we can access to things more easilyu. So what else we need? A Operation System that can be easily personalized to cater the specific needs and wants for individuals? A really personalized website?
Maybe we can look at what people think about one imaginary OS
----GoogleOS
Friday, March 02, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Real Estate 2.0
I discovered Zillow.com from the magazine FORTUNE. Let's see how the real estate business may be disrupted by the application of web 2.0 technology.
Click to read the article on FORTUNE
Click to read the article on FORTUNE
Friday, February 16, 2007
Friday, February 09, 2007
Some interesting articles
The future Web2.0 social experience is an article by Ben Hunt who tried to predict where web2.0 will lead us to. Well, let's take a look.
Forget about "E" and "M" commerce, the futuer belongs to P-commerce A quite attractive name already, isn't it?
Forget about "E" and "M" commerce, the futuer belongs to P-commerce A quite attractive name already, isn't it?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
"Colab"
During the last lesson, Prof. Gilbert said something about a website that allows musicians to compose music together remotely through internet. Well, after googling about it, I discovered that there are many websites which perform this function. The concept working together through internet is called "Colab". In fact, not only music but animations, movies can also be done this way. No such website found yet. If I can build one, then screw Hollywood! Anyway, Colab can have many applications, especially in business sector. It is still Web 2.0 concept. However, unlike blogs, wiki, youtube, it is not only about yourself now, it brings people together. I appreciate this idea very much.
Amazingly, the colab technology is designed to be a replacement for the white board. It was developed for meetings. After that, people are inspired by the concept. Some then start using it to compose music.
Read Colab's story
MusicianCollaboration It is a typical colab site, you may want to explore it yourself.
MusicColab Another one...
Amazingly, the colab technology is designed to be a replacement for the white board. It was developed for meetings. After that, people are inspired by the concept. Some then start using it to compose music.
Read Colab's story
MusicianCollaboration It is a typical colab site, you may want to explore it yourself.
MusicColab Another one...
Thursday, February 01, 2007
The 3rd lesson review
This time, a new task is given to us. We have to provide a translation service to the foreign visitors in Jurong Bird Park so that they can understand more about the birds and have a better experience.
The question is asking us to use a mobile network. However, as the visitors are from all parts of the world. There is a great variety in the phones and networks they may be using. Some of them may even have no phones. Some may be using roaming services. Some may have 3G. Some may only have black and white display. As a result, to use the conventional network, it will be costly. And a lot of high-quality service may not be feasible to carry out. Maybe SMS a question and then the Bird Park Server auto call-back and play a piece of audio answering in the selected language can be a solution. However, it does not give people a sese of excitement and enjoyment. A strange idea come across my mind, which is to forget about mobile device but to develop the Bird Park's own featured service. I am thinking of inventing a small toy bird with the ability to talk. In fact, it is just a mp3 player. The Bird Park will record all the illustrations for the birds in different languages in mp3 format. The size of the file won't be too big. 1 GB should be enough. Then the audio file is stored in the toy bird which is named "Bird Buddy" by me. The toy bird has a loud speaker. When it plays sound, its beak moves. It has Bluetooth technology support. A Bluetooth Network will be built in the Bird Park. A signal emitter is installed at each station of the Bird Park. When the visitors buy tickets and enter the park, they will choose whether they want to accept the service. If yes, a "Bird Buddy" is given to them which will be returned to the park when they leave. Then, they can configure the language they want. When they enter the effective zone of a station(which is about 100m), the signal emitter will send the location code to the toy. The toy then will know the index no. of the audio file to be played. The user then can press play button to listen to the bird knowledge. By knowing the rough position of the visitors, many other services can be provided. The "Bird Buddy" can tell the visitors where the toilet is or where to get some good food. If a child gets lost in the park, the server will know his position if he is carrying the toy bird.
The toy bird is merely my imagination now. Very unlikely, there is a product like this in the market right now. However, I found a Cinese company producing a similiar product called Toy Piggy. The Piggy can response vocally to different touches. Maybe by co-operating with this Chinese company, the "Bird Buddy" can be created. As it has Bluetooth and can play mp3. It is not merely a souvenir. The user can choose to use a new one when they are leaving the park. The content in the mp3 player will be erased. The use then can use Bluetooth device to transfer songs to the toy, maybe even their own recorded voices, just for fun. I feel that it may be a revenue generating operation rather a mere value-added service. It may really sell. If we design more model, e,g different birds, it may then has value for collection. I feel that if it is really launched, it can be an event that advertise Jurong Bird Park. With a "Robot" bird guide for everyone, it can even be the differentiating feature for JBP. I almost wanna drag in Singapore Tourism Board to launch this. I am exited about this idea.
Thanks to the wisdom of the crowd, team members makes me realise the limitations of the idea. The fact that the Bluetooth network built is not being fully used. The fact that the functions of "Bird Buddy" is quite limited as I try to reduce cost(Toys made in China are already quite cheap). They suggested using Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, not only for the toy, but also drag in telecom companies to provide wireless surfing experice in JBP. They suggested designing some channels for the network, so that friends can communicate with each other through their "Bird Buddy". They even suggest more revenue generating methods, such like selling the information about birds which originally stored in "Bird Buddy" to schools when they organize educational activities there. My team also come out with ideas of specially designed "Bird Buddy" for disabled visitors for a special rate.
Well, my team welcome the idea of the "Bird Buddy". Tomorrow, a bigger scale of the wisdom of the crowd will taken place. I will update the idea then.
PS: I have decided to try out youtubing and podcasting next time. So next time, my blog entry may be sound or video instead of boring text.
PPS: two websites I found interesting:
Engadget
The Future of Things
The question is asking us to use a mobile network. However, as the visitors are from all parts of the world. There is a great variety in the phones and networks they may be using. Some of them may even have no phones. Some may be using roaming services. Some may have 3G. Some may only have black and white display. As a result, to use the conventional network, it will be costly. And a lot of high-quality service may not be feasible to carry out. Maybe SMS a question and then the Bird Park Server auto call-back and play a piece of audio answering in the selected language can be a solution. However, it does not give people a sese of excitement and enjoyment. A strange idea come across my mind, which is to forget about mobile device but to develop the Bird Park's own featured service. I am thinking of inventing a small toy bird with the ability to talk. In fact, it is just a mp3 player. The Bird Park will record all the illustrations for the birds in different languages in mp3 format. The size of the file won't be too big. 1 GB should be enough. Then the audio file is stored in the toy bird which is named "Bird Buddy" by me. The toy bird has a loud speaker. When it plays sound, its beak moves. It has Bluetooth technology support. A Bluetooth Network will be built in the Bird Park. A signal emitter is installed at each station of the Bird Park. When the visitors buy tickets and enter the park, they will choose whether they want to accept the service. If yes, a "Bird Buddy" is given to them which will be returned to the park when they leave. Then, they can configure the language they want. When they enter the effective zone of a station(which is about 100m), the signal emitter will send the location code to the toy. The toy then will know the index no. of the audio file to be played. The user then can press play button to listen to the bird knowledge. By knowing the rough position of the visitors, many other services can be provided. The "Bird Buddy" can tell the visitors where the toilet is or where to get some good food. If a child gets lost in the park, the server will know his position if he is carrying the toy bird.
The toy bird is merely my imagination now. Very unlikely, there is a product like this in the market right now. However, I found a Cinese company producing a similiar product called Toy Piggy. The Piggy can response vocally to different touches. Maybe by co-operating with this Chinese company, the "Bird Buddy" can be created. As it has Bluetooth and can play mp3. It is not merely a souvenir. The user can choose to use a new one when they are leaving the park. The content in the mp3 player will be erased. The use then can use Bluetooth device to transfer songs to the toy, maybe even their own recorded voices, just for fun. I feel that it may be a revenue generating operation rather a mere value-added service. It may really sell. If we design more model, e,g different birds, it may then has value for collection. I feel that if it is really launched, it can be an event that advertise Jurong Bird Park. With a "Robot" bird guide for everyone, it can even be the differentiating feature for JBP. I almost wanna drag in Singapore Tourism Board to launch this. I am exited about this idea.
Thanks to the wisdom of the crowd, team members makes me realise the limitations of the idea. The fact that the Bluetooth network built is not being fully used. The fact that the functions of "Bird Buddy" is quite limited as I try to reduce cost(Toys made in China are already quite cheap). They suggested using Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, not only for the toy, but also drag in telecom companies to provide wireless surfing experice in JBP. They suggested designing some channels for the network, so that friends can communicate with each other through their "Bird Buddy". They even suggest more revenue generating methods, such like selling the information about birds which originally stored in "Bird Buddy" to schools when they organize educational activities there. My team also come out with ideas of specially designed "Bird Buddy" for disabled visitors for a special rate.
Well, my team welcome the idea of the "Bird Buddy". Tomorrow, a bigger scale of the wisdom of the crowd will taken place. I will update the idea then.
PS: I have decided to try out youtubing and podcasting next time. So next time, my blog entry may be sound or video instead of boring text.
PPS: two websites I found interesting:
Engadget
The Future of Things
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The 2nd lesson review
We did our presentation on Starhub's case this time. It was entertaining according to Mr. Gilbert's comment. Well, it is just crazy to have 3 absolutely fun-lovers in a group.
After the presentation, we discussed briefly about the feasibility of using Wi-Fi (or maybe more advanced techology) to completely replace the conventional fixed line(cable) connection in the future. I was not sure about whether fixed line has cost advantage. So i tried to do a research on the cost of installation and maintenance of cable. No exact statistics was found. However, I discovered that people have to use GIS just to locate a slight damage in a cable network. And to repair it, they is trying to use robots nowadays. This does not sound cheap. The cable is providing a fast data transfer rate now. However, as technology advaces, Wi-Fi may also be as fast. Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE) has been working on wireless data transfer protocol for more than a decade. They developed a set of standards called 802.11X. The latest 802.11n which enable a high speed of up to 320Mbps will be coming out by Jan 2008. So maybe in the near future, it will be not just Fixed Mobile Convergence. Everything can be mobile!
Then the Prof talked about the immediacy and convenience of watching a goal on the mobile phone. Starhub is going to provide this service as it won the rights to broadcast EPL. A few new terms like e-mail is loosely coupled while calling is tightly coupled were mentioned by Prof later. I think the information in the internet is also regarded as loosely coupled. Though they are being updated almost at every second, you still have to check it out by yourself. People have different needs. Both tightly coupled and loosely coupled services are required in this world. Therefore, people came out with RSS/Atom to publish the internet content. It informs the subscribers once the content is updated. To me, this service on mobile phone is regarded as a migration of RSS to the phone. It is even more tightly coupled than RSS, and therefore provide the best immediacy. This, again give me a feeling that the boundaries between the fixed line service, mobile service, and internet service are vanishing. A integrated communication network is coming really soon.
We explored the history of the internet briefly then. I am amazed by how the first connetion between two machines eventually evolves into a massive global network. It changes the way we live. The world becomes different. There is one interesting word called Usenet. For the first time, I get to know it. It is a global, distributed Internet discussion system. It was developed early in 1979. It is like a web community. Unlike forums, the way it spreads the news is through mass e-mailing. Originally, it was just a toy for college boys to chat with each other about new techonology. However, it was welcome by public and evolved into a platform for the spreading of all categories of information. All people can just subscribe the categories of their interest and receive the relevant messages from internet. So again, the key words are "own interest" and "subscribe". Personalization is the word of this era. While other websites just provide their own relevant information, google ranks them and list out the pages that the users may mostlikely find useful in front. This is one step towards personalization. As a result, google's stock shot up like a rocket. Maybe in the future, google will provide search results according to every different individuals' preference. As the IP addrss is mostlikely fixed for a region, from the key words entered in the search bar, it may be possible to deduce what kind of job the individual is doing, what is his interest and many other informaition. Knowning all your perference, they can be even sronger than the tele-comm companies. Advertisement, promotion and many other service will be brought to you and you will find them useful. Imagine about the service industry in future, whenever you just start to have a need, they provide you with a solution, a good deal. It may sound fatanstic. But imagine harder, when you are hungry, they tell you where to eat. When you are sick, they tell you where to go. Even if you are single, they may tell you who you may want to have a look(I think, for those so-called friendship networks, instead of asking people to fill in their own profiles, it may be a better idea to build a profile for them according the information gathered through tele-com or internet). Then it starts to be like you are being controlled. Maybe too much of micromarketing is not that good.
I have a little bit knowledge for HTML. And I know a bit about the internet protocols as well. Two years ago, when I was still in JC, my roommate actually made use of the IP protocol to send false packets to other computers in our hostel to cause internet disconnections. Just to defend, I learnt a bit from him. So guys if you are suddenly disconnected from internet with or without seeing "IP conflict". It must be him again. Go check your arp list in cmd mode. Add the gateway's IP and mac address back using "arp -s XXXX XXXXXX", then you will be fine.
Too be continued...
After the presentation, we discussed briefly about the feasibility of using Wi-Fi (or maybe more advanced techology) to completely replace the conventional fixed line(cable) connection in the future. I was not sure about whether fixed line has cost advantage. So i tried to do a research on the cost of installation and maintenance of cable. No exact statistics was found. However, I discovered that people have to use GIS just to locate a slight damage in a cable network. And to repair it, they is trying to use robots nowadays. This does not sound cheap. The cable is providing a fast data transfer rate now. However, as technology advaces, Wi-Fi may also be as fast. Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE) has been working on wireless data transfer protocol for more than a decade. They developed a set of standards called 802.11X. The latest 802.11n which enable a high speed of up to 320Mbps will be coming out by Jan 2008. So maybe in the near future, it will be not just Fixed Mobile Convergence. Everything can be mobile!
Then the Prof talked about the immediacy and convenience of watching a goal on the mobile phone. Starhub is going to provide this service as it won the rights to broadcast EPL. A few new terms like e-mail is loosely coupled while calling is tightly coupled were mentioned by Prof later. I think the information in the internet is also regarded as loosely coupled. Though they are being updated almost at every second, you still have to check it out by yourself. People have different needs. Both tightly coupled and loosely coupled services are required in this world. Therefore, people came out with RSS/Atom to publish the internet content. It informs the subscribers once the content is updated. To me, this service on mobile phone is regarded as a migration of RSS to the phone. It is even more tightly coupled than RSS, and therefore provide the best immediacy. This, again give me a feeling that the boundaries between the fixed line service, mobile service, and internet service are vanishing. A integrated communication network is coming really soon.
We explored the history of the internet briefly then. I am amazed by how the first connetion between two machines eventually evolves into a massive global network. It changes the way we live. The world becomes different. There is one interesting word called Usenet. For the first time, I get to know it. It is a global, distributed Internet discussion system. It was developed early in 1979. It is like a web community. Unlike forums, the way it spreads the news is through mass e-mailing. Originally, it was just a toy for college boys to chat with each other about new techonology. However, it was welcome by public and evolved into a platform for the spreading of all categories of information. All people can just subscribe the categories of their interest and receive the relevant messages from internet. So again, the key words are "own interest" and "subscribe". Personalization is the word of this era. While other websites just provide their own relevant information, google ranks them and list out the pages that the users may mostlikely find useful in front. This is one step towards personalization. As a result, google's stock shot up like a rocket. Maybe in the future, google will provide search results according to every different individuals' preference. As the IP addrss is mostlikely fixed for a region, from the key words entered in the search bar, it may be possible to deduce what kind of job the individual is doing, what is his interest and many other informaition. Knowning all your perference, they can be even sronger than the tele-comm companies. Advertisement, promotion and many other service will be brought to you and you will find them useful. Imagine about the service industry in future, whenever you just start to have a need, they provide you with a solution, a good deal. It may sound fatanstic. But imagine harder, when you are hungry, they tell you where to eat. When you are sick, they tell you where to go. Even if you are single, they may tell you who you may want to have a look(I think, for those so-called friendship networks, instead of asking people to fill in their own profiles, it may be a better idea to build a profile for them according the information gathered through tele-com or internet). Then it starts to be like you are being controlled. Maybe too much of micromarketing is not that good.
I have a little bit knowledge for HTML. And I know a bit about the internet protocols as well. Two years ago, when I was still in JC, my roommate actually made use of the IP protocol to send false packets to other computers in our hostel to cause internet disconnections. Just to defend, I learnt a bit from him. So guys if you are suddenly disconnected from internet with or without seeing "IP conflict". It must be him again. Go check your arp list in cmd mode. Add the gateway's IP and mac address back using "arp -s XXXX XXXXXX", then you will be fine.
Too be continued...
Monday, January 15, 2007
The first lesson review
In this lesson we came to the concept of disruptive technology first. As an example, MP3 technology that affected how music products are consumed had been brought out. Conventionally, peopel buy CDs and MDs. Now mp3s can be downloaded from internet with certain fees(sometimes totally free). We also talked about SMS that terminates telegraphy and paging service and touched on Voice over internet Protocol(VOIP) that may change the telephony industry. As more and more mobile phones have the ability to send and receive email(for example, blackberry and starhub's i-mode email), I think soon SMS will be replaced by mobile-email. And the trend is, all the communication services(voice, message, image, interactive gaming, commercial services and so on) will eventually become one, like how Nokia puts it, all the people are simply connected. To me, this is what digital convergence is.
Of course, there are other aspects of digital convergence. Fix to mobile convergence is one that I am interested in. Under this category, there is a methodology to maximize the use of the already built infrastucture. So that the mobile users connect the nearest available transmitting source either wireless transmitter at home(fixed line) or network transmitter. After discussing about the Web 2.0 technology(which is actually a concept more than a technology) that involves everybody in the information creating and spreading process, I have an idea that uses every single mobile device as a relay to transmit signals. Something like I send out a message, the person 300 metres away from me received it, immidately processed the header, and automatically sent it out in its destinated direction without reading the content. Personally, I called it Mobile 2.0, haha. So that no costly physical infrastucture is necessary to be built. It will be something like a P2P network. And lots of services involving information sharing can be invented. Eventually, the entire population is connected and interacting like cells in a big organism. As the population density is growing and the mobile coverage grows even faster. It may be viable. Well, just my crazy thoughts.
Another thing that interests me is the fact that mobile service providers can actually detect your location. If they really observe and study your daily movement, from the pattern they may be able to deduce your income level, hobbies, life styles and so on. That is a goodbye to privacy. This may create some new marketing measures such as sending out a message about some promotion when a user is walking around your shop. Other industries may pay big money to mobile service providers to get the valuable customer personal information. Well, there can be many other applications besides marketing. When you are driving, you can just open the e-map and see all the dots in front indicating a very crowded path and decide to change a route. During emergency event such as fire, people in danger can found more easily. Or the telecom providers can even launch the real "Loyalty Program" giving the couple a pair of numbers so that one can always see where the loved one is. LOL, just wild thoughts. The limitation is that handphones can be switched off. Maybe not so much of loyalty, but of affection. This kind of service package can be marketed between loved ones, parents and young children, or adults and their elderly parents. So that anytime, the service subscribers can see where the one they care for is and probably other status such as things they are doing and so on(the status is updated by the targeted ones)... Advertising sentence: "More than connected"...Advertisement scenes... well, I am thinking too much...Anyway, I have decided to take GIS next semester. It clashes with my cores this year...
As I surf in wikipedia, I am really amazed by the taxi driver who created the entire entry about the cellular network. I thought it should have been done by professionals. But anyway, he tells me things like how the network works and how the switching of transmitters (sometimes it is seamless sometimes it is not) takes place.
Techonology is advancing so fast nowaday, from CDMA,GSM to W-CDMA, DECT, from simple moderating and multiplexing techonology to the fancy digitalization technology now, it doesn't take long. Because of technology's disruptive nature, it is necessary to know when and how to deploy which technology to capture the market needs and wants. Well, lots of things to be explored in the sessions later.
PS: I have also signed up in GoogleAdsense for this blog. Sorry if you don't like the Ads. Well, we are doing e-commerce here. You can either support me(google is very smart, the Ads are quite relevant) or just join me by doing the same on your blog. You may also wish to try some other affiliate marketing sites, such as LinkShare. This can be fun.
To be continued...
Of course, there are other aspects of digital convergence. Fix to mobile convergence is one that I am interested in. Under this category, there is a methodology to maximize the use of the already built infrastucture. So that the mobile users connect the nearest available transmitting source either wireless transmitter at home(fixed line) or network transmitter. After discussing about the Web 2.0 technology(which is actually a concept more than a technology) that involves everybody in the information creating and spreading process, I have an idea that uses every single mobile device as a relay to transmit signals. Something like I send out a message, the person 300 metres away from me received it, immidately processed the header, and automatically sent it out in its destinated direction without reading the content. Personally, I called it Mobile 2.0, haha. So that no costly physical infrastucture is necessary to be built. It will be something like a P2P network. And lots of services involving information sharing can be invented. Eventually, the entire population is connected and interacting like cells in a big organism. As the population density is growing and the mobile coverage grows even faster. It may be viable. Well, just my crazy thoughts.
Another thing that interests me is the fact that mobile service providers can actually detect your location. If they really observe and study your daily movement, from the pattern they may be able to deduce your income level, hobbies, life styles and so on. That is a goodbye to privacy. This may create some new marketing measures such as sending out a message about some promotion when a user is walking around your shop. Other industries may pay big money to mobile service providers to get the valuable customer personal information. Well, there can be many other applications besides marketing. When you are driving, you can just open the e-map and see all the dots in front indicating a very crowded path and decide to change a route. During emergency event such as fire, people in danger can found more easily. Or the telecom providers can even launch the real "Loyalty Program" giving the couple a pair of numbers so that one can always see where the loved one is. LOL, just wild thoughts. The limitation is that handphones can be switched off. Maybe not so much of loyalty, but of affection. This kind of service package can be marketed between loved ones, parents and young children, or adults and their elderly parents. So that anytime, the service subscribers can see where the one they care for is and probably other status such as things they are doing and so on(the status is updated by the targeted ones)... Advertising sentence: "More than connected"...Advertisement scenes... well, I am thinking too much...Anyway, I have decided to take GIS next semester. It clashes with my cores this year...
As I surf in wikipedia, I am really amazed by the taxi driver who created the entire entry about the cellular network. I thought it should have been done by professionals. But anyway, he tells me things like how the network works and how the switching of transmitters (sometimes it is seamless sometimes it is not) takes place.
Techonology is advancing so fast nowaday, from CDMA,GSM to W-CDMA, DECT, from simple moderating and multiplexing techonology to the fancy digitalization technology now, it doesn't take long. Because of technology's disruptive nature, it is necessary to know when and how to deploy which technology to capture the market needs and wants. Well, lots of things to be explored in the sessions later.
PS: I have also signed up in GoogleAdsense for this blog. Sorry if you don't like the Ads. Well, we are doing e-commerce here. You can either support me(google is very smart, the Ads are quite relevant) or just join me by doing the same on your blog. You may also wish to try some other affiliate marketing sites, such as LinkShare. This can be fun.
To be continued...
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
The First Post
The blog is dedicated to the course "ELECTRONIC AND MOBILE COMMERCE", code MB 362(that is what is shown in STARS, I am really puzzled by the fact that BM362 is used in some other places). I will try to note down things I learnt from every session. However, I think this blog will be more about my own thoughts and ideas. I would have exhausted myself, before I write down every piece of information I obtained from class.
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