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...
Thursday, January 25, 2007
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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