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...