News of the future - Andreas Bossard -

Productivity Future Vision Video by Microsoft

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:54:37 +0200

Check out this future vision by Microsoft. Some inventions seem superfluous like the touchscreen-windows in the taxi. But still some interesting scenarios. Especially the big desktop screen is interesting.

What do you think? What seems superfluous and what looks like a helpful invention?

45 theses for 2032 - a book by Detecon

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 15:57:21 +0100

Just read a book by the consulting company Detecon which contains 45 articles about how life in the year 2032 could look like. Inspiring stuff. Here some food for thought:

Energy

Household appliances will run when the electricity is the cheapest. The "Smart Grid" will them when the electricity is the cheapest. The heating will only be activated just before inhabitants return home.

Cars

Cars will always be connected to the internet and supply the driver with current information he needs, based on his current context. E.g. when someone picks up a business partners from the airport, when their plane will land.

Health

Electronic around-the-clock observation of elderly and sick people will become medical standard. E.g. through a shirt which measures heart rate etc.

Finance

Social Banking will compete with normal banks, when it comes to lending money. E.g. imagine how you lend money from people you know. They will trust you since you are part of their network.

Life & Habitation

Family and friends meet more often in the virtual world and not that much in the real world. Also through the virtual presence, people won't need to leave their home to work.

Interested in more future scenarios?
They will send you the book for free, but only in German.

Mobile phone use in Africa in 2020

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:49:29 +0100

Mobile phone ad on van by futureatlas.com

This presentation on slideshare contains an interesting compilation of different statements of how mobile phone usage will change Africa until the year 2020. Here some points that caught my interest:

mLearning will help to provide more knowledge across the African continent than before

Mobile phones will become the dominant mode of payment for goods and services

Healthcare practitioners will be able to send pictures of visual symptoms to the nearest bigger center for help/support when the cases in question are too complicated to be treated locally. --> Easier Access to healthcare

Revenue realised from data services will overtake revenue realised from voice services.

With the expected expansion of Africa’s role with mobiles, the continent would be the center of innovation when it comes to mobile phones

Africa has overtaken Europe and the Americans in number of mobile phone subscriptions in the last year and is now 2nd behind Asia. With this in mind, it's surely a good idea to keep watching the African continent to get new ideas for mobile innovation.

Here the full presentation:

Mobile Trends 2020 Africa

View more presentations from Rudy De Waele

Thanks to Christoph Hess for pointing me towards this interesting presentation.

The future of books

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:38:59 +0200

A Kindle E-Book-Reader
by amcdaniel83 on flickr

If you have ever read a book on an electronic device, you will surely have wondered how books will look in the future.
Kevin Kelly wrote an interesting blog article, that takes a look into the future of books.

Here some quotes from the article:

The current custodians of ebooks -- Amazon, Google and the publishers -- have agreed to cripple the liquidity of ebooks by preventing readers from cut-and-pasting text easily, or to copy large sections of a book, or to otherwise seriously manipulate the text. But eventually the text of ebooks will be liberated, and the true nature of books will blossom. We will find out that books never really wanted to be telephone directories, or hardware catalogs, or gargantuan lists. These are jobs that websites are much superior at -- all that updating and searching -- tasks that paper is not suited for. What books have always wanted was to be annotated, marked up, underlined, dog-eared, summarized, cross-referenced, hyperlinked, shared, and talked-to. Being digital allows them to do all that and more.

Indeed dense hyperlinking among books would make every book a networked event.

In the long run (next 10-20 years) we won't pay for individual books any more than we'll pay for individual songs or movies. All will be streamed in paid subscription services; you'll just "borrow" what you want. That defuses the current anxiety to produce a container for ebooks that can be owned. Ebooks won't be owned. They'll be accessed.

Read his full blog post here: What Books Will Become by Kevin Kelly

Oracle asks employees to submit their visions for IT in the year 2020

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 19:38:17 +0200

A text field opened, and the words of her comment silently filled the screen. [Tina is not typing. For short texts she prefers to use the new MSR sensor technology on her neck. It detects minimal movements of her jaw and sub-muscular impulses of her tongue. MSR stands for Mumble Speech Recognition.]

Find the full short story by Matthias Müller Prove here:
https://blogs.oracle.com/mprove/entry/it2020

Interesting stuff Matthias!

Revisited: IPhone is a remote control

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:53:10 +0200

Apple released an iPhone App with which you can remote control iTunes on your Mac or Apple TV.

There is even a nifty feature that allows friends to request songs when they are at a party at your house (iTunes DJ).

They were a bit early though with the release date. I predicted September 2008, but it came out June 2008.

SAP Future Retail Center - Why it's not reality yet

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:02:51 +0100

The SAP Future Retail Center researches usage scenarios with RFID tags. I had the chance to visit it thanks to the Alumni Wirtschaftsinformatik of the University of Zurich.

The technology is already used in closed systems, e.g. during the supply chain on palettes. But there are still some technical issues that prevent RFID tags from being used on every product in retail stores:

A lot of the demonstrations did not work at all.
When scanning a shopping cart, the scanner only recognized 98% of all products.
RFID tags are still too expensive.
There are scanning-problems when the shopping cart contains certain materials. For example:

water (orange juice etc.)
metal (also Tetra Paks)

The market for RFID tags is still fragmented. Most vendors only sell scanners, or tags, but just a few vendors sell everything.

Conclusion
Having in mind that RFID retail stores are a hot topic for years, it was astonishing to see that the prototypes are more a proof-of-concept than really ready for the market.

What will the web look like in 5 years? Google's Eric Schmidt answers.

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:51:07 +0100

Main points:

the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content

Challenge: how to rank real-time social media (e.g. from Twitter)?

broadband will be way faster than today and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

Why newspapers are dying out

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:12:18 +0200

I tried to find some information about the coming installment of wi-fi in my hometown Zug.

So I searched for "WLAN Stadt Zug", but only found the official postulate of the local party FDP. I was more than suprised to see no news-article from the local newspaper "Zuger Zeitung".

My parents said that they read something about wi-fi in the newspaper, so the article was in the newspaper but can not be found via Google. If they would publish a title and a teaser in the internet, maybe people below 40 would also get interested in reading local news.

Only those who pay $50 per year additionally to their yearly subscription can access the newspaper-archive by internet. But why should I pay if I don't get informed about interesting news-articles via a Google-Search?

GPS-Tagging of Photos with @Trip and i-gotU

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:06:45 +0200

Some time ago I received a parcel from Taiwan. A company called Mobile Action asked me if I wanted to write a blog-review about their new GPS-Logging solution.

They do not only sell the GPS-receiver (called i-gotU), they also provide a software (called @trip PC) to combine the pictures with the GPS-data and an online-platform (called @trip) to upload your GPS-tracks and pictures.

The i-gotU GPS-receiver is obviously smaller than the Garmin Etrex Vista (which I wrote an article about some time ago).

I took the i-gotU on a trip:

Here the advantages and drawbacks that I found using the i-gotU:

Advantages:

The software automatically detects the i-gotU and you can import the GPS-data. The import of the photos from the camera also is a smooth process. The software automatically connects the GPS-data and the pictures and presents them on a Map. The whole process of importing GPS-Data, connecting it to the pictures and uploading it to the web is as easy as possible.
It's fun to re-walk your trip via the PC-Software or in the web. Check out my test-track:
http://www.a-trip.com/tracks/view/31639
If you push play you can experience the way that I went.
The i-gotU is small and water-resistant.
You can directly upload photos to flickr or picasaweb while uploading your trip, which is great!
It's cheap at about $60.

Drawbacks:

The software only runs on Windows, so you need a PC or a virtual machine like VMWare or parallels. I used VMWare Fusion.
There are only 2 LED-Lights to communicate the current status of the i-gotU, which is not really user-friendly. ("What is the meaning again of the red light on an d the blue light blinking?") Check out this short video:
A big no-go: @trip Terms of Services refer to the privacy policy of Mobile Action, but there is no link to that privacy policy. Even on the homepage of @trip there is no link to the terms of service or a privacy policy. This definitely helps not to get trust into @trip.

You can buy the i-gotU on Amazon:
Tracker i-gotU GT-120

My master's thesis available for download (PDF and Slides)

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:44:04 +0200

My master's thesis Ontology-Based Cultural Personalization in Mobile Applications is ready to download as a PDF.
For your convenience the bibtex for citation is available at the website of the University of Zurich.

If you would like to get a short overview about the thesis, you can check out the slides of a talk I did about my thesis:

Master's Thesis: Ontology-Based Cultural Personalization in Mobile Applications

View more documents from andreasbossard.

15 years of music player evolution

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:26:25 +0200

I cleaned up my room and got rid of old technology.

Microsoft HelpPoint needs Support

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:00:34 +0200

I found a Microsoft HelpPoint in an electronic retailer "Fust" in Zug. Seems like the HelpPoint need some support itself. Isn't it ironic?

August 09, 2014 - Mobile Application does budgeting automatically for you

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:57:20 +0200

The mobile application "Mint" makes it possible to pay with your mobile phone and keep track of your spendings.

For example at the grocery store you can pay with Mint. The amount to be paid is sent wirelessly to Mint and you can select your preferred credit card or bank account:

You enter your PIN-Code and you are done:

Afterwards MintBudgeteer calculates your new budget and shows you how much money you have left to buy stuff:

This scenario and the images are taken from a presentation by John Pettengill. He states that future mobile internet should not just be the internet on a smaller screen. The presentation is embedded below. The scenario starts at slide 60.

An Internet Watered Down

View more presentations from John Pettengill.

Guest post on UsabilityBlog.com about LinkedIn

nospam@example.com (Andreas Bossard) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:21:55 +0200

I did another guest post on UsabilityBlog.com, this time about the annoying "user trap" when adding a new user to your LinkedIn network. You might remember my last article about the Sony Ericsson PC Suite. I thank Paul for letting me contribute another article.

A copy of the post is archived below. If you want to comment about the article, you can do so at the UsabilityBlog.

How fast things change. I wanted to write about a workflow in LinkedIn, which had annoyed me for months, but they have fixed it in the meantime, before I could publish the article.

So anyhow, here is the article:

One of the most used functions in Linkedin is to add a new user to your own network. If you don't know the e-mail address of the person or other personal information you can choose "I don't know xy".

Then the user can enter a personal message and click the "Send Invitation" button. Which opens the following message:

The only way to proceed is to click "Go back to xy's profile". The personal message is lost! You stepped into the Linkedin user trap.
Of course, according to the Linkedin policy you're supposed to add only contacts you personally know, but since you can bypass this rule anyhow by selecting "Friend", it's illusory to educate the user by punishing him to re-enter a personal message.

There are two solutions to avoid this unpleasant interaction:
- A "Close"-Button instead of a "Go back to xy's profile"-button
- Pop up the message immediately, when the user selects "I don't know xy", instead of giving him the feeling, that he now can enter a personal message for that person.

As we can see, they solved it with a "close" link.