Posts Tagged ‘US’

GIS (geographic information system) market leader ESRI is all about collecting, analyzing and communicating geographic information. Built on the belief that geography matters and that it connects societies and influences our way of life, the R&D organization offers a new program to help schools integrate GIS in the classroom. Tiburon-TV’s Viktoria interviewed GIS in Schools Program Manager George Dailey at BETT London. „We provide everything from free web mapping services and 3D visualization tools like the ArcGIS Explorer to more ‚professional’ GIS tools. Basically a continuum of tools that people can step into whether they are elementary or university students“ explains George. He goes on to do some mapping of earthquake activity and to showcase how people are using GIS. GIS users come from all walks of life: Schools, city planners, administrators, fire fighters working with geography or agencies like the UN environment program. „GIS is great for visualization“ George says. „The key is what are people wanting to do, what are they trying to learn and what are the ways we are ready to support them. That includes curriculum materials, training, access to data and the software tools. But the tools are not as important as the question someone is trying to answer.“ Check back to our blog on Friday for an interview with Mikkel Overby from Serious Games Interactive, Winner of the BETT Award for Global Conflicts.

Inside the New York startup scene: At Web 2.0 Expo New York, Tiburon-TV’s Viktoria met with Roger Wu - co-founder and president of Big Apple-based KlickableTV. The interactive video platform allows users to create „klickable“ videos and lets viewers click on anything inside a video, interact with and find out more about the objects displayed. „We want to make video interactive and then last but not least help monetize the long tail of it“ Roger explains.

According to the young entrepreneur, anybody who can tag a Facebook photo can make a clickable video: „The easier it is, the better. Think of our solution like plastic wrap - we put this invisible wrap around the video with our technology so you can embed it anywhere you want. We really want to open it up so you can get as creative as you possibly can with it.“ That’s also what gives Klickable an edge over competitors: „We feel that we have the easiest product and the most portable solution out there“ Roger says.

Stay tuned - more interviews from Web 2.0 Expo New York will follow in the coming days.

Jeff Jarvis - author of What Would Google Do? - is writing a new book centered around living in the state of constant beta. In his interview with Tiburon-TV’s Viktoria at Web 2.0 Expo New York, he introduces the customer-centered approach: „When we create a product, the sooner in our process we can bring in our costumers, the better. Beta’s are both a call for collaboration and an active openness. People give you value in the form of good ideas.“

According to Jeff, even startups are beta and have to learn what they are as they develop: „They start up with one vision and end up with a different vision. That’s what matters. There is no such thing as perfection.“ But he also makes it clear that the internet demands specialization: „Specialization brings efficiency, higher targeting and higher value. If you try to do ten things, you’ll do each one badly. You have to decide what your best value is.“ This boils down to Jeff’s golden rule: Do what you do best, link to the rest!

Stay tuned! There’s more to come from Web 2.0 Expo New York...

--- www.tiburon-tv.com www.twitter.com/vik_t - Posted using MobyPicture.com

Last week’s Mobile Monday Berlin was all about Location Based Services: How will location drive mobile revenue? The mere existence of maps and location-finding alone won't bring in the money. In her talk, Kate Imbach - director of marketing at event sponsor Skyhook Wireless – explained how location can create new avenues for mobile revenue. In Kate’s view, traditional advertising on mobile is currently just an extension of web advertising and there’s more we can do: „When you take location and use it the same way you do on the web and add it into mobile campaigns you get some cool results. The future of location based ads is a lot of stuff that we haven’t even seen yet. Tying together all kind of information totally changes at how we look at advertising on the mobile. I think it’s still really early but the more location gets tied into it the cooler it gets“. Skyhook's technology uses signals from WiFi hot spots to triangulate and find a person's location. The Boston-based company has pioneered the development of the first hybrid positioning system to fully leverage WiFi, GPS and cell towers. For more information on how developers can make money of apps check out Skyhook’s Developer’s Guide to in-App Advertising.

Artist and Columbia University teacher Douglas Repetto believes it’s very important, especially in our current culture, to encourage the idea of a basic kind of everyday creativity. That’s why he mainly talks about nerds in his presentation at Lift France: „There’s a tremendous variety of nerds out there - Knitting Nerds, Biology Knitting Nerds, Metal Nerds, Super Nerds, Food Nerds and others. For me, a nerd is really anyone who is deeply invested in something“. Douglas is involved in a number of art/community groups, shows and exhibitions around the world including ArtBots, organism and dorkbot - a worldwide network of "people doing strange things with electricity" like collecting sweat from people working on the street and using it to make batteries... Click here for an overview of presentations from Lift France 2009.

While there’s no shortage of negative news these days, here’s a dose of positive news from Manish Madhvani, Co-Founder and Partner at GP Bullhound. With offices in London and San Francisco, the investment bank is focused on technology and digital media. So far this year they’ve closed five transactions and probably will be closing another one in the next few weeks. A lot of GP-Bullhound’s deals have been in the internet sector: „There is a trend that the internet is still performing“ says Manish „the key message is that there’s capital out there for the companies that are delivering and getting traction. One of the deals we’ve closed recently is with a company called Greetz, a pan-European player in the greetings card market. They are starting to see some good sales uptake - that’s why there was a lot of interest in funding the company. Another company we worked with recently is online fashion company Private Outlet. They kept on growing throughout the time we worked with them. It’s key to prove that the business model is working.“ Manish points out that „the capital will be there for the people who put in the work". He advises: "Go to conferences like this, build a network and talk to people who know the market. Personal contacts are crucial – we are always going to trust the business plan of someone that we’ve worked with before more than a ‚cold e-mail’“. Manish wraps up his interview with Viktoria with another dose of positive news: „There’s a saying that all the great companies are built in a downturn, because you have cheap office space and people on the market that you would never normally get access to.“ Click here for an overview of all interviews from Red Herring 100 Europe.

Engineer, researcher, educator and artist Michael Shiloh uses tinkering as a hands-on method for teaching art and technology to children and adults. He co-founded Teach me to make together with his partner Judy Castro: „We teach people how to make things because we believe that the esthetic of tinkering is really what drives people to think differently about objects. My favorite quote is ‚I didn’t know you could make that, I thought you had to buy it.’ Things are something you can make, not just something you buy. Our relationship to devices that we have designed and built is very different than our relationship to devices that we just buy off the shelf.“ Tinkering is the esthetic that Michael is using of taking things apart, of discovering what’s inside and of repurposing items. In his projects and workshops, Michael uses foam core, concrete, computers, hot glue, steel, Linux, electronics, pneumatics, hydraulics, remote controls, and broken glass. Click here for pictures of Michael’s gadget construction workshop at Lift France. Michael was the open source community liaison for mobile computing platform Openmoko. All the design information of Openmoko’s FreeRunner phone has been handed over to the community two months ago. According to Michael, the key breakthrough Openmoko achieved is to kickstart a collaborative way to develop consumer electronics: „Part of the effort of Openmoko is to migrate all of this from the commercial software to the open source software so it is available and useful to anyone. It’s not only about opening up the source but also the design process to allow for collaborative open source hardware development.“ In Michael's view we're heading towards decentralized design that can be done by anyone anywhere in the world: „We’re now seeing a shift in the way consumer electronics are being developed. We can choose what to make and we can all start creating devices the way we would like them using our own vision and artistic viewpoint. And we can design things to be hacked and repairable. The line between art and industrial design gets blurred.“ More presentations from Lift France 2009 will be posted in the days to come. Click here for an overview of interviews and presentations from Lift conference.

User experience researcher and designer Mike Kuniavsky gave a very thoughtful talk about “Making things in a Read-Write world” at Lift France. Mike’s core point is that the nature of making things changes as the cost of moving atoms goes up and technologies for reproducing physical objects using computer-controlled tools moves into more media. Mike suggests that ubiquitous computing isn’t just about offices and homes, but garages, workshops and assembly lines. In Mike’s view digital Read-Write culture (a concept invented by Harvard UC Professor Lawrence Lessig) started with the Apple LaserWriter and the MP3 and will expand to every other kind of making. Just as the economic and energy situation of the 18th Century England created the conditions for the Industrial Revolution and Read-Only culture, today’s conditions will dismantle the thinking of the last 250 years about how things are made and how we, as consumers and producers of culture, relate to it. Mike started out doing web design in 1993 and has been a consultant for a lot of dotcoms. He also wrote a book called “Observing the User Experience” and will be coming out with another one called “Smart Things”. In 2001, he co-founded a web design and consulting company called adaptive path. Five years later, he co-founded ubiquitous computing consumer electronics company ThingM. Mike also runs an annual mini conference called Sketching in Hardware. For an overview of all interviews and presentations from Lift France, please click here.

„We may build an internet of things and not see it. We won’t be able to see it any more than barcodes or the green house effect – a phantom for visionaries. It’s not such a bad thing, it might be in fact the victory condition“ says Bruce Sterling. In his presentation at Lift France, the American Science fiction writer mainly talks about the wrong aspects of his spime theory since in his opinion this is the only way to prove if a theory is good. Bruce predicts that an internet of things will start in physical places, in centers of excellence. People will get good in doing it in particular areas. Then they refine the practice and it spreads out physically from there. He unifies six big trends in his talk „trying to nail six icecubes together“: 1. Analog tools have gone away 2. Identification: Tags, Barcode, RFID 3. Tracking systems 4. Powerful search engines 5. 3D virtual models of physical objects, 6. Sustainability through recycling. According to Bruce, the green house effect which is a trash problem is the very worst and deadly serious problem our civilization faces:„It’s very difficult to make people care about trash. We have not found a way to let industry pay us to save our own lives. My spime scheme is kind of a trick to make that important accomplishment more possible. Taking ICT technology, wrapping up objects and as a sort of an after effect we wrap up the trash. We may be crushed by climate change while we are still trying to boot our netbooks...“ Click here for all videos from Lift France.