Tech news links 21/08/07

Here are a few stories and links that have caught my eye over last couple of weeks:

Google News opens up for comments from readers – old and new media response on Press Gazzette

Why newspapers are screwed by Google according to famous Wall Street Journal internet analyst from Silicon Alley Insider

From 1000heads – future of web searching - social network powered, peer-to-peer web searching

Growth of niche social networking looks like where things will head from 1000heads again

Everything you needed to know about Facebook with latest gossip

And finally more on Wikipedia edit tracking programme from FT – quotes Wired’s top favourites including someone in BBC changed George W Bush’s name from Walker to Wanker – love it!

Essential Web 2007

I attended Library House's Essential Web 2007 event today which combined Web early stage company pitches with panels of investors in a discussion forum.

The first session was a combination of search companies; Migoa.com, extate, Quintura, Trexy and ID companies; Garlik.com and the todeka project.

Most of the search companies Google-bashed saying the most well known search company can't do everything, particular as the amount of Web data continues to grow exponentially. Vertical and visual search provides a better quality of search more specific to the individual's search choice according to the companies presenting.

The panel asked whether Google could simply replicate what they are doing to take them out of the market. The overall response was at present, Google is not competing with vertical search companies because at a very local level its crawler technology can't mine complicated estate agent sites, for example.

The ID companies talked about privacy issues and whether there is value in our personal identities online.

The todeka project seemed immediately engaging as it enables Digital ID certification and Digital Life Management. You can prove who you say you are online with an ID certificate and manage your ID to only put the details you want to on the Web. Garlik lets you trawl the internet to find out how many personal details you have posted online for all to see, which I'm sure will surprise most people.

With everyone willing to put their most intimate details on sites like Facebook, will the consumer care about this? The discussion concluded this will happen only when people realise their identities and tastes are valuable to advertisers. When this will occur is open to debate and mass adoption of ID certification won't kick off anytime soon.

Panelists included: Saul Klein, venture partner, Index Ventures; Graham Sadd, CEO, PAOGA; David Soskin, CEO, Cheapflights and Howzat Media.

Tech news links 21/06/07

BBC's Bill Thompson on future of social networking - mentions Photosynth and its potential future impact as well as looking at Facebook v MySpace

Tech story of the week - speculation that Murdoch might swap MySpace for a stake in Yahoo! comment from Bobbie Johnson

Report on Techtalk 2007 hosted by Connect Yorkshire yesterday - I attended this event. Most interesting talk by far was Steve Garnet from Salesforce.com who said software is dead, long live software as a service. Well he would, wouldn't he.

Mobiles more important than sex according to teens in survey reported at the Register - those digital natives eh!

Tech news links 13/06/07

Where FlickR will likely go from the TED conference via Ben Hammersley - unbelievable demo showing future of online photosharing

10 tips to building a technology business from Richard Veal at Connect Yorkshire event

Latest Silicon.com CIO jury - techies lack business skills

How technology will help beat road pricing from Peter Cochrane

Tech news links 04/06/07

Danny Bradbury on Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise

My soul and 10 other things Google owns from Adam Ostrow's blog

BBC's Bill Thompson (excellent as always) on the future of mobile devices

Silicon on festival mobile ticketing experiment - demonstrates the ID cards we carry everywhere now

Tech news links 31/05/07

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Home is where the work is

Silicon.com is conducting a home working experiment tomorrow with the whole editorial team working from home for a day.

Amongst most technology companies I encounter homeworking seems to be standard practice now. Employers have realised that people are more productive when not in the office being interrupted all the time and are more than happy to invest in Blackberry's etc.

While at Skype, our whole global PR team worked from homes dotted around the UK and US. We used Skype for free calls to one another, multi-person conferences/instant messaging and a Wiki to access documents/share information via any Web connection. I have to say the whole company walked the walk.

I was talking to employees at Civica the other day and they can work from home when they want or just bob into their nearest office if they fancy a change of scenery. I think this is important as you can get a bit of cabin fever if you work from home all the time.

The other important thing is to be disciplined in your work hours so that it doesn't eat into your home life - which can be difficult if you have colleagues in different time zones! Anyone tips for homeworkers? Or views from your office (as above)?

Inflated figures

Randall Rothenberg, the new head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), has written an open letter to audience measurement companies, ComScore and Nielsen NetRatings, demanding an audit of their measurement processes according to the FT.

Richard Waters comments that [in the midst of the current Web 2.0 hype] we've gone back to the bad old days where companies are being valued on the number of eyeballs they can attract.

Randall's letter comes after ComScore called for a change in Web measurement tools on the back of their own survey because of the explosion of podcasts and video and people becoming wise to clearing their cookies.

ComScore uses a panel of representative internet surfers over cookies whereas Nielsen argues for measuring website use in terms of the amount of time spent on pages rather than by number of views.

This reminds me of working with Site Intelligence during the dotcom boom when everyone knew people were inflating website figures but John Woods bravely came out and said as much as 80% of companies were fibbing (resulting in half a page in the Observer).

Woods said to gain an accurate picture of website use a combination of measurements is required because of the issue of cookies being cleared etc., rather than a single method for advertisers to determine a site's popularity.

Randall's letter says that the IAB has been calling on ComScore and Neilsen NetRatings to be independently audited since 1999. It's a shame that it has taken until now for the IAB to bear its teeth but better late than never as online advertising overtakes offline. Let's hope not just the cookies get cleaned up.

View from the top

I've just returned from a great snowboarding holiday in Tignes, France which was responsible for the gap in posts. While there I got a message from O2 on my mobile which gave me a flat rate for calls home for 36p per minute which I thought was quite good but still more than double a Skype call back to an O2 mobile in the UK.

Another type of mobile technology was responsible for the delay we had flying back. We were on time until the front wheel on the Thomas Cook aircraft was broken by the tractor pushing the plane out of its dock. A 24 hour delay and extra night in Lyon ensued as an engineer needed to be flown out with two new wheels. You'd have thought something the size of a plane would have room for a spare!

Work smarter, not longer

A report from The Future Labratory claims we are more happy because we are blending our work and home lives using new technology.

Commenting on the survey, The Independent implies that as a result of working-life blending we are happier with "almost half of us (46.8 per cent, to be exact) throwing off the chains that bind us to our desks and taking jobs that involve working away from the office, on our own terms".

Sorry but mobile technology for work just means working longer/harder, no matter how you dress it up. I'm comparing the number of laptops on trains today with how many people you would you see consciously scribbling work notes before mobile computing? The survey points out 77 per cent of people felt new technology had improved productivity.

For me, technology can certainly help us work smarter. Guess it depends what you are doing but does working longer or harder make people happy?

All change

Yesterday the UK's media heavyweights met at The Guardian's Changing Media Summit 2007 and I was lucky enough to attend. I'm going to write up some thoughts but for a taster visit Kevin Anderson's blog here for transcripts of the roundtable debates.

The central theme of the summit was social media and its effect on old media and how the two are/will integrate. The comforting thing I took away from the conference was that everyone's in the same boat. We are all trying to get our heads around how social media will continue to develop, touching our business and home lives, including the Guardian's editor! Just when we begin to understand one new technology along comes another application of it that changes the media landscape again. Anway I'm twittering now. More soon...

The geek shall inherit the earth

A new silicon.com survey has found that leadership skill is the key trait for CIOs who aspire to become CEOs.

43 per cent of those surveyed said leadership was the most important quality for an ambitious CIO, while 15 percent cited commercial awareness.

A greater focus on innovation and creativity has overtaken sales and marketing skills which have fallen again in the annual survey.

Commenting on the results, Phil Young, head of IT, said that often the CIO is viewed as a technologist, which is a perception they need to overcome to be in with a chance for the top job.

For me though the Silicon Valley saying that "the geek shall inherit the earth" rings true here. If you look around, the most successful companies of the moment are technology-driven and have CEOs who have a deep understanding of technology and the competitive advantage it offers now and for the future. What do you think makes a good CEO?

Sweden's corporate seagull

One million people are connected to the Web in Western Europe using Fibre to the home (FTTH) according to a new report from Informa.

Silicon.com reports that although this only accounts for just over one per cent of all broadband connections in Europe, Sweden comes out at number one with 27 per cent of heavy users on FTTH.

This reminds me of Morre, the corporate seagull, who I used to work with and who set up Sweden's first website (the world's tenth). Back during the dotcom boom I pushed Morre out to the media as a consultant for Roxen Internet Software - an open source web content management company.

At the time I got him into the FT as he said then that our broadband infrastructure in the UK won't compete in the future because "the companies control the motorway network, not the government". In Sweden, utilities and local authorities own most of the fibre infrastructure with companies competing to offer services on the 'A road' network on top.

As our broadband access creaks along in the UK due BT passing digital information through over-subscribed, copper wire exchanges, I wonder if Morre was right? Will the UK fall behind the rest of Europe as we require faster download speeds for heavier content or will BT's 21st century network be the answer for our woes?

In case you're wondering what a corporate seagull does, I'll leave you with Computer Weekly's take on the title at the time. The publication asked, is Morre a corporate seagull because he flies over businesses and takes a 'blue sky' view or is it because he craps down on them from a great height? I'll let you decide...

Mobile mad

At the risk of posting too much mobile news, here's a link to a new Global Mobile report from Netsize and Informa, which demonstrates of the 2.2 million GSM mobile standard subscribers worldwide, growth is strongest in African and Asian markets.

Titled, "Convergence: Everything's going mobile" it includes both up-to-date research and articles from head honchos at Nokia, Google, Vodafone and the like.

Unsurprisingly, China and India lead the pack in GSM and the research shows 3G has failed to take off in Europe, with people buying the phones but not the services. Music on mobiles has proved popular during 2006 with strong download sales but TV 'on-the-go' is where companies are focusing their efforts now.

Mobile growth in the UK is predicted to jump from 69,710 million subscribers in 2006 to 74,485 million this year.

Interestingly, there's a section on machine-to-machine(M2M) computing in the report. Using the Web as a network to transmit data from electrical products with embedded digital sensors, homeowners and businesses will be able to control and monitor machines and appliances remotely from mobile devices. Useful if you've left the lights on at peak time and therefore potentially energy-saving.

Pretty young things

It's not a queue to a rave but the European Young Professionals event which took place at Aura in London last week. Feedback on the networking event's blog said there were more women then men out of the 240 people that attended. The next one's on 14 March at Pangaea in Mayfair, London. One for the diary then.

Two hours in six seconds

At 3GSM, the world's main 'mobiles of the future' event, taking place this week, Vodafone and Google announced a deal to put maps on mobiles.

The FT reports it here saying that the two companies plan location-based services so that you will be able to type in 'pizza' to your mobile and bring up a map to your nearest restaurant.

The other thing on people's lips at the event is 4G, which promises download speeds to your mobile of a two hour film in six seconds according to The Times. Anyone using 3G yet?

The hiatus

Sorry about the gap in posts. I've been on holiday and got sick. Morocco is a beautiful country worth visiting but my stomach wouldn't agree. Broadband use amongst the youth is exploding thoroughout the country with groups of kids huddled around computers in most internet cafes. It's unrestricted so it will be interesting to see the Web's cultural impact in a developing Muslim country. International mobile phone charges are extortionate so internet telephony is popular too.

Mapping the mobile Web

Web use on mobile phones is growing according to the Mobile Data Association that has said we accessed the internet 15.9 million times in December 2006 using our mobiles.

Analysts quoted on BBC Online said Web use on mobiles is far from mainstream but continued advancement requires user education. They also said location-based services will be the next big thing:

"All the major players are starting to build services around navigation and maps, but they're still new," said Thomas Husson, mobile analyst, Jupiter Research.

With MySpace map mashups already available to show where your contacts are around the world and the company moving into mobile, the possibilities are becoming interesting. Alerts to your mobile when you are in a bar near one of your contacts is one application being touted around.

Will this mean Geographic Information Systems (GIS) providers like ESRI (UK) become the next hot technology companies?

The dice man

It's the taking part that counts according to the world's largest survey of online gamblers involving 11,000 players from 96 countries. The research commissioned by industry self-regulatory body, eCOGRA, and undertaken by the Betting and International Gaming Research Units at Nottingham Trent University, found online gamblers like to play 'to relax' or 'for the excitment' more than to win money.

Other findings include that on average, more refined women (aged 46-55 and 55% of the sample) prefer the glamour of the online casino to the typical 'young buck' male poker player (aged 26-35 and 74% of sample).

Ever made a business decision on the roll of a dice?

A moment in the mountains

BBC Online has been running a series of 'My Davos Moment' articles from people attending the World Ecominic Forum event. BBC Online's business editor, Tim Weber, posted Mark Crosier's of DeepStream Technologies on Friday. Here Mark gives a taste of how just how surreal is the gathering in the mountains.

What's the most surreal business experience you've had? Mine was a client and a journalist dancing together stood on a bar at 2am in the morning in Stockholm. My colleague and I were looking at one another thinking, "right, what do we do now!".

Deep in Davos

For Mark Crosier, chief executive of Bangor-based start-up, DeepStream Technologies, this week has been a bit hectic. He's at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, rubbing shoulders with the World's great and good.

DeepStream was named a WEF Technology Pioneer 2007 at the end of last year and the acolade resulted in a profile in Time magazine and for Mark, an invitation to Davos.

The company has developed a way to fit digital sensors into any 3D space within most electrical products, making them intelligent by adding up to 20 additional features and enabling remote monitoring and control. So your electricity bills could be managed automatically to give the best possible, energy-efficient rate or a leak at home could being controlled from a mobile phone.



Here Mark explains DeepStream's revolutionary technology and how he wants global organisations to come together and develop an ecosystem to create change in the control and distribution of electrical energy worldwide.

DeepStream claims its technology could be used to save up to half a billion tonnes of carbon emissions in the UK each year, which can't be a bad thing. What do you think?

A public challenge

Last week I managed to collar Eric Woods, government practice director from IT analyst, Ovum, at Civica's annual customer meeting. Eric gave me his thoughts on the challenges facing technology companies in the public sector over the coming year.



Eric said tech companies will need to help local authorities respond to tighter budget controls and the restrictions of the Government's Spending Review while continuing to improve efficiency and demands on customer service.

I broke my New Year's resolution not to drink, while attending the event. Why do we make them? They only make us feel guilty in the end. The conference was held at the Midland Hotel in Manchester so I broke it in style though.

This blog

Hello. The aim of this blog is to publish high quality technology-related comment gained from the people I meet in my work life. I will publish Chameleon PR clients' stories but only if they pass the "mum test"! I will post regularly and will edit comments if I deem them offensive or personally insulting. Please let me know your thoughts on anything published here? Cheers. Daniel.