First Firefox smartphone launches in Spain

Firefox, one of the most popular internet browser developer had launched their first phone in Spain.
The phone runs on a Firefox system and costs approximately $113, making it one of the most affordable smart phone in the market.

By launching the phone, it further strengthens it''s motto of open development of the online world.

The main draw for the phone will be the low price. The specifications of the phone is kept at minimal and uses the internet for all it's features.

So, what's the main purpose of launching a phone with minimal features at this very moment?

The launch of the phone is to contest the big market players- iOS and Android mobile operating systems. By providing a new option for the market, it will be great for consumers to have another choice. Besides, the low-cost option will ensure that the low income in the developed countries will have a chance to purchase a smart phone.

And this is only the first phone that is launched by Firefox. By releasing a cheap model, more people will be incline to purchase the phone, providing feed backs and new enhancements can be added in to the future models.

Besides, developers are given another platform to showcase their programs.

Source: http://www.digitalone.com.sg/news/article/25501

Prepare for the Google Reader Shut Down on Monday

ABC News, 30th June 2013

Prepare for the Google Reader Shut Down on Monday, by JOANNA STERN (@joannastern)

The time has come. On Monday Google will pull the plug on its Google Reader RSS service, which has allowed users to read various news feeds and articles in one central Web application.

After July 1 the service will no longer be usable, as Google announced in March that usage of the product had declined and that it would prefer to focus on fewer products.

If you've never used the service, then this certainly doesn't affect you, but if you have been a big user of the service or had simply just used it a couple of times, you'll want to make sure you don't lose your collection of RSS feeds when Google flushes it down the toilet on Monday.

The back-up process is simple. Head to Google Takeout, log in with your account, select the "choose services button," select "Google Reader," click the "create archive" button, wait for it to create and then download it.

Our Picks for the Best Google Reader Alternatives

Now you'll have a backup of your collection of feeds saved to your computer, but the big question is what service you will want to read them in now.

Earlier this week we wrote an article on some of the best Google Reader alternatives and news applications out there. If you're looking for a straight-up RSS reader replacement, we highly recommend Feedly. The service is organized, really nicely designed and it has apps for the iPhone, iPads and Android phones.

Feedly allows you to also import your Google Reader feeds without having to do the Google Takeout process. You can just sign into Feedly with your Google account and import your feeds. The company says it has seen more than 8 million customers join the service since Google announced the death of Reader back in March.

If Feedly isn't for you, there's other options from Digg and AOL.

Check out our Google Reader alternatives article and the video above. Above all, just remember to act before July 1. We don't want your news collection to die along with Google's product.

Email Is Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online

Believe this is the article we talk about during the last lesson Email Is Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online

(both images via Wired)

Project Loon - http://www.google.com/loon/

Project Loon - Is a project started inside Google 2 years ago lead by their Chief Technical Architect Rich Devaul. 

Their goal is to create an easy network architecture that can provide affordable internet access for everyone located anywhere on earth. Especially for users who live in rural, mountain or remote area where laying infrastructure is a great challenge for the service provider and the large amount of cost involved. 

From the data shown it seem like everyone is "should"have internet access but that is not the case. Currently only 1/3 of the world population had access to internet and there is still 2/3 of untapped market. 

So Google starts their Project Loon, where they will float big balloons up in the stratosphere (about 20km) that is much higher than the currently commercial plane fly (about 10km) and be able to control the balloons from ground stations.

In the stratosphere the winds is generally in slow-moving and each layer of wind varies in direction and magnitude. Software algorithms will be used to determine where it will go.

Each balloons will have a parachute for to be landed, a solar panel which can keep the hardware running and recharge himself and the equipement which control the system, radio antennas and to communicate with other balloons.

Each balloons can provide internet at about 3G connection to a diameter of 40km. Household on the ground will need to fix a red balloon which work as an antenna to link up the bigger balloons in the stratosphere, in turns with other ballons and finally back to the one of the tower on the ground which will connect to the local internet provider.

But this is still in the experimenting stage, recently is it tested with 50 users in New Zealand and there is some degrees of success.

I mean this is a great product but there still remain a lot of challengers and unknown questions.

Advantage for Google and the world

1. If this project successfully, it can help google to generate more revenue depending on what and how they intent to use it this product.
2. Since more internet user mean they can help advertiser to reach a even more audience then the currently number 
3. If there is earthquake where ground cable or underwater cable are broken we still got the sky for connection and provide the outside world what happen inside and aids can be send to them faster
4. More users can be connected to the internet

Unknown

1. Is google going to start their internet company to provide internet connection?
2. Or are they going to sell this technology or services to the internet provider?
3. How many balloons are need to keep the connection stable since the balloons will be floating around
4. Will the country government allowing so many "unknown" balloons floating above their country.
5. Who controlling the space? Since sky is control by individual country
6. Do we now need more people to in charge of monitoring where the balloons?
7. We are having crappy 3G Handphone connection, compare to fibre connection will the result be the same?

Yahoo takes on the “Webmail war” with Xobni

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer continued her “panic” shopping spree and takes on the "webmail" war with the acquisition of Xobni. /https://www.xobni.com/

Xobni (“inbox” spelled backwards) is an email startup based in San Francisco that offers products designed to help users build/uncover information about the contacts they have exchanged email, calls or messages with.

The information include a full view of each contact, along with their photo, job title, company details, email history, attachments and even their updates from Facebook and Twitter.

Xobni uses Smartr, a system that mines our Inbox and our social media contacts, and matches messages up with people we know.

Yahoo's Recent Acquisitions

Yahoo’s other recent acquisitions include a microblogging platform and social networking website - tumblr, a video app for iPhone – Qwiki, a picture taking application for iPhones – GhostBird Software, a startup that powers games played on smartphones, tablets, consoles or personal computers – PlayerScale, a local business discovery service – Alike, a to-do app – Astrid, a social polling tool – GoPollGo, a news summarization service – Summly. 

http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-acquires-email-management-app-xobni-212758716.html

These acquisitions are in line with the company’s focus on reinventing itself, providing enhanced products and services geared toward “daily habits” like email, blogs, finance, sports, weather and photos.

Yahoo planned to use Xobni to improve its Yahoo Mail along with its other product offerings, while Xobni remarked that "Soon, you'll be able to use Yahoo! products with Xobni goodness baked right in."

According to Xobni’s official statement, “The power within every Xobni product is that it responds to how you communicate. Every day you demonstrate who and what is important to you. That can benefit not just your inbox or smartphone, but the many services you use.”

Will Yahoo win the webmail war?

While we can expect significant improvements to Yahoo Mail with this new acquisition, whether or not Yahoo can win back users who have flocked to Gmail and perhaps Outlook.com in recent years remains to be seen. Yahoo also has to convince users who have switched to communicating online via social media sites like Facebook and apps such as WhatsApp, Line and Viper. 

What will Yahoo buy next?

I wonder what will Yahoo buy next?  Will it be creating its own mobile messaging app soon? As it is, there are many mobile messaging apps out there. If Yahoo or any company were to create an app, the biggest challenge is how to win over users. I don’t think people are likely to install multiple clients on their mobile phones to communicate with each other. The right “winning” strategy is tantamount to securing a victory in the mobile messaging war.

Yahoo copied Google - targeted advertising: What about our email privacy?

On a side note, Yahoo and Google have been competing in a lot of areas, and free webmail service is one of them. Following the footsteps of Gmail, Yahoo Mail has also started to provide targeted advertising by automatically scanning our emails.

I have gmail, yahoo mail and outlook.com accounts. While I know that email has never ever been truly private communication, as if they are mailed letters going through our good old post offices, I still get a shock when I was served an advertisement related to legal services when I sent an email to my solicitor via Yahoo Mail.

Should we be concerned about email privacy at all? My answer is yes and I am very concerned....

What has happened in the digital world that is of note during our mid-term break?

Apple has moved to register “iWatch” as a trademark Japan, and in several other countries.

This has fueled speculations that Apple is working on a gadget to be worn on the wrist, what reviewers are calling the desirable truly wearable communication technology.

Many have talked about the possible functions of the iWatch aside from telling the time – maps, health monitoring, mp3 / watching videos (with wireless earpods) and how it could “talk” to your phone so you view updates of (Twitter / messages) on your wrist instead of flipping out the phone.

Many have also done mock ups of how the iWatch may look like and its possible functions…

Several questions you may ask…

What does this mean for the watch industry?

Watches running on quartz / mechanical technology may soon be a thing of the past unless they catch up – like how the typewriter lost to the desktop computer. Casio probably needs to press the panic button now!

What does this mean for Apple’s existing iPod series?

The iPod series may eventually be phased out since the iWatch could potentially take over its functions.

Remember that the previous generation of iPod nano already allowed users to wear it as a watch with the use of a wristband.

Are there other companies who have given a shot at such gadgets?

Several companies have already manufactured such gadgets. For example, Sony introduced the SmartWatch last year, which lets users play games, check Facebook pages or send text messages simply by tapping their wrists. But sales have been sluggish.

So what next?

- We could be looking at the next “thing” that everyone think they need to own – the iWatch, after the tablet boom. Since the adoption of the mobile phone as a device that one needs to have, many now look at the time via their phones instead of their watches. With a watch that now provides more functions, interacting with the watch may seem like the next most natural thing to do.

 

- Apps will also be further simplified for usage on a watch. The challenge? User design interface on a smaller gadget.

 

- For the visually impaired however, the iWatch may be most useful in navigation.

How about new modes of advertising?

Perhaps the next most irritating ads after desktop and mobile phone pop-up ads will be ads on our watches. Imagine having to close location-based ads that pop up, or text ads that take up half of the watch’s screen when we access apps or even the time.

To the next wave of technology advancement!

ATS 2013 Singapore

Today i wanted to share about the event which i attended for ATS Singapore 2013 as it is relevant to our studies in Digital Media marketing.

ATS Singapore was held on Wednesday June 12, 2013. The full-day conference covered the latest trends and developments in the data-driven ad space across South-East Asia, Australia, China and India - and featured leading figures from the key constituent players in the region.

It was held in M Hotel with very nice setups, food and refreshments that includes, lunch, dinner with a splendid spread of practically everything that was out of my expectations. It was the best so far for the various events which i had attended.

The event started early at 0830 in the morning with coffee and registration. At 0910 there was welcome and introduction and at 0920 Greg Unsworth was there giving a regional round up and an overview of the industry and what was coming.

At 1000, there was a presentation by Julian Tol, Founder and Ceo of Brandscreen, followed by two short case study presentations and some questions and answers.

At 1145, there was a panel discussion about the opportunity in multi-screens and multi-platforms. While i was listening intently to what was being presented i had mixed feelings regards to this participation.

It was really a great event to be at and i was picking up quite a bit of technical jargon and the topics brought in was really in depth and very much "live" in nature. However i could not really keep up with what I was listening to, and before  I could process and digest what was in the air, more profound discussions continue to rush in.

During the case studies presentation on the topic, a spokesperson who represents a big company in China discusses about how different and competitive it was in the China market. While the moderator was posting questions to this lady representative she made some remarks that it may be rather difficult for companies outside China to penetrate the China market as it was radically different from other countries around the world.

1315, it was lunch and we were brought to the lounge area where lunch is served and at this point in time, I couldn't really remember what i managed to get because its a month since i attended the event. All i could remember was it was really a sumptuous meal with desserts and pretty much everything that goes beyond  my expectations. The dinner served after the end of the event was also highly rated.

1415, there was a panel discussion by 4 panelists namely, Greg Williams from MediaMath, Mikka Kotila from MediaQuek, Samir Shergill from AppNexus, Scott Neville from IPONWEB. Their discussions about the industry and about the targeting  re-targeting, technology and data was simply marvelous and profoundly abstract. It was very much insightful when they spoke about what was lacking in the industry and about some of the problems that the industry faces. I would say that this discussion was the best so far and it featured the climax of the event relating to the contents and the value and degree of insights gathered throughout the session. 

1525, the speech was about advertising platforms for today and tomorrow, where the case studies were made very much in detail after the initial speech. By this time it seemed that the peak sensation of the event is seriously declining. My observation was that the crowd was getting tired and was looking forward for the end of the event.

For the rest of the day until 1730 there was more sharing by the publishers. The discussion talked about Video marketing and how costly it was for advertisers and some of the challenges which the publishers faced. Cases Studies were related and explained. 

Some of the speakers mentioned about some of the costs and media responses which was common to everyone and that how Singapore's responses was not as good as the markets in other parts of the world. There was also mention that the local companies are not prepared to pay the price for some of the digital marketing services compared to the other countries due to the cost and the responses.

Overall the event was a magnificently held, with door gifts and splendid lunch and dinner. There was good food and wine offered, however  i could only enjoy the food as i am a non-drinker. The content presented in this event was highly overwhelming but expanded my horizons by quite a fair bit. It was really insightful although some of the information i was not able to relate to or unable to comprehend.

The networking session was highly spectacular and you could see many directors and senior profiles across the industry and they came from all parts of the world. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and they knew exactly what they are talking about. 

I managed to talk to a few of the key persons around however was very much lost in the conversation because i was unable to offer anything valuable to them in terms of what i do that was relevant to the industry. Its a good experience and if i had something in common perhaps the networking session could be really be more interesting.

That sums up the event for ATS Singapore, backed by the regional focus of Exchange Wire, APAC, ATS Singapore will provide a platform for deep analysis around the evolving APAC advertising market. It can be summarized in three parts namely;

1. The future of data driven advertising In Apac,
2. How multi-screens, devices and consumer connectivity is impacting Adtech
3. How data and technology is driving change and disruption to digital marketing.

The event was brought about by Google DoubleClick, Brandscreen, Adap.TV and other sliver sponsors and endorsed by ADMA and i believe it had been very successful in its launch. 

And here i will end my sharing for today and i will share another event which i attended at Singapore Management University, presented by Mr Eris Portsman and his work in the company, Alibaba and Taobao which is a subsidiary of Alibaba on the following post.