DigIn! Media

2012 International CES: Unusual and Cool Finds at CES

by Limor Schafman

You've heard about the Samsung and LG seemingly paper thin 3D OLEDs (let me tell you they are amazing and the wall of 50+ LG 3D screens at the entry of the booth was mind boggling), but there were other small finds at CES that you may not have heard of so I will share them here. 

 

The Intel keynote with CEO Paul Otellini showed us what the power of chips can do beyond the gorgeous ultrabooks that proliferated the show floor.  Here we see the Adidas store footwear wall that was showcased in the London flagship Originals store and resulted in a 5% uptick in new product sales in two weeks.  

Then we move to the futuristic with the Aerial 3D Display made by Burton - these

are laser lights that truly create Star Wars like 3D holograms in regular air (in other words they do not need to have another particles in the air like mist in order to be seen as most laser displays require).  The laser lights can be interactive.  Apparently, you can make the lasers interactive with the Kinect, and probably any other interactive device like a tablet or smartphone. The can go as high as 5M in the air and 3M wide.  They can be multi-colored as long as they do only one color at a time.  

 

 

This is the Printing Dress which was featured at the Microsoft booth.  Made almost entirely out of paper, it allows you to tweet and display the text as art on the skirt.  While clearly a prototype - if you pear closely under the hem of the dress you can see the massive keyboard which is not condusive to elegantly moving through a crowd - the barrier between thought to public communication has lost one more brick.

 

Robitics in small sizes had a presence at CES as shown by Cubelets produced by Modular Robotics.  These are plastic building blocks that have sensors built inside and when you combine them, you can get the combinations to have different capabilities.  Matt, who works for Cublelets, gives us a great demonstration.  The Cubelets are available for direct purchase at the Modular Robotics website.   

 As you may have guessed, mobile devices are becoming the interface to our lives - they will (and in some cases already do) control our HVAC home systems, or TVs and radio systems, our car settings and garage door system, etc. etc.  Shelby.TV enables your iPhone to become your social media interactive video remote control.  Whew!  That was a lot of things together. What they do is they gather your Twitter and Facebook feeds and see what your friends are recommending you to watch. They then pick up the links, and post the friend comment with the video so you know why it is showing up on your Shelby.TV.  While you are watching, you can also comment and it will go back out to your social net.  And all this interaction between you and the TV is done through your iPhone or tablet. The app is free on iTunes.

 Another interactive I liked which was shown at the Verizon booth is the DNA Wall by Downstream which uses a mind mapping tool to display marketing information in a very dynamic way.  If you check out The Brain, you will see it is exactly the same.  I have used The Brain for a variety of projects for mind mapping a solution structure out, but also have used it for presentations.  A great way to keep the visual dynamic and the content visually structured.

And to drive out out of this blog into the next, we have Romotive's little Romo's which is a smartphone based toy vehicle in which one smartphone resides, and then another smartphone can control it.  It works with iOS and Android phones.  Very cute, very fun and just $99 if you want to give it a go.  

More CES highlights to come... 

Gary Arlen & Robert Raciti on Crash Course with Limor Schafman at NAB 2009

by Limor Schafman   

NAB Show 2009 has been an exciting one with lots of talk about 3D and MobileDTV. Limor Schafman, show host of on Crash Course TVMainstream.com, discussed the latest tech and market trends with Gary Arlen of Arlen Communications and Robert Raciti of GE Capital.  Streamed live off the NAB Show floor and now archived and available for viewing, the show covers conference highlights and what they mean for broadcasters and media producers going forward. 

Check out the show and please write to me comments here, and/or to me personally at limor@tvworldwide.com.

Cheers - Limor

IPv6 Forum Israel Asks: Are You Ready for 2010?

by Limor Schafman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - The IPv6 Forum Israel yesterday, on March 3rd, held a day long tutorial on the New Internet protocol at day two of the ISOC-IL (Internet Society of Israel) Annual Conference.  Speakers  joined from the IPv6 Forum, Google, Juniper, CISCO, Piano Networks, Bechtel, the IDF, ECI Telecom, PurePeak, and KeystoneTech Group.

In this third annual IPv6 Forum Israel participation in the ISOC-IL program, the Forum asked: “Are you ready for 2010?” The session focused on the key the drivers of IPv6 deployment – the significant depletion of the IPv4 addresses, and the opportunity of innovative v6 driven application development.  “We are moving to another level of interest and focus with regard to IPv6,” says Limor Schafman, outgoing President of the IPv6 Forum Israel.  The ISOC-IL conference focused yesterday on personalized ad serving, mobile web, video games and virtual worlds, and cloud computing.  Each of these assumes and demands ubiquitous, connected, on-demand content distribution systems which can only exist if IPv6 is adopted, deployed and activated through new applications.”

The conference emphasized new applications such as Piano Networks’ Vidder video distribution v6 over v4 browser based application, case studies by Bechtel, and in-depth presentations by the IPv6 Forum, Google, Juniper, CISCO, the IDF, ECI Telecom, PurePeak, KeystoneTech Group and STKI.

IPv6 deployment and development is of particular importance to Israel.  “Israel’s economy is largely based on its famous high-tech industries, which have been one of the main engines of its growth. Recently it seems that its technological superiority compared to the rest of the world is diminishing. Countries like China, Japan, South Korea who prioritize development of advanced high-tech industries, have all of them have implemented IPv6,” says Sharon Peleg, CEO of PurePeak and in-coming President of the IPv6 Forum Israel. “If we do not come to our senses and regain the famous Israeli technological advantage by actively adopting IPv6, we may find the Israeli high-tech market and Israeli economy in general, in a much degraded state.”

The IPv6 Forum Israel IPv6 Tutorial conference program can be found at www.isoc.org.il.  The full video of the conference will be available on the site in a few days.

Contact Info:

IPv6 Forum Israel:  The IPv6 Forum Israel (www.IPv6Forum-Israel.com) is the local chapter of the IPv6 Forum. It’s mission is to It provides information, education and resources to promote the deployment and development of networks, systems and applications utilizing IPv6.  IPv6ForumIsrael@yahoo.com.

 

Limor Schafman: Limor Schafman, outgoing president of the IPv6 Forum Israel, is honored to have worked with the co-founders of the chapter.  She is president of KeystoneTech Group (www.keystonetechgroup.com), a Washington DC based interactive marketing strategy and implementation company using mobile, social networks, video games, and virtual worlds.

 

Sharon Peleg: Mr. Peleg, incoming president of the IPv6 Forum has over 12 years of experience in entrepreneurship and in product and business development. He is the CEO of PurePeak (http://purepeak.com) – a highly technological, leading company that provides advanced solutions for IP networking requirements, establishments of large networks, ISPs and NGNs, and provides high-end colocation solutions in premium data-centers around the world.

6 Top Tips for Developing Mobile Applications

by Limor Schafman

This mobile Monday at the DigIn! Radio Show, we talked with Matt Perry, Founder and CEO of Mobients, and John Schmidt, CIO of the company, about key best practices for developing effective mobile applications.  Here are some of the top tips we covered:

1.  Mobile for a Reason.  There is a reason why you are choosing to develop information and content to be consumed on the mobile phone. Pay attention to what is unique about a mobile phone and take advantage of it: mobile, immediate, personal, goes with the consumer everywhere, reflects the consumers identity, has small screen real estate, is for short for consumption in most cases.  Build your applications to meet needs of consumers when they are engaging with their mobile phone.  When branding or advertising, remember that you have a small screen, 140 characters, limited patience of the consumer.  Give them what they want as quickly and succinctly as possible. 

2.  Utility is more important than functionality.  Make sure what you are creating meets a need, or is very cool, but there needs to be something compelling about it.  Think about when your consumer will be using the application, under what circumstances, what they really want and what will be convenient for them.  John gave a great example of a recent road trip in which he used his car GPS, computer Google Maps, and iPhone.  The GPS navigation system interface was obscure and difficult to accomplish what he needed; the computer was too cumbersome; and he needed to wait until the iPhone actually had a high speed connection since he was in the hills.  Ultimately the iPhone proved to be the most easily manageable and navigable interface, but even that had issues.

3.  Know what you are designing for and stay focused on that through the process.   It is easy to become distracted with additional features, and other "bright shiny objects" of performance.  Stick to the core of what you are creating, and make sure that works first.  You can always build from there.

4.  Really know your consumer.  Take the time to profile your consumers and place yourself in their shoes.  Who are they? What are their characteristics? What do they wear? What do they drive? Where do they drive? What do they do during the day? How do they shop?  Ask yourself a series of questions like this and profile 4-5 different characters/archetypes. Storyboard the characters. New ideas and new features that you had not originally thought of, will come to mind.  There are so many different types of applications that can be developed.  For example, a parent driving their kids' carpool may need to know of sudden weather reports and school closings, changes in sports practice, traffic alerts, have time to catch a quick update on stock feeds and news flashes, or want to completely escape for a moment in a flashblog novelette or mobile game.

5.  Choose the right mobile medium for your target market.  The mobile marketplace is still extremely fragmented.  There are over 100 devices with different form factors, different operating systems, 40+ different WAP browsers, touch screen v. roller ball v. scroll, different carriers, etc.  Each one of these has impact on shaping the target market which will eventually have access to your application.  There are approximately 15M iPhone sold in the US thus far. The iPhone has a dynamic interface which makes it fun to interact with and fun to design for.  There are 232M mobile phones in the US.  Is the iPhone going to tap the demographic you want?  Is it the coveted marketing "coolness" factor that you need?  Is it going to give you the ROI you expect and want from the application? The mobile platform forces brands to ask hard questions of themselves and their true mobile objectives.  There is much to be gained by going into mobile.  Just target your first steps and grow from there.

6.  Don't let your power users make your design decisions.  More likely than not you have a team of iPhone owning mobile gurus who eat, breath and live mobile.  That is great for knowledge and creativity, but they may not be your typical target user.  Be cautious that they don't make the final user experience decisions.  They may not be making the correct assumptions. 

To hear Matt and John from Mobients give their advice first hand, visit the DigIn! Radio Show site.

Business Opportunities in 2009: A Conversation with George Kliavkoff of NBC Universal

by Limor Schafman

 

I had the privilege this week to interview George Kliavkoff, outgoing Chief Digital Officer for NBC Universal, at the NY:MIEG (New York Media Information Exchange Group) [http://www.sobelmedia.com/2008/07/29/2396/]  Breakfast held at the Samsung Experience in the Time Warner Building.

 

With a focus on gift wrapping 2008 and casting forward to opportunities in 2009, we covered a number of different topics.  The full interview is available on TV Mainstream.  Here are some highlights:

 

Olympic Online Consumption

Customers want to consume media wherever they are and they are proving this with viewing behavior.  The Olympics stats are impressive:  2200 hours of live programming, 52M unique on line viewers, 1.4B page views, and 10M hours of streaming media over the 16 day period of the Olympics.  Note however, that 90-95% of Olympic coverage consumption was on the TV, with the remainder on the Internet and a very small amount on mobile.  The numbers show what a success the Olympic Games were for NBC Universal, and proves the adage that customer experience needs to be a driver of product and services development.  If it is, advertising, investment, and other revenue streams will follow. 

 

 

Smart Co-opetition Partnerships Can Build Success

Consumers want ease of use, convenience and a great customer experience.  If you build it and there is value, consumers will come.  Seeing the hunger for digital media and knowing quantity and quality of content were needed to draw consumers in, NBC sought out partners, and formed a joint venture with News Corporation to distribute premium content online with an advertising revenue model.  Hulu was born and today reaches 98% of the US marketplace with its multiple and varied distribution partnerships.  MSN, Yahoo! MySpace, AOL, Comcast, TV.com all stream Hulu video, with the video player skinned with that particular brand’s logo. CBS and ABC/Disney are the only two companies not working with Hulu, though their content can still be searched found and linked to through that site.  The centralized aggregation and distribution of premium content gives Hulu the scale and means to be successful.  

 

Advertising

Kliavkoff believes monetizing content with advertising will not be as difficult as people think.  Companies will be more concerned with the use of their dollars, so there will be a “flight to quality.” Though reduced in quantity, the money will be there. 

 

One interesting nugget of learning from tests on Hulu is that while consumers don’t like to view advertising, they will view it for value received.  And when given a choice between seeing a long movie trailer up front or a series of shorter advertisements over the course of a video steam, the surprising research results are that people are divided 50-50 as to preference.

 

Opportunities for Development Investment in 2009

Innovation is a key driver of revenue, and now is the time to invest in new technologies and new business models.  NBC/U and GE Commercial Finance created the Peacock Equity fund to make Series B investments in technologies that are tangential yet related to NBC/U’s core business. Capitalized with $250M, the fund has invested $100M thus far in 11 companies.  One company has successfully exited – Adify was acquired by Cox Enterprises for $300M within 6 months. Other investments include those in ad networks, mobile, and video games advertising companies.  These give a sense of how NBC/U is perceiving its business going forward, what it considers “tangential,” and where the opportunities lie for companies starting to build technology now.

  

George believes that the future lies with digital platforms replacing traditional distribution and advertising mediums. Distribution of content across all platforms – traditional, internet, mobile and onward is the plan of the future. Companies wanting to place bets will find advertising dollars seeking out digital means to deliver their messages when they return to the market place. Local distribution and advertising will become personal.  Advertising delivery systems that can target consumers with their specific needs (to buy an automobile) with advertising and information for as long as they need that content (once the car is bought, ads shift to nearby locations for road-trips or oil change discounts), will be of interest to consumers and investors.

 

Mobile has undergone an opening of the doors of possibility with the introduction of the iPhone, the Android OS and the G phone. George anticipates a marketplace for premium applications and a wave of new mobile development and associated business models. Of particular interest to him are companies focused on personal productivity and services.  This is an underserved and compelling market sector.

 

As a final wrap, George named 2008 the year of “Great Achievements,” and sets the bar for 2009 with the tag, “Recession Accelerates Shift to Digital.”

 

You heard it here first and to listen to the full interview in George’s own words, go to NY:MIEG’s online TV Channel. 

 

Verizon Knawing Off Hand That Feeds It With 3 Cent MT Fee Increase

by Limor Schafman

Those of us in the marketing, branding, mobile, content business are delighted that text messaging is outpacing voice in usage numbers.  But wait!  It seems a company wants to bank on this at a time when "banking" is getting a bad name.  Verizon has decided to increase its MT transaction fees by 3 cents per transaction for all content owners.

Bottom line on what this means: "It will kill most people's business - this will have huge imact!", says Terry  Hsiao of HookMobile, an MMS aggregator. 

Why this dramatic statement?  There are two levels of SMS/MMS messages - one is MO or "mobile originated" message which is when you or I, consumers, send messages out from our mobile phones.  We pay for these through our text messaging plans or per message.  MT or "mobile termination" messages are those that come from content owners.  These are paid for by the content owner.  The rates they pay depend on the aggregator they work with and the fees those aggregators charge, often sliding scale per volume of messages.

Verizon is suggesting that as of November 1, each single MT message will cost at least 3 cents, on top of the usual charges they and the aggregators charge.  The bottom line cost impact is enormous both on content owners and the mobile marketing ecosystem as a whole.  Some of the companies which will be affected:
- Advertiser or brand companies that use SMS/MMS to targets and communicate its offerings: Coca Cola, Target, Ikea, etc.
- Banks doing mobile reminders or other customer contact transactions
- Political campaigns pushing messages out to constituents
- News, sports, horoscope and other similar types of content owners [note: these are some of the most successful uses of text messaging]
- Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter

Fundamentally, any company trying to build brand connectivity, invite transactions or provide customer service to their consumers will be penalized by this rate increase.

What are some of the market implications:
- Mobile marketing as we know it will shift.  SMS is currently the most advanced form of mobile marketing - it may diminish significantly as a medium, disappear, or used only when customers will perceive a real value in the message being delivered to them [ie a bill payment alert].
The mobile marketing landscape may change as a result with other forms such as WAP or client based applications taking a lead. There are significant negatives to both these forms that do not compare with SMS for certain functionality so they do not fully fill the void of diminished SMS messages.
- Content owners will push the price increase to consumers.  Consumers may agree to this if they see value, as written above, but otherwise, consumers will be forced to pay more for text and the question is, will they want to do this?  And for receiving advertising messages? 
- Content owners will diminish the amount of mobile marketing they do.
- Content owners which have smaller revenue potential will go out of business [ring tone companies].
- Advertising companies focusing on helping companies do mobile marketing will see a significant decrease in campaigns and revenue.
- Consumers may ultimately not receive the services and content they now expect.

Rumor has it that AT&T is considering raising MT message costs by 1 cent.  Has the cost of delivering MT increased.  I think not.  This move to increase fees is a taking an overreaching  advantage of a market phenomenon of exponential increase in text messaging and of a just budding mobile advertising marketplace to - effectively - kill it off.

Maybe it is Verizon's gambit to create such an outcry that when they lower the MT fee increase to 1 cent or half a cent, the content owners will be grateful and buy into it more readily. 

Whatever the reason, Verizon,  is gnawing, ripping into, and stripping the hands that are feeding its network and hurting the companies attached to those hands as well.  The market will respond - and I hope it will use its power - particularly that possessed by the large content owners [banks and brands] - to tell Verizon "No!" in no uncertain terms.

If your company is in this ecosystem, speak out loud and strong.

p.s. - if Verizon pursues this increase - this will be a huge opportunity for other carriers who do not do an increase to grab significant marketing and advertising dollars, content dollars and new consumers.
 

Yahoo! Unifies the Social Experience on Mobile

Yahoo! just announced its oneConnect (tm) at the World Mobile Congress taking place in Barcelona.  Maximizing social networking with a desired user experience, Yahoo! registrants can now unify all their social networking sites, IMs, and address book.

Are you on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook and tired of having to flip from one to the other to catch the latest news?  And imagine what it would be like to have to do that on mobile. Well Yahoo!'s oneConnect instantly allows you to add as many social networks as you are on [assuming the API has been written to converge data].  Instantly, you can see who of your friends have made a new posting - it's all downloaded in real time to your mobile phone. Any friends on that social site who were not originally part of your address book are now added.  Any IM sessions you had with friends, will now appear in threads on your mobile. Check the history of your texting with them over months.  All the API's are open, so developers can get very inventive.  Want to add your 3rd party messaging service to the choices, write an API and plug it in.

In your address book, you will see listed under your friends' names all the different ways you can connect with them, and you choose which one to use with a press of a button.  Want to see whether any friends are close by?  Choose the mileage range, choose which friends groups you want to check on, either automatic or generated by you, press the icon and on a map you will see the pin points of where each of your friends are located.  Want to share Java?  Text them, email them, call them.

oneConnect requires opt in for the tracking and unifying of all the data.  Don't forget - they are an advertising model and they will be pushing ads.  Not much detail was given on this, but an example was mentioned of ads attached to text messaging on each end of the transaction. 

So far this is a US based roll out to start soon.  And there is a specific iPhone application.  But if you are a developer, call them.  They want to create a value proposition in oneConnect that will differentiate them from their prime rival. Distributing this through a widget interface allows them to maximize the number of phones on which oneConnect can access.  I can't wait to try this...just wish I could write notes in my mobile and have it automatically push to my social sites. Alas, wanting to ensure they are seen as collaborators and not competitors, this is not one of the features.