At LeWeb ‘09 FON founder Martin Varsavsky announced Peek, a GPRS email gadget that, like Amazon’s Kindle, comes with (almost) free data connection all over Europe through the new MVNO Spotnik.
The price point is set at 99€, then for around 13€ per month you’ll get unlimited data to send and receive your emails.
This could be a serious threat to BlackBerry prosumer users, which have bought their BlackBerries just for the email functionality and now have a real alternative, less expensive and available everywhere around Europe without lengthy binding contracts.
At the same time, offering data roaming connection for a bunch of euros per month disrupts the current roaming market, nowadays hardly accessible to consumers and small businesses that can easily spend hundreds of euros over a weekend abroad.
I can’t wait to learn more about this!
26 Nov, 2009
Posted by: Francesco In: Marketing
The latest Ikea online campaign on Facebook is creating a huge buzz, as they managed to ignite a viral reaction to a pretty inexpensive and simple campaign.
To promote a new store they registered the store manager on Facebook and added a bunch of catalog pictures to his profile. They then invited people to tag themselves in the picture, to win Ikea products. In a few weeks this was a huge success, with people asking for more pictures, sharing Ikea marketing material on their profiles.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE2LSp-hjbQ
The idea is indeed brilliant and being a first mover has been a key advantage for Ikea, however I don’t really like this approach. Tagging is used to alert your friends of pictures you’re in, for them to see and have fun. Honestly if I receive a status update from a friend tagged in a photo and eventually land on a Ikea furnished room, I won’t be very pleased, both with Ikea and my friend.
But, clearly, that’s probably just me as the campaign was a huge hit!
Back in the “old days” when I was a happy iPhone user, I remember how hard it was to type long messages on that tiny touchscreen keyboard, especially as I was coming from a BlackBerry Curve 8300.
Swype is a new technology that promise to bring ease back to touchscreen writing, by understanding what are you going to write as you swipe your fingers across the screen.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTooBnKAdSw
The idea is very interesting and the execution shown in the video looks pretty impressive, I should try it to say my final word, but at least it looks like something it’s going on in touchscreen input methods!
16 Nov, 2009
Posted by: Francesco In: Green
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmEBFWXMImM
I’m loving this concept of creating this huge cloud over the skies of London! The idea is both to create a huge display where to show information and shows, and also to perform particular activities inside the bubbles themselves, for people to experience London from above.
Another interesting idea is to microfund the whole process, so that the final actual scale of the building will be determined by the amount of money collected. I don’t know if this will be really possible, but it sounds sexy!
Goes without saying that the whole building is completely energy self sufficient.
You can read a full detailed report on this project here.
I recently learned that Audi has a research centre at Stanford University, where they explore and test new technologies to be implemented in future cars.
At first I just found this interesting video about a completely automated car valet system, that allows cars to park themselves on their own:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVuG7HAt-r4
Yes, very nice, but it’s this other video that’s really stunning! In 2010 Audi is planning to have a car racing the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a 20 km track featuring over 150 turns. What’s amazing is that the car will driven by a computer!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CuVVZq9GfY
Enjoy this shocking video shot in Times Square, a great reminder for all of us Internet geeks that people we’re producing web applications for are not on our same page…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
