Wallet Phones

‘Burgers paid for by mobile phone’. This article on the BBC news website made me laugh this morning. One of Japans top mobile phone providers has made a deal with McDonalds to allow customers to pay for their happy meals with their mobile phone. Besides the fact it allows corporations to collect more information on your spending habits it seems like a great idea.
I have already seen mobile phones used for payment into football matches, concerts and so on by swiping a bar code in a text massage on your phone instead of a ticket. Also, my personal favourite which is using your mobile phone to pay for ‘pay and display’ parking by phoning a particular number, they even send you a text ten minutes before your time is up. This potentially would save me lots of money. I tend to have the more relaxed attitude of not paying for parking if I don’t have any change based on the argument that if I get a £30 ticket one in ten times then the saving on the parking payment will pay for the ticket. Unfortunately this hasn’t quite worked out for me just yet.

But the burger example uses a different technology. This is a variation on the ‘mobile wallet’ technology, where can be used similar to a contact-less fob key to pay for purchases (a pin number is used for more expensive transactions). So, soon enough my mobile phone which is already my camera, MP3 player, PC and photo album will also be my new visa card, train pass and sports club card. Then, I would really be depressed if I lost my mobile phone

Blogged Pipes, Are They Something To Look Forward To?

No sooner am I getting to grips with blogging, understanding the role of Social Computing and setting up my own account on Google to keep track of some of my favourite sites someone says have you heard what Yahoo have just launched?

Well I hadn't but strangely found myself actually wanting to know what it was. It is called Pipes and has been described by Tim O'Reilly as "a milestone in the history of the Internet" Quite a bold statement to make I thought bearing in mind how fast new technology comes along so I had to have a look to see what all the hype was about. Could this be an example of disruptive technology? I thought getting ahead of myself. First I need to try and work out what it is.

This tool, as I understand not being particularly technical, is a tool that lets people manipulate data feeds from a number of different web services. I am just starting to get familiar with the term Mashup, which business week describe as a mix, match and mutation of different websites. A good example of a mashup in operation, I think, is seen here on Thinkproperty. It produces the search results from their dbase of houses for sale on a google map. Pipes then to me could be defined as the mother of all mashup tools. The main difference being, however, that it has been built for the average internet user. It has simple drag and drop editors that allow you to connect data sources, process them and then re-direct to produce your output. The result is a tool that enables you to connect to the growing number of structured data sources on the web. You then use it to monitor muiltiple listings to a level of detail that has not been possible before.

I like the idea but the important thing to me is whether it can be used within a business environment, would it improve the way a business operates and ultimately make money. I think used properly it could, for example an Antiques dealer / collector could use it to tap into auction sites around the world to price watch specfic items that are of interest to him/her. A car dealer could potentially "Pipe" very precise feeds from Auto Trader to alert them to a car that they would be interested in sourcing from say a private seller at a price they believe they can turn into a profitable sell on.

Pipes do take things to another level, but I am not convinced that it qualifies as disruptive technology. I can't help think how long will it be before we get something bigger or better (probably from Google) so the question is should I try to dig deeper into Pipes or should I wait a while?

Here are some examples of Pipes in action and if like me you want to see a simple explanation of how Pipes works check out these tutorials

Bloggers beware

I was just reading the news and came across the story of Abdel Kareem Soliman. He is an Egyptian blogger who has just been sentenced to four years in jail for insulting Islam and the president of Egypt on his blog.
As the blogoshere, now a global soap-box, propagates can governments (oppressive or not) hope to control or censor what is said. Is this the first time in history that everybody has access to free speech or should blog accounts come with a health warning ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6385849.stm

Bloggard to Floggard to Vloggard

Definition of a bloggard - a person who discovers the technology of blogging as the technology is about to become obsolete.

I have in the last three weeks traveilled the internet world and evolved from a bloggard to a blogger, flogger - confused about this one then read on , to a vloggard.

Last Friday I was told by a fellow student that in my previous blog, my prediction that blogs would never cross the chasm, was potentially right.

I sat back with a sense of self righteous smugness only to have this shattered when he informed me that this obsolescence would happen not because of humans resorting to use the communication aides they evolved with - i.e speech and facial expression, but because of flogging.

At this juncture I again became very smug, thinking that all my scare mongering about the internet being used by people who had 'different' emotional and sexual inclinations, was completely founded. I then started to visualise what a flog could possibly be, only to realise that I had completely misheard and in fact he was referring to a VLOG - a video log. I am gutted! Just as I am beginning to embrace the technology of blogs and advocate them to the world as the way forward, I find out that yes they are a beta max or BSB box (both of which my father in law was an innovator with) and about to be replaced by a technology where your thoughts are posted to vlog sites.

Whilst this vlog thingy goes someway towards addressing some of my concerns in my virgin blog about losing the power of speech - see subversive, laggard or luddite posting on this blog - it also starts to for me, raise a whole other set of issues.

For instance I typically blog late at night or early in the morning - at these times there is a common thread which is I am usually in my pyjamas and look an absolute mess. Imagine if I were vlogging at these times I would have to spend hours putting on makeup and getting my hair done etc therefore is the emergence of the vlog an attempt by the beauty and cosmetic industry to increase profits. Even more disconcertingfor me, is the loss of protection and security afforded to me by only those people I choose to inform, knowing I am JJB. Imagine walking down the street and some person who fundamentally disagrees with what you have said, accosting you on the street.

I realise by not 'digging' vlogging for these reasons I am completely contradicting my previous views about the anonymity of blogging being a major security concern and an opportunity for people to masquerade as A N Other - but there you go, the virtual world is a funny old place full of contradictions.

On that note and because I cannot think of anything else meaningful to say - I will leave you today with a quote from an esteemed management guru which you can apply to the take up of new technologies - 'eagles may soar but weasels do not get sucked into jet engines'. Am I an eagle or a weasel and which is better?

Speak soon - JJB.