Connecting Offline with Online using Mobile

One of the great lessons I have learned about Mobile is that it is not Web. Behind that simple learning is an appreciation for the unique capabilities of the phone and what kind of Mobile naive services it can enable.If you want to read more about the uniqueness of Mobile, I refer you to the following articles by Tomi Ahnon. They are quite worth your time: Deeper insights into the 7th Mass Media channel, mobile is to the internet, what TV is to radio 7th Mass Medium in context of 6 legacy mass media - about time to set facts straight about mobile The internet, the mobile internet, and nothing but the internet? No. Actually.. One of the unique capabilities of the phone is that it can act as a connector between your offline and online activities. This is something that the Web has...

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Path to disruption: from centralisation to decentralisation

If you are familiar with Clayton Christensen's disruption theory, one of the useful way to think about disruption is to identify institutions or technologies that are centralised. As technology progresses, we often see decentralisation replacing what was once centralised. The most common example is computers. When computing started out as mainframes, they were expensive and had to be centralised to maximise economics of scale. People who want to use the computers had to travel to where the mainframes are. However, technologies and innovations soon came that decentralised computing. Mainframes become desktop, desktops become laptops and very soon, laptops might become mobiles.Disruption will come from new entrantsFrom centralisation to decentralisation, there are two points to note. First,...

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The rise of the network economy

In 1998, Kelvin Kelly wrote about the network economy in one of my favourite books: New Rules for the New Economy. The central thesis of the books describes how the economy is transforming into a network-like structure, where different strategies and business models are needed to thrive. This is exactly what we are seeing today, across different verticals and industries.Network of Farmsa Bay Area startup has launched a service to make it easier and cheaper for restaurants to buy food from small, local farms. With a suite of mobile apps for use in restaurants and on farms, FarmsReach wants to create an online food marketplace that would directly connect farms with restaurants.Car InfrastructureHis vision of building networks of battery-exchange stations in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia...

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Community interactions as business models for the Consumer Web

We are still struggling for business models in the consumer Web. NYtimes has an article that says how Web startups are looking beyond advertising for revenue streams:Now advertisers have cut back their online spending. So Web start-ups are searching for new ways to make money, like selling real, or virtual, goods or asking customers to buy subscriptions.Related to it is another article that describes how a TV network is failing to monetise the Susan Boyle's web fame:FremantleMedia Enterprises, a production company that owns the international digital rights to the talent show, hastily uploaded video clips to YouTube in the wake of Ms. Boyle’s debut, but the clips do not appear to be generating any advertising revenue for the company. The most popular videos of Ms. Boyle were not the official...

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Southeast Asia: Untapped potential

I am always of the view that Southeast Asia is an unpolished diamond in terms of market opportunities for startups. Scott Rafer articulated the same view beautifully and I encourage readers to read his entire post if you are interested in this area.As always, I’m going to look for opportunities where there’s a good-sized market that’s not super fashionable and therefore not overcrowded. Southeast Asia fits that profile a lot better for me than South Asia or Greater China.To add to his commendatory, I would like to share my views on what are some key opportunities in this region. Things that might be dull but has the potentially to create lots of value and in the process make lots of $ : )Mobile servicesMobile is definitely an important area to focus on. Many of the users here are likely to...

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Publishing profitably rather than just publishing

One of my most talked about topic at this blog is enabling creatives or artists to do their own thing and earn a living while doing so. Examples of what I have written include the following: How startups can help the comic industry Empowering creative talent in next generation media 4 ideas for empowering fans Is it possible to create a Rockband equvialent for photos? Seth Godin sumed it up well when he says that:In a world in which just about everyone is a writer and just about every writer wouldn’t mind benefiting from their work, there’s a huge need for people who can help us publish profitably. Or, failing that, figuring out a way to get your own words published profitably. Some people will happily remain amateurs, but history shows us that the real explosion in content...

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Admin note: carnival of mobilists #175

Carnival of mobilists #175 is up.One of the interesting post to me is about the use of mobile technology in education. Of course, there are other topics that might arouse your interest if you are into mobile.Go take a look. You never know where serendipity might lead you to.http://blog.mobify.me/2009/05/25/carnival-of-the-mobilists-1...

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What I have learned from Twitter Tees

There is a lot to learn about Twitter Tees by Threadless (hat tip to Howard Lindzon). It is a powerful (and rare) example of how social media can go beyond communication and reshape production and consumption. Twitte Tees does it beautifully and elegantly.Here are a couple of quick thoughts of what I have learned from it so far:Fully leverage on the new mediumTwitter Tees isn't about fanciful grahpics. It is about witty text. They have widely exploit the medium for what it is. That is thoughtful and smart.Let the cream rises to the topThe normal tweets lacks the mechanisms for the cream to rise to the top. Twitter Tees, by simply adding a voting...

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Mobile Pearls Vol V

Continuing from my mobile pearls vol 4, I will be highlighting innovative or interesting mobile serivces/applications that I have come across.GlucoboyWhat is it: The Glucoboy is the first blood glucose meter that has been designed specially for kids, adolescents and the young at heart. When used with the Nintendo Game Boy® Advance System or the GRiP incentive-based web community, Glucoboy becomes part of an entire network that rewards testing compliance and good health management.Why it is cool: Combining gaming, mobile and health into a complete package is not only smart, but has real tangible benefits to the users.New health monitoring...

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Nuggets of wisdom from kids

Got this video from Fred Wilson's site. Although it is really short, the points articulated by the kids are really awesome.A couple of things that I pick up from the video:- The TV broadcast industry is in for a rude awakening. When kids as young as these think that the business is in trouble, there are real issues in the industry. Having said that, TV seems to be the most adaptive to the changes bought about by the Web. There are more experiments being tested in the industry and we shall see what it all leads to.- Kids want their content anywhere, from computer to their mobile services. How easy have we made it for them to do so? Why doesn't every video site comes with a download-to-mobile option that compresses the video to the right resolution for their mobile devices? Whoever that makes...

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Is it possible to create a Rockband equvialent for photos?

Rockband has been a runaway success, not only in terms of game sales but also bringing about a powerful new model for music consumption: The success of the video game Rock Band is drumming up revenue for the music industry. Virtual rockers downloaded roughly 2.5 million songs in the eight weeks since the game launched on the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 systems. The reason for this is simple. Games make music more interactive, more entertaining, more fun: "Hopefully it helps evolve music to not just a linear art form but a more interactive art form," says Van Toffler of MTV Networks. MTV Games publishes Rock Band, along...

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Great follow up on my post about the economics of the $9.99 ebook

I have no trackbacks here (I know my blog template sucks. I am working on a new one).However, there is blog post at zerobeta that talks about why prices of books (and in general arts) will face pressures to decline.Below is an excerpt: When certain types of art such as music and literature/books become digital, the cost to produce such a work rests mostly on the artist. In addition, the Internet has made it easier to discover new artists and for artists themselves to market their work. The result is that the economics of the publishing is dead and the economics of art takes over. To the dismay of the publisher, the economics of art is much different. The one argument you keep hearing is, “If the artists don’t get paid, how do you expect them to produce the art?”. Art is something that...

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A reply to my post on the economics of the $9.99 ebook

A great comment by one of the Hacker news community. A perspective from the publisher. I wonder if it strengthens my argument or weakens it.************This is such an uninformed argument, publishing has a narrow profit margin. These companies aren't trying to extort you at 2000% profit like other companies.The entire publishing process is designed to filter out the chaff. First you need an agent (this is undeniable when some publishing houses won't accept a submission without one) whose job it is to first find publishers that are interested and then to make them pay every penny they're willing for it. When a first time author like Stephanie Mayer gets handed $750,000 for a series, that's because their agent just got handed 75,000-112,000. If you go it alone you'd probably get less than what...

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The economics of the $9.99 ebook

The NYtimes wrote about the issues of the downward price pressure faced by the book industry as a result of the rising popularity of ebooks:“I love Baldacci’s writing,” wrote one reader, who decided not to buy. “Sorry Mr. B — price comes down or you lose a lot or readers. I’ll skip your books and move on!”Publishers, of course, object to the lower pricing, citing the reason that printing and shipping are not the main components of a book's costs.publishers argue that those costs, which generally run about 12.5 percent of the average hardcover retail list price, do not entirely disappear with e-books. What’s more, the costs of writing, editing and marketing remain the same.Within that paragraph lies the reason why traditional publishers will not survive the digital disruption. They have not...

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Problem assessing Fred Wilson's blog

I have been having this problem for a while.I used to be able to assess Fred Wilson's blog freely, like other Web sites. Recently however, I always get a page load error whenever I tried to visit the blog. I wonder if anything is wrong. Help anyone?Btw, I am using a Mac and firef...

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The downside of being in public

There is some negative publicity in the Singapore blogsphere right now about the programme that I am part of. I will not debate about the merits of the blog post that started it. Rather, I want to spend a moment to reflect on this incident.Like it or not, government is a public figure. Like all public figures, your actions will be scrutinize. This is not a bad thing as we need transparency to make sure things are in order. Unfortunately, not all reporting are factually correct, especially in blog posts where it is easy to publish without the relevant fact checking.The problem with inaccurate blog posts, especially when it is negative is its impact. Many senior folks in the government take things at the surface. A sensational title is all it takes to undo all the hard work the officers are...

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Why @tags will not be the next email

I am still thinking about using @tags as a web wide communication tool. As I was discussing this concept with a VC, the immediate reaction from him was: 'so, this is just like email, but done with @tags rather than email address'.I didn't gave him a satisfactory reply then but after thinking it through, @tags are definitely different from email.Distributed vs centralisedEmail communication is confined to a destination. If you think about it, that is like the web portal strategy of the 90s. Since everything is going distributed, why can't targeted communication like email be so? @tags may have the highest chance of becoming the default standard to point to people if Twitter continues to become grow.Open vs ClosedIf @tags are distributed, it also means they are more open. This leaves room for...

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3 powerful opportunities in next generation media

For those who have not seen it, go to Betaworks's site and view their PowerPoint. It is simultaneously an investment ideal and a manifesto on areas of opportunities in the Web space. It is powered by prezi as well so it is also damm fun to play with.Betaworks has really nailed it in terms of what a next generation media company is about. It is not about content. It is about using data to create powerful context for users in a distributed manner.Next generation media will be about creating contextual platforms, data services and auxiliary revenue to let the users do their thing. Media will no longer be centralised. Rather, it will be massively distributed. There will be big rewards for anybody that enables this to happen.Contextual platformsContent platforms are as varied as they come. More...

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There may not be a Google for real time search

Comscore released an interesting report about search ad coverage. One key point was that people were using more and more search terms in their queries:An analysis of comScore data shows that search queries are actually getting longer and that as searchers become more experienced they are using more words per search query.Based on ths report, John Battelle hypothsised that search query is becoming more and more like natural language, implying that searches are becoming conversations:In short, our queries are getting closer to real conversation, real natural language, and Google's algorithms are having a harder time keeping up - matching advertiser demand to our increasingly complex queries.Mark Cuban was pointing to the same path as he writes that search queries can now be framed as Twitter...

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I just got my first comment spam

Well, it is bound to happen but here it is: my first comment spam.http://ac-idealog.blogspot.com/2009/04/singapores-online-classified-sector.html#comment-9400432I guess I should be happy in a way since that implies my blog is significant enough for people to bother spamming.This got me thinking about how to deal with such issues. This is new for me so I am not sure what to do. How about you? How do you deal with comment sp...

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Opportunities in structuring data for music artists

Data driven business is one of my earlier interest (see my earlier posts here). Exploring how structuring data can open up new business models and opportunities for artists is a natural next step. I keep on coming back to this comment by Taylor Davidson because it struck me as something that is not fully explored:Data, data, data: TuneCore has realized the opportunity is in creating, facilitating, managing and delivering data. Ethan and Jeff’s discussion of TuneCore’s geographic trending reports highlights the vast, untouched opportunity for professionals to use data to create new business and economic models...... What are these untouched opportunities that come from leveraging data? Here are my thoughts:Social interactionsUnderstanding and harnessing the flow of social interactions can...

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How do we overcome obscurity in this age of abundance?

Continuing from my post on piracy, I wanted to think more about the problem of obscurity. How do creative folks (musicians, artists, photographers, writers etc) overcome it in a way that gives a better return on people's attention? Are the current tools sufficient or are they the next generation equivalent of spammers? How else can a creative do to connect to the right people?The following is more of my unstructured thoughts. Looking forward for someone to structure it and make them more useful.Build a more adaptive productWhen everything is abundant, the only way to stand out is to be the best in your niche. That doesn't mean having the best product from day one. It implies you need to have a process for constantly adapting to the needs of your niche. That means better feedback system and...

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Admin note: feedback needed on new design

Dear readers,I know my current template does not give the most pleasant reading experience. Hence, I am now working on a new design. You can preview it here:http://ac-testing.blogspot.com/Would appreciate if you have any comments/feedback on the new design as well as suggestions on what would you like to see.Thanks in advanc...

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Can Amazon be the default payment API for the Web?

The Web badly needs a default payment mechanism. Victor Keegan of the Guardian made a very good point about the importance of payment to a health economic system:Lots of economists argue that the digital economy - in which the cost of producing extra units is zero - is forcing prices towards zero. Poppycock. If you look at the three main arms of the digital world, it is only the web that has trouble making prices stick. The other two - mobile phones and virtual worlds (where all goods are digital) - have flourishing economies. Why?Because the internet arrived in this world without a micropayment system, whereas the other two have them built in. This is why kids who don't pay for music online will pay £2.50 for a ringtone, why emails are free but text messages can cost 25p. It's why SeeMeTV...

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Piracy means failure in business models

A NYtimes article reports on how piracy is coming to books. The popularity of digital reading devices have inevitably created a demand for free ebooks, which in turn has spawn a market in illegal book scans. To counter this problem, publishers are now resorting to suing their users.All these sound too familiar. We have seen it happening to music, films, games and now books. However, nobody in traditional media seems to learn anything despite the painful lessons that history is showing us.Piracy implies latent demand. People want these goods but are unwilling to purchase them at the current price. This is a huge opportunity. It points to the need...

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How startups can help the comic industry

I have been a big comic fan for the longest time. In my room sits boxes of comics, including classics from the Silver age era. Needless to say, I am a big comic geek.Like all media, the comic industry is undergoing drastic changes. The traditional comic books, for example, are now experiencing problems. In January, the Diamond Book Distributors raised its minimum advance orders from comic stores to $2,500 (from $1,500) before willing to distribute a title. This means independent artists will find it harder to break into traditional channels, which are gearing towards block busters. Sounds like a familiar problem?Comic strip artists don't have it any better. Traditionally, they depend on syndication models from newspapers as their sole revenue sources. However, with newspapers in trouble, many...

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Admin note: carnival of mobilists #173

Carnival of the Mobilists #173 is up at Radvisionhttp://blog.radvision.com/voipsurvivor/2009/05/11/welcome-to-the-carnival-of-the-mobilists-173/One cool section are the posts on data. As mobile services shifted from voice to data, we will seeing lots of innovations in this area. If you are interested to know more about this shift, do check out the carniv...

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Different examples of Shazam for image

Via the 7th Mass Media Blog, I came across this impressive set of revenue numbers for the service Shazam: Shazam now has 35 million users in 60 countries and they get 1 million "tags" (music identifiation requests) per day. ..... Even if we say their global average cost is 30 US cents per tag, that works out to a very impressive 109 million dollars in annual revenues. Shazam represents a different paradigm for mobile search. It is what I called 'point, snap and retrieve'. On the mobile, a user doesn't want to see a list of results, they want answers to what they are looking for. They also doesn't want to enter long search terms, they want to click a button (like snapping a picture) and get the results.As I wrote about it here, the concept of Shazam is applicable many niche areas. If we look...

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The era of API driven startup

I read an interesting article that outlines how APIs are changing the face of all businesses, not only that of web companies:These are Fortune 500 companies in retail, travel, media, telcos and even healthcare. Their level of understanding ranges broadly from those who know what they hope to achieve by creating an API program and have established measurable goals, to those who aren’t quite sure what they will achieve, but know there is something out there happening and they want to be a part of it. They all know they need to do something new, different, and big to change their business. And APIs are going to play a role.As I think about this, I begin to outline how does an API driven startup looks like. Are APIs the means to achieve edge competencies? How will it affect product development,...

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Where will open financial data lead us to?

Freerisk is really a cool startup, attempting to liberate financial data for all to reuse easily. I have not tinker with it but I can imagine the kind of value it can potentially release. I can imagine the power finally being taken from rating agencies. People who are capable of producing better risk models will surfaced and be celebrated as rockstars. We will see covestor type of models emerging that reward superstar financial modellers.I can imagine many interfaces/clients being developed. Clients that lets users better understand what financial data means, alert them to risk factors, and highlight potential investments. Hopefully, all these will give people better ideas on how to invest in stock market. I can imagine new forms of institutional funds created around new risk models that...

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Surprising results about ebooks from Google Trends

I have blogged about the rising interest of ebooks and even suggested a few startup ideas. As part of my ongoing research, I wanted to know which geographic area has the most interest in ebooks. As a proxy, I dig into Google Trends to see where ebook searches are coming from.The first obvious thing is that there are more searches now on ebooks. This is not surprising given the proliferation of devices like Kindle and the iPhone that enable mobile reading.What surprises me is the next chart that ranks the regional interest in ebooks. Unexpectedly, the countries with the highest interest all came from Southeast Asia. I had initially thought that...

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