Mobile Revolution

Financial Times writes:

Tools such as e-mail and instant messaging may have been around since the dawn of the internet era, but it has taken a wireless communications revolution to turn them into a constant and inescapable fact of life for a growing part of the population. WiFi networks - a low-cost technology that can beam large chunks of data over short distances using part of the radio spectrum that was previously the preserve of gadgets such as garage door openers and baby monitors - assure the digitally addicted of a permanent and ubiquitous connection to the wider world. At the same time, more versatile mobile phones have turned text messages into the communications tool of choice for teenagers in Asia and Europe, if not yet the US, while also bringing e-mail to many handsets. For those in the grip of these new networks, life has changed. There’s no such thing as solitude any more, no fragment of time that cannot be filled with digital chatter.
...
It is hard to deny the extent to which mobile phone communications have already crept into many, if not most, corners of our lives: children texting from the bus stop; suburban streets clogged with housewives on the phone while at the wheel (at least in countries where it is still legal); executives bowed, fetishistically, over their BlackBerries. In equal parts liberating and intrusive, the mobile phone has changed the way many people relate to their work, or to their friends and loved ones. It seems a fair bet that its next incarnation will have a much deeper and wider impact.

LeapFrog's Fly Pen

Wired writes: "In technical terms, Marggraff's Fly pen is an even greater achievement than his LeapPad. Think of it as a powerful PDA sucked into the stylus alone. Marggraff views the $99 pen, which hits stores this fall in time for the Christmas season, as an ideal tool for teaching the 8- to 14-year-old tween market everything from algebra to Spanish. It's so impressive that Disney, Upper Deck, and Warner Bros. have already signed on to develop games for the device. And Marggraff envisions still more uses for the Fly: as a group-computing device for businesses, for example, or a screenless PDA. He plans to eventually open its architecture to encourage broader development."

TV's New Parallel Universe

Business Week writes: " Suddenly, broadband is opening the floodgates for a new kind of TV show -- only not on TV but online. In just the past few months some of the biggest TV names have announced new broadband channels, from MTV Networks to Comedy Central to ABC News. If you thought the 400 cable channels focusing on everything from golf to anime were already cutting niches thin, broadband TV is going a step further...With improved speeds and video quality online, not to mention broadband's growing reach (estimated conservatively to be in 40 million U.S. homes by yearend), TV executives are rushing to connect with younger audiences that are less and less riveted to traditional TV. Getting a foothold on the Internet, especially if it creates buzz, is also a way to recapture ad dollars that have migrated away from the 30-second TV spot."

Search: Service to Application

John Battelle writes:

[The most interesting comment] came from Simply Hired CEO, Gautam Godhwani, when I asked him if he feared Google. "Google does search very well, but we have yet to see Google do applications well," was his reply.

Interesting. As I thought about that, it struck me that what we are seeing right now is indeed the evolution of search companies from their roots providing a single service - one thing, done well - to a application suite that does many things. What does that mean, exactly?
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What Godhwani was saying is that in the search field, applications are the next thing, and Google is just as new at this game as his company - if not more so in certain vertical fields.
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It's probably obvious to you, but for some reason this idea provides me with a way of grokking a much larger trend - why is it that Google is so focused on Toolbar, Desktop Search, Accelerator, Local, and Ajax-y things like Maps, etc.? It's because to create a decent search application, you need to have a far more robust interface, and you need to know far more about the intent of the person that is using your application. A web-based service, on the other hand, does one thing well, and does it the same for everyone. Search is becoming an application, indeed, and that more than anything else explains very well Google's recent moves.

China Online Gaming

Bill Bishop writes:

Here are what I see as some of the takeaways from the results this week:

1. The China game market is still large and growing but the revenues are spreading across more companies (Duh, but some folks believe it is collapsing);

2. Gamers care about content a lot more than they care about distribution (and with Bittorrent and online payments physical distribution will become increasingly marginalized), and no company has or will have a lock on game distribution and publishing in China;

3. The top 3 publishers have very weak pipelines, and right now none of them has anything particularly promising for at least the next 2 quarters (I think longer, given how hard it is too actually release a 3D game like Dungeons & Dragons or Tianxia);

4. The free model has taken off here and is really making in dent in all the games except, it appears, World of Warcraft. And the dominant incumbents are going to have a hard time cannibalizing their fee revenue games to compete with the free ones;

TECH TALK: Good Books: Capitalism at the Crossroads

Stuart Hart originated the “Bottom of the Pyramid” ideas with CK Prahalad. His recently published book: Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World's Most Difficult Problems” therefore comes with high reader expectations.

Hart writes in the prologue: “In a single lifetime, the human population will have grown from two billion to eight billion. This growth is truly unprecedented. Never before in human history has a single generation witnessed such explosive change. It seems self-evident, therefore, that the policies we adopt, the decisions we make, and the strategies we pursue over the next decade will determine the future of our species and the trajectory of our planet for the foreseeable future. That is an awesome responsibility, to say the least. It is also a huge opportunity.”

One of the chapters has a discussion on HLL:

Unilever's Indian subsidiary, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), provides an interesting glimpse of the development of native capabilities in its efforts to pioneer new markets among the rural poor. HLL requires all employees in India to spend six weeks living in rural villages, actively seeks local consumer insights and preferences as it develops new products, and sources raw materials almost exclusively from local producers. The company also created an R&D center in rural India focused specifically on technology and product development to serve the needs of the poor. HLL uses a wide variety of local partners to distribute its products and also supports the efforts of these partners to build local capabilities. In addition, HLL provides opportunities and training to local entrepreneurs and actively experiments with new types of distribution, such as selling via local product demonstrations and village street theaters.

By developing local understanding, building local capacity, and encouraging a creative and flexible market entry process, HLL has been able to generate substantial revenues and profits from operating in low-income markets. Today more than half of HLL's revenues come from customers at the base of the economic pyramid. Using the approach to product development, marketing, and distribution pioneered in rural India, Unilever has also been able to leverage a rapidly growing and profitable business focused on low-income markets in other parts of the developing world. Even more important, through its new strategy, HLL has created tens of thousands of jobs, improved hygiene and quality of life, and become an accepted partner in development among the poor themselves.

I agree with the comment made by Simon London in a review for the Financial Times: “If you read a lot of business books, some of Hart’s case studies will seem a little stale. Inevitably, Hindustan Lever crops up. So does Cemex, the Mexican cement group used to illustrate everything from leadership genius to innovation...Still, there is much here to admire. Two hundred pages are hardly enough to solve the world’s ills, but they are plenty to sketch out the nature of the management challenge.”

Tomorrow: Communities Dominate Brands

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TECH TALK: Good Books: The Go Point (Part 2) [November 1, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: The Go Point [October 31, 2006]
TECH TALK: Good Books: In Spite of the Gods (Part 2) [October 30, 2006]