Wireless connectivity juin 21, 2006
Posted by Postmaster in Devices, Home of the Future, Mobile, Office of the Future.add a comment
eLab – Wireless connectivity.ppt
There are many technologies and standards in the domain of wireless connectivity. Some are complementary, others are in direct competition. The most interesting ones are presented below.
WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a technical standard for broadband wireless access, providing an alternative to cable and DSL last-mile access. WiMax technologies are developed by the WiMax Forum, a group of more than 200 companies, providers and carriers. The WiMax standard has a theoretical bandwith of 70 Mb/s and a theoretical range of 50 km. In practice, it reaches 12 Mb/s with a range of 20 km. The first large scale tests started in 2006 for fixed access (home to WiMax base station) and in the coming years WiMax should also support mobile access (mobile to WiMax base station and mobile to mobile).
Comparison with Wi-Fi: larger bandwith (typically 12 Mb/s against 2 Mb/s) and larger coverage distance (typically 10 km against 30-50 m); however WiMax networks requires a license, whereas Wi-Fi networks can be set up by anyone.
WiBro (Wireless Broadband) is a proprietary mobile broadband wireless access technology, developed by Korean telecom industry and supported by the government. Also it is in direct competition with WiMax, WiBro joined the WiMax Forum and agreed to harmonize with the mobile version of the standard.
Bluetooth is a short-range radio communication protocol providing a way to connect and exchange information between devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers and digital cameras via short range radio frequency. Popular uses are wireless headset for mobile phones, PC mouse or keyboards, transfer of contact details, calendar appointments, and reminders between devices, wireless controllers of a games console, etc.
UWB (Ultra-Wideband) technology allows high-speed connections for short-range, wireless personal networks, to transmit video, audio and other high-bandwidth data between consumer electronic multimedia products. UWB complements other longer-range radio technologies such as Wi-Fi or WiMAX. It is used to relay data from a host device to other devices in the immediate area (up to 10 meters), e.g. from a laptop or a digital camera to a large screen display and speakers.
ZigBee is a low data rates and low power consumption radio transmission technology that is intended to be simpler and cheaper than Bluetooth and it is used in embedded applications requiring . ZigBee’s focus is to define a general-purpose, inexpensive, self-organizing, mesh network that can be used for industrial control, building automation, home automation, etc
Power line communication describes several different systems that allow simultaneous distribution of data over power wires. One such system is the use of home electrical wiring for remote control of lighting and appliances, using the X10 industry standard or the compatible Insteon (see below). Another is using power-line in order to provide broadband internet access. There are also prototypes of in-vehicle networks to transmit data, voice, music, or video over the direct current (DC) battery power-line.
Insteon is an integrated dual-band mesh network that combines wireless radio frequency with the home’s existing electrical wiring.
Mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes: the infrastructure is decentralized and each node needs only to transmit as far as the next node. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration (or “self-healing”): when a node breaks down or a connection goes bad, the networks tries to “hop” from node to node until a connection can be reestablished. As a result, these types of networks are very reliable. Mesh networking can be applied to wireless or fixed networks.
Collaborative marketing mai 30, 2006
Posted by Postmaster in Collaborative Web, Office of the Future, eMarketing.add a comment
eLab – Collaborative marketing.ppt
Traditional mass marketing techniques seem to be declining in effectiveness and increasing in costs. Indeed this 2006 survey shows that 78% of American advertisers feel that traditional television advertising has become less effective in the past two years. 80% of them will spend more of their advertising budget on Web advertising and 68% of advertisers will look to search engine marketing. Advertisers are also looking at alternatives to traditional TV advertising and will spend more on: branded entertainment within TV programs (61%); TV program sponsorships (55%); interactive advertising during TV programs (48%); online video ads (45%); and product placement (44%). Furthermore, traditional promotions have decreasing ROI: according to a Nielsen survey, between 1987 and 1997, trade promotion spending increased from 35% of the marketing mix to 54%, yet consumer sales remained relatively stable. One of the ideas to improve marketing efficiency is collective pooling of marketing efforts, information and intelligence in order to bring combined products/services to a greater audience at more economical costs. Collaborative marketing is generally based on commonality (geography, timeframe, audience, theme, etc.) and can be of many forms, for example:
- Lake Geneva and Matterhorn region marketing campaigns organized by the tourist offices of Geneva, Lake Geneva Region (Vaud) and Matterhorn Region (Valais)
- various partners advertising during a music festival or cultural event
- retailers and manufacturers targeting key shopper groups
- consumers become co-creator of a product (see entry on co-creation)
All marketing elements are potentially integrated around a common theme that communicates a brand value for the retailer and the strategic manufacturers:
- product development: for P&G Advisors, customers try new products and provide feedback
- pricing: in HP partition pricing, customers pay incrementally for capacity as they need rather that paying upfront for hardware
- segmentation: Dell allows customers to configure, price and order products according to their needs
- support: Cisco rewards selected network engineers that answer support questions on their online community by certifying them.
For detailed examples, see this article.
Most collaborative marketing initiatives rely on technological platform to connect the partners involved: customers, design/sales/marketing departments, suppliers, etc.
Skype mai 17, 2006
Posted by Postmaster in Home of the Future, Office of the Future.add a comment
Skype is a peer-to-peer Voice-over-IP (VoIP) network, allowing its users to call other Skype users for free. Skype also provides paying services allowing users to call traditional telephone numbers (SkypeOut, free in North America) and receive calls from traditional phones (SkypeIn). Skype develops additional services such as video calling and Skypecast (released on May 3, 2006), live and moderated conversations allowing groups of up to 100 people to talk to one another with a virtual microphone being passed around. Skype was bought by eBay in October 2005.
Skype is very popular: the software has been downloaded some 250 million times and it was reported that six million concurrent Skype users were on line as of March 27, 2006. Skype hit 100 million registered Skype Names on April 27, 2006.
There is however criticism against Skype and some large organisations banned it from their networks:
- Skype is a proprietary software program using undocumented protocols ("blackbox"), as opposed to VoIP applications that use standard and open VoIP protocols.
- Skype is a peer-to-peer network over client machines, with clients on fast connections becoming major exchange points; according to Computerworld, “in supernode mode, Skype is reputedly able to saturate 100 Mbit/second connections.”
- It bypasses firewalls and there is no control over information flows; although it has never happened, it could potentially be used to hack corporate networks.
Other large corporations use it: USRobotics’ customers can call Customer Support via Skype and Info-Tech reports that 17 million Skypers worldwide use it for business.
Skype has a headstart on the VoIP market, but strong competition is awaiting: Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger all offer (or will offer) similar telephony functions.
Web 2.0 mai 9, 2006
Posted by Postmaster in Collaborative Web, Office of the Future.1 comment so far
In his article where he defines the concept of Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly proposes to transform the Internet into an exchange platform for users, notably thank to online services or applications.
Although some say Web 2.0 is a marketing concept or hype, there is a general consensus that Web 2.0 should enable people to share, collaborate and interact. The main ideas behind Web 2.0 are collaboration, participation, rich user experience, trust, and mashup (combined content from more than one source/service). There are many emerging collaborative online (or Web 2.0) applications:
- Word processing: Writely (recently bought by Google), Rallypoint, JotSpot Live, Zoho Writer
- Spreadsheet: NumSum, iRows
- Calendar:30 Boxes, CalendarHub
- Projet management: Basecamp
- Presentation: Thumbstacks
- Drawing: Gliffy
- Office Suite: gOffice
- Group note-taking: Jotspot Live
- Social bookmarking: BlinkList, BlogMarks, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Simpy, Technorati
Most of these applications rely on Ajax programming (a combination of XML and Javascript), RSS (web feed formats in XML, used for Web syndication) and REST (web-based pogramming interfaces that use XML and HTTP).
Microsoft follows the trend and offers shared online functionalities with Office Live: e-mail, calendar, document management, online business application (employee/customer/project management), etc.
Successful innovation mai 5, 2006
Posted by Postmaster in Collaborative Web, Innovation, Office of the Future.add a comment
eLab – Innovation framework.ppt
Innovation happens most efficiently and most effectively when people can follow a structured process in their pursuit of new solutions: there is a need for a structured platform as the basis of an environment that supports emergent innovation…
Read full article: “Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators“
