Ólafur Andri Ragnarsson

The Internet has disrupted lotteries and land-based casinos as it has disrupted so many industries. There are hundreds of poker and casino sites available and at the same time land-based operations struggle to attract players. To address these issues and others, GLI University hosted a roundtable in Budapest in May 2012 to discuss the issues facing regulators and land-based operators. Betware got the opportunity to talk about how online sites are handling responsible gaming.

In the lecture, I made two points. First point is that the world has changed with the Internet and fast phased development of devices such as smartphones and tablets. Now people have access to their digital online universe all the time. Multiple devices give different types of access where the mobile is always in reach but has smaller screen size, but still usable for games. Tablets are more suited for browsing even though people do serious work on these small computers. The laptop is more work oriented and the TV for viewing. Regardless of the device, online lotteries and casinos are now offering games in these devices.

The second point was that installing responsible gaming mechanisms online is easier that offline. This is a fact in this new world of online profiles. People give out their identity and all their actions are tracked and stored in a database. The online lottery can track how much each person spends and enforce a limit on the spending. Other limits are loading of the wallet. This allows users to spend what they have in their account, including the winning, but controls what they spend of real money.

Many lotteries have global limits and a user adjusted limits within the global limit. This allows users to set their own limits. Although this is a handy feature only about 5% of users bother to change the limit and any to raise it to the max. Another service is self-excluding or self-barring. This option allows people to block themselves from the lottery site for specific time, or forever. Although a useful feature, it turns out that very few customers choose to self-exclude. In one installation of our software, only 0,05 are self-excluded.

Other responsible gaming mechanisms are tracking the time and reminders. With tracking time users can be periodically notified how long they have played. For long running games such as bingo and casino games, this might be a good feature. With reminders, users that show excessive gambling can be sent a “general” message about problem gambling and offered to seek council or take an online test.

The conclusion is that online lotteries and casinos are a reality and attracting players. They can bring the experience of visiting a casino or betting shop into people’s life. Although it will not rival the experience of visiting the Bellagio in Las Vegas, playing online appeals to many people. Regulators can enforce responsible gaming rules to protect the players. The challenge is to find reasonable rules that protect the people with problem, while at the same time give people the opportunity to play and lotteries and casino to make good business.

Slides are found here:

History has many examples of great innovators who had difficult time convincing their contemporaries of new technology. Even incumbent and powerful companies regarded new technologies as inferior and dismissed it as “toys”. Alexander Graham Bell did not get a good reception at Western Union when he offer the telephone for sale. Then when disruptive technologies take off they often are overhyped and can cause bubbles like the Internet bubble of the late 1990s.

In this lecture we look at some examples of disruptive technologies and the impact they had. We look at the The Disruptive Innovation Theory by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen.

So, what did you do this summer? Well, I helped create an industry. Over the summer of 2009, the Icelandic gaming industry was born. It started at a meeting in a sports bar in downtown Reykjavik on May 6^th. That same year on September 28^th, with a room full of people, two Icelandic minsters, people from government and industry, leaders of gaming companies, Erik Roberson from Nordic game and a bunch of gamers, the Icelandic Gaming Industry was founded. This is the story.

To be more precise, you don’t actually create an industry. It’s more like you take what is out there and organize, bring people together. But why did this happen in Iceland in the spring of 2009? After a huge economic boom, Iceland suffered a major recession due to the global economic crises that started in the second part of 2008. Three of the major banks got bankrupt and the currency – the Icelandic Krona or ISK (not to be confused with Interstellar Kredit) fell dramatically in a short period.

The growth of the financial sector after the turn of the century had huge impact on the IT industry. In the years prior to the bankruptcy of the banks they had been sucking almost all talent from the IT and the gaming market into the banks. Offering outrageous salaries, the rest of the market could not compete. Even the passionate game designer was tempted by the lure of money.

At the end of the financial era there came a void. It was out of this environment that individuals and young entrepreneurs started to look at games. However, there was another big reason. At the end of the first decade of the 21^st century, the field of gaming had shifted. With the rise of online games and mobile games, the playing field in gaming had changed. The cost of productions had dropped. Few passionate game developers could get together, download the tools and APIs and start creating games for iPhone, for Facebook, and for the online web. The only limit was their imagination.

Another important factor was the role of government and industry. In a recession, the government needed some new energy to revitalize the economy. Anything that was positive and showed potential to create jobs and start the economy was welcomed. Even a tiny games industry was enough to catch the attention of the media and politicians.

The industry, however, played a much stronger and active role. With a few game developers that just organized into an organization, the challenge was to form a structured professional entity.  How could a few gamers become a processional organization? The answer turned out to be simple and that’s where the Association of Industries (Samtök iðnaðarins or SI) come in.  The Head of Innovation, Davíð Lúðvíksson, at SI, did not need much time to take action. He jumped at the opportunity to form a new branch within SI.  He set up meetings and helped the group organize into a formal structure. Strategy meeting was held under the supervision of SI and the outcome was a vision for IGI. Thus, IGI became a member of SI and enjoys their professional guidance and formality. This is the reason why IGI remains unfunded and based on the efforts of volunteers but still can function as a professional organization.

What did IGI accomplish? Now we come back the real reason IGI was formed. In 2009 there were several gaming companies in Iceland. Some of these companies looked the government for support. For example, financial support to attend the Nordic gaming conference in Malmö. The reply was always the same: we can’t support a company. This is not surprising. Any direct support from government, using public money, to a privately held company is suspicious. It just doesn’t work. But if these companies get together, form a group to represent them, it’s a totally different thing.

Some of the activities of the IGI include:

• Monthly meetups where some insiders in the industry or some guests speak about gaming related issues. The topics range from development issues to specific product introduction
• IGI Game Award: a competition of game development.
• The IGI conference: The Future is Bright

Technology is one of the major factors of change. This can be an opportunity or a threat. For many businesses and industries it is important to recognize the threat. New technology is an opportunity for new companies to enter the market.

In this lecture we look at how technology evolves. We look at some of the theories of how technologies evolves including Moore´s Law and the S-curve.

The story told in the lecture is taken from this Wikipedia entry:

Legend of the Ambalappuzha Paal Payasam

Slides can be found here:

L04 Evolution of Technology

Videos used in this lecture are these:

Ray Kurzweil: How technology’s accelerating power will transform us from TED.com

Dick Tracy: The Purple Boy

Ces 2009 – LG Watch Phone from CNet TV

And the game mentioned before the break and played after the break is Timeline.

Wearable computers are becoming reality

Few years ago Wired magazine featured Brad Pitt on the front cover. Pitt was wearing one of these bluetooth phone headset on his ear.  The magazine’s point was that if it did not look good on Brad Pitt, it does not look good on you. People that wear these headsets are called bluedouche, since having these devices in your face is kind of uncool. In fact, there is almost only one thing you can put on your face and look cool – sunglasses. But what if you could add computing power, both visual and audio to glasses. That’s what Google is trying with the new Google Glasses. We are beginning the era of wearable computers but it might take some time to become as good as we expect.

The idea of a computer you take with your everywhere you go is not new. People carry mp3 players like iPods and smartphones with them all the time, even laptops and tablets. What is new is that the computer is becoming ubiquitous and integrated into your being. You are just always connected.

If you think about the timing, it all fits. The idea of wearable computers have been around for years but now you can have an industrial strength computing power on a device that is the size of a fingernail. Put this power into glasses with a display in front. This is like taking the smartphone and transforming it into glasses. The screen becomes the view, speakers are in the back near your ears, and you can easily talk and give voice commands.

Google has been working on Google Glasses for some time, according to the rumors. Now Google have revealed Project Glass, a wearable smart augmented reality device. This has even hit the mainstream media. There are lot of things unclear about this technology or if it works as smooth as just wearing glasses. It might be a tough order for Google to live up to the exceptions they have created with the concept video they have released:

However, research on wearable displays has been going on for years with many clunky and uncool prototypes. Google is not the first company to show a prototype of wearable glasses. Lumus demonstrated wearable displays at CES 2012 and even allowed people to try them on. It seems that we now have adjacent possible moment for these types of things so we can expect more to come.

But is this too much? The smartphone has changed the habit of many people. It is always on, exposing you to the world. What if you have glasses on that are always showing you information – weather temperature, email messages, places of interest and so on. Maybe augmented reality is too much reality, but it remains to be seen. We have seen computers change form factors, from desktops to tablets and smartphones. We are now seeing the smartphone transform into something you can wear.

Reading the reviews, the discussion of this technology is in many ways similar to the iPad discussion. It was polarized, with people saying nobody would use it and others looking at it as a positive thing. And when they saw the iPad, they just had to get one. If glasses with computing functionality is similar, the era of smart wearable computers is beginning.

Second part of New Technology Lecture L03 about Technology Innovation. I use some concepts form Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From.

First part can be found here: Technology Innovations Part 1.

Videos used in this lecture are these:

Steve Johnson’s Where Good Ideas come From and TED Lecture

Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster — from scratch

The Business of TV is about to Change

TV is changing. I know that people have said for years that Interactive TV will be the big thing next year. We’ve heard about interactive TV, IPTV, Digital TV and recently the Connected TV, and all those things, but nothing has really changed. Sure, TV is now flat and digital with bigger and sharper picture. The way we use TV however is still basically the same experience. This is the nature of technology evolution, it takes time and it takes many steps before it will have a game changing impact on culture. However, we are now seeing some signs that changes are coming to the TV – at last we will see that TV is the next big thing in consumer technology but it might be different than we thought is would. And it is based on software. The transformation of the current model to smart software model.

We can find some clues, not in TV technology but in another technology that got disrupted few years ago – the mobile phone. There could be some similarities to the TV business and the mobile business. The evolution of the mobile phone was something like this: first the phone was analog, then digital, then packet switched – or internet based, then the software took over and the phone became a platform for apps.

TV has gone through the same stages. First analog, then digital, and now internet based with all the “connected” or “smart” TVs. Next step is software. Before the software technology companies like Apple and Google disrupted the phone business, it was ruled by closed model platforms and walled garden mobile operators . What these operators had in common was their roots in phone handset hardware and  telecom system hardware with propitiatory closed operating systems. What Apple did was to bring a real OS into the phone and make it a software platform. The shift was from hardware to software. And this is where TV is going: to software.

We are seeing first clues with Smart TV or Connected TV where TV manufactures are bringing software into their TV sets, which is connected to the Internet. In addition, services like NetFlix are being offered. With this the viewer is given the control of the TV schedule. We actually see a trend toward this with the popularity of YouTube.

Traditionally, the TV industry has basically been all about broadcasting hardware and building infrastructure. Broadcasting TV used to require huge financing and is subject to licenses and regulation. The broadcaster has total control, decides on the schedule and content. You sign up to a service and usually get a set-top-box (STB), a small device that connects to the TV screen. The TV company (or cable or phone company) gives this box to you for “free” in exchange for some fixed length subscription.

The problem with these STB is that they are cheap low-end computers with limited capabilities, resulting in slow and boring user experience, and lack of possibilities. The software that runs on these boxes is proprietary software shipped with the box. This closed low performance clunky STB model is perfect for disruption. With focus on user experience and high-performance hardware and real operating system, it is likely that the software model will win. Just like the mobile hardware companies like Nokia, Ericsson and RIM are loosing the mobile battle to the software ecosystem companies like Google and Apple.

Another reason this model is going to break is that the viewer has no control.  You stick to the schedule of the TV channels. There are indication that this model is not favored by the net generation. They like to be in control, watch whatever they feel like, when they feel like. There is a reason for the popularity of Youtube, TED, Fora.TV and all these channels. Giving complete control might not be the right solution. TV viewers are used to “just sit down and turn on the TV”. They watch movies because they are on tonight. The right solution might be to find the right mix for the views. Netflix is trying to do this my recommending pictures based on the views preference. Your own TV channel, tailored to you.

Comparing the TV industry to the mobile industry is not strictly so straight forward. These industries are different. If you compare mobile phones and TVs, mobile phones are developing much faster and people replace them every 2-3 years. TVs last for years, at least 10 years. But then, it is not the TV set that is the key but the STB. People might be willing to replace that more frequently. Another huge difference is the nature of the business. TV is all about content, while phones are about communications – and with smartphones, about apps performing various task, be they time savers (reading email) or time killers (playing games), time wasters some might say.

But the interesting thing is that TV will be a software business. When you have a STB (or TV) from Apple or Google, the game has changed. These are software companies that target their consumers with ecosystems of devices and content. Now image that you box is running a real software platform.You can install Apps to the TV. These can take advantage of what is being viewed and, importantly, communicated to the tablet you hold while watching. This is the interesting part. The tablet (or the smartphone) is the perfect “remote control”. Why would you need a dedicated small device with lots of buttons to control the TV. When the remote was invented it was so that people would not need to get up to change channels or the volume. Over the years the controls have only increased.

Replacing software with new version is totally different than changing the TV set. Replacing the software is just an online update that can happen automatically. Another idea is that the tablet or smartphone, even a laptop can act as a STB, making the STB software instead of hardware. These devices are getting so powerful that they are fully capable of streaming content to a big shared screen.

Another trends that is making the remote control doomed, is voice control and gestures. Voice as input is getting more sophisticated. Samsung already has a system responding to voice. So has Microsoft with Kinect, and Apple has their Siri software. Gesture is also getting very good as demonstrated by Kinect and other technologies.

The move from hardware to software and more personalized experience is going to be a huge change in the TV experience. When the TV becomes an application platform, and interactions with other devices are possible, a whole new set of opportunities will open.

I finally managed to publish the third lecture video form my New Technology course. Here the topic is about innovations. The question is how does innovation happen? How do people get ideas and how do they solve problems. How do ideas happen?

We have the believe that new ideas come from brilliant inventors that have light bulb moments or an epiphany. Greek scholar Archimedes had a Eureka moment, Newton discovered the theory of gravity when the apple fell on his head, and so on. This idea has been popularized, but the truth is quite different. Most discoveries are based on long evaluation – slow hunches, and collaboration.

In this lecture we look at the complicated web of technology and look at concepts like adjacent possible and serendipity.

The original video that was uploaded to YouTube got blocked within seconds. The reason is that I embedded a short clip from the Movie Apollo 13. The point I was making came from an article in Wall Street Journal, The Genius of the Tinkerer where author Steven Johnson mentions a scene in the movie to emphasize his point.

The clip can be found on YouTube: Apollo 13 (7/11) Movie CLIP – Square Peg in a Round Hole (1995) HD. Copyright works in a mysterious ways.

The slides are here. Check out the YouTube video after slide 9.

It was the year of tablets, social, local, mobile, hacks, and the Arab spring

If 2010 was the year of the tablet, 2011 was the year of the Battle of the Tablets. Tablets played a major role in technology in 2011. So did mobile, social and local. Input like touch became the norm, and gesture and natural language recognition took off for real. Social games became mature and started the second wave, and gamification got entered into the dictionary. This is my view of the year 2011 in technology.

Let’s start with tablets. When the iPad came out, there were signs that we would be entering a new era of computing. The market embraced the device and people discovered new needs for computing. 68% of tablet owners use the device at least one hour a day and 2/3 of people use it while watching TV. On conferences, I see most people with tablets or small computers. In fact, 76% of people bought a tablet in addition to a laptop. We have entered the multidevice era where people have many devices. The laptop for work, tablet for work while travelling or couch browsing while watching TV, and smartphone anytime your not using the others.

Having multiple devices means that the cloud became more important. Basically, what you want is to have seamless access to all your data on any device. Apple has iCloud, Microsoft has SkyDrive, Amazon has Cloud Drive. Then there is Dropbox, Carbonite, SugarSync and others. Syncing content between devices is becoming a mature business in this multidevice era. Your profile and data in on online servers is an ongoing trend.

2011 is the year the PC model died. In Steve Jobs’ last keynote early 2011, he introduced Apple’s service iCloud. The interesting thing was that he demoted the PC as the center of the digital universe to be replaced by the cloud. Ten years earlier Jobs had placed the PC in the center, the digital hub. The year 2011 was the end of the PC era that took off commercially with IBM PC in 1981.

Apple continued in 2011 to lead on may fronts. iPad is still dominant with more that 60% market share. However, companies like Google and Samsung are gaining market share, and eReaders like Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook are also gaining ground. There is one distinguishing factor between these players: content. Apple has iTunes with music, movies and books. Amazon and Barnes and Nobel have books and much more. Amazon can afford to sell the Kindle Fire with a loss as long as people consume their content. The question in 2012 will be this: will tablet-only makers like Samsung survive?

In the smartphone market, the iPhone 4S proved to be successful update, although many were disappointed not to see iPhone 5. Even if Apple dominated the technology attention in 2011, Google is still the winner in smartphone category. Google actives 700.000 Android devices every day and 3.7 million over Christmas 2011.

With iPhone 4S the era of voice recognition is starting. Voice is not new as input, we have seen voice controlled devices before but with Siri Apple is taking this to a new level. Siri is an engine to understand spoken language. This is a notoriously hard problem to solve. We are now at a point where complex software like this can run on small handheld web connected devices, using web services to construct answers in real-time.

The smartphone losers of the year are Microsoft, Nokia and RIM. Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 but adoption is slow. It took them too long to go from an old and outdated OS to a new industrial strengt OS capable of being a software platform. Nokia was in the same position with Symbian. In February, Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia made the famous burning platform memo, and joined forces with Microsoft. 2011 was a horrible year for the Blackberry maker. The service was down for days. The timing was even worse since the iPhone 4S was released at the same time. The joke was, what do the people waiting in line to buy 4S have in common? A Blackberry. RIM has secured their place on the Technology Death List.

In social, Facebook reacted to Google’s onslaught with Google+. Google introduced Circles as a way to group your connections with people. The most interesting thing about Google+ was the growth. This was not steady or even exponential growth, more like rocket growth. Some estimates talk about Google plus has over 60 million users at the end of the year. Google’s plan is to integrate this service into all its products like google docs, youtube, pictures, etc. For example, Picasa, the photo album web has been transformed into Google Photos and is now part of the Google plus universe, just like Facebook Photos are just part of Facebook.

One theme of 2011 was streaming. We saw music streamed, movies streamed, and activities stream to name few. Music sites like Pandora, Spotify, last.fm and may others  grew in popularity. The model that seems to be emerging is offering tons of music and provide personal and shared playlists to stream music. If you don’t like playlists, just let the service pick the songs based on your listening history or searches. For example, if you like The Horrors, you might like (according to Last.fm) S.C.U.M, Cat’s Eyes, TOY, Spider & The Flies and July. This is the local part of the Solomo buzzword.

Another type of content to stream is movies. Netflix has been growing pretty rapidly until they changed the pricing model. That was too much for many users. Still, Netflix is responsible for 30% of internet traffic during peak times in the US. The interesting lesson from Netflix is the recommendation engine that selects 60% of the titles watched by users. Another example of local.

2011 in technology is an testament of where we are going with the online digital world. We are seeing multiple devices, PC being one of them. These devices are small, light, (relatively) affordable and fast. Cloud services with apps for functionality. New input methods are making the mouse obsolete and new UI designs are making the desktop office metaphor of files and folders obsolete. We have stopped collecting copies and started using algorithms to select our content. Welcome to 2012.

Comments to: @olandri

At any given time it is easy to look back to see how technology has changed over time. At the same time it is difficult to see what transformations are taking place in current times, and even more difficult to see where things are going.

In the late 19th century a revolution in science took off. It was easy to see the vast number of inventions and entrepreneurial sprit of the time. At the turn of the century it seems that everything had been invented. But with the rate of invention at the time, it was difficult to image what more could be invented. Yet, in the 20th century we saw more innovations and more technological advanced than in all history of mankind before that. Never in history have we seen such dramatic changes in the way people live and work.

How can we understand what is happening? What is technology anyways? In this lecture we explore what to make of technology. We define the term we will use in the course. Terms defined are technology, product performance, and innovation to name few. These will be used in the context of the next chapters. Several examples are provided.

In this first lecture we set the tone for the course and define the themes that we will be looking at. Technology is one of the major factors in change. There are other factors that transform societies but this is the one we will be focusing on. History has many examples of how companies fail to recognize new technology and find ways to dismiss it, only to find their market share drop and eventually they loose out. Why do executives of these companies fail?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

My course, New Technology is starting this week.  The goal of this course is to provide insight in to how technology evolves, how to track technology trends and create a framework for understanding and even predicting technology changes.

The course will be open and available online. Podcasts will be available on iTunes.

This is the description of the course:

The Outlook of Local in 2012

Location-based services became a new type of service with the emergence of the smartphone. Maps and navigation software are all about location. Foursqure has become the most popular “check-in” location-based service with 15 million users in December 2011 and over billion check-ins (https://foursquare.com/about/). Other services are Forcast, which allows you to tell your friends where you will be at some time, and Facebook has Places (after buying Gowalla, the Foursquare rival). But location is not the only thing about local. It‘s also about the person itself and the context.

Location apps seem to work. According to JiWire Mobile Insights Report, 78% of smartphone users use location-based apps and 29% use them multiple times a day. While this sounds great there are those who believe that the novelty will run out. Checking in is not enough, there has to be value.

As location service mature, they will give more value to the users. Eric Schmidt of Google said in his James MacTaggart lecture 2011: „If content is king, context is its crown.“ It turns out that with multiple of devices, people are in a different situation when using web sites. According to the JiWire report, 17% have made a purchase in response to a location-based advertisement.

This is however not limited to a specific place. Mobile apps can also factor in the time of day, what type of day (workday, weekend, or holiday), your surrounding (are you in a mall, or at a football game, or in a casino). It can also be based on data about you – your digital profile. This profile determines who you are, it is based on data you leave behind, your digital trail, your searches, the pages you visit, the pages you share, your recommendations, comments, your tweets, your Facebook information, and so on. With services based on your profile, apps can utilize a context that is local to you.

This is what we call context, and the technical term is Context Aware Computing or CAC. When one user is sitting at home with their laptops, taking time to find some content on the Internet, another one is looking for answers relative to the place he or she is in. As an example consider a sport betting solution. When accessing the solution on a laptop the player can be given multiple of choices. The player could be looking for content to watch or statistics to look up. If the same player accesses the solution via mobile we might want to give him or her fewer but more focused choices. It is likely that the player just wants to bet on the favourite team or look up the latest scores. The context of the player determines the content and to do so we have to use machine learning.

Machine learning is a method that uses algorithms to analyse empirical data to discover patterns and make decisions based on the data. Popular example uses of this are Amazon‘s recommendation engine and NetFlix movie recommendations. Machine learning is the next step after search. When searching gives you too many outcomes and becomes irrelevant, using data based on the user’s behaviour is the next logical step.

Location is just beginning. Software like Apple’s Siri are emerging and are in the early stages. In 2012 and beyond we will see more applications that use data analysis to find out more about us as users, track our behaviors, our views, comments, ratings and so on. Like it or not, your personal assistant is coming.

The picture above is on the remains of the Berlin wall, part of the East Side Gallery. Taken in summer 2011.

The Outlook of Social in 2012

The buzzword of the year 2011 has to be Solomo which stands for social, local and mobile. Although it is a bit limiting to lump these terms together, the term will clearly continue up the hype cycle in 2012. In terms of social there are few key ideas that will be important in 2012. They can be describe with these words: saturated, dedicated and promoted.

The main driver is that social networks are saturated and getting meaningless for many users. Facebook has now (December 2011) over 800 million users. After doing mindless stuff for some time now, users will leave if they don’t get more sophisticated, more-value-for-the-time experience. People need more serendipity.

Social will of course continue but we will see new ways to do social online, for example smaller and closer networks and maybe more dedicated networks. We could call this the Groucho Marx Paradox, as he is quoted saying: I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members. One way to determine a value of a network is by who is not there. Facebook has become an gigantic address book where people can communicate with other people and groups when needed, but hanging out socially is done in other places. Wikipedia list of social networks contains over 200 networks, including ClassMates, CouchSurfing, hi5, LibraryThink, Linkedin, Tumblr, Habbo Hotel, and WeeWorld, just to name few.

Still, Facebook will continue to be the most important platform, at least in the western world. For most Facebook developers, the social network is important to them and made them what they are. But they also fear Facebook as they have no control and the terms can change any time. Mobile is one escape route from being locked into Facebook. This is why the term cross-platform will be key in 2012.

Corporations will further use social media as their main form of communications. We are now just beginning to see the rise of social business. Social media is where products and brands will be promoted. According to 2011 IBM Tech Trend Report, 43% of surveyed businesses are already deploying internal social media products and some 41% are deploying social platforms to promote their brands.

Social games are changing also. In 2012 we will see divergence of social and casual games. Some vendors will continue to provide short game experience like Zynga. In the Zynga games the goal is to create an experience where people can play for very short time. You can check-in often, just to check the status or to play a few moves. These games exploit the Checking Habit, where people have the urge to check multiple times over the day. Other games will be longer and deeper. Gamers tend to like games that last and provide rich and deep context. Causal games, like the typical Facebook game, are usually not that deep. In 2012 we will see more games with deeper game play. This is sometimes referred to as second wave of social games. Cross-platform strategies are also crucial to social games. Well designed game can allow for game play using Facebook, tablet and a smartphone.

Social networks and social media in general will continue explosive growth in 2012 and new services emerge. There are more people using social networks today than used the Internet in 2006. Global social network ad revenues already make up about 10% of worldwide online ad spending, or about $8 billion. There is big money in social and we are still in the early stages.  Facebook will continue to dominate social networking in 2012 but faces competition from other players, of which Google seems to be the most threat. Facebook will fight to keep the users logged into their platform. Perhaps the biggest threat to Facebook is from an unknown power very fundamental to the Internet, decoupling. This concept is the key to why the Internet works. There is no reason to limit users to one web site. The power of the web comes from multiple services, many of them available programmatically though APIs.

Someone will come up with a killer app where users can use their social graph from Facebook and manage all social media without using the Facebook website or other social media websites. It might even exist in some form already.

I recently participated in an interesting and illuminating experiment. Having carried a smartphone on me for some two years, what would life be without a phone? Not only without a smartphone but just without a phone altogether. The results were quite interesting and not what I expected. I actually experienced a feeling of freedom.

The reason I participated in this experiment was not entirely voluntary. On a recent business trip my phone and myself got separated. While I travelled back home to Iceland, the phone went south, all the way to Africa. It was located using Find my iPhone service from Apple in the town of Nabor in Marocco. I could even see the street and the house. And given these circumstances I considered the phone gone.

Then how do you live without a phone? Since I was in this situation, might as well find out. So, here is the experience.

Let’s start with the bad things first. I think the most annoying thing was not to be able to contact my family. This is very natural since the phone is a security tool, a survival mechanism. One few occasions, my wife needed to get hold on me. In all cases, for trivial issues such as picking up some missing ingredants from the dinner recepy. For us to communicate over the workday was easy since we both work on computers and messaging is just a click away.

I missed being able to call when I was at the grocery store. Even if I carefully created a list, I still had the urge to call. Just to check. Then again, this is what we do, we check all the time.

This checking also happens with information. We are always checking mail and for news. I experienced few times early in the experiment that I wanted to grab the phone and do something. Having done that, I noted down why I would do this. In most cases it was because I was bored. Just waiting and with nothing to do. The phone is indeed, a time-killer device.  In two occasions it was because of insecurity. I was worried and not sure if I was doing the right thing so I tried to grab the non-existing phone for confort, just to look like I’m in control – just checking my mail or something. The phone seems to be an escape from insecurity. We feel we look less out place if we appear to be doing something. In one case I needed the phone because I wanted to know where I was and in few I felt it would be good to look up some some information.

I just realized I was suffering from the Checking Habit. This is described by scientists as brief, repetitive inspection of dynamic content quickly accessible on the device (Paper by Oulasvirta et. al: Habits make smartphone use more pervasive). We are checking all the time!

Now for the good parts. Being without the phone actually improved my life in this way. Instead of check email before going out of bed in the morning and numerous times during the day, I committed on working on email fewer times, but much more effective. Also, if you read your email on the phone it is quite common, if not a rule, that you do not respond on the device, but decide to wait until you are at the computer. Reason is that writing email messages is easier using a keyboard than a small device. Then, at the office with the computer you have no new emails and might fail to respond to read-only message.

The most surprising experience I got was when I was just going to work on some preparation. I needed to work for few hours. I got the feeling that I was free – nobody could interrupt me. I was in total control of my life.

With the phone we are actually open for interruption 24/7. We accept this and are not surprised when the phone rings. Somehow this is part of modern life. Always-on. Always checking. And as I write this, my new iPhone on the table beside the laptop.

I’m back on the chain gang.

One interesting field of study that has emerged is the field of biomimicry. This field looks to nature for solution of human problems. Nature has been working on many problems for a very long time and provided solutions that just work – otherwise they simply would not exist.

Pétur Örn Arnarson, student in my 2011 class of New Technology, researched the concept of biomimicry. His paper provides this information:

The purpose of the report is to introduce and create interest by the reader in the ideology of biomimicry that refers to sustainability by looking to Nature for solutions. In this report the basics of biomimicry are introduced to the reader as well as the history of biomimicry. There will be explanation of biomimicry and examples of how biomimicry can be used to create more sustainable world by looking at Nature as a model, mentor and measure. There is an introduction of the largest institutions in this field and there is an explication of the creator of biomimicry, Janine M. Benyus and her work.

My course on technology trends, New Technology starts in January. The purpose of the course is to understand how technology evolves and how it disrupts society. More information can be found here: www.olafurandri.com/newtechnology

This course will be open. It will be made available online.

To give a preview, here is a trailer. This is the People’s Trailer.

Image that you are looking for a restaurant and you go on the Internet to find a good place to eat. Go to any restaurant website and you will get restaurants categorized by food type, prices, ratings and location. You can browse though some reviews by customers and see menus and wine lists. You can view pictures of the interior and see video interviews with the hosts. This sounds just fine, but then add another factor. Image that you are actually downtown (your favorite city) and you want to eat now. Furthermore, you are using your mobile and you’re really not ready to browse all night. What you really need is a place close by that sells pizza or burgers and has decent wines. You need local results that fits the context you are in at this very moment. Localization is all about the meaning of context.

It turns out that with multiple of devices, people are in different situation when using web sites. This is what we call context, and the technical term is Context Aware Computing or CAC. When one user is sitting at home with their laptops, taking time to find some content on the Internet, another one is looking for answers relative to the place he or she is in. This is however not limited to a specific place. Mobile apps can also factor in the time of day, what type of day (workday, weekend, or holiday), your surrounding (are you in a mall, or at a football game, or in a casino). It can also be based on data about you – your digital profile. This profile determines who you are, it is based on data you leave behind, your digital trail, your searches, the pages you visit, the pages you share, your recommendations, comments, your tweets, your Facebook information, and so on. With services based on your profile, apps can utilize a context that is local to you.

With this local personal context, the restaurant app might even suggest 2-3 places that you might like. All you need to do is to ask it to find a place. If it is early in the day, it might suggest some cafés, while in the afternoon a bar might be a better choice. And of course it knows that you never go to fast food joints or a place that does not have wireless Internet.

You see this type of localization on the web also. When searching for restaurants Google will come back with local restaurants and a map to find them. Google knows where your IP address comes from and can pinpoint your city. Mobiles are much more precise. With GPS, the mobile can pinpoint the street you are standing on. This is where the context becomes relevant. A person with a mobile is, in most cases, probably looking for different things that a person using a laptop. Instead of every restaurant in town, you only want the ones near. For choices, like price and food type,  you want them simple and clear, without any clutter. Instead of customer reviews you just want the rating.

Another example is sports betting. Let’s say you open a sports betting site. If browsing on a computer, you might be interested in statistics about soccer teams, videos of goals and all the gossip about the players. On a Saturday, with a mobile, the sports betting app knows you are going to place a bet on some games in the English Premier League. It knows what team you follow and the bet types you like. First choice is to place a bet on your favorite team. If you are actually at a soccer stadium somewhere, that game might also be a choice. Placing a bet is relevant and easy and over in few seconds.

For the last few years, one of the trends in web design is the concept of responsive web design. With this design idea, the web site displays nicely in different sizes of screen. Web site might be 4 columns in a typical desktop web browser, while a horizontal tablet uses 3 and vertical tablet 2, and mobile 1. The same web page in all cases, no need for a specific mobile version or specific tablet version. While this maybe the greatest idea ever, it totally ignores the context of the user.

In the coming years we will see more focus on Local (the Lo part of SoLoMo). We will see more apps that use information from the environment, from the user, and from social media and information sites, to create experience for the user. We will see trials with successes and failures, with some companies finding something that works while others cause privacy concerns and even anger. As we move on, solutions will appear that actually works for users. So, when I’m standing on a street corner downtown Reykjavík in the afternoon on Thursday, and I need a place with WiFi to write an article about technology trends, my phone knows where I want to go. And it has already checked that I will like the glass of wine they have.

The place was at best strange but so fitting the event. Set in a old, somewhat respectfully neglected house where the walls could tell many stories, this event was the second Games Summit, held in Antwerp, Belgium on the last day of September. A one day of sessions bringing together games industry people from Flemish and the Nordic region.

The morning session was moderated by Erik Robertson of the Nordic Game Program. First speaker was Tom Putzki, a veteran game designer and now a consultant. Putzki’s talk was a good overview of the games industry providing insights and statistics into the world of gaming.

After Tom’s presentation, Wim Wouters from gaming studio GriN presented a social game. It was the social version of the popular Snake game. This idea was this: everyone has a smartphone so why not use the smartphone as a remote. People in the audience took out their phones and played a multiplayer Snake for awhile, or until so many were playing that it got too messy.

Next two sessions were about unconventional games. First was Lau Korsgaard of the Copenhagen Game Collective. He talked about how the console companies are trying to reinvent the input controller. Nintendo’s success with Wii sparked responses for Sony, unveiling Move, and Microsoft with Kinect. But according to Lau this is the wrong way. You, the person playing the game should not be the input but the output. Your body should be the output device. Lau introduces a game called B.U.T.T.O.N. which stands for Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Ok Now. In this game the players are asked to step back and are then given instructions, for example do push-ups or lie dead for some minutes. To win, participants have to get back to the controllers and perform simple task, such as holding a key down for 7 seconds. This can lead to interesting actions.

The next speaker was Martin Ericsson from The Company P. He talked about transmedia, a story format where multiple mediums are use to tell the same story. His example was the TV series The Truth about Marika done with Swedish TV corporation, SVT. The story was told not only on the TV screens but also using the Internet and mobile, as well as the streets. The viewer was invited to participate and find and post clues to the mystery.

In the afternoon participants of the Crossover Lab presented their projects to the audience and to a panel of game experts. The last section was a panel with representatives of from the Nordic countries and the European games industry. The message was clear. The Flemish games companies need to organize and have a voice. This industry is competing with other countries, many of which provide good development grants and even subsidize game development. I explained how the Icelandic gaming studios got together and formed an association, the Icelandic Gaming Industry, IGI. The Flemish gaming studios need to organize and become a united voice. Only then can they lobby the government for support and funds. And, from what I learned at the summit, the government officials are calling for this – they too want to support the creative industries to fuel the industry and create growth.

Now it remains to be seen if the Flemish Games industry gets born.

First meetup of the 2011-12 season was held að the usual hangout, the sports bar Hvíta Perlan, on 1st of September. Well attended meetup with the topic of introducing the IGI Game Creator contest that officially started the same day.

This contest is in cooperation with University of Iceland and Reykjavík University.

Taken from the gamecreator.is web site:

Game Creator is a competition for the best computer game, starting with brainstorming good ideas and, by the end of the competition, delivering a functional prototype. Don’t be alarmed if you are new to all of this – you will get help! And not just any help, experienced industry experts from Iceland’s lead gaming companies will be at your service. This Icelandic Gaming Industry competition was first held in 2010 under the name of IGI Awards with very good success.

To introduce the competition Jóhannes Sigurðsson of Gogogic went through some slides and answered questions.

During the informal discussions at the end, the discussion turned to hackathons, where participants get something like 24 to 48 hours to deliver a game. One person in the audience, Eiríkur Heiðar, pointed out that he and his team, Aranja, participated in Node.js Knockout, a 48-hour hackathon that took place in August. They delivered a game called Outburst. Needless to say, he and the team were pulled to the stage to do a demo. The team of four, Eiríkur Heiðar, Ari Þór, Sveinn and Ægir, made this multiplayer game where players guard some sheeps from killer robots.

Game can be found here: http://www.outburstgame.com/

Watching killer robots attack some livestock was a good ending to a good evening.

On August 12th 1981, IBM introduced the IBM model 5150 or the IBM PC. Big Blue launched an ad champaign featuring the Tramp. This was a serious PC for the serious business man. The impact was huge. IBM created the PC industry. The most interesting fact is that IBM, a mainframe company, could actually pull this off. If we look at corporate history, it is rare that corporation can go into totally new type of ventures. In fact, this was really a remarkable feat. But as it turns out, the birth of IBM PC was totally an accident.

Consider the market prior to the IBM lunch. MITS introduced Altair 8800 in 1975. It was based on the new Intel 8080 Microchip. This landmark computer was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics. This was the issue that inspired Bill Gates and Paul Allen to go into the software business, creating a BASIC interpretor for the machine. Although the Altair was very primitive by modern standards – you had to assemble it yourself, it ignited fire in all those computer hobbyist that would love to have their own computer.

In the 1970s, the only way to get your hands on a computer was to get access to a time-sharing facility. These were available at many univerisies, and some times had restricted access. The term “hacker” was used to describe those enthusiast that would steal access to machines just for the joy of using the machine. Somewhat romantic term that would later get a more negative meaning.

In the late 70s, several personal computers emerged and the momentum was building. At the West Coast Fair in 1977, Apple, with Steve Jobs and Woz, introduced the Apple II and it was clear that something was happening. IBM, the computer giant, the makers of serious computers for the business, watched this from a distance. Clearly this was the market for hobbyists, not to be taken seriously by business. But Big Blue management did watch this development carefully.

In 1980, IBM management approved a project to create a personal computer. This task was given to a small team that would get one year to complete the task.  So the team went to Boca Raton, Florida and worked on the new computer. The team did several things different from the traditional IBM corporate way of building computers. One thing was that this team was a long way from headquarters and the corporate culture. Another was that given the time restrictions the team could not wait for IBM engineers to create parts that would fit into the PC. So the chip was licensed from Intel, the floppy disk drive from Tandem and so on.

The operating system, PC-DOS was licensed from Microsoft. The software company also got rights to sell the system to other computer makers. This created a platform for software makers to create programs. This was in line with Microsoft’s focus on providing computer languages like BASIC.

One remarkable thing that IBM did was to publish all the specification documents. So people could actually read how the computer was made. Everything was specified. This resulted in a new industry. Anyone could start creating add-ons and accessories to the IBM PC. And soon, the clones started to appear. A software industry was born. With each release of IBM PC, another computer company would release a compatible machine little later.

Eventually, the success of the PC as an industry standard, resulted in the downfall of the IBM PC. After the computer had become a success, IBM management started to make the decisions on releases of updates. IBM management wanted to use the same practices as they used in the mainframe business, delaying new models to get most out of the current one. IBM decided when the move to new model of Intel chips. Finally, the industry didn’t wait for IBM to lead anymore. Compaq released the Compaq Deskpro 386 in 1986. This was first PC that IBM did not initiate.

The impact of the IBM PC was huge. The PC gives use lessons in corporate management, both it’s birth and death. It’s not that corporate management can’t create good products and make good decisions, it’s about how one corporate culture, in this case mainframe culture, can’t easily be applied to an industry that needs a different culture, in this case PC culture. And it proved that open platform builds industry standards.

Image: Moovit Wall from Displex

For decades computer operating systems have used the traditional desktop metaphor. Programs and files are represented by icons and open in windows. For control we use the keyboard and mouse. Now we are seeing changes in this way of interacting with computers. Recently, at their WWDC conference, Apple showed new Macs with multitouch trackpads, offering a new way to interact with computers. Upcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft will contain touch features, so the line between PC operating systems and mobile is blurring.

New Technology student Tomas Hahn wrote a paper titled: Future Human Computer Interaction with special focus on input and output techniques. The paper is a good summary of developments in interacting with computers.

The abstract from the paper is this:

Human Computer Interaction in the field of input and output techniques has developed a lot of new techniques over the last few years. With the recently released full multi- touch tablets and notebooks the way how people interact with the computer is coming to a new dimension. As humans are used to handle things with their hands the technology of multi-touch displays or touchpad’s brought much more convenience for use in daily life. But for sure the usage of human speech recognition will also play an important part in the future of human computer interaction. This paper introduces techniques and devices using the humans hand gestures for the use with multi-touch tablets and video recognition and techniques for voice interaction. Thereby the gesture and speech recognition take an important role as these are the main communication methods between humans and how they could disrupt the keyboard or mouse as we know it today.

Paper: Future Human Computer Interaction with special focus on input and output techniques

Image this: before you get out of bed, you have read your email, checked what meetings you have today and scanned the news. Then breakfast. If this is not yet a description of your life, you might like to know that to many people this is pretty much what they do. Many people keep their smartphone on their nightstand over night, ready to grab it when they wake up. Their mobile phone is with them 24/7, all-the-time. This device is a window into our digital life. Somewhere out there is all the information about us, our content, our conversations, our likes, our contacts and our everything. Welcome to the digital lifestyle of the 21st century.

If we look at the trends of the last two decades we can make interesting observations. The Internet becomes mainstream around 1994-5. At this time getting online was not that easy and required some effort. With better operating systems like Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and computers with WiFi built in, this became easier, making adoption go to an exponential growth stage. The computer and the Internet became consumer items.

The first decade of the 21st century can be called the digital decade. This is the time when content became digital. Media such as music and video became digital. Music was the first to become easy to share, resulting in the record labels long battle with piracy. As bandwidth got better, music videos, photos, short videos, then episodes, then movies and now HD movies are easily shared and downloaded (legally or not). Lastly, books became digital with eReaders like kindle and iPad.

It’s been twenty years since the first web pages appeared. To begin with, the web was not taken seriously and corporate web sites were mostly information sites, online brochures as Douglas Adams called them. Slowly the web became the primary way to use computers. Today, many people use the web to do their banking, bookings of travel arrangements or tickets for concerts, and ordering games, magazines and books. Applications such as Google docs are web based, and so are music sites, and even movies have found their way into the browser. Now we are seeing a shift again to applications or apps. With the mobile smartphone as a software platform, apps are taking over the web. More and more people use apps on their smartphones to access the services of the Internet. It seems that the battle is now between the app and the web.

The early web did not pose much threat to the then existing computer infrastructure. The dominant model of computing in the early 1990s was just stand-alone GUI programs, mostly applications written for Microsoft Windows. Networked applications were primarily client-server applications, requiring a software install on each machine. When web based systems started to appear they lacked in interactive user experience since each web page was reloaded upon every user action. But the web had a clear advantage. Building a web app required a server-only application and no client since the web browser was the client. Maintaining multiple versions of clients and communication protocols was not needed. This had huge benefits but did not come free since browser compatibility became an issue instead. With advances in the use of web technologies, such as Ajax, interactive web applications became a reality.

When the iPhone appeared the mobile phone became a software platform. Summer 2008, the Apple App Store became available and thousand of developers saw this as an opportunity and an adopters market emerged. Others, like Google with Android, followed and soon the mobile app became a practical way to provide software to end users. Mobile Apps have exploded in availability. By May 2011, Apple had 380,000 apps in their App Store, Google Android had 295,000, and even Microsoft had 17,500 apps.

The rise of apps have changed how people use their phone. It has turned into an information and processing tool. According to mobile maker Ericsson, mobile data overtook voice in December 2009. And this trend will continue. It is predicted that mobile data will grow 300% by 2015. Mobile Commerce Daily says that a purchase is made every second through eBay’s mobile apps.

The mobile phone has huge advantages over the laptops (or desktops). People have their phones on them all the time. We don’t leave the house without it and all trough the day, many people grab it to check mail, or play games. Of course the mobile can use the mobile web browser for all this, but the growth in mobile data use has a lot to do with apps. Well designed mobile apps are also focused, making the most-used features easily available and ignores not-needed features. As more functionality becomes easily available in mobile apps, more and more people are getting comfortable with doing business transaction using the mobile device.

Where will this take the web? Some even say that the Web is dead (Wired article: The Web is Dead, Long live the Internet) but others point to HTML5. The trend now is clearly towards the apps. However, we must keep in mind that technology follows cycles and now we are swinging to the app, just like we saw client-server replace dumb terminals, only to see the web take over. It is not likely that the app will overtake the web, it is more likely that these will coexist, as each has their benefits. There is also the incentive to bypass Apple’s approval process and avoid the 30% cut they take in sold apps.

Furthermore, we might see some web-based developer toolkits making highly interactive HTML5 web apps for the mobile phone. Indeed, there are rumors that Facebook is working on such a project. We could also see Microsoft release some tools for making HTML5 apps for their Windows Phone 7 platform. The battle of the Internet could become interesting.

Electric vehicles (EV) were actually conceived in 19th century, before the invention of the combustion engine. However, with limited battery technology electricity did not become the means to power cars. Today we are seeing more and more EVs on the roads. Battery technologies are fast improving and becoming more practical as with the rise of oil prices.

New technology student Þuríður Björg Guðnadóttir wrote a paper titled Electric Vehicles where she looks at EVs from the early beginnings to the current status. In particular the paper examines why the EV did not take off until recently.

An interesting part of the paper is a survey on people’s views on EV. It turns out that 61% have considered buying an EV and 73% would pay more for EV than regular car.

Paper:  Electric Vehicles

In 2010, the iPad changed computer interfaces. A new type of device, the iPad broke the desktop file system metaphor of the past. No longer did the user see files and folders, organized in complex tree structure hierarchies. This trend of moving away from the file system has now entered the PC. Both Apple and Microsoft, the leading manufactures of operating systems for computers have taken steps to make their systems less like file operating systems and more like interfaces of consumer devices. The file system will still be there but it is getting buried.

The idea of organizing data into files emerged very early in the history of computers. Systems like Unix and VMS and later DOS were all about files and how to operate files. Even when the graphical user interfaces emerged in the 1980s, the file system became visual with the desktop metaphor where, using the term folders instead of directories. Files with visible content became documents. In the desktop metaphor the user is very much aware that applications work with documents and you explicitly create new documents, you save documents, and you open documents. Your are very much aware that the documents are files in the file system and the application is a separate thing to work with them.

Computers in the 80s and 90s were primary business machines used by trained office workers. The idea that people would buy computers for their personal use took some time. Even in 1990 when I bought a Gateway PC during my studies in Eugene, Oregon, the delivery guy was confused bringing a computer to a residential area, and asked if I was running a business from home.

The rise of the Internet in the late 90s and the early 00s and the digitalization of devices such as music players and cameras changed the role of computers. Today, computers are consumer devices. And consumers are using their computers for lots of different tasks, like browsing the Internet, watching movies, communicating and listening to music.

This June, the makers of two of the leading computer operating systems introduced their next versions. Both show clear signs how they are trying to hide the file system. Apple showed Lion, their next major version of Mac OS X, at their developer’s conference in San Francisco. Although the desktop idea is not gone and Finder is still there, there is a definite move away from the office like metaphor towards the iOS like interface. The multi-touch gestures are clear example of this. Another example is the Mac App Store and how software is installed. The process of downloading a installation file to your file system and then running that file, is gone. Just select the app in the app store and it will automatically install and be ready to use. A clear move away from the file system. Lion also has an app called Launchpad which organizes the applications as iOS organizes apps. No need to browse the Application folder to find the application file in the file system.

Lion also has new features that bring more subtle changes but are actually very interesting moves away from the file system. Resume opens application in the state it was open last time, moving away from explicitly opening the files your were working on. Finally, Autosave further moves us away from the disk. This might be a trivial change but it is actually pretty big since this marks the end of saving and thus the notion that the file is something stored on a disk and that you must be aware of this fact.

Microsoft is also moving from the file system to a more consumer friendly experience with Windows 8, just previewed this June. In fact, Windows 8 goes further into the mobile experience with the mosaic tiles user interfaces of Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. The file system is still there but apps can use new and easier ways to access content.

The trend is clear. We are seeing a shift in computer user interfaces. The notion of files and folders are being replaced by higher abstractions more oriented towards the consumption of media content. The days of drives are gone. The A-drive is long gone, and now the C-drive with the rest of the alphabet soup. For the end user, the file system is dead and the sky is cloudy.

My New Technology course versions 2011 finished in beginning April. Students turned in some 70 papers so I spent much of April reading about technology. As usual, I will publish some of the more interesting ones here on my site.

First one is a really interesting research done by Brynjar Örn Jensson. He did research in to how people use social networks. Some interesting findings are that most most people abandoned MySpace when they open a Facebook account. It seems that Facebook killed MySpace. Another interesting result is that over 70% of the participants use Facebook for communication with family and friends, while some 10% use the site to kill time.

Most people, almost 60% spend less than 3 hours a day on social networking while some 10% are online all day.

The abstract:

This paper covers the largest social networking sites available today. Facebook is currently the largest site. Twitter is growing fast and these two sites are the options that people choose when it comes to communicating and socialising online. MySpace is a social network that has completely crashed in popularity and has lost all of its former characteristics due to the downfall in their user base. They have decided to concentrate on promoting unknown music talents.

The survey that was carried out underlines Facebook ́s dominance and suggests that Twitter is a force to be reckoned with. The survey explaines why Facebook completely shattered MySpace when it comes to popularity and number of active users.

Facebook and Twitter are put head to head and their pros and cons are examined. Although Facebook dominates in number of users, Twitter definitely has some factors over and above Facebook.

Paper can be found here: Social Networks: Survival of the fittest

At a the resent Nordic game conference in Malmö I noticed that not many people carried laptops. Instead they had tablets, mostly iPad. Few speakers also presented using a tablet. This trend is more dramatic than expected. Tablets are causing a real disruption in the PC market and how people use computers.

Then as I was leaving the Nordic game conference, the Silicon Alley Insider Chart of the day reported on a survey on how people use their devices (see below).

Source: Silicon Allay Insider

As it turn out people claim to use their iPad 37% of the time compared to 27.2% of the time for the laptop. While the iPad usage is up, the laptop usage is down. According to the same source sales of Microsoft consumer PC sales growth has dropped from 37% to -4% in a year.

The iPad is also disrupting print. One example is my own subscription to the Economist. The magazine hits the streets every Thursday. Since I live in Iceland, it will be in my office on Tuesday, some five days later. Since I have an iPad I usually download a copy of the magazine to my iPad app before the weekend and read the magazine over the weekend. I also download it to my iPhone, including the audio and more often than not, I listen to some articles while walking or running. Needless to say, the printed version is pretty much outdated when I get my hands on it. I just stacks up on my desk now:

It turns out that the iPad is a pretty good reading device. When the personal computer became widely used in the office environment, many believed that printing would be a thing of the past. The opposite happend since with quality laser printers, printing document exploded. The reasons was that reading from computer screen is not comfortable and thus, people print the paper. It may be due to the position people are in. When reading from a computer screen, whether desktop screen or laptop, its not a “reading position”. With tablets you can get in a more relaxed positon.

A new paper by Morgan Stanley about Tablet Demand and Disruption confirms this trend:



We are seeing some changes as people with tablets seem to print less than PC users. Tablets are disrupting how people work in the office and the result is printing is declining. The Morgan Stanley report shows that tablet owners print less paper in the office. They predict that tablets reduce office printing by 1-2% in 2011 and by 2-5% in 2012. These are not high numbers but any impact the printing industry.

Recently I gave a presentation at the Gambling Technology Strategies 2011 conference held in London. The topic was on mobile phones.

The mobile phone is the most important device of many people’s lives. I argued that the first decade of the 21st century – The Digital Decade, was about making everything digital and connecting devices using the Internet. This has led to a new digital online lifestyle, and mobile gaming is part of this lifestyle. We have today in our pocket a computer that is just the powerful as the iMac in 2000.

There are few key points made in the slides:

Practically everyone has a mobile phone. In fact, more people would give up cars and TV instead of their phones. Another point is that these phones are more like powerful computers than phone. Apple’s iPhone and many Android based phones are good examples. People are using their phones more as a computer that as a tool for making voice calls. The general trends is that new generations are simply not making phone calls as previous generations.

The fundamental change lies in how the customer experience has changed. In the 90s and early 00s, the focus was on the hardware and voice calls. In recent years this shifted to software. Now with iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 operating system and application platform the focus is on user experience and increasingly on the context of the user.

With mobile the key is to have high context. This means that great mobile apps are built to make their specific task really easy and relative to the context of the user. For example, FourSquare, the social location game lists all the venues nearby that are popular right-now, or are the user’s favourite, than places nearby. You can search, but the app provides a context, namely nearby venues, that are more likely be what you want.

What I find surprising is that with all these opportunities to add mobile access to the online gaming, many gaming operators have not taken the advantage of the changed lifestyle.

Since Apple redefined the smartphone as a software platform, people all over the world are finding new ways to use their mobile device. Most phones have decent cameras and software to manage photos. And since people don’t go out the door without their phones, this is the device that is more likely to be in their pocket when a photo opportunity comes. One result of this is that the smartphone is taking over the role of the camera. The smartphone is disrupting the camera and camcorder market.

Few weeks ago Cisco announced that they are shutting down their Flip camera devision. Although it is not clear why they would do this, or if it has anything to do with smartphones, it is one sign that digital cameras and camcorders as a special device are facing hard times. Camera retailers are seeing decline in sales and less profits. Some have shifted the focus on printing and framing.

Flickr has a page which shows the most popular cameras (http://www.flickr.com/cameras/) According to this page the Nikon D90 is the most popular, followed by iPhone 4. Furthermore, the page suggests that point and shoot cameras are declining in market share at least compared to cameraphones.

Most Popular Cameras in the Flickr Community (source: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/)

We are seeing cameras getting disrupted. This disruption is caused by smartphones. There are several reasons why this is happening. First, the mobile phone is the most widely used device on this planet. Everyone has one. And you don’t leave the house without your phone. This is the device you have on you all the time. Morgan Stanley reports that 91% of people have their phone within arms reach 24/7. This means that whenever you find yourself presented with a photo opportunity, the camera device in your pocket is your phone.

Second point is about the quality of camera phones. Some years ago, in the early days of digital cameras, I asked a person that worked at a company selling film, film cameras and development of film, if she was worried about digital cameras. “No” was the response, with the explanation ”have you seen the quality of these things  - it’s horrible”. This is the nature of disruptive products, like the camera was – they offer low performance in their early stages and slowly get better over time. Point is that cameraphones have good-enough quality.

Third is the constant connectivity. The mobile phone is a communication device (or used to be). Thus, it is always connected. With wireless hotspots all over the place and 3G networks, sending pictures to sites like Flickr is easy. You don’t have to get a wire to connect the device to your laptop, you just send the picture. So if you’re at an event or in a special place you want to make sure your friends know about this, and you want to send them the picture right away.

This has to be easy which leads to the last point. The Software. Smartphones with apps have great many  applications that manipulate pictures. Selecting them and sending is only few touches on the device. Sharing can also be automatic – which might get people into trouble.

But are cameras and camcorders dead? That is unlikely, they will become the high-end professional devices. The users of Nikion D90 on Flickr are likely to be serious photographers, either professionals making a living taking pictures or amateurs that just love taking photos. While the casual users might prefer their phone as a camera, the serious user will still want the high-end product. The result is consolidation in the camera and camcorder market. As a last point, even if the numbers show that cameras are getting disrupted they don’t say anything about the artistic quality of the pictures taken.