iPlot

In Between Years: Innovation Trends and Snippets

Soccer and innovation: I blogged about "what Ronaldinho and FC Barcelona can teach you about innovation" before "el clásico" on Sunday, and, well, there was a certain risk that my bold claim would backfire. Madrid slammed Barca in its own backyard 1-0, and while I'm flattered that my favorite Fox soccer analyst Bobby McMahon is linking to my post, his comment still stings a little....

Monarchy 2.0: Queen Elizabeth has launched a new channel on YouTube -- the Royal Channel -- which will broadcast her traditional Christmas address, at 3 p.m. (7 a.m. PST, 10 a.m. EST) on Tuesday. According to a YouTube spokesperson (via the New York Times), the channel has been a huge success so far, drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers. The most popular clip is the 1957 broadcast of the Queen's Christmas address, with more than 400,000 viewers.

Trends of the trends: That time of the year again. Media out-forecast each other with predictions of trends for 2008. Here's a compilation: consumer trends, advertising and marketing trends, fashion trends, IT trends, security trends, marketing trends for small and medium-sized businesses, media trends, air travel trends, and there are much more....

Mobile: Speaking of trends, David Armano argues that 2007 was the year of social media and 2008 will be the year of mobile media. I've heard that one before, you may think, but perhaps he's right, and fueled by the "iPhone effect" this time companies will live up to the hype. There are indeed signs of real break-through innovation on the horizon: "Silicon Valley's first phone company," Ribbit, is all the talk right now in Silicon Valley; "viral" WiFi models like that of Fon will continue to thrive; more local businesses and chains will offer free Wi-Fi; and Google's Android platform will drive tons of new business for user interface designers and developers. And then there is the new Skypephone with its iSkoot software. And the Google phone...?

Conversation analytics: New metrics for new social media are in high demand. How, for example, do you track and analyze conversations on Twitter? Tweeterboard is an attempt to provide "conversation analytics," and one of the parameters it uses to gauge someone's influence on Twitter is the level of "giving and receiving love..."

Happy holidays!

Form Follows Apple: Is the iPhone Next?

There has been much discussion since Apple filed a multi-functional handheld device patent application yesterday. MacNN reports that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application depicting a cell phone capable of functioning in multiple modes: “The patent apparently describes an electronic device that can function as a cell phone, music player, video player, game player, camera, GPS receiver, 'hand top,' and a remote control. The device would function in multiple modes with the potential of a changing user interface.”

The document, originally filed in March of 2006, may hold clues to Apple's upcoming special event scheduled for September 12th, coinciding with the large mobile devices conference CTIA (industry watchers believe the company is also set to unveil a new full-length movie service via its iTunes Music Store along with a revamped widescreen video iPod).

So will the iPhone be the long-expected Swiss army knife of mobile communications – the iTunes/iPhoto/iChat/BlackBerry/Skype phone with USB 2.0 all built-in, music, pictures, and VoIP, ready to work with Mac or Windows? Pundits are skeptical as many questions remain: Which mobile phone networks would market the phone? And how could Apple refrain from relying on just one carrier? Does it even want to? One thing is evident: If Apple wants to dominate the mobile industry, it has to break into cell phones and establish the iPhone as the one and only “all-in-one” product. Given its brand, however, this is a risky move: The company is of course expected to do nothing less than rethink and redesign the whole notion of a cell phone (and thus the entire industry) as it did with the iPod and the music industry. It needs to be another “Form follows Apple” shift that goes beyond just the integration of various features into one handheld or a cool design innovation that tops the fashionable “thinism” of the Razr and its many copycats. So what could it be?

One scenario might be an extended version of iTunes that connects with the iPhone and serves not only as a contact list/directory but also as a social networking site combining music and video libraries, archived phone calls, ring tones, text messaging, video chat, and other key ingredients of the connected world. Alternatively, the break-through innovation might occur on the handheld side, for example with a button-free and voice recognition-enabled phone that is essentially a mini-mobile computer. The problem with this is: If Apple intends to create this kind of super-phone, how does it maintain its brand-critical design simplicity while providing the features of a PDA? But then again, at the end of the day, maybe Apple is just planning to make a better phone -- in the words of Apple’s SVP of design Jonathan Ive: “A preoccupation with differentiation is the concern of many corporations rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better” (in an interview with Design Museum).

Of course, the news about the Apple patent filing could also just turn out to be a deftly planned PR coup as the fiercemobilecontent blog suspects: “Oh how I just love watching Apple’s patent filings. Nothing gets the digerati more worked up than rumblings from the secretive compound in Cupertino.”

Skype Launches Skypecasts

Seems like Skype is joining WebEx and LiveMeeting in the race for the mainstream conferencing application. Skype envisions Skypecasts as a way for people to discuss shared interests and hobbies. Six Apart Ltd., the parent of blogging and networking services TypePad, Movable Type and LiveJournal, plans to promote Skypecasts as a way of expanding online communities. The term "Skypecast" could cause some confusion — it has been used to describe a recording of an interview conducted via Skype, then distributed as a "podcast."

The Skype-conomy

Michael Arrington writes on TechCrunch that “The success of a service can sometimes be measured according to the business activity it is generating around it (think of accessories for Ipod or recently SkyLook). Skype’s success is giving many ideas to imaginative entrepreneurs (the Skype-conomy).”

One of these Skype-based ventures is Switzerland-based Sky-Click, a 100% web-based solution to set up your call center, built on the Skype API. The service does not require any particular hardware investment and can be easily integrated in a web site. All that users have to do is to download the Skype client on the call-center collaborators’ computer. On the end-user side they need to press the “call” button to initiate a call (or a video call) to the call-center.

Other ideas for Skype-conomic services:
- a plug-in to integrate with web conferencing
- a plug-in with other CRM tools (an integration ith salesforce.com exists already)
- ringing tones for Skype (SkyScraper)
- a service to record, organize, and archive Skype calls (SkyBrary)

More?