Last year a friend told me that while he was in China, he saw a huge white advertisement on the road with just a black 2D-Barcode. That was all. Obviously, he was very intrigued by it, but could not figure out what it was so he asked his taxi driver about it. The taxi driver took his cameraphone, snapped the barcode, and an advertisement of a large nearby company with a link to their website showed up on his screen. A good example of how technology innovation comes to the real consumer! 

New technology trends allow and drive many new innovation tracks in companies. And the last years were for sure no exception. We have seen a strong popularity in social networking sites based on web 2.0 collaborative and participative technologies, not only on the public internet, but also now within enterprises. Mobility device integration also became hotter. The use of internet on mobile phones, PDA/smartphones, networking games on gaming  consoles, but even appliances such as fridges and kitchens became more accepted. Mobile social networking websites saw many startups develop mobile phone software last year to interact on social networking sites through your mobile.

Less prominently, but increasing, we also see that there is a careful shift from text-based to non-text based internet. Internet is still strongly text-based. Yes, you can already google images nowadays, but you still have to type in the keywords you are looking for. Websites including google focus now on matching pictures with your uploaded picture rather than analyzing keywords and do a semantic search. There is a website allowing people to upload their own picture and the website chooses clothes and accessories which fits the person’s picture. Other websites experiment with voice (Midomi.com) where you can sing a lyric and it recognizes the song. There is a phone number you can call and let your phone listen to a song in a shop for instance, and it recognizes the song and artist (great for copyright protection). Amazon.com opened up a service where you can SMS lees verder…

Onlangs ging de middaguitzending van Standpunt café op radio 1 over studeren. Het onderwerp was de klacht vanuit studentorganisaties dat studeren te duur wordt en dat studenten te veel moeten lenen. Deze discussie vindt plaats in het kader van de ideeën van Plasterk om de basisbeurs af te schaffen of het collegegeld te verhogen. De klacht van studentenorganisaties is dat de toegang tot het hoger onderwijs wordt beperkt. Ik word hier een beetje moe van. lees verder…

My great colleague Richard Wilkinson, who I met at LeWeb3 in Paris last year, could not keep his hands off his computer during the holidays last week. He loaded the Accenture Office Locations in Google Maps and Google Earth. Some minor errors, but the result is already a pre-trip destination we can all use. Thanks Richard.

Nrc.Next pointed me to some great (new) online destinations this week:

Every person in New York

Jason Polan has a mission. He is going to make a drawing of every person in NYC. He moves unnoticable throughout the city and draws people in the subway, in musea, restaurants. etc. Whenever he has a new stack of drawings he uploads them. Since there are about 8 million people to be drawn - more fun to come!

Evite 2.0

A true web 2.0 invitation service. The user submits her details and receives invites based on the events that match her profile. Going and Facebook are following with their own invitation services.

Grandma’s socks

This is a great idea, it has everything: old meets new, truly unique and cult power waiting to be unleashed. On netgranny.ch you pick a Grandma, a design and Granny starts knitting. Soon you’ll have your granny-generated socks delivered to your home.

Note: the idea sounds better than the actual destination. Which brave entrepreneurial soul will help make this a professional enterprise with a site to match?

Re-usability

Green e-commerce - a place for old things to get a new life. Fun to look at the ingredients label on each product that tells you what rubbish went into making it. Anyone looking for shoes from old car tires?

Yesterday, I presented at the Heliview Conference on how the Next Enterprise should profit from Web 2.0. It centers around three large Business Technology trends:
 1. The rising popularity of Collaborative and Participative Platforms within the Enterprise
2. Accessibility through the ability of connecting higher number of devices to systems and changing way of user-input
3. Integration Standardization for applications as well as data. 

We have already witnessed the popularity of collaborative and participative platforms on the public internet: crowdsourcing (wikipedia), folksonomies (del.icio.us), social networking (Linkedin, Facebook), search and discovery (google, stumbleUpon) etc. However, enterprises are now also taking larger interest in these platforms to enable within their own boundaries. Enterprise software vendors as well as many startup niche companies are jumping on the bandwagon to fill in the gaps in this market segment.Secondly, we also see a larger set of devices being able to be integrated with company applications: mobile phones, PDAs, self service check in machines (e.g ATM), gaming consoles and even fridges. We see the user interface becoming also more interactive through technologies like RIA and lees verder…

Is hier nu eindelijk eens iemand die gaat coördineren? In het heetst van de strijd roepen jonge ambtenaren van Piazza elkaar toe om in de Lean Six Sigma simulatie de doorlooptijd te reduceren. In dit geval was het de postbezorging. In de simulatie Sigma Station ondergingen top ambtenaren en managers bedrijfsvoering een ‘proces optimalisatie’ slag waarbij ook de management strategie werd betrokken.   Grote administratieve organisatie’s zoals financiële instellingen, verzekeraars en overheidsinstellingen zoals UWV, Belastingdienst, Defensie worden gedwongen om verbeteringsinitiatieven in de bedrijfsvoering door te voeren om concurrerend te blijven. Wanneer er geen concurrentie is – dan nog ben je het aan de belastingbetaler verplicht om efficiënt, effectief en klantgericht te werken. Daarom waren de deelnemers ook zo enthousiast.   Maar wat is nou Lean? Lean gaat niet over ‘Mager’ zijn (de letterlijke vertaling). Lean gaat niet over het ‘Mean zijn’ (ondanks de woorden rijmen). Het gaat niet over ‘kaasschaven’ maar wel over efficiënter, effectiever  en klantgerichter werken. Lean is wel een set aan management best practices gebaseerd op het Toyota Produktie Systeem. De term is ‘belegd’ door een groep van onderzoekers van het Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) dat het boek ‘de machine die de wereld veranderde’ schreef.   Six Sigma is gebaseerd op het statistische denken dat zijn oorsprong in het kwaliteitsdenken heeft (Demming etc.).  Er zijn methoden zoals DMAIC gedefinieerd om processen en producten te verbeteren met Six Sigma en er zijn opleidingen (diverse zogenaamde ‘Belts’) ontwikkeld om de methode toe te passen. Het gaat dan niet over judo maar om ervaring niveau’s. Het is strategisch kijken naar je operationele praktijk.

This morning in the Dutch news - citizen journalism website SKOEPS.nl is no more. The joint initiative from PcM Uitgevers and the digital part of Talpa Media did not make it past 1,5 years. lees verder…