Mobile e-commerce & augmented reality?

When you think e-commerce what comes to mind? For me, I think Amazon.com and eBay.com. I remember reading somewhere that Amazon wasn't the first online bookstore, but in fact it was books.com - which is gone now by the way, and instead redirects to Barnes & Noble. Today, Amazon doesn't just sell books anymore, heck I can even order 18-inch wheels from there. But, what comes next? The e-commerce market is already at a point of saturation and it comes down to a battle-of-the-brands. Do I order this book from Amazon? or Barnes & Noble? or even Walmart? Should I buy a Dell from Dell.com? or from Walmart.com?

I blogged about social e-commerce at the beginning of this year, and some things are getting rolling in Collier's predictions, but we still have more to go before all her 2010 predictions are realized; sadly it won't be 2010; we're close I think, but I think social e-commerce is still a few years ahead. Its hard for these data silos to get broken down to really enable me to receiving recommendations from Amazon based on my Facebook friends or even tweets. Maybe I'm wrong.

But while these silos are up, m-commerce and augmented reality can go hand in hand, and it solves one of the problems faced by online shoppers; the "I'm not sure how this will look" problem. Its not a problem that every online store has, ex. I won't question how a PS3 will look like in my living room, nor will I question how a Mac mini will look like on my desk, so its not a problem there. It is a problem when buying something bigger, like furniture, appliances, decorations, wall paint, etc. Things that either take a lot of room, or might lead you to the dog house if your significant other does not approve take a lot of time to undo if you don't like where you placed it.

For e-commerce a picture is not worth 1000 words for most products out there. In the crazy world between my ears, I would go to the new place I'm moving into this month, pull out my iPhone 3GS and go to Ikea.com and start up their augmented reality furniture browser. I can then load up all the furniture I'm moving from the old place and see how everything comes together. It will then recommend other products based on the data it's collecting via my phone's camera, maybe different colours? maybe furniture pads to prevent the table from scratching the hardwood? Perhaps it'll recognize the TV and recommend a different place to reduce the glare in the morning since the windows face East?

Can it be done? I think so. The technology is already available. Where do you see mobile commerce heading in the next two years?

Don't tell me your TV supports Twitter (Part 2)

In Part 1 I ranted about the Samsung commercial that I caught on TV raving about accessing Facebook and Twitter from their new TV. I questioned how TV manufacturers are repeating the marketing campaigns the telecoms did a few years ago when the iPhone came out on select telecoms. The ones that weren't chosen such as Bell and Telus raved about their Blackberry, Palm and HTC lineups. They coined the term "social phones" or "smarter smart phone" and being able to access Facebook on their phones. Anyway, the future of mobile is in the apps, not the device nor the platform. I believe the same is true for TV.

In Part 2 I question the role of TV service providers and broadcasters in this new "smart TV" era that seems to be around the corner. The good thing that is going for these guys, is that they usually are Internet providers as well, or are at least partnered with an Internet provider. Smart TVs obviously need an Internet connection, so these guys will still be there. Their role could change a bit. As more Internet ready devices hit the market, it doesn't make sense for them to split their business into three lines; Internet, TV, Phone. What happens when we start getting fridges with WiFi / data chips? or washing machines? or even cars? I predict they'll just all converge into one line, connectivity and you pay for the data you use. Before we get there, we'll probably go through a stage where a standard package will give you X devices, a "gold" package gets you Y devices, and a "VIP" package gets you Z devices. Soon after that, that too won't cut it as it becomes the norm that devices have these connectivity chips built in.

Fast Mover Advantage?

I just finished reading the book "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich. The book provides great stories into the lives of the "founding fathers" of probably the most successful website on the Internet today - Facebook - although it wasn't a first mover. What amazed me the most about the book is how fast everything was happening.

Maybe once upon a time "First Mover Advantage" was important, that time I believe is long gone. Maybe it was important when building and shipping any product or service was extremely costly and time consuming. It was probably an important idea or theory for the Space Race in the 60s and 70s. I don't think it is all that important today.

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbutterfly/3051019058/

I think people should think more about the "Fast Mover Advantage" (I'm surprised there is no Wikipedia page on this today). The fast mover is able to counter all the hypothetical advantages associated with the first mover. Here is why:

Don't tell me your TV supports Twitter

Last night I caught a Best Buy ad on AMC about Samsung's smart/social/internet TV.  It reminded me of the Telus/Rogers/Bell BlackBerry ads a couple of years ago marketing Twitter and Facebook as features of their smartphones. They're still doing it with terms like "social phone" or "smarter smart phone" which I don't really understand.  I was still really excited about this ad, especially because it got the gears in the crazy place between my ears turning again...

Samsung seems confused about what to do with Google entering a market in which Samsung is one of the largest players. Add to that, Apple's arrival later this year with iTV. The same two companies that pretty much destroyed Samsung's chances in the phone industry. Samsung has its own OS for its phones, which also powers their smart tv - Bada. This is a bad idea:

• Popularity. Recent market results show iOS and Android capturing about 80% of the mobile web consumption. (Not including iPad). Since these numbers were gathered in June, the iPad has probably gained some more ground for iOS. Let's keep it at 80%. Samsung Bada's share is a fraction of that 10% for "Other", with probably an equal if not greater chunk of that "Other" going to SymbianOS.

Yahoo's culture vs. Google's culture

Two interesting articles I have read in the past week had to do with Yahoo's "hacker-centric" culture - or lack of. Two different views, one from Paul Graham's "What happened to Yahoo" post and the second from Ryan Grove's "What's happening at Yahoo!". Both were excellent reads and provide an interesting look into Yahoo's culture.

These articles got me interested in comparing both Yahoo! and Google, and see which is more a technology/software firm. I started out with the leadership team of both companies and counted how many engineers, scientists and mathematicians are in both. I could be wrong, but I'm considering a "hacker-centric" culture is composed of a high number of engineers, scientists and mathematicians. So I'll refer to these as "techies".

The results were pretty amazing. The higher that number is, the more "hacker-centric" that company is. Feel free to comment about this, if I'm being biased or overlooked something. One thing I did, but not on purpose was I double counted some members if they were in both the board of directors and VP lists, so the ratios are a little skewed, but still the difference is huge.

First insight was the very different leadership structure in both companies. The boards of directors for both are rather similar, nine members in Google's, ten in Yahoo!'s, roughly the same number of "techies"; four in Google's vs three in Yahoo. Nothing surprising here.

Daily Digest

Last night I came across this sweet web app called paper.ly that generates a newspaper of your Twitter feed daily. It comes with a pretty basic embed that displays a table of contents for your own personalized news paper that you can embed on your blog or website. The people I follow are mainly from the tech community in North America and the Toronto Twitter community. You'll find posts from the usual suspects like GigaOM, TechCrunch, Mashable, and Seth Godin. Also some local people like Alex Blom, Scott Stratten, Breanna Hughes and Joallore have appeared in my daily digest today. Anyway, if you are interested in seeing what the Twitter community I'm following is publishing on Twitter, feel free to bookmark this page.

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex

Just came across this fascinating video on TED. Needless to say that when technological ideas have sex we can end up with the Twitters, Facebooks, iPads, iPods, iPhones, etc. etc. Enjoy.

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.