An early look at the ultimate social networking tool

For several weeks I've been in a private beta test of a new social networking service designed to help mobile and PC users keep in touch and share ideas. I think it's the sexiest new product I've seen since the Nokia 7650, and even though it's still in early beta I want to talk about it.

I promised not to describe some of the details of their implementation, because the patents haven't all been filed, so I apologize in advance that I'll have to leave some blanks. But here goes...

The company, Inrvoice LLC, has great credentials -- it was founded by former engineers from Netscape and RIM, who teamed up with a group of biomedical researchers from UC San Francisco. It's funded by a consortium of A-list VCs from Stockholm and Palo Alto. That in itself is unusual -- usually startups like this are funded only in one region. But I think the cross-cultural aspect of the service make its appeal universal.

The folks at Inrvoice are targeting one of the key drawbacks of today's social networking software -- the need to type ideas and comments in order to share them with others. Instead, Inrvoice's software directly captures the thoughts of users, as they happen, and shares them automatically with everyone in the user's social network.

I'm not allowed to give all the details of the process, but suffice it to say that it involves Bluetooth wireless, the user swallowing a small sensor pill, and one of the first commercial deployments of nanomachines that I've heard of.

The product is called Spitr, and I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about it in the weeks to come.



Spitr's ability to share thoughts rather than typed words dramatically increases the efficiency and richness of interactions on social networks. No longer do you have to guess what one of your friends might be thinking on a moment to moment basis; no longer do you miss out on nuances or ideas that they might not normally have time to share.

As an example of Spitr's power, here's a real Spew (the company's term for a transcript of a user's thoughts). I've been asked not to give the user's name, but I can tell you that he/she is a blogger and executive at a major Web company, attending a recent conference:

11:45:39 i wonder if there are any new comments on my blog
11:45:44 huh, the next speaker is making a web service that recycles composted kitchen waste
11:45:47 i dont get it. who eats at home anymore
11:45:49 when the hell is the lunch break
11:45:48 this company doesnt make sense to me but arrington likes it so i should invest
11:45:53 i wonder if there are any new comments on my blog
11:45:57 damn my new shoes look cool
11:46:03 hey what the hell was that. did something bite me or did i just sit on a tack. wait if i grab my butt i'll look stupid. dont move
11:46:07 ow ow ow it really hurts
11:46:01 dont move dont move
11:46:04 maybe if i pretend to adjust my sock i can lean over and
11:46:07 ahhh much better
11:46:08 damn i sat on my usb drive. hope i didn't break another one
11:46:10 is that guy still talking about kitchen waste
11:46:12 tim looks really good in that jacket
11:46:15 i wonder if there are any new comments on my blog

Currently, Spitr Spews are only one-way: the user's thoughts are transcribed and sent in writing to other members, who read them on their PC or mobile phone. The company is working on two-way Spews which transfer thoughts directly between the minds of recipients, but needs to do more work before it turns on the feature. In an early two-way test, the thoughts of Steve Ballmer and Eric Schmidt were accidentally linked in a single session, producing a destructive feedback loop that took down Sprint's EVDO data network for twenty minutes. The company is confident that new filtering software can prevent those loops in the future.

Even in its one-way mode, Spitr makes an incredible improvement in the frequency and detail of social messaging. But once it becomes two-way, it'll really take off. I think some of the most promising usages are:

Workgroup collaboration. A work team in a company could be continuously linked to one-another in a two-way Spew. The effect would be like a continuous staff meeting 24/7, but removing all remaining illusions that people might actually be paying attention.

International understanding. Another exciting aspect of Spitr is that the company is exposing an API to the service, enabling others to create mash-ups of Spitr with additional web services. One of the first mashups has combined Spitr with BabelFish to produce BabelSpit, which produces instant translation of a user's thoughts into six different languages. Here's the translated Spew from a Japanese tech executive attending that same recent conference:

11:45:33 As for me it is not possible to believe those which these people make their kitchen scraps.
11:45:42 I putting, tonight it is possible to be able, whether or not you think in doubt.
11:45:48 I me Tokyo yakitori which is eaten and desire the fact that it returns to the beer which is drunk.
11:45:57 As for me it is necessary to arrange the hair of my ear.
11:46:07 That man is he grabbing his underside?
11:46:12 Whether or not there is new comment in my blog, I think.

Spitr's potential impact on international communication is obvious.

Celebrity interest groups. Fans of a celebrity could subscribe to a one-way Spew feed (a "Spweed") to monitor the thoughts of celebrities throughout the day. Inrvoice hasn't yet disclosed its financial model, but I believe this is how it will monetize the service. Imagine how much fans would pay to track Paris Hilton as she tries to remember whether she has a valid driver's license, or Britney Spears as she ponders the underwear yes/no question.

I think that's just the start, though. Every Spitr account automatically generates a Spew feed, giving each and every one of us the opportunity to auction off the last shreds of our privacy and create a circle of obsessive admirers. This is the ultimate evolution of social networking, and I expect to see Spweeds pop up rapidly on MySpace and weblog sidebars.

Biometric sharing. Since they're already placing sensors in the body, an obvious next step for Inrvoice is to add biometric data to the Spew feed. That's apparently what the company is planning, judging from the screen shot below that I found on a bulletin board:



One application of this could be to help a social group of teenage girls plan a shared trip to the bathroom.

I think this is a very powerful and extensible feature. Picture the company pairing the biometric data with the GPS in your mobile to deliver customized location-aware services. For example, you could configure your phone to automatically order a pizza delivered to your location whenever you reach a certain hunger level. Or you could scan a dance club for people with compatible levels of libido and blood alcohol.

The possibilities are endless.

Implications for the industry. I'll be interested to see how the Spitr service develops over time. There are sure to be efforts at clones from other companies, although the Inrvoice folks seem to be pretty confident that their patents will hold up. Google and Microsoft would obviously be interested, if only for the possibility of slipping ads directly into the thought streams of users. And I think it would be interesting to see what Apple would do with it, especially since Mac owners are already close to a group entity.

I'm sure we'll know more by the next time April first rolls around.

I'm reading: An early look at the ultimate social networking tool

N95 - Available to buy

One of the aims of this blog, as well as giving news, views and opinion, is to offer the option to buy what you read about. And it's slowly coming into place. See the post below, for example, an offer to buy the best email program for S60 phones, Profimail, with an amazing 40% discount.

And now, we have an offer from T-Mobile direct to buy the N95!

The N95 is the most talked about phone for months. Ever since Nokia announced it months back, it's been the number one on every phone geeks most wanted list.

The N95 is probably the most complete phone ever to be released to market. I struggle to think of one feature it doesn't support. The list is impressive. The N95 offers built in GPS, a large QVGA screen, HSDPA, stereo bluetooth, an amazing on board memory of 160MB which can be increased with the addition of a micro SD memory card.

The offer to buy the N95 from T-Mobile direct is open to any UK resident, aged 18 or over. Standard conditions apply. Click here to buy now, before stock is gone.

I'm reading: N95 - Available to buy

Sprint to Hollywood and Silicon Valley: Drop Dead

Okay, that's a deliberately provocative headline, but I was very surprised this week when Sprint gave more details on the rollout plan for its WiMax high-speed network. Keep in mind that Sprint's counting on support from the technology and content industries to help make its network successful. They want lots of new devices and lots of new services to drive usage of mobile WiMax.

So, what are the first nineteen cities where Sprint's rolling out WiMax?

There's Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, Washington D.C., Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and Seattle.

Let's see, what's missing? Oh, yeah -- the country's two biggest cities, New York and Los Angeles. Plus Silicon Valley.

Hey, I'm sure there are good reasons for the choices Sprint made. I'm delighted they're covering five cities in Texas, and it's great that the critical Rhode Island market will be nailed. But if it's essential to the success of your network that you get support from the tech and entertainment industries, wouldn't you make it a priority to let people use that network in the capitals of those industries, Hollywood, New York, and Silicon Valley? I mean, Portland's a wonderful place, but if I were trying to pick a city on the North American west coast that has tech and entertainment industry presence, I'd rank it just above Ensenada and Anchorage.

So I don't understand what Sprint's doing. I want to root for them, because I like the story they tell about their future business model for WiMax, but they're making it hard to love them.

________

A couple of other tidbits worth mentioning:

HTC, say it ain't so. Jason Dunn of Pocket PC Thoughts is blogging about CTIA for Microsoft. He says HTC hinted that its upcoming Advantage product will be priced at about $800. Advantage is very interesting technologically -- it's a Windows Mobile mini-tablet, a little larger than a handheld, and could make a very nice info pad. But the right price point for that product is $299. At $800, Advantage is going to be compared to low-end laptops, and it's vastly less powerful and capable than they are. I'm very concerned that if Jason's price information is correct, HTC is going to produce yet another tweener product that'll delight no one and give the info pad form factor a bad name. I love the way HTC is experimenting with different hardware designs, but I wish they'd be more clever about the target markets.

An alternate explanation for the reported collapse of Web 2.0. Venture capitalist Peter Rip reports that Web 2.0 as an idea must be falling apart because traffic to two major Web 2.0 commentary sites, GigaOm and Tech Crunch, has been dropping since late 2006. Peter makes some other very interesting points, in particular on the difficulty of moving Web 2 from a tool to a platform. But I'd like to suggest an alternate explanation for the traffic decline he noted: Maybe those websites have just gone stale. Magazines go through cycles -- for example, in business magazines Forbes was pretty interesting in the1980s, while Fortune was dry as day-old toast left by the side of the road in Arizona. Today their positions are reversed. I think the same sort of cycles are likely to happen in websites, and may be even more frequent, because so many sites depend on a single author who could easily burn out or get distracted.

Is this the beginning of the end for RIM? Maybe not now, but... Richard Windsor of Nomura, one of my favorite financial analysts covering the mobile market, just issued a scathing recommendation to sell RIM stock.

"In order to see further upside we think RIM needs to ship around 1m Pearl devices per quarter to consumers outside of its traditional channels. We have seen no sign of these shipments."

Basically, he's arguing that RIM's dominance in the business communicator market has already been factored into the stock's value, and that to see a lot of upside it has to grow substantially in the consumer market.

I'm not as pessimistic about Pearl shipments as he is -- the early word in the industry was that Pearl was selling extremely well, although it's almost impossible to get reliable figures on phone sales. But I think he's right directionally, even though it's for the wrong reasons. The real question for RIM isn't whether it can break into the "consumer" communicator market, because there's no such thing. There are just communication users, and they use the same devices for both work and personal use. Those people make up about 12% of the population. At some point, between sales of RIM and Treo and all the copycat communicators coming to market, that segment's going to saturate, and RIM's growth will come to an abrupt halt.

The trick is predicting when it'll happen. I don't have enough data to make that call. If anyone wants to invest about $50k in some quantitative research, I could find out. ;-)

Think more creatively about new forms of telephony. Dean Bubley wrote a nice article on possible future uses of voice technology. His point, which I agree with strongly, is that we're paying too much attention to VOIP as a replacement for conventional phone calls. It's important, for sure, but the most interesting change in voice communication is likely to be the integration of voice conversations into lots of different web services. Talking will just be one of the things you do on web sites and online communities. You won't think of it as a phone call, but it'll displace traditional calls as surely as that Vonage handset on somebody's desk. The only difference is, most of the industry won't see it coming.

As they used to say in war movies, "the bullet you don't hear is the one that gets you."

After the death of the album. The mainstream media seems to be finally waking up to the main impact of the iTunes -- it enables people to buy singles instead of albums. That's a financial disaster for the record companies, because they can no longer force people to pay $14 to get the one or two songs they actually want. But I can't see how it is anything but good news for consumers.

Please excuse me if this sounds like bragging, but this trend is what I predicted last year when I looked in detail at the economics of music distribution on the Internet. In that spirit, here's what the newspapers will be reporting in another year or two: more and more new acts will be bypassing the record companies and using iTunes as their music publisher. This will let them keep about 65% of their revenue, rather than under 15%, enabling them to make reasonable money on a relatively small fan base. I believe Apple's fate is to become the music publisher of choice in the US, but the iPod installed base has to grow some more before it'll happen.

I'm reading: Sprint to Hollywood and Silicon Valley: Drop Dead

Profimail offer update - 40% off!

Following on from yesterdays post, the guys at NSeries Blog Software shop are now giving 40% off the list price of Profimail!

Click here to purchase what is probably the best S60 email program available.

I'm reading: Profimail offer update - 40% off!

Profimail - 20% off at NSeries Blog Shop

To buy Profimail with 20% discount, click here and enter this code in the cart: 112553737106892 This offer is open until 7th April

For sending and receiving email on my phone, I always use Profimail. Have done pretty much since it first came out for S60 way back. If I were to choose one thing that Profimail handles better than the native S60 email client, it would be attachments.

When I write an email using the native S60 client, and I want to add an image (sending an email with picture attachment is often cheaper than MMS) I go to options>insert image. The choice of images is ALL the images in my gallery! This means if you have programs installed such as Tom Tom or the Smart2Go app, you get a whole load of images of maps and speed alert icons, amongst other things:


















So you have to scroll through the whole list of images to find the one you want. I've always hated the way S60 organises the gallery, lumping all pictures into one long group. Gallery setup on S60 is awful. I can put different images in different folders, things like gif files ideal for sending via MMS, and a photo album, etc. But open the gallery on a S60 phone and they are all lumped in together. Awful.

In this regard Profimail is better. When you write an email, and select an attachment, you can choose attachments through a folder setup:


















From here, I can select the images folder, and open it up to see all sub folders inside, in this case my Screenshot folder:


















It makes selecting attachments for email so much easier.

Profimail is, rightly so, one of the top products available for S60 phones, always in the top three for best sellers. I've got a promotion running for Profimail, in partnership with the NSeries software shop that you see at the top of the page. Click here, select Profimail and enter in this code, 112553737106892 in the basket, and you will receive a 20% discount! This offer is open until the 7th April.

I'm reading: Profimail - 20% off at NSeries Blog Shop

Seven Companies That Aren't Rumored to be Buying Palm, But Really Should Be

This afternoon I heard from a reporter that Google and Microsoft are now rumored to be interested in buying Palm. I have no idea who starts these rumors, or whether there's any truth to them, but they're not nearly creative enough. Here's my list of other companies that have absolutely no interest in buying Palm, but ought to be in the rumor mill anyway. Feel free to re-use these if you want to manipulate the stock market. No need to credit me; I don't want to be visited by the Feds.


7. Airbus

Compelling business rationale. I hear Airbus has a lot of trouble with the wiring in the A380, and there's a bunch of wires and stuff inside a Treo, so this seems like a good match. (Hey, it makes as much sense as Google buying Palm.)


6. eBay

Compelling business rationale. Most Treos end up on eBay eventually, after their owners upgrade to a new model, so this is an opportunity to "significantly integrate the value chain," as we say in the business. Each Treo could come with an eBay account, enabling the user to offer it for sale whenever they're ready.

As an added benefit, a Skype client could be bundled with every Treo sold. (By the way, this is apparently the only way to get Skype to port its full native client to Palm OS.)


5. Ben & Jerry's

Compelling business rationale. What if Jeff Hawkins designed ice cream flavors?




4. Cisco

Compelling business rationale. Apparently not required for a Cisco acquisition.


3. DaimlerChrysler

Compelling business rationale. I propose a straight-up equity swap: Palm for Chrysler. Daimler would give away a company that's talented at design, but whose products have fallen behind the innovation curve, and that has problems with execution. In exchange, it would get...exactly the same thing. But as a bonus, Daimler could build a Treo and sync cradle into every car it sells. This fits with the whole convergence thing that's supposedly driving all industrial development in the western world, so this merger is a natural.


2. HP

Compelling business rationale. No, wait, this one actually makes sense. Never mind.


1. JetBlue

Compelling business rationale. Give a Tungsten to every employee, pre-loaded with a datebook alarm that says, "Time for the airplane to leave now." The acquisition would pay for itself within three months.

I'm reading: Seven Companies That Aren't Rumored to be Buying Palm, But Really Should Be

Nokia N95 multimedia computer starts shipping

Here's the news we've all been waiting for. The press release direct from Nokia:

Nokia today announced that the Nokia N95 started shipping in key European, Asian and Middle Eastern markets, with expanded shipments to other markets in those regions in the coming weeks. The Nokia N95 is an all-in-one multimedia computer with a unique 2-way slide design, integrated GPS functionality, a 5 megapixel camera and support for high-speed mobile networks, making it easier to watch and record videos, listen to songs, take high-quality photos, browse the internet, or catch up on email while on the move.

"The Nokia N95 is the ultimate multimedia computer and a fantastic example of what Nokia Nseries devices can deliver," said Juha Putkiranta, senior vice president, Multimedia, Nokia. "It easily replaces a number of single purpose devices with a well designed package that is with you and connected. The Nokia N95 is what computers have become - personal, powerful and connected devices."

Designed for High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) networks and with support for WLAN, EDGE and WCDMA networks, the Nokia N95 provides excellent coverage and connection speeds. Browsing the internet and subscribing to your favourite news feeds is a pleasure using the Nokia Web Browser with Mini Map.

The Nokia N95 offers a well rounded entertainment experience with a sharp color display, built-in stereo speakers, a standard 3.5 mm audio connector and support for compatible microSD memory cards. With powerful 3D graphics, the Nokia N95 has a stunning user interface that makes it intuitive to find the features and services you want.

With its integrated GPS and Nokia Maps application, finding your way just got easier. The Nokia Maps application includes maps for more than 150 countries, enabling users to explore the world, find specific routes or locate services such as restaurants and hotels and covering more than 15 million points of interest. You can also purchase additional features, such as city guides and voice guided navigation.

The innovative 2-way slide design makes it easy to switch between different modes, going from reading maps to watching a video with a simple slide. With Carl Zeiss optics on the 5 megapixel camera, you can capture print quality photos and DVD-like quality video clips.

The Nokia N95 is based on the world's leading S60 software on Symbian OS, enabling you to personalize your device from a wide choice of compatible applications that can be downloaded to the Nokia N95, including games, navigation, entertainment, productivity and creativity.

I'm reading: Nokia N95 multimedia computer starts shipping