Headworx

Read Write World: Democratizing Locative Media was one of my favorite presentations at the last eComm conference. Blaise Aguera y Aracas, who is an architect at Microsoft, working on projects like the Photosynth and Bing Maps was demonstrating how the new media processing technologies applied to crowdsourced content can bring a completely new kind of user experience. We already have the Street View, being able to "walk" along just any street on the planet looking at our screens (or better: the Internet glasses). But the discussed project goes even deeper. During your virtual walk you can enter just about any door or a gate and get inside the street - facing building - a shop or a cafe. Then inside walk and look around and then go back to the street and walk it further down... All the content, being made of real pictures taken by real people, is blended together, forming a complete. fully detailed virtual world. Trekking the Andes, as this blog is posted, I still carry my DSL...

The so called "Experimental" Web browser on Kindle has been the reason I selected this particular eReader, not even thinking of any other. Of course the content selection from Amazon is very rich and chances are even without the Internet I would select Kindle anyway. But still I view the Browser feature as very important, even a breakthrough, as at the moment it is a class of its own, with no competition. Yes, I know, many will raise their eyebrows now. Why? Because browsing the Web on Kindle is free. Wherever you go. Worldwide. On any GSM or 3G network. Yes, I know, many will raise their eyebrows again. What? Exactly what your hear. No contract. No fees. Go and use it. Especially when you travel abroad. Of course the Kindle browser is not a speed demon, and it is monochrome and has no tabs and this and that... But from my experience it runs things like GMail (the simple HTML version) very well. And often email and one or two sites is all you need to stay in touch. As you are...

I have installed the best upgrade to my brain this year. It is called eComm 2011 , and was released last week in San Francisco. It was a continuous and very broad stream of innovative ideas, many of them I will be recalling here on future occasions. And myself I was lucky to be on the stage too, so let me fulfill my duty and add some comments. First two shortcuts: the link to my slides and the excellent follow-up article by Chris Jablonski . After you read Chris' piece, you should have a very good grasp on what the device will be, will look like and how we will be using it, so I will not repeat this. But let me add a few words explaining "why?". There are a number of issues, or even fundamental inconveniences with current mobile phones, which by the way should be considered as mobile personal computers, or personal teleputers (PTs). The first and obvious problem is the physical size. We want to carry the devices with us, so naturally we want them as small, thin and ligh...

My tablet dilemma is over. I purchased the latest Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1. What a feeling! This thing is a breakthrough. Have been playing with it just for two days now, and it feels like the iPad 3. Yes, 3. Physically it is a marvel. Thinner and lighter than the iPad 2. With bigger screen (1280x800). Room filling stereo sound. And the Android 3.1 just flies! It is a beauty. The browser runs Flash. All the settings (including things like WiFi passwords etc) are saved to Google account (hello, iCloud!). The device has entirely autoconfigured itself just after I supplied my GMail name and password (of course, with all Android devices having GMail account helps). It downloaded all my Picasa photos. Later on let me add my second GMail (Google Apps) account and switch between them seamlessly. Wow, wow, wow... It has been worth waiting. The only difficult decision to make was which case to buy, as the device is so thin and light, that even the slimmest case doubles its size and weight. In th...

eComm 2011 is coming. I am very excited about this conference and hope no volcano will mess up with my travel this time. And even if it does (knocking the wood), I hope the travel business had enough time to upgrade their communications infrastructure. eComm is one of the most important events for anyone who has any relation to telecommunications and the Internet. Yes there are other events, but this one is about the creativity of the future. Fantastically inspiring and a joy to attend. In its nature the eComm is very close to TED, just focused on one (albeit very broad) industry. The beauty is people come there and speak about their passions and hardly anybody is selling anything. If you are not going and there is still a chance you would go if the opportunity knocked... Here it calls: as a speaker I have two priceless tickets for the event to spare. Please email me at szymon _at_ slupik.com if you are interested.

People just do not realize the speed and magnitude of the collapse of Nokia. Last week I attended the Mobile Monday Poland conference, which by the way was a great reactivation of the event. But I could not (and still can't) believe what I heard there. About Nokia and Symbian and how both dominate the mobile market. Industry experts during the discussion panel pointing out Symbian still has the biggest market share among mobile web users down here. Yes it was true a week ago and it still may be true today. But I am not so sure about tomorrow and certainly it is a matter of months Symbian will be wiped out. Application development takes weeks, months. And they are developed to last for years (I mean, more than a year). So selecting a platform based on yesterday's market share is like driving a twisting mountain road looking at the rear view mirror. Absolutely irrelevant perspective, ending up with a crash. Well, I am talking obvious things. But there was nobody who cried "w...

After formulating the Quality versus ROI statement, I have started noticing a great deal of real world confirmation cases. So excuse me my dear tech / gadget followers, from time to time I will be returning to this subject, which I consider fundamental. This week's case? I lost my cellphone connection. I live just 15 minutes from a big city. Just a mile from a main road. And despite having four mobile network operators (MNOs) in Poland, I have no coverage. True, the terrain is a bit unfortunate (a valley). True, there are just a few houses down here. But I have been cut out. And this turns out to be a problem nowadays. I have a copper landline, delivering DSL Internet and fixed voice service. Theoretically I could set up a call forwarding rule to the landline, when my cellphone is out of the network, even if this costs extra money per forwarded call. But I cannot forward SMS messages, which is a blocker in most Internet banking operations, as almost every transaction today has to ...