Location based social community for… TOILETS
Here’s a great example of a useful and simple location-based service that relies on its social community to scale its value. It’s MizPee and it does nothing less than provide you with the oh-so-important locations of clean public toilets. This is sure to come in handy this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Zedmo at StartupCampMontreal tomorrow!
Come check out Zedmo at StartupCamp Montreal. We’ll be there meeting greeting and demoing. This is a great event for the Montreal tech startup community, and it’s being organized and sponsored by BDC, BCF, EMBRASE, SAT, Microsoft, and bitHeads
95 million access internet exclusively through cellular
Dean Bubley at Disruptive Wireless has taken a stab at the number of people globally connecting to the internet through all access options: cellular, wired, WiFi, and combinations of all three. The results? Out of 1.295B people connected, 700 million access the internet only through wired, 95 million access it through cellular only, and only 26 million have a mix of all three etc.
I’m dubious of the cellular-only numbers. 80 million connectors not touching a PC? This seems large, but the concept is fascinating. Certainly in developing countries this makes a worthwhile cultural observation — all the build-out of cellular connectivity over fixed connectivity. Why build fixed networks when you can skip them entirely!
How will these numbers look in 10 years? I’d venture to say that exactly contrary to my doubts above the cellular-only piece of the pie will grow the most. This has so many implications to how the web will be used and how it ought to be so much more geared for those little screens.
The internet VS the mobile internet IS the internet
Many recent events like the launch of the iPhone have opened up the discussion on what exactly the “mobile internet” is. Apple proclaims that, on its iPhone, “it’s not a watered down version of the internet. It’s just the internet. On your phone.” It’s part of a long line of commentators saying that the mobile web sucks.
But maybe it doesn’t. Researchers will argue that “it’s incredibly challenging to create a desktop experience on a 2.5-inch screen,” according to Philippe Winthrop, research director of wireless and mobility at the Aberdeen Group. If it comes down to proportions, Stuart Carlaw at ABI Research says that “there is generally a 4-inch/7-inch question over screen size. Four-inch is the largest a screen can get and fit into a pocket, and seven-inch is the smallest you can get to and still open up attachments in a rational way.”
And everyone wants a piece of the mobile internet. Do we build the internet in the same way for both mobile and PC? Or this is not even the question. It’s not about the viewing the browsing. It’s about the context. The mobility of the “mobile internet” opens up so many options for location and event relevance and the challenge for fast answers. Mobile browsing is an active experience. It not about sitting back and surfing. What we’re looking for are pockets on the web that deliver immediate answers. But imagine if also we wrapped those answers in social communities. Now localize those social communities around events and places and anything else that’s brought you away from your computer with your phone into the real world.
I think we’ve got some catching up to do here.
Internet on my phone??
The act of carrying a mobile phone has been the fastest growing trend the world has ever seen. Today, nearly three billion people carry one, and carry it everywhere they go! However, I’m constantly amazed that these “IV connections” are completely underutilized. There is information that people have gotten so used to getting when they’re sitting at a computer and cannot fathom being connected to it all the time, nor do we even know how to get it. “I can get the internet on my phone?” I’ve heard that before. Ok you won’t have the same experience on your mobile phone as on a PC. Some websites and content providers think they can do it. We have something different in mind. We are building mobile communities, firstly around the mobile device, and secondarily around all access. We won’t label it, let’s say, as mobile web 2.0 to follow the revolution of the user driven web 2.0, but it just might change how you use your mobile phone. This is really cool. Stay tuned for more!