Hiconomics

This is an email I sent to contacts to encourage some donations, I thought I’d put it on the blog as well. For those of you who don’t know… Movember is a charity project that’s quite popular in Australia.

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Dear Generous Friends, Rich Acquaintances and Mustache Enthusiasts…

It’s day 13 of Movember, and as I stared in the mirror marveling at the thickening forest on my upper lip (and a smattering of nostril hair)… I suddenly realised I’d lost the plot!

I had to remind myself, that the point was not to partake in facial-hair gymnastics or to show off my Middle Eastern hair-raising capabilities… or to scare my posh clean-cut neighbours in Cremorne.

No! The point, my dear fans, was to take advantage of these unique skills and make you all pay for the pleasure and entertainment of seeing Bus drivers ignore me, cafe baristas refuse to serve me, and doors having to open wider just to get myself and the mo through… and contribute to a worthy cause of eradicating Prostate Cancer from… erm… the Prostate.

So, my extremely thoughtful and generous friends, now is your chance to pay for this unique experience… by clicking here…and hitting the rather not-so-subtle orange button clearly marked ‘Donate’… you can’t miss it.

Warning:
If I don’t reach 500$ by mid next week, I threaten to take the selfish approach and SHAVE it off. I urge you not to take this threat lightly, the last time I shaved my mo off in 1997 it caused a huge natural disaster and kicked off the global warming crisis we are all suffering now (poor Adelaide had to close their Zoo today).

Thanks for your contributions…
Hichame

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Charity, Movember, Personal

To be honest, I’d never been very interested in touch pads… I’d always considered them to be specific tools for Graphic Designers to use. Those of you who know me, will know I am NOT a designer, so you’ll be surprised to know, that since last week I’ve been using the Wacom Touch pad daily.

Why? To put it simply, the version I’m using Bamboo Pen + Touch is great … and really aims to democratize touch by bringing the typical two-finger gestures currently used on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phones and Palm Pre… to your laptop or desktop. I’ve been using it mainly as an alternative to the small touchpad on my laptop. It’s very robust (although not completely waterproof) and has programmable short-cut keys.

In a bid to create some loyalty Wacom has also evolved it’s strategy to encompass a supportive eco-system of products with a set of Minis (apps) and an open API (based on Adobe AIR)… which I think will go a long way to securing their strangle-hold on the Touch Pad market.

You can get more info about the Bamboo product line here…

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touchpad, Wacom

All this hype and talk of Apple’s rumored iTablet… and we all missed the incredible news about the launch of the iToilet. I was so excited by this revolutionary product, it had to go straight on the bog blog…

Enjoy… hat tip to @thixotropic77…

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Apple, Humor

I first wrote about Augmented Reality in my post early May, and I am quite proud of the fact that I indicated it’s potential well before all the recent hype from some of the more read tech blogs out there.

There have been a number of recent articles and posts by TechCrunch, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb about Augmented Reality, mainly on the back of the iPhone’s functionality being upgraded to allow for AR applications to run. The reality is, it’s been around for a while on Android OS, with  Layar and Wikitude setting the pace with platforms, browsers and APIs.

Augmented Reality definitely has a role in shaping the future of our collective ‘realities’… and here is one of the latest developments: an Augmented Reality GPS Navigation app called Wikitude Drive (developed by Mobilizy).

Transitioning from a standard map-based GPS Navigation system to one based on the Camera view will take some getting used to, but does anyone else think it looks a little dangerous?

I can’t help but think that drivers will get distracted by the camera view and be sucked in to viewing the road through the app rather than through their windscreen. I don’t think it’ll be long before car manufacturers develop intelligent windscreens that present augmented layers of information on top of the real view…

…Now that would be COOL!

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Augmented Reality, Layar, Wikitude

This is a great presentation by Matt Cutts… that anyone interested in SEO should watch. It’s quite long, but however much of an expert you think you are in the discipline of SEO (white-hat that is..), I am sure you will learn something from this… at least in regards to Google.

Enjoy…

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google, SEO, SEO tools

I am naturally interested in this article in the WSJ because of my research in the field of Open Innovation. But I think what Brynjolfsson and Schrage have to say here, about how the speed at which technology operates (especially with the RealTime features of the web) is helping speed up the pace of innovation itself, is quite relevant at a broader level, and should interest more than just geeky academics.

Here is an excerpt to get you a bit more excited:

But the essential point remains: Technology is transforming innovation at its core, allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds—and prices—that were unimaginable even a decade ago. They can stick features on Web sites and tell within hours how customers respond. They can see results from in-store promotions, or efforts to boost process productivity, almost as quickly.

The result? Innovation initiatives that used to take months and megabucks to coordinate and launch can often be started in seconds for cents.

And that makes innovation, the lifeblood of growth, more efficient and cheaper. Companies are able to get a much better idea of how their customers behave and what they want. This gives new offerings and marketing efforts a better shot at success.

You can read the rest here…

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innovation, open innovation, realtime

I’m sure a lot of you have heard or read about the Semantic Web… or what is referred to occasionally as Web3.0. The underlying principle is that it will be a Web that not only relies on keywords or tagged content but on the actual semantics (meaning and context) of various words.

There have been some developments on a number of levels with some ‘Semantic Search Engines’, but the presentation below by the CEO of eSpace  is a great one… and suggests an easier and more practical solution to achieving a more semantic web quicker, using RDFa and micro-formats within HTML to provide more context to the keywords… helping the likes of Google to identify when a keyword fits more suitably to your query.

It’s a simple and enjoyable presentation, hats off to Hatem Mahmoud for the great work…

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micro-formats, RDFa, semantic web, web3.0

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I posted my last blog update about Microsoft Office 2010, and the excitement of having a web-based MS Office suite sitting on the cloud.

Time has literally flown by and to say I’ve been busy would be an understatement. Aside from my full time job, I have 4 concurrent side-projects that I’m working on, including 2 Syria specific sites, speccing out an Android app (with @thixotropic77), and setting up a new collaborative blog dedicated to Asia Online Marketing (with @desmondphua).  All of which seem to have reached a critical point over the last few weeks….
I will post separately about each project as they come to the fore.

My blogging absence, obviously, does not mean that it’s been an uneventful period. Since writing my last post there have been some interesting developments… here’s a quick summary…

Some of the more notable Mergers and Acquisitions…
- The much publicised MicroHoo deal finally culminated in a ‘Search’ deal between Yahoo and Microsoft which revolves around Bing powering Yahoo Search.
- Publicis acquired RazorFish from Microsoft for a deal that includes spending 100s of millions of dollars on Bing ads.
- FriendFeed was acquired by FaceBook in a sudden move not forecasted by anyone (as far as I could tell). This move puts FaceBook in a much stronger position for RealTime search, conversations and multi-threaded comments. It pits FaceBook head on with Google and Twitter.

Strategic shifts…
- Apple and Google fell out over Apple’s rejection of Google Voice… a move blamed on Apple’s insistence to placate the US telcos (AT&T).
- Closely related to this was Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) standing down from Apple’s board of directors, in a move signifying deepening competition between the two tech firms (Chrome OS, Android…etc).
- Twitter updates it’s homepage putting a huge emphasis on Real-Time search..
- Arrington and Calacanis start and/or join a new ‘I hate Apple’ bandwagon… largely due to the Google Voice debacle. Apple is now seen as a mainstream brand that has moved away from it’s original cult following, applying authoritarian rules in a rapidly opening world.

These are just a small list of developments in the tech world, but probably the most significant over the last couple of months… and it would surprise me if you hadn’t heard or read about it yourself. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few, so feel free to comment and add any in.

I hope.. that it won’t be a month before my next post…

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Apple, Bing, Facebook, FriendFeed, google, Microsoft, ysm

Microsoft has just launched/released the latest incarnation of their Office software suite… and by the looks of it the hype and buzz about this latest version is warranted.

Some of the most notable improvements in MS Office 2010 include:
- MS Web Apps: A free web-based version of Word, Excel and Powerpoint… sitting on the Cloud… and accessible through your browser. This is probably MS biggest move in the cloud since their launch of the Azure platform and goes head to head with Google Docs (with probably more functionality). I’m sure it’ll be extremely popular amongst students and professionals… especially the ability to share between Desktop and the Web. But will it cannibalise and dilute their core Office Desktop market?

- Realtime Collaboration: You can now collaborate and have multiple parties update the same document in realtime – which is a welcome enhancement. Apparently, though, this is limited to the Desktop version. I’m a little perplexed as to why they did not extend this to the Browser version…? Surely the web lends itself to a more collaborative environment? You can already do this on Google Docs and Zoho.

- Deeper control over media… from within the Office applications. This will come in very handy when trying to fiddle with images, videos or other media files from within Powerpoint.

- A load of other User Interface changes…

Here’s a cool preview of Office 2010…

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cloud computing, Microsoft, MS Office 2010, MS Web Apps