Last week, while enjoying a fanastic holiday in Sicily (Italy), I found out that there was just one item I couldn’t have missed: my GPS-enabled N82 mobile phone - working seamlessly together with Google Maps.

Even though we had enough maps and card-reading skills on board (I simply love maps and both my boyfriend and I are good at navigating), we have been thanking Saints Nokia and Google a few times for having helped us out.

Being used to Dutch traffic and roadsigns (all extremely well organized), Sicilian traffic and wayfinding takes some getting used to.

Apart from really needing all your sensors to stay concentrated on traffic alone ['Keeping your lane" doesn't really exist, there were easily 5 rows of traffic on a 2-lane + safety lane motorway], road exit signs are simply very hard to find. And usually placed after an exit, amongst all kinds of other highly distracting signs.

We therefor used Google Maps, together with regular maps and route descriptions from our picturesque yet sometimes quite remotely located Agriturismos and hotels.

It works so easily. Just press “0″ and the GPS tells you immediately where you are. Zooming in and out, scrolling - it is all so incredibly intuitive. The fact that you can choose any level of (non)-detail via Google Maps makes it very easy to get an overview of the entire journey and of the details.

Satellite mode

We also used the ‘Satellite’ mode (= Google Earth) multiple times, for example to find ourselves a nice beach on our way to the next destination or  to locate the ‘teatro Romano’ (lower right on the picture) from our location near the ‘teatro Greco’ (upper left) in Sicacusa.

Again, the roadsigns at that point didn’t help us out, Google Earth did.

We didn’t even use the ’search’ option for finding restaurants this time - this time we simply chose to follow our real life eyes, ears and nose to find lovely places to eat and drink…

So, where will this lead to?

Currently, there were no usable other mobile location services available for Sicily yet, apart from some very simple (but not so interesting) Lonely Planet content. But how would we have loved to get more information about the wonderful monuments ready at hand. However, this is just a matter of time- I’m sure that by next summer many of these services will be available. In the iPhone app store, you can already try out Wikime (link to article in Dutch).

My dream would be to point the camera of my phone at all of the archeological sites which make Sicily (and many other tourist destinations on this planet) so special - and see in the screen of my camera:

• how this site looked like in the old days
• how the people looked like, and what they were doing at that moment

This type of ‘Augmented Reality’ via your regular mobile phone is also only a few years away.

It could radically change the way we live our holidays… If we want to, of course. Luckily there’s always the possibility to switch off your mobile, simply get lost somewhere in the middle of nowhere and phantasize about how life and the historic sites could have looked like a long, long time ago.

Nice video I found via OpenGardens about Android running on a relative simple and old piece of LINUX hardware from E28 (yes existing hardware!!). This video for me really shows what we can expect with these open OS platforms.

[youtube=http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=muIqc7TP1bs]

I expect a lot of innovation around hardware. Just imagine all these (chinese) manufacturers trying to get a grip on the handset market. All without brands and no differentiation on the OS and application layer. This means the hardware will be a key differentiator. So more micro segmentation(designed by and for niche markets), more models in general, new materials, new formfactors, hybrids, transformers and also higher replacement rates. We will become very picky about the design of a phone.

As some of you know we work for NOS, the dutch news and sport broadcaster. I have been busy last months to build a great mobile application for them called NOS Mobiel. On top of this application we also developed an Olympics application (which is integrated in the navigation of NOS Mobiel the coming weeks). I must say that I am very proud of the result. Together with the NOS team, Triple IT (video encoding) and the client platform (WeComm) we made a hell of an application
So what content is in this application?

• Newsfeeds(dutch and general)
• Radio Olympia
• Programming (what is LIVE now and what is next?)
• 12 livestreams straight from Beijing (with adaptive and fastchannel switching, streams are 115kb and 200kb 3gp streams)
• Dynamic screenshotsof from the live streams(refreshed every 3 minutes)
• Video on Demand (Highlights, ceremonies)
• Medalscore
• and some really fancy interaction elements..

Today we launched. Have a look at the screenshots. Video can be only watched by people in Netherlands IP range

For the dutchpeople:

download via m.nos.nl/nosmobiel

or

SMS NOS MOBIEL to 9090

Wow.. Just read that the first commercial WiMax network in the Netherlands, called Aerea, is going live..
For 29,95 you receive a PCMCIA card (for XP only) and get a month access to the WiMax network. After one month you have a kind of pay as you go construction. So basically you can buy a new month for 9,95 euro.

Company behind the network is Worldmax

Too bad that there is no support for Apple yet. Would have loved to try it. They will come with a USB adapter in  November according to Bright.  How knows maybe that they have OSX software with the USB solution *fingers crossed*.

Bad thing is also that WorldMax uses a different solution than Sprint so the N810 Wimax doesn’t work either.. (Thanks Candyman for the info)

Just read a post from Helen Keegan (who joined the MoMo London team..yeahh) about the relevant simple approach of the current wave of Location Based Services. I totally agree with her that we are still not very creative nor intelligent with the context information we currently have to our disposal. As I commented on her blog I believe that having the complete context in place is necessary to offer relevant contextual services. The first step after having the context information in place is being great in pattern recognition.  Spotting the Nodal Points(as Jyri calls them).

Well what is the complete context? Here is my list:

• Taskrelated context: What are you doing?
• Social context: With whom are you?
• Spatio-Temporal context: Where are you? What time is it?
• Physiological context: Heartrate, movement, temparature(see post about the pill below)
• Environmental context: In what environment are you?
• Mental context: How are you feeling?

These context domains are all about the NOW! So not ” what are you plans tomorrow?” or “what is your favourite music?”.  These are all legitimate profiling questions and offer great insight about a person BUT I question if in a mobile services context(hehe) they are relevant..

Some questions I am still puzzling with is what to do with informaton about your history or the complete context of the people which are important to you. Would you need to have this information to become more relavent to people in specific situations?

Curious about your thoughts..

P.S. Image is from Helen’s blog.. Just had to post it. LOVE IT!!

[vimeo=1451793]
[digg http://digg.com/general_sciences/Learning_from_the_Future_Jyri_Engstrom_Nodal_Points]

UPDATE: Download the version above in M4V format (470mb). Or watch the keynote registration by the organization with beter audio on Youtube.

In 40 minutes Jyri Engeström builds upon his ideas of social objects and social peripheral vision. He adds the idea of nodal points.

Jyri is co-founder of Jaiku, a microblogging service acquired by Google in 2007. Before he was Senior Product Manager at Nokia. He runs the Aula conference. Jyri holds a Master’s Degree in Social Science from the University of Helsinki and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Lancaster University Management School.

The presentation (its from ReBoot10 and as far as i can see the same)

[slideshare id=489115&doc=nodal-pointsreboot-1214583362722752-8&w=425]

Links
- Registration of his social objects and social peripheral vision presentation at Mobile Monday Amsterdam
- Jyri Engeström website and blog
- His Bio
- Jaiku
- The conference The Web and Beyond

About this series
Learning from the Future is a video series with people known for their forward thinking. Inspired by the book Theory U and started at Le Web 3 2007. Other episodes, with Doc Searls, Nova Spivack, Hans Rosling and more can be found here.

This registration was made with minimal tools. Recorded in Amsterdam at the CHI conference: The Web and Beyond 2008: Mobility in Amsterdam in may 2008.

On Mobile 2.0 event in Barcelona last month I came in contact with Zipiko.  A fairly simple and well designed service helping people to plan “get togethers” . They call this Intention Broadcasting.

The definition used by Zipipop the mother organization is as follows:
” Intention Broadcasting is the process of spreading awareness of your intentions via information and communication technologies. Think status messaging with an emphasis on the future. An intention broadcasting system should also contain a feedback loop that can directly affect the intentions.”

Never realised that future plans are also a part of your personal context hence relevant for mobile. Your intentions as social objects. Great Find!

They also have a fantastic blog: http://zipitheory.blogspot.com/

I just saw the first demo of Skyfire on a S60 device. Very impressive. Love it that it shows video in the browser and supports AJAX. As we are working with a broadcaster this is something we find really interesting! Have a look at the video. Will Skyfire become the firefox in mobile? Is Opera sleeping?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX9x3hkUHGQ]

Just read an interesting article on RFID pills that measure body temperature. These pills were used during a famous 4 day marching event in the Netherlands. Through GPS enabled phones researchers could follow the developments (every 10 sec) in body temperature of 10 volunteers..

Just imagine that in the future when you go out running you swallow an Adidas pill that connects to your Micoach phone ..

Here is the article and here is the more eloborating article in RFID Update

If you look the whole evolution of all media since 5.000 years ago, there are a few remarkable patterns.

First of all, the rise of interactivity.
Second, the rise of geographic scope.
Third, the increasing role of advertising as a business model, although not exclusively.
Fourth, the need by advertisers for more targeting, accountability and relevance for users.
Finally and most importantly, an increasing amount of possibilities to collect data on usage and users.

In our view, mobile phones and mobile internet are the future as they encompass all of the above media trends. Additionally, they are an effective combination of previous media (radio, tv, print, PC-internet, movies, telephone and even the older media). Mobile is the only true convergence medium, now and even more so in the near future. What we are witnessing today is just the tip of the iceberg taking into account the emerging technologies like augmented reality, LBS, speech recognition and the Multiverse, all driving usage and user data collection moments.

Furthermore, social networks and microblogging sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Identica collect a lot of user data as well. What are they doing ? There is no other way to collect more user data in our view. The most valuable data is the most recent data shared by users (real time lifelogging data).

Interestingly, the marketing and branding industry is migrating towards ever more targeting and relevance. Targeting is based on more user and usage data. As a result, the advertising ecosystem will slowly evolve towards the mobile social networks and microblogging offerings.