Home > Tech Circuit > Archives > 2006 > November > 22
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Wasted Potential?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Remember how excited you were when you picked up that picture-taking, MP3-playing, can-opening cellphone? Remember how you planned to become the Ansel Adams of the cellphone set? Videograph your life and upload it to YouTube for the world to see? Download your entire Grateful Dead collection for between-call croon-fests?
Betcha didn’t.
David Chamberlain, principal wireless analyst for InStat, stopped by the Wireless Technology Forum at the Marriott Perimeter Center in Dunwoody to talk about consumer trends.
According to his company’s research, 57 percent of camera-equipped cellphone users planned to prodigiously share cellphone photos, but only 28 percent actually have.
Chamberlain said nearly 65 percent of music-playing phone owners planned to use them as their primary or secondary MP3 player, but 44 percent haven’t transferred a single file and another 29 percent say they haven’t added all those they’d planned to.
“The numbers are kind of sad when you consider how important camera phones were when you were going to go down and by one,” Chamberlain said.
What’s the big hang-up? Ease of use, he said.
One suspects there’s money to be made there.
Think Tank
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The intellectual property set has a new place to hang out in Alpharetta.
The Clements Walker law firm has opened the “Think Tank” at its Alpharetta offices as a creative haven for inventors.
The law firm isn’t doing this purely as a public service to all you brainiacs out there: Clements Walker is an intellectual property law firm that works to protect what comes out of the brains of innovative folks.
The room features amenities designed to get those brain juices flowing, including creative play and audio-visual tools. It also features broadband access, which in our case usually means dawdling around watching stupid YouTube videos instead of being creative. Maybe we’re just not using it right.
In any event, partner Rick Walker says the company isn’t quite ready to let us into the space, which Clements Walker says is “designed to provide function as well as fun,” but as soon as we get a tour we’ll clue you in.
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Instant Messaging and the Enterprise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Instant messaging. For now, it’s that thing your kid does all day long, but according to IDC wireless analyst Scott Ellison, it’s going to be the big enterprise technology story of 2007.
“There’s a huge amount of venture capital pouring into messaging,” Ellison told the November general session of the Wireless Technology Forum at the Marriott Perimeter Center.
According to IDC, more than 130 million Americans use instant messaging systems, many of them AOL’s Instant Messenger. Most of those users are private individuals, and most of those are youngsters who use the service to make plans with friends, gossip and collaborate on schoolwork.
That instant collaboration is what business users are after. Fast, ad-hoc working groups can spring up quickly on instant messaging applications to solve problems. Similar programs can also be used by customer service representatives to help consumers on the Web.
Another big wireless trend for the coming year, Ellison said, is telemetry č the ability for machines to send data back to their respective mother ships for action. Wireless technology could, for instance, wipe out an entire generation of utility meter readers by allowing meters to wirelessly transmit data about customer usage back to the utility. It could also allow the office vending machine to send word back to the distributor that it’s nearly empty, Ellison said.
Of course, much of this depends on ubiquitous next-generation, or 4G, wireless broadband access, which is creeping ever closer. For instance, Sprint intends to launch its 4G network in early 2007. Instant messaging. For now, it’s that thing your kid does all day long, but according to IDC wireless analyst Scott Ellison, it’s going to be the big enterprise technology story of 2007.
“There’s a huge amount of venture capital pouring into messaging,” Ellison told the November general session of the Wireless Technology Forum at the Marriott Perimeter Center.
According to IDC, more than 130 million Americans use instant messaging systems, many of them AOL’s Instant Messenger. Most of those users are private individuals, and most of those are youngsters who use the service to make plans with friends, gossip and collaborate on schoolwork.
That instant collaboration is what business users are after. Fast, ad-hoc working groups can spring up quickly on instant messaging applications to solve problems. Similar programs can also be used by customer service representatives to help consumers on the Web.
Another big wireless trend for the coming year, Ellison said, is telemetry č the ability for machines to send data back to their respective mother ships for action. Wireless technology could, for instance, wipe out an entire generation of utility meter readers by allowing meters to wirelessly transmit data about customer usage back to the utility. It could also allow the office vending machine to send word back to the distributor that it’s nearly empty, Ellison said.
Of course, much of this depends on ubiquitous next-generation, or 4G, wireless broadband access, which is creeping ever closer. For instance, Sprint intends to launch its 4G network in early 2007.
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