Mobile and Wireless Technologies

For quite some time now, a group of well known personalities from the mobile, advertising and business worlds have been working to give shape to an initiative that may change the mobile communications market in dramatic ways. It may even have a huge impact on advertising both on-line and on any other media.

TAVOS Media Network is a trail-blazing venture based in Palo Alto, California, that empowers people in underserved communities around the world through local media services. Our vision is to build a global network of local media microfranchises to give voice and promote the life and prosperity of every community.

From a recent Fortune magazine that I read that most companies in S&P have been rated as risky. This represents a huge challenge for companies as new emerging economies such as India, China or other countries mean new business models which have to be sustainable and scalable and I do not think that there are in most text books or case studies of today.

There's been a recent hype around the use of mobile technologies to "empower" people to submit reports "from the field", take action and change the course of society...

Somehow, just like we were promised that TV would educate people and that the Internet would free us all, we've heard it all before, yet we have to see it happen.

Cellphone applications today are often focused on, in some sense simplified, displaying the web page on the cellphone. The web pages are more or less exclusively designed only considering the restrains of a regular work station. This is perhaps one most important challenge in future cellphone solutions and in many ways this is a philosophical challenge rather than a technological challenge. Nevertheless, I will not try to fully address the challenge in this blog post, but indicate what I believe are the key elements of it and sketch the solution.

Attached is a New York Times article from Davos about Microsoft's response to the One Laptop Per Child project by MIT's Negroponte. They propose using a cellphone as a computer connected to a TV and a keyboard. I don't know about the feasibility of Microsoft's proposal but the fact that they have one demonstrates the power of OLPC, open-source and market dynamics.

At SVASE (www.svase.org) main event “Where the Hot Money Will Be Going in 2006,” the panelists from Onset Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson talked about the innovations they see that are coming to reshape the landscape of software, semiconductors, Internet, telecom, energy and bio-tech industries.

The biggest problem facing micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries is the inability to access the larger public market and its market information. They do not have efficient channels to reach customers. This creates a significant barrier for the working poor to rise from poverty.

The first Mobile Film Festival will take place from January 3 to 15, 2006 in mobile France (as opposed to virtual, digital or real France).

Yes we now have a new dimension to live in: The mobile dimension. Just as part of our lives takes place on the digital or virtual world, we must now get ready for the transition the mobile world.