Accessible Music (Content), Anytime!!

Tunes changed how music was discovered. Will services like Spotify and We7 revolutionize the collection and sharing of music? The future appears to be all about anywhere access through streaming, not hoarding.

Up-and-coming UK music startup Spotify is gaining traction in the mobile space as it strikes deals with mobile networks and releases applications across multiple platforms. The site relies on advertising and a paid premium service to provide users with unlimited free music. This simple cloud-based access to music from anywhere through our phones is changing the game—and our behavior.

Ownership of sound has come a long way, ever since it became possible to record it. With the MP3, Kazaa, and iTunes, people began hoarding music and asking their friends, “how many gigabytes of music do you have?” With Rhapsody and now Spotify—as well as We7 and Grooveshark—this entire competition to own the most or best disappears. You already “own” all the music. Downloading it almost seems like a waste of time. In Spotify, every song you ever wanted is available with a simple search and without a download.

This privileging of sharing and universal access over ownership has been trending over the past few years. In 2008 MTV’s MX2 study pointed to an insight around consumer music listening behavior: Owning is more and more about timely access and less about physical possession. There is a difference between being able to physically and forever own music like in 1997, and being able to hear it when you want to, now, and in the moment. This is why mobile streaming is the future of music consumption. Expect this trend to magnify as Mobile broadband penetration starts to increase around the globe.

Intelligent Network of Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are getting powerful day by day….Better data capability, Smart functions, Higher bandwidth utilisation are some of the new stuff that keeps them buzzing. Nokia has put together this video that imagines what they hope to provide by the year 2015. Mobile phones will share intelligence to change the way we behave in social situations. Whether it’s with our significant other, at the club, or on the way to work, Nokia is there for you. Quite surprised to see an Indian Fisherman though

Ask your queries instead of typing them

Good news for Nokia users who carry an N-Series or E-Series mobile phone. You can now download the Google Mobile app for your Nokia phone and search Google using simple voice commands.

Google Voice Search app is location aware so you don’t have to mention the name of your city or locality when using location specific queries like “nearest chinese restaurant or “hospitals”.

The Google voice search app is integrated with Google Suggest but in addition to regular search queries, the voice app can also auto-suggest websites so you reach your favorites sites more quickly as you no longer have to type the full address of a domain.

In addition to Nokia S60 phones, Google Mobile App with Voice Search is available for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android based mobile devices.

This is one more example of interfaces that will help people jump the technology barriers through better use of technology itself. Considering the huge potential of the Indian telephony market, expect more applications like this as they tap into new audiences time and time again.

Printable Circuitry

Xerox has developed a silver ink that can be used to print electronic circuits on fabrics, films, and materials other than boards.

Where silicon is the current standard for circuitry boards, the new ink allows electronic components to be integrated into apparel and flexible surfaces.

The printing industry is quite excited right now due to the rapidly developing field of printable electronics. The technology will allow for innovations ranging from flexible e-paper displays (which, in turn, could radically change the way we read books), more easily manageable RFID tags, product packaging and, among other things, animated posters. It looks as though this business is going to be a winner. Certainly, by the sound of the technology itself, it’s hard to deny that the world is poised for a major shift in the way it does paper and printing.

Keep a look out for more on this….

Social Media and Marketing Research

I do come across this question several times while speaking on Social Media, hence this post to answer the queries I have cumulatively recieved on this topic. 

By 2010, 70% of online content will be produced by the consumer.  Consumers are constantly talking about you, your product, your brand, and your icons. As marketers now we have only two choices. Either we listen to them or we ignore them. But then again, they have been talking about you since the beginning of your brand. As marketers we always had only two choices either we listen to them or we ignore them. We have reached where we are today with a selective input from them, selective input from our employees, some commonsense and some business intelligence. This not only applies to your brand but also applies to every other successful brand from Pepsi to James Bond.

Following are few ways which can help you listen to your audience 

1. Measure Social media
   1. Measure word of mouth for free: Here is an article on Mashable that will guide you on the free resources to measure WOM.  Click here to read it
2. Measure online media
   1. There is another link that I found during my search and it has a comprehensive list of multiple tracking systems to brand monitoring. Click here to read it

I have also tried to compile the sources which can help you listen to your audience, I hope you will find it useful

Social media monitoring
Monitor Buzz	Monitor Presence	Monitor Sentiments	Monitor Website traffic
Google Trends	HowSociable?	BackType	Compete
Trendpedia –	Addict-o-matic	PostRank Analytics	Quantcast
BlogPulse Trends	socialmention	ScoutLabs	Alexa
eKstreme		Radian6	BlogFlux Page Rank
Omgili Charts		Visible Technologies
Alltop		Collectiveintellect
Monitter		Onalytica
		Jive

Marketing: has always been and will always be the image maker of the company, previously we were doing it on gut and some consumer involvement and now web has enabled us to increase consumer involvement.

Marketing research: Interestingly this profession has seen much technological advancement in its short life-span. Internet is also another technological advancement and nothing else. (The most noticeable one is the WOM monitoring which is a direct outcome of social media growth; this was completely missing from MR’s product portfolio)

Throughout the ages they have been saying “innovate or evaporate” and it’s true for our times as well. The more I read about social media, the more I sense disturbance and panic in the market which should not be the case. Social media, internet, and new generation of empowered consumers are just another addition in the marketing mix. It is a phase in marketing’s own product lifecycle, and these phases make marketing worth spending our careers with.

So enjoy marketing, stop panicking.

Augmented Reality – on a cereal box

We have all this buzz happening around AR applications these days. This is the latest application which I came across, supposed to be released during this November. This is kind of cool way of connecting with gamers both young and old.
It would be great if a promo code could be given out to people who complete all levels here…..who can then redeem these codes in real world for some more cool stuff, we would be able to measure interactions here.

Have a look at this demo here…

Tweeriing, Tweeriing!!

Forget 140-character text-based tweets. Twitter users can now send audio tweets to each other using a third-party service from Internet communication provider Jajah. The service, whose beta name is Jajah@call, gives Twitter users the chance to make two-way calls with other users by typing “@call @username.”

Jajah’s free service allows Twitter users to tweet friends and strangers alike, as Jajah@call keeps phone numbers private. And just like text-based tweets, users may ignore the audio tweet and choose not to respond.
Jajah@call limits each audio tweet to two minutes, but that may change when the service moves out of beta.

What this means for business….?
Super-connected consumers have an interest, if not a curiosity, in potential audio integration options via social media networks. Vivox offers a third-party voice option for Second Life users and recently announced its third-party voice service for Facebook. It probably won’t be long before more mainstream social media sites start creating their own call services.
New Twitter applications spell new potential monetary options for marketers and Twitter users alike.

What do you think….?

Video Status Updates : Robo.to

This is something which will excite Twitter fans, who are glued to their updates most of the time. Here comes Robo.to a mobile service, that allows visual status updates with 4-second videos and multi-platform integration. It allows users to utilize the service as a digital calling card, giving details on recent updates right as the person calls.

It seems they have already enlisted 100,000 users till date and hopes to become the largest microvideo service on the web. Justin Timberlake, a financial backer of the service, posts regular updates and boast over 800,000 followers, but it remains to be seen how this new format integrates with other ideas in a cluttered “statusphere.”

Developer Rey Flemings while speaking to Fast Company says “On Twitter, you can see what’s happening right now, but the photo you see has nothing do with what’s going on right now,” says Flemings. Robo.to works in conjunction with almost every major social network, from Twitter to Facebook to Flickr, so it coalesces all that stuff into a palette you can check out before or during a call. “The information you see will still be going on while you’re on the call,” he says, so while talking to your friend, you might be able to see that they’re on vacation in Mexico, or check out a picture of their new dog. It’s conversational lubricant.”

A quick demo video here:

Google – Experiment with creativity

The guys at Google surely know how to push the envelope…. This is a must read.
Shared at the break-out sessions at Ad Week 2009

Mobile mixed reality – Nokia Concept

Any time you combine digital information with the real world, you end up somewhere within the spectrum of technologies collectively known as Mixed Reality. From enhancing online maps with real-world photos or other media, to interacting with a video game by simply waving your hands in the air, Nokia believes the line where digital information ends and the real world begins, is becoming increasingly blurred.

On one end of the Mixed Reality continuum is augmented reality, a technology that enhances the world around us by overlaying important data, usually in real-time. One can immediately bring to mind the image of a fighter pilot looking through his visor’s Heads-Up Display (HUD) at a view of the sky enhanced with real-world information, such as the target, altitude and horizon data. This type of technology has been used in specialized areas for years, but now is becoming much more commonplace, though many may not identify it as advanced technology in its daily context.

In American football, viewers are now treated to a dynamic yellow line drawn across the playing field, which marks the first down line. Players pass over and around this line as if it were actually drawn on the field itself, but it is just an illusion created by banks of computers, and geo-synced video cameras bolted to the stadium floor. In international football, or soccer, this technology can show on-pitch information such the distance a defender must stand back from a free kick. The technology to do this is relatively new, but has become such an integrated part of the viewing experience that “football” fans, of all types, simply can’t do without it.

On the other end of the Mixed Reality spectrum, video game makers have started using augmented virtuality in various ways to enhance the gaming experience. New controllers from companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony enable players to interact with games by tracking real movement in 3D space, providing a more intuitive, natural and overall fun gaming experience.

Mobile Mixed Reality

Researchers at Nokia have started pushing the boundaries of Mixed Reality by making it mobile. A phone becomes a “magic lens” which lets users look through the mobile’s display at a world that has been supplemented with information about the objects that it sees.

The various rich sensors that are being incorporated into new phones such as GPS location, wireless sensitivity, compass direction, accelerometer movement as well as sound and image recognition enable a new dimension of understanding and interacting with the world around us. Contextually tied to time, place and user, the information provided will be invaluable. Have a look at the video giving a glimpse of this concept coming along to life.

Download PDF Report : http://research.nokia.com/files/insight/NTI_MARA_-_June_2009.pdf