What is the Long Tail?

According to Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine, the Long tail is a part of the business market such as Amazon or Netflix, that sell multiple products each in small quantities. It is the set of catalog products (books, CDs, DVDs ...) which are sold in small proportion, but the sum of sales could exceed the collectively sale of the most popular products.

Chris Anderson noted that a relatively small number of weblogs have many web links pointing to them, then that the long tail composed of millions of weblogs have few links pointing to them. In a series of conferences in the Wired magazine, published in October 2004, Anderson described the effects of this long tail on the present and future business models. He believes that products that are subject to low demand or have low sales volume can collectively represent a market share equal to or greater than that of bestsellers, if distribution channels may offer enough choices and create the link to discover them. Examples of such channels can be caught in Amazon.com, Netfix, Rezolibre.com or Wikipedia. As these examples illustrate, the long tail is a potential market, made available by the possibilities of the Internet .

The Long Tail is particularly suitable for Web distribution model because the cost of putting in an additional product line is marginal and displays virtual e-commerce sites are virtually infinite, unlike physical stores. The Long Tail applies perfectly to cultural distance.

Direct consequence: The Long Tail promotes the emergence of niche markets where niche products will be offered for sale and ultimately very likely find a buyer.

The World Is Flat

Thomas L. Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and author of several books on globalization, reveals his thoughts on the state of the economy and the role of the web on globalization. During a trip to Bangalore, India, where he studied the effects of outsourcing on the local economy, he realized that globalization has changed core economic concepts and he begins to write The World is Flat ...

“The World Is Flat” analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century.

The title is a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, where all competitors have an equal opportunity. It refers to the perceptual shift required for countries, companies and individuals to remain competitive in a global market where historical and geographical divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

From globalization 1.0 to globalization 3.0 ...

According to Friedman, in the twenty-first century appeared the flattening of the economic playing field on the same platform (the Web) enabling many forms of collaboration. That process is done in 3 major eras:

In the first, he calls "Globalization 1.0" and which begins in 1492 until the early nineteenth century, globalization is driven by the country. States are active players in the world (Spain and Portugal explore Latin America and the East Asia, Britain colonized India).

"Globalization 2.0" begins in the nineteenth century and ended in 2000. The action is conducted by companies that globalize themselves to reach new markets and lower labor costs.

In "Globalization 3.0", from 2000 to today, what is new and different is that this momentum is carried by individuals.

From digitalization of content to social web ...

What are the steps that, in the end, make individuals the dynamics of globalization?

Friedman talks about three key stages. 

The first appears with the PC, which enabled the digitization of content (text, images, audio, video), making them malleable by other users and easy to share.

The second step appeared on August 9, 1994 with the IPO of Netscape , the startup that launched the first web browser. This is actually the browser that breathed life to the Internet. It is also the date that begins the "dotcom boom", system in which startups are over-funded. Then occur the "dotcom bubble".

The third step is the revolution in communication protocols, or he calls the alphabet soup (php, xml, html, http, css ...), allowing interconnectivity. The idea is that, whatever the machine on which you work, computer languages enable you to collaborate with anyone in the world.

These three steps lead to the creation of a global platform enabling individuals to participate / connect / work fairly and comprehensively, and the ability to send its contents everywhere for free.

What is learned from the "Globalization 3.0" is that we no longer download, but we upload. We put online our digital content using the levers of social web .

Examples: open source software, Wikipedia, YouTube and the millions of blogs or other social networks.

In a global world 3.0, the most important economic competition is the one between individuals and their own imagination. When the world is flat and that people have so much power, imagination is the true engine of the economy.

Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs

Microsoft has unveiled as a part of Office 2010 a suite of Microsoft Office Web apps that will compete directly with Google Docs. Microsoft's Web apps look like they could blow Google's online services out of the water.

Microsoft's new Web apps will let you create, edit, and save documents right online. Here's a quick head-to-head between Google and Microsoft Web apps.

Price

For personal users, Microsoft's Web apps will cost the same as Google Docs: nothing ! All you will need is a Window Live ID, and you'll be able to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote online and for free.

Winner: Tie

Look and Feel

Google Docs is keeping with the simplicity and ease of use that Google brings to its products. Microsoft, however, is not worried about complicating things, and this time that attitude may leads to good results. According to Microsoft, its Web apps will have a similar look and feel as their desktop counterparts. Microsoft also says that the Web versions of your formatted documents will render properly in most browsers, including Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox. Nothing has been said on Microsoft's plans for the Chrome or Opera browsers.

Winner: Microsoft.

Collaboration

One of the best characteristics of Google Docs is real-time collaboration in the Web browser. Microsoft is bringing similar functionality named “co-authoring”. However, it is not clear how exactly co-authoring works. With Microsoft, before you can collaborate, you must save a document to a Windows Live site or a SharePoint server, but the company doesn't say whether you can work together on a document right from the Web browser or if you need to use the desktop version. Moreover, it's not clear whether co-authoring only works on a private network, or if you can collaborate via the web.

Winner: Google. Real-time collaboration right from the Web browser is a winning feature for ease of use and Google Docs will work from almost any computer with connectivity.

Spreadsheets

Microsoft Excel's Web app will allow co-authoring and you can use the same Excel formulas you know from the desktop version. However, Excel online will not be as complete as its desktop counterpart. It will also simplify online sharing for Excel documents allowing you to easily publish a spreadsheet to blogs, wikis or other Web sites.

Winner: Microsoft. The familiarity of Excel, plus the argument of easy Web publishing.

 

Word Processing

The world's most popular word processor should have Google running scared. If Microsoft comes through on its promise to deliver a desktop look and feel to the online version of Word, it could be all over for Google. Both Google and Microsoft will allow you to create tables, bullets and styles and have spell checkers, but Word online will also give you auto-correct.

Winner : Microsoft.

Microsoft is making some big promises with its Web apps. However, Google may also stage an even bigger challenge to Microsoft later this year since the company is promising that Google Docs will undergo "dramatic changes in the next 12 months."

RSS

What is it ?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a standard XML-based system that enables to broadcast content in a simple and hierarchical way. Many websites and blogs offer the broadcasting of their news as RSS feeds. An RSS file is a simple text file that presents information in an organized way. This file is updated whenever new information is added. To read this file, a RSS reader is required. 

What's the point?

RSS technology allows you to receive on your computer in real time any news broadcasted on a blog or a site using RSS.

Imagine that you have signed up to receive news from the newspaper "X". Your RSS reader will, for example, every hour check on the website of the newspaper "X" if there are new releases and notify you in case there is. 

It exists 3 types of RSS reader:

• Software: they settle just like any other applications (eg Feedreader)

• Integrated applications: these are pieces of software as browsers and email clients (eg Thunderbird (Mac and PC))

• Web interfaces: These applications are directly accessible by Internet without any prerequired installation (eg Snyke.com)

The advantages of RSS

• Information is transmitted to the user (pull) and it is the latter who request so, the user remains anonymous and control access to information. Spam is very limited or absent.
• The broacast of information and its update are nearly instant.
• The simplicity and standardization of this technology makes it mobile on all platforms (portable software, web sites, blogs, Mac, Pc, phone, PDA, etc.)

More information ? See this video !

Facebook Privacy as seen by Mark Zuckenberg

"People are now comfortable with the idea of sharing more different information, more openly and with more Internet users. (...) The social norm has changed." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, talked about the changing of the privacy parameters in his social network, and estimated that the 350 millions of site users do not attach as much importance to protection of their personal data as before.

According to the founder of the largest social network in the world, this evolution justifies the modification of the privacy settings of the website, put in place in mid-December, and strongly criticized by privacy advocacy groups. Mark Zuckerberg, who had himself been trapped by change settings on its own personal account, estimated that this website's changes was necessary, and reflected "what would be standards if we launched the website today". "Few companies would dare to change the privacy settings of 350 million of users."

For Mark Zuckerberg, it is mainly the younger generations who have a different notion of what constitutes privacy, and how it must be protected. "The kids were always concerned about the respect of their privacy, it is just what they mean by 'private life' that is very different from what it is for adults", he said. "As adults, we believe that our home is a private space ... For young people, this is not the case. They can not control who enters and leaves their room. For them the on-line world is more private, because they have more control over what is happening there. "

See the video here !

Web 2.0 ?

Web 2.0 is redefining the Internet not as a medium but as a platform: a platform for exchanges between users ("collective intelligence") and services or applications online.

It is the Internet that we all know, but which could have added a collaborative dimension, where a number of innovative concepts (Blogs, wikis, tags, social networks ...) are gradually enriching existing services to form a revolutionary all in one logic of continuous development.

Internet and online services have entered a maturation phase. For the four pillars of the Web (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay) it is important to engage in a race for innovation. For if the quality level of the websites has increased overall in recent years, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out and retain visitors. In this context, the concepts associated with Web 2.0 can bring response elements.

The blogging phenomenon - 70 million worldwide - shows how Internet users are hungry for making speech and recognition. 

Similarly, wikis are also experiencing strong growth. Wikipedia the collaborative online encyclopedia, is the figurehead. 

Obviously the principle of personal pages is not new, but recent technological developments and ergonomic tools available to users have adopting a much broader and a much more fluid circulation of information using the syndication mechanism and RSS. 


Social networks are the backbone of Web 2.0. All these services propose to create an online identity card that will allow you to find contacts and build a network of relationships within clicks. 
 


But the collaboration between users can take other forms.

Folksonomies are a good example with services as del.icio.us or Flickr. Behind this term lies a classification system based on collective keywords (or tags).

The principle is simple: it is the users who organize their content (photos, links, music ...) by applying to each elements one or more tags. These tags are then pooled and emerge statistically most relevant of the lot. 

The site selling T-shirts "LaFraise.com" was a pioneer of collaborative e-commerce :

Visitors publish visuals that are rated by Internet users and whether the creations reach a sufficient score, T-shirts are printed and sold. 

In this beautiful story, everyone wins: the author of the visual is paid for his work, customers choose their own T-shirts they like and the boss only prints T-shirts that he is sure are going to be sell.

The promise of Web 2.0 is opening a new era where users are both contributors and beneficiaries. We leave the era of two-way interaction (website <-> user) for one of collaboration and collective intelligence. A new start where a multitude of new uses and new applications are yet to find.

How Google make money ?

Everyone (or at least, nearly everyone) knows that Google makes money through advertising on its search engine. But how do they do that exactly? And what about all its application that does not seem to have ads on it ?

Search engine : AdSense - AdWords / Click-to-Call / Pay-per-action / Acquisition

Google.com earns most of its profits thanks to a program called AdWords.

How? By allowing other website owners to advertise on their search result pages. Advertisers pay only when an ad is clicked (called cost-per-click or CPC)

In order to be more present (to have more ads), Google has developed a program called AdSense that proposes to website owners to earn a share of its revenue from AdWords by displaying these same "sponsored links" on their site.  In other words, you're helping Google advertise and they pay you a percentage of what they earn thanks to you. 

Another online "experiment" of Google is the Click-to-Call service that allows internautes to initiate a phone call to an advertiser when a telephone icon appearing next to a text ad is clicked. 

Or "pay-per-action" advertising which is a new pricing model that allows advertisers to pay only when specific actions (such as making a purchase) are completed by a user on their site. --> Only pay for ads that works !

Moreover, Google is also expanding beyond online search advertising and is broadening its offerings to marketers. In 2006, Google acquired dMarc Broadcasting and Youtube. The first one is a radio-advertising firm that provides an automated system for purchasing radio advertising. The second one is the most visited Web site on the Internet.  One year later, Google also acquired DoubleClick, the industry leader in providing technology and services for placing ads on Web sites. 

During this same year the company launched Google TV Ads which is an online platform fo buying, selling, measuring, and delivering television commercials. The goal is to provide advertisers with more detailed and accurate information on how many people are viewing TV commercials and who these people are. 

By collecting those marketing data Google can sell them or using it for targeted advertising. 

The former way (of course still used) is to charge Web sites to become listed in Google search engine and for better placement in this list, or charging them for the purchasing of keywords for themselves. 

What about the applications of Google ?

Google has developed its applications for three reasons : 

1° To collect more marketing data on people in order to better target them and to increase the probability that those people are going to click on an ad. 

2° To put more advertising. 

More Google products = more time spend on google pages = more exposure to Google ads. 

A good example is Google Maps. For example, when tapping "The Skyline Hotel, NY", Google locates the hotel, gives us information about it such as the phone number and the official Web site, but Google also offers the possibility to book a room online at the best price!

3° To associate people with the brand, creating a positive brand image. "Google enables you to do anything on the Internet thanks to Google Maps, GMail, Google Agenda, Google Documents, Google Groups, Google Chrome, Picasa, Sketch Up, google News, Orkut, Blogger, ...  either for a business use or for personal use.

Light Touch Holographic Projector

We have already discussed in the previous topic the several possibilities offered by pico-projectors among Smartphones. However, this new topic tackles pico-projectors that use holography to interact with the user directly on the image projected.

How is it possible?

It is a projector equipped with holographic laser technology and infrared touch sensors that can register the movement of your hands. That potent mix of functionality means that you can control the projector simply by “pressing” the images it displays.

Imagine the diverse possibilities offered by this technology.

• In a restaurant, in stead of having a menu that you need to change every week (dirty, updates, ...), you could just have a tool that displays an holographic menu directly on the table where customers could directly order their meal without having to wait for the waiter to ask them what they want to eat.

• In a clothing store, you could also have such a tool to look at the different size and colors available for the dress you would like to buy. Is it in stock? Can I order it? What is the delivery time?

• In the day to day life, with the unbelievable miniaturization of electronic devices, it would be interesting to have a projector that displays query results (see the topic "smartphone"), but it would also be interesting to have a full size keyboard in such ultra small devices. This would indeed be possible thanks to this technology! You could just have a virtual holographic keyboard projected wherever you want.

Mozilla Seabird 

Smartphones

This first topic is about the evolution of smartphones for the upcoming years.

• Pico Projectors :

At the time of plasma, LCD and other full HD, this technology looks like a revolution in the field of audio visual since it would ultimately lead to a multimedia mobile providing a visual quality to meet the current trend. It is the use of a projector embedded in a handheld device that enables to project a large image that overcomes the screen size limitation in mobile electronics devices thanks to miniaturized software and hardware that enables to project digital images onto any nearby viewing surface, such as wall. 
Moreover, this has sufficient storage capacity to handle presentation materials.

Many manufacturers point the various opportunities offered by the pico-projection and the associated media that could be attributed with it. 

In the short term, most major manufacturers announce support for multimedia readers, mobile phones and laptops. iSuppli forecasts that shipments of embedded pico projectors will rise to more than 3 million units in 2013, up from less than 50,000 units this year.

For example, we have the LG eXpo, the ShowwX of Macrovision

     

• Flexible wrist smartphones or computer

When we want to buy a mobile phone or a laptop, we have to choose between:

• Big screen to promote readability and clarity, to the detriment of having a bulky device.
• Small screen for easy transport or easy placement in his pocket, with the disadvantage of having an illegible device only displaying few information at a time.

This choice is quite restrictive and annoying. Therefore, some companies have attempted to reconcile the benefits of each solution : more portable & easy to use thanks to a large screen! This led them to invent "flexible wrist smartphones"or "flexible wrist computer".

The Sony Nextep : 

A really impressive example is the device imaginated by Hiromi Kiriki for Sony. This designer created what could be the ultra-portable computer of Sony in 2020, one that we will wear like a bracelet and carry evrywhere : the Sony Nextep. 

"The OLED screens would let the Sony Nextep roll up to conform to the shape of the wearer’s wrist. When in use, the computer folds out to expose its twin holographic projector screens and split pull-out keyboard. It’s designed to keep you connected to your social networking sites at all times, so you’re never more than a few folds and clicks away from your online network." Lien

The Nokia Morph concept : 

This cellphone is just amazing, it rolls up, stretches, cleans itself, ...

This concept demonstrates some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable for the future! There are no words to express this ... just a video !

More information?