Supposedly the weak economy will bury landlines

Of course, the most expensive-to-serve areas -- the rural areas, where low population density and vast spaces mean that telecomm companies have to lay lots of infrastructure per person -- are also underserved by wireless companies. So I don't think landlines will disappear soon.

Survey: Weak economy will bury landlines as mobile phones become ubiquitous - Austin Business Journal:

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The expansion of the mobile social web

Est. 975m by 2012. That seems a little low given mobile phone penetration rates. How will they generate revenue? "advertising, subscription services, and premium upgrades." Ad revenue appears to be the most pervasive, but I wonder how long ads can support social networks. They need another revenue stream.

Mobile Social Web: 975 Million Users By 2012 - ReadWriteWeb

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STC tweets

At the recent Society for Technical Communication conference, they used the hash tag #stc2008 to categorize their tweets. I expect we'll see more of this at conferences and other public gatherings.

#stc2008 - Summize

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How to locate a mobile phone

A primer discussing the many ways to make mobile devices location-aware, and why it matters. (The main reason: contextual advertising.)

Location Technologies Primer

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An effusive Plurk review

I haven't used the serice, but Muhammad Saleem has.

Plurk: Unique or Just Another Twitter Clone? - ReadWriteWeb

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It's a sure winner?

Via Slashdot. Preston Galla at ComputerWorld is pushing the idea that

"If Google really wanted to deliver a knockout punch to Microsoft, it would integrate OpenOffice with Google Docs, and sell support for the combined suite to small businesses, medium-sized business, and large corporations. Given the reach of Google, the quality of OpenOffice, and the lure of free, it's a sure winner."

I strongly doubt that this would deliver a "knockout punch," that Google wants to compete directly in this space, or that a full suite is in Google's strategic roadmap. Let's take just the last point: Google's strategy is to enhance online collaboration and display through the web browser (desktop and mobile) in order primarily to enhance online experience -- and sell more advertising. Driving people offline during the drafting and collaboration process, and encouraging them to use features that can't be used with the online version such as footnotes, is counter to the strategy.

Slashdot | Why Google Should Embrace OpenOffice

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Status messages - not aggregation but capillary action

Confused of Calcutta speculates about the ways we'll handle status messages in social networks in the near future:

I think we’re going to see an explosion of activity in the status message related tool space, with two different sets of tools. One to do with personal “manual” input, one to do with automated input. In both cases, I think we’re going to see this explosion connect with a similar set of explosions in the visualisation space, so that we see more colour, more heatmaps, more timelines, more fractal representations, more radar diagrams, more tag-cloud-like diagrams …… but all to do with status messages.

Status messages with a difference. Not aggregated, not summarised, but built around a capillary-action publish-subscribe model. Truly personalised.

Wondering about status messages amongst other things

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NCTE discovers Twitter

NCTE Inbox Blog: Twitter: 140-Character Professional Development and Writing Tool

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TimeWarner Cable testing metered Internet bandwidth in Beaumont, Texas

$1 per GB for bandwidth going over the plan. Sigh.

Going Medieval: Time-Warner Begins Metered Bandwidth Testing

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Filtrbox

Filtrbox is out in private beta. It's a visual tool for filtering out specific content. The obvious app: ego surfing. From the site:

Filtrbox is an intelligent content and news monitoring service that does the work of monitoring the millions of blogs and online news sources for you. In one place. Stay competitive, save time, and keep everyone on the same page. Filtrbox is powerful and easy to use, and you can access the new content via the dashboard, email, or custom RSS feeds.

In practice, it's very easy to use. You search for a term and Filtrbox brings up three panes: a tagcloud of words that appear in the search results, a pane for refining the search, and a pane listing results. If your search is overly broad, you can drag tags into the appropriate spots to include or exclude them in the refined search results. This allows you to inductively refine the search until it looks solid. Then you can save the search and have it push results to your email box, dashboard, etc. Results are visualized in graph form.

Filtrbox is not a general search; it focuses on the blogosphere and online news. It is therefore well positioned for marketers, managers, etc. In an increasingly informated world, online identities are also brands, so Filtrbox could make a good platform for ego surfing as well.

filtrbox : home

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Microblogging platform 2: Plurk

Like Twitter, but with optional tags called qualifiers ("is," "feels", "thinks", "loves"). Can define smaller groups (cliques). Does not appear to push updates to SMS at present. People are characterizing it as "weird" and aimed towards the Neopets crowd, but that's just window dressing.

Your life, on the line - Plurk.com

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Microblogging platform 1: Adocu

Like Twitter, but allows only one word per post. Not a joke.

Adocu Is The World’s First Nano-Blogging Platform

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