To no surprise BMW’s controller is called the iDrive….a perfect fit for Apple’s iProducts.  Drivers will be able to control music playback and browse playlists, podcasts, and Genius mixes.

Tags: BMW, Apple iOS4, innovation, product launch, interface, ideas, business, trends

Tags: Apple, Inc., design, Mac, Newton, iPod, iPhone, iPad, trends

Google has been helping K12 Schools and Colleges save money by giving free access to their powerful tools in an enterprise setting.  Google began offering Gmail and have continued to add more tools to their suite specifically tuned for schools.  Known as Google Apps for Education (GAE) this collection provides an excellent solution for schools just as most technology budgets are shrinking…or should I say…being slashed to the bone.

To no surprise Gmail has been a hit with schools.  In 2006 Arizona State University was one of the first colleges to migrate to Gmail.  They moved 65,000 student email accounts saving over $400,000 in ANNUAL related email costs.  Since then more higher education institutions including Northwestern University (case study) and Notre Dame (moved 15,000 students and 150,000 alumni and saved $1.5 Million) have migrated to Gmail.

For Students, Faculty and Administrative staff, GAE has grown to include 7GB of individual email storage, integration with GoogleCalendar, GoogleDocs (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations) and GoogleSites (websites and wikis) for web publishing.  Google has even added 10GB of storage to their Google Video offering.  These tools provide a tremendous savings for schools who can retire in-house or expensive outsourced systems.

From Good To Great:
A necessary email-related tool schools need is anti-spam and anti-virus protection.  And Google has recently responded with an AWESOME offer for K12 Schools that’s too good to pass up:

Until July 2010 K12 Districts can migrate to Google Apps for Education AND receive FREE anti-spam/anti virus-protection via Postini

Postini is a popular (Google owned) industrial strength anti-spam & anti-virus solution.  And Google is even offering deep discounts on email archiving, malware protection and web filtering for K12 Districts as part of Postini.

In today’s economy hundreds of under-funded K12 school districts are moving to Gmail as a permanent replacement for those expensive, legacy solutions from companies like Novell and WorstClass FirstClass.  Google provides free GAE infrastructure tools for School IT Administrators and Google’s Sync is available to K12 IT Administrators to links contacts and calendars for popular mobile devices including Blackberry, iPhone and Android smartphones.

Still not convinced?  Take a moment and learn about ASU’s Gmail conversion:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How much does email cost your school?  Its expensive and ultimately costs are passed to taxpayers or student tuition.  By the way, what sliding scale fee does your school annually pay for a campus-wide Microsoft Office license?  GAE kills two birds with one stone as Google Docs is a free replacement for Office.

Act Now – Deploy later. Google’s offer ends July 2010

Related: Top Ten Reasons Schools should move to Google Apps.

Tags: Google, Google Apps for Education, education, Postini, anti-virus, K12, trends

However if you have been working with blogs and wikis for more than five years this book is a bit too elementary but a great quick read nevertheless.

The Groundswell is the powerful movement of our networked society. Basically the book breaks the “groundswell” into gaining insights from what social networks say about your company, your products and the people representing your company.

Blogs help talk to your communities, and buzz helps energize the groundswell and the new ability to utilize “customers” as collaborative team members.
In the end its about person to person relationships.

Groundswell’s blog

Tags: Groundswell, Social Technologies, economy, networking, buzz, education, values, reading, trends

Click here to view the embedded video.

internet users worldwide June 2009

Consider this form IF you can image everyone you know connected, literally everyone in the USA — then you would see China has surpassed our population.  With almost 75% of Americans connected implications are huge since China has only 20% of its population connected.  I blogged about this impact with YouTube in March.

Original graphic

Tags: Internet Users, China, population, internet growth, internet, economy, trends

And YES you can read his book for free online at Scribd and at Google Books.  You can also download a full unabridged 6 hour audiobook for free — or purchase a 3 hour abridged copy.  Get it?

If you have not been paying close attention to the Free Economy, there is a lot you can learn from this book.  Anderson traces the history of “free” products (Gillette razor blades in 1895 and even Jello) and services and intelligently outlines how “free” is driving sales in our culture today.  Even in our current economic recession.

He introduces the idea by recalling the announcement from Monty Python, who’s pirated movies were already on YouTube.  They decided to establish their own YouTube channel, place higher quality clips online with links to their DVD products….and placed a hilarious insult letter to all their fans.

Even though they were placing movies online for free, fans purchased their DVDs at Amazon, driving them to the #2 sales rank with an increased sales volume of 23,000%.  That’s no typo: a 23,000% sales jump!  Clearly free works.

Anderson has done great research to help explain (he calls them “sidebars” in the book) to help you see where you have already run across “free” in your daily life including radical ideas including air travel, cars, silverware, textbooks and even a university education.

If you have a child gifted in school or passionate about learning a specific subject you can tap the world’s best professors online via MIT’s OpenCourseWare or download audio and video lectures online via iTunesU or at a school’s website like Stanford.

I think this book can even “wake you up” to really see how innovative marketing is changing the world.  Would you ever think a child’s online game (Club Penguin) that is free to play can generate associated revenue equal to the largest worldwide subscription revenue of the Wall Street Journal?  Think again.

Want to learn how?  Read his book….its free!

Tags: Chris Anderson, Free: The future of a Radical Price, marketing, copyright, internet, economy, innovation, ideas, business, radical, reading, trends

BTW: The cover is not an actual photo rather a Photoshop’d image. However the image clearly represents his message.  The book is about Generativity impacting the internet.  Ultimately his argument is to place generativity at the core of all open technologies that tap into the internet.

Zittrain begins Part I in the book with a bit of historical reflection: The Battle of the Boxes, Battle of the Networks and CyberSecurity.  He followed on the impact of legal lessons learned from Wikipedia.  There are plenty of examples how open, generativity systems make the internet better.  Here are a couple of examples Zittrain addressed that do not:

Law enforcement agencies have used network devices to manually turn on OnStar (the in-vehicle security, communications, and diagnostics system from GM) to record and monitor conversations of unknowing passengers.  OnStar is installed in over 50 models of GM cars alone.

The FBI requested from a judge the ability to turn on the microphone of a unsuspecting cell phone owner allowing law enforcement to tap, track and record conversations.

Think about that for a moment. Ever take a picture with your digital camera or cell phone?  Millions of people do this everyday and upload content to photo-sharing websites like Flickr.  Can you imagine taking a series of photographs — only to later realize the camera (via remote commands) copied all your photos without your knowledge.  Zittrain addresses how your personal content can be affected by a judge in Texas while you live … say in Ohio.  Don’t believe it? Read Chapter 5: Tethered Appliances, Software as Service and Perfect Enforcement” to see how a judge in Marshall Texas did just that — regarding a copyright case involving TiVo.

Zittrain accurately addresses how generativity (on the internet) will impact how we engage data — regardless if the task is email, video streaming, blogging or accessing robots over a wireless network via smartphone.   He uses the example of two products from Apple that were developed in opposite directions exactly 30 years apart:  The Apple II and the iPhone but missed out on Amazon’s Kindle.  The Apple II fit the idea of generativity perfectly.  It was an “open” desktop computer and the world began to tinker, develop, push and ultimately secure the product’s success.

Zittrain compares this approach to the 1st generation iPhone.  Zittrain recently blogged about a bizarre copyright conflict between an iPhone application that clearly reinforces his position: Apple has the ability to control application distribution.  This means you can purchase an application at Apple’s iTunes store, download it and use it on your iPhone but Apple can remotely kill that program at any given point in the future.

To be fair: At the time of his writing the 1st generation iPhone was selling for $500.  Today we have the iPhone 3GS, OS 3.0, The App Store and Apple’s road-map for iPhone developers. The most change has been the highly successful App Store on iTunes with over a billion apps downloaded.
Yes – BILLION.  Profit gets in the way too.

To see another example of Zittrain’s idea substitute TiVo or Amazon’s Kindle and you’ll get his message. Remember TiVo tipped its hand revealing it tracks what users watch? That came as a bit of a surprise to many  unaware their viewing habits were tracked.

Even though Amazon recently updated their Kindle ebook reader to support users adding PDF files, the Kindle’s generativity score (this might be a new blog all by itself) would be very low due to its lack of open standards.  Amazon has run into issues due to remotely crippling installed ebooks due to copyright and DRM.

There is also a copyright issue with the new Kindles.  The new model has the ability to read ebooks aloud.  Publishing companies began suing Amazon over this “feature” on the bigger Kindles.  Publishers want to sell you an Audiobook version of the eBook loaded on your Kindle.  So in the end you pay twice for the same digital product!  Publishers argue eBooks legally cannot be read out loud.  Amazing.  For all the technology advances, profit still drives old school publishing companies to sue Amazon.

I found his conclusion powerful.  He shares the impact of Generativity on the OLPC project.  I am a fan of the One Laptop Per Child project.  As he suggests Generativity is really at the core of this product.  It has changed the world and can be viewed (in a limited way) as a path for future internet generativity.

Tags: Jonathan Zittrain, Future of the Internet, Generativity, copyright, internet, Network, Apple II, iphone, TiVo, onstar, amazon, OLPC, reading, trends

who controls the internet

On the surface you may believe — even in 2009 that you can still say anything, do anything or hack any computer around the globe without impunity because you can hide inside the internet.

Goldsmith and Wu challenge Tom Friedman’s (The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century) position that globalization is opening up communication in countries that have long suppressed their citizen’s ability to speak freely.

China for example. Or think about the European Union.  Is the EU able to dictate how Microsoft releases software?  Think again.  When Microsoft published it’s passport technology it was rejected by the EU.  Rather than pay a fine Microsoft added the tougher security standards dictated by the EU for all customers worldwide.  Those standards are even tougher than those used in America.

Can France tell Yahoo or eBay what products to sell?  They can and they already do.  This book is written from a legal standpoint since both teach at the Law Schools of Harvard and Columbia respectively. Is it strange to see government control over the internet?  Would this be different if today was September 10 2001?  Goldsmith and Wu share their insight to the way Law helps and hinders the internet.  From simply selling memorabilia to cybercrime you learn gaping holes exist even today to prosecute offenders and criminals.

The “I Love You” virus that cost US companies millions of dollars originated in The Philippines, but since there is no law against this type of crime in the The Philippines the US was unable to arrest the known hacker.  Similar rules apply in Russia. When the FBI arrested a hacker who extorted millions from US companies, Russia did not acknowledge this type of crime and did not agree to extradite, so the FBI was forced to release the criminal.

Goldsmith and Wu share the legal case between Yahoo and the country of France that forced Yahoo’s online store to pull Nazi related memorabilia even though Yahoo is an American based company.  But Yahoo’s remote offices in France proved to the key error Jerry Yang overlooked.  Yahoo has stumbled a lot lately.

Control over the internet extends to US K12 School Districts who filter web content to protect minors from material that is deemed to be offensive, sexual or drug related.  But many in America may find that the country of Australia has been trying to impose the same type of filtering for the whole country.

As the internet has grown in popularity and extending access to schools, banks, companies and financial firms the need to protect assets against cybercrime has also grown.  To no surprise the US and foreign countries have begun to establish laws to protect citizens and business.

Finally Goldsmith and Wu show how companies eager to enter China’s vast market have been answering to the communist party vs. individual freedoms.  Yahoo provided the strongest example when they give Chinese authorities the identity of a blogger who wrote “controversial” posts about the Chinese government and leadership.

Who Controls the Internet is a valuable read to understand that governments can control access and at the same time acknowledge some laws are not enough when hunting cyber crime.

who controls the internet

I have been impressed with the book, including a new preface to the paperback release.  But guys, seriously….why did you ditch the original hardcover visual? The typography on the updated paperback is terrible in comparison. Looks like someone forgot to ftp the master cover art to the book publisher.

Goldsmith and Wu also trace the history of DNS and ICANN regarding the recent discussions about moving control of the internet to the UN or to other countries, both friend and foe.  There is a lot to be considered if giving up control of a democratic tool to the Chinese or any non-democratic country including Russia.

There are plenty of examples of how the net began as a US defense department project and has revolutionized the world.  But they also do not acknowledge any issue with ICANN and the role of spam.  Since many spam servers sit outside the US there is little the government can do to stop this threat.  Ditto for identity theft.

Tags: internet, Legal, China, Cisco, Tom Friedman, filtering, European Union, Microsoft, trends,

Tags: smartphone, IPv6, network, advanced technologies, trends

The most surprising session was “HD video over IP for Distance Learning” because the original presenter did not show up….so I decided to try an Unconference session that ran two hours long.  Lots of great learning about how K12 Districts around the Midwest want to bring distance learning and HD video into the classroom.

Population
China: 1,330,044,544 (July 08) Source
US:         303,824,640 (July 08) Source

Internet Population
China:   298,000,000 (Jan 09)  22.4% of the population Source
US:        220,141,969 (June 08)  72.5% of the population  Source

China has almost as many people connected to the internet as America has people.  Think about that for a moment.  At Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society this week former Berkman fellow Rebecca MacKinnon addressed “The Tao of the Web: China and the future of the Internet” in a webcast about the role of censorship in China.

Over the past two years leading up to the summer Olympic games many publications (print and digital) wrote articles about “The Great Firewall of China” and China’s censorship efforts.  But MacKinnon shared the Chinese Communist party has lost control over their own young citizens.  The webcast alone is worth the view and here are two amazing facts regarding China’s youth culture:

Over 65% utilize the web as the primary source of video entertainment.
Over 60% found YouTube videos via social networks and IM.

MacKinnon’s webcast (view it here) proves China has not only embraced YouTube. China’s own premier conducted a two-hour webcast available on YouTube.  The Great Firewall of China still has oppressive control over their citizens but YouTube has shown a small crack in their armor.

Tags: China, YouTube, The Great Firewall of China, globalization, Population, Internet Users, Censorship, education, technology, trends

From a technical point-of-view CIPA solutions range in flexibility like Tylenol:  Extra Strength Tylenol, Regular Strength Tylenol, Tylenol 8 hour and Tylenol PM.
For a real-world overview of YouTube, K12 web filtering & CIPA: Click Here

Many CIPA related questions from teachers and administrators can be addressed by a single resource:  District Technology Policy.  If you do not have one — get one — following these easy steps:

1. Google “K12 district technology policy”
2. Read policies posted online by Districts around the country
2a. Find one that looks appealing for the needs of your District
2b. Don’t forget to acknowledge their efforts…send an email acknowledging their work
3. Copy/paste
4. Modify as needed WITH District-wide consensus
5. Publish your Policy under Creative Commons

In many respects the CIPA vendor you choose may limit your flexibility in unblocking webpages.  Most robust CIPA products DO permit teachers/district coordinators to permit custom URLs to be available on the fly.

Vendors permit “timed access” to specific pages allowing, for example a class meeting Monday afternoons from 1:00 to 2:00pm will have a block of pre-approved website URLs available for 60 minutes.

Vendors also provide the flexibility to permit access to certain categories like eBay, Amazon or CraigsList with options:

1.    Warn:  This CIPA option will display a dialog box reminding users that the destination URL has been identified as a non-academic site but still allows access to the page.
2.    Tracking:  Pages can be tracked by administrators if your Technology Policy is so inclined.
3.    Time Quota:   This CIPA option will track a set time per day (beginning at midnight) for users to access defined, specific or pages.  categories.  If your district policy calls for 2 hours/day users are simply blocked after the district-wide site times out.

C O N T R O L:
Teachers have commented they need “special permission” to get access to a page or entire website for class.  Management of IT organizations has taught me many schools (and organizations) have adverse relationships with their IT staffs.  I’m sorry this exists.

It is often difficult to break the assumption, or the “built-in notion” that IT holds C O N T R O L simply because they install and configure the hardware/software but ultimately do not use the product in the classroom.  Do you work in a District where IT is the tail that wags the dog?

Q and A:
Does IT tell you what textbooks to order?

Today more and more textbook publishers are embedding webpage URL resources inside textbooks or have established textbook companion webpages.  Think you still have the right CIPA solution running in your District?

The idea that textbook approval is equal to website approval is not real.  Textbooks are a single source of knowledge unchanged until the next physical edition is printed/shipped … in some cases years later.   The equivalent would be a series of fixed bookmarked websites pointing to  content. However in some cases pages move to different webservers, blogs or wikis by the time a textbook is shipped. The advantage to online resources includes the ability to see feedback from students outside his/her classroom on a potential global scale regarding subject matter.

BTW:  In some cases a remote firewall can block access to the destination website.  Sometimes the webserver crashes.
The internet … like life … is not perfect.
Q:  Should the teachers be in this same umbrella of protection?
A:  The CIPA law is for the protection of minors.

Q:  Should the teachers then be allowed to access the internet without restrictions?  If so, where does the boundary lies – shopping sites, personal email sites, etc.
A: Well … do you ALWAYS log off your classroom computer correctly?
I have personally watched teachers leave their restricted login account running after they have exited the classroom leaving the computer available to anyone with access to grading and assessment.  There are boundaries/rules/guidelines and dare I say … Policy for a reason — to protect students AND faculty.

Is a computer available in the teacher’s lounge?  That computer could be configured to bypass CIPA filtering based upon LDAP or Microsoft’s Active Directory.  Some have voiced an opinion that teachers and administrators are employees of the District and must obey rules when using equipment at school.  While teachers at home or on the road – different story/different post.

A Technology Policy crafted for your District based upon the realworld needs of your teachers can determine the best product and will serve your District well.

Tags: content filter, CIPA, K12, education, technology, web filter, 8e6, bandwidth, broadband, internet, teacher, school, youtube, K12 Technology Policy, District Technology, Technology Policy, web filter, trends

The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution proves that indeed access to music can be modified to be as simple as finding water.  If you are interested in education David and Gerd actually spell out something special in chapter one … maybe without even knowing it.

Without a doubt they have The Future of Music nailed down: Mobile and Digital.  The book is labeled a Manifesto for good reason.  If you want to understand the music industry from the inside, gain a better perspective on how the record industry stacks the deck against musicians and how mp3 + iPod + iTunes = Revolution then you will really enjoy The Future of Music.

Authors David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard have combined their knowledge and talent to truly place a wonderful series of ideas, thoughts and experiences from the music industry into a book that will show how radical changes to the digital distribution of music will actually make everyone happy, kill Digital Rights Management in the process yet make the music business profitable.

The book begins with David and Gerd sharing their ideas of what our lives would be like if music was like water.  “Music is starting to flow all around us. It is available on the internet, on mobile networks, wifi, 3G and your home.”   But I was really struck by the idea that they were really talking about the future of education. I’m really not sure how to tell you how this hit me while moving through the first chapter but I realized that in sharing their ideas about the future of music, they were actually describing how the future of education could be accessed just like water.  Try this: read the first chapter and substitute ‘education’ for ‘music industry’ and ‘teachers’ for ‘artists’ and even ‘students’ for ‘music fans’ and it just comes together … and makes a very powerful statement about how changes to our educational system due to technology, the internet and digital downloads have just as much impact as how today we can access iTunes for music and iTunesU for learning.

Chapter 2 is a great overview about the top ten truths in the music business for those of us who do not have insider knowledge on how the industry is changing.

The Top 10 Ten Truths of The Music Business:
01.  Music matters more than ever: the music market is alive & vibrant.
02.  The record business ? the music business
03.  The artists are the brands, and entertainment is the main attraction.
04.  Artists and their managers will shape the future.
05.  Publishing income is a crucial income stream
06.  Radio is no longer the primary way that people discover new music
07.  Digital niche marketing outperforms mass marketing
08.  Customers demand and get increasing convenience and value
09.  The current pricing model goes out the window
10.  Music is mobile, and new models will embrace a more liquid view of music.

It was very interesting to learn how U2 even passed up financial compensation for their Apple/Vertigo TV commercials with Apple but arranged a cut of sales of the U2 iPod Special Edition introduced in 2004.  Simply a book you must read.  Get it here: The Future of Music.  And Gerd has written Music 2.0 which I’m going to place on my reading list.

PS – Best thing about writing this post?  I’m listening to Mozart on Pandora via the Internet.

Tags: The Future of Music, David Kusek, Gerd Leonhard, music, globalization, mp3, digital, music industry, manifesto, itunes, ipod, napster, drm, reading, trends

This morning’s commute was much better than DOT’s suggested Milwaukee > Beloit > Madison. That route tacks an extra 105 miles one way. I cannot believe they are suggesting this route all the way down to Beloit!  This route was much better:

Here is the link to the Google Maps page. Lets hope flooding decreases over the next couple of days. Take this route and you will see flooded roads and houses under water in low areas with plenty of farm land underwater too.Tags: Milwaukee, Madison, I-94, commute, flooding

Playing catch-up
Today we find a majority of schools around the country in the educational slow lane. For some reason it does not matter if the school is remote or urban, many are connecting at just 5 Megabits/second. Its like teaching history with books that still recognize Russia as the old Soviet Union….oh how I miss Gorgachev.
Any college connecting at less than 10MB — shows a lack of understanding and vision for their students who enter higher education seeking not just a degree but an advantage to enter the global marketplace.

How can any teacher provide engaging content to today’s rich media students with the school’s 5Mb/s connection? My home cable modem runs at 6Mb/s while other providers around the country are pushing 8Mb/s for a service that is sparingly used after work.

My home computer sits idle during the school day. I’d support any solution to transfer my 6Mb/s to my local school during the day. Okay, I know this probably will not work. But do you see my desire?

Lets go a step further
With emerging (and engaging) content coming from Internet2 any school (K12 or HigherEd) needs 10Mb/s minimum…to be honest it should probably be 25Mb/s minimum because 10 will be flooded immediately by students accessing rich media content.

HD video on the internet needs 8Mb/s alone, so 10Mb/s will not permit email, web and VoIP to function on the academic side while the administrative access to ERP software like Oracle and MS Dynamics cannot be off-line during a HD video broadcast.

9/11 video history
How successful could a teacher convey history lessons with access to video footage surrounding 9/11? For my generation: think of the value a history lesson from the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. The resource Archive.org has raw video from ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and even the BBC from 9/11 available for free. Take a look for yourself here.

Why is this important? Because ultimately any historian whats to convey a real sense of the times. And what a resource this can be.

I would be interested to see the same access to raw video of Katrina. History teaches us compelling and emotional lessons but the impact on today’s students will only be powerful if you don’t have to deal with the “stop/start/stop/start” video jerkiness due to slow bandwidth.

Competition
Countries including Canada, South Korea and Japan deliver over 1GB/s to their schools and libraries empowering their students and citizens. Yes thats 1 Gigabit per second! Our students (I.E. our future) are learning in the slow lane. Lets use an automotive theme:

Bandwidth to the Home
Japan: 1 Gigabit/second or 1,000 miles per hour
USA : 5-8 Megabits/second or 5-8 miles per hour

Do you see the crisis looming?
Its only going to get worse. Is Bandwidth on the radar for our upcoming Presidential election — Maybe to no surprise? Just as those countries are supplying bandwidth to schools, we are losing our research edge as more and more talented Americans leave for greener pastures overseas. Please understand today’s fight for talent is not east coast vs. west coast…..its now global.

Its now East Asia vs. Western Europe with American somewhere in between and beginning to show its aging infrastructure. If you were unaware of this talent migration, may I suggest Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back I’m just half way through and have been further enlightened to the dangerous slide occurring in America.

Tags: Internet2, bandwidth, school, community, globalization, trends

Although announced months ago BMW has recently posted details online. To date iPhones are compatible with the 2007 line of vehicles. Its another look at BMW and Apple, two of the most known brands working to provide a seamless integration of their respective products.

BMW was the first vehicle manufacturer to integrate the iPod in 2004. Expect additional auto manufacturers to follow their lead.

Tags: BMW, iPhone, advanced technologies, trends

Tags: NBC, iTunes, low ratings, trends

Its no surprise engineers connect standard PCs to analyze engine and chassis control systems. But the opportunities to configure a multimedia server for the auto’s entertainment system is instep with tomorrow’s demands of mobile communication. Naturally it would be expected that your BMW’s diagnostics would be linked in real-time to your repair shop.

It’s a little spooky to think that your fly-by-wire throttle could be trying to chat with the engine using the same technology that we use to send instant messages, but IP proved itself capable enough even for critical safety functions. The research is ongoing, but BMW’s work bodes well for adding functionality while decreasing costs.

IPv6 supports 340 undecillion devices. If you think desktops, servers, laptops and smartphones your in the ballpark — just add cars. 340 undecillion is 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 proving there are plenty of device addresses in IPv6 to support every car on the planet.

For BMW’s engineers I have the real question for implementing IPv6 that every geek would desire: Heads up display technology.

So when the car is parked (thinking safety first of course) can the driver surf the web with iDrive? Or would you probably just pass the address to an iPhone? Since BMW already supports the iPhone it makes sense to just pass the address along…but that windshield could be a nice monitor when your out on the road.

Tags: BMW, IPv6, network, advanced technologies, trends

Digital Rights Management

Funny that Microsoft’s own DRM software will not run on their Zune product. Wal-Mart ditched DRM music in August and a month later Amazon’s site launched DRM free. With larger numbers of online shoppers, the control over digital rights now sit in the hands of the big resellers and not the music industry or even technology companies.

PS – The disappointment with Wal-Mart is their decision to NOT support Mac or Linux systems for downloading music.  Not a good sign for a lot of users.

Tags: Amazon, Walmart, music store, music download, Fairplay, PlaysForSure, The Long Tail, trends

Amazon MP3 offers the top 100 songs for 89 cents each and the top 100 albums for $8.99, with most albums priced from $5.99 to $9.99.

However I believe the breaking point will be what is available.
Search for U2 and you get:

Not a lot of music (actually none) from my favorite band.  I have literally everything they have produced on my iPod already but is a clear sign they will have no music from many popular bands.  It will be difficult to overcome at first.

With a lot of independents lining up it proves Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail theory again. Amazon’s advanced systems and reputation will permit them to sell a lot of music…but they are also selling against themselves with their highly successful CD music store available online for years. I’m interested to see how they compete against Walmart.

The benefit for all those iTunes users…buy a song from Amazon and it will be placed in your iTunes directory automatically. Nice touch.

Tags: Amazon, music store, music download, The Long Tail, trends

Sound interesting? Big pizza lover? You will need to register and establish a preferred menu…but just text message “gametime” will have your favorite pizza at your door within 30 minutes.

And by gametime I mean football….well actually I mean soccer. Domino’s is making this available only in the United Kingdom.

Tags: pizza, Domino’s, SMS, United Kingdom, trends

CSS was the next logical choice that continues today as designers create smarter webpages and blogs with strong visual impacts. Even WordPress‘ own website correctly states: Code is Poetry. These skills have proved to be required tools for today’s successful graphic designer.

The next step may well be Apple’s Core Animation. Look closely at the new iPhone commercials – you will notice a bit of Core Animation: Google push pins drop from the sky onto a map. Good bye static pins!

This small example should really open up the interactive space for designers. Core Animation clearly shows just the tip of the graphical/animation iceberg that will become more robust moving forward.

Designers will jump on this new technology and adapt the necessary code to implement designs on phone and webpages. Apple needs to empower more than their die-hard programmers. Give designers the right tool for the job and we will see amazing interactive graphic elements on the web and our iPhones.

Tags: Core Animation, graphic design, code, iPhone, information design, trends

In the UK alone 95% of their business is digital.  Which makes the statement of Nokia being the largest supplier of cameras no surprise…Nokia builds camers into most of their phones.  This should be a trend of where the image capture market is moving towards for consumers.

Technorati Tags: art & design, web2.0, trends, rich media, education