BMW has an app for the iPhone that was demo’d at the Paris auto show. Currently available in Europe, it will make its way across the pond in the near future. Labeled “My BMW Remote” the new iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad app includes the same remote functions of BMW Assist.
The app features: Remote Door Lock & Unlock, Remote Climate Control, Remote Light Flash (remote control of configurable exterior light functions to locate the vehicle), Google Local Search (address destination search on the iPhone and transfer to the vehicle navigation system) and Vehicle Finder display of current vehicle position on a map (google perhaps) in the iPhone – for locating your parked Bimmer.
Category: Innovation
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Amazon.com Tuesday released Windowshop for Apple’s iPad, a program that takes advantage of the tablet’s screen and touch capabilities. Tablets like the iPad seem to be a great display to look at merchandise in online store “windows or showcases” without making purchases.
“Amazon Windowshop is a top-to-bottom rewrite of Amazon.com — designed and built without compromise just for iPad,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.
I have been looking at The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom as a learning tool for social networks impacting society and found this a very deep read….like a college econ/sociology textbook. Caught myself thinking I was actually back in school. This goes much deeper than Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.
Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler has written a very comprehensive book to describe conflicts between analog and digital data creators in society and how internet based technologies are changing society and commerce.
It’s a good read but hard to grasp due to a focus on economics. Don’t be fooled the by title if your looking at computer networks….he has written it into the binding that ties his arguments together. It is truly worth the read.
Benkler shares how technology has merged the professional and the consumer into a ‘prosumer’ due to low cost and high performing computers and robust networks have made distribution of information cheap enough that community is now empowered to drive change.
Take a look at how the internet has evolved. The Akami to YouTube migration showed how multimedia has found a free, reliable distribution center. When you also migrate 1st generation complex, large scale websites to new blogs and content management systems under the open source business model Benkler states that data is now a “non-rival” product that has democratized the digital workflow of data from brick and mortar to community, peer-developed content solutions.
Benkler suggests modern computing drives new, strong and deep collaboration that can have a large impact on the global economy and society. Benkler also suggests that as more consumers embrace technology collaboration, change to our culture is possible due to engines of free exchange (wikipedia, creative commons, open source and the blogosphere) could be more efficient (when shared) than current models that are restricted by copyright and patents because the ability to duplicate (or reproduce digital content) makes little or no impact on business.
Tags: The Wealth of Networks, Social Technologies, economy, society, Yochai Benkler, education, change, reading, trends
How do organizations compete today? Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World provides a good reference on how major US companies have adopted a new business model for competing in a flat world.
After reading Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century book series on globalization and the breakthrough work by Jerry Wind and Victor & William Fung in Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World.
I found chapters in Corporate Agility a fit perfectly to the above works. Corporate Agility supports business case studies throughout the book that span a wide range of industries with lessons for all who are seeking new models for business in the 21st globalized century.
The strongest chapter is early in the book surrounding the shift in company buildings and the move to a mobile workforce that permits companies to break expensive building leases and create smaller ‘offices’ with limited administrative staff and resources.
I have experienced these efforts directly in working with clients who have been forced to trim staff and yet end up in an dry office complex with over 50% of their office cubes empty.
Actually I’m reminded of a PR company who hired temporary workers to “work” in all their empty cubes while a potential client made an office visit. Needless to say they did not understand the basics of a company’s need for agility as described in the book.
I feel the early chapters of Corporate Agility is an expansion of The World Is Flat while the book’s case studies just touch the surface that is presented in detail by Competing in a Flat World.
Corporate Agility’s book website
Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book.