The Coming Explosion in Mobile Internet

4 Billion Mobile devices with over 700 Million of those accessing the Internet is a testament to where we are now in the trend toward increasing mobility. The implications are fascinating. The non-profit mobile think tank, MOCOM2020, has shared some compelling research as to where this is all heading and its coming sooner than you might think.

Several new network technologies for mobile and non mobile Internet access are in place or being launched very soon. 4G continues to be rolled out while Verizon is planning to test its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in Boston and Seattle later this year as a dry run for its big commercial launch in 2010 - see Five reasons it's time for a Verizon iPhone. MOCOM2020's interesting presentation below highlights the implications for these high speed networks.

Verizon COO Denny Strigl recently mentioned the company planned to commercially launch LTE services in "up to 30 markets" next year to service 100 million people. The Boston Globe reported that Verizon isn't willing to elaborate on its LTE plans further and it hasn't yet released pricing the service.

Verizon first announced it was trialing LTE in two U.S. cities last February. At the time Verizon did not know what download and upload speeds its networks would offer. In Verizon's own trials with its partners at Vodafone, its LTE network reached peak speeds of 60Mbps. See the video demo of LTE below. High speed mobile access to the Internet is about to revolutionize the way we do many things. Expect it to reach mainstream use in less than 3 years.

Physical Hyperlinks - Convergence of the Digital & Physical

Saletan's recent post on Slate explores the convergence of the digital and physical world, referencing a 2007 NYT article which said...

"New technology, already in use in parts of Asia but still in development in the United States, allows [cell] phones to connect everyday objects with the Internet. In their new incarnation, cellphones become a sort of digital remote control, as one CBS executive put it. With a wave, the phone can read encoded information on everyday objects and translate that into videos, pictures or text files on its screen. ...In Japan, McDonald's customers can already point their cellphones at the wrapping on their hamburgers and get nutrition information on their screens. Users there can also point their phones at magazine ads to receive insurance quotes, and boardairplanes using their phones rather than paper tickets. And film promoters can send their movie trailers from billboards."

See My Click CEO talk about an example of this new technology.

Google's Wave

See what Google is up to. Our means of using communication tools is about to shift; enabling more efficient ways to interact and exchange information.

The demo at the recent IO conference is below.

Tim Berners-Lee's 3 Rules For the Future of the Internet

Twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, and video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. Read more and watch the video on TED as he explains his concept.

If the past was document sharing, the future is data sharing. Tim Berners-Lee says now, “I want you to put your data on the Web.” But how should we go about that? To answer that question, Berners-Lee provides three points of instruction. One, a URL should point to the data. Two, anyone accessing the URL should get data back. Three, relationships in the data should point to additional URLs with data. These three rules are simpler departure from the past 10 years of discussion, focused on the “semantic” web and a “resource description framework”. Those concepts have received less mainstream acceptance because of their high degree of abstraction. Other technology is faring better, in particular the hardware devices. For example, wider data collection through common 3G devices can now monitor traffic, temperature, emergencies and other events with transparent data connectivity. If the past is any indication, hardware advances will continue to arrive much earlier than software advances. So while the raw data is coming, we still have a long way to go before the software to access a world wide web of data is mature.

What is Computing in the Cloud ?

Collaboration is an essential strategy to the successful navigation of change for any individual or organization. No more evident is this truth than in the realm of IT. The essence of computing in the cloud is collaboration. Find out more about how the most forward thinking people and organizations are utilizing this strategy in this video about salesforce.com and the cloud.