Annotate web sites and pdf. Keep organized.

Nowadays we spend more time surfing the Internet than sleeping. Some of us work hooked in a browser, searching for information and managing it, and believe me, to keep track of relevant information is not an easy task.

Before we use to have cabinets where we stored our papers, now we have bookmarks, and other internet services. We have moved to have an Internet Explorer browser with favorites that are duplicated and useless as we used to just click favorite and forget about it, then 5 years later realize that we have hundreds of bookmarks in the office computer, different bookmarks at home, in our laptop… basically a useless mess.

The idea of this blog entry is to show a set of tools that can help you be organized in this chaotic Internet so you can be more productive.

If you are a bookmark type of guy, then what you need is synchronization. Be aware that syncronization of bookmarks is different depending on the browser you use.

Google Chrome

In the cases of Google Chrome browser if you have a google account, then all your google chrome browsers bookmarks can be synchronized.

So if you have Google Chome in the office and at home, if you add a new bookmark both will be synchronized. The way it is done is via Google Docs. There is a document there with all your bookmarks.

Firefox

If you are a firefox type of guy then you have several plugins that will allow you to sync your bookmarks between firefoxes and the web. The most notable I would say is xmarks (previously known as foxmarks).

Safari

If you use safari then the best way to sync not just between safaris but also with your iPhone, iPad and so, it is using mobileme.

Browser Independent

Delicious in Safari

Now, if you are not married to a specific browser, then I would recommend Delicious. Delicious is a socialbookmarking but you have plugins for all browsers, so if you see a site you like or want to remember you just click on a button and the beauty is that you can access via web o via another button in your browser (no matter which one), plus it is very powerfull because it let you apply tags to your bookmarks (much better than folders) and decide if you want them public or private.

Delicious in Chrome

Delicious in Firefox

Other tools

Bookmarking is OK but not enough. We have been bookmarking for 20 years now. True that now we have synchronization and tagging, which makes life easier, but there are other tools that allow you to:

1. Highlight parts of text of a website or PDF, add notes and share them. You can comment on a specific website or add some notes.
2. Get a copy of the website offline and make it searchable
3. If you don’t have the time to read something, with the click of a button you can add it to a cue of thing you have to read in your computer, iPhone or wherever when you have time.

This things have different tools.

1.- To annotate on websites and PDFs (which is very usefull) you can use:

a.nnotate, just for PDF. It is the pionner (I think). It is free if you don’t use it a look but it looks great. You upload a pdf and you can highlight stuff and add notes. Share, and so.

Lets annotate I discovered lately. It is also for PDF only and it is not as nice as a.nnote but it is free. In a.nnotate you can select text to be highlighted. In letsannotate you create a box with the mouse. It is good to provide comments on PDFs

Webnotes is by far my favorite, and the one I use. When you see a website click on the bookmark you have to add it to your webnotes and voila, you have the website with a top bar that allows you to highlight text, add post it’s, share it… and then you have an organizer where you can organise your websites and PDFs on folders and see the annotations.

2.- If you would like to have a copy offline of your website, Evernote does a great job. Its competitor Springpad might also do it (I have never tested as I am a devoted Evernote user).

With Evernote, if you see a site you want to remember then you click on the Evernote button in your browers (no matter which one you are using) and then you can access your evernote online or in your desktop sofware. If you want the site as you see it click on SHIFT+ the Evernote button (tip). It will be indexed and you can change the name and tag it as you wish.

3.- If you use twitter in your phone or you see a long article you can not read now, then there are a couple of tools that are great for this:

Instapaper (the one I use) has a bookmark you can have in your browser so you basically add the website you are reading or want to read to the cue of sites to read. The nice thing is that it has an iPhone (I don’t know about Android) app where the sites are transformed in text if you wish.

Readitlater is similiar.

Most of all services I mentioned here are free, and if you want more features, space, etc… then you have a pro payed plan.

Which ones I use?

1. Webnotes. Specially to highlight parts of a website I find interesting.
2. Evernote: not a lot for websites but I take photos of all the incoming mail, books, wine, receipts, etc… so they are indexed.
3. Instapaper: if there is something I want to blog about, or I’m in the iPhone and theres is a link in a tweet that I would like to read later. Very handy.

what’s next in mobile: windows phone 7 series brings something good

I have been using windows OS for mobile phone for ages. I started with the famous Qtek s100 (magician) since 2003. Then I upgraded to the p3330 (artemis) with GPS included.

From my dear p3300 I changed to the iPhone first generation, then iPhone 3g and currently iPhone 3GS.

Up to now windows mobile has been an OS for freaks like me or business people because it was the best platform to sync with exchange. Then iPhone and blackberries came into play and since then windows mobile has taken a less important role.

Few weeks ago windows announced in barcelona a brand new OS for phones: the windows phone 7 series. A pretty bad name if I have to say… specially when they have to compete with a number one iPhone and second Android with much better names.

The new OS will not be available until the 4 quarter of the year, but you can find some videos and tests on internet.

People would wonder if there is a place for Windows when iPhone is so strong and Android is coming even stronger. A lot of iPhone users are fed up of the limitations of their iPhones (closed platform with a dictatorship filter for development).

Palm has also tried with the Pre but who has heard about them lately? It will probably die. The reason why is because they have tried to be an iPhone killer by being like an iPhone.

Android is similar but much more customizable, and open source, but there was no room for another iPhone-like (closed) runner.

Windows has adopted a different approach. They have not tried to copy iPhone at all, in fact they are bringing something new into the game, something that the iPhone or the android do not have…. and it could be big.

Windows phone 7 series introduces a very nice interface (but so is the iPhone) with a new way of approaching the experience. Windows tries to create a unique phone interface for each of the users. A custom experience.

How?

It introduces a concept they call hubs. People hub, for instance will be about the people you care (your contacts) and how to interact with them, bringing together facebook, all different ways to keep up with them, so no simple address book for phones and contact details, then an app for facebook, another for twitter, etc…

Instead, you go to Peter Smith, and there you will automatically see the pictures he has posted in flickr, the status update in twitter or facebook, etc…

I love the approach. At the end of the day you will not care about so many apps (twitter client, facebook, flickr, foursquare…), you care about people and the idea of putting everything into one place is great.

I did not play with it but thumbs up.

OpenTable: booking restaurants online

There is a very cool service called OpenTable.

OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants plus www.opentable.com, the world’s most popular website for making restaurant reservations online.

With more than 12,000 customers throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and Japan, the OpenTable hardware and software system replaces pen-and-paper at the host stand. It automates the process of taking reservations and managing tables, while allowing restaurants to build robust diner databases for superior guest recognition and targeted e-mail marketing.

For diners, concierges and administrative professionals, the website provides a fast, efficient way to find available tables that meet desired criteria for cuisine, price and location at a specified time. Reservations are free and can be made around the clock. The website is directly connected to the thousands of computerized reservation systems at OpenTable restaurants. Search results reflect actual, “real-time” availability and reservations are immediately recorded in the same electronic reservation book used by the maitre’d.

Unfortunately there are only 2 restaurants in Geneva, but I see the potential of a tool like this, which has an iPhone app and also manages reviews (like other location apps such as tellmewhere or tripadvisor).

The nice thing of this one is that allows restaurants to manage bookings, and you can go and see who in a specific area and cusine has a free table at 8.30pm, click and book it. Pretty cool. True that you can always grab the phone and call, but here you can do much more: search, etc…

Siri: a personal assistant for your iPhone

You’re busy. Between meetings, social events, and hopefully a workout or two, your schedule’s packed. Don’t you wish you could hand off simple tasks so you could have more time to play?

Take a look at Siri, your personal assistant. Just like a real assistant, Siri understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and adapts to your preferences over time.

Today, Siri can help you find and plan things to do. You can ask Siri to find a romantic place for dinner, tell you what’s playing at a local jazz club or get tickets to a movie for Saturday night.

Siri is young and, like a child taking its first steps, may be awkward at times. Siri may occasionally misunderstand things you ask it to do even within its range of understanding.

Nonetheless, Siri will improve quickly by getting to know you better and understanding a broader set of tasks. In fact, right now, Siri’s learning how to handle reminders, flights stats and reference questions. Our vision is that, over time, you’ll trust Siri to manage many personal details in your life – from recommending a wine you might enjoy to managing your to do list.

The current version of Siri is built for iPhone 3GS and requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later. Soon, Siri will run on the iPod Touch, iPhone 3G and additional mobile platforms, as well.

location based apps: the future

I have talked in the past about location based apps. Now google targets your searches depending on your location. New browsers ask you if you allow them to know where you are so the results are more location based, and not only traditional searches but more and more real time social network news from twitter and others. Google for instance by using iGoogle, you can have latitude so your friends can know where you are at a specific time.

As Internet is moving at giant steps towards smart phones which now provide a decent browsing and Internet experience such as iPhones and new Android phones (nexus one, droid and others) and why not by the new segment surging now in a serious way, such as iPad, and soon others (probable android based ones), location is the next big thing, so if you are an investor, consider new companies such as foursquare, gowalla, or what it has been and still is my favorite: tellmewhere.

All this smartphone apps allow you to check in at a certain place so you can know who is there (you set up your privacy levels, of course) and depending on the app you can do several things.

What I like about tellmewhere is that it is simple, you check in or you review a place. If it does not exist you can create it. You can upload photos of that place and read comments. You can add it to your todo list (if you would like to visit it) and give tips. It is linked to your facebook and twitter accounts so you can spread the word.

Tellmewhere was small at the begining. It was an app basically for France. I started using it (it is call dismoiou) but now they have received some funding and it is in english, a 2.0 version of the app with checkins and much more. The beauty of it is that is sort of a location based wikipedia. You can create/edit a place, list it under the right category and add photos, etc… Other apps such as foursquare had a game part like being a major of a place (if you check in often) which is a cool thing. Others, like gowalla allow you to take virtual stuff (a piece of pizza, a boot…) and leave stuff. Personally I don’t like this game side of the app and gowalla is the one I use the least.

Facebook is clearly the biggest social network out there. They have now redesigned their web interface for their 6th anniversary when they have reached more than 400.000.000 users. It still think it lacks location. Twitter is great too but location is basic. You can use nice clients such as tweetie to keep updating your profile location but I see this more like a workaround. Also it does not support natively photos. You have to use twitpic or yfrog (that I prefer) for that. I like to have all in one place. Ideally Facebook should have location but it would not be the ideal solution too, as I see facebook and twitter complementary. One for your network of friends (Facebook) and one for shouting out loud to everybody (twitter).

My work around is brightkite. I also talked in the past. Is the app I use in the iPhone to tweet/twit (not to read the tweets) and to update facebook. I can handle photos and location. Unfortunately not video like yfrog with twitter, but the best compromise out there for creating content (writing) and send it to your desired social networks.

Give tellmewhere a try. It will succeed if they get the right critical mass, and for the time being, in the US I guess the winner is foursquare.

Thumbs up fro tellmewhere.

iTunes alternative for android… and the rest

doubleTwist is a iTunes clone to sync your android, palm pre, blackberry or in fact up to more than a hundred devices.

It looks like iTunes, and you can buy music directly from amazon. If you have a nexus one, give it a try.

Internet in 2009: wrap up

What happened with the Internet in 2009?

How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many more. Prepare for information overload, but in a good way.

We have used a wide variety of sources from around the Web. A full list of source references is available at the bottom of the post for those interested. We here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get even more numbers to show you.

Enjoy!

Email

• 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
• 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 100 million – New email users since the year before.
• 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
• 92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
• 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
• 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

Websites

• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
• 47 million – Added websites in 2009.

Web servers

• 13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
• -22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
• 35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
• 384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
• -72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names

• 81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
• 12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
• 7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
• 76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
• 187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
• 8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users

• 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
• 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
• 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
• 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
• 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
• 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
• 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
• 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social media

• 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
• 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
• 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
• 4.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 350 million – People on Facebook.
• 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
• 500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Images

• 4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
• 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
• 30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos

• 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
• 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
• 924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
• 182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
• 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
• 39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
• 81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Web browsers

Malicious software

• 148,000 – New zombie computers created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc.)
• 2.6 million – Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc.)
• 921,143 – The number of new malicious code signatures added by Symantec in Q4 2009.

Data sources: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign andWebhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Email stats from Radicati Group. Spam stats from McAfee. Malware stats fromSymantec (and here) and McAfee. Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube. Photo stats from Flickr and Facebook. Social media stats from BlogPulse, Pingdom (here andhere), Twittercounter, Facebook and GigaOm.

(from pingdom)

Diet and exercise. Calorie counters. iPhone apps.

I have put on weight lately and since two days ago I am trying to actively loose is, but this time by eating better and controlling my caloric intake.
I have been researching online solutions with iPhone apps and there are quite a bit.
Well normally I keep track of my weight with an apple software called dietcontroller, but I am not carrying my mac everywhere, so it is not very handy to keep adding the food you eat.

In my case there is an extra problem, I live in France/Switzerland and most of the stuff out there are for american users (types of foods, stores, etc…) so there is actually no good solution for me, with the food I eat (that I buy at migros).

Here you have the options:

1.- I have been using for a while a service (free) called fatsecret (I know, horrible name) which is good. Most of the foods are there and it is sort of a community. Again, using the iPhone browser was not good enough but now lately they have open the API and there is an iPhone app (free) called Calorie Counter. I was going to give a try but it only works with iPhone 3.1.2 and I am not going to upgrade for that.

2.- I continued researching for similar solutions and I found myfitnesspal. This is a great service too (free) with the addition of exercices as well. Here you set up your target, and upfront you have the calories left for the day. I liked it. They have a nice iphone app, where you can add what you eat, classifying it in breakfast, lunch, dinner and snaks, discounting from the calories you have left for the day, add exercises. Very good, and the iphone app too.

3.- I found a third one called diet tv which has by far, the best website in terms of nice and graphics. I have not tried this a lot though. Looks like you can do most of what the other two can do: log food, weight, measures, see your progress, engage in the community, record your diary… and in a very nice interface. I don’t think they have an iPhone app, so for me is a no-going.

4.- Finally what is probably the best, but you have pay plans, is DailyBurn. You can do basically the same than with fatsecret and myfitnesspal but when you add food, the results are much better than with the chaotic other two. They have photos for each entry (which is a killer feature) and you can also track your workouts. They have two iPhone apps, one (free) to enter your weight and food, and another one (paid) to scan food code bars. Looks like it is good for the US, but not for Europe. What I don’t like is that you just keep adding food but you cannot structure it on breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is just what you eat. I also don’t like that you can only create 20 favorite food entries (otherwise you have to pay).

I guess for me the winner is myfitnesspal. With myfitnesspal and dailyburn you can use the withings scale (a weight scale connected to wifi), which make life easier. Withings scale can even twit your weight… cool (and expensive) gadget.

If dailyburn would be free, it would probably be my winner.

Brainstorming online tools

I have blogged in the past about prezi, and I think is one of the coolest presentation tools out there.
I would like to share a couple of other brainstorming tools that might be useful for your thinking processes:

• Prezi
• xmind
• bubbl.us

Is this where advertising is going?

Many times you have wondered who the hell reads the adds in websites and other places. You just skip them or close them, so you wonder how can the companies pay to advertise…

Nowadays mass advertising is transforming into custom advertising. Google does so in its add sense and gmail. I would say it might work better as you can be interested in what it is being offered as it fits in the context of your search, emails, etc…

Is mass advertising dead then?

I guess no. Walmart or Carrefour, Coca-Cola and so need to continue with mass advertising as well as customizing their campaigns into this new era.

As you know I listen constantly to podcasts audiobooks and so. At first I was surprised that one of my favorite podcaster (or netcaster as he likes to call himself) started adding 2 to 3 adds in each show. The difference is that he would talk about the products and looks like he really likes it.

I think that it is not the same to listen to a commercial in a traditional way, than to hear someone you trust recommending a product. For the person you trust doing this could cost him the fact that you don’t trust him anymore as you might think that if he does reviews and some of them are ads, he is not being transparent and objective…. unless…. if he really likes a service he can choose to be paid by them to advertise.

Well this is where we are going and this website is some of it. Take a look: open candy

Others could be services like trialpay where if you are normaly buying something, you can get a discount on a product you want to try. For instance you are going to buy something from gap anyway and you would like to try 3 free months of evernote. Voila.

Chat, share documents and whiteboards

Showdocument is free online service that will allow you to upload a document and in real time chat and highlight stuff together, like browsing the pages together. You can also open a plain one and write, and even link it with google docs.

Very easy to use and very handy when wanting to go over a document on the phone remotely.

Notable: provide feedback on websites

Notable is an online tool that will allow you to easily provide feedback on websites.
Quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser.  Works on iPhone, too!

Notable helps your team collaborate through visual feedback on screenshots, via a chaos-free process so that everyone can express their opinion.

Text recognition OCR in photos

I have blogged about Evernote in the past. Is one of my top ten apps for the web, mac, windows and iPhone. I use it extensively everyday. I take photos with my iPhone 3GS which has autofocus and in the past with my iPhone 3G with a berklin case with a magnifying glass.

The fact is that I aim to have a digital indexed life. I take photos of all visiting cards, job and private, wines, books I have, and lately all the mail (bank, cell, etc..). What I like about Evernote is that you take a photo, it is uploaded to their servers and they extract the text, even if handwritten so the images are indexed and if you search for a work appearing in a bottle of wine, author of a book you have taken a photo, there you have it, in your phone, in the web or in the desktop app.

What I like the most is that you take the photo and you forget about it. You can later add it to a specific notebook and tag it for easier access and organization.

What I also liked is that in the windows app, the OCR was done locally so you could have local notebook not synchronized, which for mail was fine. In the mac it has to be sent to their servers for OCR recognition. I hate it because I soon finish my free quota which is 40Mb per month. You can go pro for $45 a year increasing it to 500Mb per month.

I have always been interested in OCR. Ideally I would love to have it in the mac by default so I could use spotlight and it would search in the photos, pdf, and why not, mp3s. I hope that is what will happen next, but for the time being the indexing does not go that far.

Windows is more advance. Onenote does precisely all this.

With this I would like to point out that in my view scanners are dead. We all have mobile phones and we take photos of documents, visiting cards or whatever, and ideally OCR should be part of the jpg so everything could be indexed. We are not there yet.

I found a program for mac: Prizmo

Prizmo will allow you to take a photo which has text and put it into the right perspective and then do OCR. Then you can save the new modified image or a PDF with the embedded text. It is a cools software, but at the end of the day, what you want is more intelligence, like Evernote. You want to take a photo and forget about it. Here you have to make a rectangle, select the text, apply OCR save file…. don’t get me wrong, it is a great software.

If you use windows you can use Onenote, SimpleOCR, topOCR (which is equivalent to Prizmo for windows) or freeOCR.

Google has also an open source OCR treatment, but I don’t know a lot about it.

There are also other ways to organize your bills and mail: snapscan scanners and neatreceipts which are expensive and for neatreceipts I’ve read mixed reviews.

Conclusion: I like simplicity. Take a photo and ideally when in iPhoto be able to index it and be able to find it using spotlight. Not possible yet.

The solution that is the easiest, more effective and efficient is still Evernote. Pity that OCR is not done in my mac.

Last day of 2009. How was it?

For me (us) it has been a great year.
It all started in December 2008. Nuria got a new job at The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. A considerable jump in her career in a place where most of us would love to work for what they do, which is to save lives. 4.9 million to be precise.

Once we learnt that, I was working at Shelter Centre where I was the Web Communications Chief, I asked for leave without pay, so we could have a dream trip around the world February and March. They accepted. The new Drupal website was up and running now it was just a question of fine tuning it.

We bought a round the world ticket with roundtheworldflights.com very nice people (thanks Jarvis) and very good price.
We did Geneva, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tahiti, Auckland, Christchurch, Hong Kong, London, Geneva. All flexible. In Tahiti we bought internal flights to Moorea, Bora Bora and Huahine (see photos at http://norai.net)

Well we blogged every day in our TDM (tour du monde), so you can see our adventures, skydiving, and 9000 km driving in New Zealand.

There we conceived Kai. Our Christmas present for 2009.

Once back in Geneva Nuria started her job, and I was called by my former employer (the ITC) where I worked nearly for 5 years as a consultant and they asked me to join them, so I finished the site at Shelter Centre and joined ITC in July, where I have been an Advisor in Export Strategy and Competitiveness up to present, traveling extensively to Africa (Liberia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Rwanda…).

When kai was born, 23 days ago, we also got our new car. We said bye to the 1989 red Golf GTI and said Hi to the new Fiat 500.

Now I can go to work in the car rather than in my Ducati. It is pretty cold and rains often. I’m very happy with my new little car too. Pack of technology by default (bluetooth for mobile, reads mp3 from USB key, vocal commands, … etc…)

So as you see, even if for most of the world it has been a bad year, not for us.

My brother lost his job. Nuria’s brother’s too. The economy is in pretty bad shape, but 2009 has been a very good year for us.

Now it is coming to an end. In less than 6 hours in fact. It is also the end of a decennium.

What happened this decennium technologically speaking?

This decennium has been a huge change in technology. Internet has changed the world. We carry our computers in our phones, specially since the iPhone came out. Internet is fast web2.0 has brought us video and ajax. The web experience has reached unthinkable limits. Google has become bigger than General Motors and one of the most profitable companies in the world… and it is in internet… who could have imagine something like that 10 years ago! They are even on the phone industry!

Information is now at the tip of the hands. Mobile phones have spread like mushrooms and have given Africa a huge step towards development and poverty reduction.

Now the big media companies (CBS, CNN and so) are not that big. Internet has provided real time news and information has been democratized with tools such as twitter or Facebook. We know what it is going on firt by social media tools than from BBC or CNN. We are the writers and we control the content with tools such as digg or delicious. Now we have millions of people feeding the news. It is a user generated era, even companies have started to learn that they should have API’s or be open source (google). Look at the contribution in kind done to the iphone platform! nearly 100.000 apps!

The hardware has progressed a lot too. My iPhone 3GS has 32Mb. Solid state memory has increased at huge steps too. Who could think 10 years ago that a mobile phone could have 32Gb or/and a 8Mp camera? 10 years ago we had 3Mp with a terrible screen. Now cameras like canon 5d mark II provide video at a HD quality with the plus of professional lenses.

What else have we seen… the web… the web has gone from a showroom to a two-way collaborative tool making our live more efficient. We buy all via internet now. I bought not only my car via internet but most of the stuff I own. And I have been doing that for a while already. My 42 LCD TV I bought in ebay in 2003. In my house, the shower with sauna, the massage chair, all the kitchen appliances and most of the stuff I bought via internet.

Last that I can think of for this last decade, having kai and Nuria sleeping on my right, is that finally the LHC (at CERN) is working! I am proud as I worked for 3 years in the conception phase of the LHC 10 years ago. To see it now running is great, specially when I contributed to it.

What can we expect in the next 10 years?

Obviously the hardware will continue to explode. Hard disk, processors, screen technology (LED or something new, ebook readers, tablets), internet speed and connectivity (wimax, 4g)… that will make information easier to access and to share. Now a smartphone has GPS, accelerometers and a lot of sensors. I foresee a step towards this sort of uses: location, using the camera of the phone to take a photo from anything and have image recognition, reviews, who is there, where is cheaper, banking, payments… all!!. Search engines will go one step further and they will have other ways to search than text, photos videos, voice… everything indexable. With my phone I will be able to see where my friends are, what they are drinking, etc… reviews are important. I use internet to review and read reviews of what I buy, the hotels I go (tripadvisor), google, tell me where, etc… so location, location, location.

But not everything are flowers… I think that because Internet is going to be so big, Internet Governance is going to be a big issue. Now the US controls ICANN and a lot of other stuff. Internet Governance is going to be a difficult topic. Also Internet as a human right. ISP (internet providers) will try to get the maximum out of it, by capping, limiting connectivity, filtering content (like in China) and so. If this is the case, Internet could be in danger. It should be a 100% open platform. No restrictions. I hope governments intervene to avoid this sort of issues that we are already starting to see in the US with ISPs. Access to Internet should be unlimited and unrestricted. Government should be careful also not doing like in Finland where they are going to filter content at ISP level… a biiiiig mistake.

Privacy is also going to be an issue, but I guess we will be living in public. There is no problem for me, but privacy should be seriously managed. Specially when companies are outsourcing for instance email to google apps, or google docs and calendars…

Cloud computing will be big, and I don’t know if computers will trend to be more like terminals and run all the programs in the cloud. I do use google docs a lot I must say. Online photo services, backups, etc… I can’t wait to see how it progresses. The combination of cloud computing and terminals with strong browsers with offline technology could be a way. If you think about it, why not log in at any computer/terminal and have your files programs and so? Well this could be achieved with good connectivity and good cloud computing. But again, if this is where we go, we will start to see issues of compatibility and standards. Exporting things from a cloud to a computer or to another cloud… it should be standardized.

But the I wonder… when I bought my fiat 500, I printed out the price I was getting in internet and went to my local Fiat dealer. The salesman was furious. He said he could not compete with that. They have cost of personnel, stocks, training, etc… while the guy in internet buys bulk and gets incredible prices… so it made me think. There is no point in having shops or car dealers. They are simply not competitive with internet. So where is the business? Well, services I guess. Garage to repair. Warehouse to collect parts. Advise… but not in selling goods. I told the guy in Fiat that his business model was condemned to die.

There is another ethical question you could ask yourself. If you could buy cheaper 98% of people would buy cheaper. What about paying extra if it manufactured at home, or uses organic stuff, or is environmentally better? It is a difficult question. Specially for our generation. I hope next generation will think differently. Developed countries can not live from services alone, and the rest is more expensive than to do it abroad. So what to do? Free trade has given a lot of opportunities to developing countries, but we have seen with Doha failure that one size does not fit all. What about free movement of people? Goods and people are not strangers. If I am a farmer in France and all farming goes to … China (just a stupid example), then what happens to the french farmer? Should he go to China? Move to something else? Should we cluster activities wherever they are more productive? I don’t know. That would not be sustainable for the environment. Look at Indonesia, they have destroyed the forest to put palm oil plantations. It is so sad. Al fauna is dead and most of the country is monocorp…. but this is where we are going! Look at the farmers in the US. Maybe it should be studied where the environmental impact is lower and do it there.

If you go to Africa you will see how developed countries have destroyed. We imposed the capitalism there. The richer continent in earth is the poorest. Before people there did not have to work. If they were hungry they would take it from the trees. No effort. Simple and happy life….

The end of it is that we can not avoid to spread wealth with this model, meaning that developed countries will have to lower their living standards, otherwise I don’t see how this is sustainable. Closing borders? Big mistake… Anyway that is whole new story.

Happy new year!!!

Spotify

Spotify is a new way to enjoy music. Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice. With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.

There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.

Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists, Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again! We’re music lovers like everyone else.

We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs by creating a product that people love to use. We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.

You will need to have an invitation (token) to get access as it is still in beta. There 3 plans, free (supported by ads) and two premiums.

There is also a nice iPhone app. This link is for the features and this for the price plans.

The iPhone app is superior to the Pandora or last.fm ones.

The interface is like iTunes (which is a negative point if you want it web based like pandora).

Unlike either Last.fm or Pandora, Spotify actually lets you pick the exact music you listen to, which is a plus.

Of course, there is a catch. In return for being able to access any music you want,  you have to listen to occasional adverts, like radio ads with web links to the products. This for the free version. The  ‘Premium’ account (a tenner a month, or 99p for a day pass)  removes the ads entirely.