Agora Media Group Innovation Blog

It had to happen sooner or later. Mashable reports that Facebook takes its Open Graph to the Mobile.

In essence this means you’ll be able to see Recommendations and Like buttons and more, that will enhance your context socially.

In a recent article about Mobile strategies and the three aspects, I elaborated on Location, Relevancy and Immediacy.
When reading the given example by Eric Tseng, Head of Mobile products at Facebook, an interesting application of taking this to the Mobile is of course enhancing geo-centric marketing efforts.

The expansion of Facebook’s Open Graph perfectly fits the “triple play”. By tapping into the opportunities which are provided by location, the large amount of information that is pushed and/or searched by mobile users is contextually enhanced by your network.
How can users differentiate and make choices? Your network can at least help you making that choice.

Facebook is providing the ability to socially augment the users’ experience, instead of augmenting it with extra contents, which only adds more information and no relevant decision-making “mechanisms”.

Facebook’s user base is put on 150 million users, for application developers this could mean a new range of opportunities by the Facebook plugins. Users are already online, are already on Facebook, the extension to third party applications is logical and can fuel the usage of mobile and mobile applications.

What do you think the implications are?

WOOHOO!

Our friends at Paladin Studios, who we worked with on Twinners in 2007-08, have just released their first iPhone game called Jimmy Pataya. Will we see it on the iPad next?

In this action-arcade title, players jump from an airplane to face an obstacle course called “The Grinder”. By tilting the iPhone side to side, players dodge objects at an increasingly fast pace. The goal is to get as far as possible and earn ample bragging rights!

Adrenaline

Finally, yesterday was the day that the iPad became available in the US.
Much is written about the iPad and about its launch. Now that it is available, check out the video below for a well in-depth introduction of the device.

Already, 2300 applications are available for the device.
This article discusses eight Twitter apps for the brand new iPad.
The article by the Wall Street Journal shows screenshots of several apps.
Ubiquity, social media and applications reinforce each other, the market of applications will remain growing explosively if the iPad proves its value.
If this will happen, businesses need to (re)think there strategies when it comes to platforms, target groups and visibility.
Desktop applications won’t suffice anymore, those who react on the omnipresent needs, might well win battles.
The bigger question will be: to build or not to build?
When the iPhone was released, tailormade application development had a reserved character by many, with the release of the iPad -and most probably many more to come-, mobile as a strategy becomes central.
‘Mobile First’ – Google’s new Mantra is an announcement of what is coming and will happen in the mobile and wireless industry.

How do you see the mobile industry react and evolve the next coming year?

Various media and websites already referred to the rumor of a mobile ad platform, called iAd.
MediaPost announces that Apple is preparing a personalized mobile advertising system which could well be “the next big thing”.

Interesting are the release dates of both the iPad and iAd.
April 3rd is the official launch of the iPad, only for days later is the supposed launch of iAd.
This could well mean that there are -any kind of- ties between iAd, iPad and the iPhone.

A mobile advertising platform means serving location based ads, adding contextual relevancy to the ads, creating a second generation of proximity marketing.
In the same article by MediaPost, it points out that Google has won patents on technologies that serve dynamically ads based upon one’s location.

All that can be concluded from this is that the battle between Apple and Google is by far not over. It makes it only more interesting, competitiveness raises and accelerates innovation and developments which only benefits the users.

Let’s wait and see what happens next week. A counter-attack on Google’s AdMob acquisition and development is bound to come, a possible launch in close relation to the iPad makes it more impacting.

What do you think of a possible mobile ad platform by Apple?

Jason Goecke is the Vice President of Innovation at Voxeo Labs and this article was originally posted on the Tropo blog. He’s been a friend and technology mentor to Agora Media’s  Richard Kastelein since 2003 when they built the original  Expatforums community as North American tech refugees in Europe.

Speech Synthesis, otherwise known as Text to Speech (TTS), is a technology that quickly synthesizes a human voice using text as input. Speech synthesis  is the default behavior for voice calls on the Tropo platform. The Tropo ‘say‘ verb is the one that provides the TTS capability, by taking a string of text and speaking it back. It is of course possible for this verb to take a URL to a ‘wav’ or ‘mp3′ file for pre-recorded audio to be played as well.

When it comes to teaching your application to speak we follow the Perl ethos of making “the simple things easy and difficult things possible”. So your application may speak very well with the simplicity of our APIs, or it may be as sophisticated and emotional as you like through Tropo exposing powerful capabilities for giving your voices character.

For our first example we will simply say:

Which then renders this audio.

Next, we may choose from a voice that speaks any number of languages supported by Tropo (US/UK English, Castilian/Mexican Spanish, French, German, Italian & Dutch). Lets give French a try for our next example:

Which then renders this audio.

Now, those were the simple examples that anyone may use to add a little speech to their applications. But, remember, we also make the difficult possible for those who want to really make their characters speak. As sometimes simply customizing the voice is not enough. There are cases when you’d also like control over pitch, volume and intonation. Tropo natively supports a standard called the Synthesized Speech Markup Language (SSML).

The Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) is a W3C standard for controlling the pace, tone, pitch and all around sound of computer generated voices. Here’s a Ruby script that repeats the same sentence four times; each at a gradually lower speed:

Which renders this audio. The previous example made use of the rate property of the SSML prosody element to control the playback speed. There are many other elements and attributes you may use, including: emphasis, phoneme, etc. To learn more about SSML and related technologies check out the W3C site at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/.

If you would like to call in and listen to these examples live, you may do so by dialing +990009369991429940 on Skype (free) or calling +1.408.940.5920 from any phone. What are you waiting for? Get started by signing up for an always free developer account @ Tropo.com.

Great graphic that presents very well the opportunities and the Content-Context relationship.

What interesting to see are the Synaptic Web derivatives when we have a look at the Context.
Information is being filtered and recommended, based upon interests, location, subscriptions and so on. By doing so, the offered Content is more relevant and appropriate.

When looking at the amount of possibilities that are shown in the image,  understanding the -potential- power of this device is important.
Why?
First of all to understand the business environment better, secondly to adjust business strategies to these new opportunities or maybe reinforcing current strategies in order to create a better positioning and proposition.

I should at least research the impact on middle- and long term, making sure you won’t be surprised and ready to thrive or survive this mobile transformation.

(click to enlarge)

What do you think of the graphic and that what is being shown?

Great graphic by Randy Krum who created his personal infographic.

Of course, not everybody has all these devices, but it’s clear that we’re become increasingly mechanized beings and have many extensions that are belonging to the daily repertoire.
With the rise of the smartphone and other convergent devices, many activities can be completed at anytime and anywhere. This only will increase in the future due to more advanced processors/hardware and societal diffusion of technology in general.

What are your thoughts on the digitalization of society?
Do you adhere the Transhumanist view, that science and technology improve human lives and want to intertwine it as much as possible?
Or do you adhere the Modern World critics view which see an advancement in technology as an involution of the human being?
Or somewhere in between?

More news from the  Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Yesterday I reported that Verizon Wireless and Skype are at the verge of changing the industry.

Today other news reached me, this time it’s Google, who’s new mantra “Mobile First” is being put as primary focus of the company. The latest acquisition in that space, AdMob, is a result of this new strategy.

Mr. Schmidt said that three areas are coming together on the mobile device, namely the Cloud, computing power and interconnectivity. All these three areas converge in the mobile device, making it a most powerful device where strategies need to be developed in order to thrive or at least, survive.

The signs are there, smartphone sales are growing at a 30% year-over-year rate, which will eventually surpass the personal computer sales.
Even more important, the adoption of the Mobile Web is growing annualy eight times faster than the Web adoption did a decade ago.
In countries like Indonesia and South Africa more searches are done via the mobile Web than via the desktop, it simply cannot be ignored.
For other key mobile trends, have a look at the 8 key Mobile Internet themes article.

These are all serious figures developments which cannot be ignored by companies if they want to keep up the high pace of emerging and converging opportunities.

What do you think of this ‘declaration’ by Google?

That is what Verizon Wireless and Skype have announced yesterday at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona!
It was bound to happen at one point, but I never thought that Verizon would be the operator to initiate this.
Secondly, this is a huge milestone for Skype which is trying to get access to wireless networks for several years now.

What do you think the effect of this development will be on the mobile industry and on the current relationships?

Press release from Skype:
read more

Gartner predicts that mobile will overtake the PC’s as Web access device.
There will be 1.82 billion mobile devices (smartphones and browser equipped phones), and 1,78 bilion PC’s.

Three important issues are raised in the article by MediaPost on the Gartner research.

1. Most companies have not optimized their websites for the Mobile Web. To have a good presence on the Mobile Web, an adjusted website for the device must be set in place.

2. Context will be key for mobile just as search engines are for the Web. The context will be able to service the user personalized relevant content (in time).

3. Search engines were based upon pulling information to users at their request, mobile on the other hand will be able to prepopulate or push information on unique aspects as the context, the person and content wanted at that point of time.

As outlined in my article “Mobile Marketing moving to centre of the Marketing Strategy?” , companies need to start thinking about any implications the Mobile Web might have for their business and target groups. Fast consecutive occuring life-cycles will make it much more difficult to intervene when the mobile has come to its peak of importance.
A technology like Augmented Reality, which is going to grow the coming years, will even grow further by this, where it could be possible that Proximity Marketing will have a second more contextually relevant chance. Read my article “Mobile Augmented Reality boosting Proximity Marketing” on this subject.
Last but not least, this could impact media convergence as well, where TV, PC and Mobile will blend into new cross-media experiences which shall depend much on Mobile as well.

What implications do you foresee?