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31 Oct 09

The boom in smart-phones: Cleverly simple | The Economist

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phone business google trends mobility

The market for smart-phones is expected to grow so quickly in part because they are changing. Expensive pocket computers such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, which let users watch videos and download whatever applications they want, are giving way to new models that come with popular services built in, but are less versatile or run on open-source operating systems, and are often cheaper. All this reflects a broader trend in the industry, where value is migrating from firms that run networks and make hardware to those that make software and offer service
New handsets from Motorola, an industry veteran, and INQ, a rising star, illustrate these changes. They both feature built-in support for online services, including popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. On the iPhone, in contrast, the necessary software has to be downloaded and installed. What is more, both phones can automatically add contacts from such sites to their address books.
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- Technical specifications are not important provided customers can use their favourite online services with ease.
- INQ and Motorola are also both betting on Android, an open-source operating system developed by Google. Although the internet giant’s operating system only has a small piece of the market, it is clearly gaining momentum. According to Google, as many as 20 handsets based on the software will be available by the end of the year.
- Prices are now on a downward spiral, says Ben Wood of CCS Insight, a research firm. Several other handset-makers are already offering cheap smart-phone-like devices. Android allows cut-price Chinese firms such as Huawei and ZTE to enter the smart-phone market, which they had previously stayed out of for lack of the necessary software. Last month T-Mobile, a mobile operator, gave a taste of things to come. Its British subsidiary started selling the Pulse, an Android-powered smart-phone made by Huawei, for only £180. (The cheapest iPhone model sells for £340 in Britain if bought without a contract.)

30 Oct 09

Graduate unemployment to soar, says thinktank | Business | guardian.co.uk

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youth trends employment UK

29 Oct 09

The Smart List: 12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

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trends essential future politics economics society technology environment

28 Oct 09

The Rise of the 'Homepreneur' - BusinessWeek

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trends business work living entrepreneurship innovation

You Choose Jamborees | Evenings of live music created by you

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trends music participation

27 Oct 09

Demos | Blogs

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youth trends future

26 Oct 09

Running in the Shadows - Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways - Series - NYTimes.com

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trends youth family

22 Oct 09

RSA - Design hacking

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design trends

Web technology is about to change how we learn | VentureBeat

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technology learning trends collaboration education

One example of an educational company on the cutting edge of this kind of collaboration is eduFire. Founders Jon Bischke and Kareem Mayan want to empower both the educator and the learner by removing geographic boundaries. They feel anyone with knowledge to share has the right to become an “educational entrepreneur,” and anyone who desires to learn should have access to the tutor just right for him or her.
Online textbook startups such as Flat World Knowledge — which lets you customize textbooks online and is about to make a splash on campuses across America — also promise to increase the customizability and affordability of education
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- Chinesepod is a great example of an early mover in this space. Looking at the huge population of China, and that country’s equally huge desire to learn English, founder Ken Carrol quickly realized that classrooms could never scale to meet demand, but that teachers could scale via podcasting (pictured right).
- Numerous other online language learning communities are building out as well — sites such as Livemocha, nciku, and Lang-8.

20 Oct 09

A New Recycling Strategy Is Catching On - NYTimes.com

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green behaviour trends environment

Foursquare, a Social Network Site, Puts Users Face to Face - NYTimes.com

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future socialnetworks trends advertising business

But for many urbanites in their 20s and 30s, two other questions are just as important: Where are you, and can I come join you?
“On Twitter, there are more than 3,000 people that follow me, and Facebook is more of a business community now,” said Annie Heckenberger, 36, who works at an advertising agency in Philadelphia. “Foursquare is more of the people that I actually hang out with and want to socialize with.”
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- Other companies, like BrightKite, Loopt and Google Latitude, are also offering services aimed at helping friends find each other on the go. But Foursquare has attracted more attention than the others, in part because it incorporates elements of gaming and social competition.
- The system awards points and virtual badges to players depending on how often they go out and which places they visit. Users who frequent a particular place enough times are crowned “mayor” of that particular location.
- Foursquare is available in 31 cities in the United States, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Washington. The service is also operating in London, Amsterdam and three Canadian cities.

18 Oct 09

Home | Kept - Things don't have to be rubbish

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environment trends

12 Oct 09

Almost one in three young people 'lack parental support' | Society | guardian.co.uk

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youth trends family

Almost one in three young people in the UK do not receive the support they need from their parents

UK quality of life poor, study says | UK news | The Guardian

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living work happiness society trends

08 Oct 09

Paul Krugman: In Trade, ‘It’s Not the Great Depression — It’s Worse’ - Real Time Economics - WSJ

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trade economics trends

07 Oct 09

The Art of With.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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culture future trends collaboration interesting

Mobile communication subscriptions soar to 4.6 billion, says UN body

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trends phone communication

30 Sep 09

Socialised government: the rise of micro public service uninstitutions | Personal Democracy Forum

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services society trends organization

These nimble micro public service uninstitutions, from School of Everything to Enabled by Design to Patients Opinion (given a helping hand from iniatives such as Social Innovation Camp and Talk about Local), are redefining public services as we’ve come to know them, socialising them in the true sense of the word.

27 Sep 09

Telecoms: The power of mobile money | The Economist

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trends economics development finance mobility phone innovation

an extra ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country boosts GDP growth by 0.8 percentage points, according to the World Bank.
With such phones now so commonplace, a new opportunity beckons: mobile money, which allows cash to travel as quickly as a text message.
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- By far the most successful example of mobile money is M-PESA, launched in 2007 by Safaricom of Kenya. It now has nearly 7m users—not bad for a country of 38m people, 18.3m of whom have mobile phones. M-PESA first became popular as a way for young, male urban migrants to send money back to their families in the countryside. It is now used to pay for everything from school fees (no need to queue up at the bank every month to hand over a wad of bills) to taxis (drivers like it because they are carrying around less cash). Similar schemes are popular in the Philippines and South Africa.
- The incomes of Kenyan households using M-PESA have increased by 5-30% since they started mobile banking, according to a recent study.
- Mobile banking is safer than storing wealth in the form of cattle (which can become diseased and die), gold (which can be stolen), in neighbourhood savings schemes (which may be fraudulent) or by stuffing banknotes into a mattress. In the Maldives many people lost their savings in the tsunami of 2004; it hopes to introduce universal mobile banking next year.
- why is mobile money not more widespread? Its progress has been impeded by banks, which fear that mobile operators will eat their lunch, and by regulators, who worry that mobile-money schemes will be abused by fraudsters and money-launderers. In many countries mobile money has been blocked because operators do not have banking licences and their networks of corner-shop retailers do not meet the strict criteria for formal bank branches. And some mobile-money schemes that have been launched, such as one in Tanzania, failed to catch on. As recently as a year ago people wondered whether M-PESA’s success was a fluke.
- Some banks, meanwhile, have come to see mobile money not as a threat but as an opportunity, and are teaming up with operators. And phone companies have studied Kenya closely to learn how to establish and market a successful mobile-money scheme. MTN, Africa’s biggest operator, has launched a mobile-money service in Uganda in conjunction with Standard Bank; it appears to be doing well. MTN is fine-tuning its service in Uganda before rolling it out across Africa.
- Instead of lobbying against mobile money, banks should see it as an exciting chance to exploit telecoms firms’ vast retail networks and powerful brands to reach new customers. Tie-ups between banks and operators will help reassure regulators.