Luis Benavides

Google has changed the way how advertising works in the world. When you want to advertise a product or make branding (show up your company name to the market), you have to think who is the people who might be interested and where are they. Well, a recent study in Spain showed that the most popular activity in the internet is search, so where better to advertise than in the search engines?

But people don’t just use the internet, they listen to the radio, watch TV, read the newspaper etc… and Google is everywhere! Just check this out:

Internet: With Google you, not only, can post your texts ads in the results of searches. You can also advertise in millions of internet content sites that make part of its advertising network. You can use from the most primitive text ads to full video and interactive commercials.

Radio: In the last year, Google bought a radio broadcasting advertising system and has made several partnerships with radio stations to transmit live ads having total control of them.

Newspapers: The recently launched service, where printed spaces of the most important newspapers of the world are placed in bid directly from the Google website, fosters a totally new way of business for print newspapers, magazines, etc…

TV: The acquisition of youtube.com and the plan to make it available on mobile devices, in addition to the plan of transmitting popular TV shows on its Google Video.

Google is moving at the same pace as people and technology evolves. They understand that innovation is the key to maintain their leadership and even gain more market share. They have re-invented the way marketing is done and they will continue doing so.

What can we expect in the future? Personalized advertising also in the real life?

Imagine just that, as cell phones, in the near future, people will have devices that show the position of each person in the earth. Say a GPS. Google earth will know all the businesses and shops placed in your surroundings as well as your interests (because they register every search you make, the news you read, etc…). So, they could send and ad, in the radio station that you are hearing (only to you) saying, “hey! These red nice shoes that you wanted to buy are right across the next corner!”

We are not so far from that, it is not fiction; it’s just the evolution of advertising.

Today I read about the new son of Google. It’s a search engine, -obviously- based on his parent, but with lots of new features. In fact, you can’t realize that it is a Google creation until you check the privacy link in the front page.

First of all, this search engine is supposed to be unbiased, which means that the search results are not filtered, modified or organized based on any personal, commercial or political scopes.

Second, there are lots of things you can do with the results. You can drag each result higher or lower in the page, you can see more results without reloading, plus more comfortable and simple navigation options.

This is one neat example of WEB 2.0, where web applications are more and more reflecting the responsiveness of a local application. I believe that it is a response to the live.com search engine lately launched by Microsoft, which showed this certain “interactiveness” but this time Google is showing Microsoft how things should be done.

I think that the best way to appreciate it, is checking it out for yourselves, so just follow this link searchmash.com and happy surfing!

Today I want to post you some quotes of US carrier Sprint CTO about WiMAX and the current multibillionaire investments to migrate the cell-phone networks to mobile WiMAX.

“A lot of people are real enthusiastic about having an ‘Internet anywhere’ experience,”

“WiMax creates a 10-fold improvement in the price-per-bit,”

“That is made possible by the fact it uses a wider channel.”

“We talked to one consumer Electronics Company about putting WiMax in a TV set, and with another about putting it in printers. Once you do that, you can then deliver other services over that [WiMax] network.”

Sprint’s plan is to have 100,000 points of presence enabled with WiMax service by the end of 2008.

Taken from:
Techworld.com
Why Sprint says WiMax is 4G
Mobile chips and lower costs wil drive it.
By John Cox, Network World

British Telecom, known as one of the world pioneers of the FMC (Fixed-mobile convergence) movement, is speculated to get now into the WiMAX game.

“British regulatory body Office of Communications (Ofcom) is due to open up spectrum in the 2.5GHz to 2.69GHz band in January 2008. Auctions are expected to be held late this year or early in 2007. These frequencies are prime WiMax ranges.”

It’s known that BT has been running some WiMAX tests on gear from Navini Networks Inc. in Birmingham.

“Sources expect BT to go aggressively after that spectrum.”They have to,” says one industry figure. “Otherwise Vodafone owns everything.””

BT’s bet on FMC involved a partnership with Vodafone in order to offer their users roaming between their WiFi hotspots and the UMTS Vodafone network. What would an introduction into WiMAX mean for BT?

PROS
– Independence of any partnership to offer services, creating owned networks;
– Establishing itself as a mobile communications company;
– Become a cost-advantageous competitor in the mobile telephony market;
– Offer services that no other mobile operator can offer and competitive prices.

CONS
– Betray its partner Vodafone;
– Creation of a fierce competence and turbid market which could reduce profits.

In my opinion, WiMAX is a clear plain bet that BT will pursue. The partnership betrayal would be though decision and could affect the relationship with other partners/providers so it has to be managed carefully. At the end, cell phone companies will definitely avoid to be drawn out of the market. Aggressive reactions and government intervention would be expected.

This information, as a speculation, has to be confirmed and I will post on it as soon as I get to know.

“The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.”
William Gibson

Today I woke up with a scenario in my head where I could travel all around the world being able to contact my friends and family, watch TV, listen to music, transfer files, contact my customers, pay my bills, look for maps, read the news, go shopping, take pictures, record videos, read books, play some games, pay my drinks, no matter where, no matter when with one single device.

Well, the future is here! One device, one network, one standard. The device is called PDA, the network is Internet and the standard is WiMAX.

Today, I saw the announcement of NXP (the world’s 10th biggest chip maker):
“The design is extremely small and it can live off battery power. There are companies working on similar integrated chips, but we’re already in mass production,” said WiMAX Marketing Manager Ruud van den Brink.

This chip fully supports 802.16e, which is the IEEE WiMAX standard for mobility. Hand-off/Handover is fully supported, so you can move freely with your portable device without loosing connection.

Imagine a massive adoption, like the GSM adoption in Europe, where you could move from different countries “roaming” your internet connection and using all the services mentioned above. Imagine just having to pay your internet access and being able to get in contact with other people for free.

Well, there are right now entire cities covered with WiMAX, there are right now the mobile devices to connect to these networks. All the content is out there: books, internet banking, web shops, YouTube (now Google’s), internet radio, Skype, etc… It’s just distribution missing, and when it is about technology, it is fast! So start making some savings because these devices are not cheap but they worth every cent you pay.

Since some months I’ve been looking closely to Jajah, and the whole VoIP industry. I’ve talked about ways of how the wireless internet networks could take over the cell phones and wondering how the communications would be in some years. I’ve been investigating the evolution of the different paths and I’ve get to the conclusion that “technologically” speaking, the world is yet not ready for a whole VoIP interconnected communications and Jajah has come to a solution for it.

Let’s start with two premises:
The trend goes 100% sure toward mobile: The use of fixed phones is decreasing each year. It’s neither economically (operators) nor a preferred option (people). It has become unsustainable for operators that have struggled to put video and internet on the lines to create more value.
Wireless technologies WiFi and WiMAX are not ready yet: Even if it’s the cheapest way of communications, and the trend toward deployment and development is growing, some years have to pass in order to be a reality.

WiFi and WiMAX challenges
WiFi has two limitations, the coverage and the heterogeneity. To cover an acceptable area of a city, there are needed lots of hotspots, economically unsustainable for an operator. Approaches such as FON where everyone shares the connection solve this issue in the economical matters, but the limitation is that the connection is not reliable as there’s not a direct control of the network. The second limitation is the hand over (switch from one access point to another), if you move further the coverage of the AP you are connected to, you loose your connection until you connect to the next one. There are companies such as Cisco which has solved this issue but is a proprietary protocol and there’s no standard out there.

In the other hand, WiMAX limitations are due to the high frequency it uses. It goes over the 3.4Mhz and with this frequencies, an obstacle such as a tree or a building could block the signal.

I’m for sure not saying that it’s an impossible thing to make any of this technologies work. I’m pointing out that in order these technologies to be “ready” there’s some work to be done, and some years to pass.

Jajah’s solution
Jajah is a neat VoIP platform such as Skype, Vonage, among others, that you can find in www.jajah.com where you just need to enter your phone number, the number you want to call and voila! They connect both numbers ringing first in yours and then in the destination one. The company has today stated that by the end of this year there would be ready a little application compatible with 80 different cell phone models, that would permit to start calls without the use of the internet but with the use of this little program in you mobile phone. It’s like if they had read my article “Something better than Skype?” In this article I stated that a big contra of their solution was that if it was using neither your computer nor your internet connection to talk, why should you actually use them?

Jajah has also stated today that it wanted to become “the Skype of the mobile world” If the future of communications is going to be mostly mobile, then if Jajah manages to become what it plans, for certain, it would become the leader.

Following my last post “Google earth shows us the past!”, today I found that my idea of watching some topless girls through Google Earth was not so crazy. In the beautifull country of Netherlands a girl was caught getting some sun tan. Check it out:

Click on the picture for watching it bigger.

If you want to see it by yourselves in Google Earth just try this link. Topless sunbather (You must have version 4+)

Watch out girls! Google is after you! 😛

Recently, Microsoft launched their new “live search” that is intended to be the evolution of MSN search and would try to catch a bigger market piece from its competitors. The search market is actually led by Google(49.2%) and Yahoo(23.8%)*.

This launch is really Microsoft-like (non innovative), you can judge by yourselves the similarity with Google. They copied every single thing! Maps, answers (Yahoo initiative), picture search, video, academic etc…
live.com

The only new thing is seen in the image search section, you can add the pics you like to a basket, and once you roll-over a picture, you get more useful information. The problem is that it still has a lot of bugs; it’s slow and more complicated.

This is one of the steps until VISTA’s launch. The idea of Microsoft is to have a full integration with the LIVE and Windows platform, this way gaining more users. I think that this new copy-Google approach of Microsoft is not working, products lack of personality and in the rush to add features they are making the products useless.

* According to Nielsen NetRatings on Web search engine rankings for July

Today I was surfing with the google earth tool and discovered a somehow weird thing. Looking at my neighborhood in Bucaramanga (my city), called “the beautiful city”. I realized that the image appearing in google earth was +/- two years outdated.

The places where the two right stars are, now, there is a big shopping center. In the star at the left, now there is a condominium. The construction started more or less two years ago.

I couldn’t stop my curiosity and “googled” a little bit to understand how it works. First I discovered that in fact the images can be up to 3 years old. The thing that surprised me was that my city was not available in good resolution a couple of months ago, and when it was available, the images dated more that 2 years old.

Second, I realized that my naïve idea that this sharp low altitude images where taken from a satellite was not true. The zoom-in pictures are taken from an aircraft (as Google says). When did this airplane passed over my home taking pictures? I really thought that this satellite cameras could zoom-in so much to see the time in my watch (ok! I’m exaggerating).

Before Google earth existed, it was a program called Keyhole that Google bought. In fact the South Korean government has demanded changes in the program in order not to reveal the location of their military bases to their enemies. Even though this geographical information is publicly available from different sources.

If you haven’t tried this program I’m sure that lots of owws will come out from your mouth. Will this information be available someday in real-time? This could be a nice tool for terrorists! Or maybe we could be able to see some topless girls at Ibiza’s beaches… Now you’re thinking about huh?

In my first post I talked about the high amount of competitors that Skype was gaining each day, even though they represented a threat, they were not big enough. But today I read about the huge American leader AOL getting hands on it. The offer is:

“Free inbound calling along with your own phone number with its AIM Phoneline service. For an additional $9.95 a month, you can get unlimited calling to 30 countries” (Taken from: George Ou’s Blog).

This is really a disruptive offer in price and in services, but it doesn’t affect Skype so much. AOL is a regional company and just serves the American market. Even if USA is the biggest Skype market, it just represents the 9% of its user base. I found in the EuroTelcoblog how is the Skype’s user-base distributed in the main countries. The information in parenthesis is the position and percentage 2 years ago (2004):

[1] United States – 9.13% (1, 10.3%)
[2] Poland – 7.87% (3, 8.78%)
[3] Taiwan – 7.80% (2, 9.24%)
[4] China – 6.75% (6, 5.89%)
[5] Germany – 6.06% (5, 6.18%)
[6] Brazil – 5.85% (4, 7.24%)
[7] France – 5.62% (7, 5.53%)
[8] United Kingdom – 3.50% (10, 2.94%)
[9] Netherlands – 3.47% (8, 3.50%)
[10] Japan – 3.17% (12, 2.61%)
[11] Spain – 2.64% (15, 1.82%)
[12] Israel – 2.36% (11, 2.94%)
[13] Canada – 2.22% (13, 2.46%)
[14] Belgium – 1.95% (14, 2.10%)
[15] Italy – 1.91% (18, 1.44%)
[16] Denmark – 1.73% (9, 3.07%)
[17] Sweden – 1.62% (16, 1.76%)
[18] Turkey – 1.59% (not ranked)
[19] Switzerland – 1.42% (19, 1.22%)
[20] Australia – 1.41% (17, 1.46%)

Skype made its move at the beginning and now it’s evenly distributed, different to AOL or Vonage. This new move is a hit against Vonage. In my opinion, Vonage is going to be sold or will die soon, they are over expending in marketing (as shows their income statement in their investor section of their website) and they can’t maintain their user-base with their actual prices.

I give three months for something to happen, just wait and see if I’m wrong 😉