Mobile phone helps people in the kitchen

A New York Times article about the mobile phone helping people in the kitchen demonstrates the opportunity the mobile platform provides to help people accomplish tasks. For service providers and developers we still have just begun to scratch the surface conceptually of how to maximize the value of this platform. The following quote from chef Chris Cosentino summarizes part of the uniqueness of the mobile phone as a practical tool.

“You’re never going to get a chef to sit at a desk or a computer screen all day,” he said. “But I can take this to the farmers’ market, I can take it to Italy, use it as a camera, look up the history of dishes so I can brief my servers, and make voice notes while I’m cooking,” he said.

For me, this utility underscores some of the core propositions we’ve embraced with Ibiograph:

1. Save people time and effort
2. Intersect productively the mobile phone and
the real world
3. Accomplish tasks for people

Ibiograph sees these ideas as a core mission of its service. Save me time; accomplish real tasks on my behalf. I want my memories preserved in a life narrative. I want a meaningful way to save the pictures from my mobile phone. I want to quickly find and assemble aspects of my life into a medium for reviewing, saving, and sharing. I just don’t have the time to do it all myself. If a service does these tasks for me and offers me the results I'm happy.

WWII Bombing of London and Networked biography’s implications for the study of History

At Radar Oreilly Nat Torkington links through to a map of the German rocket strikes of Greater London in WWII. Fantastic work assembling this from historical sources, interviews with people, and Google maps. This effort demonstrates the value of combining digital tools (mapping) and historical information from multiple sources.

The element of time and its constant change struck me when viewing the map. When looking at modern day satellite images of coordinates that were struck by Hitler’s V2 rockets, many of the sites are still noticeable for their lack of old trees and many are now parking lots. The results of the rocket strikes underscores, albeit starkly, a point we’ve incorporated in Ibiograph: Over time just geo coordinates provide insufficient context. Today’s parking lot a generation ago, prior to the Vengeance-2 rockets, was a family home. In addition to geo coordinates Ibiograph gathers the individual’s understanding of context (e.g., home, backyard, office)

The example of the London rocket strikes map demonstrates why we think ongoing, mass biography will revolutionize how history is recorded and interpreted.

1. More information - far richer detail and data than previously available
2. Dimension of Time - changes over time and evolution of meaning
3. Save time - historians and history buffs gain from exponential reduction in work and costs required to find and reconstruct information

More on mass biography and human history in the future as we believe this is a "big" idea related to the Ibiograph service.

Rise of the cloud agent, the next big thing

A post on readwriteweb via the New York Times touches on a “big” idea: digital agents working on behalf of individuals to accomplish tasks.

As we’ve posited before, the agent model represents one of the next big things for internetworked digital communication and services both on the Internet and using mobile phones. Using text messaging to execute commands on an individual’s behalf creates significant value. A problem arises when services proliferate each with their own centrally mandated codes. People will find it difficult to remember codes for each service. The agent that translates the individual’s meaning to other parties provides a key link in the value chain. The cloud agent concept requires a dedicated agent acting on behalf of the individual to automatically interact with these other agents to make the market work efficiently and unlock significant value.