Cdr Blog

Location and context-aware applications are a very hot topic.

Google has just launched the Gears Geolocation API for mobile and desktop browsers. The API can determine your location using nearby cell-towers or GPS for your mobile device or your computer’s IP address for your laptop. Google provides this service for free to both developers and users. The news on Techcrunch.

Yahoo has launched Fire Eagle, a geo-location platform. Fire Eagle allows allows developers to include positional data in their applications with a minimal amount of work. Fire Eagle allows users to send their positional data to any partner service from a supported device or website.  The news on Techcrunch, and on Fortune.

The Future of Management is the latest great book of Gary Hamel (visiting professor of strategic and international management at the London Business School).

According to Hamel, there are various forms of innovation and those forms can be thought as a hierarchy, where higher tiers denote higher levels of value creations and management innovation comes out on top.

The innovation stack:

• management innovation
• strategic innovation
• product/service innovation
• operational innovation

Management innovation is defined as anything that substancially alters the way in which the work of management is carried out, or significantly modifies customary organizational forms, and, by so doing, advances organizational goals. Put simply, management innovation changes the way managers do what they do, and does so in a way that enhances organizational performance.

The author presents several examples of organizations that have succeeded by adopting management innovation. Overall, a very interesting book.

Curious about how Google ranks web pages?

Then read the post Technologies behind Google ranking by  Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

Hidden flaws in strategy is a well written article by Charles Roxburgh in the McKinsey Quartely. The article lists some of the reasons of why do top managers, steeped in theories of good business strategy, still make bad decisions.

The hidden flaws in strategy:

• overconfidence
• mental accounting
• status quo bias
• anchoring
• the sunk cost effect
• herding instinct
• misestimating future hedonic states
• false consensus

In the herding section, there is one nice citation of Warren Buffet. In one of his famous letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway (annual report 1984), he writes:

Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.

From the Financial Times:

“Silvio Berlusconi has been in power in Italy for almost 50 days. Watching his new government in action is a bit like sitting down to view a bad old movie again.”

click here to read the full article

Today Nokia has announced the acquisition of Symbian. Nokia has also created the Symbian foundation that will provide a royalty free license to its members. Carriers Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo and AT&T, as well as Samsung and LG Electronics are becoming members.

Symbian is the operating system in the Nokia S60 smartphones and in some Sony Erricsson and Samsung devices, just to cite some.
Symbian is currently the world’s dominant smartphone operating system.

The problem with Symbian was that it constituted only the operating system and mobile phone manufacturers had created different UI platforms on top of it. Nokia for example has the S60 platform and Sony Erricsson has the UIQ platform on top of Symbian. The result is that different platforms are not compatible with each other.

The acquisition have the benefit to unite the several different software platforms under a standard platform.In fact, this is the most important message from the Nokia press: “Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS(TM), S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform.”

The news in the press:

• Nokia to Acquire and Open Source Symbian (Slashdot)
  
• Nokia Acquires Symbian - Goes Open Source (TechCrunch)
• Symbian Mobile Platform To Become Free, Rivaling Android & iPhone (Search Engine Land)
• Nokia to take full control of Symbian (Financial Times)
• Nokia in full buy-out of Symbian (BBC news)

Clayton M. Christensen and et al. have published a paper in IEEE Spectrum on how the semiconductor industry can successfully apply the concept of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to improve the production efficiency.

The New Economics of Semiconductor Manufacturing, By Clayton M. Christensen, Steven King, Matt Verlinden, and Woodward Yang

The TPS was first described in 1999 by Steve Spear and Kent Bowen in the Harvard Business Review article “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System“.

Google Chief Economist Hal Varian (author with Carl Shapiro of the important book
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy) has a post on the Official Google Blog on “How auctions set ad prices“.

A must read if you want to understand how the advertising business model works at Google.

Interesting videos on the science of communication and persuasion.

Check the videos available on the FRONTLINE website the “PERSUADERS“.

In one of the video is featured Frank I. Lunt, author of Words that work, and inspired source of the Republican party. For a liberal counterpoint to Luntz, check out George Lakoff’s work, especially his book Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.

The iPhone 3G is out. Apple sells it as twice as fast half the price. Indeed, it looks pretty cool.

Some interesting related news:

• The NYT writes that New iPhone Pricing Model Is a Step Backward for Consumers since by subsidizing the cost of the new iPhone and locking customers into a two-year contract, AT&T is returning to a more traditional U.S. pricing model for cellphones.
• Apple has replaced .Mac with MobileMe. There is also an open source implementation, Funanbol that does many of the same things.
• From the NYT, Take That, Google: No Ads From Apple. Apple is showing new ways for the iPhone to check news, sports and e-mail. But it appears to be willing to ask users to pay fees to do so rather than subsidizing content and services with advertising.