Mark Cuban: The Facebook IPO is the most important IPO to hit the stock market in …..forever. Not because of its size in dollars. Not because of the gap up it may experience in its first day of trading. ...
My take: One word... Ouch! 
From OpenSignalMaps - The many faces of a little green robot...Fragmentation matters to the entire Android community: users, developers, OEMs, brands & networks. It's a blessing and a curse. Over 3,997 different devices were spotted using OpenSignalMaps for Android.
My take: Well known issue for developers, lots of good numbers.Over 3,997 different devices were spotted using OpenSignalMaps for Android. 
From CNET: Verizon customers should expect to pay more for Fios and their wireless service, as the company looks for ways to increase revenue to justify its spending on its infrastructure. Verizon CEO Fran Shammo announced on Wednesday that the company will discontinue existing unlimited data plans when users move to the carrier's faster 4G LTE network, pushing current 3G subscribers toward data share plans expected to launch later this summer.
My take: Verizon is the first, but won't be the last... 
Conculsion: Nowadays, everyone has a smartphone or can get one, regardless of education or financial standing. And with a smartphone in hand, access to education – be it a text message from a caregiver, friend or family member or a link to a healthy living website – is greatly enhanced. One doesn’t need a high school or college diploma to engage in healthy behaviors, if the tools are there and easily accessible. Forum post over at My-Symbian.com lists 101 reason why Windows Phone 7.5 does not cut it...
My take: WinPhone 7.5 as executed in the Lumia 900 is a great competitor for my iPhone 4... That's not the iPhone 4s, but my 18 month old phone. Sorry Microsoft, this just does not cut it.
WinPhone 8 might be a better improvement when it comes out late 2012 or early 2013, but by then it will have to compete with iOS 6 and Android Jellybean (I think that's the name of the next version).
It appears that WinPhone will be at least a year behind Apple and Google for a generation or two. Too bad for Nokia. From Mobile Industry Review... IBM has released their research into the future for mobile operators, and they are screwed. Headline: 92% of customers don't plan on increasing their spending over the next 2 or 3 years.
What it means: Consumer expectations are that they will move to data, and use less voice minutes and SMS. Moving from the high margin products to the low margin products. 
Two of the biggest trends in technology innovation are converging. One of these forces is “big data,” the ever-increasing capabilities of computers and analytic software to move from gigabytes to terabytes, petabytes, and beyond. The other is “big biology,” which encompasses a breathtaking array of fundamental breakthroughs in DNA sequencing, molecular diagnostics, genome biology, proteomics, and other “omics” technologies. 
In a blog post, Greeley speculated that the decline signals the “End of the Great Seed Experiment” and the beginning of a correction that will see the disappearance of many angel-funded “me too” companies. With venture firms apparently shifting their money toward later-stage investments that are more likely to bring their limited partners some liquidity, there’s unlikely to be much succor in the coming year for the hundreds of startups that will, sooner or later, exhaust their seed money and go out in search of real Series A investments.
Comments: Fortune had an article projecting that Angels are getting very interested in Crowdfunding. If Angels are moving to the "latest" funding source, because other funds are drying up, then early stage companies are in deep trouble. 
Hedgeable will have the only platform that will charge nothing for companies to list, nothing for buyers to buy, and will make no money on transactions, regardless of how SEC defines the role of similar platforms, beginning in 2013.
My take: With nine months to go before launch, the price war seems about to begin. This is what the Internet was all about, frictionless transactions and lower prices. 
It will take another eight years for cash and credit cards to be replaced almost completely by smartphones, according to those interviewed by Pew Research.
My take: A lot of people agree with me (Ahh! the wisdom of crowds). The key to taking payments away from plastic and onto the mobile phone is the merchant terminals. And, Visa's new requirements mean that terminals won't be swapped out for years. Could crowd-funding work for entrepreneurs who need capital for their private startup and are willing to sell a stake in it to the masses? Congress seems to think so.
My take: Tell me something I don't already know topic: QS, mHealth Fitbit’s newest device, called the Fitbit Ultra, is a wireless-enabled, fitness and calorie tracking device small enough to clip on to the user’s clothing. Fitbit leverages an internal motion detector to track the wearer’s movement, sleep, and calorie burn during both the day and night. Fitbit provides users with metrics like: steps taken, miles traveled, calories burned, calories consumed, bedtime, time to fall asleep, number of times awoken, total time in bed, and actual time sleeping.
My take: Coming up, securing your health information |
Google collaborated with advertising research company Nielsen to conduct a series of new cross-media studies for television.
Bottom Line: Adults choose the web over television, and YouTube ads are more efficient than cable ads 
If Facebook’s future is mobile, then it may not be enough for it to merely secure a piece of the mobile ad market. It will need to have an outsized impact on the industry. 
Tomi puts together the numbers... Bottom line, Samsung and Apple account for 56% of smartphones sold. By platform, Android is 56%, iOS comes in second at 24% with BBOS a distant third at 8%. Windows (WP and WM account for less than 2%) 
Verizon phones won't work outside the US... First, there are few LTE networks built outside the U.S. But the main reason is that Verizon's LTE network and devices are not compatible with any other wireless carrier's network because the spectrum frequency and the specifications developed for its sliver of wireless spectrum is different from any other carrier in the world. A Skeptical Optimist's Look at Facebook... David Evans takes a look at Facebook. His take, "There are reasons to be skeptical that Facebook will be able to capitalize on the tremendous assets it has developed. But as I’ve just noted that’s not because it doesn’t have its game together in mobile or because there isn’t a lot of commerce occurring in Facebook-land."
My Take: Facebook is an advertising platform, first last and always. Remember, if you cannot identify the product, you are the product. The problem with this is that there is only so many $$'s available to ad platforms. And, perhaps more importantly, ad platforms don't get a 100 P/E (see Yahoo, and the nation's newspapers).
Facebook stock will come down in about six months, when the employee shares can be sold and shares flood the market. 
A thought-provoking research note from the team at Strand Consult: People who believe that Google is currently the biggest threat to mobile operators... "Facebook is currently changing the way over 800 million people communicate on a daily basis. The biggest difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook is a communication tool that people use to keep in touch with their family and friends every day." (h/t Mobile Industry Review) The real challenge with home health monitoring. In far too many cases I’ve seen mHealth apps that are trying to monitor too much data. Sure, I think it’s great to be ambitious and I think it’s even better to collect as much data as we can. Long term I think that patient collected healthcare data is going to be essential to providing great healthcare. Although, in the short term if we want to break most physicians into Home Health Monitoring, then I think we need to be a little less ambitious and more targeted. Interesting article on the lack of a good answer for home monitoring. Worst case study, a small group provided with the Intel Health Guide base station had a 3x higher mortality rate...
Things that make you go hmmm... 
To me, there are two big questions for this burgeoning boom: 2. What is going to differentiate the platforms? Maybe there will simply be so much volume that more will be merrier, but there will need to be incentives for startups to pick one system over another.
My answers... There are plenty of ways to police fraud. Yes, some fraud will always get through, but this is a war between the good guys and the bad guys.
Differentiation... It has already started. Service and Price. 
"With massive amounts of wellbeing and contextual data now being collected, systems are needed that make sense of this data for people and allow them to focus on what is significant to their lives without a large amount of effort. With Health Mashups our participants could gain these insights, combining data that is automatically collected as they live their lives. We believe these types of insights have the power to raise awareness about situations that lead to poor life choices, resulting in positive changes in behavior and ultimately happier, healthier lives." “The similarities between modern EMRs and the BBS system are striking. Like many old Bulletin Board Systems the vast majority of EMR systems do not communicate with each other (nor even the outside world). Not only are they often incapable of communicating with another EMR or computer but even in 2012 most new EMRs don’t even have an option for sharing information with other systems! This is one of the biggest paradoxes and failures of almost all EMRs. Designed for an industry where the sharing of medical information among different facilities and health care providers is critical to the timely, effective, and safe delivery of medical care, the majority of these systems are designed to share information only within the limited confines of the specific facility or health care system that they serve. 
Topics: mHealth, EMR, security Researchers working at Purdue University and Princeton University have developed a proof-of-concept device, called MedMon, that blocks hackers from hijacking or interfering with wireless medical devices, like pacemakers, insulin pumps, or brain implants. The researchers were motivated to work on the problem after discovering how easy it was for hackers to break into current wireless medical systems.
My take: unfortunately, this will become a bigger issue over the next several years. |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|
Next |
