Category Archives: Mobility

Another Episode of “WHAT IF…” this BIZ meets that Tech

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The idea for the “What If…” Business and Technology series for me, comes directly out of Marvel comics.  The comics ranged from “fictional” battles or plots that were so abstract yet tangent that it was nearly impossible to happen other than in a “one-off”, alternate reality, comic book in the Marvel Universe.   On the same premise, I will spin several stories that will most likely not happen in the “real world”, but we will bring them to light.

Apple Adopts the Palm OS Business Model

Apple spins off its mobile hardware business and focuses on the iOS operating system.  The mobile OS business unit, in theory, will have a robust and direct focus to drive revenue to their area.  We may see partnerships that would have never developed if these units are continued to be tied together.  Mobile iOS on OEM, 3rd party devices?   Multiboot mobile hardware for Android, Linux, and Mac iOS out of the box.  Competing and evolving lines, between the iOS tablets. How about mobile hardware from Motorola, Nokia, or Blackberry using iOS?

Allow Customers to Buy Gasoline as Units at Current Price on Loyalty Debit Cards

A legitimate reason IS NEEDED why in this day and age of commodities trading, storage, pipelines, trains, tankers, and trucks, why if I can buy stocks at current market value, or go on Ebay and buy 50 yards of antique bobbed wire at an auction, why can’t I go to a gas station and buy 50 UNITS of gas at the current price of gas that day? Upon return to the same brand gas station, I should be able to use my same loyalty debit card and subtract units of gas from the card, instead of the current price of gas that day.

EVs “in the field” Use Existing Home Energy Provider, with Transportation Charges Applied

Similar logic can be applied to Electric, and EVs but with a twist, incorporating the use of your home “energy provider”, and when charging ‘on the go’, only pay local “line usage/distribution” fees.

Full Article Here

Fundraising Using Public WiFi, and an UL/DL MB Meter Reading

What if commercial, public WiFi Hotspots partnered with a fundraising cause, and every MB exchanged (up and/or down), a donation of N cents would go to a charity-sponsored by you with Paypal. The business providing the WiFi would match the donation.

Greece Prosperity / Tourism: The World will Come See You in Augmented Reality (AR)

While perusing through all of the ruins, looking at the sites, watching the tour groups, and the tour guides explaining these empty ruins, I pondered, wouldn’t it be amazing to see the people of ancient times dressed in their clothing of the times, interacting with each other through the ruins as though the tourists were not even there. In effect, acting out scenes that perhaps took place thousands of years ago, echoes of the past. I thought why wouldn’t for starters, the government pays the people of the Arts and Sciences to go through scenes, such as basic interactions with a Librarian, studying in one corner, ignoring the world, and just reading and thinking, and in another corner of this library, there might be a quiet debate going on, in Greek of course, and through a translation application, any foreigner could hear their native language the interactions. It could be ancient commoners, to known ancient people of the past acting out scenes like echoes of the past, while tours just come up close and personal, pass by, even wave their hand in front of an actors hand, and he continues to act as if the tourists were not even there. All of these Greek actors would be prerecorded and play out in Augmented Reality (AR).

Full Article Here

 Tune in next time for more “What If…” episodes.

iPhone Notifications Need an Upgrade

Color Coded Notification Cards

I have a swarm of notifications from many sources, and yes, the header source name and icon does help differentiate between notification sources, but it’s relatively tiny, and I have the 8+. Developers and/or User Settings should allow for the color-coding of the header, and the body of the notification cards by App Name, or App Category (“Gaming”)

Notification Transitions – Active and Passive

When the iPhone screen is in passive (sleep) mode or the screen is active, the ability to transition the notification in and out could be fun, such as when using PowerPoint slide transitions.

Notifications List by Source – Filter + Sort Order

I’m constantly scrolling through my notifications for specific Notification sources’ updates. It would be great if the user can sort Notifications not just by the latest updates. Maybe allow alphabetical sort order. Or, allow the user to Filter by only the notifications they need at the moment, instead of being lost in a sea of notifications. For example, allow the user to Filter the notification list by specific app notifications.

Level Up Social Media with Microsoft Power Automate

Create Automated Workflows with Microsoft Power Automate

I’ve been using this powerful workflow automation platform since it was called Microsoft Flow, and was free for low volume usage. Essentially, users can pick any sources of data, create triggers, transform data to a multitude of target systems, and notify through a multitude of opportunities, such as eMail and push notifications. The platform is boundless through “Connectors” to just about any 3rd party platforms from SalesForce to an Oracle database. The basic plan after the free trial is 15 USD per month.

Connectors and Templates: Ready, Set, Go

1st, define your connectors, such as your Google Email account connection details, and your Twitter account information. 2nd, select from one of the many “out of the box” predefined templates, such as from the “Social Media” category.

MSFT Power Automate Templates
MSFT Power Automate Templates

Twitter Use Cases – Configure In Minutes

Once you’ve signed up for the Power Automate SaaS platform, you can start creating workflows in minutes. At first I used the “Templates”, but it is much easier to create workflows from scratch. Here are a few opportunities foe getting started

Retweet based on Tweet Search Criteria

  • Define what tweets you would like to retweet using query search criteria of words, a combination of hashtags, phrases with simple AND and OR logic.
  • Optionally, add a condition before performing an action within the workflow. In this case, we can allow the retweet only if the retweet count is greater than N retweets.
  • Select the returned Tweet ID to perform the “Retweet” action
  • Optionally, add notifications, such as emailing yourself each time you retweet and include elements of the tweet within your Email, such as the tweet text, tweet user ID, or a dozen of other tweet elements.

Catalog Tweets when they meet your Tweet Criteria

  • Define what tweets you would like to store in your “data” repository.
  • Select from one of a multitude of data targets ranging from Excel spreadsheets, Google Sheets, SQL Server, Oracle Database, and dozens of other repositories.
  • Based on the data target, perform the mapping of available tweet elements to the data target fields, such as a database, table, and fields.

And Beyond

Microsoft Power Automate can do automated workflows beyond the social media capabilities highlighted here. I have a wish list of “Triggers” and “Actions” not yet supported by the platform. I’d like to have the same “Trigger” criteria we have with Twitter extended to LinkedIn, and trigger LinkedIn posts based on query criteria, extract, and load into en external data source.

Going Solo – Gig to Gig

Having the Stamina to Last…

Going the consulting path, on your own, is no small feat. Do you have what it takes to persist, survive, and thrive?

  • Army of One – Not only do you need to perform your CONSULTANCY role, but you also have to be bookkeeper, sales and marketing, looking for new opportunities.
  • The Gap Between Gigs – To all recruiters and hiring managers – it’s not a bad thing to have gaps in a candidate’s resume. Its the way of life in our gig economy. We are constantly hunting for just the right opportunity in a sea of hundreds or thousands of candidates per role.
  • Keeping Up With Market Trends – Online learning platforms such as Pluralsight, keep their content fresh, relevant, and in line with your career path.
  • Networking, Networking, Networking – at every opportunity, build your network of contacts and keep them in the know

Free Nights and Weekends Makes a Comeback

Remember when you could make free mobile calls after 9:30 PM weeknights, and all weekend? For awhile the mobile carriers competed on the time when “off-peak” started, from 10 PM to 8:30 PM. A whole hour and a half! These days we have unlimited domestic calling all the time.

So, now we have varying degrees of data plans, such as AT&T Wireless 3 GB, 9 GB, or unlimited per month, but there are caps where after 22 GB data transfer speeds are slowed down.  22 gigs seem like a lot until you have kids using Snapchat and TikTok.

When you think about it, data peak is when you may not be in a hot spot. At night, you’re at home using your own WiFi, or at an establishment with their complimentary WiFi. Weekends and weekdays are a bit scattered. Your work may have WiFi, but weekdays “on peak” are mostly commuting times, the “rush hour(s)”,

Can wireless carriers bring back on and off-peak for data?  The simplest approach:  “turn off the meter” during off-peak data periods.  Maybe on-peak the consumer can elect 5G, when available, and off-peak at 4G LTE? Our Smartphones can identify low consuming bandwidth opportunities, e.g. when the phone is locked, text messages without graphics and email are semi-passive states. Maybe users are able to prioritize their apps data usage? What about those “chatty” apps that you rarely use? Smartphone settings may show you those apps bandwidth consumption as opportunities to prioritize them lower than your priority apps.

Skeptic, and think there are no Peak or Off-Peak periods with data?  Check the business analytics.  I’m sure wireless carriers have a depth of understanding for their own business intelligence (BI).

As your Digital Assistant, Siri Will Answer Incoming Calls

Voice mail is so LAST Century. It’s a static communications interface to address your incoming phone calls. It’s a dinosaur in terms of communications protocol. Yes, a digital assistant, or chat bots should “field” your incoming calls, providing your callers a higher level of service.

Business or Personal?

Why not both? There are use cases which highlight the value of a Digital Assistant answering your phone calls when you’re unavailable.

Trusted Friends and Business Pins

Level of available services may change based upon the level of trusted access, such as:

  • Friends Seeking Your Availability for a Hockey Game Next Week
  • Business Partners Sharing Information access such as invoices

Untrusted Caller Access

  • The Vetting of Unsolicited Calls, such as robocalls

Defining and Default Dialogs

Users can define dialogs through drop and drag workflow diagram tools making it easy to “build” conversations / dialogs flows. In addition, out of the box flows can provide administrators with opportunities and discover the ways in which AI digital assistant may be leveraged.

Canned / Default dialog templates to handle the most common dialogs / workflows will empower users to the implement rapidly.

Any Acquisitions in the Pipeline?

Are the big names in the Digital Assistant space looking to partner or acquire tools that can easily transform workflows to be leveraged by digital assistant?

  • IBM’s Conversations – chatbot dialog definition tool
  • Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions

APIs available on Mobile OS SDKs?

Are the components available for third party product companies to extend the Mobile OS capabilities as of now? Or are the mobile OS companies the only ones in a possession of performing these upgrades?

Slack & Flickr Founder Stewart Butterfield Interviews with NPR

Excellent, Well Told “Rags to Riches” Interview with the Founder of Slack, Stewart Butterfield

In the early 2000s, Stewart Butterfield tried to build a weird, massively multiplayer online game, but the venture failed.

Instead, he and his co-founders used the technology they had developed to create the photo-sharing site Flickr.

After Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in 2005, Butterfield went back to the online game idea, only to fail again.

But the office messaging platform Slack rose from the ashes of that second failure — a company which, today, is valued at over $5 billion.

Click through to the Audio Recording of the Interview.

Source: Slack & Flickr: Stewart Butterfield : NPR

Akamai Cuts 5 Percent of Workforce as Q4 tops expectations | ZDNet

The company is cutting workers primarily in its media division as it aims to improve margins.

The media division, Akamai’s unit that speeds up Web pages (including Video streaming), saw fourth quarter revenue fall 3 percent.

Source: Akamai cuts 5 percent of workforce as Q4 tops expectations | ZDNet

Suprised?

Based on the conditions of the markets, i.e. the dissolution of Net Neutrality, companies like Akamai are primed to present attractive solutions to a bandwidth constrained market.  Akamai historically has been a market leader in this space, along with Amazon’s CloudFront solution.  So, I take pause by these actions, although on the surface Akamai has market dominance in this growth area, are there other potential impeding factors:

  • Akamai’s business operating plan needs to be retooled to compete with ever-increasing competitors into space once dominated.
  • Projected (i.e. inside information) regarding FCC regulations that will put Akamai at a market disadvantage.  Lobbyists!