Phones are the new cars

This thought actually originate from an article from "The Economist".
How much are cellphones and cars used the same way - No, I do not mean you drive a cellphone, nor make phone call through cars (even though nowadays you can do it) - what I mean is how much of a statement one can make by pulling your phone (with all the customized ring tones and etc) on a bar - isn't it the same sort of statement one would make by arriving on a specific car? For teenagers, both cars and cellphone act as symbols of independence, freedom and mobility, with unexpected social consequences.
But what does it tell us about the future of cellphones? Instead of the expected convergence, the history of the car suggests that the exact opposite may happen. More and more cellphones should look apart from each other. No one asks what the ideal shape for a car is, more and more you have developed and new niches ( SUVs, Sedan, Sport and etc ), and the same should apply to cellphones where different phones would specialized on different applications ( there always will be the RIM's Blackberry for heavy email usage, Nokia Ngage for gamming, different ones for pictures and etc ).
Within this context, small wonder then that Nokia, recruited its design chief, Frank Nuovo, from BMW.

Viral Videos

To illustrate my last post, I list hereunder a ranking of top ViralVideos, developed by AdAge:

1 OK Go
The perfect merging of the two biggest YouTube phenomena: wacky physical stunts and homemade music videos. Eight treadmills helped launch OK Go to MTV notoriety, leaving floor-based dance routines gasping for creative breath in their wake.

2 Diet Coke and Mentos
The viral hit with the best copycats, the Diet Coke-Mentos hybrid was a "Jackass" stunt the whole world could safely try. That is, until that guy tried putting them in his mouth.

3 The LonelyGirl15 series
At first, she was a beautiful young brainiac posting videos without her parents' consent. But Bree was eventually unmasked as an actress who was working with filmmakers determined to create a new way of delivering a story. With nearly 6 million views on YouTube, they found one.

4 Bank of America
Unabashed earnestness is the new irony. The only thing stranger than watching that Bank of America employee do his smirk-free Bono impression is the complete lack of humor the on-camera audience finds in the performance.

5 Faith Hill loses to Carrie Underwood at the Country Music Awards
Hill gave us a sore-loser moment more candid and over-the-top than any "Flavor of Love" castoff could muster. And we're so not buying her "playing for the camera" excuse.

6 Clay Aiken puts his hand over Kelly Ripa's mouth - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKAtKUjuAcI
Kelly's icy (homophobic?) reaction to Clay's hand-cup was bettered by a YouTuber's unearthing of a clip showing the talk-show host doing the very same thing to Regis months earlier. Hypocrisy was never more frivolous.

7 Natalie Portman's gangsta rap
It was a blatant attempt to recreate the fluke success of "Lazy Sunday," but "SNL" pulled it off anyway, allowing the pixie-ish star to unleash her inner Eminem. The result was funnier than anything else the show aired this year.

8 Smirnoff's
This video featured the P-Unit boys keepin' it real and rapping about living the preppie life in New England. What made this viral different? Real actors in a real commercial made by real agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

9 Must Love Jaws
One of the better mash-ups of movie trailers. Mike Dow and Ari Eisner recast the Steve Spielberg classic that made you afraid to go into the water as a romantic comedy in which love comes to the surface. Complete with bouncy pop songs.

10 Kelly's Shoes
"Let me borrow that top, betch!"The viral market's quirkiest new star was "Kelly," aka Boston-based comedian Liam Sullivan, who coined catchphrases with his "Kids in the Hall"-esque series of music videos on everything from shoes to text-message breakups (take that, K-Fed!).

Web 2.0 equilibrium

After TIME named "YOU" as the person of the year, the debate about WEB2.0 re emerged. But the tone is now different - everyone agrees Web2.0 is here to stay - the discussion lie on what its identity and if it has reached maturity.

The Web2.0 concept is that internet has become a platform that enables every user to run applications on the web(instead of desktops)and as a consequence, data became a driving force. Internet turned once again democratic (like in the early years, when mostly everything was shared freely). The line that defines users and consumers no longer exist - as an example on any given social network, the content provider is the user himself (same applies to Blogs and etc).

But as happened with the "traditional" internet, the early success of the WEB2.0 attracted players that are not users themselves (the original content providers) and their entrance into this environment promoted some changes on the original Web2.0 concept.

The core change is that content isn't created solely by users. It is very interesting to compare the original Google social community "Orkut" (where all the content is user generated), with the more recently created "Joga.com" (where Nike plays a great part on content), or even, simply to remember the early days of MySpace (pre-"News Corp." acquisition).

Even with this change, content is still simply a commodity (biggest illustration is the RSS feeds), and even not being user-generated, it is still user-controlled (as the concept shifted from "publishing" to "participating"). Taking YouTube as an example, it evolved from a platform for user created videos, to a platform where users edit and pick videos created by the traditional suppliers: TV show clips, Sports best moments and even traditional 30 second spots (which ironically, internet was suppose to kill anyway).

As Web2.0 appears to be reaching the equilibrium, both content suppliers (allying with platform suppliers) and users (now also "editor" and "contributors" ) seemed to find their place on this environment.

Exhibitionism and Voyeurism on the Pre and Post Web World

Acts and concern about confidentiality was widely accepted and considered normal on the Pre Web World... but this no longer applies. The web has released the exhibitionism and voyeurism present within everyone's soul. There is no longer room (nor desire) for hiding nor discretion. Orkut, My Space, YouTube and others, have fed this ever present feeling of exposure. But what has developed this need to communicate?
The early internet days was filled with chat rooms full of made believe people acting, pretending and sharing fake pictures. The creation of this virtual reality led people to release themselves ( as what was being exposed was actually their alter-egos, while their intimacy was still kept protected from the outer world).
Nevertheless a generation was raised with the notion of acceptance of exposition, and was just a matter of time for them to feel compelled to post (on the web) intimacies that were before seldom shared even with best friends. Personal journals, photo albums, pen-friends were rapidly replaced by their public counter parts ( blogs, photo-blogs, scrapbooks ).
This massive lack of inhibition generates an unimaginable amount of changes in our culture, on how we are defined and who we are. The simple concept of sharing leads to a stronger sense of community and acceptance which is much needed in today's world.

Zeitgeist - Part III - some graphs

zeit·geist - Part II

if one wonders about the power of this tool, , here it is an year to date summary of the most searched terms ( It's very clear what each one of them refers to ):
Top Searched:1.bebo; 2.myspace; 3.world cup
Top News: 1.paris hilton; 2.orlando bloom; 3.cancer
Who is...: 1.borat; 2.hezbollah; 3.EU
How to...: 1.refinance; 2.wiki; 3.drift
Where is...: 1.togo; 2.matt; 3.torino; 4.darfur

For more info, I am posting Zeitgeist on the link session of the blog

Google circa 1960 - How would it look like?

zeit·geist- German noun from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit)

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

Zeitgeist is a service provided by Google, where it ranks the most searched for terms on a given period of time. But what can we learn from it? According to the author John Battelle a lot.

On his thesis "The database of intentions" I quote: ".. the aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result... this information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture..."

Browsing through the available data, one can definitely understand what he is referring to. Like reading an old newspaper, by opening historical data, it becomes clear what was fashionable (or not) in any period of time

This is an issue that I definitely plan to re visit, as it fascinates me tremendously and I do believe that is still a lot to be learned about and from it.

For now, I am posting the link of this service and wishing everyone to visit, explore and conclude how much these simple rankings define who we are

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist_monthly.html

Sports and society

As I've previously mentioned, I am still not sure what this blog's focus will be, so I will continue to feed it with different thoughts and perspectives...

During my trips I always try to interact and learn the most about local culture, and one key activity is to attend to a sports event (specially soccer games). There, one can learn about local food, education, family interaction and etc... but one thing that always intrigue me is a thought originally coined by Franklin Foer: How much the soccer leagues around the world resembles the American society, and how much the American leagues resembles the European society.
At first, I did not get exactly what he meant by that, but taking a dive into it:
While in Soccer Leagues, any team can reach the top - it may be a 3rd division team, and through a windfall or by simply putting together a group of good players, in 2 years can be national or even world champions - compare it to the US social mobility usually labeled as "American dream". In American leagues to be a "1st division team" one needs "to buy in" - not sports' performance based - this can be compared to the European elitism (ex: the titles system still existent in Europe).
On the other hand in American Leagues once you join this "elite", does not matter how poorly you perform, there is no relegation, quite the opposite, the league provides you with tools for recovery ( better draft position and etc ) - this representing the European social responsibility - while in Soccer leagues, a few mistakes and a bad season, does not only means relegation, but possibly the end of legacies built across generations - which could not better illustrate the social careless of United States

Communicating through cars

Cars, for a while, are much more than means of transportation, its a way of one defining oneself. As Flavio Ferrari, wrote on his blog "Cafe Arguta" - "A imported car has more functions and potential that one will use during one's life" - Nevertheless, they continue to be replaced frequently. It's commonly believed that picking the car you drive is a statement. And this statement resonates much louder during certain life periods ( youth, midlife crisis etc ).
Many may claim that then Cars is more a mean of communication than of transportation - if faced by the the objective, the statement is correct. But cars not necessarily define who someone is, but who one would like to be.

First post...

First post... As I am still not sure what this blog will be about ( I am not even sure which language to use), I will keep it simple and write about the reason of creating it - the need to communicate.
Not only my personal need to communicate, but also the understanding of this need.

"To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking."
William James