Petras dotmobi - Technology, science and nature in perfect harmony

Future of Mobile

Petra S — 2011-09-16T13:43:15Z

I'm attending The Future of Mobile conference in London today. Wow this is really impressive. In one day we are covering pros and cons of native apps, web/HTML5 apps, non-apps, "the cloud", sensors, plus of course dissecting Android, iOS and Windows to the death.

One of my favorite sessions was by PhoneGap, a cross-platform native app platform, running on HTML5. This _could_ be the future of mobile. Let's see what our panel on HTML5 vs native apps will come up with. I'm there later today with Dan Appelquist, Tom Hume, James Pearce and Brian LeRoux from PhoneGap.

My own session was titled "App stores, which is the right one for me?". Funny question ;) The only sensible way to address the question was to have a workshop where we would talk through the topic together with the audience. It went well, and thank you enormously if you were there to contributed.

First we watched a little video that I made with Ugur Kaner, Julien Fourgeaud, Sivakumar Karuppusamy and Josep Maria Roca, thank you guys too for starring the video. You can watch the video on Youtube.

Based on the video, we then talked through different characteristics and attributes of Apple App Store, Android Marketplace and the Windows Mobile app store. Here's what we came up with:

It's not self-explanatory, but it might give you an idea of how the audience felt about the stores.

The day still continues, and looking increasingly interesting.

Welcome to Finland, Google IV

Petra S — 2011-09-11T14:03:35Z

As reported earlier, Google is opening a server farm in Hamina, Finland. Finland is a good location for server farms, because of the cool weather, availability of sea water, safety, good infrastructure and well educated people.

Yesterday Google celebrated the inauguration, and Finns were excited about the opportunity to see how this former paper factory now looks like. Only Google didn't allow the guests to go inside, but the celebration was hosted in a marquee area in the front yard. The minister of Employment and Economy was allowed a quick visit into a couple of rooms - forbidden to take any pictures - and then escorted back outside to the circus acts and other entertainment.

Journalists interviewed a few people who start to work in the plant, but they were not allowed to say anything about their work.

Story in Finnish in Iltalehti.

Accurate identification of plant species from aerial images

Petra S — 2011-09-01T17:10:54Z

One of my cherished ideas has been to build a mobile AR application to identify mushrooms. This is the time of year again when I am spending hours in the Finnish forest picking the most delicious mushrooms one can imaging.

Mentioning this today at lunch was a good idea. I was informed of a recent Fujitsu project, where they have enhanced a normal GPS service to identify different vegetation on earth. Before, looking at the GPS images one could only see green. Now with the new Fujitsu technology, one is able to identify different kinds of trees.

Use cases for this technology are of course many - really exciting - but for me it would be another enabler in finding the best chanterelle accumulations. Anyone care to join me in developing this app?

Reindeer developed UV vision

Petra S — 2011-06-19T10:06:16Z

I usually buy Wired and science magazines when flying. It's been one of those months again, so picked up an issue of New Scientist from the airport. (Wired ran glossy pics of how nature has taken over Chernobyl, a story that I've seen in numerous papers and mags since Fukujima. Frankly I was disappointed that Wired would be late and copy a story from others so left it on the shelf this time).

New Science had a really fascinating article on "superposition, a multiverse of parallel worlds" which is too complex to cover on this Sunday morning when I'm not fully woken up yet. However, another nice piece caught my attention.

Reindeer are of course close to my heart, being almost from the arctic myself.

Since migrating to the arctic 10,000 years ago, reindeer have developed a skill to see ultraviolet light. "the frozen wastes of the Arctic reflect around 90 % if the UV light that hits them". Urine, which is a sign of a predator, or lichens, only source of food in winter, absorb UV making them appear black in contrast to the UV reflecting snow.

The researcher Glenn Jeffrey of University College in London says this is the first time we have a real handle on why a mammal uses UV light.

Go Reindeer!

Areva CEO goes

Petra S — 2011-06-19T09:43:39Z

As you may remember from my earlier postings, nuclear is not my favorite energy technology. I have covered some of the problems at the Finnish Olkiluoto plant here, here, here and here.

French Areva, who is the supplier of this infamous construction site, is now showing the door to their long time CEO Anne Lauvergeon ("Atomic Anne"). Reasons for her discharge are many, but overspending 2,6 billion euros extra on the Olkiluoto project, and its delay by more than three years are certainly listed.

According to this article, Areva will need to sell another 12 nuclear plants to cover the costs from Olkiluoto, or else the French taxpayers will.

"AREVA’s Olkiluoto nuclear reactor a total financial disaster...

... The current Finnish nuclear experience echoes the industry’s long history. Backed by French government loan guarantees, Areva, the French government-owned nuclear energy company began construction in 2005 on what is supposed to be the world’s largest and safest nuclear plant at Olkiluoto, Finland.

Plagued by thousands of construction and design problems it is currently 2 to 3 billion dollars over budget and three to four years behind schedule.

“It’s a total disaster for Areva,” Schneider says. Areva will have to sell another 12 reactors to cover the cost overruns thus far or else French taxpayers will, he said.

I don't know which is sadder, to be on the buyers side or the sellers side.

Snow experiments for artists and scientists

Petra S — 2011-02-20T17:01:00Z

This winter has been - again - one of the coldest, and with most snow in Helsinki. In December I moved back to city center, after a 3 year experiment in the countryside. I am happily free from snow-shoveling and can just observe interesting new phenomena about the town.

People have taken all kinds of nice pictures of items covered with snow, and other abnormal sights. This smiling car is familiar to the readers of Helsingin Sanomat.

One interesting phenomenon from behavior science point of view is how people behave when walkways have been narrowed down to some 30-50 cm wide paths. On some streets, this narrow area is sided from one side with a wall of snow, and the other side by traffic. In parks and other open areas the paths are stomped tight, and if you take a side step you will fall into the soft snow up to your knees. This is a great opportunity to study who is giving way to whom, and who are not giving way to anyone.

One man had had enough of this maneuvering and dug a roundabout around his neighborhood in Herttoniemi.

I also took some pictures of park benches up to their elbows in snow during my walk yesterday and today .

Then there is of course the annual Art Meets Ice ice sculpture competition in Korkeasaari, and may other snow building events.

Image credits announced in links.

A week in Stanford

Petra S — 2011-02-20T16:30:00Z

A year ago I spent a A week in Harvard as part of my (yes, still ongoing) MBA studies. In 2010 it was time to complete the second international module, this time at Stanford.

The module was built around innovation and entrepreneurship, so a most fascinating topic at the most fascinating place. We were asked to keep a learning diary from the week, so I did. I've uploaded it on Slideshare in case someone might be interested in seeing what those type of business modules include.

What is not captured in the diary is fabulous visits to vineyards, early morning runs at the Stanford park and possibly the best - and most organic - food on the planet. I just love that place.

Closing comments - sorry

Petra S — 2011-02-20T16:18:00Z

It's been a while I've had a chance to clean the blog from unwanted comments, and there are now over 3000 of them. Unfortunately the bots are winning the game, and I have to close down the comments on this blog.

I am still happy to receive your comments, and discuss through other channels. Why not find me in Twitter as PetraHelsinki, and post comments there.

Innovation Excellence

Petra S — 2010-09-16T21:19:00Z

I was invited to speak at the Innovation Excellence conference in Amsterdam. The day began on a low note, when I entered the room I was the only, yes the only, woman there. Later two more women arrived so in the end we were 3. As you might guess, everyone else was a white European, middle aged man. Hmmm...

Well, the event turned out to be interesting after initial shock. Intel's presentation was of course fascinating as always. There's a company who knows how to step outside of the box. I learned about the Innovation Value Institute , which I plan to study in more detail.

IBM was a positive surprise. It's brand image is a bit old fashioned and slow. The things they do on social networking solutions inside the company are anything but.

My own presentation was on how Nokia engages end users, developers and other externals on innovation. The audience was so wonderfully interactive and demanding that I didn't have time to present all of my material. If you're interested, it can be found here.

Moon is shrinking

Petra S — 2010-08-20T04:27:00Z

You can't trust anything these days. Extreme weather conditions, changing flora and fauna, and now this: Moon is shrinking.

From Space.com :

In all, 14 previously undetected small thrust faults – the physical markers of contraction on the lunar surface– were found to be globally distributed around the moon in thousands of photos returned by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

These fault structures – called lobate scarps – are among the youngest landforms on the moon. Their distribution across the lunar surface (as opposed to regional distribution), suggests that cooling in the moon's interior is the likely cause of the contraction, or shrinkage, said study leader Thomas Watters, a scientist with the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

"The surface is pushed together by internal forces," Watters told SPACE.com. "When it breaks, it literally thrusts material upward because the surface is contracting. That contraction, we think, is coming from internal cooling of the moon. We now know that's a global process, so it means the moon is shrinking globally – very likely because it is continuing to cool."

Tweets from Pjongjang

Petra S — 2010-08-20T04:04:00Z

North Korea has opened Twitter and YouTube accounts, and they have 185.000 subscribers to 3G mobile network. Wow. For a totally isolated nation, this is big news.

Of course all messages are fully controlled by the govenrment, no international phone calls nor free access to internet is allowed, but this is a start. I have always believed that dictatorships will fall, give them time, and that mobile technology is changing the world for better.

An interesting detail about the 3G network is that it is run jointly by the North Korean governement, and an independent German company called Korea Computer Center Europe. It's surprising to see a totalitarian communist nation partner with a western private company, and not utilizing the same knowledge available from other communist or socialist countries.

Follow North Korea in Twitter and Youtube, and read more in Huffington Post .

Turquoise is the new green

Petra S — 2010-08-15T12:07:00Z

The Greens have lost their touch. I don't know any Green party in Europe with a clear political agenda for how to prevent soon 7 billion people from consuming the globe to death, or a plan to execute such agenda for that matter.

I'm a member of the Finnish Green party since 1995, subscribing to Vihreä Lanka newspaper and getting disappointed evey friday when I open the paper. Nice articles about environmental nappies and local food recipes, but no political debate, and rarely views on science, technology or economy.

Today was a day I'm happy I've subscribed to Vihreä Lanka for the past 15 years. There was a book review on Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Discipline - An Ecopragmatic Manifesto" .

The book itself seems to be full of slogans and easy "truths", but at least it is addressing the issue: How to utilize science and technology in our efforts to save the world. A few of Brand's claims with my comments following each:

- environmental footprint of nuclear power and waste is minimal compared to oil and coal (true, but why even compare these two without looking at renewable energy sources)
- investing in research for renewable energy sources is taking too much resources because they cannot produce enough energy for the growing metropolisies (nonsense, we should invest in the technology that is most sustainable in the long run)
- nuclear waste should be stored in a way that it can be used in "microreactor utilizing Thorium" in the future (I dont't know about these microreactors, but sounds like this technology is still in too early phase to be relying on its future, and starting to store nuke waste "just in case")
- most important task is to outprice coil from the energy market (yes!)
- gene manipulated plants are not a health risk to humans (even if this is true, when spreading into the nature, gene manipulated plants will change biodiversity. Haven't we messed with Earth enough already)
- "back to nature" thinking is romantic nonsense, people's environmental footprint is smallest in big cities (probably so)
- raising food, wood, cattle and fish should be located in areas where it makes most sense (good idea, with pollution-free vessels transportation will not be a problem)

Brand introduces a new environmental movement, post-Greens a.k.a "The Turquoise". The Turquoise see and utilize potential of science and technology. Although I don't agree with most of his specific arguments, it is about time someone says the Emperor doesn't have any clothes: Green movement is not capable of driving global environmental change.

Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction

Petra S — 2010-08-10T15:37:00Z

What do you think about this? Stephen Hawking says that one way or another, the life on Earth will likely become uninhabitable for mankind in the future. We need to start seriously thinking about how we will free ourselves from the constraints of this dying planet. His proposal is to relocate to another planet.

"I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking says. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."

Read the full story here .

Solar powered airplanes

Petra S — 2010-07-28T07:46:00Z

Electric airplanes have been in the development pipeline for some time, according to wikipedia even from 1970 or earlier. These funky looking clever machines took a step forward in becoming commercialized, as a manned, solar-powered plane flew 26 hours by using only solar power as energy.

Image from Wikipedia

It is the longest and highest flight recorded by a solar-powered plane, and also the first time a manned solar powered plane has flown during night with no direct sunlight available. The plane has 12,000 solar cells arranged on its wingspan which collected enough energy to power the plane for the flight. Read full story at BBC .

Image via BBC.

Mystery hole-punch cloud formation solved

Petra S — 2010-06-21T12:40:00Z

It's nice to hear that humans are still solving some basic natural phenomena. We aren't as smart as we tend to think.

Since 1940's scientists have been wondering about the hole-punch clouds. They have suggested that the cause could be any aviation-related cause, such as acoustic shock waves produced by jets, to local warming of the air along a jet's path, to the formation of ice along jet contrails.

Image credit: Alan Sealls

Researchers in the 1980s observed that propeller aircraft could transform supercooled droplets into ice crystals, and experiments were launched in the 1990s to characterize the phenomenon.

Now, in 2010, they finally came up with the answer : water droplets at subfreezing temperatures, below about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 degrees Celsius). As air is cooled behind aircraft propellers or over jet wings, the water droplets freeze and drop toward Earth.

So each propeller airplane is a rain-maker. How cool. The next step would obviously be, how can we apply this to make rain in areas where it is badly needed.

Yey, I'm on BBC!

Petra S — 2010-06-07T17:33:00Z

I've reported before how excited I've been about crowdfunding with Kiva and Grow VC.

This is probably considered shameless self-promotion, but I have to store this link somewhere so why not here: I'm on BBC!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/10100885.stm

The good people of Grow VC - many thanks to Jouko - hinted to BBC that I could be a candidate for an interview on how I see crowdfunding initiatives. We did a phone intervew and it got published.

The only thing I regret is sending them that awful picture. I need to get some prettier pictures taken.

Making mobile work for social entrepreneurs

Petra S — 2010-06-07T17:03:00Z

I met with Stephen Wolak from Vodafone and Betavine the other week in London. Betavine is an open community, run by Vodafone R&D, where developers can create applications, learn, and discuss developer related stuff.

It ‘s also a social exchange between developers and NGO’s. They will run a workshop on June 12, titled “Making Mobile Technology work for Social Entrepreneurs “. The agenda looks pretty interesting, and even spotting some Mobile Brain Bank folks there, too.

Stepehn walked me through the Betavine initiative, massively interesting. Betavine was launched back in 2007 by Vodafone R&D with the objective to bringing web 2.0 ways of working to mobile development environment. Since then, the initiative has experienced re-births and incremental upgrades, and today is a lively co munity members, partners and other contributors. mmunity of com

From their blog post January 31, 2007:

“Inspired by the discussion around Web 2.0, Vodafone Betavine applies some of the principles of Web 2.0 to R&D in the mobile and Internet communications space, in particular, openness, collaboration and collective intelligence.

We hope that the website will become a place where developers, students and early adoptors can meet as peers to work together on new concepts and technologies in the mobile and Internet communications space. Vodafone Betavine is truly a “beta” website, we are launching with basic functionality today and seeking our users feedback and input on the future development of the site.”

I’m impressed by the variety of technologies supported in the community, ranging from Linux, Symbian to web, M2M etc.

Mobile Brain Bank is present in the upcoming Betavine Mobile Technology for Social Entrepreneurs event, taking place at the Vodafone HQ in London on June 12. Thibaut Rouffineau, a Mobile Brain Bank ambassador is speaking on behalf of his current employee WIP Jam and putting in a good word on behalf of MoBB.

Betavine also has a strong link to African developers. This is of course very interesting to us, as we are the organizers of Europe’s largest event on mobile opportunities in Africa . I hope my flyers, sent from Finland, find their way to the participants of the Betavine afternoon.

Bell Labs, Cheeky Monkeys and Viennese pizza

Petra S — 2010-06-07T16:43:00Z

Again this year I was priviledged to be invited to the New Product Development Strategies conference. We are in Vienna as last year, before that the conference was two consecutive years in Amsterdam.

Participants come from different industries, including ICT, food, chemical, FMCG, luxury brands, consumer electronics etc. etc. The one common goal we all have, is how to be able to produce products and services that take into novel innovation, customer requirements, and implement lean, agile and cost conscious product management. Not easy.

My presentation topic was “Evaluating the next level of market insights and complex research methods to match with consumer preference”. The title sounds rather ambitious, but I think I did an ok job in delivering how Nokia takes in consumers and other customers in the research and development process. I had a few cases:

- Design by Community
- Symbian Ideas
- Traffic Works
- NRC Nairobi music project
- Nokia Pilots
- Awarenet

See the whole presentation here .

I’ve found some great companies from these conferences in the past, Creax, and CSR come to mind quickly. Neither of these companies were present this time, but I did discover a new firm worth hyping: Cheeky Monkey!

Cheeky Monkey is a small UK company who productized Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) in a wonderful, compact way. Nina presented their PLM process, in a nutshell being “How to win in the market with PLM in 100 days”. Their approach looks so simple it makes you wonder why companies do it so difficult.

Check them out at www.wayofthemonkey.co.uk and www.plmmadesimple.com

The Alcatel-Lucent presentation is also worth mentioning. The speaker was not embarrassed to start his presentation with a case from the early 2000 presenting an idea collection project that went all wrong. What they did back then was initiated a contest for most new ideas, and winner got a car. Obviously this model has many flaws and they have learned since. Bell Labs in Belgium are now running series of Entrepreneurial boot camps for finding new business opportunities in 50-100 million euros. I was very impressed by the effectiveness of these boot camps and the following internal ventures, all done in a stealth mode until launch.

Now I'm off to the social evening where Cheeky Monkey will serve us some real Austrian pizza and hopefully some local beer to go. Cheers!

From London to Helsinki - on a bus

Petra S — 2010-04-28T08:34:00Z

One of the most bizarre experiences in a long time. Being stranded in London for an additional week, due to volcanic ash in the airspace leading to all European planes being kept on ground. I originally went to London on Monday, April 12th, with the intention of coming back on Thursday April 15th.

Only, during the previous night the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland had erupted, and all flights were cancelled. That started a week long period of uncertainty and anxiety. I couldn't get hold of my travel agency nor Finnair. Their phone recordings and websites were giving out information that was not useful (e.g. the text message received from Finnair: "your flight may have been affected by the volcanic ash, please follow the situation in the media"), and also guiding to contact someone else, who in turn guided to contact someone else. It felt like no one was taking responsibility, nor giving out accurate information.

A Big thanks to BA and Heathrow airport for their information tactics, good move to be active on Twitter, and to give out flight specific information.

From Thursday to Tuesday, I didn't know if I had a hotel room or not. Every morning I would wake up, call the reception who asked me to call be just before noon. Every morning I had to be alert to pack up and check out in case there wasn't a room for me in the hotel.

Finally, thanks to Nokia, no thanks to Finnair, a coach was arranged for Nokia employees from Southwood to Helsinki. For some time we didn't know which route we'd take, but no one cared.

First I had to get myself, and all the luggage from London to Southwood. That proved to work out fine, because I left early in the morning to avoid any kind of panic. In Southwood I met a room full of people from Nokia business travellers to Nokia families on holiday. We were given coffee, snacks, pillows and blankets, and guided on a bus.

From Southwood to Brussels the journey went fine. It was a bit like a class trip, with the children entertaning us with their funny jokes, people eating snacks and reading newspapers. Crossing the Eurotunnel was not too unpleasant, we drove the bus on a train car and were allowed to strech our legs on a small area inside the car.

Arriving to Calais was the first unpleasant experience. Because we were in a hurry, we only had 45 minute break. The huge mall was almost entirely closed, but we managed to find some open restaurants in the remotest corner of the maze. After I had eaten a quick pizza, I headed for restrooms and then back. But they had closed down the route where I came from, and I had to exit from another door. There I was standing in front of a huge parking building, on the opposite side of the mall to where our bus was. I was already late. In the dark and empty Calais mall parking building I ran around, trying to find our bus, nearly panicing. After some serious running I found the bus, and we could continue.

We arrived in Brussels at 1 am. Checked into a hotel, and got 3,5 hours of sleep. We took off at 6 am in the morning.

From there on it was 22 hours straight travel.

We stopped in Germany two times for 30 minutes each. You can imagine how stressful it can be, trying to get 50 people, including children, to go to bathroom, order food, eat, and buy water and snacks for the remaining journey. OUt of those 30 minute breaks about 20 minutes was queuing, and 10 minutes actual delivery. Germany also features toilets that only worked with a 50 cent coins, so if you didn't have any, there was an additional task to change coins.

There was no possibility to charge electricity to one's devices, so I kept Tweeting and filming to minimum, and working on laptop close to zero. The pics and videos that I did take are all here.

At some point, getting closer to Denmark, the bus' toilet became full. Because our drivers were bound to strict union regulation, there was not time to get it emptied, nor was there time for any additional breaks.

The 45 minute ferry from Germany to Denmark brought a nice opportunity to charge the phone and strech our legs, as from thereon it was one rapid ride. From Copenhaguen to Stockholm, we spent 8 hours, from 9 pm to 5 pm with only one break. It was on a gas station with only one toilet for women, and one for men. As we were a busload of people, it was clear that not everyone could make it in the 30 minutes we had. The drivers were all the time watching how much water we were drinking, and complaining that we drink too much.

At 5 am we arrived to Stockholm, but the ferry terminal was not yet open. We camped out in a lobby of a nearby hotel, with people running thankfully to the bathroom.

A big thanks for Nokia for arranging cabins and buffet breakfasts and lunch on the ferry from Stockholm to Turku. Having a shower and getting some food saved the trip in the end.

All in all

it was a good reminder how big Europe is, and how far away Finland is. It was nice to be able to follow how spring progresses in different areas, and what an advantages for example Denmark has over Finland when it comes to agriculture. We still have our ground frozen, and their potatoes are already 15-20 cm tall.

Another interesting remark was how much wind and solar power is used in Germany and Denmark. It feels almost ridiculous to read in the Finnish newspapers debates over the harmful noice of windmills, and lack of belief in solar power. Finns want more "studies" and "research", while others are far along implementing the new technology.

Despite this one trip being less than comfortable, I might imagine taking another bus or rail tour in Europe for fun. The advantage of seeing the world, over just seeing the sky, outweighs the time such travel takes.

One thing bothers me, still, though. Over a couple of kilometers in Denmark I saw 5-10 dead swans on fields. Does anyone have an explanation to this?

MoMoLo

Petra S — 2010-04-19T15:36:00Z

If you gotta be stranded somewhere, London isn't the worst place to be. In one week, I've been to three awesome networking events. After Mobile Brain Bank, TEDxVolcano, tonight was Mobile Monday London .

Theme of the evening was mPayment - myths and reality.

"mPayments is a topic that has had more false dawns than the dark side of the moon. There is no doubt that mobile technology promises to deliver both an appealing merchant and consumer experience, yet in the past, we've seen many mPayment companies and initiatives fall by the wayside as the promise and the reality have been light years apart.

We are hearing that things really are happening outside of the developing world and that players other than mobile operators are making good progress - so we thought it was time to look again at this area and answer some of these questions:

What is the future for mPayments outside the developing world? When will Mobile Contactless / NFC actually happen? Who is likely to make money in this sector above and beyond the network operator?

Speakers included:
- Neil Daly of the GSM Association
- Paul Makin of Consult Hyperion
- Panel chaired by David Birch, panellists John Lunn of PayPal, Chris Thomason of Seren and Ben Whitaker from Masabi, and Andrew Henderson of UK Mobile Contactless Forum

I was happy to get together with some of the same people who attended the Mobile Brain Bank event last week, plus made some valuable contacts for further planning for the Mobile opportunities in Africa event.

Some pictures uploaded here .