jeudi 2 décembre 2010

Green PDF!

The Non-Governmental Organization WWF has created the first Green file format for documents. The extension of this file inhertis of the name of the organization itself: .wwf. The file fomat is meant to replace traditional pdf, to make documents unprintable and thus Green! so it is the responsability of the creator of the document to make it unprintable. the slogan of the campaign is very creative: Save as wwf, Save a Tree. Please spread the word!

dimanche 28 novembre 2010

Monitor your presence on internet!

Nowadays,  it's getting almost impossible to control our identities on the internet. I thought about a simple way, that helps us monitoring what is being known about us. The idea is simple: create a Google Alerts on you name as a keyword. For those who doesn't know, this service of Google sends you a mail each time a new website on the internet mentions your desired keyword. Bad luck for you if you have a popular name, because it wont be efficient. We can go beyond with this kind of intelligence, by setting up keywords on a special professional subject of interest, or even a company to follow its news...
Achraf

dimanche 21 novembre 2010

Mobil-Inn a new innovative SME(PME) in Lannion

Mobil-Inn is a new small business in Lannion, France, presented by its founder Frederic Jeanne, as a mobile development enterprise.
Frederic is a former Alten employee, he has more than 15 years of experience in software architecture in the telecom industry.
Frederic's concept is is based on the fact that smartphone market is growing very fast, and its share is increasing among mobile devices, so why don't we use smartphones to replace old fashioned boxes with dedicated functionality? a simple app on a smartphone can make use of the several capacities of the device (geolocalization, communication, orientation, sound...) to provide a similar functionality to a traditional box.
The first ready product of Mobil-Inn is Avenguard. Avenguard is a solution to protect isolated workers. In fact in France, the law defines isolated workers and requires that they can be able to ask for help at any moment when something bad happens to them. The current solutions for this are expensive dedicated boxes, which are hardly customizable to the needs of a specific company:



Avengard is a solution on smartphone, on Android in its first version, which allows an isolated worker to use his mobile to inform about his problem. In the basic free version, Avenguard sends an SMS to a prefigured contact upon a fast movement (worker falling), long time immobility (worker lost conscious) or an intentional click of a big button on the screen in case the worker feels threatened. The SMS includes the name of the worker, a preconfigured message and his GPS coordinates. In its Pro paid version, avenguard back end system initiates a call to the preconfigured contact, interacts with the callee using the latest IVR technologies to inform him about the worker and then puts him in contact with him. You can test the demo version in the android market here.



Mobil-Inn is in its very first steps of creation, searching for its form, its economical model, its financing, market studies, partners..
Frederic still has a lot of innovative ideas in this field, and he has the necessary experience and dedication for succeeding in his project.
Fore more information, you can check Mobil-Inn's website: http://www.mobil-inn.com/, or contact Frederic directly on this email: frederic.jeanne@mobil-inn.com

Achraf

dimanche 14 novembre 2010

Social Networks & Next Generations

I am a young person that belongs to the first generations that created an account on Facebook or so. Recently I was looking at the pictures of an old friend from university; so she got married, and got a wonderful kiddo.Then, I had flash questions about the impact of social networks on the identity of next generations, and on their social behavior. I will illustrate my thoughts by imagining my self the recently born son of my friend, but in the Future.

So I get 14 years old, and my parents allow me to use the internet. Since all of my school buddies have a Facebook profile, it will be the first think to do. Then I add my parents since luckily Facebook suggests this :). The surprise is here: I just discover the whole history of my parents and myself.

What will be my reactions when i discover all of the history of my parents? will we still have the need for those intimate moments of father and son where he tells him special stories from his past to teach him a life lesson? what if in this history there was some bad pictures? and don't tell me that you can control everything on Facebook, because you can't. So how will my father will teach me the wrong from bad, if I saw on his profile a picture of him doing the opposite?

Now consider me finding pictures of me since they gave me the first bath, till the day i had my first music concert in the school... At the first site I'll like that, but afterwards I am pretty sure that it will annoy me.

We can imagine a lot and really a lot of awkward maybe funny situations for the next coming generations. I am eager to see how will social relations will be affected in our new future by social networks. The next video is a nice video depicting the whole life of a man through Facebook. Gladly,  I am not the only one asking himself such questions.


lundi 8 novembre 2010

Divergent Thinking

Convergent Thinking is the traditional way of reasoning, taught at early stages in schools. In front of a problem, we consider the first common solutions that cross our mind, then after eliminating by logic one by one, we stop when find the first solution that answers the problem.
At the opposite side to Convergent Thinking, Divergent Thinking focuses on the early stages of considering a problem. First, the problem by itself is thought of in different ways. Then we take all of our time brainstorming all ideas and possible solutions, even if they don't seem feasible or rational at the first site. The more your ideas are numerous, different, unconventional, the more you are thinking in a divergent way. After this phase, we use Convergent thinking and common logical sense to solve the problem.
Divergent thinking is the engine of creativity. As Einstein used to say : "Imagination is more important than knowledge". His divergent thinking led him to the discovery of the general relativity theory. In his approach to light, he imagined himself riding a beam of light, and asked himself what would happen in this case? studies show that divergent thinking is very important within the young people, and disappears progressively with age in the current educational system. The greatest men in our history were those who had developed this ability to think divergently. This can't but remind me of the famous story of the danish physicist Niels Bohr, in which the teacher had asked him in the exam to find a way to measure the height of a building using a barometer. In one of his answers, Niels suggested to give the barometer to the guarder of the building if he tells him the height of it. In another answer, he proposes to throw the barometer from the top of the building and by measuring the time it took it to fall, one can calculate the height of the building. At the end he gave more than 7 amazing answers for a stupid known problem. The full story can be read here.
Divergent thinking can be exercised by different way: Brainstorming deeply and noting all ideas, Keeping a journal that becomes a creative source of ideas, Freewriting in an unconscious stream way, and finally Mind Mapping, a technique I exposed previously in one of my post.

An interesting article on the subject can be found here, and for deeper readings, you can check the books of the American psychologist Joy Paul Guilford.

dimanche 7 novembre 2010

The world according to Google - comic

Inspired by XKCD comics, I realized this one. The idea is to search for a sentence in Google with different words. For example, we take the sentence "Thank you " and then search for "Thank you god", "Thank you Mom"... and in each time we note the number of results in the search. This normally indicates how many times it occurred on the internet. Finally we plot the results on a graph. Amazing results no? notice the position of God in the world of Google!!!



lundi 1 novembre 2010

Social answering machine

A few days ago I was in a music class and I was messing with my smartphone. Then suddenly I had this idea: What about an application that updates the message on my answering machine just like a status on a social network? for example in my case in the music class i would have started this application on my phone, then written “I am in the music class” in the status field, then updated the status. If someone calls me and he gets my answering machine, he will hear “I am in the music class”.
As a geek, I thought about the technical aspects of the idea, and i figured out a way to do it. First, you must redirect your incoming calls when you do not respond, to a fixed number. For example, with Orange in France all you have to do is dial: **61* redirection number #. You should own the redirection number, on which you install an interactive voice server (IVR), Asterisk for instance. The VXML script of the IVR must do the following: read for the redirected caller the message text file (e.g.: msg.txt containing the string “I am in the music class”), then save his voice message if he leaves one in an audio file. We will suppose that this is a simple answering machine, so afterwards it sends the voice message to me as a mail, and notify me by SMS for example using the Orange SMS API or other APIs. On the same machine, we install a web server with a simple servlet that changes the msg.txt file upon an authenticated web request. Lets suppose that the request is according to the following form:
www.mydomain.com/servlet/setMessage?msg=I%20am%20in%20the%20music%20class
The server side is done, all we need now is a simple client application on the smartphone. On the application UI, I write my new status, and click on update. the application sends an HTTP request to our webserver with the new status in parameter to update the answering machine message.
We can add complexity the idea by integrating the traditional answering machine services, like calling back to hear the message, or we can have several customized statuses according to the calling number (SFR offers a similar service: SFR Repondeur+). Social extensions maybe thought of, like synchronisation with Facebook or others.

Would you appreciate such an option in you answering machine if it existed in you offer?

Achraf

vendredi 3 septembre 2010

Luther King speaking about IMS Comic

I ran into this slide in one of the IMS presentations created by Alcatel Lucent University. The idea is original, it illustrates the hopes built on IMS in all of its beginnings. Till this day, IMS is getting more and more deployed worldwide, but still, it is far from the dream that "Luther" had.

jeudi 26 août 2010

Android in 3 days

Android OS for mobile phones is gaining market shares in an exponential rhythm : 1.8% in the second quarter of 2009 to 17.2% one year later, thus making it the third worldwide popular mobile OS just behind Symbian and RIM  (Source: Gartner).Android changed the landscape of the mobile ecosystem: HTC doubled his shares by taking the risk of massively investing on android, a platform leveraged by the APIs of Google almighty, app store, open source, active developpers community..
Personally, i was seduced by the OS and im using android on HTC legend. Im quite happy with the richness of its interface and its functionalities.But i think Google still have alot to do on its performance, clearly android have inherited the sins of Java.
So now all telcos are investing on android, and there is more and more demand on development of applications on this platform. In this context i had to discover the platform, and it took me three days to understand it and develop my first application on it. this is Mainly due to:
1 - Google provides freely a very easy to install environment: Android SDK (Emulators, platforms..) and an Eclipse plugin (ADT) that gives you all the necessary tools to develop, debug, test, deploy...
2 - Google provides tons of documentations, and plenty of well explained samples.
3 - Android is based on Java, and it is somehow inspired of some J2ME concepts. (comparison)

In the following i will explain rapidly main concepts of android, and than use them to explain my application.
An android application is composed of one or many of the following elements:


View
UI elements that form the basic building blocks of a user interface: e.g. Buttons, Images…
Activity
A user interface concept, It represents a single screen. The design of the Activity is separated of the programming logic in an XML file.
Intent
Intention to do some work: Broadcast a message, Start a service, Launch an activity, Display a web page, Dial a phone number
Content Provider
A standard mechanism for applications to share data
Service
Background processes that can be local services or remote services
Broadcast receivers
A component that receive and react to broadcast announcements: time zone has changed, that the battery is low, that a picture has been taken…
AndroidManifest.xml
Lists app’s activities and services along with application permissions

For deeper understanding of the fundamentals of android click here.
My application is a fake call simulator. it is a widget, that once it is clicked, it launches a Calling similar screen after 7 seconds and play the default ringtone of the phone. the user accepts the fake call, so an In Call screen shows up. Very useful to find an excuse to runaway from someone :)
Here are the screens of the application:


So in the AndroidManifest.xml i declared the followinf entities:
1 - FCWidget.Java: defines the behavior and design of the widget
2 - FCService.Java: the service that waits 7s and launches the fake call
3 - CallingActivity.Java: defines the first screen of the application
4 - InCallActivity.Java: defines the second screen of the application

When the widget is clicked, it start the service. After 7 seconds, the service creates and intent to launch the Calling Activity screen. Once created, the activity plays the default ringing ringtone. Clicking on the answer image button will stop the ringtone and create an intent to launch the InCall Activity. finally the End Call image button will end up the application. you can download and try the application here: Fake_Call.apk

Bref, i think android is a promising platform, many telcos are adopting it in their offers, especially that they can customize it, and a key benefit of developping products on this plateform, is the fast time to market (TTM) (i developped on iPhone, i know what im saying :D)

Achraf

jeudi 19 août 2010

Alternative Marketing examples in Telecom industry

Although it's not easy to find a clear definition of alternative marketing, most sources put in this category of marketing all the techniques that doesn't come from traditional, intrusive and boring marketing.
The main idea of alternative marketing is advertising through extremely innovative and attractive concepts, that seduce the consumer and push him to come himself to the brand asking for information, even to spread the word and create a buzz about it.
Alternative marketing include many branches such as buzz marketing, street marketing, guerrilla marketing, ambush marketing, undercover marketing...
I am not intending to analyze alternative marketing, i will just give real examples in the telecom industry.

The first exemple is the usage of the roman telco Romtelecom to advertise for his VOD offer and the for the opening of a new store (august 2010):




Sony Ericsson advertises for his new mobile Xperia X10 Mini using a Mini Parade concept (july 2010):




also to announce the roll out of their mobiles Aino and Satio with their Hoppers invasion (november 2009):



Blackberry captures the passengers' attention in Paris through its biggest "Blackberry device", on which they displayed messages sent by the passengers through facebook and Blackberry messenger (may 2010):



And finally Nokia, to promote their Ovi navigation application, they installed a huge crane in London carrying a giant signpost in the form of an arrow. The passengers send an sms to the signpost including a destination, so the arrow changes its orientation into the direction of the destination while displaying the message and the estimated distance (january 2010):



I will probably try to analyze more deeply alternative marketing in one of my upcoming posts.

Achraf

vendredi 9 juillet 2010

SFR’s Click To Call: Integration in Facebook

During 4 months, one thousand clients of the french telco SFR volunteered to test a beta version of their application “Click To Call SFR”. The purpose of the application is to offer to SFR mobile clients who have a facebook account a C2C service from their facebook page. a typical use case is the following: Bob is my friend on facebook, so i navigate to his profile, and i click on the C2C box to initiate a Web2Phone communication with him. the main idea of the application is to offer a way to an SFR mobile client to be called without giving out his phone number.

 SFR has understood the potential of social networks to increase the ARPU and thus their revenue. Last year,I had the chance to work with them on their RCS application “Mon repretoire Live”, when they wanted to enrich it by social networks’ functionalities. Voxalot is a VoIP application provider who proposes also a C2C application on facebook.

Since I am an SFR client, i tested the application on facebook. The quality of the communication is not very good, but that depends on a lot of factors, especially the Internet connection of the caller. The ergonomy is to improve, and they have to negotiate with facebook how to be implemented in the profile page. because as it is, it wont be discovered easily by facebook users. it should be placed for example in the contact information. When someone calls you, your phone rings, but you cannot figure out who is calling! this is a major drawback, but its not easy to be resolved using the actual technology (IMS as a solution ?? :) ). Security problems also must be fully examined, as you dont wish to be called by a Internet bot!! An advantage of this application is the possibility of make easy low cost international calls (SFR competes then with low cost VoIP providers?). Finally i ask this question: is facebook the adapted social network for this feature? in facebook we might have a lot of contacts, but we dont wish that everybody just call us! unless we can set the privacy of the application in facebook. I think professional social networks are the ideal potential for the C2C application.

We have to wait to see if SFR will commercialize this application, and in under what offer?

Achraf

vendredi 2 juillet 2010

Mind Mapping (& a Resume Example)

Mind Mapping is a technique for representing ideas in a hierarchical way around a central point. This technique was made popular by the British psychologist Tony Buzan in the 70s. According to Tony, it is a way to represent ideas as they really exist in the human mind.
The concept of mind mapping is creating hierarchical branches out of ideas. For example we start by the main idea “music”, than we create several branches: “instruments”, “style”.. Then we break the “instruments” branch into “piano”, “clarinet”…
The most important rule is to use only keywords, and use colors for main branches. Images for representing ideas are also recommended. Tony says that taking notes using one color is mono – tone, equivalent to monotone, which mean boring and the brain will be sleeping. You can find many software on the net to help you create such mappings, but I think using paper increases the efficiency of the method, although using software you can have a lot of cool functionalities, like adding multimedia content, check-out boxes, links...
Great uses of mind mapping are taking notes, preparing a speech, a presentation, brainstorming, creating a summary, preparing a debate, representing complex hierarchical data… Although I think it is made for personal use, but you can always adapt it to be used as a collaborative and communication tool. Bref, I think it is a very useful, but not the only, tool for everybody.
A very helpful usage I found is for creating a book’s summary. It allows to better memorize the book’s content, and to faster access certain information in your head. In this usage, each chapter will be represented by a branch, and it is recommended to try to redraw the mind map once you finish reading the book, to anchor once for all its ideas.
I will finally expose my first usage of mind mapping with an evaluation version of Mind Manager 8.0 to create my resume. I found it a funny idea to try, but interestingly it made me discover more the keywords associated to my profile. How would a recruiter or an HR would appreciate such a version?! :)

mercredi 16 juin 2010

Content Aware Video Encoding

It’s a thought I had since a few years, but recently I was inspired again by the Football World Cup going on in South Africa, so I decided to write about it.
The purpose is to improve video encoding in order to reduce network congestion by unicast/multicast video streams when diffusing a common broadcast show like a football game. The idea is to encode the video stream while considering what we already know about its content. In fact since we already know a lot of information about the specific content, for example the football field will be green!, we can try to use this information in the coding process, so we can somehow decrease the "entropy" of the stream and thus increase the compression of the video, and saving this way more bandwidth.

I can give many examples in the case of the football game:

1 - Decrease bits used to represent the green field, but conserving the quality of bits representing white strips on the field.
2 - Decrease bits used to represent the fans in the stadium, if the view is distant!
3 - Encode positions of players
4 - Focus on THE BALL!
5 - Players uniforms are the same for each team, use this information!!!

In fact essential information for watcher must be highly encoded, other information in a lower quality.

This kind of encoding would be possible for other kind of broadcast shows, for example a politician speech, where the background doesn't move, and is not important! this way each kind of broadcast show can have its own encoder. I called this Content Aware Video Encoding (CAVE, sexy name no? :) ).

I don't know how technically can this be implemented, but its worth studying to see how much we can reduce bandwidth using these kind of algorithms. A major criteria for adopting a possible CAVE encoder is the quality of the video, and the complexity of the algorithm. A drawback of CAVE is the need of alot of encoders for different shows. This might be critical on low resources devices such as mobile telephones.