Archive Page 13

Nokia Apps Review – Waze (GPS)

Published May 26, 2010 mobile Closed
Tags: , , , , , ,

Location based services (LBS) are a hot topic now, owing the success to the built-in GPS chips available in every mobile smartphone sold today. In Israel, every cellular provider (4) has its own GPS application, which costs extra $$ monthly to use, and users, like myself, decided to look for alternatives [HE review].

Waze

2 years ago I came across Waze, a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. The idea is simple – waze provides the software, but the users are the driving force behind it:  the more you drive, the better it gets. Each driver shares his location and road conditions with fellow ‘wazers’, alerting them of traffic jams, police, and accidents. Twitter and Foursquare integration are also available.

Waze is available for iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry (Beta). Simply point your phone’s browser to m.waze.com or follow the instructions here. The symbian version (officially) works with Nokia E66/71/72/75 and N82/85/95/95 8GB/96/97. Personally, I know it’s been used with Nokia 5800, N86, and E52.

Waze are doing an excellent work online with their community, sporting a company blog, users-blog, forums, wiki, hall of fame users (each report is worth points), recent map updates (by location), twitter (global and Israel) and much more.

Here’s what Scobleizer had to say about Waze, in a recent visit to Israel:

Google’s Pac-Man cost the world $120,483,800

Published May 26, 2010 internet Closed
Tags: , , , , ,

Frankly, I thought the figure will be higher (HE tweet), closer to $500m. Given the amount of traffic Google receives a day, and the twitter buzz surrounding the Pac-Man homage, ‘losing’ just $120m is fine. Also, bare in mind that Friday is a non-working day in Israel, so we helped, by like $10.

Google's Pac-Man homage

Now, to the math:

On average, a user spends 4:30 minutes per day on Google.com, spread across 22 pages, give or take a page. Each search you perform is over in ~12sec (270/22). Seems like nothing, but next time you search, start the clock – 12sec is a lot of time.

On Friday, May 23rd, the average user spent an additional 36sec on Google.com, playing Pac-Man of course. Assuming Google.com has over 500 million visitors a day (Wolfram-Alpha), then the Pac-Man players  have consumed almost 4,820,000 hours of play (!), and, at a $25/hour rate = $120, 483,800 per day. Oh, and if all the Pac-Man players had Google employees’ benefits (higher hour rate of course), the cost leaps to $298,803,988.

In case you missed the homage, or just want to play (and burn more $$), Google has created a permanent page: google.com/pacman. Enjoy 🙂

Just how big is social media?

Published May 11, 2010 internet , mobile Closed
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Excellent question. The answer could have been tricky, but luckily, there’s an app for it, courtesy of Gary Hayes at Personalize Media. You can filter by Social Media, Mobile (even more interesting!) or Games, and determine the time period (now, day, week, month, year). Leave this tab open and come back in 10min. You’ll be surprised [widget not available in RSS, goto original post].

And if it wasn’t Dr. Idan’s birthday, I would have missed it.. Thanks Arad!

Scary: Facebook Privacy, Then and Now

Published May 11, 2010 internet Closed
Tags: , , , , ,

Facebook are planning to rule the world, and with almost 500 million unique visitors a month, they are heading in the right direction. In January facebook surpassed Yahoo! as the #2 site in the US, with over 133 million unique visitors. In terms of attention (time spent on site as a percentage of all time spent online), facebook.com is leading the pack, more than Google+Yahoo! combined.

Matt McKeon (IBM Research Center for Social Software) created an amazing infograph, illustrating how our personal information has been exposed to more and more people due to the changed Privacy Policy over the last 5 years. The original animation (plus methodology) is available here, also posted at All Facebook and 140.co.il [Hebrew]. To make things simple, I modified the original, showing the beginning (2005) and present time (April 2010). Over those 5 years there were 6 changes to facebook’s privacy policy, half of them (3) made in the last 8 months (!) – as seen in the original infograph, at the bottom of this post.

Facebook privacy settings, 2005 vs 2010

Facebook's default privacy settings, 2005 vs 2010

If you’re still on facebook using the default settings, now is the time to make a change. Here are couple of guides:

FastCompany (April 2010) –Time to audit your facebook privacy settings

AllFacebook.com (Dec 2009) – 10 new privacy settings every user should know

Holesinthenet.co.il (May 2010, Hebrew) – 8 tips for keeping your facebook information private

Original infograph:

Facebook's privacy settings

Conan O’Brien visits Google

Published May 9, 2010 internet Closed
Tags: , , , , , ,

Conan O’Brien has some free time, so he is doing a tour across 30 US cities, before his new TBS show kicks-off coming November. Last week he stopped by at Google, part of At Google Talks series.

« Previous Page — Next Page »



Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
Website
About

Archives

Disclaimer

This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.