Posts Tagged 'offline'

The Real Life Facebook LIKE Button

The Coca-Cola Village is an Israeli summer tradition.

Every year, in July-August, thousands of kids in their summer break attend ‘The Village’, a 5-day camp, organized by Coca-Cola Israel, with fun activities, pool, social games and Coca Cola drinks of course. This year, e-dologic, the interactive agency working with Coca-Cola Israel, has developed a very cool solution for connecting the offline world with the online – facebook.

The real life life button - coca-cola village

The real life life button - coca-cola village

Each kid upon entering the village received an RFID bracelet, with his/her facebook profile saved, securely, in that chip. In turn, the kid was able to ‘Like’ each activity he/she performed at the village, showing up on their facebook profile as a 15sec video, outlining the activity, which was pre-recorded.

The ‘Real life facebook like button’ was a huge success (Hebrew), with tens of thousands #LIKES, for a total of under 1,000 participants! Facebook sent over Mark Cowan, VP Operationsת Europe, to visit the village and experience ‘The Like Machine‘ first-hand, after Mark Zukerberg heard about it at Cannes Lions by Enon Landenberg, e-dologic CEO.

Update on privacy: in a related post (Hebrew) by Jonathan Klinger, it was suggested that the RFID tag stores the username and password details of each participant, thus making it easy to steal the credentials using a simple RFID reader (or in the event of lost/stolen tag). I double-checked with e-dologic the info I had: The RFID tag only stores a unique id number, worthless on its own. When a participant moves his hand near the RFID reader in the village, the on-site server (protected both physically and virtually) receives the participant location and unique id number, to match against its own DB. Every cycle (Coca-Cola Village has 5-7 cycles, each one 3 days) the DB is formatted, for security reasons. On top of that, participants pay a 15US$ fee to receive the RFID tag, refundable upon return of the tag.

The Real Life LIKE Butoon – Case Study – Coca-Cola Village:

Gmail Labs adds Lotus Notes Replication Capability

One of the many things I love about Google Reader is its Offline mode – which comes in handy especially during flights. I can read (a lot of) feeds and blogs, marking for later the things I want to tag/dogear/post/delicious. This story at Calcalist.co.il caught my eye, talking about Gmail Labs adding offline capability to the popular e-mail service. Wow.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love Gmail (much more than Yahoo! Mail), and the Labs have some cool products, BUT, two things bugs me in this story:

The first, Lotus Notes has been sporting this ‘offline’ mode since its inception, some 16 years ago. It’s called ‘Replication‘, and allows you to take everything (not just emails) offline, including composite applications, calendar, emails with attachments – and syncing with the Domino server when such a connection is available.

The second is the total disregard to Lotus Notes and Domino as a desktop email client/platform. The reporter, Dora Kishinevsky, mentions that such a feature is similar to what desktop email clients do, like Outlook. Israel is a Microsoft country, but there are other vendors, and some journalists know that.

Links:
Gmail Labs adds offline capability – Calcalist.co.il
Google unveils beta of offline Gmail option – NetworkWorld (via Ed Brill)
Gmail Labs adds a decade old Notes feature – Alan Lepofsky

Palm to big for your palm?! and Google goes offline

I Read yesterday Palm’s latest announcement, of Palm Foleo, a new appliance, which is basically a very small factor laptop, 1.3 Kg (2.5 Pound), with a 10-inch screen.
The Foleo serves as an external display, with larger keyboard, and syncs instantly with smart phones using Bluetooth technology. An update made in your smart phone will instantly appear on Foleo, and vise-versa (giving both products are in Bluetooth range). Why? because ‘sometimes you need a bigger screen’, according to Jeff Hawkins, Palm’s founder. Will that reason suffice? not sure. In my opinion Palm are taking a big (and costly) step in entering a flooded laptop market, with a product that is inferior to most others, and only advantage being its ability to ‘always sync’ to smart phones.
In an era when everyone are seeking smaller, faster, do-it-all gadgets (like Nokia N95), I’m not sure if adding a 2nd product to a person’s bag is really the correct way… Even now people are trying to minimize the amount of gadgets they carry: mobile phone already serves as a camera, email client, mp3, calendar and address book, GPS and more.. so why go against the trend? And you have to carry both products, your smartphone and the Foleo in order to enjoy the benefits they offer..
If Palm would offer their always-sync technology as a 3rd party software, that would be interesting – and an interesting way to expand your market, with current products, but new technologies.

Google goes offline
Imagine reading your rss feeds in reader, checking your Gmail and editing a Google Docs document – offline. No internet connection needed… This is cool. In an on-going trend of making software as a service (SaaS), that requires an internet connection, the next logical step is making SaaS-O (Software as a Service – offline).
Google Gears should do just that. Announced today, Gears is still in Beta and an Open Source application that allows the community to do some testing and mock-ups, while improving its abilities to accommodate their needs.
If you plan on testing this new application, pay close attention to the install instructions..




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