At Last.fm, we enjoy being mad scientists, playing with data and infographics — stay tuned for more in the visualization department!
via Last.fm – the Blog · Mad Science + Awesome! = New playground apps.
snip of last.fm tube tags visualisation for alter
The “Tube Tags” map snipped above is a visualisation of alter’s listening habits, using music tags and related artists as this fictional Tube main lines and stops, and changes as lines directions (so e.g. as I was listening more of Mozart the corresponding classical music brown line goes up or “North”, and the same for the yellow “Folk” line as more of Stefano Miele was scrobbled).
The link above from Last.fm official blog has more on the topic — in short, the team has beefed up the service “playground” area with some new visualisations, available only to subscribers but visible to everyone.
I like the idea very much, even though no practical implication is evident at the moment — or maybe exactly for this reason. This is also really on the same lines that were discussed in Vertigo, a conceptual design and exploratory research work on which I have been active over the last few months (in Vertigo the scope was larger than music and included movies, pictures, linear media in general).
I am fascinated by the idea that visualisations can be informative and entertaining at the same time. It’s a blend of functional and aesthetic (or edonistic) values that to me is badly needed in the digital space, where they are often separated (so that you might have applications or services that are either overtly functional or overtly easthetic-driven, or let’s say dominated by formal technological and media experimentation — not a bad thing as such of course! in both instances).
See here below another example, a collage of top artists pictures (again, alter’s view).
Verizon Wireless came up with a series of announcements geared to new revenue streams in the emerging world of the mobile cloud and open web services. As well as its M2M venture with Qualcomm, it hosted its first developer conference, showing off the Vcast application store and throwing open the doors to its traditionally tightly guarded network. “Our future success is no longer in the walled garden,” Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam told the developers gathered in Silicon Valley.
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“It’s a new day [in wireless],” McAdam said in his keynote and webcast to developers. “Our success is tied to you.” He stressed the advantages that carriers stores – as opposed to those from device or software makers like Apple, Microsoft and Google – bring to programmers, notably access to mobile subscribers and their personal data and preferences, plus a familiar billing platform. Like Vodafone, the US cellco is creating open APIs to allow developers to hook into Verizon’s billing system, to support one-click purchasing, and into other subscriber platforms within the network, such as location-based services, presence, and messaging.
via Vcast store finally destroys walled garden at Verizon – Rethink Wireless.
Having just posted about Vodafone Live! death, I couldn’t resist to quote again from Rethink Wireless on another “walled garden” happy end. So, now it’s “carriers stores” time. They are expected to offer some concrete advantages over the leading Apple Store and other followers, in terms of telecom-specific features (if I got it right, the money for the developer would be the same 70%). On a personal note: the Live! news brought me back to MobiLife business modelling times; this one to the SPICE business modelling work, with smart people at IBBT, NTNU, Telenor, Telecom Italia and Telefonica.
Drawing explicitly from UCG intended as User Generated Content, the idea of UGS-User Generated Services put more emphasis on the role of the user as the one being able to create and manage services; in other words, this is about offering users appropriate (i.e. easy to use, enjoyable etc.) technical means not only to produce, publish and share content, but services as well. Among others, the SPICE project (where we at Neos are partner) supports the workshop on UGS to be held in Madrid next July on the initiative of the OPUCE project.
The full program is already available (see it on Scribd) and attendance is free to registered participants.
As part of the SPICE project, successfully completed an initial socio-economic analysis on the potential impact of the technologies reseearched and developed in that same project (in short, a mobile service creation and execution platform, with a set of context-awareness, service roaming and content delivery distinctive capabilities).
I conducted the study combining the results of a project internal workshop (held in Budapest with participants from Telenor and NTNU) and an external online video and email-based questionnaire addressed to experts in the field.
I managed the workshop as a structured brainstorming, eliciting feedback in discussion rounds based on a review of the key usage scenarios; then I analyzed the results extracting pros, cons and mixed reactions.
The questionnaire consisted in a simple set of open questions related to four short videos made available online; I selected a number of academics and research manager with relevant expertise from various locations (Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Israel, among others) and got them to provide their comments.
The task was part of the revised business modelling analysis, coordinated by NTNU and conducted in cooperation with VUB (Brussels), Telenor, Telefonica and Telecom Italia; it has been also my last major effort in Spice, in which I have been working right since the kick-off in Paris, in January 2006 (and before that a bit at the proposal stage too).
