Back Seat Marketers » Innovation

Smart enough

cory — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:09:41 +0000

In the last couple of months, there have been a number of newly launched Internet capable products. What is interesting to me is that many of these products are able to connect to you anywhere. But what the ex-Apple people have done with nest.com is offer a product that is more than connected to you. It learns from you.

Apple’s new TV is rumored to have voice recognition from Siri. What will make this TV cool is not voice recognition, but the ability to know what the person is saying contextually.

The end benefits are easy to describe, but hard to deliver consistently or reliably.

I am heading to CES and will use this blog as a set of notes around interesting ideas and my notes.

Siri Blogging

cory — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:10:52 +0000

Today I set up my iPhone 4S which includes a voice recognition component to a keyboard. My goal for this entry is to use only my voice to provide a blog post of my ideas.

While I think this is a little bit clunky, I do have to admit that the ability to be able to post my ideas at the speed at which I talk as opposed to the speed at which I type is a transformational activity.

I once blog that I felt that Apple was moving down the road of being able to use voice recognition for something more powerful than Multi-Touch.

That time has come.

What if Publishers Went All Digital

cory — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:54:56 +0000

Now that we’re getting all hyped up on the age of digital, we should start to wonder whether news media are more brands that are the mark of quality than exclusively the creator of content. While starting to use my new cool iPad, I am beginning the migration process from print to digital. This new device is the beginning of the end of the constraints of the publishing deadline and all things that go with it, including the vertical integration that was required by the legacy industry.

Makes me think of the value of media brands and not the value of the print medium they are delivered on. In the consumer goods arena, companies can license a name with almost no knowledge of the fact to an end consumer. Can publishers begin the process of licensing brands to lend credibility to new arenas? The NY Times front page, available in your home town? Probably a better produced front page than what is made today. Not possible? With digital editing and delivery, it sure is. In fact, news sources could aggregate and charge for the brands and content additions that you want, like cable. My Netvibes feed does this to a degree, but the delivery is still Yahoo homepage 2004.

Why pay, when it is all free? Because no industry survives on free and most stubbornly find a way to get back to normal profits over time. If the telecom industry can do it, anyone can.

Is New Better? Innovation Poll Says Maybe

cory — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:55:22 +0000

From the NYT Bits. The IIIP posted results from its world review of consumer perception on “innovation confidence” that future advancements will improve quality of life. The results, not surprisingly, showed that developing countries like UAE and India see continued value from further use of innovation while many areas of the EU and the US are less inclined to see the same value.

While at a conference a few years ago, I was introduced to the idea of “over-innovating”. While competition forces incremental improvements, a line gets crossed between improving for the user’s sake, and beating out the most recent introduction. Over time, these advancements cost more than they’re worth allowing disrupting players to come in with new business models and value propositions, typically based on completely different feature sets) pushing the leader out (=Honda/Toyota’s hybrid/efficiency v. GM/Ford’s SUV’s).