Phweet Escalates Calls into Conferences

No one has measured the numbers of teams that work together virtually, but some estimate there are more than 1.89 billion workers worldwide. While Gartner Dataquest has claimed that almost 41 million employees worldwide will be teleworkers by the end of 2008 (working at least one day a week from home), Wainhouse Research believes that the numbers of distributed and mobile workers far exceed that number. Furthermore, the total number of distributed workers, including teleworkers, could reach as much as 100 million worldwide, Wainhouse suggests.

In principle, Phweet, a new application based on Twitter, might ulimately help all those distributed workers communicate. A Phweet begins as a person-to-person call, but Phweets are meant to be social and so any Phweet can be instantly transformed into a multi-party conference call.

When you Phweet someone, you can decide to make it “private” (sent with a Twitter “direct message”). In that case, you can still add people to the call, but only people you explicitly invite to the call can join in (and they must be following you on Twitter).

Otherwise, a Phweet is sent using the public twitter stream (with a message such as “@phweet http://phweet.com/Gyfc India PhweetUp at 3 pm today. Join by clicking url.”) and in this case anybody that sees that URL can click the link and request to join.

The “host” then can approve that user and let them into the Phweet. In other words, the Phweet URL can be sent to anyone, using any means available, it doesn’t have to be sent only via Twitter. Skype chat and RSS feeds can be the notification vehicles.

One objective of a Phweet is to make the path from tweeting to talking quick and easy. 

People Underestimate Email Intensity

In a study last year, Dr. Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email, so people who check their email every five minutes waste 8.5 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before, reports Suw Charman-Anderson, a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Dr. Jackson found that people tend to respond to email as it arrives, taking an average of only one minute and 44 seconds to act upon a new email notification. About 70 percent of alerts got a reaction within six seconds, arguably a faster reaction that occurs when a phone rings, sings or buzzes.

Likewise, a July 2006 study by ClearContext found that 56 percent of users spent more than two hours a day in their inbox.

The other thing is that what people say, and what they do, often are different. And that seems to be true about the frequency of interaction with email systems. About 64 percent of respondents in the Jackson study claimed to check their email once an hour while 35 percent said they checked every 15 minutes, but they were actually checking it much more frequently, about every five minutes, in fact. So it is likely that respondents underestimate the amount of disruption email causes. 

Add Twitter posts, instant messaging, text messaging and other forms of IP-mediated communications, and things will get worse. "Presence" might help, but only possibly. Unified communications providers need to pay more attention to "overload," not "missing a message."

LEOS: Here We Go Again

Google has agreed to back a satellite broadband access service in Africa, Asia and South America

within 45 degrees of the equator or half the world’s surface, CommsDay reports. Google is working with  HSBC and Liberty Global and O3b Networks to construct and operate a fleet of 16 low-Earth-orbit satellites. Service activation is scheduled for late 2010. 

The project aims to offer low latency Internet backhaul for 3G and WiMAX deployments, as well as satellite-based broadband services.

It isn't the first time lots of capital has been thrown at the idea of LEOS systems. Teledesic proposed just such a system in 1990. Teledesic's original proposal aimed to build a huge network costing over $9 billion and using 840 active satellites. In 1997 the scheme was scaled back to 288 active satellites was later scaled back further.

The commercial failure of the similar Iridium and Globalstar ventures (composed of 66 and 48 operational satellites, respectively) and other systems, along with bankruptcy protection filings, were primary factors in halting the project.

The satellites will offer speeds of up to 10Gbps with a combined total capacity of the constellation in excess of 160Gbps, the company says. The system will cover Asia, Africa and South American countries located within 45 degrees of the equator.

The three initial partners have injected an initial investment of $65 million into O3b. The total costs of the project is expected to sum up to $750 million. 

The difference this time around is that backhaul is a bigger market than in was in 1990. That, more than direct-to-user services, might be the key to success, this time around.

Google Antitrust Action Coming?

It looks increasingly likely to some observers that Google is about to get a taste of the antitrust scrutiny Microsoft has had to deal with. The Justice Department probably is going to bring an antitrust suit against Google, experts are beginning to say. The Wall Street Journal has reported that DOJ has hired renowned antitrust lawyer Sanford M. Litvack to take a closer look at Yahoo's deal to outsource search to Google.

Welcome to Microsoft's world. 

Millennials Drive Parental Purchases

Millennials (16-27 year olds) in Europe and the Middle East have huge influence on buying of broadband and TV services purchased by their parents, even when the Millennials do not live at home with their parents, a survey conducted by Motorola indicates. The majority of respondents stated that they influence the broadband (83 percent) or TV services (84 percent) purchased by their parents, even if they do not live at home.

The new study of over 1,200 Millennials from five countries in Europe and the Middle East also found that young adults are passionate about being in control of their rich media content and are heavily influencing older generations. So while it is important to understand and meet the needs of Millennials as the future drivers of demand, it is worthwhile to remember that Millennials also drive current buying.

About 66 percent would be interested in pausing TV in one room and restarting it in another. This compares to 86 percent of respondents in the United States when Motorola surveyed U.S. respondents earlier this year. And though lots of attention now is directed at delivering high-quality video using the Internet and then displaying that content on a TV, almost one in three (32 percent) prefer to watch programs on their PC rather than TV set.

Significant numbers of respondents want to be able to access full-length movies and their favorite shows using a mobile device, possibly by side loading. About 81 percent of respondents indicated strong interest in having the ability to move content from a set-top at home to a mobile device.

About 75 percent indicate that watching movies while travelling also is appealing. But there is an apparent appetite for shorter items as well. About 62 percent would be interested in watching 15-minute mobile versions of 30-minute TV programs and 61 percent would be interested in three-minute versions of their favorite shows on their mobile devices.

“Technology is the lifeblood of this generation. Millennials feel that their personal lifestyle would change dramatically without internet access. It is not surprising therefore to see their influence on technology purchasing for the home,” said Joe Cozzolino, corporate vice president and general manager, Motorola Home & Networks Mobility EMEA. "By understanding the needs and desires of this generation, Motorola is able to design and customize solutions for our customers that enable them to deliver rich media experiences to today’s and tomorrow’s consumer.”

Some 63 percent of respondents acknowlede that their demands and expectations for rich media experiences are higher than those of their parents, partcularly in the area of interacting with what is on the screen:

Over half of those surveyed would like to be able to interact with their TV and accessing information about the content they are watching. About 68 percent would be interested in learning about and possibly purchasing items featured in TV shows, with the highest appetite coming from the UAE where 81 percent of the sample expressed interest in doing so.

High-definition TV is popular throughout all markets surveyed, especially in Germany and the UAE with 53 percent and 58 percent saying they "love" HD content

About 43 percent of respondents have an HDTV set; the United Kingdom having the greatest market penetration with 54 percent owning an HDTV set. Of the 57 percent of total respondents who do not presently have an HDTV set, only a quarter said they did not want to get one.

DVRs: Consumers Really Love Them

More than 80 percent of U.S. digital video recorder users surveyed by Consumer Analysis Group say they could not live without their DVRs. Respondents also said that DVRs were the second-most-indispensable item of household technology, behind only the mobile phone.

The number of DVR households in the United States will pass 30 million in 2008 and climb to 48 million in 2012, says Consumer Analysis Group. At that point more than 40 percent of U.S. households will have a DVR.

The average DVR owner surveyed watched 4.7 hours of television per day, over one hour per day more than the 3.7 hours viewed by adults surveyed in June 2008 by The Media Audit, says eMarketer. 

DVR user TV viewing generally rose with age. Respondents under 30 watched an average of 3.7 hours daily, while middle-aged TV viewers had the TV on for as long as 5.4 hours, eMarketer notes.

U.S. Broadband Will Break 90% This Year, Among Internet Users

At current growth rates, broadband penetration among active U.S. Internet users should break 90 percent by the end of 2008, predicts Leichtman Research. Overall, broadband penetration is 57 percent of U.S. households, but was well over 80 percent of Internet users at the beginning of the year.