Multimodality approaches. Old approach.

Yesterday, reading the DevCentral newsletter (the AT&T newsletter for developers) and talking about multimodal interaction (multimodality), in plain words, using voice to command the mobile browser :-), they talked about 2 options: Fat and thin clients (On Device Clients).

• FAT CLIENT was a mobile application including ASR (speech recognition capabilities) and TTS (text to speech).

• THIN CLIENT was a mobile application able to encode/decode the voice to send to remote server where IVR resourcer are based.

In both alternative to get multimodal solutions, you face the same problem, only powerful smartphones have the resources to run those clients (symbian, windows mobile and possible iPhone and Blackberry) but with difficult compatibility from handset to handset.
Additionally, if you want to get connected with multimodal capability with several CRM (m-banking, m-ticketing, etc) you do not want to install so many application. And a lot of people prefer mid tier devices with good browser but not so "open" to create thin or fat clients.

In our opinion, these restrictions reduce the "potential market" of multimodal enabled mobility solutions or m-CRM offers. Why not using native mid-tier handser capabilities as browser and the voice and data simoultaneus offered in 3G and class A GSM/GPRS/EDGE handsets.
Stay tunned, tomorrow we will unveiling our approach not needed fat or thin client :-)
juan

NTT: one of the biggest IMS & PoC deployment so far

Over the last years NTT has deployed more than 30 million of PoC handsets in its advanced 3G FOMA network. The service was launched as "PushTalk" in late 2005. Now, 30 million handsets is a small fraction of the market but a significant number compared to the tiny deployments made so far.

Service relies on NEC IMS core, technical details are not clear, but we can safely bet this is the biggest mobile IMS deployment so far. PoC or PTT are terms not mentioned by NTT, perhaps they are using a proprietary, IMS-based, protocol.

The basic service includes group calls up to 5 participants, for larger groups an additional service must be contracted (PushTalk Plus), aimed at enterprises. Service is billed per push (0,03€ per push) and there is a flat rate (Kake-Hodai) service for 6,45€ per month.
PushTalk Plus service, including group calls up to 20 members, is 12,9€ per month.

And a very interesting detail: Service is activated by default in every handset for every subscriber. I don't know the reason for that, but one very important consequence: you needn't to know in advance if the person you want to call has the service or not: everybody "is in the service". And the person receiving the call will probably answer back. This scheme encourages service spreading from a small number of knowledgeable users to the rest. From my point of view, this is much better than waiting for the subscribers to ask for activation, or trying to communicate with other subscribers only to find that they are not subscribed.

Japan is a very innovative market, we are looking forward to reading some data about service usage, would that be a test of things to come?

web2.0 interacting with Solaiemes team is easy !

We encourage our readers, clients, partners, to follow up our communication channels (website, blog, twitter) and even make the next step, a real interaction, commenting our posts or twits, recommending our channles, linking us when posting about a relevant matter for you, your personal or corporate blogs.
We think mutual feedback is important to improve, and the web 2.0 tools make really easy and quick to provide feedback, ask questions to get a very quick answer, etc.

Currently we have the next averages:

1-2 monthly updates of the website (PR or new product/demo)
2-3 blog monthly posts
1-2 daily twits

We want to double our communication averages with answers, required posts, open questions to other technologyst or "connected people". Please, help us :-) recommended step, follow us at twitter, we will announcing there new post, PR, new products and day by day activities.

We also welcome initiatives as
http://mundotwitter.blogspot.com/

a initiative to register a Twitter Brand Index for spanish companies, by Marc Cortés, the promoter. Thanks Marc for adding us :-)

Innovation Directors, a needed real role for telcos and big companies

Hi, after some posts talking about Solaiemes news or technology we post today about innovation deployment. As entrepreneurs creating new technologies able to deliver innovative use cases for telcos, banks, media companies we are discouraging from the unclear entry-door to explain our products/services.
Carriers and huge companies operating mature markets, fully competitive, have little space for ARPU increases other than new services people consider good to pay for them.
A lot of good ideas come generally from little start-ups, and all the big companies make some marketing movements about how they promote the ecosystem, but sadly, often, basically this actions are only for press relase purposes and not pursue a real collaboration and deployment of innovation.
Most of innovation managers in big companies are not managing budget, and their task is basically prospection but with no capability (even their efforts to scalate opportunities). At the other hand, some innovation directors with direct budget responsability are executives promoted to that position because it was the "director" position vacancy and not because they are interested in innovation. The last one, with more conservative aproach likely will spend de budget buying reports to market research analyst and paying a lot of money to a big consultancy company to make some kind of innovation that it is not their real focus.
In a lot of international events as GSMA mobile congresses (MWC, Asia Mobile) panelists from carriers talk a lot about promoting ecosystem but they have no time to visit start-up booths. Please, the success of your companies depends of innovation difficult to be created internally or coming from big suppliers, looking what we are doing is helping yourselves to improve your business.
Hope head-hunter leader firms will be helping to recruit former entrepreneurs, understanding from the other side, how innovation could be placed in a fast track inside large company in a win-win scheme helping ecosystem to grow faster.
Fortunately, we detect some exceptions is some media company or banks with innovating style people managing the innovation functions but carriers should improve :-)

Push to Talk. Good news, Instantcom offering PTT offered as ASP

We welcome the initiative of Instantcom launching a push to talk service as SaaS. Carriers did not push forward very powerful services as PTT due to concerns about circuit switch voice cannibalization and a lot of possible services man-machine oir man-to-serveral could not become feasible.
The service is offered with monthly fee plus the amount of data accoring to the data price of mobile/dsl carriers. Even paying twice (service provider and data traffic provider) it turns positive as roaming is enabled, and you can use the service with other carrier customers.
As Solaiemes is launching their new product line based on PoC added value solutions the concern about carrier service availability disappeared :-)
Hope big companies, banks, media companies, will replace carriers pushing services if carriers are not interested.

New! Solaiemes Communication SaaS

Finally, after conducting appliance based trials of our LIVESERVE technology converging media from mobile to Web 2.0, a new provisioning tool allows the capacity sharing, and start commercialization of our technology as SaaS model in parallel with the appliance model.

With this new approach, online media, web 2.0 communities, third party integrators will have an affordable way to include ubiquos live video in their solutions.
The platforms provideds html embbeds to include in the customer public sites or private web bases productivity solutions (as ERP, CRM) in a very simple way, each embed could be linked with media associated from 1 to n different handsets or resources. Several applications becoming feasible:

• Web TV
• online media live feeds from outdoors
• VideoBlogging / Video personal live broadcasting
• Video Surveillance
• VideoReporting ERP (gardening, maintenance, building tasks documentation)
• Interactive Voice and Video Response (IVVR)

Media Sources include:

• 3G handsets with videoshare feature ( Nokia N Series, 6120, 6110, and others)
• 3G videocall capable (upon request, needs a videogateway platform and ISDN conections)
  
• Webcams
  
• fix IP cameras
• and specific clients developed on demand in case of targetting other devices with no videoshare feature (windows mobile, iPhone, etc).

See exemples of integration with public site as blogger.com and enterprise propietary solution.




Additional brochure (spanish versión) -> brochure
And finally the video showing how easy could be integrating the platform with final use cases.

Solaiemes Team

Yes! Solaiemes team has a sleepless iPhone fan :-)

Alex, one of the Solaiemers, even as a company we tried to work for empower mid-tier devices is apple-fanatic, it proves how Solaiemes mobility army is accepting all views :-)
He was in the cue during now to adquire his 3G iPhone in the recently open TELEFONICA Store in the historical Telefonica headquarter in Madrid (just plane city centre, Gran Via street, where usually cinema premiers take place, the street of red carpets).

See the sequence of 4 videos (selected from the more than 10 he shooted) from the "long waiting" until getting the ONE, this services where streamed "live" in our blog using our technology, the quality is not as better as it use to see due the lots of 3G
subscribers in such a small place and also the mobile-camera (nokia 6120) being
handled by the quivering hand of our "excited by iPhone" colleague :-)

Let's talk about handsets

Disclaimer: this is a personal view, in Solaiemes we have team members worshipping the IPhone, and perhaps they are no sharing my point of view :-)

Now, let's talk about handsets as mobility tools. Everybody is waiting impatient the 3G iPhone, of course, it is a very nice handset, with lot of capabilities, Apple design, and proper marketing, obviously Solaiemes will try to squeeze its capabilities to deliver more mobility use cases experiencies.
Once said that, now, I want to help people realizing that a lot of powerful use cases are not needing iPhone, and perhaps other devices have advantadges. iPhone has a powerful browser and a lot of mobile solutions could be done base on rich web using AJAX, it is a fact, but for multimedia mobile use cases, related with infrastructure, all is still to be done.
Nokia is including by default as "out the box" features Push to Talk, VideoShare (see what i see), etc...
Other device manufacturers as Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson, have the same features developed but are no enabled in the SW right now in most of countries, we encourage them to enable the features and help the ecosystem to make this features a powerful ARPU generator for carriers, and a powerful "satisfaction" generator for their customers. With PTT and VideoShare you have real mobile experiences and new capabilities about being conected, alerted, sharing live media, multimodal usability. All these capabilities enable competition vs iPhone strengths: mobile browser, ipod-mobile, high tier conected PDA.

Solaiemes focuses on empowering the mid-tier devices, the largest market size in western countries to enable from network application specific infrastructure the same or even more multimedia and usability performance of high tier devices, and will help people with mid tier devices not envying iPhone users :-)

juan

Solaiemes also twitters !

Hi, we created this blog to share opinion about mobile infrastructure and service trends and entrepreneurship. We prefer the blog to share our views better than the formal company site.
Some time ago, the blog become the place to advance some news before formal PR was released, and show demo videos.
Now, we are delighted to add Twitter as a new communication channel to follow up our day by day, activities, the one we can disclose :-)
We do not promise to become heavy users :-(, unfortunately no time to report everything we would report, in any case we encorage people and companies interested in our business focus or directly interested in us to follow our twitter.


Our intention is even using twitter as a way to receive feedback, quick questions, and even to communicate with other entrepreneurs and mobile ecosystem. We invite to follow us !!!
http://www.twitter.com/solaiemes

Will finally carriers detect the PoC opportunities?

After several posts talking about us, new products, mentions, come back to evangelist task :-)
Carriers are worried about still 80% voice and 20% data mobile revenue not being balanced (and even the difference is wider if taking in count SMS is carried to CS - voice domain).
At the same time most markets are mature in terms of subscribers reaching 90-120% market penetration (more than 1 linea per citizen) and the ARPU is being stable around 28-40 € in most western countries.
Some promising technologies as PoC (push over cellular, mainly push-to-talk) have been delayed, shyly launches, or discarded due to voice and sms canibalization fears. Carriers are having a too mucha conservative approach, they are more focused about risk avoidance than boosting new ARPU increasing opportunities.
Please, start seeing PoC as SMS. SMS is not seeing only as mobile to mobile use case, and a lot of mobile to machine (sms to tv-screen, ring-tones download payment, voting, etc) and machine to mobile (alerts, m-banking alerts, marketing, headline news distribution, etc).
Why not using PoC with the same approach with push-to-talk? A lot of mobile to server and server to mobile can be used for raising marketing budgets of companies, increasing the non-final subscribers revenues, and enablig new on subscription based services. Being even more ambitious push-to-talk could be the first step for affordable man-machine interaction to browse news, services, etc, defeating the usability barrier of mid-tier devices (small display, limited keypad).
Hope we can find soon carriers realizing of PoC potential and proactively launching PoC to mass market.

Solaiemes, Finalist at "Emprendedor XXI 2008" in Madrid

Hi! Happy to say that our effort has been recognized in our headquarter location, Madrid. Solaiemes was declared finalist at "Emprendedor XXI 2008" (entrepreneurship award) in the Madrid state edition. "Premio Emprendedor XXI" (translating "XXI Entrepreneur Award") is sponsored by savings bank La Caixa and Spanish Ministery of Industry.

(jury act, in spanish)
http://www.madrimasd.org/emprendedores/uploads/Acta_Jurado_Emprendedor_XXI_2008.pdf

This kind of mentions encourage us to to more things, do things better, and grow and expand our brand and solutions.

Congratulations to the winner, a biotech company ( Projech Science to Technology ) and the other finalist with us, VaniOs (IT Security based on Biometrics). VaniOs is one of the companies invested by EURECAN VC (Caja Navarra), our common investor.

solaiemes team

Solaiemes LiveServe new feature. VideoPosting in OVI SHARE

Hi,
After including in our "mobile to whatever" videoshare LiveServe Suite platform features as automatic posting in YouTube and Blogger accounts, we announce that now we can videopost in the OVI media share social network (owned by Nokia) using VideoShare in 3G Networks.
With handsets supporting videoshare (also known as See What I See) configured to reach our platform, user could real time post, after stop your shooting, with no handset application needed.
Of course it is a test done from Spain, and not a commercial service yet :-(


Handsets we can send sip settings to configure and supporting the videosharing are mainly Nokia N73, 6120, 6110, N93 and others with specs indicating videoshare support.

Solaiemes showcased at IPTV Evangelist Magazine

Gilbert B. Hammer, IPTVe editor and Producer/DP showcased our technology at their well known IPTV site. We performed a remote demo about mobile to web realtime broadcasting, and storage ->website autoposting. Gilbert is based in New York, and shooted the real time demo to produce a 4 minutes videoreport including videos of our other use cases as peer to multipeer mobile videoshare. Many Thanks Gilbert

http://www.iptvevangelist.com/mobile/2008/04/solaiemes.html
also available at Brightcove.TV http://www.brightcove.tv/channel.jsp?channel=14549041

About IPTV Evangelist

IPTV Evangelist is the ultimate guide to the people and the companies that are defining the red-hot IPTV market. Founded by streaming video pioneer Gilbert B. Hammer, IPTV Evangelist combines the latest IPTV news and analysis with interviews with key IPTV players. As the title of the site implies, Gilbert is passionate about IPTV, which he views as the next-generation for online and mobile entertainment for its creative integration of new and improved forms of communication, storytelling and community. For more information, visit www.iptvevangelist.com.

Good news for VideoShare !!! Nokia's move.

Recently Nokia has been adding the VideoShare feature (SeeWhatISee) to mid-tier handsets as 6110, 6120 and 6130, with configuration menu.
We are excited:

• Till now, the entry level of using N Series was a barrier for several customers asking for small and cheaper devices. FIXED.
  
• Till now not available handsets with WCDMA bands used in Europe/Asia (mostly 2100) and US and SouthAmeria (1900/850). That is letting us (Solaiemes) to demonstrate in a lot of countries the capabilities of our mobile infrastructure.

Hope we strength soon links with Nokia to cooperate to make VideoShare a killer feature and feasible a lot of high added value mobile use cases.