Category Archives: Mobile

Innotribe Sibos 2010: Cloud Computing

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Cross-posted at swiftcommunity.net

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Last time, we shared our high-level Innotribe program for the Sibos week (25-29 October 2010) . This week we’ll zoom into the details of our Cloud program, one of the 4 themes of this year’s Innotribe.

Cloud was already on the program last year. Our main ambition then was to introduce you to some basic concepts of Cloud Computing, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

This year we want to go beyond that basic definition stage. Following last year’s Labs, which were focused on the economics of cloud computing, this year focuses on the practical implementation, user experiences, and why it’s important for the financial industry. There will be a specific focus on hybrid cloud models and APIs.

As always in Innotribe @ Sibos, also this Cloud theme is supported by Keynotes, Face-to-Face discussions, interactive workshops (Innotribe Labs) and R&D demonstrations.

Cloud computing keynotes: “Towards new models and APIs”
on Monday 25 October from 11:00 – 12:30 in the Interactive Workspace
We have a great line of speakers. Confirmed at the time of this writing are:

  • Sean Kelly, Global CIO for Deutsche Asset Management, Deutsche Bank. Sean is also elected Chairman of ECLC (Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council) a key banking cloud initiative including participation of Bank of America and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
  • Subhra Bose, CTO for alternative investments, Credit Suisse. He will share the experiences of Credit Suisse in implementing cloud in alternative investments.
  • Jacqui Taylor, Founder of Flying Binary. In a previous life, Jacqui was Design Manager at BACS. She will talk about a Google Apps application supporting the Payments Services Directive.
  • Paula Richards, Cloud Computing Initiatives Executive, IBM
  • Oren Michels, CEO, Mashery. He will give an amazing speech on how API’s are now offered as-a-Service, including a compelling demo of their developer’s portal. Oren is sharing his enthusiasm for the Cloud theme in following YouTube video

Face-to-Face discussion: “Appstore for financial services – dream or reality?”
on Monday 25 October from 12:30 – 14:00 in the Interactive Workspace, right after the Cloud keynotes.

The Face-to-Face discussion will be kicked-off by a provoking presentation by Sean Park (CEO, Nauiokaspark) on the need for a neutral platform for cloud applications for the financial services.

Peter Hinssen, CEO, A-Cross Technologies will again be our skilled moderator for the Cloud Face-to-Face discussions. Last year he managed a panel of 11 participants. The feedback indicated that such a big panel was maybe a bit over the top. So this year, we have a slightly smaller panel. Confirmed so far are:

  • All the Cloud keynote presenters above, complemented with
  • Amir Halfon, Senior Director & Global Lead Architecture and Technology, Oracle
  • Sean Park, CEO, Nauiokaspark
  • Abbie Barbir, VP Senior Architect, Bank of America
  • Keith Saxton, Director, of Banking & Financial Markets IBM Global Financial Services
  • Mary Knox, Research Director, Banking and Investment Services, Gartner Research

Innotribe Labs

We are repeating the highly successful format of Innotribe Labs. One or more Cloud Idea generation teams will be formed on the spot, and over the course of the 3 days they will prepare a professional pitch to be delivered on Thursday during the “Pitch your Lab competition, in front of the public and a very skilled Buyer’s Panel.

The Cloud Innotribe Lab team will be supported by following professionals:

  • Innotribe Leaders Business: Jacqui Taylor (ex-BACS) and now Founder of FlyingBinary
  • Innotribe Leader Technology: Sungard (to be advised)
  • VC-Coach: Sean Park
  • Professional facilitators from The Value Web
  • Your’s truly, as SWIFT representative

R&D Demonstrations:

We’ll have this year a beautiful Innotribe corner integrated in the main SWIFT Stand. We’ll have a packed program here as well. We are still looking at the many candidates, and will do a separate blog on all the presentations scheduled throughout the week.

Let’s start the conversation:

We just opened a Web-Storm on Innotribe.com to collect your idea on this Cloud theme and the other 3 themes as we build up towards October. We will feed-back these ideas to the Innotribe Leaders before the actual Labs in Amsterdam. Check out www.innotribe.com

Innotribe is organised by SWIFT Innovation with the support of financial institutions, vendors and innovation leaders.

In the true spirit of less push and more pull, we encourage you to engage in a true dialogue with the Innotribe team. We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam.

The Innotribe team

www.sibos2010.com
www.innotribe.com
www.swiftcommunity.net/innotribe
innotribe@swift.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/innotribe

The DJ with the Brainwave Helmet

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Found this TED 2010 video via Kurt Vega’s tweets.

From the TED site: “Tan Le’s astonishing new computer interface reads its user’s brainwaves, making it possible to control virtual objects, and even physical electronics, with mere thoughts (and a little concentration). She demos the headset, and talks about its far-reaching applications.”

Out-of-the-box support for facial expressions and emotional experiences, with some sensitivity adjustments available for personalization.

The demo is focusing  on the “cognitive suite”: the ability to move virtual objects with your mind.

And it just costs only a few hundred dollars. Like an iPAD, but it’s a hPAH “head-PAD”

Start mixing this with the ongoing discussions on personal digital identity. As you will notice, the demo starts with making a personal profile for this headset owner. And tuning to a neutral signal, a signal where you’re doing nothing particular, your are relaxed, hanging-out: a but like my holidays at home where I basically don’t do anything particular other than hanging around.

It’s interesting to see that the test is about “pulling” an object forward instead of “pushing”. I may be too influenced by John Hagel’s latest book “The Power of Pull” 😉

The cool stuff starts when the helmet man starts visualizing something that does not exist in real life: making something disappear.

Applications are obvious in virtual reality games, domotica systems, all sort of gesture and thought based interactions, control an electric wheel-chair. In banking it would be nice is I could raise the balance on my account just by thinking about it.

What I do NOT like about it is that the “system” has some built-in leveling system. It makes me think of Jaron Renier’s fantastic rant / manifesto that I mentioned in my previous blog “you have to be somebody before you can share yourself”

Start mixing this up with some of the cool ideas like Mark Pesce’s Plexus which is a quite novel way of looking and using your social graph in a sort of

event driven pub-sub system

where you decide as a user

what you listen to and

who and what you want to share

with

Sometimes, I think of myself as a disc-jockey (which I was as a matter of fact for more than 15 years starting in the late 70’ies), and I very much like Ethan Zuckerberg’s description of a DJ in this also great TED 2010 video on our distorted world-views.

His talk is basically about

getting you out of your normal orbit, of stepping out of your usual “flock” of people you normally interact with (both on- and off-line).

Around min 15:30, he describes a DJ as a guide:

A skilled human curator, who knows what material is available to her, who is able to listen to the audience, and who is able to make a selection and push people forward in one fashion or another

Of course, I could now make jokes on Faithless “God is a DJ”, and/or refer to one of my previous posts called “We are as gods and might as well get good at it”, but I won’t do that.

Instead, I’d like to share with you the feeling of giving pleasure to my audience.

It’s something I feel while writing these blogs, and it’s a very similar feeling as being a DJ in front of an audience and pushing people forward.

Its has a same sort of stage-fright

when starting a gig,

and the same sort of excitement

when you see your crowd getting

excited

As a DJ, I was doing some quite big gigs for 3,000 people or so, and my following community is not that big yet. But the feeling is the same, and everyday there are some more folks following my tweets. Some more reacting to my blog. Some more getting inspired by what’s on these pages.

So, I just continue doing that, and hope to inspire you to dream and execute your dreams.

Innotribe @ Sibos 2010 : High-Level program

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Cross-Posted on SwiftCommunity.net

Last week, Kosta kicked-off the next Innotribe @ Sibos2010.

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I am pleased and excited to complement Kosta’s introduction by sharing with you our high-level program for the Sibos week (25-29 October 2010).

High Level program

A good presentation/show has a fantastic start, and great core, and an exciting grand finale. That’s exactly how our Innotribe @ Sibos2010 program is organized 😉

We have a fantastic start: our “Innovation Opening Keynotes: the big tectonic shifts” on Monday 25th from 9am – 10:30

What a line-up of speakers ! We have now confirmed:

  • John Hagel (Author of THE business book of the year “Power of Pull”),
  • Peter Hinssen on “The New Normal” (also title of his new book),
  • Nova Spivack with a long-term technology forecast,
  • Venessa Miemis (28 year old GEN-Y Graduate Student from NYC) who will prepare a talk on the future of money,
  • and a still to be announced very senior banker on tectonic shifts in banking.

Both in content, quality of the speakers, and format of this session, this will be THE not-to-be-missed session on Sibos Monday. We are convinced it will set the bar for any session for the upcoming week.

We have a great core: We have 4 Themes. As last year, we have appointed Innotribe Leaders and VC-Coaches to each of these themes:

  • Cloud: following last year’s Labs, which were focused on the economics of cloud computing, this year focuses on the practical implementation, user experiences, and why it’s important for the financial industry. There will be a specific focus on hybrid cloud models and API’s.
    • Innotribe Leaders:Jacqui Taylor (ex-BACS) and now building Google Apps with FlyingBinary and Sungard
    • VC-Coach: Sean Park
  • Mobile: the emergence of mobile payments, especially in the worker’s remittances area, and the role of banks.
    • Innotribe Leaders: Jonathan Bye (RBS) and Ville Sointu (Tieto)
    • VC-Coach: Matthaus Krzykowski (Venture Beat)
  • Smart data: how to capitalise on the power of semantic web technologies to enable greater intelligence for financial institutions.
    • Innotribe Leaders: Wells Fargo and Nova Spivack
    • VC-Coach: Eghosa Omoigui (ex Intel Capital)
  • The Long Now: this series of interactive workshops will engage in long term scenario planning for the financial industry.
    • Innotribe Leaders: Chris Skinner and Sean Park

The line-up of speakers, face-to-face panel members and moderators is stronger than ever before. This will be the subject of subsequent Innotribe @ Sibos2010 blogs.

We just opened a Web-Storm on Innotribe.com to collect your idea on these 4 themes as we build up towards October. We will feed-back these ideas to the Innotribe Leaders before the actual Labs in Amsterdam. Check out www.innotribe.com

In addition, we will have 2 Masterclasses Innovation, we have invited the 5 leading software vendors for innovation management tools, and we’ll have an update on eMe (winner of last year).

We also teamed-up in a quite significant way with our colleagues from Standards and Technology. You will notice on the Sibos program a number of interactive sessions that have been co-designed with Innotribe.

The exciting grand finale: the best of the Innotribe week comes together on Thursday 28 October 2010.

  • We start with “Pitch your Innotribe Lab”, a competition between the best idea teams that were formed during the Labs throughout the week, in front of the buyer’s panel. 5 minutes pitches with Q&A by the SWIFT Buyer’s Panel, with input from our VC-Advisors. They compete for the Sibos2010 Innovation Award. Last year’s winner was eMe. Who will it be this year ?
  • Right after, we’ll have the “Open Innovation Best Practices”, with again a staggering line up of Heads of Innovation of Banks, and thought leaders from other industries on Open Innovation
  • To pump up your adrenaline levels, we’ll close with a real Start-Up Competition, where we have invited some of the start-ups and great idea teams we met throughout the year. They will pitch in front of a real VC-Panel.
  • And who knows: last year’s Innotribe made it to the final plenary closing of Sibos. We know this year’s Innotribe @ Sibos is even better and The Long Now seems to be positioned in pole-position.

Some elements to spice it all up:

  • All the Innotribe @ Sibos2010 sessions will be supported and facilitated by a team from The Value Web.
  • The Long Now and the Grand Finale will be supported with live streaming and interaction technologies (more news to come in the next weeks)
  • We will be at 3 locations:
    • The Innovation Opening Keynotes in Conference Room #1 aka “the box-ring”. We’ll make maximum use of the interactive features of this room;
    • The Interactive Workspace: a special built space in the middle of the exhibition centre that will host all the other Innotribe sessions; the design of that space is just awesome.
    • The special Innotribe corner on the SWIFT Stand that will host the R&D sessions, including the results of some SWIFT proof-of-concepts.

Let’s start the conversation:

Innotribe is organised by SWIFT Innovation with the support of financial institutions, vendors and innovation leaders.

In the true spirit of less push and more pull, we encourage you to engage in a true dialogue with the Innotribe team. We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam.

The Innotribe team

www.sibos2010.com

www.innotribe.com

www.swiftcommunity.net/innotribe

innotribe@swift.com

innovate@swift.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/innotribe

New Money and Payments

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The last couple of days there have been several blogs reporting on new types of money and payments.

First there was the great interview of Steve Boyd with Jamais Cascio.

Some highlights of the highlights:

You have to get a critical mass of people to agree in a new fantasy.

Groups with shared purposes could in fact have new currencies.

The unbanked are the source of many innovations in the world, right now.

Governments start to care when economies arise.

The question of anonymous money and the roll of cell phones in future money.

Then there were 2 news items on micropayments to news publishers:

The first one related to a New platform for micropayments to news publishers

image

The key comment in the Spingwise article being that:

…for bitcents to work, it will need to attract enough publishers who produce content that readers are willing to pay for. Meanwhile, other ventures—like the soon-to-be-launched Journalism Online—are also working to create a new economic model for the news industry. Keep a close eye on this space—change is in the air, and business opportunities won’t be far behind.

Especially if the big boys want a piece of the cake. Here comes Google again.

googlecheckout

I found this one via my Twine subsription, and Nova Spivak was the first one posting it.

Again, some highlights only:

Google is developing a micropayment platform that will be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year,” according to a document the company submitted to the Newspaper Association of America. The system, an extension of Google Checkout, would be a new and unexpected option for the news industry as it considers how to charge for content online.

While currently in the early planning stages, micropayments will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year. The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants and over time. Google will mitigate the risk of non-payment by assigning credit limits based on past purchasing behavior and having credit card instruments on file for those with higher credit limits and using our proprietary risk engines to track abuse or fraud. Merchant integration will be extremely simple. [grey bold emphasis Google]

In a brief paragraph entitled “business model,” Google suggests that it would share revenue in a similar fashion to the iTunes App Store and its own Android Market, both of which take a 30% cut of revenue.

I downloaded the document and besides what’s covered in the blog post, it contains some other interesting facts about Google Checkout:

Key statistics:
• Tens of millions of registered Checkout users
• Several hundred thousand registered merchants, high number of sellers selling digital
goods
• $ Billions of orders processed

Planned Roadmap:
• Simplified Merchant Integration – Dramatically increase the speed by which merchants
integrate with Google Checkout. Target early 2010
• Guest Checkout – Allow users to buy goods with Checkout-enabled merchants without
creating an account. Target Q4 2009
• Stored Value – Gift cards and maintaining a balance for buyers on Google Checkout.
Planned for future
• Micropayments – Aggregation of small payments by buyers for purchasing digital
content. Planned for future

The PDF also mentions some really interesting thinking on what i would call “convenience” in a multi-vendor marketplace environment:

Easy Subscription Sign-up and Management for Users Plus Content
Packaging and Multiple Payment Forms for Publishers
o Single sign-on capability so users can use one login for access to premium content and a central place to manage subscriptions and payments.
o We envision the typical scenario to be where a user pays a monthly fee for access to a wide-ranging package of premium content. One example of a "package" might be full access to the WSJ; another "package" might include the top 10 business publications. Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes.
o For multi-publication packages, publishers will receive a revenue disbursement that is proportional to the usage of their content in the package.
o While providing an option for micropayments will be important, we do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content. Example 1: A user has access to the "basic" premium content package. She hears about the latest Sarah Palin article in Vanity Fair, which  is not part of her package. She can make a one-off payment of $0.10 to read that article, which will show up on her bill as part of the monthly payment.

Just think: replace publishers by financial services providers, and micropayments by regular monthly payments. Sounds like a marketplace for financial services. With a single-sign on for the marketplace syndicated/federated to the underlying providers of services. But i am deviating, this post is about new money and payment systems.

Last but not least there is the iPhone Payment App by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey:

3aug09_squareccr

Here are the dongles again ! And i thought that the whole idea of smartcards, USB-Tokens, and other physical tokens were gone, as they do in my opinion no sense in a mobile world. Wrong again, Peter ! (Don’t worry, i am stubborn 😉

The innovation is in a small, plastic card reader that fits in to the headphone jack of an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and transfers the credit card’s swipe data to the app. After the employee enters the amount to charge, the customer confirms by scrawling their signature with their finger and then either one enters the customer’s email address to send the receipt to. The payment is processed by Square for a small percentage plus a fixed fee; the funds are transferred directly to the store’s bank account, cutting both time and complexity on the processing side. The customer’s receipt includes a map showing the location of the transaction which is handy for those who record, sort and file such things.

Jack Dorsey (please DO read the man’s Wikipedia bio), the man who all but built Twitter in a matter of two weeks, has been working on a half-secret start-up project since around May. His new venture — dubbed, funnily enough, Squirrel — is based around the concept of using the iPhone as… yep, a portable, personal cash register; essentially the exact device which Square has created

Two links if you want to know more. Here and Here.

Big changes coming in this area. Have you seen any bank involved in these innovations ?

Augmented Reality is Real Now

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The big news this week is that Layar’s iPhone App is approved and available.

From now on we call it the “Reality Browser”

image

See also sub-line “Available for Android”. I clicked on the Android Marketplace and this is what i got.

image

Also have a look at the 162 Layers that are already available. Yes, you got it right: 162 Layers available already.

Droid vs. iPhone

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droidlogo-1

The blogs are full these days of Android phones coming to the market. Especially on the Verizon-Motorola-Android phone that is being launches as we speak.

I just picked one of the articles: the one from Michael Arrington on TechMeme.

+++Update: very complete update by Scobleizer on 8 Nov 2009.

From a US perspective probably the key differentiators is that Droid comes with Verizon. Every time i meet folks in the US, they complain like hell about AT&T. In other regions this may be less relevant – as some countries do not allow packages deals – and many have hacked iPhones that use other providers.

I don’t think Apple cares a lot about the hacked iPhones. Sold is sold. For Apple it is about market share in highly profitable markets. They have already very successfully milked the iPhone profit/cash cow. They may be worried about marketshare competition with Android. But Apple will for sure come-up with something else that is completely disruptive – not necessarily in iPhone land – to reset the landscape once again. And who still talks about Windows Mobile, albeit the latest version was released only a couple of weeks ago with a lot of marketing dollars ?

Last i heard that iPhone in the US is on its own counting for 21% of all mobile internet browsing. That’s a really big part of the mobile pie. No wonder Google goes full steam ahead.

You probably all have read about Google being bullish during last weeks financial results: crisis is over, Android going to be very very big, and going to really spend money in innovation. What will that mean ? Already now, Google is cranking our one innovation after the other. At about one announcement per week. So, now they are going to really invest in innovation ? They sit on a cash-pile of more than 20 billion USD. It will be very interesting to see where they will put their money.

Next week, Microsoft in launching Windows 7. I just read that Apple has almost 10% of the “PC” market in the US. Looking at recent history, i would not be surprised that both Google and Apple will use the publicity momentum of Windows 7 to undercut Microsoft’s airspace with some of their own announcements.

My good friend Nick was already playing with one of the Android phones when we are at Sibos. As a matter of fact, Nick has something like seven (7 !) mobile devices in his backpack ! Anything from the iPhone and iTouch to the latest HTC (with our without Windows) and the latest Android.

He told me: “once you have touched the Android phone, you realize how outdated the iPhone is “. Wow.

The key question will be whether Google can build an as successfull application marketplace as Apple. Nick runs more than 350 iPhone apps on his iPhone and his iTouch.

So Nick knows what he talks about. Nick, feel free to jump into the comments and share your reflections on the iPhone vs. Android debate.