Every so often fun things happen and shame if you only hear about it 4 weeks later. This time it is infamous Paul Carr’s very own story to accept Michael Arrington’s call to write the Saturday column at Web 2.0 blog/news portal Techcrunch. I think it is a smart move to try to lighten up the otherwise very dry reads about the dozen or more Web 2.0 startup news pieces every day mixed with a good dose of Apple, Google or Microsoft stories to increase readership - of course. Now I have to admit that I have not read Paul Carr’s Techcrunch columns yet but will start doing so from tomorrow on and with that read - yes - Techcrunch. His first intro post shows the kind of blog posts you have to expect and not take too seriously, or should you take it seriously? Bringing nothing to Techcrunch…; as the boss in the movie Good Morning Vietnam with Robin Williams said “…well, that is funny”.

I attended this week a presentation hosted at Deloitte in Zurich. While Deloitte presented some high-level social communications and collaboration PPT slides from a former internal workshop only, the communication expert and project manager at SwissRe (a large global reinsurer company) had much more concrete to say about his project. SwissRe will launch end of September now to all their 10k employees after a successful trial with 1300 employees since April this year an internal collaboration software based on an off-the-shelf Web 2.0 community tool. What makes this news interesting is not the rollout of this tool which is IT-wise a piece of cake, but the fact that such a conservative company now suddenly opens up to full collaboration between all its employees allowing them to use any kind of web based tools such as forums, wikis, IM, blogs etc. being able to form groups and share knowledge across any departments globally.

They justified the investment with a range of organizational and cultural benefits that they expect but one thing worked out by chance very nicely, they could show that they can replace two very expensive (only used by small groups) existing collaboration tools that they inherited from some former acquisitions. The project was run by the communications department and was not an IT project which makes total sense since it is not about the tool or technology but about the business benefits in communications that are at the center here.

During the following apero I raised the idea that any progressive bank that would allow its analysts to work with such tools would have a significant advantage over the currently closed-minded and self-centric approach that all the banks have right now. People agreed with me. Will it happen? We will see, there is certainly a chance for a paradigm shift which is not only the case in the banking and insurance markets. And if there are some expensive not much used software tools in your organization as well, how about taking a look at replacing them with something that could actually work and provide big benefits to your organization? Now is the right time to do this.

Image: Flickr/Paul Shaffner

As the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger writes, the new launch of Google StreetView in Switzerland creates lots of protests among private people, companies, communities as well as annoys the country’s top data security officer, Hanspeter Thür. Already on Friday this Swiss data security officer announced that he would order to shut down the service if Google should not - as they actually already agreed prior to the launch of its service - take off faces, car license plates and other private information. In Europe and even more so I feel in Switzerland people do not take privacy issues that lightly as maybe it is done in the US.

The deal with other countries where Google will take such information off when people ask them to do so is not what they agreed to in Switzerland. They want Google to take it off immediately prior to going live. I think this is not that easy to do and for sure quite time consuming and costly. It might well be that Google decides to not offer this service in Switzerland at all. I would find that a shame, but try to argue with people who are paranoid when they see their house on the Internet. They should be maybe more concerned about what possibilities the military or the police has to check them out, but that is not known in public. To me they make an elephant out if a fly and as usual Google is quite amateurish in handling it.

The GSM protocol family will soon reach 4 billion connections. And no end is in sight. The Chinese TD standards so far cannot technically compete it seems but that could well change in the next few years; half of these connections are in China. The winner was and currently is GSM-based technology though and as GigaOm noted:

GSM has economies of scale working for it; that’s why it’s gaining traction in fast-growing teleconomies such as Brazil, India, Russia and Africa.

.

.

This report forecasts that the worldwide smartphone market will grow from 160million units shipped in 2009 to more than 500 million in 2012.  I am asking myself how much of that was initiated by Apple’s iPhone vs. the inherent interest/need in having a PC substitute with you all the time.

In any case, it is good news for the mobile industry who will enjoy impressive growth also in mobile data services as the smartphone users will of course drive that market too.

Here’s a list of the iPod Touch apps I like the most and also some that I am still checking out some more as I have not yet seen their usefulness in full.

Twitter client

Twittelator is what I use the most. Sometimes also TweetDeck. Other clients that work well but are not that popular with me — but still worth taking a look as it is quite subjective — are Tweetie, Twitterrific, TwitterFon.

Traveling apps

The iPhone apps in the traveling category are growing rapidly and I am not up to date on all that’s out there now. I think LonelyPlanet is good, although I have not bought any iphone app. What I can recommend are Tube (London, Paris), BERLIN (TripPlanner), CityGuide (Barcelona, Roma), BucksMe (to find the next Starbucks nearby), worldtop7 (best restaurants to check out), and Beijing and Shanghai Taxi Guide — a MUST have when you are there.

Swiss apps

Yes, living in Switzerland you have a good choice of some really excellent apps like: PhoneBook (works super fast), ParkMe (shows in real-time the parking lots available in all the major Swiss cities), SBB Mobile (all the railway connections), Wemlin (all the buses and trams in Zurich), 20minuten and Tagesanzeiger apps, which are very good online newspapers, Swiss events, Swim Weather (shows details of all the public swimming pools), usgang.ch.

Games

My kids are the authorities on this. They like: Topple, Monkey, NFSU, Tiki Towers (is THE hit), Paper Toss, Hanoi. Shazam for recognizing songs works well and I use it quite often.

Weather

WeatherPro is the best I think, AeroWeather as a backup is OK next to Apple’s own Weather app. iWeather.ch I don’t yet find useful.

News

20minuten and TA in Switzerland, stern.de is well done, NYT, Instapaper, Newsstand (I like the most as blog reader), Stitcher for podcasts, TVGuide, TV Movie and netTV are all far from perfect TV guides and lots of usability improvements are needed for all of them.

Work tools

DocsToGo is similar to FileShare, OffMaps I consider as a work tool to help me find my way as a backup, Flight Status is nice to have and AirportStatus is good for only shows US airport delays, 30Boxes online calendar works very well, Convertbot makes converting Fahrenheit or inches into what I understand better - metrics - fun to use, mSecure keeps all my login names and passwords at one place — and man, how many there are! My ultimate week planning tool is Evernote, a must-try-out app! To find Wifi networks I use WifiTrak and WiFinder (this does not work under OS 3.0 anymore, though), to find FREE Wifi connections I try out iFiFi and FREE Wi.Fi but both with so-so success, you need to be patient so often not the best tool for work. I have now found WifiCafe and this app seems to also work in offline mode.

Social Communications

LinkedIn and Facebook work well on the iPhone, so does Skype (no more need for FRING, sorry guys), Brightkite and Mobeedo or aka-aki I am trying out still, so far it did not convince me as there are not enough people in it and anyway only works in BIG cities, maybe.

Fun for me

Cocktails, easyPasta, Holidays (to see when other people are taking off again), iChillout, CellarRat (quick overview of what wine area and year could be promising, so far did not use much at all). Schmap and Unlike I’ll probably delete soon, Trailers Int. shows the latest movie trailers, very nice app, CultureGPS is a mix of fun and business app, sometimes one and sometimes the other — try it out and see yourself!

The iPhone apps are overall now more sophisticated than the first versions. Still I have the feeling they are now reaching their limitations as there is only so much you can do with an app on a relatively small screen. Not surprisingly Apple seems to be working on a bigger screen version which will open up entirely new and better opportunities. E.g. web surfing on a small screen is still not that much fun and remains an exception for me even with Wifi connectivity.

This year’s elections in Germany will also make use of social media tools. Unlike the US presidential elections, I do not expect they will be much affected — with one exception:

The newly founded HSP (Horst Schlämmer Partei) is betting big time through using social media. On its campaign website you can see that they are present on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, StudiVZ, have newsletters, a blog, its podcast is number one in the iTunes store already, and much more. It looks almost as if they are making fun of social media tools, too, having just about any social network embedded code for copy available.

Watch the campaign video, I like most where he shows his plan in a live TV show.

Hot off the press: Ericsson buys the CDMA and LTE business in NA from Nortel for 1.1 bln USD. While NSN lost out in this deal it is Motorola and (Alcatel)-Lucent who will not like this at all. Ericsson will double its revenue in NA with this deal and also buy a profitable business.

As we have seen at the Mobile Wireless event in Barcelona, Nortel’s LTE development was quite advanced, having been able to leverage its WiMAX technology (shares OFDM with LTE) to gain a lead I think.  Their LTE system was showcased jointly with LG and T-Mobile. See our videos on this as well.

Funny side note: we did this video by simply walking around and cost us zero. Goal was to be as authentic as possible. T-Mobile had their Marcom department run a very expensive video with professional graphic animations on this as well but got only double the viewers (3000) that we did (1500).  This is how the social web works, it us all about being authentic. Next year we plan to invest a little more than zero, but then strive for 10-100x the viewers: stay tuned.

Looks like Twitter is now becoming quite popular in Europe too. At first sight it seems like a waste of time for most people, but only if you take some time to check it out will you really know if that is true or not.

Here a list of the things you can do to get your feet wet:

Introductions: read the Twitterhandbook first, then you can also go through the new Twitter 101 for business. Also great tutorials can be found on Slideshare, which I recommend reading after these two introductions and after you have actually signed on and started using it already. There are more than 4,000 presentations on Twitter already uploaded. (a nice one is this here.)

Using your first apps: some apps you might want to install are Twitpic, which lets you upload pictures and also send them simply via e-mail. To start getting some discussion going you can try out TwttrStrm, which lets you post questions. You can also link to your Facebook account with twitter/badges. There are endless apps available. One recent one is Geo Chirp, which allows you to search for Twitter users locally.

Install on your mobile: to make things really neat you have to install a Twitter client on your mobile. I have tried a few apps on my iPod touch and all of them do the job quite well. It is more a matter of personal taste I think what app you pick: I use mostly TweetDeck now but Tweetie and Twitterrific are good choices too.

Only time will tell if Twitter is indeed the most initially undervalued business app or the most hyped up tool.

My feeling is that either Google or Microsoft might acquire them if not even Facebook, who seem to have some close links to them already.

I just came back from a 10-day business trip to the U.S. having been on the west coast mainly.
It is obvious that the economy has been hurting for quite a while now. This can be seen literally on the street with less traffic (relatively speaking only as it is still bad in peak times), areas such as south of Seattle where whole neighborhoods seem to be up for sale (hundreds of meters of For Sale signs) and stories of startups who can’t get any funding anymore at all, plus people struggling to find new jobs.
Still I got the clear feeling that the bad times have hit the bottom and that things are improving.
Also the latest financial results from companies like Intel or IBM show this clearly. Not to mention
the stock market where the NASDAQ had a big rise this week, so folks are speculating that it will get better too.
One ex-colleague of mine who used to live in Silicon Valley and went back to Switzerland 6 years ago, has decided to move back to the U.S. and bought a house in Mountain View for his family (3 kids) just this Monday. He told me that he got already quite a few job offers, which makes him believe that there are options for him. In Europe he could never find a challenging HW engineering job in the datacom industry and had the feeling that most Swiss companies he talked to were very stagnant, doing the same as they did more than 10 years ago and happy with that - but of course being hit hard now due to their inflexible business attitude. House prices are low so he might do quite well I think. Still, banks are asking for 60% down payments as in his case, which is ridiculous of course.

(Photo credit: www.pbase.com/camera0bug/image/13107594)