Connected loneliness

As a prelude to her new book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, psychologist Sherry Turkle is back at TED, where she spoke for the first time in 1996, to elighten us about the impact of technology on our relationships...

This is definitely a welcome piece! For the past few years, I have indeed advocated on the importance of paying closer attention to the 'social' technology we continuously produce and innovate upon. Ensuring the continuous development of our emotional intelligence is as important as feeding our hunger for higher IQ, now more than ever...

Instead of building tools that are supposed to be an extension of our humanity, we have instead become an extension of the technology itself and turned ourselves into APIs, unable to fully function without the cloud.

Crackberry behaviors have long been adopted outside of the professional arena, feeding the fear of having real non-controlled person-to-person conversations (gateway to intimacy, oulala!). We are already contemplating machine-based companionship for our elderly days...

How many people are telling you "I would rather text than talk"?

When Turkle asked people "What's wrong with having a conversation?", the answer was "I'll tell what's wrong with having a conversation! It takes place in real time, and you can't control what you're gonna say"...

"Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be".

"Human relationships are rich, and they're messy, and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology... over time we seem to stop caring...".

I would love to hear your thoughts, especially from my friends building the next Facebook or the ones who cringe when I dare to pick up the phone to call them... ;-)

More seriously, is teaching the next generation how to be occasionally alone and disconnected from the cloud really the best way to deal with this technology-enhanced shift?

Mobile Hackathon this Sunday @ CES, 20K cash prizes & more by AT&T

Let's begin the new year with some good news for my fellow mobile entrepreneurs and developers.

For those of you flying to Las Vegas for CES this week, AT&T is putting together a hackathon this Sunday, January 8!

It's a great opportunity for startupers, developers and talented students to launch their app and get the opportunity to market it thanks to the free PR and prizes.

Full details here: http://www.bit.ly/HackVegas
(Use code HDS903 to register for the hackathon)
It's this coming Sunday!

1st Place gets:
•$20k Cash Prize
•Featured in AT&T TV commercial
•Video Interview with Andrew Keen to be posted on TechCrunch
•Six (6) month membership in Alpha API program where we help setup networking events where you get to rub elbows with significant peers
•Three (3) days of AT&T Foundry business and technical support
•One month feature in AT&T Promotional Widget (platform dependent)
•"Back-Stage" meet and greet with Developer Summit Band (up to 4 people)
•Microsoft Xbox 360 + Kinect for the entire team if Microsoft Azure is used as a backend

Feel free to retweet & share with your peers.

Also, they are still open slots for startups & organizations who want to meet up with the AT&T one-on-one.
Email me for that so I can hook you up directly.

Best wishes of health, love and mobile prosperity & May the Force be with You!

S@

P.S. Yes, my sister's name is really Leia... no kidding! Mmmh, what does that make me? Luke?! 

If you love New York City and are curious about Augmented Reality...

Niche dating sites for Geeks + Dating-related panels at SxSW

Keyboard romance, a new fragrance by...

I just came across an ad for Geek 2 Geek, a dating site for... geeks!

It reminded me of a site back in the days. Can anyone remember which one, wasn't it part of CNET or some equivalent?

Anyway, this definitely picked my curiosity and - while looking for the answer - I decided to research the space and find out which other sites are attempting to cater to the romantic needs of fellow geeks and nerds out there.

Here is a sample: 

• Sweet on Geeks and their cool tagline: A Space Where Gray Matters
• Cupidtino - dedicated to the Apple/Mac lovers out there.
• Nerd Passions - run by Passions Network a cousin of Gaming Passions.
• Meet a Geek - made in Europe
• GamerDating - made for gamers by gamers

(Please note these are currently web-based only. So feel free to send me links for mobile and Facebook apps as well as International sites)

South by SouthWest: Where are the experts

Unfortunately, for those will also be in Austin this week for SxSW and were hoping to learn a thing or two about this fascinating industry, it appears there are only a couple of related panels:

• Online Dating 2.0: All Mobile, All Location-Based (on March 13) featuring MeetMoi and Grindr's respective founders: Andrew Weinreich and Joel Simkhai
• Paying with Data: How Free Services Aren't Free (on March 13) featuring OKCupid's co-founder/CEO Sam Yagan (quick reminder: OKCupid was acquired by Match.com last month for 50 million dollars)
• and for singles, parents & consumer journalists: Naked Dating: Finding Love in 140 Characters or Less (on March 14).

 (Again, comments & emails are welcome, should you know of any other panels/events worth mentioning.) 

Geek matchmaking, a new eldorado?

Coming back to our main topic, anyone will agree that nerds and geeks are now part of the pop culture. Thanks to the democratization of Internet and mobile devices and of course the portrayal of nerdy heroes stamped by Hollywood, it has never been so cool to be a nerd.

Content publishers attracting a high volume audience of geeks and nerds may soon decide to seize the day and release their own branded dating platform following the footsteps of more traditional players.

Indeed, both The Guardian's soulmates.com and Condé Nast's trulymadlydating.com have jumped on the opportunity by partnering with The Dating Lab, a white-label company which makes it easy for any substantially important online community site to play at the dating table...

This potential "match made in heaven" for a Geek.com or IGN could very well help them also get a piece of the pie.

Indeed, TechCrunch and more recently the New York Times have reported on the growthof niche dating sites... But I will leave it up to Business Insider to show us the actual market potential with a lovely chart that would resemble to this one. By the way, how about a customized idateon.TechCrunch.com? ;-P

Reminiscences

To conclude this piece, let me share with you some retro geeky bonus content:

as well as a Craigslist homage:
Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It...

This post is dedicated to my #NYTM single friends.

Essential app for GDC, SxSW, CTIA or some other cool events

I don't know about you, but my month of March is packed with conferences, fairs and tradeshows. Unfortunately I cannot all these great events (except for SxSW!!!). But for those heading to the GDC in San Francisco, CTIA in Orlando, The Book Fair / Salon du Livre in Paris, or SxSW in Austin, then you will understand right away the pain of having to go through literally a couple of hundreds of business cards after each event...

Luckily, ScanBizCards released its new version just on time to make us all more efficient and networking-friendly.

Available on iPhone and Android. I have discount codes for the iPhone version, feel free to ping me for it and please don't forget to rate the app :) 

The next iPhone lost by an Apple employee in a bar

First of all, here is how it supposedly looks like:

Leaked by Gizmodo, the story is centered around an Apple employee who allegedly forgot what seems to be the iPhone 4G to be launched this coming June on a bar counter. The story is well written, yet I found it to be way too focused on the employee, releasing his name and his love for drinking. This guy is now going to have a hard time keeping some privacy. That said, imagine if Gizmodo had 'tactfully' not released his name. Then it would be logical to think that - considering that Apple would have found out who the iPhone owner was anyway - they might have fired him discreetly. Gray Powell is now so famous, it would pretty much be bad publicity for Apple to get rid of him, at least for now.

Some questions remain: how did the soon-to-be launched iPhone leaked onto Gizmodo's hands? and therefore who received those 5,000 dollars Gizmodo paid for it?

In the meantime, here is a fake leak of the iPhone 4G for your amusement:

Amazon's 420,000+ books available via its new Blackberry Kindle App

Before stumbling Wireless Week's news regarding the launch of the 'Kindle for Blackberry', I had lunch (actually it was more of a brunch) with a friend who was reading Les Echos on his Kindle. And among other things we talked about how the iPad's arrival would definitely pause as a game changer for Amazon's eReader and might be the catalyst to Amazon venturing onto other handsets. It turns out we were wrong (yes I admit) as Amazon probably thought of providing an ubiquitous experience long ago since its ebooks are already available via all the following platforms iPhone, iPod Touch, PC and Mac. Getting on the iPad seems to be Amazon's next step on sealing a very incesteous relationship with Apple...

Apple blocks location-based advertising within apps

Mobile Marketer's Dan Butcher agily details the ramification of Apple's stance against location-based advertising within applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

This decision will definitely impact most players of the mobile advertising industry. Yet I do not think it will presents itself as an issue for companies like Foursquare or Buzzd, whose location-based feature is not only part but beneficial to the user experience.

Indeed, according to Apple's advice to the developer community about its CoreLocation framework:
If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.
You can learn more about using Core Location by reading the CLLocationManager Class Reference and downloading the LocateMe sample code available in the iPhone OS Reference Library.

To learn more about the potential repercussions from a marketing and advertising stand-point, please read Dan Butcher's piece here: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/5430.html