Hey there, been a while, innit? For all of those that thought we were down and out... we're back in it and heading up.
I'm currently in Paris for some interesting stuff that will be coming up early next year, but more on that in 2008. A lot of things happening behind the scenes at Naviblog, a lot of projects that are using our platform but not in the typical mobile LBS mentality, nor in the this-is-my-blog-alaMySpace.
There is a lot of talk around me recently on micro-personalisation, auto-generated ad-hoc communities of interest, new forms of search, emotive web manipulation, novel man-machine interface design.
There is definitely a move away from all the web 2.0. web 3.0, mobile 2.0 and all that. I feel we are entering a phase of experimentation with more intelligent forms of online manipulation and community.
As always, there is the problem of navel-gazing 2.0 versus irrelevant commercial editorial content, but this problem is there regardless of the publisher ecosystem. Very interesting movements generally.
I am astonished how quickly things are moving mobile-wise in Europe (finally!): there's going to be some serious work to do in Japan if the Europeans catch up with Japan in terms of agency creative work. They have the economies of scale, the price differentials for near-shoring dev work quickly that Japan doesn't, and the tech ecosystem is coming up to scratch fairly fast.
I think that Japanese do not realise how quickly things are heating up, but then again, what would they do about it even if they did know? Market-wise things are pretty locked down in Japan, but can Japan afford to lock down innovation? With more stability comes less innovation. Is it possible that as the mobile world over-matures in Japan, that other markets will both copy Japanese market models and innovate beyond it?
Laurels should not be sat on. They don't like being sat on. Japan beware.
MK
