Tiago Matos’ Nest

More info about this stuff at vendder.com

Google keeps surprising us. They’re next toy is Google Auto-Captions… it basically uses speech-to-text technology from Google Voice and brings it to the millions of YouTube videos. It can also be combined with Google Translator resulting in an array of subtitle languages. It is isn’t perfect but it’s better than nothing, for sure.

This brings me to mind the two distinct beliefs towards an universal language, some belive that with time, we will be able to understand each other using a dominant language, let’s say English or Spanish, or via some lingua franca, like English and Chines with some bits of Spanish and other languages, as we travel and mingle more with other cultures.

Others, like myself, believe there won’t be a need for that, machines will be able to translate from and to any targeted language. All emails written in English will be presented to me in Portuguese and I will be able to pick up a German customer phone call and hear only English if I am pleased.

I hope this new Google product brings more sense to this reality.

The future of mobile phones, or “smartphones” as they are still distinguished today, will be to connecting you to the world.

The mobile phone brings the three missing contextual parts to the “world wide web”: identity, connections and location.

A mobile phone is the supreme form of identification because, except in rare occasions, it is intrinsic to only one person. It is not easily shared or lent away. Some say, and I agree, the mobile phone will replacing the three basic stuff you always have in your pockets (women do not apply): ID, Money and Keys.

Nokia, for example, starteded to work closely with VISA in order to bring you the possibility to connect your mobile phone with the banking systems. In the other end, if you pay more attention to the available payment methods in your favororite restaurant you might find a RFID Cards reader already available use the most recent RFID Credit Cards. Things are rapidly binding together. As soon as this tecnhology becomes mainstream other types of interaction will pop-up like paying for traveling or forgeting about promotional coupons and other company fidelization offers.

The mobile phone also knows everything about your connections, it owns your most complete and detailed contact list. It also knows who are the people you are more connected to: the people you most often SMS or spend more time calling. It can also knows who is your girlfriend (or girlfriends) and work colleagues, the same way Gmail smartly suggests you to buy flowers on S. Valentines day when you are reading your lover’s email. You will be able to connect  and sync information to existing Social Applications as Facebook, LinkedIn.

With geo-location capabilities, the phone will know where you work during the week and your favorite restaurant on Saturday evenings and rainy Sundays. It will help you with your jogging tracks and getting lost in Amadora, Lisbon with Google Maps.
Will rank your Google searches according to your location, as you do not want to know about available bars in Madrid if you are with Minna in Helsinki and guide you home safely avoiding car traffic.

In the end, the ultimate business case, goes like this: Cristina, your boss, sets up a meeting with you at 9.30am and updates your calendar with it. As usual you oversleep, and  wake up by your mobile phone event notification, informing you about your upcoming meeting with Cristina. Calculating weather, traffic and available transports you get your itinerary suggested and Cristina gets notified you will arrive later, at 10.00am, so she can plan accordingly. By the end of meeting you check your mobile phone  and check your best friend, Luis is only 2 blocks away at your favorite restaurant and you drop to have lunch with him, just to realize he is cheating on you with Minna.

Everybody has a dream… I would would like to write for living. Writing is a powerful medium. It is the best way of narrowing the gap between two people’s brains. The writer can carefully choose its words before deploy them in paper, still allowing the readers imagination to make his words fly around his own imagination. Oral speech is difficult, you’re often misunderstood and your thoughts challenged back and forth by the listener. Writing is deploying deep thoughts in paper.

I also would like to have a Porshe… but that’s not really a achievement.