The Lauri Monroy Blog

http://www.myspace.com/evokateur

It's not enough that you have free email (Gmail), free office productivity suite online (Google Docs), free online maps (Google Maps) and free this and that... I mean the list is endless and now we are going to have a free in-car GPS navigation system for again FREE (excluding the device - of course). And the new Google GPS is not only free but it is superior to any competition thanks to the amazing StreetView integration. You can navigate using real 3D type view of the surroundings when StreetView images are available. I mean how cool is that? Not any other company could take photographs of all the streets of all the major cities in the world than Google. It would be too expensive! But Google can. Google can disrupt almost any market it enters nowadays. Their advertising funded approach to everything can and will upset many businesess now and in the future. The sheer mass of users who see Google adverts in various channels every day is huge. This creates the fuel to transform many industries. Google also likes buying companies - it is becoming a huge machine that will eat everything which is in front of it.

Even on my Windows 7 powered laptop I have Google logo cleverly placed next to the Windows start button. Google is finding its way to everywhere slowly. Soon we have Google computers, Google phones, Google cars, Google WHATEVER. The entire planet will be renamed to Google and we will become Googloids and we only eat Google food and work for Google. What happened to choise and innovation? And their LOGO is ugly! I like much more the logos of all other big companies - I do not want to have that ugly Google logo on my car! I do not want to become a Googloid!

Disruption is great - but also there seems to be no real match for Google at the moment. Big companies like Nokia, Microsoft are already shaking becouse of the power Google has created. Google can even change their logo for a day to a barcode and their brand just gets bigger and better every moment. When is it going to end? Where is the new innovative company that will become match for Google? The problem is that if there is such a company Google will buy it. It eats everything due to the sheer volume of Google advertising traffic which fuels any of the creative ideas Google has. I do like Google disruption but I also want choise - I want to use other cool products from other cool companies! Thank God Google Wave is not great - so not everything Google does is great - Google is also human. Pheew.

I did not used to like Microsoft but I think I am going to switch to Live search - just for a change. I also like their visual design more - Google sucks in style big time.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/28/google-redefines-car-gps-navigation-google-maps-navigation-android/

Finally it is official - email is dead as the Wall Street Journal states (link below). If I look at my own inbox, 90% of the emails I receive are junk. Only  couple of emails from friends and relatives. Nowadays I do receive most of my personal emails and invitations from friends via Facebook - the social media is becoming a full communication medium replacing email and also IM. Traditional email is really anymore a replacement for the junk mail that used to come through the letterbox. As a result emails usefulness has gone down as it's value as a marketing tool. Many email marketers note that their open rates are going down on email and everyone is looking now how to leverage Social Media mostly meaning Facebook and Twitter. Social Media is how you communicate now and also how you market your products since that's where the people are. World is changing - fast, it's better to adjust your marketing strategies now.

WSJ: Why Email No Longer Rules
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html

I was first quite excited when a friend of mine told my that he has invited me to Google Wave. I immediately went to my inbox just to learn that there is no invite - after a 10 day frustrating wait the invite finally arrived (more about the reason for the delay see link below). Finally on the big day when I was able to login to Google Wave first time I was quite disappointed. The revolution of Google Wave is not in providing amazing content, it's just simply a collaboration platform with a twist. It's not going to be a Facebook killer - at least for the next few years. Google Wave is not a mainstream product - it's designed for advanced collaboration for people who are very used to working using online tools (typically IT professionals). It's key challenge is that it offers too much choice and freedom - you need to think how you want to use it. This simply means that it's not going to be a mainstream consumer product very quickly. Unless it completely transforms how people interact - which is possible.

I do not like seeing when people type: First it's funny, then it's hilarious and in the end it's boring. This will be turned off at some point since it takes the focus off from the actual sentence - you will start looking how someone types - that's not the point, the key thing is to understand what the other person is trying to say. One thing I do agree with Google Wave developers: email is dead - the future is for social networks and collaboration. That's for sure.

Don't get me completely wrong - I think Google Wave is great and offers exciting possibilities as an advanced collaboration platform. However as I have helped to launch one collaboration platform myself years ago (FLE project see link below) I know that if you require users to go through paradigm shifts your platform is not going to be successful easily or quickly - at least by a mainstream audience. And I believe this is the challenge Google Wave is going to face - of course as it is created by Google there will be millions of people trying it and it will evolve quickly and it will find its' market - however I do not believe it will kill Facebook or IM. IM is becoming more network agnostic functionality anyway - soon it does not matter which network you are on and you can IM with anyone (except with Skype because they think they own the world).

However there is one market which would be ready for something like this. I think Google Wave will find lot's of audience from the education sector: universities, schools and other educational projects will find this tool extremely useful. This is where it's advanced features will be useful. I think Google Wave is going to be a great learning platform with the potential of transforming the entire education system. Each lesson can be a wave and you can see how the learning happens through the playback feature later on - very cool and useful. You can embed videos, pictures and multimedia - just what a modern education system needs. This linked with a smart room that converts your speech into text and projects the entire discussion on the wall - wow a tru killer app for the education sector! Very exciting indeed.

Well it is going to be very interesting to see where this leads. Hopefully Google Wave increases learning across the world. That would be a great thing indeed.

Why do you have to wait for your invite:
http://jessenewhart.com/google/why-you-havent-got-you-google-wave-invite-yet/

Overview of Google Wave:

FLE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fle3

Certainly very interesting, out of the box thinking from the worlds biggest government. More stuff like these, please.

http://arpa-e.energy.gov/

Why this is not surprising me?

http://www.wddty.com/swine-flu-may-have-started-in-laboratory-expert-says.html

Best ever video on how to pitch to VCs:

Is this from The Da Vinci code or is this real?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,630158,00.html