Have you ever couchsurfed somewhere? The couchsurfing website (www.couchsurfing.com) was built in 2004 allowing people from all over the world to host and be hosted by someone on this someone’s couch around the globe. If you don’t have a couch, you can take this visitor to go sightseeing, have a coffee, or simply just give him the tips that only locals know.

The idea of couchsurfing came from the North-American guy named Casey Fenton who was going to Iceland and did not want to do the usual process: look for a hotel or hostel and an agency that offers city tours. So, he emailed 150 students from a university of Iceland to see if anyone could host him. Surprisingly, around 50 students answered YES. When he came back from his trip, he joined two friends and built the “couch accommodation network”. This social network is not only to offer or receive a couchsurfing but it is also to exchange knowledge, culture, and experiences. The mission of couchsurfing is to spread solidarity and one of the rules is that it is non-profit.

If you want to join this network, you can register your profile and preferences in the site and you can be either a “couchsurfer” or a “couchsurfee”.

It is very interesting how this idea have been successful as the majority of people had great feedbacks from their past experiences. You can get free accommodation all over the world and cultural lessons. You will also receive feedback about your host and vice-versa. 99,6% of the people who couchsurfed through Couchsurfing.com had positive past experiences. Today, Couchsurfing.com has more than 1,7 million members and more than 420.000 couches available at the moment in more than 200 countries.

Couchsurfing.com has been very successful for many reasons. First, there is demand and supply; in other words, there are people who would like to show and teach about their culture and meet people from other places and there are people who would like to stay with locals, feel the local culture and also save money on accommodations. Couchsurfing.com filters down the profile of your potential visitor and you can choose whether or not to host this person and the visitor can also choose his host beforehand based on his profile and feedbacks.

The web 2.0 and Couchsurfing network allowed many people to travel to new countries, meet new people, and exchange experiences at a very low cost.

So… now… are interested on trying?

According to Pew Research Center, Americans prefer online news to paper news. The research says that 61% of Americans prefer to obtain news on the web, 71% on local TV channels, and 78% on national TV channels such as NBC, CNN, and Fox News. Although, Americans prefer to read news through the web to the newspaper, most Americans prefer to get news on TV.

I believe that the more technology apparatus we have available in the market with an embedded TV, the more people will switch to online sources to read and watch news.

I remember that in more than one of our meetings in Future Centre we were discussing when the paper news will come to an end if it will. Well, it seems that it is already starting to end with all these new technologies, internet speed, data storage capacity, and changes in consumer behavior.

I guess the need to keep one’s updated about what’s going on around the world, one’s surroundings, and communities will always remain. People would like to know what is going in Brazil to invest in real estate, the earthquake in Chile, the technology conference in Germany, etc. As communication means are becoming cheaper if not free, easily accessed, and more efficient, people have more urgency to receive news asap and free but we’ve better be careful with the quality of these news because you get free online news but at the same time, they seem to be more brief and full of advertisements. However, to send comments about the news we read have never been so convenient.

Have you ever wondered about hiring a robot housewife who could make spaghetti alla carbonara, seafood okonomiyaki, or even a feijoada?

There are many chef robots in the market nowadays that can supply you a meal. For instance, the University of Carnegie Mellon has just completed the development of Snackbot after two years of research. Snackbot is equipped with a laser navigation system that is worth $20.000, sound sensors, and a Point Grey Bumblebee 2 camera that works as the robot eyes and give you the impression that it is starring at you. It has an embedded laptop where you can type what you wish: a cereal bar, a can of coke, a tuna sandwich, etc. Snackbot circulates around one of the university’s buidings.

Snackbot

Snackbot is not the only robot chef available in the market. There are plenty of those. In 2006, Fanxing Science and Technology, a Chinese company, based in Shenzhen developed the AIC-AI Cooking Robot with a $250.000 investments. This Chinese robot is believed to be the first chef robot. It can cook, fry, boil, and bake thousands of Chinese dishes from three different regions of China. Tempting !!!

In 2008, a Swiss Polytechnic School, Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, developed the Chief Cook Robot who can make omelets. You can choose the raw materials such as ham, cheese, mushroom, etc. In the same year, in Japan, the Osaka Museum of Creative Industries developed a robot who could make takoyaki (fish ball).

In 2009, in Japan, there was the presentation of robots in the International Expo of Food Machinery and Technology who are able to make okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes) and sushi.

Well, to sum it up, there are many types of chef robots under research and development. Whether they are going to be popular or not, it depends on many factors. One obviously is the price. A simple task chef robot costs at least a few thousand dollars. Another factor is the economy; Japan, for instance, is facing high levels of unemployment so even though it is a very technology advanced country, Japanese still don’t see the chef robot with good eyes as they may be taking a human’s job. However, one factor that depends on the robot manufacturers and designers is the human-machine-interface that is still very primitive because robots still don’t have the human five senses. They still don’t know how to deal with, for instance, ice and breaking eggs perfectly. Anyway, the cost of owning a robot chef is still not affordable for my pocket so I’d better do my own meal but it would not be a bad idea to have chef robot to cook for me a nice Sichuan fried rice or a seafood okonomiyaki after a tiring day.

Companies that are aiming to offer personalized products or services face many challenges. However, I believe they should make sure which market segment they are targeting. Theoretically, in the business ecosystems model, everyone is allowed to enter the game, but for how long, it depends. Similar to the natural ecosystem, the strongest wins. Animals start building their networks with others who they believe they can have some benefit from. It happens similarly in the business ecosystems. Companies are also willing to partner with others in order to be stronger. These “partnerships” must be well selected; otherwise, they can ruin their reputation. In this line of thought, they must partner with companies that target the same market segment that they are. Companies must be aware of whom they are partnering with. Their brand is at risk; in other words, the brand partnerships must match. For instance, it is unusual someone owns platinum category credit card, travels business/first class, stay in five-star hotels and eat street food. It is important to see with whom companies should do their strategical partnerships. In the long term, I believe this will be as smooth as the natural ecosystems.

The purpose of this blog is to first, introduce Ning, and then how it can be an enabler of business ecosystems.

It has never been so easy to create a social network according to one’s profile. Ning is an online platform for people to create their own social networks. You can choose the visual design, the members’ data, and customized features. And two very interesting things are: (1) it does not require advanced computer skills and (2) it’s free!

Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. Ning is Andreessen’s third company, founded in 2005 (after Netscape and Opsware).

Ning has both free and paid options. When someone creates a social network on Ning, it is free by default and runs ads that Ning controls. If the person creating the social network chooses, they can pay to control the ads (or lack thereof), in exchange for a monthly fee. A few other premium services such as extra storage and bandwidth and non-Ning URLs are also available for additional monthly fee. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ning.com).

Just as an example, I will share my experience at Ning.com. It took me 15 minutes to create a social network on Ning platform. I chose the social network I wanted to create, how it will appear, which features I want to make available for my social network users, the colors and the size of the font, etc. Please, take a look at the pictures below.

My social network topic was Backpack Travelers. All I had to do was to fill in the blanks like below:

I had the option to add which features I want to make available for the members who wish to join, for instance: forum, blogs, birthdays, etc.

In addition, I could choose the visual design of how I would like my social network to be displayed:

In the end consumer point of view or P2P, it is a very interesting platform that allows individuals to create their own personalized social network fulfilling their needs and desires.

Furthermore, if you think in the business to business, B2B, point of view, it seems that Ning combines different kind of features such as blogs, social networks, etc. This allows many enterprises and individuals to communicate with each other in a more personalized and objective manner without a lot of CAPEX. In this sense, Ning opens up opportunities for existing companies and start-ups to expand their businesses with very low investments and also allows companies that have small exposure, specially SMEs to gain more market and have a bigger share of the pie, in other words, Ning can be an enabler of business ecosystems, evolving many players; for instance, applications developers, consumer manufacturers, government institution, consumers, services providers in general, etc. for all kinds of industries. And its users can be the consumers, but at the same time content and applications providers. In this sense, Ning enables the value creation and business ecosystems development and combines the strengths of third parties into a single services platform.

To learn more about it, to create your own social network, or to develop a business ecosystem, please go to www.ning.com.

Can you imagine students being able to print their projects in 3D at school?

Well, it seems that students from a few Hawaiian schools can. With the support  of Hawaii’s State Department of Education in partnership with Z Corporation, a leader manufacturer in 3D printers, students can send their files with their final project to be printed in 3D (http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/04/z-corps-3d-printers-available-to-hawaiian-school-students-the/). Depending on the prototype, the students may have a better idea how they can improve their work and make possible adjustments that can only be noticed after having a 3D print on hand.

The popularity of 3D printers at schools will have a great impact on the education system of those schools. As stated in the press release of Z Corporation, 3D printers give students ample opportunity to experience the design process from idea to finished product, putting more finished models in the hands of more students faster. Printing speed is critical for large classes, cross-discipline printer sharing, and meeting project deadlines, such as the end of term. Students in the field of design, engineering, manufacturing, etc will definitely not take this for granted, but rather enhance their skills and can probably increase their career prospects.

The picture above is a 3D printer from Z Corporation and 3D print.

Last week, our team did a presentation about Apple and its new operational system iphone OS 3.0 that will be coming soon in the summer.

Our purpose was to present the new strategy of Apple and new features of iphone OS 3.0. Our guess is that Apple is trying to sell ways for you to realize your dream. How? It is doing it by offering its new services platform where it enables new and existing Apple Store users to sell their products and services in a very easy and fast way.

We began the presentation by giving an overview about Apple and the new features of the new OS. Then, we tried to analyze the impact of the new OS to Apple’s main stakeholders: customers, hardware manufacturers, applications’ developers and content providers, and competitors. We closed the presentation linking with what everyone here at the Future Centre is studying and of course, raising many questions about the future:

- Will Apple Store be available in other cell phone manufacturers’ products?

- Only Apple devices carry Apple Store: for Apple, it might be its strength, but for the consumer, is it a positive thing? You, as a consumer, would you like to have more than one platform in your cell phone? Would you like to have Windows Mobile and iTunes in the same handset?

- Will Apple have a strong competitor in the future?

- My colleague just got her first smartphone, and as a matter of fact, this smartphone ended up to be an IPHONE! Her insight was that once you have an Iphone, you don’t get away from it! Iphone basically fulfill many of your needs: entertainment, games, agenda, flashlight, social networking, etc, etc… Yes, sure… you can get many out of the 35000 applications available to be downloaded at Apple Store! But like she said: You live in Apple’s world! You get so fascinated with surprises that Apple offers you on a daily basis that you don’t think about switching to another handset. Do you agree?

- It seems that Apple is also trying to target the corporate market by creating strong partnerships with big companies like Oracle on one hand and on the other hand, its competitor, Blackberry seems to go in the opposite way trying to attract the consumer market.

Well, those were a few questions that we raised during our discussion. What’s your opinion? Would you like to join Apple’s world or you’ve already joined? J

In Japan and Malaysia, and very soon, in Singapore, people have the option to make payments through their cell phones. They have the option to pay their shopping, the parking lot, the road tolls, and their meals at many restaurants through their cell phones in the countries mentioned before.

My work colleagues and I were brainstorming about this subject yesterday: we were discussing if we would like to have this kind of function in our cell phones. In my team, there are people from Brazil, Italy, and Japan, and I noticed that certain issues were concerned to a specific cultural background.

For instance, as a Brazilian, it seems a little awkward to have this kind of function today. In Brazil, perhaps people will be afraid of these kinds of technologies because of the violence, identity theft, and other aspects of this nature. It won’t be a surprise if someone comes to you and point a gun at your back and asks you to follow him/her to a bank to withdraw money or to make a payment for something.

To my Japanese colleague, he would prefer paying in cash for his shopping whenever he can or using the credit card in the traditional way (swiping his card on a POS (Point-of-Sale)).

In order to make these technologies popular in Brazil, there must be a feature or devices that protect Brazilians from this kind of fear of being robbered anywhere or at anytime. Otherwise, I don’t believe it will work out in Brazil.

Looking at an optimistic point of view, I believe that having a credit card function attached on my cell phone will make my life easier. I won’t need to carry so many credit cards on my wallet when I go shopping; I won’t need to get off from the car to pay the parking fees, road tolls, etc. Moreover, it won’t be necessary to stand in line just to pay the meal I just bought. I can use my lunch time to do things more pleasurable than staying in the long lines. I could just make a payment for the meal through my cell phone. I believe that these types of technologies can make our life easier but they still need some adjustments before we adopt them.