If you are new to this column and do not really know what TECH-i-LICIOUS is all about here is what you should know, TECH-i-LICIOUS is your monthly dose of all things; gadgets to technology trends to new media that is making waves these days.
So let’s get started with what’s making news!
What’s making news!
Lotusphere – World’s premier collaboration conference kicks off January 30th.
Snippets from the 2011 International Consumer Electronic Show, held from 6-9 January at
Plus a recap of Social Business predictions for 2011 from t
he Sandy Carter, Vice President, IBM Social Software, Lotus.
Lotusphere 2011
Lotusphere is an annual conference hosted by Lotus Group, IBM Software.
Except for the first conference, which took place in December 1993, Lotusphere is held in late January. It starts with a reception party on Sunday night and continuing on through the closing session on Thursday afternoon. The conference uses the conference rooms in the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin hotels.
In addition to the annual conference in
A special event named IBM Social Business Industries Symposium, in conjunction with Lotusphere 2011 for executive-level leaders, will also take place on January 31st and February 1st. The IBM
Social Business Industries Symposium is targeted for C-level and senior leaders from sales, marketing, HR, operations, customer service, and product development, where they can learn on how to get started to become a social business. The USP of the show is to exhibit how proposed clients can drive measurable results and attain competitive advantage by applying proven social business practices with customers, partners, and across the employee population. You can follow @collabagenda and @lotusknows on twitter to learn more.
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the
- Motorola Xoom -- Motorola Xoom grabbed the most headlines being the first tablet based on Google’s Honeycomb (Android 3.0) operating system, and eventually was crowned the best gadget of the show.
- BlackBerry PlayBook -- Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook is a 7-inch tablet running on a 1GHz processor and 1GB of memory, has HD cameras at the front and rear (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), and runs on the BlackBerry Tablet operating system.
- Lenovo LePad -- The Lenovo LePad is an Android tablet powered by a dual-core 1.3 GHz Snapdragon CPU, 1 GB of memory and 16 or 32 GB SSD.
- Dell Streak 7 -- Dell Streak 7 is powered by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and 16GB of internal memory.
- Toshiba -- Toshiba unveiled a yet to be named 10.1-Inch Tablet powered by Tegra 2 and running Android Honeycomb.
- Acer Iconia Dual-Screen Tablet -- This offering from Acer is a dual-screen laptop/tablet PC from Acer running Windows 7.
- Virtual gifting will become mainstream. The research shows that people value virtual gifts as much as real gifts. Social dating sites already make lots of money on virtual roses and IBM did the virtual “hex” necklace for our great developers. What will 2011 bring!
- Crowdsourcing will be used by the crowds. Crowds of successful companies that is. The most competitive and successful companies in 2011 will use crowdsourcing for new products and services. Enough said.
- Social media and gaming will interconnect and gaming will become “the” currency in 2011. Games like Farmville will become the norm due to the popularity of gaming with all ages and the fun, teachable moments that encompass it. Aren’t Foursquare and Gowalla just gaming platforms? Will everything become a gaming platform? I think so!!
- Everything is
- Cyberwarfare has just begun. With the Wikileaks publicity, cyberwarfare has just begun. Its power is great and it numbers more than we can imagine.
- Talent will select companies who embrace social media. Talented resources will want to work for the uberconnected company. Beware — those of you out there who still restrict your employees.
- Put a ring on it. Engagement is Queen! Customer engagement is the winning strategy in 2011. Purchases are often the result of emotions, maximizing a customer’s hands-on experience within the environment.
- Crystal balls are required. Social Analytics that not only tell you what’s been done but also predict based on that information, will be the wave of the future.
- Friends matter most. In the next five years, consumers will increasingly rely on themselves – and the opinions of each other – to make purchasing decisions rather than wait for help from companies. 2011 is the time to get yourself a group of Brand Advocates to assist your brand!
- PR is 2.0. The potential for PR 2.0 is immense, and I don’t think anyone realizes that PR 2.0 will educate citizens and influence so many in ways corporations and governments have not realized … yet!
- Social business not Social Media. Today, companies are using social media to talk to clients, to do sentiment analysis…all important. But 2011 will be the Social Business year. Social business is about being able to leverage social tools to have sell side analysts communicate to institutional traders, reinvented CRM systems, social learning, and process changes to incorporate social.
With that it’s a wrap of January issue. Please keep follow me on www.twitter.com/4LOK
