Prompt's Blog

If you haven't heard of Navilator.com, maybe you've heard of the movie that it sprung from – a low-key, low-budget film called Avatar.

Yes indeed, James Cameron's latest box office hit has introduced the world to a planet full of an indigenous people who speak a completely different language called Na'vi. As it turns out, the language heard in the movie was created by linguistics professor, Paul Frommer from the University of Southern California, who designed the language by combining syntactic and grammatical rules from existing languages.

Soon after the release of the box office hit came the launch of Navilator.com – a website created as a translator for the Na'vi language. Upon first visit, the website looks an awful lot like a Google Translator page with a black background and flashes of red here and there.

A disclaimer reminds site visitors that, "Na'vi is a new and ever expanding language, so words that are not in the database today maybe tomorrow, new words are added every day." Words that haven't been added yet display in red, but that really doesn't take away from much of the fun – have a look and see for yourself. If you stick around long enough, maybe you will be graced with an ad for Rosetta Stone's language tutorial software like I was! Unfortunately, a Na'vi software pack is not yet available.

Labels: Avatar, Na'vi, Navilator

Whenever my family leaves for vacation, we keep the upstairs light on and arrange for our neighbors to take in the mail. "This way," my mother reasons, "Burglars won't know we're not home."

Foursquare, a location-based social networking website, has gained a ton of popularity recently. The website encourages people to connect and explore their communities, particularly local businesses. Members earn points by 'checking-in' to locations, unlock 'badges', and become the 'Mayor' if they accumulate the most check-ins at one location.

When a lot of people start using a new social network, it's almost guaranteed that some won't get the point. People who check-in to places far from their usual neighborhood are exposing that their home is empty, and those who check-in to their homes might as well broadcast their address for all to see.

This is where Please Rob Me comes in. The "dressed-up Twitter search page," as proclaimed by its founders presents 'opportunities' to visitors to 'Please Rob Me' when it appears someone is not home. The website's main aim isn't to help people burglarize homes, but rather to point out the dangers of publicly telling people where you are.

Burglars and other would-be predators have every reason to pay attention to social media, however. British insurance and investment management firm Legal & General found that almost 40% of social networking users share holiday plans on sites like Facebook or Twitter. In addition, 13% of Facebook users and 92% of Twitter users accept follows without checking up on the source.

The main point: Be careful about what information you share on the web. As Please Rob Me creators reasoned, publicly telling people where you've checked in is dangerous because it leaves one place you're definitely not: home. And if you've checked in to the airport 5 minutes ago, that upstairs light won't fool anyone.

Labels: Facebook, Foursquare, Please Rob Me, social media, social networking, Twitter

In history, January 9th has played host to quite a few notable events.

For example, it was on this date in 1861 that Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union before the outbreak of the American Civil War. In 1947, it was the last day that Elizabeth "Betty" Short, the (legendary) Black Dahlia, was last seen alive, and was the birthday for the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Well known Jamaican ragga-hip hop musician Sean Paul celebrates his birthday on January 9th each year, along with one of the Backstreet Boys (bet you can't guess which one). Not only that, it was the date of the first eclipse of the third millennium in 2001 and would eventually become the date in 2007 that Steve Jobs would introduce the iPhone.

Even more importantly, however, January 9, 2001 was the date that the world was introduced to and began its obsession with Apple's iTunes.

Further to iTunes' success from 2001 on, Apple launched the iTunes store in April 2003. Five years later, it had become the number one music vendor in the United States and now boasts over 11 million songs available for download accounting for 70% of online digital music sales worldwide.

Beyond music, the iTunes store currently has 150,000 podcasts available for download, 20,000 audio books, countless hours of video content and over over 75,000 educational audio and video content files available to download through iTunes U.

Now just over nine years old, iTunes really is 'the world's most popular way to organize music and download songs online' - just how Apple puts it. On Wednesday this week, the iTunes store celebrated its 10 billionth music download coincidentally on Steve Jobs' 55th birthday.

The iTunes store was launched on April 28, 2003, making it just under seven years (or 2,494 days) old. Given its age,the iTunes store has averaged a staggering 4,009,623.1 downloads for each day that it's been in existence.

The lucky downloader of the milestone track was a 71 year old man from Georgia who was downloading Johnny Cash's "Guess Things Happen That Way." Once the download finished he received a phone call from Steve Jobs himself to let him know he had just won a $10,000 (£6,500) iTunes gift card redeemable against song, movie, TV show, and application purchases on the iTunes Store.

Jealous? I know I am.

Labels: apple, downloads, itunes, Steve Jobs

Poor Gordon Brown, he's had a rough week. UK newspapers telling him to stop his 'bullying behaviour'; a meeting of 250 global business leaders pointing out Britain really needs to improve tax regime and infrastructure; and then his broadband tax gets damning reviews from a new report by a House of Commons committee.

The monthly tax of 50 pence, known as the 'Next Generation Levy' would be applied to every landline telephone account in Britain. It's meant to drum up £175m each year to help the Government roll out Next Generation Access to more rural areas, particularly those where BT hasn't rolled out fibre connections as, well, it wouldn't be profitable to do that.

This week the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) committee published some rather hefty protests, both against the proposed tax itself, as well as the basic idea. It feels the government should see how the market copes with deploying high-speed networks before it 'intervenes'. BIS chairman Peter Luff said: "In times of great stringency in public expenditure, digital inclusion, not Next Generation Access, should be the priority for expenditure."

Ahh yes, digital inclusion. Part of the government's 'Digital Britain' initiative launched last year which was meant to ensure that everyone in Britain would have 2Mbps broadband.

Now the government faces calls for it to stop being distracted from Next Generation networks until digital inclusion has been conquered. As the BIS report states: "greater attention and resources should be given to digital inclusion which delivers proven social and economic benefits to the individual."

Which is most important to you, 2Mbps broadband for all or super-fast next generation networks? Have your say on what the government should do by leaving your comment below.

Labels: Broadband, Digital Britain, next generation levy, next generation networks

Since consumers first began logging on to the web with their Mosaic browsers back in the early 90s, one train of thought has dominated more than other: "What can I get for free? Why would I pay for some content when so much other stuff is free? Will it always be free? What does 'free' really mean anyway?"

Relatively recent developments in social networking, collaborative content, smartphone adoption, micropayment systems and premium content business models have all contributed to adjust our natural tendencies to freeload. But it remains a rather subtle change in attitudes that could best be summed up in this way: "If I really have to pay for stuff I used to get for free, and they make it really easy for me to get a quality product at negligible cost, then I might not be too upset about paying for it. But frankly I'd rather not."

In its survey 'Changing Models: A Global Perspective on Paying for Content Online', published earlier this week, analyst Nielsen asked 27,000 consumers across 52 countries if they would pay for news and entertainment they currently get for free. As you might expect 85 percent said they'd rather it just stayed free, 79 percent said they'd simply stop using free sites that suddenly started charging, and less than 30 percent said they would even think about paying for social networks, podcasts or consumer-generated content.

If there's an upside to the survey, then surprisingly it is for media companies and publishing houses. Half of respondents said they'd at least consider paying for professionally developed films, games and music, while more than 40 percent said they *might* even pay something for digital newspapers and magazines. Still of some concern, though, is that that just 34 percent of consumers said that they believed entertainment companies' arguments that online content is damaging their ability to produce professional services and products.

Nielsen's report concludes that there is a shock in store for the majority of online consumers weaned on free content: "At this point, no one can say for sure how deeply embedded the free-information ideology is among consumers. So it is unclear how, even if they accept the inevitability of having to pay for online content, consumers will deal with a flood of new charges."

What do you think? What are you happy to pay for online? What should stay free?

Labels: content, free, Nielsen, paid, premium

Prompt's Boston office is part of the fantastic Cambridge Innovation Center. In addition to the fully-stocked kitchens and the free bike share program, the CIC hosts over 175 start-ups and emerging companies, the largest collection of start-ups on the East Coast. We know we're surrounded by innovation within our building, a Silicon Valley in miniature, but the same is true outside the CIC walls.

The Boston Globe's Scott Kirsner recently posted his Red Line Tour of Innovation in Boston, mapping out all the places that make this subway line an epicenter of innovation. Kirsner lays out all of the places where innovators work, meet, and inspire, and more importantly, where visitors can see and experience it.

Near (or rather, on top of) the Harvard Square stop is the Out of Town News, where Paul Allen read the Popular Electronics article that inspired him to invest his future in computers (and convinced Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard).

A stop over at Central Square, you can find the Novartis research lab, where the Swiss company develops cancer treatments (as well as the always delightful Toscanini's).

Our Kendall Square backyard plays host to the MIT Media Lab, the Broad Institute DNAtrium, and the Akamai Network Operations Command Center.

Check out Kirsner's annotated map and the accompanying article and start exploring.

Labels: Cambridge, innovation, Kendall Square

Considering the frenzy of excitement that preceded Wednesday's launch of the Apple iPad -- you couldn't move on Twitter, Facebook or tech blogs for rumour, speculation and general pant-wetting anticipation -- it was somewhat surprising to wake up on the morning-after-the-night-before to find the huddled online masses shrugging and underwhelmed.

A prolonged news conference spearheaded by Apple supremo Steve Jobs and his magical assistant Jonathan Ive was precisely scripted to reveal the wonders of the iPad feature by feature - hyping the innovation and revolutionary claims, pushing the lifestyle benefits and dropping the odd price-bomb along the way. We got to see a stylish device twirled around, and to preview that stunning display streaming multimedia marvels and handling productivity apps with aplomb. So why exactly are so many potential customers now seemingly feeling deflated and dismayed?

It's hard to pinpoint really as there’s not really anything wrong with the iPad, but the hype cycle would suggest the market is merely experiencing 'the trough of disillusionment'. I believe we were basically spoilt by the huge sea change brought about with the launch of the iPhone/iTouch design. Apps, screen-pinching, accelerometers, GPS, Wi-Fi, 3G, HD... ...it was all massively impressive the first time round and now the iPad is giving us more of the same, pretty much. Yes the SDK is a leap forward, the browser experience is better, the screen is sharper, mail is better integrated, eBooks will look terrific and so on. But to many observers the overall impression was much the same as it was to a five year-old who saw me streaming the launch: "Hey it's just like your phone, only for giants!"

Whatever your own personal reaction has been to the unveiling of the iPad, you have to admit that Mr Ive has conjured up a gorgeous chunk of techy eye-candy, and that this is likely yet another launch pad device for Apple to take off from, taking millions of followers along for the journey. No doubt it will work hard to earn its place in the Apple product stack and in the affections of many customers throughout 2010 and beyond.

What did you think of the unveiling? Please let us know.

Labels: apple, iPad, Jonathan Ive, Steve Jobs, Tablet

By now, you’ve seen Avatar, now the most lucrative film ever. You looked through your awkward 3D glasses, gazing past its Fern Gully-meets-The Last Samurai-meets-Dances with Wolves plot straight into the vivid world of Pandora. Avatar’s astronomic box office figures ensure one thing: we’ll see a lot of the technology that made it a success in some very unAvatar-like places very soon.



When South Africa and Mexico kick off the 2010 World Cup on June 11th, you’ll be able to watch it in the same stunning 3D. ESPN’s new 3D venture (unsurprisingly named ESPN 3D) could purportedly change the way we watch sports. It could even more easily not change a thing.

Most sports broadcasts make use of the same camera angle: at the midfield (or midcourt or midice or midanything) line, perched high above the action. While Avatar was urgent, yanking viewers by the collar and dragging them through Pandora, the traditional sports broadcast is more passive. During the run of play, viewers watch games unfold from this one, distant vantage point, taking stock of the entirety of the action, not just a few protagonists. Only in replays can producers find the right angles for the right plays, immersing viewers in the action from field level. Cameras can’t shift in live coverage from a player curling a free kick into the box to a goalkeeper rising to grab the ball during the run of play. They don’t know that it will happen. They didn’t receive a storyboard before the match started.

The medium, as it stands, isn’t ready for 3D. Sports broadcasting conventions don’t allow networks to make the technology worthwhile. That high-above-the-action camera is a staple because it works, consistently capturing the whole of the game. Jerking around viewers with constantly changing field-level shots will enhance the 3D experience, but take away from the game experience. High costs won’t dissuade early adopters, who’ll need to buy 3D TVs, the premium channel, and glasses. ESPN needs to make sure that an unexciting product doesn’t either.

Labels: 3D, Avatar, ESPN, TV