Paul Jacobson

I just received a press release from Emerging Media about an exciting product G-Connect has announced and which is getting a lot of attention on Twitter so far. The interesting bits from the press release (Update: check out background and some more information after the break below):

Sub-Saharan Africans will soon be able to connect to the Internet pretty-much anywhere they are – even while on a domestic or long-haul flight – thanks to a new technology announcement from WirelessG, the company behind SA’s first converged, pre-paid Internet product, G-Connect.

While the technology that will enable in-flight Internet services is depending on Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approval, it will be provided through an exclusive agreement with US-based Row 44 who is already successfully offering in-flight Wi-Fi Internet to Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and in 2010, through Norwegian Air Shuttle. After extensive testing in the US, the first complete set of hardware will arrive in South Africa shortly. This will be used to setup a ground-based proof of concept (POC) here in South Africa to test the complete solution including the Satellites that will be used for the commercial product.

…

Carel van der Merwe, CEO of WirelessG, says the company is already in negotiations with local airlines, and while the solution is already in POC phase, no information is being released as to which carrier will launch the service first.

Because Row 44’s in-flight broadband system is satellite-based and leverages the extensive Hughes satelllite network, WirelessG and Row 44 will be able to provide African airlines’ passengers with uninterrupted high-speed connectivity in-flight, no matter where they fly—including flights across multiple countries and over water.

WirelessG has successfully integrated its converged billing platform to this new technological environment. This platform, which has undergone extensive testing against the WirelessG converged billing service, will connect via satellite to provide a full range of Internet services such as web browsing, email access, VPN connectivity and web-based SMS.
Van der Merwe says the new solution will dovetail perfectly into G-Connect’s current converged Internet solution and extend the ADSL, Wi-Fi hotspot and 3G Internet access currently on offer from the service into the cloud.

The in-flight Internet service will be available to all passengers on participating flights for a fee, while G-Connect users can benefit from the service as they will be able to use their current G-Connect accounts onboard the aircraft.

“With the G-Connect sign-up process being free of cost and contracts, we are expecting many travelers to utilise the advantage of our in-flight offering,” says van der Merwe.

I don’t have any bandwidth figures (apparently pretty close to hotspot speeds) yet or even prices (update: take a look here for an indication of pricing) for the airborne service (they should be comparable to international inflight broadband prices – Virgin America charges between $6 and $13 depending on flight duration and device type). While this is certainly an exciting development and it bridges the connectivity gap for travellers, I wonder if it is such a great idea for some people, people like me.

I am online practically all the time and getting onto a plane forces me to disconnect and take a break from the flurry of information I expose my poor, under-equipped brain to each day. A flight, as comparatively boring as it can be, is also a forced break and an opportunity to take a break, listen to some music, read a book or magazine (or lots of both using an Amazon Kindle, perhaps) or even get through a full email inbox before the next email avalanche hits. Now that we will have inflight broadband, we are faced with the temptation to stay connected. Having this capability also creates an expectation that we will use it and stay connected to our work, clients and the connected world at large.

I don’t know about you but I’m not so sure that this is such a great idea. At least not for me. You can bet your bottom Zim dollar that I will use give it a go and run a speed test every time, just to see how fast I can do stuff in the air. Beyond that I can see myself turning off the wifi most of the time unless I am on a longer trip and can’t afford to lose the time.

On the other hand, this offering does make G-Connect an even more compelling option for me when I am travelling. I already use it almost all the time when I am out (I still use an IS wifi hotspot account when a hotspot is available) and this will make it even easier for me to connect and remain connected. I may be somewhat of an old fart when it comes to my forced disconnect time but you can be darn sure I will be bitching if I can’t connect when I absolutely have to get something done online!

As Mike Stopforth pointed out (and as you can see from the title of my post), the hashtag on Twitter for the discussion is #gconnectinflight.
Read more…

I was invited to a Google Maps launch event at the Helderfontein Estate. Of course I immediately agreed to attend although I was wondering what I would see at the launch that I haven’t been seeing recently on Google Maps.

It turns out that Google Maps is pretty important to Google with roughly 50% of searches having a geographical component. Google SA’s Stephen Newton started off answering a question I had. Why is there a launch for Google Maps in SA when we’ve had Google Maps for some time now. It turns out that the version of Google Maps we were about to be introduced to is a new release.

Business listings

One of the features of the new Google Maps initiative is free business listings. Another is directions which has been missing from Google Maps until recently (I first noticed it a couple days ago and used it earlier this week to find a meeting location after Nokia Maps took a while to find me and where I wanted to go).

If you use the local maps.google.co.za domain you will find that local content is given precedence. One nice touch is that you can search using popular names in some contexts. For example, you can look for “Joburg” when you are search for stuff about “Johannesburg”. An really handy feature for people wanting to learn more about the locations they are searching for is that you can click on a link “more info” …

… and be presented with a profile page of sorts about that location which aggregates information available on the Web:

For local businesses the business listings parallel the place profile pages. These profiles can contain a variety of rich media about the business, reviews, search results and contact information. It sounds a little like a crowdsourced Yellow Pages with arguably more useful information about these businesses and places. Business listings are free, as in air, and businesses are encouraged to add as much information about their business as they can. Google wants your rich media! This isn’t purely altruistic (although the potential benefit to businesses and consumers alike is substantial). No doubt richer business listings provide more opportunities for Google ad sales but this is something that works out well for all concerned, I think.

For tourists

The addition of a series of information layers adds photos, Wikipedia articles and webcams. This is going to be a pretty handy tool for tourists, especially with the 2010 World Cup coming up next year. I am sure they thought about that … But wait, there is more. There is transit information:

Tourists will find that place and street names have been translated into a number of foreign languages including Japanese, Russian, Hebrew and so on. They can even search for place names in a foreign language using phonetically similar terms.

The travel directions appeal to me and although routes don’t change dynamically on your mobile device as you are driving, you can change the route by dragging points on the route around. In the process you will be presented with information about the trip including distance and travel times.

Mobile

Of course no Google product would be complete without a mobile version. We were treated to a demonstration of the Samsung Galaxy (I think) and Google Maps on Android. Samsung sees Android as a strategically important platform and this really reinforces my thoughts about Android which I rambled about yesterday.

Watching Google Maps being demonstrated on the Samsung Android phone (and similar devices) you can really begin to appreciate how powerful our mobile experience of the Web will be as more and more smart devices rollout and additional features like Street View and other augmented reality apps find their way on to those devices.

As we were watching the presentations, I noticed this gem on the Google Blog:

Here it is in action:

MTN is feeling a little backward lately. The outages on the network (which may or may not be Telkom’s fault) are just part of the mix. It also seems that Vodacom has managed to snag all the cool devices that are heading this way. One good example is the iPhone 3G which Vodacom secured the right to distribute when it came out last year. This morning I read that Vodacom is the network you need to go through to access Facebook Mobile.

Ok, this isn’t exactly the death knell for MTN but it is another indicator Vodacom is the network for the cool new gadgets and better access to social services on the Web. This may be due to Vodafone’s stake in Vodacom (Simon Dingle or Duncan McLeod can better speak to those things than me) but whatever the enabling mechanism, all I get from MTN is offers of crappy phones when I am due to upgrade and an average service.

I think I am due for an upgrade soon and I am starting to think about moving across to Vodacom. The one thing that holds me back is that I have been told that MTN has a lower subscriber density (or whatever the term is) and I believe MTN is currently building trenches and building capacity. If only I could get better than EDGE connectivity in my house …

begin woolly thinking …

I tweeted a while ago, wondering whether SA had any Scoble-style evangelists. I just didn’t see anyone who consistently stood out. There certainly didn’t appear to be many career evangelists although it may be I just wasn’t looking in the right places.

I’ve been thinking about evangelism quite a bit lately, for the most part because that is what I have found myself engaged in online. Anyone who has been following me for a short period of time will know that I talk a lot about a couple brands like Nokia and FriendFeed. I’ve been told that I read like Nokia PR and FriendFeed’s local agent in South Africa even though I am not paid by either company, or any other company I talk about (unless, of course, I specifically mention the company concerned is a client). The fact is I love to talk about the brands, products and services I am passionate about.

Of course I am hardly alone in what I do. Most of the higher profile bloggers in South Africa evangelise in varying degrees. One of the most well known blogger evangelists is Mike Stopforth who has written about companies like Dell (remember the post about Dell’s oops when it advertised laptops at a drastically reduced price?).

So what does it mean to be an evangelist in the Twitter age? Is everyone an evangelist in some degree or does it take more than a couple 140 character bursts to be a credible evangelist? What degree of focus do you require? PR agencies certainly seem to be catching on to the benefits of supporting or somehow harnessing this evangelism.

I feel a little blocked as I write this post because I am not sure I am asking the right questions. It is one thing to talk about evangelism inspired by access to unreleased gadgets or lunches with executives but I think a more authentic form of evangelism is organic. It exists independently of any form of incentive or reward (it is worth mentioning that I do receive advance phones to demo from Nokia and I am occasionally invited to lunches, launches and breakfasts in the hope I write positively about the products or services being launched or discussed). I am beginning to think that meaningful evangelism originates in a deep seated desire or need to share information, ideas and opinions.

Actually, I’d love to know what Scoble’s thoughts on evangelism are. In a way he is the stereotypical evangelist and it is pretty much how he makes his living.

… end woolly thinking.

Image credit: 2006-06-16 Robert Scoble Exits Microsoft by Roy Blumenthal licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license