SpeedPlexer Blog

YouTube is, as you probably know, owned by Google, whose data indicates that people watch lots of  YouTube videos from their mobile devices. I know I have—when you’re out and a video comes up in conversation, it’s great to be able to pull out your phone and play it right there and then.  It only takes a few minutes and then you can all enjoy the moment together, whether you use your mobile 3G/4G connection or Wi-Fi internet speed.

Google says that mobile viewing numbers went up 160% in 2009 and that these days, YouTube gets over 100 million mobile views each day.  That’s a lot of eyeballs, and more are expected. That’s why they’ve made it even easier for people to watch from mobile devices by making the delivery faster and the interface more user-friendly. Yahoo news tells us, “The new mobile YouTube also mirrors features and functions from the .com site, including search query suggestions, playlist creations, and the chance to favorite, like or unlike videos from a smartphone. The new site works with iPhone and Android browsers.”

They do this all through the magic of HTML5.  According to InfoWorld , “HTML5 will change many aspects of life on the Web. It will not displace Flash or Shockwave: One glance at the games on Miniclip.com, such as Jet Ski Racer, shows how much ground the HTML5 committee must cover. But HTML5 will still remake the Web and enable basic Websites to do much more — from tracking our location to storing more of our data in the cloud. HTML5 tags will displace plug-ins for simpler jobs, at least some of the time, and it will open up advanced capabilities to a larger audience. It might even make the Web more secure, more efficient, and more adaptable.”

California, a state deeply in debt (about $19 billion), is considering making money by selling digital advertising on car license plates. They’ll remain static, just showing the usual license plate number and registration while in motion, but if the car stops for more than 4 seconds, it could show any number of things while the license plate number fades into the background or minimizes, but it won’t disappear.  

Options include advertising sold through the Department of Motor Vehicles, emergency amber alerts or traffic information, or personalized messages like a favorite sports team or school affiliation.  The device would be controlled from inside the vehicle, but of course, emergency updates would have to be sent using Wi-Fi internet speed.

While it certainly could be distracting, it might also help entertain people during stop-and-go traffic. People who commented on the article posted on Yahoo made some good points:

• “How hard is it gonna be to steal that identification and put it on yours? Now I have to worry about my license plate going out?”
• “Will these plates have their own power source? Just what I need, something else to drain power from my car’s battery.”
• “I would only be for such and idea if it would pay for license, registration fees and full coverage insurance for me and my vehicles. Why should only the government benefit from ads displayed on my vehicle?”
• “What about people that use a small truck to pull a trailer? I routinely dent up my plate…”
• “I can’t stand people tracking me as it is, and I’m not going to voluntarily let them track me through my license plate.”

How great is this?  Starting July 1st, Starbucks will be offering all customers at all of their company-owned locations FREE wireless internet access. The franchise stores aren’t in on the deal. But if they’re smart, they’ll join in the fun with internet speed. Why? Because it’s brilliant.

No more multi-step process to get online, or worrying if you’d exceeded the two-hour mark for free internet access with their Starbucks loyalty card. That’d mean you’d have to start paying $3.99 and hour. How much more encouraged will you be to choose the local Starbucks over elsewhere when you can get delicious and comparatively healthy food and beverages all day, plus good music and a nice clean atmosphere? 

Of course the above time limit probably helped to encourage people to move on and not take up space without buying more stuff. The thing is, Starbucks has been losing customers to McDonald’s ever since they started offering free wi-fi and cheaper McCafe coffee not long ago. 

Chris Brogan, president of a social media marketing agency called New Marketing Labs, blogged about it this way: “They said, ‘Not only do we have free Wi-Fi, but we’re going to offer this huge raft of digital products you can get while you’re here, and you like our coffee better anyway.’ ” That should be on Starbucks billboards!

The Starbucks Digital Network, will (eventually) sell you stuff online. For now, it hopes to attract people with free access to paid sites like The Wall Street Journal and Zagat, plus partnerships will allow them to offer free iTunes downloads and previews of not-yet-released movies and albums. They’ll also feature local content based on the location and help for job-seekers using Starbucks as their resume-sending base.

You may want to file this under “Do we need this?”, but gone are the days when you’d merely look at the number on your bathroom scale and then either have to remember it or write it down.  Now, with the new scale by Withings, your scale will use Wi-Fi technology to record your weight and zap it to your computer–or iPhone–with internet speed.  The magic number then appears on your personal web page, where you can compare it with past readings, or even view it on a chart. Or it can be viewed on your iPhone, with their handy iPhone app. 

If weight is a sensitive issue for you, as it is for many of us, you might want to double check and make sure your Wi-Fi is secure. But if you are concerned with monitoring your health, it may be helpful to track your weight loss and gain over time. 

The Wi-Fi Body Scale also helpfully measures body mass index and can recognize up to eight users, so the whole household can join in, or maybe you can start your own weight watching support group.

Here’s what various publications had to say about it:

“Not only does the Withings Connected Scale look ridiculously stylish with its tempered glass surface, brushed metal accents and inverted LCD display, but its functions actually manage to outweigh its form…the icing on the cake, or maybe the cottage cheese on the celery is a better analogy, is the free WiScale iPhone app which gives you access to [your] graphs and weight data from your phone.” – Oh Gizmo

“More often the object of dread than fascination, the humble bathroom scale has been given a makeover by Withings…” - engadget