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{ Author Archives } Martijn Kriens

In the news

With the company ReMarketable we are working on a "Medical Data Recorder" for operating rooms. Just like the flight data recorder (aka the black box in a aeroplane). I The flight data recorder is an important aide in the safety culture of aviation since a) pilots know that all actions are recorded and can be reviewed and b) after an accident there is always objective and factual data on the condition how things went wrong. There is of course a difference between pilots and surgeons. However, the way the safety and quality culture can be enhanced looks very much the same. A medical data recorder will play an important role in this. Today an article is published in Spits about the medical black box and a radio interview was held with us on Radio 1 at the AVRO. You can find the article here.
2010 06 28 Uncategorized Comments (0)

2(.0) many communication channels

Sometimes I have the feeling there are too many communication channels. Lately I have been using twitter a lot and I see that it distracts me from writing the blog. You can only spend you time once. Nice thing about the blog is that it forces you to think about a (small) subject and in order to say something coherent about it. Twitter is much more instant gratification it seems: fun but also easily flushed. Let's see if I can switch back to the blog a bit more.
2010 03 10 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Lykke li

Sometimes you find something that leaves you breathless. The look and sound of this video really makes me speechless. Lykke Li - Tonight from Lykke Li on Vimeo.
2009 08 25 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Reality can be improved

This is sooo cool. People at sprxmobile.com made a special augmented reality browser, called Layar. What is does is that is show you digital reality over the physical reality in the screen of your phone. For example you point you phone at a house and over the camera picture it is shown if it is for sale and what is the price. Look below. All kinds of interesting applications can be made with this. In a project in the Amsterdam Living Lab we are piloting an application like this to find out how people will use such a service, especially when they are able to leave digital information behind that others can see with their phone. It may be that we will use the Layar technology instead of the home grown one. Of course a phone with and a GPS and a compass is needed like the Google phone or the latest iPhone 3gs.
2009 07 13 Tech Comments (0)

Structured or unstructured

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Tinkebell"][/caption] Regarding privacy a lot of fuss is often made about the information that the government collects about this. And I must say the government collects a lot. An interesting case recently was with two criminals in the Netherlands. After stealing 21 cars they have been apprehended. The police stores every license plate in a database of every care that drives on the highway at Zwolle. It turned out that each time a stolen car drove by the same car was just behind it. This is the first time that the judge has to decide if this large database of car movements in the Netherlands can be legally used to search for clues. As for the storage of personal information we can distinguish three domains who has access to the information: the government, (networks of) companies and the Internet. As for the Government I am not that worried. I do believe that we have a strong democracy that will correct itself when information is misused too often. Of course that government may change. However, when it changes the government would start to implement a lot more means to spy on us anyway. ...
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2009 07 12 privacyTags: , , , , Comments (0)

“Secret” service, now on Facebook!

A small row in the UK because the wife of the new head of MI6 has placed pictures of her family including her husband on Facebook including information on the place where they live, where they go on holiday and other information. I think this is a good example of how more and more people are used to publicising information on themselves that they would not have thought about publicising some years ago. Reaction of the foreign secretary: 'It is not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks. Let's grow up.' Of course he is right on the swimming trunks. I omitted that picture not of secrecy but of bad taste ... However this is an example how social networking is becoming part of our everyday existence and that even the family of the head of MI6 do not realize the width of the audiences like Facebook has.
2009 07 06 privacyTags: , , Comments (1)

We know what you did last summer

Some time ago I wrote about the dangers of developments like child dossiers used by governments. One of the major risks is that people that will use this information use it without knowledge of the context when the information was stored. Information without context is hard to interpret leaves a lot of room for personal biases. The Rathenau project I am doing deals with how the information anyone can find on the Internet will more and more become the context from which much of the official information in databases like Electronic Patient Files, Child Dossier, Civil Administration and others will be interpreted. This I showed also in the case on the social services. And many will recognize how they are using information found on the Internet as the context of the CV of a job applicant. In relation to the social services we can debate whether this is a bad thing. After all the government also used special "kliklijnen" where people can complain anonymous about the black market activities of their neighbour on welfare. Not to say I approve of this method but it is legal. But what about a health insurance company that starts to search the Internet ...
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2009 07 04 privacyTags: , , , Comments (0)

Peekeboo

Google is at the moment making pictures of all the citys in the Netherlands for their streetview service. Besides this being a usefull service (what does that area look like) it leads to some bizarre situations: In some cases Google has by accident photographed famous dutch people. Even though the faces are blurred in most cases the people are still clearly recognisable. This may of course be a problem since it makes the place where someone lives visible for everyone. In one case a crime is even solved. Some time ago a person was mugged in the street, just a the moment the Google streetview care was driving by taking pictures. The criminals got away. After some months the person looked at the streetview pictures of that location and to his surprise he could see himself and the boys that mugged him running away. He called the police, they called Google for the un-blurred pictures and got them. The criminals are apprehended. Streetview now even has it's own site where remarkable pictures can be found. Two people walking hand in hand on four separate pictures and ...
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2009 07 01 privacyTags: , Comments (0)

High pressure

I suppose you all know the statement that during hard economic times that the economy has the flu (and as they say, when Germany sneezes we in Holland get pneumonia). Recently I wrote something about the flu monitor of Google. Google also has recognised this resemblence between catching the flu and economic recession and has introduced an economic barometer. By paying attention to the nature of search words (new car is positive but occasion negative, vacation is good but golf vacation is better ..) they show the trend how people are feeling. I suspect that this will work pretty good. The terms people use are very much dependent on how they feel at that moment so this barometer will say something about how the general population is feeling (or better, how the feeling changes over time). Sometimes they can be very mistaken of course (many people search for Ferrari's without being able to buy them anyhow. I sometimes search for beautiful destinations for vacations I know I will not make. A little bit of dreaming is nice ..). But in general this really might ...
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2009 06 30 crowdsourcingTags: Comments (0)

How was your vacation?

(to get in the mood for this posting you need to repeat the title of the article in a deeply sinister voice, you will understand why at the end of the posting ..)At the moment I am working on a project for Rathenau institute relating to privacy and the information you can find on individuals on the Internet. I was talking to a friend who works for social security in a large city and he said that the Internet is a source they often use to get information about people.One of the sites they are using is www.wieowie.nl. This is a service that queries information about a person from all kinds of sources: google, yahoo, schoolbank, hyves and others. But it also finds telephone numbers, the tags that relate to that person, photos and document that are associated with you.It turns out that they regularly find information about people that points towards fraud. For example somebody who is asked by someone else how her vacation was in Mexico. At the social security service they for example can see that that person did not register for a vacation. Result can be that the person is invited to come to city hall ...
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2009 06 29 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Would you do what Google does?

  [caption id="attachment_188" align="alignright" width="330" caption="WWGD"][/caption] I just finished reading the Book "What would google do" from Jeff Jarvis. It is an interesting book but it puzzles me on two parts. In two words: Adds and Apples.   As for Adds, on the one hand he stresses the importance of the business model of Google by selling adds based on the data that you collect of a person. And of course, Google is wildly successful in selling adds. But on the other hand he explains that, due to the networked transparency that the Internet creates, advertising is less important. He even points out that not needing to advertise is a sign of success. To me that sounds like a contradiction. The more successful companies become in using the transparency of the Internet (created and improved in a large part by Google) the less profitable Google will become (and therefore not being able anymore to sustain their role in creating transparency). This catch 22 type of situation will no doubt have some equilibrium but is totally disregarded by Jeff Jarvis. Another question about the business models on advertising that always puzzles me how far it ...
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2009 05 16 business modelsTags: , , Comments (0)

Recovery revisited

Recovery.gov is the website that Obama uses to deliver on his promise to let us monitor "to the last dime" of the government money that is being spent in the simulus package. However, reporting on progress and spending is a difficult thing if you have to fall back on formal reporting mechanisms from the whole country to the lowest bureaucratic levels. At this moment they are saying that the first reports will be delivered somewhere in Oktober (november, december ...). In comes a commercial company, Onvia, that made a website that tracks the planning and spending of the stimulus package on the website recovery.org. This website relies on a crawler mechanism that checks thousands of websites on information about spending in relation to the stimulus package and make this information available to the public. For companies to lead them to intesting projects to pitch and for citizens to check what kind of projects are being setup in your local neighbourhood and make it possible to complain about silly projects to local politicians. Below is an interview with the CEO of Onvia: I think this is an interesting development where formal reporting procedures are turn out to be much slower than ...
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2009 05 09 Uncategorized Comments (2)

Scalia likes …

Some time ago I had a discussion at the Rathenau institute with Geert Munnich about a new project they are setting up (the picture on the side I took of Geert and Mirjam Schuijff to show them that it is not only information they publish themselves that may harm their privacy but also pictures someone else might take that includes date and GPS data). During this meeting we talked about the idea that in a way the Internet is often used for the same purpose as the formal databases are used to find information about people. There is so much valuable information to find on people if you take some effort to find it. It is probably even richer than the data in many formal databases like those form the civil service. In relation to this I came across this article. It deals with Judge Scalia of the supreme court in the USA. He has always played privacy issues down in relation to information stored on the Internet. However, recently a professor of law in the USA asked a group of his students to compile a dossier ...
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2009 05 07 privacyTags: , , Comments (0)

“Floogle”

Because so much of our activities in our daily lives have some form of connection to the Internet some amazing effects happen. Google recently launched a service where they track flu related queries that people are using in their searches. Analysing their data back to 2003 and comparing it to the CDC network they found that they can pinpoint the start of a flu epidemic two weeks earlier than the CDC. They can even follow the spread of the flu geographically (at least, in the USA). This is I think an amazing example of how we can use this kind of implicit "wisdom of crowds" type of ideas. considering the risk of the swine flu epidemic in Mexico this might come in handy... The flow of the epidemic can be followed in Google maps. More information you can find in the Nature article and of course on the Google website.
2009 04 26 Uncategorized Comments (0)

ReMarketable

Some time ago I started a new company with two friends, Jan Arends and Eddy Reimerink. Our focus is a partnership between technology providers that are focused on a niche market but have technology that can be used in other markets with solution vendors strong in these other markets. The website is www.remarketable.nl and you can read more in the following slides: Remarketable V2 R1x View more presentations from Martijn Kriens.
2009 04 26 ReMarketableTags: Comments (0)

Banker 2.0

Recently Hans Wortmann and me have given a presentation in Amsterdam for the Holland Financial Centre (HFC). Subject of this presentation was (of course) the development of SaaS in relation to the financial Sector. ICT is very much undervalued in the financial sector. Even though financial institutions spend considerably amount of money on IT it seldom is used strategically in practice. Robin Fransman, deputy director of HFC, showed this clearly by pointing out that the wordt ICT is only mentioned once in the working plan for the HFC for 2008/2009. This funny enough to everyone's surprise! In the presentation (that you can find here) we showed many examples how ICT in general and SaaS in particular will change the banking sector significantly in the coming years. For example, Google already has a banking licence in the Netherlands... The presentation changed into a lively and interesting discussion with the the audiance. The general feeling was that financial institutions really should be more aware of the strategic possibilities (and competitive dangers) of ICT. At the moment we are working an a way, together with HFC, to keep that discussion going. You can find the presentation here....
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2009 04 08 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Service Innovation and SaaS

Yesterday I gave a presentation for the Services Innovation unit at SenterNovem and the Economic Affairs department. Focus was on how SaaS is one of the important enabling foundations of service innovations. Service innovation is possible through advancements in ICT but ICT is not a transparent factor that makes everything possible. Some functionalities are easy to achieve whereas some are hard or impossible due to the quirky nature of technology. However, often to little attention is given to the relation between business goals and ICT possibilities. Our statement is that both need explicit attention. Ez Sn Kenniscommunity View more presentations from mkriens. The presentation is ended with a call to start working on a national testbed infrastructure for the development of SaaS services. Espcially a country like the Netherlands can be strong in delivering services by "mashing up" all kinds of basic services due to our strengths in trade. In the development of the inrastructure needed to create an agile business community ...
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2009 04 08 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Aging 0.5

The aging society is I think one of the big issues that as society we will have to deal with in the future. We do know that there will simply be not enough hands to help the aging people in a way that is personnel. Technology can help a lot but has the risk of creating a too mechanical care. A special lift can help you out of bed but will not talk to you. That is why I like projects where technology helps us by connecting people and give care in a way that is friendly and personnel. Like this project or this. In the second project my favourite moment was when the elderly lady is told that there is a camera in the Aibo and here reaction is: oh nice, it can see me? However, today I read that there are even bigger problems in an aging world. In Japan people that turn 100 receive a special silver cup. Only there are so many people turning a 100 now that they had to reduce the size of the cup in order to save money! In 1963, the first year they started this program, ...
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2009 03 05 Uncategorized
researchTags: Comments (0)

Privacy 0.2

Yesterday I heard an interesting item on the television. In Weesp there had been some threats made towards schools over the phone. In the end it turned out to be little children that made them. Interesting part is how the police found out who they were. The boys made the call to the schools on a public payphone, thinking they would not be traceable that way. Of course the police could easily find out which payphone was used but by the time they were there the boys were long gone. However, the police was able to acquire several images of video camera's close by that had the boys on tape while they were making their calls. By showing these video images on national television the parents recognised them and immediately took them to the police station (brave action!). This case does show, even though the outcome is rather positive in this case, that it is more and more possible to follow people and in the end, invade privacy of civilians. Technology allows us to follow anyone we want in many places. Remember, you are being watched!
2009 02 12 Uncategorized Comments (0)

Power to the People

Google is very much working on ways to stimulate conservation of energy. One of the issues they mention on their blog is that by giving feedback to people it is possible to save lots of energy in homes and offices. Some time ago I was involved in a research study where we looked at research worldwide on this subject. One of the most remarkable ones was a study done in Stavanger, Norway. There it turned out that just by changing the period after which people settle their energy bill (you get a bill every month normally but only once a year the energy company checks if the bill is the same as the real (average) use during the year). They changed the period from one year to two months (meaning the amount used was checked bi-monthly and the bill adapted accordingly). The energy use of households after this went down 8%. Because of the bi-monthly check people where immediately reminded that energy costs a lot during winter. With some extra data the savings grew to 12 to 16%. This feedback on use can be more fine-grained. At home I am ...
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2009 02 11 EnergyTags: , , , Comments (0)

Longing for latitude

One of the interesting features of technologies is how it can bring people close together, in real life as well as in perception. Google has an interesting new feature called Google Latitude. Through this service you can show your location to your friends and of course see the location that your friends are sharing with you. Interesting feature is that the application has a fine grained way of setting your privacy in relation to the various friends that you have. This I think is a general direction you see in web 2.0 that more and more people are becoming concerned about privacy and about who really are your friends you are willing to share all. In the past I used an application called IYOUIT that was also capable of showing this like this. To me it was surprising how much feeling is involved in knowing precisely where your friends are.
2009 02 05 Social Software
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Everyware

One of the most interesting developments I see at the moment is the move to ubiquitous ICT. ICT in the form of small unobtrusive sensors, smart ICT that takes the context of the user into account (based on all those sensors) and feedback mechanisms to users that do not use explicit displays do this much more on an "experience" level, e.g. by changing the colour of light. I recently read a book called Everyware (as in Hardware and Software) that says some interesting things on this. Sort of like using computers without really using a computer.... A very nice example of this is the "unpronounceable rabbit". It connects to the Internet, is able to sniff RFID tags and communicate by talking, changing colours, communicates with his ears and all kinds of other things. And the rabbits can talk to eachother so you can send messages to a friend by just twisting his ears.
2008 11 26 everywareTags: , , Comments (1)

Innovation

At the moment I am very much involved in Living Labs. Living Labs are an important development in research, design and development. At the core of the living labs idea is that the gap between design and reality is growing. More and more products and services have social networking aspects or location aware functionality. These aspects are very hard to simulate in a normal laboratory like Home lab at  Philips. Amsterdam Living Lab is the initiative that we are starting in, surprise, Amsterdam. Here we are changing Amsterdam in a large scale laboratory, together with Waag Society, University  of Amsterdam and Telematica Instituut. Together we try to create new design, develop and test processes based on real life user experience. For this measurement tools and sensor to measure reality will be developed and new design processes that take this real life data into account. More locations in the Netherlands are developing such an approach. Living Lab Leiden is involved in development of wireless services, Rotterdam Climate Initiative is developing new approaches to saving energy. Approaches that take the real life behaviour of people into account. For the ...
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2008 11 26 Living LabTags: , Comments (0)

Google bank

Banks are of course very much the focus of the news these days. One of the interesting news items a journalist found out is that Google already has a banking license in the Netherlands. Bank are potentially one of the sectors that will change a lot because of business possibilities that a technology like SaaS will enable. Competition will come from completely new sectors because they are better at reaching the market or using the “intelligence of crowds”. While searching a little further I found this blog post from Jeff Jarvis where he is asking for examples of bank services that Google would be very good at. Examples are peer to peer lending, more transparency around transactions in stocks, open source platforms to increase functionality (E-invoices anyone?). In a way Google checkout and it’s competitor PayPal are already on the move. In my view banks really have to start thinking on how to really innovate their processes through which they create value for their customers.
2008 11 24 businessmodelTags: , Comments (1)

Flabbergasted

This is very interesting picture that shows the difference between the opportunities for saving energy between Europe and the USA. I do not think there are many households in the Netherlands that do not use a programmeable thermostat, often even integrated with a outside temperature sensor. This is something we have to keep in mind when comparing research on energy saving between the USA and Europe.
2008 11 04 EnergyTags: , Comments (0)