If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you would know by now that I’m a big fan of sharing ideas and thoughts. Internets biggest contribution to a better world is exactly this – getting rid of protectionism and replacing it with sharing knowledge.

Together we can tear down the walls of monopoly built up by multinational companies more interested in giving money back to shareholders than actually building great things for the people. The open source culture is probably the best example of this with code like Android, MySQL, WordPress, Drupal, Linux but also real objects like the 3D printing Makerbot and Frankencamera 2.0 by Stanford to prove that it works. We’re living in exiting times!

Now that’s a sort of long introduction to this short link tip. But I felt I needed to remind you all to share your knowledge before sharing my knowledge about the Yahoo Design Stencils. This initiative by yahoo is yet another example of sharing. Yahoo has this section called All Design Patterns where you can find all their best practice thinking on usability and design for both mobiles and the online world. Then a couple of clicks away you’ll find all these great thoughts in downloadable templates for Photoshop, Omni Graffle, Visio and…yes you name it!

Smart move. Just when we’re about to be swarmed with augmented reality apps Google takes a step forward and turns the whole hype into something mainstream.

Yesterday the search company introduced a number of new things. Apart from the new live search my favorite was Google Goggles. A new app for the Android that let’s you search the world through the lens of your mobile camera. I bet at least one company will have this functionality actually turned in to a pair of ‘goggles’ before 2010 is over.

So far Google hasn’t decided if the app will let you recognize faces. But rest assured if they won’t someone else will! This type of technology is exactly what every security company in the world are craving for. The next time you rob a bank – remember you will be searched and logged with some kind of Google app

In 1996 I was very proud of my first Palm Pilot. You might recall them – grey little bastards with a pen so you could write the alphabet instead of typing it with your fingers. I was happy to transfer all my contacts and calendars to my Palm since that would hopefully lead to me not loosing them ever again. Today we’re all talking about iPhone and Android and how they have a bunch of applications that you can use in your phone. But back then in 1996 Palm was ahead of the game and multiple sites offered thousands of applications that you could easily download to your Palm

Well, today Palm, in front of their fans introduced the Palm Pre. Their latest phone with the new Palm Web OS that made their stock jump 35%. According to the company, anyone who knows CSS, HTML and XML will be able to develop for the new Web OS. The phone is of course packed with everything you expect including GPS and according to Engadget it will be available in the first half of 2009.

Where does this leave us?

Apple, Google and now Palm. Three companies that doesn’t have the mobile phone history Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola and Samsung has, have proven that they all understand the future business of mobile communication better than any of the old dragons.

The future of mobile communications is open source, usability, social communication and the players are new.

Oh, forgot. Not a word about Adobe Flash in this phone either. It’s all CSS, HTML, XML.  All you digital advertising people out there – get on the boat, we’re changing direction!

Since the mobile established it self as the ONE personal communication tool advertising agencies, brands and mobile technology enthusiasts has always raised it as the future place of advertising. And the more people that get their hands on a mobile, the more people seem to think that we will all walk around and view things while being exposed to ads.

Will this be the fact?

No.

Instead I believe that we can expect the mobile to be the truly first platform where we enjoy information and entertainment without any kind of advertising as we know it today.

Advertising as a whole is moving away from one to many and instead personalization becomes more and more important every day. Of course brand communication in traditional media will hang on yet for another 50 years but it’s going to change as technology get’s easier to use and people understand what they can do with it. That all comes along with the generations to come.
  New tools like Netvibes let’s us read feeds from major websites and blogs without having to see any ads. We read what our friends to through friendfeeds like Friendfeed and microblogs like Jaiku, Twitter and Bloggy. If we wanna view video we head for YouTube and search for content. If you’re a brand you might be lucky get a hit from us, but you’re fighting your way through the jungle of another 100 million videos a day. Banner blindness brings down effect of online ads. Campaign suffer from having people leaving the page before it’s even loaded.

Don’t disturb our personal sphere.

Since the mobile is our ultimately personal gadget I don’t think we’ll let any kind of ads into that space either. Instead we’ll make sure we read information through feed readers. When we view videos it’ll be through video readers rather than the ad-crowded page. We’ll hook up to Facebook and other communities via applications and widgets. We search for information on Google through specific Google search fields. Brands that send us information will be blocked. We’ll sooner or later stop paying for things like SMS or MMS.

How do you sell your stuff in a future where the buyer is empowered with superpower of turning our ears of? You gotta make us wanna turn them on of course. And the key to that on button spells NETWORK and FREE.

If you wanna utilize the fact that more than 4 billion people carry a mobile you have to start thinking different about your communication. You have to give something away. Plan your campaigns without knowing anything about the coming results in beforehand. Your advertising initiatives has to move away from campaigns to constant conversations.  

So far the one and only social networking application that has been developed for the phone is SMS. Hmm, is it a social networking application? Of course it is. It let’s us communicate with friends, many at once. We send recommendations to one another and tell our friends where we are. The microblogging thing has been around here for ever, we’ve just haven’t been able to save the conversations.

The next coming years when more more phones get the functionality of the iPhone and the Android, brands will have to fight their way into the apps of the people. The start page of a browser will once again be something to fight for. If you’re selling shoes you better make sure you’re in that price comparison app cause when I’m thinking of buying a new pair of sneakers I’l tap the Pricerunner app and compare the price while I’m in the store with the price online. If it’s cheaper online I’ll press buy online. If I’m buying a car it might be the free mobile music, video and games kit that let’s me plug my mobile into my car entertainment system that makes me choose car, not an advertising campaign. When I’m choosing a restaurant I’ll consult my social network, not the Guide Michelin. 

NO. We will not be walking down streets and have messages popping up in our handsets that tells us that there’s a sale 50 meters from our position. First, we would already have known. Secondly we’ll press spam and you’ll never hear from us again. If you’re unlucky, our spam filter is connected to our social network. Then you’re really screwed.

The winners in a future like this will be the value producers. Video, music, gaming and all kinds of entertainment will own us. When we shop it will extremely seldom be without consulting our social network and price comparison engines. And here lies the opportunity for the brands. Why not invest more than 70% of your entire media budget on giving value away. Imagine how much digital content you could produce if you did that. Do not sponsor, but instead produce. Do not product place but instead build your brand relevance. If you’re into running. How can you build the best running community world wide. How can you make sure that every marathon runner out there can in some way sign up to your site and improve their times no matter how fast they’re running. If you’re into burgers – stop creating boring advertising and instead start the greatest community for people who love to barbeque. Become the role model. If you’re into cars – build driving experiences and have people logging them in their mobile. BMW motorcycles are already there with their terrain program. 

What ever you do, make sure the mobile is in the middle of it all.

Earlier today, Google together with T-mobile and HTC introduced the first mobile phone running Android. The press conference took place in New York. To be honest they didn’t really surprise that much since Google has already released a lot of news on the Android. The phone from HTC was a quite ugly piece, but I like the fact that it got a large keyboard.

As said, it was a busy day for me to, so I’ll send you all along to ReadWriteWeb that got a good post on this.