The Smartphone. It combines so many communication, media and entertainment forms from one place. It’s many things at once, all available in the palm of your hand. I love my smartphone. It has changed my way of doing things in so many different ways. Yet I’m careful in saying “changed” rather than “improved”. 

Behavioural impacts on society

I’d like to ask you honestly what does your morning look like? I personally wake up, turn off the alarm, and start checking notifications from dozens of other applications on my smartphone. Some mornings I’ve found myself an hour later, still in bed, in a very uncomfortable posture, still browsing on. What is going on? It’s an addiction that many of us share, but usually choose to ignore. 

We’ve become so dependant on these devices that we get genuinely anxious when we’re without them or if the battery gets dangerously low. Just ask someone these days if they could live without their smartphone for a day, I guarantee you there’ll be people who dread to even imagine it. In fact, there’s even a name for that: Nomophobia. Smartphones have become so important to us: a disturbing survey revealed that students would rather give up coffee, eating out, and even sex before giving up their smartphones. 

These days, when you go anywhere in public, you notice a big majority of people are engrossed in their rectangular touchscreen device, oblivious to what’s happening around them. It’s as if you’re in a smartphone zombie apocalypse.

Whenever I go out with friends to eat or drink, most people will have their phones on the table “just in case”. It’s really something that makes me ponder. 

Smartphones can so easily distract us, and take us out of the moment. It’s so easy to opt out of an awkward silence with somebody by reaching out for your smartphone and starting to scroll through facebook, check emails, and other useless things. It’s a way to make us seem less alone. But it’s actually doing quite the opposite. 

This behaviour is particularly annoying and quite rude when it happens amongst our own friends. They’re physically present, yet trying to converse with a distant friend virtually. This is so common, there’s a word for that too: phubbing. 

This phubbing can have a contagious effect on others, who feel the need to do the same. Eventually there will be a collective compulsion to mindlessly check phones, often for no good reason. 

It’s ironic how antisocial this is, especially when it’s for checking "social media" like Facebook. I’ve seen people (often groups of young adolescents) spend most of their time together taking ridiculous amounts of selfies. I watch them as they then bury their faces in their phone meticulously applying the best filters and hashtags, promptly proceeding with uploading to social media. I can’t help thinking how horribly narcissistic, shallow, and approval seeking behaviour this is. Social media is all about displaying the better version of yourself, showing off to your friends that you go out, that you have a more fulfilled life than they think. But how much are these people actually living the moment? 

We live more and more in a virtual world. And there’s one particular feature on smartphones that allow us to do that more than any other: the camera. 

St Peter's Square, announcement of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005
and  announcement of Pope Francis in 2013.

Just think of last time you were at a concert or a show of some sort. A lot of people are just filming and watching a digital reproduction of what’s actually unfolding before their eyes.

I can’t wrap my head around why people record such events. It’s downgrading the experience. Often there’s no optical zoom, it’s too dark, and the audio is horrible. It just seems pointless to me. Why attend such occasions and then try to watch what you filmed on a 5 inch display? It’s almost as if people don’t trust themselves to remember the event. 

However, this is just scratching the surface of what impacts smartphones have on society. There are also health issues. 

Health impacts on society

The University of Hertfordshire has found that 6 in 10 Brits are having sleep deprivation because of using smartphones before bed. Staring at the blue unnatural light when it’s supposed to be dark messes with the circadian rhythm, making it difficult to sleep. And lacking sleep can cause a whole lot of problems such as higher risks of diabetes, weight gain, heart attack, cancer… This harsh blue light is also the culprit for harming vision. It can cause retinal damage to the point of losing central vision. 

Additionally, the way we hold our smartphones and bend our neck has created a new form of physical harm, "text neck". Looking down at our smartphones at an angle puts strain on the spine, that could result in permanent damage. 

Another problem is bacteria. We often don’t realize how dirty the screen of our smartphone is and how much we touch it. A study found that the average phone has up to 20 times the amount of bacteria found on a toilet seat. 

Of course, being such a source of distraction also increases chances of being in an accident. A study by the University of Washington found that texting pedestrians were four times more likely to ignore lights or forget to look both ways before crossing the street. And I shouldn’t even have to mention how irresponsible and dangerous it is to text when driving. 

Final thoughts 

You could call me a hypocrite for bashing the very technology I overuse myself. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not criticizing the technology here, but the problems that are related to society. In other words I’m a big fan of what technology can do for us, not so much what it does to us. 

It all comes down to us as people, to decide and put limits on ourselves, and use this technology with moderation. I quite like the analogy of Lior Frenkel for this matter: We should be thinking about it like a diet. There are apps that are like junk food, others like organic food. Just like we’ve become aware of what we eat, we need to become aware of what and how much we consume. A "digital diet". 

When used in the right ways and to the right degrees, smartphones are wonderful. But when we start to lose touch with what’s actually important, they become the opposite. Just think about how people behave today with smartphones, and imagine what happens when more wearable devices and the IoT revolution comes into the picture. 

Ok, I admit, the title of this article may be misleading. These days, Internet access has so many different names, it's hard to understand what the difference is. Although Wikipedia isn't the most reliable source, this page contains some useful vocabulary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_access . 

What this article is actually referring to is "Hardwired Internet Access" and  "Wireless Internet Access". Hence the name, hardwired uses wires or cables (DSL or Fiber) as opposed to wireless (WiFi and mobile networks). 

ISP rant

Internet Service Providers (ISP) are well-known to rip their customers off with overpriced offers. Ridiculous data caps, inflexible bundled services, contracts binding you for years... you name it! And they are only able to get away with it because of their oligopoly of the market, as well as a very questionable regulation. It's not surprising that the ISP “Comcast” is in the top most hated companies in the US. 

Going wireless

Over the past year, I haven't been subscribed to any ISP for hardwired Internet access. Instead, I have only been using my phone data and WiFi, and it has been well enough. How? By using the best mobile offer I’ve ever come across.

It’s no secret, Europe has the most affordable mobile broadbands. France however, only owes its position thanks to the operator "Free". Back in 2012, they disrupted the market with unheard of cheap prices. Unlimited calls, SMS, MMS, and 3GB for 19,99€/mo and prepaid! Since then it has got better and better. End of 2013, they introduced the same offer, but this time with 20GB of data and on the LTE/4G network. This 4G network was quite controversial as Free's coverage wasn't all that good at the time. But for all the major cities, where coverage wasn't an issue, it was extremely fast. Using SpeedTest, I reached over 90Mbps/sec in download, and 70Mbps/s in upload!

I couldn't believe such amazing numbers. To put this in perspective, at the time I could get no more than 60Mbps/s download speed from fiber. 

Free received a lot of hate and love for this brave move. Not all consumers that had been lured into their viral marketing campaigns were having the same results. Even the 20GB seemed over the top, people didn't believe that anyone would reach such limits. Well, here's a screenshot of the month I used the most data (18,57GB).

It is not only possible, but actually a challenge to keep it under 20GB. With my 90+ applications that need regular updating, my average of 40 photos per month backed up in the cloud, my web & social media browsing... It all adds up. But we're still nowhere close to 20GB. 

The vast majority is used via data tethering. With the insane bandwidth speeds, it was a natural substitute to my DSL Internet connection at home. Data tethering allows the user to share their phone's internet connection with other devices. This is usually very easy to activate on most smartphones. Yes, with 20GB, you are definitely limited - yet it is quite enough! Most websites won't eat that much data. From personal experience, if you were to avoid any videos online, I doubt you'd reach 20GB, even with heavy usage. That being said, I could watch at least 200 short high definition YouTube videos, and even stream 2 or 3 movies per month (less than 1GB/movie at 720p).  

With the amount of time we spend on the Internet today, this would clearly not be enough for many people. But consider how many free WiFi hotspots are about in big cities, the Internet you have at work or school. It's actually quite conceivable. 

Where we stand today

This whole article was inspired by yet another announcement by Free, offering now 50GB, still at 19,99€/month. Wireless broadband keeps getting better as well: 5G network theoretical speeds put 4G to shame.

At this rate, I believe it is not too far fetched to predict the death of hardwired Internet in the future. However, it might take a long time to get there, mainly because ISPs do not want to update their obsolete infrastructures. Coverage is of course another problem. While 5G networks are being tested, most people merely have access to 3G networks. Only time will tell. 

As part of my work for online marketing I naturally use social media. That’s what most other marketers would do, and they should. But when I try to talk clients into using other solutions, such as forums, I often get frowned at, because after all, forums are outdated. Nowadays everybody has moved on to social media… Right? Wrong. Let me try and convince you why.

Forums have been around since the very beginning of the Internet revolution. Maybe some of you will remember back in the day of “pay per minute” Internet access, where people would download discussions through newsgroups in order to read them properly once offline. It was only a few years later that forums became actual platforms. Communities of individuals with common interests were suddenly able to connect, all around the world. 

But with all the hype around social media in recent years, people forget about forums. Today, everything is about being “social”. These social platforms get all the praise even if most forums have the same qualities: Marketers can learn from either platform about their potential leads or problems of their existing clients. So although they have similarities, consumers use them in very different ways. If you want to share a random thought or what you just did with your day, you use Facebook or Twitter. But, if you want to discuss about your recent changes with your Harley Davidson with other passionate Harley Davidson owners, then you go to a Harley Davidson forum. Forums deal with specific topics, making the audience more qualified, unlike on social media.

What marketers often think is that they should get similar campaign results with social media when sharing a link on a forum. The problem here is that it gets irrelevant to compare them. People “opt-in” when they like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter. People come to you. Forums, on the other hand, are public and open to everyone. You come to the people. The members of forums do not want to suddenly see promotional message in a discussion thread. Just imagine how that feels like for a second. It’s like when idiots people drive slowly through the town center with their car windows down with loud unpleasant music. It’s just disrespectful.

If you join a forum, you shouldn’t be thinking about your own interest and sending the members elsewhere with a link. Instead, it you should be there to participate and contribute in a meaningful manner.

So how can you use forums for marketing purposes? This is my two cents on the matter:

Find the right forum

If you are going to use forums in the correct way, you’ll be spending a lot of time on them. This means you’ll have to choose only a few, which correspond to your niche market in order to be profitable for you. A good place to start is by asking various stakeholders of your company (colleagues, customers, partners, etc.) where they hang out online.

Once you gather a list of potential forums, you can filter them by popularity. Good indicators can be the amount of traffic (you can use quantcase.com for an estimation of traffic), the amount of members, and the amount of activity (several posts per day). This doesn’t mean you should leave aside the forums that don’t fit these criteria. If you find a promising forum, it’s actually good to be one of the first to join, as a lot of forums have special privileges for veteran members. However, you should be avoiding forums with a lot of “spammers” (people who just post links and leave for example), as the audience won’t be as serious. Forums with a strong presence of competitors will also be more of a battle. 

Read the rules and observe

I can’t stress this enough. It’s so tempting to skip the long list of terms and conditions when joining a forum, but it’s extremely important to read them. Forums work like countries: each country works differently and has its own rules, and if you don’t respect them, you’ll be punished. All analogies aside, this means you’ll be classified in the “spammer” category and possibly banned.  And forums don’t forgive spammers, even if you try to come back with another name. This is often why marketers give up so quickly with forums, yet the rules are your friend, not your enemy. They can indicate whether or not links are allowed or if we can directly send a private message to another member for example.

While reading the rules will tell you a lot, just observing can tell you even more. Instead of diving in and answering as many questions as possible, it’s good practice to learn all the cultural norms and watch how other members contribute. What works and what doesn’t. This will give you a pretty good idea to the best way of contributing yourself.

Whenever you’re in doubt, you can never go wrong if you ask the forum moderators directly if something is allowed or not. As forum moderators are often volunteers, they will appreciate you asking them before doing something stupid, as they’ll be the ones having to clean up afterwards (deleting your posts).

Create the optimal profile

If you’ve made it this far, the first thing to do is to create a user profile. The goal is to establish yourself as an industry thought leader in your area of expertise. Even though the purpose is for marketing, if you want to be taken seriously you should use your own name and not your brand’s name. This will also add more of a “human” aspect, which is much better for interactions with other members. Having a friendly profile picture (a picture of you on holiday for example) along with personal social media links will certainly emphasize this effect.

You should fill in as much information as possible, such as your expertise and experience, but avoid any polarizing opinions (religion, politics, etc.). If you plan to mention your brand in your comments, you must disclose your connection with it somewhere. Other members must understand any possible conflict of interest, otherwise it can have disastrous effects on the brand’s image. Hiding this is not only unethical, but in certain cases could be illegal.

On some forums, it’s quite common to be able to have an introductory post, where you can write a small biography. If you have this possibility, you should say why you joined the forum, and what your goal is. Of course, you should avoid directly saying that it’s purely for marketing. You should show that you’re there to contribute.

Almost all forums also have what’s called a signature which will appear under your posts. As they are always visible, they’re ideal for sharing information, such as a commercial message, but you must be sure they comply with the forum rules.

Add value and be honest

You can’t just come on a forum and shout to everyone “Hey, look, my company exists and has a great product!”. The ideal contributions are ones that are objective. Of course if you are on the forum for marketing reasons, your posts will be biased (and as mentioned previously, you will have to include a disclosure anyway). But as long as you post helpful and useful information, it will be accepted. In other words, if you contribute, it has to add value and not just be an occasion to mention your brand. The best case scenario would be when someone else mentions your brand first, and you can jump in the conversation to thank them (if it’s positive!) and add extra information.

What you must not do is pretend to be someone else. When I personally have troubles with something, I browse online and often find a forum where another person has had the same problem. In the answers, I’ll sometimes see people pretending that they’ve been having a similar problem, and that they found this revolutionary product that solved everything for them and they absolutely recommend it. This marketing attempt is ridiculously obvious and actually reminds me of these pop-up scam videos where a guy (usually on a webcam) tells you how he earns 10k€ per day and generously offers to reveal his secrets. Very annoying indeed.

Creating multiple accounts in an attempt to up-vote your own contributions is also a no go. While this may seem less obvious then pretending to be someone else, it can be easily traceable with your IP address.

Stay polite and earn respect

Staying honest and always adding value will ultimately make people respect you. You can easily help the situation if you stay polite. Being positioned as an expert doesn’t mean you should make others feel inferior compared to you. Too many negative comparisons with a direct competitor for example can cause conflicts.

All conflicts should be avoided. This means staying away from hot topics and keeping it cool. It’s very easy to get angry with a “forum troll” for example (someone taking advantage of being anonymous on the Internet and insulting others for their own pleasure). That being said, usually forums do not have this troll problem as other social platforms on the Internet: you may have noticed that forum threads rarely resemble the comments found on YouTube. On the contrary, you can find on forums discussions that are meaningful and go into depth. Something quite hard to reproduce with a 140 character limit on Twitter…

Reputation matters

If you’re considering forum marketing, you must not outsource the work. Trying to come across as an expert and industry thought leader isn’t a responsibility you can leave to somebody else. There are agencies out there “specialized” in forum marketing. Their packages usually offer adding a certain number of links on a certain number of forums over a given time. This kind of offer is totally counterproductive because forums are all about quality, not quantity. These agencies concentrate on reaching their quantitative target, which will inevitably end up being flagged as spam and you would have basically paid a third party to ruin your brand image.

So you must keep the forum marketing internally, and if possible, on a regular basis. Being an active member and frequently contributing will enable you to have an authoritative reputation. Being one of the first to contribute to a recent thread has huge benefits also: your answer will be the first one people see. With this increasing reputation, it is only natural that other members will read your signature, look up your profile and come to your company. Mission accomplished. 

Virtual reality. Or diving into worlds I would virtually love to replace my own reality with.

Although virtual reality has been about for years, it's only recently that it has really been kicking off on the consumer end. Oculus Rift was one of the first virtual reality companies to get popular and catch media's attention. I had been reading a lot so I knew about the concept of VR myself. However, words are not quite enough to really grasp the huge potential behind VR, you have to experience it.

It was only when Google came out with their ridiculously cheap Cardboard version that I was able to buy one on eBay for 2€ to see for myself what it was like. I think that the gobsmacked faces everyone uses to represent VR illustrates quite well how I looked too. It was amazing. And that was just by using the power of my smartphone (a Nexus 5 at the time)!

Since then, I have been following the virtual reality landscape, especially everything that "orbits" the Oculus Rift. I created a mind map to keep a global look on how things are evolving. Here is a screenshot of how it looks from April 2015:

For all links, you can find the Xmind file I used to create this here (25MB). 

I'd love to know if this was helpful for anyone, and if you have other interesting VR related info leave a comment below! :) 

Hey guys, in this tutorial I’ll be giving you 10 tips for extending battery life. And by tips I mean tips that will make your battery on Smartphones and Tablets last longer. But also a few tips for how to treat Lithium-ion techology batteries. I will mainly mention Android phones for they are more customizable than iPhones and Windows Phones.

Before you read on, be aware that you can’t magically increase battery life for 24 hours if it lasts 4 hours now but you can prevent draining your battery for nothing. Here are my 10 tips :

1. Use a mobile with a removable battery

First things first, in order to anticipate a draining battery, it’s best if you can easily change it instead of buying a new phone. The lithium-ion battery techlonology today can last for 2 to 3 years before noticeably degrading. Several trending phones today like the iPhone, Sony Xperia Z, HTC’s, Nexus 4, don’t have removable batteries. The big tech comanies claim that users don’t hold on to their smartphones for more than 18 months. Pretty surprising for a hi-tech product for more than 600€ !

On the web you can find powerfull external or spare batteries for 20 bucks. They can last up to 3 times longer than the original battery (one’s over 5000 mAh are worth while).

Don’t be fooled with solar powered rechargers, or ones with a crank handle. You’ll need at least a 10 hrs exposure with strong sun and cramps in your wrists for the crank handle types.

2. Desactivate unused or gadget functions

This is common sense. Functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, vibration can easily be toogled on or off, and can save up to 10% battery life. Even if 10% doesn’t seem like much, it still counts, so turn these features off if idle. New phones seem to have more and more of these clever functions such as on the Galaxy S4 with air gestures and they all use a lot of energy.

3. Use Wi-Fi if possible instead of 3G or 4G.

Surprising as it may be, Wi-Fi uses less energy than a 3G or 4G connection. So if you’re indoors with a wireless network available, use that instead. But if you don’t have a wireless connection, turn it off to avoid continously searching for a hotspot.

4. Use 2G instead of 3G or 4G

A 2G network uses less ressources than for a 3G network, and can save a lot of battery life. But be warned, this type of connection is only worth it for receiving message notifications when idle. To surf on the Internet or to download files, you will need at least a 3G network.

5. Display – Reduce screen brightness

This is probably not news anymore, the brighter your screen, the more power it uses. Screen brightness is what uses the most energy on your phone – at least 50%. Most phone manufacturers have included a fuction so you can ajust the screen brightness. You can also use the automatic mode that uses the light sensor. However, the light sensor on its own uses some power to detect the surrounding brightness, and it sometimes isn’t all that accurate.

Secondly you can reduce your screen timeout and that can save you a lot more battery than people usually think it does.

Also, avoid using live wallpaper. The super AMOLED, OLED screens and other screens will tend to use more power when using live wallpaper, instead use a static opaque black wallpaper and dark theme so there will be almost no backlight.

6. Set your sync options

Another area where you can save more battery power is app data syncing. Many apps need to sync data with external servers. Naturally, the process uses battery power. Facebook, Gmail, news or weather apps need to fetch updates on the internet at regular intervals and use a lot of the phones functions such as the auto-sync, the geolocation, or push notifications for email. All this data connection consumes lots of your battery life. Try to disable or at least reduce the sync frequency or search for updates manually.

7. Manage wasteful apps

Don’t hesitate to uninstall apps or widgets you don’t use. You could have some apps preinstalled that contiously try to sync, causing you to use data connection. Remember, the more widgets you have, the more power you will need and the more battery you will use.

The more recent smartphones with more processing power and RAM can multitask a lot of apps. Lots of users get confused and frustrated when their phone slows up. If you have multiple apps running on the phone, the processor has to work harder to compensate. Use the task manager to close (kill) opened apps in the background.

8. Lithium-ion battery usage (Recharging)

There are some misconceptions about the Lithium-ion batteries mainly because people confuse them with the old nickel based batteries. This is really how to use this technology :

- Never let the battery percentage go under 5% for this damages the battery, you can start recharging when at 10%, and that’s there abouts when the phone warns you to recharge.

- Small recharges of 20 or 25% DO NOT damage the battery (Lithium-ion). And keeping your phone charged when it has reached 100% doesn’t overcharge the battery and damage the battery life

- Don’t recharge the battery when in high usage. The ideal temperature for your battery when being recharged is 20°C. This is ideal yet hard to accomplish, but you can help by avoiding playing a game, or using the GPS at the same time.

- Once every now and again, you can calibrate your battery. This sometimes needs to be done because the phone software can have problems reading the battery percentage left. To do this you do a full discharge from 100% to 5% (not less remember) and then a full recharge to 100%. Idealy with the phone off.

- Remember, heat is the Li-ion technology’s enemy. Keep your battery in cool conditions (down to 0°C) when storing the phone, even in a fridge can do the job (although in a waterproof bag). Also, when storing your battery, have it charged at 40-50% just like at the purchase.

9. Root your phone

Jailbreaking or Rooting your phone can do your battery miracles. A lot of battery issues are partly due to the buggy firmware originally installed. A rooted device opens up several ways to lessen battery consumption such as the possibility to remove bloated apps that OEMs and network carriers preinstall on your device, you can gain access to rooted only apps on the Google Play store can so you can tweak the CPU clock speed (with SetCPU), get rid of ads, and so on.

With a rooted phone you can also install a custom ROM and custom kernel. Many can offer remarkable optimisations and improve battery life. Although legal, be reminded that flashing a custom ROM will be voiding the warranty of your phone manufacturor. Here are some sites you can check out : CyanogenMod, Tiamat, Chameleon OS

10. Battery apps

To easily control the battery usage, you can download battery apps such as Juice defender. Juice Defender is packed with a powerful and easy to use power manager app that specifically designed to extend the battery life of your Android device. When your phone is rooted you’ll generally have more options.

Every phone is specific, look up on the XDA developpers forum for details for your phone.