Connecting the Dots

Where the hell is Wells Fargo? Out on the dusty trail, I presume

UPDATE: See this post for final resolution that came in a phone call from a Wells Fargo executive.

Here's a superb lesson in how not to manage your customer relationships and, especially, solve their problems.

What if your business was dependent upon online ecommerce and one of the processing chain providers cancelled your account without telling you, while the organization that owns the relationship and process cordially ignored you?

That's what happened to us, and the big problem lies with our prime relationship, Wells Fargo, and how they dropped the ball (or stuff off the stagecoach if you like that metaphor better) and have not helped me resolve the problem in any way.

There's a reason Wells Fargo uses a stagecoach as their symbol since it's illustrative of the state of their leadership in merchant services...more aligned with the 1800's than the demands of business in the 21st century.

WELLS FARGO AND PARTNERS HAVE ME IN A CHOKEHOLD
After six years of successful ecommerce running on one platform, our hosting company let us know in January they were pulling the plug March 31st. So we made a change, rebuilt our site on a new platform in the first quarter, and launched the third week of March before the old one went dark.

Our new platform required us to set up a new processing gateway (really the whole chain from payment gateway to back-end credit card processing with a third firm to bank and the money then in our account). I chose my personal and commercial banking company, Wells Fargo, since I trusted them. The bonus was there would be a single relationship point, they could set up the payment gateway with partner Authorize.net and the back-end processor, and it was actually less expensive then us going direct with the latter.

But it suddenly stopped working two and a half weeks after we launched.

For the first few weeks we received "successful transaction" settlement reports from Authorize.net and credit card orders were processing fine...and the last couple of weeks my staff flagged me that there were zeroes on these settlement reports. Since many people order by phone or fax even today -- and our sales weren't suffering dramatically and we didn't have a mass mailing going out until this past Monday -- we initially assumed it was the economic downturn, people getting acclimated to the new site and so on.

Yesterday two customers called about credit card payment failures on our site. I went online and tried two purchases myself with two different credit cards: they both failed. Digging in at Authorize.net, I was stunned to see dozens of failed transaction attempts.

You won't believe what I've gone through to get this problem resolved and no, it's still not fixed at 3pm CDT.

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UPDATE as of 6pm CDT: See the resolution at the bottom of the post.

Mobile SMS: Do you even *know* you're being ripped off?

For a long, long time I've limited my SMS text messaging since it was too laborious to type with a keypad and I -- and most of my friends and colleagues -- didn't like being "interrupt driven" and being bombarded by SMS interruptions. It was also ridiculously expensive and I knew it was a ripoff so was reluctant to use it.

Most of us now realize that an SMS is, in many ways, a more efficient and surprisingly less intrusive way to connect with someone. Now that I (and my daughter and some friends) have iPhones and the text messaging is so much easier, I bought her the unlimited SMS for $20 option with AT&T which she goes crazy with as she messages like mad (but they're raising the price as well...bummer).

Here's the kicker though: think about how much you pay for unlimited Internet access at home where you probably download hundreds of megabytes (or even gigabytes) of data every month for, say, $50. Ever do the math on how extremely and insanely expensive sending and receiving those teeny, tiny SMS messages are in comparison?  This is why SMS is the "cash cow" for the mobile telephony companies and they're laughing all the way to the bank, thank you very much.

Now you don't have to do the math since Sam Garfield did it for you with the true price of SMS messaging and it's enlightening. An excerpt:

What exactly justifies making SMS messages sixty one million times more expensive than ISP data and 200x more expensive than TCP/USPS? How come technology, communication, and infrastructure is getting cheaper while the costs of SMS messages are increasing exponentially? My theory: SMS messages are transfered over air made of solid gold.

No Sam...they're charging it because they can and that we haven't called them on it. It's posts like yours that will help fan the flames of mobile users getting ripped off for something so minor.

Save Your Digital Memories....Now

How many of us have thousands of digital photos, hours of digital video, all sitting in drawers or on a computer hard drive?  If you're like me, I've backed it all up but it's not fully organized, photo filenames all start with "DSC" or some other camera-generated filename so all of them are similar, and I've begun to think about my kids and future generations and their access and understanding of these artifacts.

One of my favorite blogs is Shorpy's, the "100 Year Old Photo Blog". I often delight in the images captured and think often about today's photos (and video) and whether there will be much for a Shorpy's to showcase 100 years from now (and images that have analogous resolution to the beautiful "HD" ones they showcase).

After threatening to do this for five years or so, I've just begun a project to copy and store about 75 hours of digital video and record it to archive quality DVD discs. Since magnetic tape deteriorates over time (and VHS color fades in about 10 years) and even digital tape experiences dropouts, it's imperative that I get this stuff in other forms before it's lost.

I've had the best of intentions for several years but these projects are daunting in their scope, time and attention required to drive them to completion. Besides all of my digital video, I have about 10GB's (thousands and thousands of photos) with only about 50% of them properly organized into folders and they certainly do NOT have enough metadata in them since that's even MORE work!

Why metadata? So we know who-is-who and what-is-what in these photos. I've started (twice) to scan boxes of family photos, many of them one of a kind. Most have names written on the back (my maternal grandmother annotated many of them) but ~40% have nothing and know one is alive that knows what they represent or who is in them. I have Apple's iPhoto (which has a "description" field for annotating a photo) and Adobe's Lightroom (with rich metadata capability) but any good photo management software has this capability and it's gnawing at me every time I glance at yet another huge folder full of images that only I know what's in it.

My intention is to copy and archive all my video; organize all my digital photos; scan all the family photos; and back them all up. Once bandwidth is sufficient to upload gigabytes-upon-gigabytes of digital memories, I'll ensure that everything is off-site as well (and hope that a service appears that I can pay "X" to for, say, 50-100 years of guaranteed storage.

Just know that everything you're capturing on physical media needs your attention...even if its digital. Maybe more so....and now.

Apple iPad: Would you buy a tablet-sized iPhone?

When Apple introduced the iPhone, it hit my personal sweet spot of a device so perfectly that I knew I'd have it with me all the time. As my lifestyle has increasingly become an always-on, always-connected one, having the ability to communicate in a variety of ways (voice, SMS, Twitter, moblogging), instantly look up a phone number, address or some obscure fact (the latter which always receives that "not again!" look from my wife), use the new Google Maps features (which I now prefer to my in-car navigation) means that this device has woven its way into my psyche and you'll now have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

In my eight months of iPhone ownership, I've discovered that anything besides casual use (even when connected to Wifi) is less than optimal and heavy Wifi use sucks the juice from the battery at an alarming rate. Sometimes when waiting or bored, I'll break it out and surf sites, but pinching-n-zooming gets old real fast. The tradeoff for having the internet-in-my-pocket with my phone (and always available) is gazing at it through a tiny screen and for now, I'm more than willing to make that compromise with this delightful device.

When Apple introduced the Macbook Air, I thought that finally, here was the perfect computing device for both my bride and I to augment our main computing boxes (she a 24" iMac, me a Mac Pro with Apple 23" display). Especially her, someone who travels globally and where every ounce she packs matters, is someone I thought would leap at this device. For me, someone who strongly desires a "more portable, portable" that is a step-up from the iPhone, chances were good I'd be buying one.

Not gonna happen for either of us.

Economic Effect on Tech

If you have a job, retirement assets, are looking to spend or invest in anything, or have a company that relies on discretionary consumer spending (or a Web startup that is dependent on equally volatile discretionary ad spending), then listen up.

Woke up this morning to this article in the Minneapolis StarTribune entitled, "Retailers Hit 40-Year Low" which said in part, "On Thursday, the nation's retailers turned in their worst January in almost four decades, as high fuel and food prices, a slumping housing market, tighter credit and a tougher job market pushed consumers to the edge."

It's no wonder that Apple cut its production of (what is mostly) discretionary purchases. From that StarTribune article, "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says that its shoppers are redeeming their holiday gift cards for basic items -- pasta sauce, diapers, laundry detergent -- instead of iPods or DVDs."

But it gets worse than consumers buying staples instead of tech.

Sprout: A mashup & application tool for the masses

Our pals at Techcrunch just posted about a new company that debuted today at DEMO called Sprout and thought I'd attempt to get in on the private beta and lo-and-behold...I got in.

The 'sprout' (their term vs. 'widget') you see below is one I created in 15 minutes. It took me longer to open Photoshop, reduce the size of the Connecting the Dots header and to type in the pathnames to my podcasts (yes I know...they're OLD) then it did to create the sprout!

I just grinned and shook my head in disbelief as I used it since Sprout has delivered on my pent up desire to have just such a mashup and creation tool which begs the question: why the hell didn't Adobe do this with their rich internet application (i.e., RIA or Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)) strategy? To date mere mortals -- who are savvy enough to use InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and the like -- can't truly deliver on AIR, Microsoft Silverlight or even Webkit apps unless the propeller on their beanie is fairly large.

There are a few nits (the words "Click on any playlist..." were bolded and italicized which didn't publish) but they're so few compared to the power Sprout has unleashed they're easily overlooked. I also want to understand what they'll charge for the service -- or those I direct to Sprout to create -- before I get too fired up about recommending people leap on the tool and deliver mission-critical products.

I also noticed a slight latency as my 'sprout' loads which you might notice also. I've been a broken record on the topic of the "dirty little secret" -- that Internetwork latency is already affecting mashups, Web/Enterprise 2.0 applications, video delivery and essentially everything we do over the Internet -- but this latency won't likely slow down the creation and delivery of mashed up applications. I hope, really hope, that this latency doesn't crush the spirit of those of us truly wanting to create and deliver significantly higher value on the Web with tools like Sprout.

Using this tool for 30 minutes tonight has sparked about 25 ideas for how I'd use it. From completely self-contained multimedia slideshows to a different sort of ebook to a poor man's RIA, I suspect many others will have exactly the same reaction and start building these things like mad.

WebKit-based application from Ntractive to debut at Macworld

If you don't know about the category of applications dubbed "hybrid" or "Rich, Internet Applications (RIA's)" then you need to learn more since 2008 is the year this category accelerates. RIA's are functionally like desktop applications but arguably the most significant feature of them is the ability to interact with "the cloud" or computing that occurs with hosted applications on the Internet.

Though not explicitly an RIA-type application, the easiest way most people understand the category is to think about iTunes. This application is a desktop one enabling you to rip, manage, burn to CD or sync to iPod all of your music. But where it gets really interesting is when you're Internet-connected and you can buy music or videos, subscribe to podcasts, and download cover art. This hybrid nature is quite useful as Internet connections become ever faster, increasingly wireless and more ubiquitous.

The Minneapolis StarTribune had an article in the business section Friday morning showcasing a Grand Forks, ND startup, Ntractive, who will be launching Elements SBM™ at Macworld which opens Tuesday with a keynote by Steve Jobs.

Marketing Consultant Graeme Thickins of NewMediaWise contacted me to find out if I'd be interested in having co-founder Dale Jensen walk me through Elements SBM, which we did in early December. We met and I was stunned with the completeness of the application, how well thought out it was and that it looked great. The user interface was one that I saw any small to midsized business would have a staffer up-n-running on in an hour.

Rather than re-create the great job they've done laying out their features and benefits, I'll instead suggest you go through the tabs on their site starting with Features. The application integrates very well with such Mac applications like iChat, iPhoto and, of course, connects to Ntractive's hosted service to leverage data storage and connection in a true software as a service (SaaS) fashion.

What I'll end with is my perspective about the brilliance of these two deciding on and engineering upon WebKit. There are competitive approaches and examples include: Adobe leveraging Flash and other standard technologies with their RIA container called "AIR" (Adobe Integrated Runtime); Microsoft with a browser plugin to deliver their RIA runtime Silverlight; as well as other projects to "hybridize" web applications like Google Gears and Mozilla Prism. WebKit, however, is a complete, self-contained application framework that is fully standards compliant and open source.

WebKit is the basis of Mac OS X's Safari web browser (now on both Mac and Windows). Though the horserace has just begun on who will win the dominant approach to creating and delivering RIA's, I'm experiencing my alpha geek friends staying neutral on which "RIA horse" to bet on (or keep coding using other approaches). Still, there is no question in my mind that choosing WebKit enables Ntractive to move faster and build higher level functionality than other approaches while leaving the framework horserace to the software stallions Adobe, Apple and Microsoft.

CES: One example of our lost technology edge

Just finished skimming 187 posts in my RSS reader that were piled up from Engadget's coverage of the winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  The innovation, evolutionary features and new gadgets are pretty cool but at the same time troubling.

The Japanese and Korean HDTV models are incredible. Any glimmer of a US-based production presence is non-existent.

In the late 1980's I moved to Chicago to take a job at Pioneer New Media (PNM was part of Pioneer Electronics, focusing on laser videodisc, CD-ROM and cable gear). One task I undertook was holding discussions with Zenith TV in Illinois about their possible desire to private label one or more models of our laser videodisc players.

This was a company and brand I knew well growing up. My grandparents had two Zenith 13" black and white sets and a color one in the living room, and I bought a Zenith TV as a high schooler for my bedroom. Knowing that former television manufacturing powerhouse Zenith was pretty much irrelevant, I nonetheless dutifully headed over.

The physical plant was like walking through a time warp back into the 1950's. It was dingy, old, and filled with almost antique furnishings and equipment. The folks I met with were so incredibly clueless about the entire category -- and wanted players so inexpensively we couldn't possibly supply them -- that I knew I'd wasted my time.

As a technologist and futurist I'm excited by all the new gadgets. As an American and a father who cares about the country we're passing down to our children, I'm appalled that we're making little the world wants to buy.

Is that an LED projector in your pocket?

Minnesota-based 3M announced today that they have released an earpiece-sized LED projector for mobile and handheld device projection.

3M is now providing consumer electronics manufacturers with a revolutionary advancement in the emerging field of miniature projection technology. 3M scientists developed a breakthrough ultra-compact, LED-illuminated projection engine designed for integration into virtually any personal electronic device. Roughly the size of a wireless earpiece and less than half an inch thick, the 3M mobile projection engine delivers brilliant VGA resolution images and is available today.

This company creates and develops alot of cool technology, but is primarily a supplier of infrastructure materials or building blocks that others turn into finished goods. They do say in the press release that they are "...partnering with leading consumer electronics companies that plan to launch products in early 2008."

Before I get too excited I'll have to see one in action. Though I love the several smaller-than-dime-sized-lens 7 megapixel Panasonic and Canon cameras we own, when I'm serious about a photograph I'll grab my Nikon digital SLR with its huge sensor and lens about the size of a small apple. The resulting image is low on noise and high on clarity.

Of course, cost and convenience are why we always buy the tiny, less qualitatively nice gear, heh? When I look at this tiny little projector component in the 3M picture, I can't help but remember wheeling  a huge Sony 3 gun projector (like this one) into a large group presentation and have been enjoying the continued reduction in size -- and increase in quality -- of the small projectors. At some point I'll buy one when I'm confident a small one will be decent.

Apple + Presence and Location Awareness

What if you could take your mobile phone near a retail outlet and it would tell you the specials? Have your favorite cup of coffee waiting for you to pick it up? Personalize their offerings so that only the things you might like to buy would be presented to you? Allow the retailer to automatically know who the good and loyal customers are so you could be catered to?

Those are just some of the positives of Apple's recent patent application discussed in this Forbes article.

The downsides? Too early to tell, but having an iPhone stolen would be one though there will undoubtedly be security implementations to avoid that problem. How about ordering something automatically -- a cup of coffee or example -- when today you had a hankering for tea?

My bigger concern is the perfect storm around presence and location awareness. Presence is when systems know where you are and that you're online and/or your device(s) are capable of communicating with you (which is one reason why the Blackberry has done so well since YOU don't have to check for email...it TELLS you when there's a message). Location awareness is like the photo above when machines are aware of where you are geographically.

Both of these are huge for Google since every touch point where any of us could possibly receive and act on an ad is key to their strategy. Imagine you search for, say, an HDTV and the ads delivered to your phone or browser are specific to your location? Or what if you're sitting in a Starbucks and corporate sends out a promotion while you're physically there -- and they know by your purchase history and interactions with them via your iPhone that you're open to what's in the promotion -- and your phone vibrates with an SMS delivering the promo?

Slowly but surely we're handing over more and more of ourselves and our privacy in exchange for what? I've handed over a lot and done so willingly (Gmail, Google Analytics, et al) but there is much I haven't used (Picasa or YouTube with their complete ability to reuse your pics and video).

Lastly, I have to admit being sort of amused by Apple delivering this functionality since they're the LEAST personalized and targeted company of their size on the planet. EVERYTHING that I receive from Apple is completely generic though they have my purchase history, machines and applications registered, and my credit history since I have an account at iTunes. Still puzzles me that they don't bother to use any of that meaningfully.

2 Trillion SMS messages

Often many of us simply don't pay attention to signs of growth or are unaware until some new development, meme or technology has hit critical mass and we then must pay attention to it.

We've all known for some time that mobile phones hit critical mass globally and that Millenials and GenX'ers are using text messaging as a primary means of communication. What you might not know is the volume of messages and Cellular News had this to say about a recent Gartner report:

As the popularity of SMSs continue to grow, Gartner forecasts 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages. Mobile messaging revenue across major markets will grow 15.7 percent in 2008 to $60.2 billion, up from $52 billion in 2007.

Asia/Pacific and Japan are the biggest consumers of mobile messaging. Gartner estimated that there were 1.5 trillion messages sent in 2007, and the number will grow to 1.7 trillion in 2008. Volumes of short messages and picture messages will increase, but growth rates are expected to slow in line with the saturation of mobile connections.

As I discussed in this post Mobile Global Grid: When the World is at Your Fingertips, mobile technologies -- and especially smartphones -- may already be the primary way many of us stay connected to others and is increasingly putting the world of knowledge at-our-fingertips. With messaging schemes growing quickly (e.g., Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku) and mobile providers ostensibly opening their networks (e.g., Verizon and AT&T) to other devices and potentially more unrestricted data use, a rich always-on, always-connected critical mass of people will be using much more than simple SMS and it behooves any of us in business to keep tabs on this growth.

My Digidesign paper weight...

A cautionary tale for those of you who rely on vendors of product upon which you depend for your livelihood.

This morning I sat down in front of my three month old audio setup: a Digidesign MBox2Pro ($800); Shure SM7B microphone ($350); and my Macbook Pro loaded with all sorts of software (~$300); (all worth roughly $1,400-$1,600 in order to do a voiceover for a product I'm shipping this coming week.

When booting the software (ProTools LE) I got an error message that it couldn't find the Digidesign hardware. "No worries, it's a driver issue probably due to a Leopard incompatibitlity, and they'll surely have an update on their site" I thought since it had been about two months since I used the Digidesign hardware and about seven weeks since I installed Leopard on all of my machines, including the Macbook Pro I use for audio work.

Digidesign still doesn't support Leopard, seven weeks after it shipped. Since so many of my other applications have been upgraded, I can't downgrade Mac OS X just because Digidesign doesn't have their act together, so I've got a big, expensive blue-faced paperweight.

If audio was my main business or completely mission-critical, I'd have a dedicated machine for it and would've waited on upgrading to Leopard. But since every other vendor I rely on (e.g., Adobe with the Creative Suite) and even scanners and other devices already supported, I assumed (wrongly) that a vendor upon which so many have invested large sums and rely upon would have their act together.

I won't even get into the issues with hosted applications (e.g., Twitter's outage yesterday or Skype's recent multi-day meltdown) and the trepidation many of my clients, family and friends experience.  Today's experience of mine is but one more reason to tread cautiously with any technology you've bet your business or product on and make no assumptions about support.

UPDATE on next page...

Digg + Techmeme/Blogrunner + Newsvine = Wikio

Grabbed lunch in a coffee shop so I could followup on some emails and surf Google Reader and leech off use their free wifi.  Like you probably do as well, I use tabs in Firefox to create "tabbed workspaces" that let me use different browser windows to load my oft-used sites so they're at my fingertips just a tab-click away.

Four I check constantly are Google Reader (GR), Newsvine as well as the memetrackers (probably THE most powerful automated conversation tracking mechanism on the Web) TechMeme and Blogrunner. With the 1,000 or so articles popping up in GR that I skim/read each day -- cross-referenced in the memetrackers so I make certain I've seen all the hot stuff of the day bloggers are "conversing" about by linking to one another -- I really have a handle on what I need to stay appraised of daily.

While reading Mashable just now I came across this breaking news on the US launch of Wikio, an offering that I describe as sort of a Digg, Techmeme, Blogrunner and Newsvine combined. I dropped my sandwich as I realized that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to combine my use of these four sites within just this one!

As Mashable's Adam Ostrow states in his opening, "Wikio, which already claims 5 million unique users in Europe, is officially launching their memetracker in the US today. “Memetracker” is probably too narrow a description for Wikio, as it attempts to be much more than services like TechMeme, BlogRunner, and the new Technorati."

Wikio describes their site like this: Wikio is a personalised page of news, including a news search engine that searches media sites, blogs and member publications. Even without signing up or personalizing Wikio for myself and my own interests -- which I just did -- I can really see the potential here.

You can vote and promote articles you find interesting ala Digg. It acts as a memetracker, like TechMeme and Blogrunner (though I think that capability looks weak....but I haven't yet formed an opinion). It allows submission like Digg does -- and Newsvine before Digg appeared -- but with a twist: since you can complete a profile like a social network, it allows someone who is willing to invest in article submission with the capability to build a reputation on the site which Newsvine pioneered with news gathering.

The bad news? I can't export my OPML file from Google Reader (which I've painstakingly invested in categorizing over a couple of years) and then import it into Wikio. Maybe I'm missing something and I can do this, but if not it's a deal-killer for me using Wikio as my primary hub.

The good news? I've broken into huge grins several times as I've bumped across articles and blog posts that I've *never* seen before. THAT sort of experience will be the acid-test for acceptance of this tool: if the value delivered by Wikio is higher than figuring out how to really use it effectively (which isn't too tough) and if it provides more of us with the ability to consume and parse high volumes of information, than Wikio is a winner which it already looks to be.

Schwarzenegger and Broadband: Is this leadership?

No question that California has a lot at stake with respect to broadband (major Internet players like eBay, Google, and others are there), movie and (much of the) television industry, infrastructure companies (like Cisco) but then so does the United States overall. There seems to me to be a woeful lack of leadership when it comes to this economic catalyst both at the Federal and at the State level and Governor Schwarzenegger just demonstrated his lack of leadership on this matter.

At least the Governator has some level of awareness as he exhibited weakly at last Tuesday's talk to a broadband conference, though according to this CNet article he's a proponent of letting the free market take care of making broadband ubiquitous, affordable and faster.

Hmmm...let's see: The Internet wouldn't exist had it not been for the Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) creating it; the "free market" is traffic shaping on their networks dictating what can-and-cannot run on their networks; and US broadband speeds are laughingly slow compared to the rest of the world.

In the same way I don't need a meteorologist to tell me the sun is shining, I don't require someone to inform me as to why the US needs faster broadband speeds (both download and, most importantly, upload speeds so we can serve from our homes and businesses if we choose). If you, like me, use the Internet in any meaningful way you feel it and understand it down-to-your-toes.

The Sacramento Regional Research Institute, like a good meteorologist, looked at the concept strategically from several miles up and Schwarzenegger referenced the study in his talk:

An increase in California’s broadband Internet usage could lead to significantly higher levels of employment and payroll in the state, according to a new study by the Sacramento Regional Research Institute (SRRI). The Economic Effects of Increased Broadband Use in California shows that with a 3.8 annual percentage point increase in the proportion of the adult population using broadband, California could see a net cumulative gain of 1.8 million jobs and $132 billion of payroll over the next 10 years. (Study PDF press release here).

An earlier (Jan 2006) study (PDF) by MIT/Carnegie Mellon also reinforces the economic impact of broadband:

"We find that between 1998 and 2002, communities in which mass-market broadband became available by December 1999 experienced more rapid growth in (1) employment, (2) the number of businesses overall, and (3) businesses in IT-intensive sectors."

So it's not just me that sees the sun is shining, so where do we go from here?

Replace One Face-to-Face

If you've been in a coma for the last couple of years you might have missed the emergence of an enormous awareness of global warming and a focus on being "green".  What may not be as apparent is the shift that has occurred in the strategic vision and mission of most companies and how to capitalize upon green is on the lips of most business people. This is occurring while simultaneously there has been an increasing concern about business continuity in a day of terrorism, avian flu and accelerating gasoline prices and, most importantly, an explosion of innovation and disruption of business status quo causing leaders to re-think how people collaborate, create and innovate.

There are so many incredibly simple things you can do to make a personal and positive change in your impact on being green: turn off lights and replace your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents; conserve water; don't drive around if you don't have to or carpool; recycle; stop the herbicide and pesticide use; and so forth.

Businesses are made up of people (who are obviously negatively impacted by global warming) and are increasingly buying green products and services from others and pressuring companies to become more green. One could argue it's in every firms best interest to be green, deliver green products and services, and help their employees become more so in order to be more profitable and be good corporate citizens. As long as what companies do doesn't "dilute shareholder value" most senior leadership will react and many already are going green and profiting from doing so.

But what if making less of an impact was good for the bottom line and could also become part of helping employees be more productive and, most importantly, turned out to be a fabulous way to mitigate risk, ensure business continuity in the event of a catastrophe and sparked creativity and innovation through collaboration?

As always, what I'm about to argue isn't a magic bullet nor is it a research paper on business continuity, collaboration and being green. It's just a couple of dots I've connected that you might find worthwhile.

Why we *must* touch, feel or experience products

How can Amazon sell a kindle that no one can touch, feel or experience? Since Amazon doesn't have storefronts or isn't in the retail distribution channel in any fashion, how will people determine if they want to shell out $399 for a player and then read most of their subsequent books and publications with it?

It appears that their sole initial strategy is to rely on early adopters and influencers touting the merits of the device (which, IMHO, is why so-called A-list bloggers were included in the launch). Since there is monetary incentive to see it adopted, having these influencers buy one (if they weren't just given one) and either sing its praises or show it off to everyone else is undoubtedly a great way to build buzz.

I've been in many conversations recently about the supposed death of retail in a day of ecommerce, the now obvious wisdom of Apple rolling out their own stores, how Dell has begun a shift to a retail distribution strategy and that as devices and products become more complex -- and thus require more initial education of the consumer before a purchase -- that having physical locations where people can touch, feel or experience it is more important than ever before.

Or is it?

Retail is a push-pull for me. On the one hand, like most people I like to go into a store to actually play with a product before I buy it. On the other hand I understand how it's a physical impossibility for stores -- even the size of a Best Buy, Target or Walmart -- to stock anything more than the 60-80% of the mainstream products people will buy which often makes ecommerce all that more attractive.

So how realistic is it that new concepts or paradigms will be launched and need to be sold at retail?  Are influencers and recommenders enough to launch a new product like Amazon's kindle?

Will US Technology Win the "War"?

This is a great example of amazing technology that -- among other things -- could enable sensors to be dropped all over a war zone with pinpoint accuracy!  Seems that, "A ten-person Arizona based start-up has claimed victory in the annual US Army precision airdrop competition, claiming to have hurled disguised spy sensors from a plane flying at 10,000 feet. The "five pound fake rocks" landed "within ten, seven and three metres" of their intended touchdown points more than two miles away."

"STARA's main technology is small, custom-built autonomous guided parachutes which can be dropped from a wide variety of military aircraft to deliver smallish payloads with great accuracy. Their packages can be released from existing flare or chaff dispensers, dropped from drone aircraft, or simply "hand tossed" from the ramp of a C-130 transport to fly themselves down using a mixture of satnav and inertial guidance."

Reading this article over lunch today got me to thinking: with technology like we have, why is the US so seemingly challenged in rooting out and fighting so-called "terrorists?"  The answer is that the "war" isn't about terrorism, spreading freedom and democracy or ensuring we have the latest technology (since we could crush any country on earth now). It's about the oil that's feeding our economy which is a resource you're apparently going to be paying $4 per gallon of gasoline for by next summer and is one that would grind our economy (and the world's) to a halt if materially disrupted.

According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), "Iraq holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil - the world's second largest proven reserves. Iraq also contains 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and is a focal point for regional and international security issues."

Google "doing evil" by invisibly observing?

Google is known for it's internal guiding phrase "Do No Evil". What I've never seen is a strict definition of what "doing evil" really means to the folks at Google. Have you? Should you care? What data is Google looking at when you're online?

An article in SLATE yesterday entitled, "Google's Evil Eye" about summed up what I've talked about previously (a key post is here and another handful are here, here and here) and all of this should at least make you stop and think about all the Google services you're using and how much you're simply handing over to them:

Google's fingerprints aren't just on your e-mail. Last week, the Senate held hearings regarding Google's proposed acquisition of Doubleclick. Google dominates the micro-end of Internet advertising with its text ads. Doubleclick is the leading provider of banner ads, like the one at the top of this page. A combined Googleclick would be a force in Internet advertising—Google makes 99 percent of its profits from ads—and have an awesome ability to track your online behavior. Google will be able to inform advertisers what sites your browser has visited, what ads have been clicked on, what search terms have been used. The company can also get a good idea of your physical location from your computer's IP address. And that's just the tip of the data iceberg. If Sony wants to target teenage PlayStation 3 owners in Southern California with a special promotion on flatscreen TVs, who do you think they are going to call?

When I was at Vignette during the dotcom heyday, I recall the Doubleclick controversy in 1999 that showed, for the first time, the unprecedented capability of tracking and measuring. From Wikipedia:

"In 1999, at a cost of US $1.7 billion, DoubleClick merged with the data-collection agency, Abacus Direct, which works with offline catalog companies. This raised fears that the combined company would link anonymous Web-surfing profiles with personally identifiable information (name, address, telephone number, e-mail, address, etc.) collected by Abacus. This merger made waves and was heavily criticized by privacy organizations. Controversy grew when it was discovered that sensitive financial information users entered on a popular Web site that offered financial software was being sent to DoubleClick, which delivered the ads."

That was over seven years ago which is an eternity in internet time.

Zink: Inkless Printing

It seems today that there are few technologies that surprise or delight me. When this one was shown at Demo last January, it was because it was close; perhaps it's because of my prepress and publishing background that I took more notice than most; or maybe it's because it's simple to see the opportunity. Regardless, this is one amazing technology that's worth you thinking about and watching as it develops.

I subscribed to the Business 2.0 "New Disruptors" video podcast (the now defunct Business 2.0) and Erick Schonfeld (now of TechCrunch and I hope he keeps doing these disruptor segments) did a segment on this company, Zink, that is close to delivering printing without ink:

ZINK™ is a breakthrough technology that produces on-demand color images and photos - without ink, ribbons or toner. The ZINK™ Technology enables a new category of color printers and paper that work as a system to print in a whole new way.

The key to this process is the patented ZINK™ Paper, an advanced composite material with cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside. The printing process is now radically simple. Just add Paper™.

While I also was enamored by the Foveon chip (an innovative RGB image sensor), I realized early on that unless this chip was embraced by camera manufacturer's it never would go anywhere. Sigma, Toshiba (with one camera) and Polaroid are the only OEM manufacturer's who've used the chip to date and it's effectively dead, in my opinion. Could Zink's fate be tied with their ability to cajole, persuade and sell to OEM printer product companies?

Perhaps. But this article from July shows how they're hedging their bets: Late last week, the company announced it completed a deal that sees it taking control of a manufacturing plant in North Carolina that previously belonged to Konica Minolta. With the purchase, Zink can now speed up the development of both its Zero-Ink printers and supporting Zink paper.

Though Zink has more than 100 patents on this inkless printing process, competition looms from Xerox, though the latter's technology is focused on being an erasable one. This concerns me since so many of our artifacts (e.g., photos!) are digital and in considerable jeopardy of being lost. The archival quality of Zink's approach gives me warm fuzzies about creating things that future generations may be able to hold in their hands.

Regardless of what happens, who wins, or what technology we end up using, the fact remains that in a short time we'll have options for high resolution printing that will no longer require we buy expensive consumables, chop down trees or process pulp to create printed artifacts.

NetRadio's 1995 debut in Minneapolis

If you weren't deeply immersed in the Internet's early days as I was, it's hard to remember the pain, the obstacles and the now almost quaint state-of-the-art in 1995.

It was that year in November that NetRadio made its debut here in Minneapolis and is an invention and milestone that needs to be lauded and remembered. Invented by Scott Bourne and Scot McCombs (more here), NetRadio used RealAudio's first player and server technology to run. A former Authorware (now part of Adobe) colleague of mine, Rob Griggs, was an early investor and co-founder and he invited me to the offices you'll see in the video below (via TWiT) to see their new radio offering streaming over the Internet.

At the time I was impressed and could easily visualize the possibilities, but also knew in every cell of my being how long it would take before this was anything more than cool and a novelty. In fact, my belief as to one, key cause of the dotcom crash was that there was a HUGE amount of Web content pouring into the top of the funnel (i.e., being served) and most of us were sipping through the tiny hole at the bottom of the funnel (i.e., with dial-up 56k modems) and there was no way rich media of any kind -- including low audio quality radio -- would yet flourish over copper wires for quite some time.

In 1995 there were, as the video points out, roughly "110,000 Web sites" and that NetRadio received "about 25,000 Web visitors in the first few days". Impressive at the time, but so was the Model T in 1908.

Finally...Congressional pressure on mobile telephony providers

When describing my experiences trying to figure out what I'm paying for with mobile telephony services -- and how to figure out a personal or business cost model -- I've said, "If it's Tuesday and the customer service person has had onions on their cheeseburger for lunch, the price is different." It's my way of expressing the huge number of variables that make it very difficult to predict what mobile usage is going to cost.

Obviously that's the strategy. Keep us befuddled and confused with a dizzying array of choices and we'll just pick one and rack up who knows what costs.

Thankfully my own Minnesota Senator, Amy Klobuchar, has teamed up with Senator Jay Rockefeller to introduce a bill to empower all of us to not be locked in to any given mobile telephony provider and have some form of mobile telephony choice:

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) today unveiled legislation aimed at empowering the 200 million cell phone customers nationwide to make informed choices about a wireless service that best fits their needs and their budget.

The Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007 will require wireless service providers to share simple, clear information on their services and charges with customers before they enter into long-term contracts; a thirty-day window in which to exit a contract without early termination fees; and greater flexibility to exit contracts with services that don’t meet their needs.

I've had my own issues with Verizon Wireless in the past as well as the only provider I could use with my new iPhone (AT&T Wireless) and their sneaky methods to get me to pay more money. All of it stems from these provider's attempts at maximizing their profits at our expense. It's as though each has figured out the absolute base-case services to provide and no more.

Why is it that my old phones could easily connect to my laptop so I could add my own, home-created ringtones? Then the mobile telephony providers pressured cell phone manufacturer's to remove these features so they could sell $1.99 ringtones (of course, I've found easy ways to make my own ringtones for my iPhone and can easily get them there...I'll not pay even $.99 for a ringtone from a song I've already purchased!).

In their defense, these companies have invested billions in infrastructure and it's not trivial to cover the huge geography that is the United States of America. They're finally facing potential competition from the upcoming auction of the 700mhz spectrum (which could see a non-traditional telephony provider offering competitive mobile telephony products and services) so maybe they'll change before competition ensues or Congressional bills become law.

Is this Steve Fossett's plane?

UPDATE: A fellow pointed out to me in an email that others had located this same plane BUT that shadows make it appear to be a plane in flight vs. on the ground. Slashdot thread here. SUNDAY A.M.: A tired Sergeant from the Mono County Sheriff's called that they'd combed this area already and wanted me to know. Even though I expressed my apology for reaching out beyond channels, he stopped me to let me know that he was *very* appreciative of all efforts expended by satellite imagery searchers and eased my mind that I hadn't (even with all my best intentions) diverted search and rescue (SAR) efforts.

I've communicated with the Amazon Mechanical Turk folks that are coordinating this imagery search effort on how challenging it is to communicate with them in the event of discovery -- which is why I took my own steps to reach out to the SAR folks. They're working on methods to streamline their interface (and make it easier to communicate findings to one, central point) so this sort of thing is intuitive and easy to do in the future.

My wife is out of town and it's a Saturday night at home with my 12 year old son. Reading this Slashdot article, I thought "Hey...why not do something useful tonight instead of watching TV?" and I went to this Amazon Mechanical Turk site to help out in the search for Steve Fossett by scouring a detailed satellite image for any signs of what might look like a small, white plane.

About three hours into the search, I found the white plane above. At first thinking "Nah...this is too obvious," I couldn't let it slide and immediately tried to find a way to alert the authorities through the Amazon site, but just couldn't figure out how to do it with any sort of urgency.

So I instead did a quick search and found the woman (Major Cynthia Ryan) who is running the search for the Nevada Civil Air Patrol. Her voicemail left her home phone but it's been busy for over an hour. I next called the dispatcher for the local sheriff's office near where the search central is (Minden, NV) and left the latitude and longitude coordinates with the dispatcher.

For some reason I was troubled. I plugged the coordinates into Google Maps and was dismayed by the significantly lower resolution imagery, but I could see more macro level detail and realized that the plane I found is in California and specifically within Mono County.

Next call was to the Mono County Sheriff's Office who has the data now. The dispatcher, John, actually called me back to the get the latitude and longitude coordinates since he didn't do it on the first call we had. He sure sounded more urgent so we'll see.

The plane looks intact and I sure hope Fossett is found a bit busted up but alive.

Do you rely on electricity? Roads & bridges? The Internet?

This weekend I've had a lot of time to reflect on how fragile and dependent we all are on infrastructure and distribution. All of these thoughts have also had me remember being a kid during the 1970's energy crisis (with lines at gas stations) and times when pending blizzards caused people to make a run on grocery stores stripping the shelves of certain foods, water and other staples.

We're far too dependent on so much infrastructure and distribution systems that most of us either take for granted or simply expect will always be there.

The Interstate 35W bridge collapse two weeks ago was the first stunning blow about the frailty of infrastructure and a wake-up call for all of us. I've been reading a tremendous amount about needed bridge and roadway repairs in the US and it seems as though every state (as well as the Federal government) is suddenly taking action.

Yesterday morning's storm here in Minnesota knocked out our power at 3am Saturday and it's expected to fixed by close-of-business on Tuesday!  It's only affecting 45,000 people here now, so this is a local story. But what a pain in the butt it is to be without power and, thank goodness, my neighbors behind us have power so I've run a contractor grade extension cord so I can plug in my refrigerator and sump pump.

When there have been huge electrical outages there have been outcries (and I wrote about it here and you can read more about our crumbling power grid here). But since these outages have yet to be in the same horrific category as a catastrophic bridge collapse tragedy, not much is being done. I also remember Reddy Killowatt, the electric industry spokescartoon who encouraged us to use electricity. He's retired now having outlived his usefulness in a time of energy conservation.

I'm sitting here in a restaurant this morning with free Wifi since my Internet access at home is out (no electricity...no working cable modem). Thankfully I have an office a short drive away with power so it's not too horrible and I can still get work done, but my 12 year old son keeps asking me how he can get on the 'net from home. There are some silver linings to having all the electrical stuff off, but I'm not too interested in living off the grid just yet.

Yesterday afternoon I almost purchased a portable generator. Instead, I'll be buying a standby generator (which runs on natural gas) that I can plug into my home circuit system and prioritize my heat and air conditioning; sump pump (critical since my basement flooded last year when the power went out!); refrigerator; and a few other items so I'm not at the mercy of Xcel Energy or a kind neighbor. The cost will be roughly $5k installed and a whole house generator (instead of a limited number of items) is about $13k. What's enlightening to me has been the exercise of adding up all the watts I pull in my house and realizing how tough (and expensive) it is to be self sufficient with energy!

The small outage of Internet hosting I referenced in my post is so laughingly small that it went almost unnoticed by the general public. But as more and more of us map our businesses, our social networks and our communications on the 'net, the potential for horrific and catastrophic outages -- though unlikely to take lives -- may finally get people to wake up to our dependency on bridges, our distribution system, electricity, the Internet, and all the other systems and processes we now take for granted.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs?

Often I take Robert X. Cringely's columns with a grain-of-salt, but this one entitled, "Game Over: The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership" really hit me since I make my living on Internet-centric management consulting and view broadband as the key enabler of business going forward. Cringely's article is an important one to read if you care about US competitiveness in the future.

Back in the mid-1990's I had an ISDN line with a whopping 128kbps access for $69 per month. Incredibly fast at the time, I even considered their bonded option for 256kbps (well over $100 per month) but I wanted to stay married. Today I have 8mbps per second downstream and 768kbps upstream for essentially the same price.

I have friends in San Francisco with 10mbps symmetrical (both upload and download) for under $100 a month. Others using Verizon's fiber (FIOS) and getting 15mbps down, 2mbps up for $50 per month.

But Cringely talks about the 100mbps speeds in Japan, others have complained about them being ahead of us too and the OECD's April, 2007 report (which showed the US at 25th in global broadband penetration and speed) is open to debate. So is it important for us to have competitiveness in broadband speeds and why aren't we -- the inventor and creator of the Internet -- in the world's leading position for broadband speed and penetration?

When you think about the relative sizes of countries vs. US states, you begin to get a feel for the enormity of the problem. Japan is roughly the size of Montana, for example, and (as of 2001), 79% of the population lived in urban areas with ~20% in Tokyo alone. That makes it considerably easier to provide a high speed broadband infrastructure for the overwhelming majority of Japanese. It's a lot tougher to do so across the vast geography that is the United States.

The stakes are too high, however, to NOT solve this accelerating need for true broadband. ArsTechnica has a good article on House Democrats and discussions about 'true' broadband. I'm not even going to get into the lobbying and politics of broadband, telephony and wireless, but suffice to say there are alot of complexities on why we're NOT the world's leader. What most discussions don't focus on, however, is that broadband is viewed as a driver of gross domestic product (GDP) output and we need to be accelerating the Internet -- both in speed and penetration -- now.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs? Read on for a very interesting set of data...

The Internet and a Graying World

My posting has been light since my 94 year old father-in-law has been living with us -- after a fall and before he transitions to assisted living -- and now my 81 year old dad is going in for major colon surgery tomorrow. I'm honored to be serving these two men and have been doing so with a lightness in my heart and a lot of love and expect it to consume my summer.

This time serving our dad's has been a profound learning experience on many levels. Since I write about technology and the meaning behind it, I'm not going to leap into the spiritual aspects, a discussion about honoring our elders or even how I'm worried I won't capture their stories on audio or video, but instead about the macro trends of a graying world.

An experience like mine makes me think deeply about mortality, aging, and my work (Internet and Web centric management consulting) and what it means when a HUGE part of the Internet-centric market are Seniors with the time, inclination and interest -- not to mention a higher net worth than any generation in history -- embrace the Internet.  All of us in the Web/Enterprise 2.0 game need to figure out how to cater to this group of folks.

This is NOT just a US-centric phenomena...it's a global graying one. The National Institute of Aging produced this report Why Population Aging Matters: A Global Perspective which provides a succinct description of population trends that are transforming the world in fundamental ways. The report, using data from the United Nations, US Census Bureau, and the Statistical Office of the European Communities as well as regional surveys, identifies nine emerging trends in global aging and starts off like this:

We are aging—not just as individuals or communities but as a world. In 2006, almost 500 million people worldwide were 65 and older. By 2030, that total is projected to increase to 1 billion—1 in every 8 of the earth’s inhabitants. Significantly, the most rapid increases in the 65-and-older population are occurring in developing countries, which will see a jump of 140 percent by 2030.

Social Security number for iPhone activitation

After reading this article, "Before you activate your iPhone, read this!", I feel like I violated my age-old, number one caveat for myself: never give out my Social Security number. It's the key to my identity, my financial and my governmental life.

CNet's Michael Tiemann said in that article, "Which is why the iPhone activation mechanism is so troubling, because it compels people in the heat of the moment to do something they should never do if given a moment's thought." Yikes...that was exactly my predicament (the heat of the moment) since I got to the Apple Store just before they ran out of a new shipment, I bought one for my daughter as well and we had limited time, so I quickly put both of our SSN#'s in anyway.

Mobile telephony providers ask for either a SSN# or a Tax ID# (for a business) and I've always abhored both practices. With AT&T's collaboration with the NSA over domestic spying, I've now handed myself over willingly to some database of theirs (though how trivial would it be to be on one anyway?).

Here's what's different: an unprecedented level of tracking that's possible with today's technologies. The justification for triangulation of your mobile signal to cellular telephone towers; Global Positioning system; hardware and chip unique identifiers so your actual device can be tracked; are just a few of the reasons why this is disconcerting.

The argument from the uninformed is, "Well....if you don't have anything to hide there shouldn't be a problem, heh?" falls on my deaf ears. The reason is that I'm an intellectually curious guy and read stuff online that may be construed as subversive (one example is Cryptome) and who knows if I went to that site, surfed to conspiracy, bomb making and Aryan Brotherhood sites if I somehow wouldn't end up on a watch list. It would be trivial to track me.

If I trusted AT&T, Apple, our own government or the frickin' boneheads who allow people to download and take with them millions of identities I'd be less concerned....but I don't and I am concerned.

What if there is no equilibrium?

One result of an increasingly interconnected world -- and we humans who are leveraging this network, adding ourselves as nodes to it -- is that hundreds of thousands or millions of changes are occurring everywhere. Change is being accelerated because people can help people; ideas are propagated at the speed electrons can traverse the 'net; and thoughts inform others thoughts which build upon one another quickly.

New companies are popping up all over, industries are being disrupted globally, and the fear most status quo holders have is about the disruption we will NOT see.

I've been observing this massive change enabled, in no small part, by the Internet-as-a-platform, Web/Enterprise 2.0 space and have slowly realized that no one, no analyst organization or set of thought leaders is going to be able to track and even identify disruption and emergence everywhere on our planet.

When I think about industries that have been disrupted by quickly emerging competitors in the past: railroads; vacuum tube companies; minicomputer makers; today's newspaper and television providers; or even the printing industry my 94 year old father-in-law worked in for his entire career; I see now that disruption occurred but there was ample time for adaption. Companies adapted, industries figured out how to stay relevant or go away, economies discovered new revenue streams, and equilibrium was reached.

But what would happen if equilibrium is no longer within reach?

Get Smart about Helping Others Understand Technology

Was poking around Brightcove's site this morning and found a Time/Life channel with the clip below. I remember this show, Get Smart, and its bumbling spy Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams). It was campy as hell but was fun to watch nevertheless.

This clip -- complete with a pinkish red wrapper and an ad for the series on DVD (Note: for some reason I noticed today, July 12th, that it had been taken down so I put up a new version) -- was still one I wanted to include in this post today. Why? Because the way Maxwell is using all his phone gadgets is how I sometimes think people see me when I'm goofin' with all my gadgets and technology. This might be an enjoyable clip that may also make you stop and think about what those of us deeply embedded in Web 2.0, the Internet, software and gadgets present with our use of technology. Let's help the rest of 'em catch up, heh?

See the Dirty Little Secret for Yourself

The Associated Press had this article about a new, free service offered by the content delivery network provider, Akamai.

As you can see from the screengrab, I took a peek at the closest hub to me in Minneapolis (the Chicago one) and the end point in Sydney, Australia since I'm working with this guy on delivering live streaming video content from there to here.

In the article was this quote, "We originally built this feature as a tool for our customers, but once it was built it seemed like a fun thing to put out there to the public," said Tom Leighton, Akamai's chief scientist." A fun thing? I don't think so. More like, "We are delivering this to graphically demonstrate the latency on the Internet and the incredible performance boost we can provide you with the Akamai service." I'm enamored with what Akamai is delivering and particularly intrigued with their announcement of a Flash streaming service combined with their other media offerings (more here).

Performance with video streaming, webinars, application performance, content delivery and anything else that travels over the Internet is becoming increasingly dependent upon how much latency (i.e., the time it takes for packets to travel over the Internet and be re-assembled at their destination) is introduced. Of course, it isn't just the latency from one hub to another...it's also from that hub to its ultimate destination (including from the Internet Service Provider you have to your desktop).

Composite applications or "mashups" of discrete chunks of functionality (think widgets and gadgets) assembled together to deliver an end application is a real problem if there isn't any thought to how much time it will take for all that data to be grabbed and a Web page to be built.

I know I'm a broken record on the topic of the "dirty little secret" -- that Internetwork latency is already affecting mashups, Web/Enterprise 2.0 applications, video delivery and essentially everything we do over the Internet -- but dealing with this latency is something that should be baked into every Internet companies business plan as well as your business case if you're delivering anything over the 'net and/or relying on applications and data up there in that Internet cloud.

Unleashing the Collective