Ambur MacArthur has an excellent update on the fight for net neutrality in Canada this morning, showing some growing momentum against the traffic shaping (read “traffic blocking”) practices of the biggest ISP’s. The government apparently will begin to investigate traffic shaping policies of Rogers and Bell.
There has been a lot of discussion and debate in the U.S. about the traffic shaping practices of Comast, and other ISP’s. I personally use the Verizon FIOS service and love it. For $53 a month (including taxes) I get 5 mbps downlink and 2 mbps uplink via fiber optics directly to my house. I have not had any issues with my connections, but I don’t do very much P2P traffic, which is what the ISP’s predominantly target in their traffic policies.
The FCC in the U.S. is reportedly considering some regulations on ISP’s to better define and reign in traffic shaping, but given the big money (and therefore big lobby and big lawyers) behind the big ISP’s, I think the FCC is unlikely to enact any significant or sweeping regulations (and Karl at the BroadbandReports also wonders the same thing) . The debate will likely go on and change will come in small, incremental steps.
Why?
The ISP’s currently have the advantage, as they control the entryway to the Internet for most consumers and small-to-medium sized businesses. They will do everything they can to protect their revenue as a value-added service provider, though most people see them simply as a commodity provider.
Do consumers love Comcast? Of course not. Comcast, and most other ISP’s and tv service providers, are necessary evils that simply get in the way of what people really want to do by slowing down traffic, offering high-priced services and inferior applications to those that are available on the Internet.
Do consumer need Comcast? Of course they do. Until, that is, technology for alternative means of Internet access becomes more ubiquitous and cost-effective. See WiMax (the next step beyond WiFi) and 4G / LTE (the next step beyond EVDO and GSM/UMTS) wireless technologies as possible game-changers that will enable other companies to offer broadband access.
However, WiMax and 4G are 2-3 years away from any type of widespread availability. Until then, lawyers and lobbyists will fight the good fight on behalf of the big ISP’s as they war against the inevitable transformation of their business from cutting edge technology providers to purveyors of a commodity than can easily be had elsewhere.
Have you ever seen a lawyer or lobbyist move quickly? How about a big corporation change quickly? Or an industry give up its foothold to smaller competitors easily?
OK, I’m addicted. Robert Scoble is creating fantastic interviews and discussions on the Scobleshow since starting mid-last year. I’ve watched every single episode all the way through and can say that I learn something, am inspired by something or provoked to think about something every time.
Jonathan Schwartz was Robert’s very first interview last year, and I wrote about how he’s talking about Sun being relevant. Robert catches up with Jonathan again last week just after CES, and we see more fascinating insights into Sun.
A couple of things hit me as I watched this discussion. First, Sun really is remaking itself into an innovative services company. I’ve seen that a bit, but it just hit me when Jonathan Schwartz said
Every software asset we produce is free and open source - and if it’s not today, then it will be soon.
Wow - that makes it very clear - Sun isn’t going to make money on their OS, they’re going to make money on servers, support and customized applications.
Also, it’s apparent how Jonathan helps define a culture at Sun of openness, honesty and genuineness. He talks about how a near-death experience changed his outlook on life, and how he is actually more open to risks now than he was before he “almost died”. He’s also a geek and lives and breathes what his company does every day.
It’s a great insight into a man and a company. (We also get visual confirmation that he does indeed have a pony tail, a fact that was a bit nebulous in the first interview).
The company I work for (which I make a reasonable effort to not mention on this blog, but which isn’t necessarily a dark secret) has begun to support internal employee blogs. By “support” I mean “provide a means to make happen”, but not “encourage by implementing a simple yet effective architecture familiar to most bloggers.”
My company is a telecommunications and networking infrastructure provider, and we have a lot of intellectual property that we must maintain. We’re struggling to figure out how to create cutting edge technology and freely participate in the technology marketplace of today, which includes openness, direct communication, collaboration, user-generated content etc. etc. - while still protecting our IP (intellectual property).
So we’ve taken a small step by implementing something more like a web forum system tweaked up to look like a blog. It supports real html, comments and attachments. However, it’s an SSL-encrypted webpage behind our firewall, there’s no RSS and the internal URL’s look like a mashup of misspelled Russian words and symbols that are at least 20 characters long.
In short, it’s extremely inconvenient for others to access the content - you have to have a specific URL of the employee blogs page. In stead of RSS, the system offers an email subscription, which is certainly better than nothing.
I understand why our company isn’t allowing externally-visible employee blogs, and can understand the security concerns even behind the firewall - at least to a point. But the restrictions significantly hinder the power of a blog - easily accessible, open posting API (e.g. Wordpress or Moveable Type) and syndication.
I’d like to offer my very humble input to our IS team but would like to seek others input about the best practices for setting up blogs behind the firewall. For example:
are there some proven ways to implement RSS with both authorization and encryption?
what blogging platforms are most conducive to a behind-the-firewall application?
how have other companies developed an internal blogging policy (I’m not even considering external blogging policies at this point) where there is a lot of IP discussion involved, even internally?
If anyone has input on this topic I’d love to hear it! Thanks.
The Dallas Business Journal recently ran a story about the Richards Group, a Dallas-based ad agency that many believe is one of the best in the industry. Stan Richards, the founder and principal, talks with Glenn Hunter of DBJ about his philosophy, his approach to the business of creativity and some of the elements that make the Richards Group such a unique company.
Since its founding (Stan Richards forming an official company in the 1970’s after doing do freelance creative ad work in Dallas since the 1950’s) in the 1970’s, the Richards Group has grown to a 662–employee and $1.1B company. Yet, to read Mr. Richards talk about his company today, one would never guess that it is that big. Richards works hard to make it function like a small, agile company through some very unconventional approaches.
For example, there is a ban on the use of most internal email. Email lends itself to misunderstanding, Richards explains, so he forces people to talk to each other more.
Also, Richards has a four-part criteria when considering a new business opportunity with a client, that he puts in the form of four questions they must answer Yes to:
Why do people go to see a movie at a movie theater? With Netflix, widescreen TVs, surround sound home theater systems, media rooms and digital cable, why would anyone pay $8–10 per person to go see a movie at a theater? These, apparently, are the questions that the National Association of Theater Owners are asking; and apparently, they are not coming up with very good answers.
Mark Cuban, however, the enthusiastic owner of the great Dallas Mavericks, and hi-tech investor, has a very different perspective. In his recent post on his blog, he sets out very clearly some great arguments about why he believes the movie theater experience can only get better, and how Landmark Theaters, owned by his 2929 Entertainment, is striving to enhance that experience. Landmark’s much-discussed strategy of releasing movies simultaneously in multiply formats – theater, DVD, TV – has drawn scorn from the National Association of Theater Owners, saying that consumers will simply get the DVD and forgo the movie theaters altogether.
Cuban writes:
I can whip up a mean steak, but I still like to go to restaurants. Because I enjoy it. I enjoy getting out of the house with family, friends, who ever.
Mark Cuban gets the idea of a complete digital experience. Here’s a great example of a company – Landmark – and a leader / influencer taking a stand for understanding their consumers and how to give them a high quality experience, not just a neat product. Cuban talks about how he and Landmark are working on new ways to enhance the theater experience – how about headphones in each seat, for example – and how the traditional theater owners are essentially sitting idly by waiting for someone to take away their competition.
I haven’t seen any of the current releases playing at Landmark, or the films produced by Cuban’s HDNetFilms. I don’t get a chance to watch too many movies at this stage in my life, but I sure will check out Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and The War Within when I get a chance.
Check out Mark’s post, then think about which movie theater you would like to give your hard-earned money to.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of Katherine Stone’s Decent Marketing blog. She has a great perspective on how companies can engage their customers on a more personal level than traditional marketing does. Katherine was interviewed last week on AdPulp, where she talks about what experiential marketing is and how her approach is different than traditional marketing.
For consumer electronics companies, hi-tech companies, telecom companies, part of selling a complete digital experience is making a more human connection with potential customers through more engaging, and “decent” marketing. I hope more of these companies will pay attention to what Katherine says.
The consumer electronics market is a thriving, robust industry, turning out wonderful, useful, powerful, amazing products (“toys” my wife calls them) at a break-neck pace. Look no further than the Consumer Electronics Show for example of the desire, demand – dare I even call it lust – for new digital machines that wow us, entertain us, streamline us and make us cool.
Yet consider this: how would you rate the quality of your entire “digital experience” with these products – the way they work alone, the way they work together, the ease of which you can configure them, the type of support you receive from the companies that make them, etc. I suspect your end-to-end digital experience is fractured and inconsistent at best. James Womack, in an article in the current edition of Fast Company asks the question: “How can individual goods and services get better and better while the experience of using them doesn’t?”
The medical profession is one of the most promising vertical markets for the Tablet PC. Many hospitals and doctors offices are experimenting with tablets already, and their popularity is growing.
For a great site that tracks the latest news, discussions and articles about using portable tablet tablet-like devices in the medical profession, see the MedicalTabletPC.com site.
Nortel and Lucent are often considered peer companies in the telecom vendor industry. The two companies are roughly equivalent in number of employees, revenue, market focus stock price, market cap, and outlook. Two weeks ago, Lucent announced that it was lowering its sales outlook for 2006, sending both its and Nortel’s shares significantly lower. Then, this week, Lucent reported fourth quarter results of a loss of $104M, or $0.02 per share.
This had many analysts and investors renewing concerns about both the short term and long term viability of both companies.
Thursday, however, a BusinessWeek article describes what may be a growing confidence in the future of Nortel, while Lucent’s outlook seems less bright. Nortel’s new CEO, Mike Zafirovski has made several structural and personnel changes, and has begun to re-invigorate the employee and investor base with his vision and goals. There are several areas for Nortel that could be tapped for further cost reduction and efficiency, as well as product portfolio decisions that could stimulate growth. However, Lucent has already made several cuts and strategic moves, and could have fewer easy targets to hit for cost savings and growth, many analysts believe.
Nortel will report its fourth quarter and year-end results in early February.
The January 23rd issue of BusinessWeek has a great article about C.J. Prahalad, a business strategist / consultant / professor who has very innovating and challenging views about how global business will change over the next several decades. He points to his native India – specifically to Bombay for this article – and shows that while some people see abject poverty, filth and apparent hopelessness, he sees a hotbed of capitalism and innovation without equal anywhere in “first world” countries.
He goes so far as to argue that the third world economies are producing some of the the best innovations in cost reduction, process efficiency and quality in the world. He looks at the streets of Bombay and sees money-making enterprises – from sugar-cane stands to faxing services to hot dog stands, people are making money – however little it may be – in just about every place you look.
I just read an article published in November 2005 on the Knowledge@Wharton web site, discussing the research of Mary J. Benner regarding the best ways to apply process management disciplines such as Six Sigma or ISO 9000. Ms. Benner, a former General Manager at Honeywell and now a Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, began to re-think her own propensity to emphasize process mapping and optimization at Honeywell after she began working on her PhD.
Benner began to wonder if the process disciplines were having a stifling effect on innovation within an organization. She and Harvard Business School professor Michael Tushman have studied the subject since 1998 and have come to some interesting, although reasonable and practical, conclusions. By studying patent activity in the paint and photography industries from 1980 to 1999, they found that the number of patents that related to knowledge that was entirely new to the company decreased in proportion to the number of ISO certifications that a company received.
In other words, the more official process discipline certifications, the fewer new, innovative patents.
Does this mean companies should abandon process quality, discipline and optimization programs like ISO 9000 and Six Sigma?
Presenters University is an excellent site that collects tips, tricks, templates, clip art and other useful content geared towards effective presentations. Microsoft PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation delivery tool, is featured, but they also have sections for Apple’s KeyNote and Corel Draw.
One of the new articles added in October is by Troy Chollar of TLC Creative Services. Troy provides 13 tips for professional formatting in PowerPoint, based on his experience and work at his company. Here are a couple of highlights:
Turn off SNAP OBJECTS TO GRID and SNAP OBJECTS TO OTHER OBJECTS.
Use the Slide Layout task pane
Use the Align and Distribute tools in the Draw menu
Troy offers 2 public tools – PowerPoint add-ins from the PPTxtreme tool set – that help align and format multiple objects between slides. [I was not familiar with these add-ins and they look like they will be very useful]
Consistent layout of similar objects across multiple slides
Add shadows, rounded corners and/or beveled edges to inserted photos in a presentation
This article is a great refresher for those that have been putting together PowerPoint presentations for a while, and a great place to go after learning the basics of PowerPoint for the not-so-experienced. I encourage you to check it out.
Three months into my tablet PC experience, just as I have become attached to – even dependent upon – my Toshiba M200 tablet, it has happened. The screen on my M200 broke.
After following Tracy Hooten’s terrible experience with Toshiba (see here, here, and here; you can keep reading previous posts for the complete history of her issue) when her new M200’s screen cracked, I was anticipating a horrible time dealing with customer service issues and long delays in getting everything fixed. However, my experience has been much more positive than Tracy’s, though not perfect.
It started last Wednesday night. Everything on the tablet was working fine during the day at work. Then, when I turned it on that evening, the screen images were distorted, had shadows and there were some vertical lines, even when the screen was black. I found out that my company had purchased on-site support for the few M200’s that they bought, so I called up Toshiba the next day. My tablet is now fixed, one week later, though not without some bumps in the road. I’ll chronicle the experience with a time line below:
Last year’s merger of Cingular and AT&T Wireless created the nation’s largest wireless operator – the new Cingular presently has about 42 million customers. One of the issues that was plaguing AT&T Wireless (or AWS) was its reputation for bad customer service. I had first-hand experience as a subscriber, and my parents also suffered through several long and ultimately ineffective phone conversations to customer support to try resolve some issues with their account. My parents are now Sprint customers, and even though my company did a lot of business with AWS, and still does do business with Cingular, I can’t say I blame them. (My company does business with all the wireless carriers anyway).
Well, the big Cingular mother ship hasn’t yet solved all the customer service issues, it seems.
Katherine Stone writes about her recent troubling customer service experience with the new Cingular in her great blog, Decent Marketing. Her story is a great (or terrible, depending on your perspective) example of how companies can easily lose sight of their customers’ experience with their products and services.
Katherine has great perspectives on the way business interact with potential customers via marketing and customer service, and always offers some interesting insights – not to mention personal stories like this one. I highly recommend checking out her blog:
Legos were probably my favorite “toy” when I was young. I could go and spend hours on the floor just creating things – airplanes, cars, buildings were my favorites. One of the joys of being a parent, now, is that we have Legos in our house again, and I get to play with them. I still love putting things together and transforming an idea or a picture into a real physical creation.
I saw this article in Fast Company today about how the Lego company is offering a new on-line customization service for the latest generation of Lego builders. You can go to the Lego web site and design your own lego creation, then order a custom set that contains all the pieces required to build what you just designed. Wow, if I only had this when I was a kid!
Here are a couple of example designs that some people have created. You can find these and more on the on-line Gallery on the web site.
Now, what’s also interesting about this Lego initiative is how it helps make a very traditional non-electronic toy – which, by not having flashing lights, music or clothes makes it easy for today’s kids to overlook – very relevant to kids (and parents) who spend so much time on-line. I think it’s genius, not just for the company’s health (they lost $310M last year on revenues of $1.1B) but for the creative health of kids. Despite just being a lot of fun, Legos also stimulate creativity and problem-solving, can foster a sense of accomplishment, and can be an excellent way for kids or parents and their kids to spend time together “connecting” with each other.
Legos will definitely continue to have a place in our home!
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The medical profession is one of the most promising vertical markets for the Tablet PC. Many hospitals and doctors offices are experimenting with tablets already, and their popularity is growing. 
