Strategy/Tired

Tired words: Computer

Posted on by charlie

Another big name I am struggling with.

Computer – Another term that no longer seems to fit the bill.

Computers (as in laptop and desktop computers) no longer compute. They are appliances that do things that were once reserved for other machines. For example, we watch video, listen to music, browse text, send messages. No longer does the computer sit waiting for our command to crank something out (that is, compute) – we just use it to handle our media.

On the flip side, applicances have become like computers, that is, they have programmable chips embedded. I don’t call my car a computer, or my VCR, or my microwave, though I can program them or interact with them in a post-mechanical way.

Should I call my phone a computer? It sure is acting like one (in all descriptions above), but the name doesn’t really fit anymore.

You can review all my previous ‘Tired Words’ here on this page.

Strategy/The Narrative

Flat rate billing – be careful what you wish for

Posted on by charlie

Today I gave a talk for alumni from the Copenhagen Business School (tickled pink to be invited).

I spoke about three topics that are near and dear to me:

  1. The growth of the Mobile Lifestyle – how service providers need to understand how folks use mobile phones in their life, rather than just porting experiences from the broadband PC world.
  2. The rise of the emerging markets – what a billion new subscribers in the next year or so mean to local and global commerce and society.
  3. The fusion of the Web and mobile world – how we can bring the innovativeness of the open Web to the mobile world, along the way teaching operators how to find other areas of value.

I kept the talk informal and there was a good discussion during and after. The one thing that still is bouncing around my brain was a comment from a CEO from a giant electronics firm. He tied two of my threads together: the push for more flat rate pricing and the use of pre-pay minutes as the basis for an informal economy in emerging markets.

He asked what will happen if we go all flat rate pricing, how will folks use minutes as a currency then?

Good question.

It would certainly remove a central role of the mobile in the informal economy and remittances of the developing world. But, we must also keep in mind that even in really mature markets, pre-pay subscriptions are still significant (I think it’s like 50% in the UK). So, while we should be careful what we wish for, I don’t think we should think of the consequences in today’s terms. In future, there will be other things that will make this worry minor.

The Narrative/Tired

Tired words: Internet

Posted on by charlie

I suppose you could say today’s word is a hard one to be tired of. But, I think it’s just that I belong to the last generation of the non-natives who live this hyperconnected life as much as a non-native can.

Internet – Sigh. I wonder if in the late 19th century, everything was about telegraph still or was it finally accepted by then. When will be stop talking about the ‘Internet’ as much as we’ve stopped talking about the phone network, the telegraph network, the electricity network? When does the Internet stop being a place and we start talking about what we do in terms of verbs. I am pretty sure my kids will have no separate concept of what the Internet is.

You can review all my previous ‘Tired Words’ here on this page.

Announcements/Innovation/Strategy/The Narrative

Audioblogger closing down

Posted on by charlie

Audioblogger, a service from Odeo to post over-the-phone recordings onto a Blogger site, will close at the end of this month.

Basically, they say it was too expensive to run and Odeo wants to concentrate on their thing – podcasts.

Now, I viewed Audioblogger as a mobile to Web bridge. It’s a pity to see it go. Either there wasn’t much of an uptake or mobile has quietly slipped off the Odeo radar.

It must have been a hard decision, since Odeo and Blogger are historically linked via their founders.

The announcement to Audiobloggers listed other services one could use. I think I’ll check them out.

From the email they sent me:

As of November 1, 2006, Audioblogger will no longer accept phone
calls. MP3s made with the service will continue to be hosted and
served but you will no longer be able to use Audioblogger to post
new audio.
…

However, there are several other services that offer similar
functionality. Odeo is not affiliated with any of these services,
we only suggest them only in hopes that one or the other will be
a good alternative for you.

Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone
Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features
Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording

Innovation/Strategy/The Narrative

Failure by leaps and bounds

Posted on by charlie

I was listening to another great seminar (don’t remember which), but there was a side comment on evolution. Basically, nature can really only make incremental steps, building and changing only what it has. Making a huge evolutionary leap is hard. For, example, wings evolved from feathered arms. Nature just didn’t leap to birds.

And the same, I think, applies to products. I think that one reason big complex products fail is because the leap too big, the number of changes to large, the scale of complexity affecting everything. For example, space travel and nuclear reactors are complex endeavors that we leaped into, but they are plagued with difficulties, and, as with space, no mere mortal can do it. I think this also is part of the reason that biotech is still struggling -it’s a jump into a complex product, even if it is one single drug.

Furthermore, as I’ve been trying to stretch my mind 5,000 years into the future, I think such issues affect our predictions of the future. If you subscribe to the Vinge-Kurzwiel view of the coming Singularity, then you believe in the linearity of technology. But, I think that, all because the components have become bigger, better, and faster, it doesn’t mean that the complexity scales in a manageable way. I think when we arrive to the time of the Singularity, the complexity will keep us from making the fantastic leaps that Vinge and Kurzwiel believe in.*

*Oh, and then there’s the software to run it all. Heh.

Strategy/The Narrative/Tired

Tired words: Podcast

Posted on by charlie

Well, I’m not really tired of it – yet.

Podcast – I would like to have another name for time-shifted recordings. Y’see, none of the podcasts I listen to go on an iPod, nor are they listened to on a PC. I always listen to podcasts on my phone (or multimedia computer, if you want to be exact). And my podcasts are sometimes time-shifted radio shows, interviews, seminars, or even just spoken text. Suggestions?

You can review all my previous ‘Tired Words’ here on this page.

The Narrative/Tired

Tired words: Blog

Posted on by charlie

Today’s word will probably lead to a lot of flames.

Blog – I try to avoid this word. Really, blogs are just websites and come in all shape, sizes, and qualities. Why the distinction? Throw into this batch vlogs, clogs, phlogs, grogs, hogs, and pogs and what ever else we might combine with it. Hey, it’s a website.

You can review all my previous ‘Tired Words’ here on this page.

Strategy

Google integrating much more lately

Posted on by charlie

It was inevitable.

After launching a large number of services, Google is finally starting to stitch them together.

The latest is Picasa. Picasa was the gold standard for PC albums. When Google took them, I was a bit disappointed the all the cool stuff you could then do with Picasa was hard-coded into Google. Nonetheless, it was an attempt to have services work with each other.

Now, Picasa goes online in a true way (then what was Hello?), integrating an online album with the PC app. not rocket science, but as Google showed with email, it doesn’t have to be – it only needs to be good and what people like.

But, what caught my eye was the side comment that Picasa also works with Google Earth. To me, that’s really cool. It’s gonna be those weird links that will really start thrilling the masses and bring all the Google stuff together.

Keep it up, Google.

Link: Official Google Blog: Picasa goes online, gets new features too.

And there’s more — you can import into any folder you like, make time-lapse sequences into movies, search by color, create a screensaver with beautiful visual effects, and even re-arrange Picasa’s buttons. Oh, and we also made Picasa work with Google Earth, so you can put information about where you went on vacation into the photos themselves, and then, view your shots on a 3-D globe. Try it all out for yourself at picasa.google.com.

Oh, and have you checked out moon.google.com (mentioned in post above)? Why can’t my company be so cool: zoom into the highest resolution moon images. It’s for real!