Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The Perils of Internet Phone Systems

We've been saying for years that the phone systems of the country are going to end up on the internet. this has been happening especially over the past couple of years, with many businesses buying into this relatively less expensive option, as well as its convenience. However, as with other business applications moving to the internet it carries with it new security challenges. Now the risks are beginning to surface and some companies are not ready for the challenge. Check out this write-up on the issue.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Word of Mouth Marketing

Marketing through word of mouth, referrals from happy customers, for example, has long been a most effective technique for many businesses. People are more likely to be convinced by someone who has had a positive experience with a company than by an impersonal image on TV.

The past few years have seen a growth in social media and, what is more important, a change in the demographics of the users of social media. Research now shows that over 35-year-olds now form a major component of social media users. Something like Twitter is a means of reaching out in a word of mouth fashion. Re-tweets can extend the message to a wider audience. Media like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Flickr, Digg, etc all offer the opportunity to advertise by word of mouth. It's the new way and many companies are picking up on it. A good article on this topic is found in E-Commerce News.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Now its the Nook

Barnes & Noble has announced a new e-reader - The Nook - to compete with the Kindle. it advances the technology by adding in an LCD screen as well as one based on the e-ink technology. the biog advantage of this is that it adds colour, which is not yet available with e-ink. That could make a difference with consumers.

E-readers are the wave of the future for books, but there does need to be more maturity in the technology., All these different readers will not be helpful to the consumer. They stand at risk of spending a still significant amount of money to buy one of them only to find out after a few months that it has been overcome by one of the other products. Also, newer ones are coming out, notably the expected release from Apple, which is almost certain to be a major event. And the price is going to go way down. Another year will make all the difference for e-readers. And we are waiting with bated breath for that new Apple product.

Friday, October 16, 2009

The Future of Books
by Gerald Trites

Google has announced the formation of a business - Google Editions - to sell electronic books that can be read on a number of devices. It represents an attempt to capitalize on their recent efforts at digitizing books in unprecedented quantities. In this new business, they say they will only be distributing books with the permission of the copyrightholder, where the copyright has not expired.

Google stands in a good place to offer direct and strong competition to Amazon and other publishers. Electronic readers are starting to take off. So far, they constitute as much as 5% of the total market. This is sometimes touted as a small percentage, but remember, good readers like the Kindle have only just started and are still expensive. It costs almost as much to buy a Kindle as it does to buy a desktop computer. This will change. Eventually, readers like the Kindle will be sold for perhaps $20 or perhaps given away in return for the purchase of books. Others are coming out with readers, like Apple. Smart phones are getting smarter and have a lot more power and storage space. It isn't hard to imagine smart phones impinging into the e-reader market.

Eventually, the electronic books market will be the majority of the book market. There seems little doubt about that. Google is placing itself in the market at an excellent time - just when the field is starting to heat up. For more, see this article.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Collaboration Pays Off

A recent survey carried out globally, sponsored by Cisco and Verizon, shows that collaboration results in more effective sales efforts and better customer relations. The survey took a broad definition of collaboration, and included the use of tools such as video and audio conferencing, VOIP and instant messaging.

Collaboration has been a feature of eBusiness for years, but it continues to pay dividends to companies, who have constantly employed a variety of collaboration techniques to strengthen their business and extend its boundaries beyond its traditional limits.

Interestingly, some of the new collaboration techniques include desktop video conferencing, which is suitable for a moblie workforce and holds a lot of promise. We'll be hearing more about that. For a write up on the survey see this article.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Canadian Wireless System Needs a Fix
by Gerald Trites

Canada has one of the most regressive and outdated wireless systems in the world. Generally. Canada is a technologically sophisticated country but in the wireless area, this does not apply.

Canadians pay the price in cell phone bills, the outdated practice of requiring contracts to obtain cell phones, the lack of availability of spectrum to more providers and the outmoded system of regulation.

True, more spectrum has been made available to some new competitors in the wireless area, and we are all waiting impatiently for them to arrive (at least consumers in selected areas are because the first ventures into the market will be limited to certain areas like Toronto). But this is something that should have been done years ago.

The big problem has been lack of competition, and still the arena is dominated by just three companies - Rogers, Telus and Bell. This is simply not competition, is oligarchic at best and not in the best interests of the consumer. The government and regulators seem to know this, but are bound by the old regulatory system which takes years to make simple rulings.

We see this not only in higher cell phone bills than most other areas of the developed world, like Asia and Europe, but in the availability of new technologies. We had to wait until the iPhone could be sold in Canada. We are having to wait for the arrival of the Kindle, because of issues among the carriers. We will have to wait for the arrival of future products such as the  forthcoming Reader from Apple, which will likely take the market by storm in other parts of the world and we will only be able to watch from the sidelines.

We also suffer from lack of online programming because of Canadian regulatory systems, such as the CRTC, which again is outdated and irrelevant. For example, Canadians cannot watch programming on Hulu.com for this very reason.

It's time the Canadian Government initiated a major reworking of the Canadian wireless and online programming regulatory framework. Canadians dsserve better.

For a good article on the Kindle issue, see this article in the Globe.