Friday, November 27, 2009

The Universality of Broadband

Here's an interesting social question. Should we take the necessary steps in society to make broadband universally available?

It's an important question, because the continued growth and success of our economy depends on technology and broadband is the core of modern technology. Access to high speed internet improves access to information, enables better education and promotes higher levels of productivity. These advantages cut across all sectors of the economy, albeit to different degrees. Generally, people with higher incomes make good use of broadband. those with lower incomes do not. Lack of universality of broadband access therefore promotes the digital divide - the growing economic disparities in society brought about by access to technology. It's a chicken an egg situation. People without broadband are at an economic disadvantage, in their education and in their jobs. They tend to become lower income, and therefore can't afford broadband or the equipment to make use of it. People in poverty can't afford broadband and therefore have yet another impediment to improving their lot in life.

Should the government step in to develop policies for universal access to broadband? There have been sporadic attempts to do this, but not a comprehensive carefully defined policy. The question has been likened to the initiatives during the industrial revolution to make road access available to everyone. Broadband is the new road system, just as essential to the e-economy as roads were to the i-economy. It needs to be approached that way.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The Opportunity, A Novel

A new novel - The Opportunity, by Gerald Trites, has just been published. The novel involves the high tech industry and has an e-business backdrop. It centers on a complex merger in the high tech industry. It is available from Amazon.com and, in Canada, from BlackAvon Books.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

CRM Failure

Customer Relationship Systems are large systems that take a lot of time and resources to properly implement and then operate. They are in the same league as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and the size and scope of some of the failures with these systems are legendary.

Some failures, however, are not as dramatic or obvious as the more famous implementation failures. Sometimes, the new system comes into production, and then the users work with it and it can take a long time before the realization creeps in that the system is not delivering on its promise, perhaps that it is draining the enterprise of its resources and not delivering results.

This calls for ongoing vigilence and the implementation of evaluation systems, carried out by groups with a degree of independence from the implementation, to determine whether the system needs to be tweaked or even replaced.

An article in E-Commerce News addresses this issue for CRM systems and offers some practical advice.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

International E-Tailing

Selling internationally is a benefit of the internet. However it also carries risks, as international fraud is high. So precautions are in order, as well as using the best of the international marketing sites and services to help share the risk. This article takes a quick look at this arena, and offers up some sound advice.

Friday, November 13, 2009

That Blinkin E-Mail

Most people find e-mail management frustrating, at least some of the time and in many cases virtually all of the time. It just keeps flooding in, and much of it is stuff you don't really want to read, at least right now, but have subscribed to because it comes form an area of interest and might be useful in the future. So we sort through it and file it appropriately.

What if this process were automated. Just think how much time it would save.

The first reaction to this idea is that - is there any system out there we could trust to sort it accurately? The fact is, some of those messages are important, indeed crucial to our jobs. So we need to find out quickly which are important and which aren't.

One idea being floated is that we can learn from some of the techniques used in social networks. They often enable messages to be built into searchable databases. They have approval systems (thumbs up/thumbs down) that help to shape the messages received.

Google Mail does some of this, but sorts the messages by conversation. Google Wave has some promise, primarily for collaborative situations, but is untried. There are other possible tools, though. Check out the suggestions in this article.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Online Shopping

We still hear about shoppers who are afraid of online shopping because of security concerns. Some of this fear is fed by prominent stories in the media about identity theft, credit card fraud and phishing. many of the fears are overblown.

The fact is, online shopping is safer than ever before. Website security is well established. Payment card companies have adopted new and better means of authentication. Encryption techniques are commonly used and with modern systems and browsers, need not slow down transactions.

True, shoppers still need to be aware of the danger of fraud, fake sites, and phishing and hacking. However, many people these days have the basic level of "web smarts" to be able to tell when something is not right..

Online shopping has been a growing industry. Each year sees significant increases in the volume and this year it is likely to grow again. Hopefully the numbers of people who are deterred by security concerns is diminishing. Here's an article on this topic with more detail.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Facebook Responds to Canada's Privacy Commissioner

Facebook has recently posted changes to its privacy policy in response to an investigation by the Office of the Privacy commissioner of Canada. That investigation identified a number of instances where Facebook privacy policy did not meet Canadian rulkes, For example, the Canadain legislation is clear about the requirement to fully inform users of why their information is being collectedd and what will be done with it. Facebook has had policies that were vague in this department. They also had a policy of retaining information for deleted accounts, which users did not necessarily know about. Their argument was that the users might wish to reinstate their accounts in future. However, the users have a right to have the information deleted if they wish.

A good writeup on this development is found on InternetNews.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Paypal - A Success Story

There have been some remarkable success stories in eCommerce over the past ten years, but few overshadow that of Paypal. Starting out as simple way for people to pay for goods on palm pilots, it was bought by eBay, and  has grown into a full service online payment system accepting most major credit cards and serving almost 80 million people today. Now it is positioned to outgrow eBay itself - a remarkable achievement. More of the story can be found on Technology Review.