NYC iSchool

A new educational movement in New York City transforms the educational system from the Gutenberg era to the age of the Internet. It engages the students much more effectively and may be the way of the future. Watch this video.

Social Marketing
by Gerald Trites

Social networking, such as Facebook, is entering into mainstream business with some interesting twists. One of these is the idea of social marketing, where social networks are utilized to monitor and channel group opinions and views towards a particular product. It's a major change from the classic approach to advertising. Arguably it isn't advertising at all, but a new way to utilize online communities to make others aware of your product in a way that is more credible than using your own voice. In other words, let others speak for you.

Combine this approach with social mapping tools, such as Loomia, that enable sophisticated trend mapping, and you have a powerful marketing tool.

A good article on social marketing can be found in Businessweek.

Speedsourcing

It was expected that the current recession would lead to an increase in outsourcing. Sure enough, it's happening. And there's even a name for it - speedsourcing. The idea is that outsourcing agreements are nailed down within a three month period by working out the major issues up front and tying down the details afterwards. Of course, deciding what needs to be done up front and what can be done later is a critical decision, and one wonders how well it is being made.

One of the issues that often gets shortchanged in approaches like speedsourcing is that of proper internal control. It's often not seen as on a critical path and, anyway, the auditors will look at it later.

Mistake.

Poor controls can undermine the whole process and cost heavily in the longer term. Companies had better make sure they cover it off well, preferably by having controls experts involved at the outset. A summary of Speedsourcing is found at the CIO.com site.

Google and Information Control

Google is famous for collecting data. The more of their products you use, the more information they have about you. They say they will not use that personal information, but then they are also famous for making innovative use of masses of data. No company in history has gathered so much information about people and the world in general. This in an age when information is at the core of economic and social activity. It gives google a lot of power - unprecedented power because they are in the drivers seat as to what they gather, how long they keep it, what they do with it. Of course, Google, like everyone else, must acknowledge privacy legislation. Well, maybe not quite like everyone else. There is an excellent and in depth article on this in the current Computerworld. Very much worth a read.

Cloud Computing and Moving Data
by Gerald Trites

There continues to be progress in the Cloud Computing arena, with a new application recently out, called Cloudkick, which enables the movement of data between Cloud applications run by different vendors, such as Amazon and Google. This will address one of the big concerns that many companies have, that is having their data tied up with one company. This means there can be a stronger element of competition in the Cloud, which is presently dominated by Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

The other side of the coin, however, is that the easy movement of data may complicate the control issues that have dominated IT management with regard to the movement of data across organizations, between applications and between companies. Also, data has moved on different platforms, notably small mobile devices, amaking it very difficult to avoid occasional data loss and the resultant privacy concerns.

It's nice to be able to move data around, for sure, but IT security administrators have to be cognizaant of the risks involved, and deal with them.

eBooks on Cell Phones

We hear a lot about the Kindle and the inroads it is making into the book publishing industry. However, we hear less about the software that makes it possible to read eBooks on cell phones, especially smart phones with their larger screens.

Nevertheless, smart phones, like the Blackberry, are gaining in popularity, expecially, it seems, among higher income women. The beauty of using phones to read on is that there is nothing extra to carry around. You're going to have your phone with you anyway. And even though the screen is smaller and not as geared to reading as the Kindle, the convenience factor is obviously an important one to many. Not to mention the cost factor - not having to spend $300 plus on a new gadget. There's a rundown on this trend in Computerworld this week.

Cloud Computing and Cell Phones
by Gerald Trites, FCA

The idea of cloud computing and cell phones working together makes a lot of intuitive sense. Cell phones are becoming much more powerful and therefore are relied on by users for more complex tasks. However, compared to portable computing options like laptops, the computing power of cell phones fades to insignificance. The hardware and software is just to limited for serious work. So people are using them more for computing functions, but running into the barrier of size and power.

At the same time, the cloud is becoming much more prominent as a way to offload processing to applications on the internet, and therefore use the more powerful capabilities that can be invoked there. The cloud is almost unlimited in its potential.

Bringing the two - cell phones and the cloud - together would enable people to get the best of both worlds. The trouble is there has not yet been an effective way to do that. Cloud computing is geared for conventional computer networks, and cell phones are, well, cell phones.

All of this might change if a new proposal put forward by Byung-Gon Chun, a research scientist at Intel Research Berkeley, gains traction. Chun suggestion: "create a supercharged clone of your smart phone that lives in 'the cloud' and let it do all the computational heavy lifting that your phone is too wimpy to handle." A simple idea that could work.

The idea is that the interface you hold in your hand is duplicated in the cloud. However, the difference is that the cloud duplicate is , unlike your cell, able to interact effectively with applications in the cloud, giving it the power of a full sized computer.

That still would leave issues related to input and output display, however, the idea is a start, and while there would still be limitations to cell/cloud computing, at least initially, there would also be a considerable increase in those capabilities, which would likely grow as the technology improves.

Needed - A new Business Model for Television
by Gerald Trites

A Globe and Mail article today points to the difficulty that many television stations and networks are having. Their business model hasn't changed for decades, and with the advent of new technologies, the internet, internet applications like Youtube, and other pressures, the traditional industry is having a tough time. The CRTC, the industry regulator, also has a tough challenge ahead of it. Many of its policies, such as the requirements for Canadian content, have been framed in the context of an industry with lots of money. Now that is no longer the case, and so some of those policies will have to go. Which ones remains to be seen.

Essentially, television is in process of merging with the internet, and ultimately all vestiges of the traditional industry, such as the networks and local TV stations, will disappear, or become so radically transformed as to be unrecognizable.

A major shortcoming of all this change, in this industry as well as in the newspaper industry, is the decline of local stations and papers. The Internet is decidedly global in scope, and there seems little movement in favour of local or community audiences. There needs to be something to enable communities to communicate with each other. There certainly is lots if capability in the internet for such communication, but the best, most viable, approach has yet to emerge.

Greening the IT department is a major issue. The first thing people think about is printing, or power consumption. But there's a lot more to it than that. Check out the article at the following link:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=management&articleId=336339&taxonomyId=14&intsrc=kc_feat

Communications Convergence
by Gerald Trites

Ever since the changes in business brought about by the internet became evident, there has been talk of convergence. This means that various previously extant technologies would be melded into a single new or combined technology. It meant that the companies that provided these technologies to customers, or used them to provide their services, would also have to change and converge, or merge or go out of business and be replaced by new companies more in tune with the changing times.

Some of this has indeed happened, with land line carriers moving into the cell phone space and high speed internet. Land line carriers have been at greatest risk, since they held for a long time a position of essential monopoly in the provision of telephone services. As the eBusiness revolution gained in strength, their position came to be seen as more vulnerable, with competition coming from other carriers like cable companies and cell phone companies.

But there is a lot more change to come, convergence is still the watchword in the industry, and we "ain't seen nothin yet".

That technology has been changing rapidly in the communications field is an understatement. Over the past few years, we have seen the introduction of smart phones, more powerful hand-helds like the Blackberry, Netbooks, which rely heavily on the internet for applications and storage and new software applications that make effective use of VOIP.

Traditional carriers continue to be challenged and it is worth remembering that this is an industry that held a near monopoly not so many years ago. Can an industry that was mired in the inertia of a monopolistic environment develop the new more vigorous culture that is required to adapt to the unpecedented change that is about to befall them? The question is open.

The issue is that ultimately the industry is driven by the demands of the consumer - now more than ever before because the consumers have access to the new technologies and want to use them to their greatest potential. They want to be able to communicate and obtain the information they want seamlessly, independently of the carriers, anywhere, anytime. And they don't want to, and are not willing to, pay an arm and a leg for it.

How the carriers and the rest of the industry react to these changes is going to establish the viability of these and other companies in the communications industry over the next several years. Accenture has written a white paper on these issues which provides a high level strategic overview of the challenges, and is worth a read.

Spam Hurts the Environment
by Gerald Trites, FCA

The scourge of Spam, that has plagued the internet almost since its founding, has received a lot of publicity. Spam makes up as much as 80 - 90% of the total emails sent out. We don't see all of it because most companies and people make use of spam filters, that recognize much of it and take it out of circulation. However, in order to get to the filters, the spam is consuming computer resources. And computer resources consume energy.

A recent report prepared by a consulting firm, ICF, and McAfee has revealed that spam contributes to the production of 17 million tons of CO2 annually. This is equivalent to more than 2300 cars on the road and represents more than 20% of all the energy used by computers worldwide.

While there has been some attention in the past few years to the impact of computing on the environment and what can be done to reduce that impact, there has been little attention given to the impact of spam. This is a timely study. The conclusion is that the fight against spam must proceed against its originators, and not wait until it moves through the internet and reaches the filters.

SAAS
by Gerald Trites

Software as a Service (SAAS) is an approach that in our current recession has gained some traction. Essentially, SAAS involves outsourcing applications to a service provider who develops and maintains the application. An organization can run its data through the application over the internet and obtain much of the output it wants. As with any outsourcing activity, SAAS frees up valuable resources to work on the most critical aspects of the organizational information systems, without getting bogged down in development or maintenance activities on systems that are othersise less important but simply need attention. With the scarcity of resources inherent in a recession, SAAS is a natural direction for many companies.

Also, SAAS is a significant step towards the much heralded cloud computing, which involves having significant chunks of an organization's system on the interenet. So far, despite the hype, the cloud has not yet formed for most companies.

SAAS, however, is being adopted. In a recent article in Computerworld, four companies that adopted SAAS are interviewed. All are happy with their decision. All mention the kinds of pros and cons that one would expect with adopting applications that are not unique to the company, not fully customized. But all enjoy the new freedom to apply their resources to areas they consider to be of the greatest strategic importance, which has got to be a major advantage of SAAS.

Changing Business Models For The Information Age
by Gerald Trites

When the impact of the information age, particlarly the internet, first started to be noticed, many observers noted that the then-new world of eBusiness involved significanly different supply chain structures. Instead of using the old supply driven approach, where production lines are fed with materials that go into production of goods that end up in inventory and become available for sale, they began using a customer driven approach, where goods are only produced after they have been sold.

One of the best examples among the new information age companies was Dell Computers, who adopted exactly this approach, building computers on demand.

The result of the customer driven approach is that the supply chain is steamlined, inventory levels are reduced and obsolescence is controlled. The approach has been so successful - not just for electronics companies - that those who do not adopt it are at risk of becoming obsolete themselves.

A case in point is the North American automobile industry, who have not changed their basic production model since they started producing cars, with the limited exception of Ford.

This lack of responsiveness to the realities of the information age, the lack of competitiveness that results from this lack of responsiveness, can perhaps explain the trouble that GM and Chrysler find themselves in. They have been asked several times by the US government to produce a viable business model, and so far have failed to do so. Their myopia is staggering. The Globe and Mail today carries a good story on this very point.

Mobile Technology - Coming of Age?

Mobile technology has been changing the world of personal computing dramatically in the past couple of years. The changes could be as great as the introduction of pc's themselves during the 1980's. Indeed, there are some who think that mobile units, like smartphones, netbooks and hybrids could largely replace the laptops we see every day now. No doubt there will continue to be a demand for large powerful laptops. However, many people, given the opportunity might be just as happy not to carry laptops around with them if they can achieve their computing needs with the smaller units. Increasingly, smartphones, pda's and other small units are measuring up to the challenge. They can be used for social networking, which is major, browsing, email, games, and many other applications. their big disadvantage now is that the keyboards are not big enough for comfortably preparing longish documents, and of course, their screens are small. With the advent of virtual screens and keyboards, this might change.

Technology Review has put together an interesting set of articles and papers on mobile computing that is worth a browse. It can be found at: Technology Review: EFlorida

Twitter, Blogs and media like Facebook have been gaining credibility as a means to keep in touch with customers. They are good for establishing a presence, getting feedback on products and generally keeping in touch. Companies that are stepping into this space are finding they need to learn how to use these tools. Not too much direct advertising. Not too much fluff. Good solid information plays out the best, it seems. This ROB article explores the area.
reportonbusiness.com: Businesses tap new markets with social media

Payment Systems
by Gerald Trites, FCA

For years cell phone payment systems have existed, but in North America, they have been slow to take off - perhaps grounded is a better word. There are reasons for this. Lack of technology is not one of them. Likely, the reasons are more cultural than technological. Also, it is noteworthy that in North America, we have numerous options for payment systems already in place, and a good financial system (current breakdown notwithstanding) to support payments by debit card, credit card and, yes, cash.

Some countries lack this financial infrastructure, even down to lacking bank accounts and strong currencies. But in many developing areas in the world, amazingly, cell phones abound. Thus their appeal as payment systems. Nokia is investing $70 million in this potential of cell phones in the developing world. Others are doing the same.

It's an interesting scenario and one that is fairly typical of the developing world. they often lack the infrastructure we developed during the industrial age. But now they have an opportunity to adopt the technologies available in the post industrial age, and in effect skip the mess of industrialization. Another good example is the lack of a communications structure. Since they often lack phone lines, for example, traditional communications can be all but impossible. Indeed this is one of the reasons why cell phones are so popular. They don't need the infrastructure. The capabilities of wireless technologies present an interesting opportunity with potential long term benefits for developing countries.

Music Needs a Business Model
by Gerald Trites, FCA

Since the early years of the Internet, the music industry has been a focus of the kind of business model problem faced by many online businesses. They have had great difficulty finding a viable business model. In the very early days, Napster rocked the industry with its free music sharing service, essentially robbing the industry of the music. Over the years, numerous court cases have found against Napster and they were forced to go "legitimate". Then iTunes came along and has experienced a great deal of popularity. It had the closest to a viable business model of most of the other online music sites. They sell single tracks for 99 cents, and take in some advertising revenue as well. Now, however, they are raising their prices for single tracks to $1.29, perhaps launching a trend that could be its undoing. Other services, like Ruckus and SpiralFrog have had to close down.

Many other music sites have gotten themselves into the bind of offering music for free and having to pay the music labels for their music - a business model with no future. One of the basic principles of business that seems to have been lost with some cyber entrepreneurs is that a retail business must buy goods and then sell them at a higher price in order to generate a profit. Advertising can augment the revenues and lead to a bigger profit, but is not necessarily going to be enough to lead to a profit in the long term by itself.

Consumers are both naive and short-sighted to think that they can get good music for free. It costs a great deal to produce modern music and someone has to pay for those costs and provide some kind of return on investment to the providers of the music - the musicians, producers, labels, etc. That is simple economics.

The music industry has been going through a restructuring since the Web took hold. After more than ten years, it is still struggling to come to terms with it. Hopefully there will be some progress to be made in the next couple of years. See this article for a good summary of the current changes going on in the industry.

INTERVIEW: IT Skills Shortage A Chance for Unemployed Workers > Human Resources Issues > IT Workplace

For several years, there has been a shortage of people with IT skills. This means that there are jobs available. In the article cited below, the estimate for the US is 200,000 to 300,000. Much of the shortage started when the high tech bubble burst in the early 2000's and many people concluded that there were no more jobs available in the IT area. An illogical conclusion because the high tech sector is not the same thing as IT jobs, which are common in all kinds of industry, indeed most industries these days.

Now the problem is even more bizarre, snce there are a lot of people without jobs because of the down economy, but there are still a lot of IT jobs that have gone unfilled. This is an opportunity for people displaced from their jobs in the economy who might be able to round out their IT skills. Also, it is an opportunity for young people starting out, who with the right skills can get a very good high paying job right from the get-go. INTERVIEW: IT Skills Shortage A Chance for Unemployed Workers > Human Resources Issues > IT Workplace

The Conficker Cabal
by Gerald Trites, FCA

An underground struggle is going on with potentially high stakes worthy of a thriller novel. A group of computer experts - state of the art experts - known as the Conficker Cabal, along with Microsoft, is attempting to fight a deadly worm spreading through the world's computer systems that is known to have malicious intentions. It's authors are unlknown. The FBI , other law enforcement officials and a host of security experts are battling quitely in the background to determine the identify of the Conficker authors and to minimize or forestall the impact of the virus, which they think is intended to take effect on April 1. So far, every step the law has taken has been countered by the authors in a high tech cat and mouse game. Time is getting short, and the stakes are high.

It appears to some of the experts that the Conficker worm was built to take advantage of the cloud computing initiative, spearheaded by Sun and Microsoft, in which companies have their applications and data reside in internet based servers run by the service providers. It has been clear from the start that security is of the utmost importance in such a scenario, but the basis of going forward has been that the state of security capability for internet based applications has advanced to the point where cloud computing should not be hindered by security concerns. The Conficker worm could challenge this premise. For more on the Conficker Cabal see this article in the New York Times.

Newspapers Struggle to find a New Business Model
by Gerald Trites, FCA

Ever since the world wide web got rolling twenty years ago, people have been predicting the end of print media. The predictions were that the end of the Gutenberg Age had come, that newspapers, books of all kinds and any other paper media were destined for the dustheap.

Now after all that time, we still have books. A recent poll revealed that a majority of people still felt that paperbacks would survive, even over competition like the Kindle. There are still newspapers around the world, although the evidence suggests that they are not read as much as they used to be and subscriptions have been declining. What happened?

There has been an evolution going on. In the case of books, basic information based books like those on business have declined dramatically. It is simply easier and faster for one to get information from the web than it is by wading through printed books. On the other hand, novels continue to be written, and people can be seen in public places, like airlanes and subways, reading paperbacks. Sure there is competition from iPods and laptops, but the paperbacks are still there.

Newspapers are a different deal. You don't often see them being read in public places any more. Any trip on a commuter train will show the newspapers to be in a minority. So, where do people get their news?

It seems they get a lot of it from television and the web. With regard to the web, they get a lot of it from the online versions of - yes - newspapers. Some make use of blogs and some have their favourite bloggers. The big difference between newspapers and blogs, though, is that newspapers are written and run by journalists in a newsroom - people with comprehensive training on how to obtain, verify, source and present stories in a reliable and accurate way. Blogs are often produced by people with little such training. Therefore, newspapers should be a more reliable source of information than blogs. Also, blogs tend to have a relatively narrow focus, while newspapers tend to cover a wide variety of areas of interest - news, weather, sports, community affairs, politics, comics, classified ads, crossword puzzles, you name it. Blogs don't do that. Some people think that blogs can substitute for newspapers, but that's a kneejerk reaction that simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

Newspapers have been trying over the past twenty years to find a business model that accomodates the web. Some of them charge for content. Some charged for content and then changed their minds. Most simply offered up their content for free. But with subscriptions to their print versions declining, the recession has been the tipping point for some papers.

The question is, what are they to do? There are options but not very many. Here are a few:

1. Continue to offer online content free and hope to increase online advertising revenue,
2. Offer online content on a subscription basis,
3. Offer online content on a pay-as-you-read basis,
4. Discontinue the print version, then refer back to 1, 2 or 3.

Their challenge is to come up with a business model that produces enough revenue to support their newsroom and the kind of standards that have made them an important part of our society, indeed, as the Globe and Mail puts it in a recent article, an important element of our democracy.

The problem is all of these options have shortcomings. Offering content free does not generate revenue. Advertising revenue has not been sufficient to cover costs. To require subscriptions for online content just turns people away to content that they do not have to pay for. Charging subscriptions would require unprecedented collaboration among all newspapers to work. And even then there would be other sources. Pay-as-you-go might have potential. Some have tried it, but again, the competition would need to do the same. Discontinuing the print version loses revenue, caves in and would leave parts of the populace without the news, because not everyone has and uses a computer on the internet.

The bigger risk appears to be with newspapers for smaller cities and communities. Newspapers that have national and international reach seem able to survive. But there is a growing list of cities that have lost or may lose newspapers - Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis and others, maybe San Francisco are some mentioned in the Globe article. Is this just a reflection of tough economic times on a struggling industry? Or is it part of something bigger? Is it part of the continuing decline of community in our society?

The role of families (along with communities) has also declined drastically over the past twenty years or so. We have attempted to maintain the services they provided by outsourcing, particularly the outsourcing of child rearing to day care, sports teams and schools.

For communities, newspapers have played an important role in maintaining public awareness of the community environment, the activities of their politicians, keeping them accountable and providing a forum of discussion among its members. To whom do we outsource those activities? Who will step in and take up the challenge? There are no obvious contenders.

But the newspapers are not dead yet. They do need to adapt with bold and new initiatives that recognize the role that the web plays in society - that it is more than a medium for conveying information, but rather itself a forum for interaction. The newspapers that capitalize on this aspect of the web will have the better chance. That means going beyond the provision of reader comments on stories, although that is useful. It means having people join rather than subscribe. It means making the newspapers truly interactive, social networking sites - not copies of Facebook type sites, but not totally unlike them either.

The Web has transformed society. It has made us much more interactive and engaged with each other in new and diferent ways. That is what people want. They don't want just to be told, they want to discuss. They want to hear and be heard. They truly want to be part of something - a community of some kind. Newspapers have recognized some of these trends and tried to respond to them. They just haven't gone far enough.