Perhaps I am being too hard on the devil's instrument.
You might recall my post last week on the second source for iPhones now coming from Verizon.
In the post I mentioned that there were some issues....
Well here are a few more.
Even though CDMA has the potential to go faster for the device... well its not really. According to several studies on the phone by journalists lucky enough to get their fingers on it - its a bit faster. Just not by much.
But here is another thought. You CANNOT do VOICE and DATA TOGETHER unless you are hooked up to wifi.
So you will need to make sure that you are in a good place with wifi (preferably for free) and your CDMA works for Voice. THEN you can multi task.
Wow that would be a great feature for the AT&T version or when roaming internationally. Oh but wait... you can't do that - CMDA doesn't work outside of the USA (except in VERY rare occasions).
OOOpppp might want to think again about that nice idea.
Cheers
05 February 2011
Are We Reaching Saturation In Transformation To Digital Media
There are a number of interesting trends that I follow. At the moment I believe we are starting to see a point of saturation in the adoption of digital media.
One of the stats I saw recently gave me pause for thought. The numbers in my view didn't make a lot of sense.
So I did a bit of poking around. This study is from Strata media. So the numbers for TV seem to be a bit high. Then you realize who owns them. Comcast.
So in my view these numbers are skewed against digital. So I would think that digital is already higher in value.
Perhaps now is the time to consider what happens when the rest of the world bails from the traditional media outlets and piles into digital. In my view this will be a bad thing especially for the smaller guy. Good of course for the Googleplex and the big digital properties such as Facebook.
UGH!!!
Cheers
One of the stats I saw recently gave me pause for thought. The numbers in my view didn't make a lot of sense.
So I did a bit of poking around. This study is from Strata media. So the numbers for TV seem to be a bit high. Then you realize who owns them. Comcast.
So in my view these numbers are skewed against digital. So I would think that digital is already higher in value.
Perhaps now is the time to consider what happens when the rest of the world bails from the traditional media outlets and piles into digital. In my view this will be a bad thing especially for the smaller guy. Good of course for the Googleplex and the big digital properties such as Facebook.
UGH!!!
Cheers
04 February 2011
Shhhh Don't Tell Anyone But Verizon has run out of iPhones and....
Well the running out was common knowledge. However you might want to think carefully about signing up for the service if you travel outside the country.
Why/
2 reasons - first one is that Verizon's main network will be the current version not the new LTE (we all have to wait for iphone 5 for that) which is GSM compatible.
And the other... well - just ask anyone who has an iPhone what its like to travel outside the USA.
The devil's instrument it is....
Cheers
Airline Dodge the First Bullet
WAY Baaaaaak when the debate over Ancillary Services started. I made a noise about the issue of Ancillaries actually costing the Government money.
It seems that at least someone was listening to the old Professor.
However it seems that the IRS ruled first that these services are not part of the ticket which set the scene for a government money grab. Well the airlines have dodged the first bullet.
Sen. Max Baucus one of the senators from the Great State of Montana says FAA bill won't include bag-fee tax. The Government Accountability Office said that a tax on baggage fees charged by airlines could raise roughly $240 million each year for the Airport and Airway Trust Fund. The Senator is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he said that he will not propose such a tax as part of a bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration.
Dont expect this situation to last that long. I am sure that there are many States who are looking at this from a revenue perspective. With the DoT now in the process of finding ways to monitor the ancillaries - we can be assured that as soon as they figure this out - they will indeed then work out a way to tax it.
Cheers
With thanks to ChukyPita for the great image
The sure things in life are death and taxes.
02 February 2011
So You Think Social Media Is Important?
According to a study released in January 2011 from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, those who try Social Media - seem to like it and now the importance has spread mainstream with the following chart as provided by eMarketer.
Well it would seem you are in good company.
What still bothers me a little is that while we move from eCommerce to F-Commerce or is it SM-Commerce - in my view we are moving towards more and more near or actual real time commerce.
Great - BUT.... will the back end systems (which is my specialty) keep up? The truth is out there somewhere - but the legacy systems model of contract based agreements as opposed to real time technologies will come under a lot of pressure. The ability of cache to be real and accurate with trust - becomes a lot harder.
I have opined before that the demands of Social Media based commerce and individualized results is a recipe for disaster for legacy systems. This seems to get confirmed at every turn. Last year - at the OTA meeting in Seattle - the CTO for Pegasus demonstrated how search is driving more and more transactions but not driving more sales or profit. Indeed the corollary is true. The harder the user searches to get better pricing the lower the yield and the greater the cost of the transaction.
Anyone still stuck in the legacy world - (are you listening GDSs) - and not paying attention to this issue is either guilty of monopolistic or ostrich behaviour. Possibly both.
The emergence of next generation FIND vs explicit search demands better back end infrastructure.
And yes - the emerging companies get this. Those who are sticking to the old model. Your time is up. Time for you to get out of the way... and close the door on the way out.
Cheers
With special thanks to the Dr Who Tardis money box. http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2010/09/doctor_who_tardis_money_bank_2.jpg
Exploiting "Like" Is A Slippery Slope.
Call me old fashioned - but when I like something, it should have meaning and be relevant and something that represents a real attribute.
In today's somewhat hedonistic environment where subtlety and nuance have been replaced by quantity over quality and arbitrary measurements of both - the word LIKE has become a victim to over use in the same way that - well - Windows has.
Until now I didn't pay attention to things like (meaning similar to) the "Like" button on Facebook. To me the misuse was abundantly clear. People are sitting there clicking the "Like" button like chimpanzees in the zoo. Click the button and you get something. The Pavlovian response becomes a normal conditioned response rather than a meaningful expression of human emotion.
However the use of the "Like" button has become part of the mechanism of relevance. Another component of the "Gaming" of the system of search that reduces our human ability to express ourselves in ways that - shall we say define our humanism. IE what differentiates us from a machine.
Don't believe me?
On December 15th 2010,amongst many Bing announcements that day - the Search Division of Microsoft announced even deeper integration of Facebook data into Bing’s search results and rankings. Up to this point Bing had integrated “liked” content from Facebook into its search results in a distinct content areas. The change was that now it was using the "Like" as a general criteria for ranking. Further the only viable Google Search alternative now openly states that your friends’ Facebook activity will be “influencing ranking on Bing and will lead to personalized search rankings.”
As several analysts point out the basic risk here is that social media “gaming” will lead to clutter in Bing’s search results. Not only that (clutter) but also all the bots and scripts - malicious or benign - will now skew results. While this is supposed to be just an opt-in feature and disconnecting your Facebook account with Bing turns off the addition of “likes” in your Bing search results - we all know that the default situation is to leave it turned on and results will again be skewed permanently. Or at least until the geniuses in Redmond try another feature to out Google Google or simply because they were bored that day and had nothing else to do now that stock clock watching has ceased to have any meaning on the Campus astride the 520 Freeway.
Not to be outdone - the droids from the Googleplex confirmed that they too were happily using Facebook, Twitter and other social media services to influence their rankings.
Thanks to Professor Paul for pointing out perhaps the drivers for this. It took me a little while to cotton on - but after looking at the latest financials from Google it starts to make sense. Google is seeing basic search as a declining share of their gross revenues. With about as much ad revenue sucked from the traditional media as has already converted - social media and social "ad dollars" are where the growth action is. (Chart courtesy of eMarketer).
To me this is all very scary. I see that the human levels of emotion - ranging from love to hate are being turned into machine comprehensible elements. Thus in turn making machines more easily capable to replicate human activity. Let's face it the machine already has an advantage. In this phase of human development unlike any other development before it - we do not have the power to harness the result. Consider previous developments: Fire, speed etc. in each of those cases the human intellect was able to master the power unleashed and contain it. This time the actual power unleashed is synthetic intellect. Dumbed down into forms that the machine can demonstrate its superiority we are now at the disadvantage of the machine who has infinite memory and ordering capability. Reducing our humanism to facsimiles of differentiated components such as love and hate, heart and soul if you will then synthesizing these factors into the "wisdom" of the crowd reduces our ability to display the uniqueness of our true ourselves.
And if nothing else it means we will now be guaranteed to lose in Jeopardy and Alex Trebak will not be needed either. Click on the link to see the wired story on how IBM's SuperComputer Watson will compete against two of the winning-est contestants of the American Game Show.
And this is why it makes me sad (human emotion) and just a little scared.
Er. cheers?
In today's somewhat hedonistic environment where subtlety and nuance have been replaced by quantity over quality and arbitrary measurements of both - the word LIKE has become a victim to over use in the same way that - well - Windows has.
Until now I didn't pay attention to things like (meaning similar to) the "Like" button on Facebook. To me the misuse was abundantly clear. People are sitting there clicking the "Like" button like chimpanzees in the zoo. Click the button and you get something. The Pavlovian response becomes a normal conditioned response rather than a meaningful expression of human emotion.
However the use of the "Like" button has become part of the mechanism of relevance. Another component of the "Gaming" of the system of search that reduces our human ability to express ourselves in ways that - shall we say define our humanism. IE what differentiates us from a machine.
Don't believe me?
On December 15th 2010,amongst many Bing announcements that day - the Search Division of Microsoft announced even deeper integration of Facebook data into Bing’s search results and rankings. Up to this point Bing had integrated “liked” content from Facebook into its search results in a distinct content areas. The change was that now it was using the "Like" as a general criteria for ranking. Further the only viable Google Search alternative now openly states that your friends’ Facebook activity will be “influencing ranking on Bing and will lead to personalized search rankings.”
As several analysts point out the basic risk here is that social media “gaming” will lead to clutter in Bing’s search results. Not only that (clutter) but also all the bots and scripts - malicious or benign - will now skew results. While this is supposed to be just an opt-in feature and disconnecting your Facebook account with Bing turns off the addition of “likes” in your Bing search results - we all know that the default situation is to leave it turned on and results will again be skewed permanently. Or at least until the geniuses in Redmond try another feature to out Google Google or simply because they were bored that day and had nothing else to do now that stock clock watching has ceased to have any meaning on the Campus astride the 520 Freeway.
Not to be outdone - the droids from the Googleplex confirmed that they too were happily using Facebook, Twitter and other social media services to influence their rankings.
Thanks to Professor Paul for pointing out perhaps the drivers for this. It took me a little while to cotton on - but after looking at the latest financials from Google it starts to make sense. Google is seeing basic search as a declining share of their gross revenues. With about as much ad revenue sucked from the traditional media as has already converted - social media and social "ad dollars" are where the growth action is. (Chart courtesy of eMarketer).
To me this is all very scary. I see that the human levels of emotion - ranging from love to hate are being turned into machine comprehensible elements. Thus in turn making machines more easily capable to replicate human activity. Let's face it the machine already has an advantage. In this phase of human development unlike any other development before it - we do not have the power to harness the result. Consider previous developments: Fire, speed etc. in each of those cases the human intellect was able to master the power unleashed and contain it. This time the actual power unleashed is synthetic intellect. Dumbed down into forms that the machine can demonstrate its superiority we are now at the disadvantage of the machine who has infinite memory and ordering capability. Reducing our humanism to facsimiles of differentiated components such as love and hate, heart and soul if you will then synthesizing these factors into the "wisdom" of the crowd reduces our ability to display the uniqueness of our true ourselves.
And if nothing else it means we will now be guaranteed to lose in Jeopardy and Alex Trebak will not be needed either. Click on the link to see the wired story on how IBM's SuperComputer Watson will compete against two of the winning-est contestants of the American Game Show.
And this is why it makes me sad (human emotion) and just a little scared.
Er. cheers?
The Bright Spot In the US Economy - TRAVEL!!!
Gary Locke (who used to be the Gosvenor of the Great State of Washington (where I live) was yesterday touting the benefits of Travel and Tourism to the US Economy.
At a meeting of the Commerce Department's Travel and Tourism Advisory Board today, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced a 47 percent surge in the travel and tourism trade surplus in 2010; the surplus now exceeds $28 billion. The United States welcomed more than 55 million international visitors during the first 11 months of 2010, 11.4 million more visitors than the year before. While international visitation increased 10 percent, international visitor spending increased 11 percent to $122.7 billion. The travel and tourism industry employs nearly 8 million people across the United States.
While the airlines have been cutting back to the extent that only 500K people work for US airlines with a smattering of other foreign carriers - that makes Airlines total employment about 6% of the total.
Even adding back in the GDS staffers - it doesn't do a heck of a lot for the market. But the burgeoning IT businesses will bring some entrepreneurship to the market. Provided of course that this is not stifled by some insane notions of transparency.
Cheers
At a meeting of the Commerce Department's Travel and Tourism Advisory Board today, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced a 47 percent surge in the travel and tourism trade surplus in 2010; the surplus now exceeds $28 billion. The United States welcomed more than 55 million international visitors during the first 11 months of 2010, 11.4 million more visitors than the year before. While international visitation increased 10 percent, international visitor spending increased 11 percent to $122.7 billion. The travel and tourism industry employs nearly 8 million people across the United States.
While the airlines have been cutting back to the extent that only 500K people work for US airlines with a smattering of other foreign carriers - that makes Airlines total employment about 6% of the total.
Even adding back in the GDS staffers - it doesn't do a heck of a lot for the market. But the burgeoning IT businesses will bring some entrepreneurship to the market. Provided of course that this is not stifled by some insane notions of transparency.
Cheers
01 February 2011
And The Bad Boy Winner - By a Hair?
American Airlines
The vote tally was as follows:
In who is the bad boy in the Orbitz dispute:
AA 55%
Expedia 16%
Orbitz 16%
Travelport 50%
The audience has spoken.
Check out my latest poll. Bundled vs Unbundled... not your typical options
Cheers
The vote tally was as follows:
In who is the bad boy in the Orbitz dispute:
AA 55%
Expedia 16%
Orbitz 16%
Travelport 50%
The audience has spoken.
Check out my latest poll. Bundled vs Unbundled... not your typical options
Cheers
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