Internet Changes Everything

July 31, 2003

Blogs Have a Place on News Web Sites

Blogs Have a Place on News Web Sites

Reporters and Readers Can Contribute

By Steve Outing

(July 31, 2003) -- I hope you're not sick of Weblogs (AKA blogs) yet, because they're not a fad that will go away soon. Blogs, it is becoming obvious to me, are where much of the innovation in online content is taking place.

Let's dig deeper into the intersection of Weblogs and journalism. (Not all blogs can appropriately be called "journalism," though many can.) Because if your news Web site isn't publishing blogs of some sort, you are, like, so 1990s. It's past time to get with it.

Who writes your blogs?

Last year, I wrote a column for Editor & Publisher Online suggesting that many reporters, correspondents, editors, and columnists at newspapers should produce Weblogs. I stand by that advice, but these days I place equal importance on non-staff members producing the content for blogs at news companies.

Weblogs present a wonderful opportunity to get the voices of the public onto your site. An area that's ripe to capitalize on is digital photographs taken by members of the public -- AKA witnesses to news. This, I am convinced, is going to be a huge trend in the next couple of years.

A handful of media companies have already experimented with the concept. BBC News Online solicited digital photos from people attending anti-war rallies prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Dallas Morning News Web site collected images of space shuttle Columbia debris that had fallen to earth.

My advice is for news companies to set up a standard repository of public images and publicize how to submit photos (e-mail a specific address either from a photo phone or conventional e-mail). Then, the next time a tornado or hurricane rolls through, or a plane crashes in a populated area, a stream of witness images will pour in, ready to be filtered for publication. This concept can be deployed on any manner of public event or happening: a participatory event (say, a local marathon); an appearance by a presidential candidate; a Hollywood filming taking place in your town; etc.

Having a digital-camera-toting public at your disposal is, of course, the result of the popularity not only of digital cameras, but also picture cell-phones. It's the latter that's really exciting, and that will change the face of photojournalism. With a photo phone, the witness of a horrific auto accident can simply and instantly e-mail photos to a news organization. Indeed, that happened recently in Japan, when a truck driver used his photo phone to send a short (and grainy) video clip of the accident scene to a TV network, which broadcast the images, before professional photo-journalists could get to the scene. (With an army of photo-phone witnesses, you could argue that for stories that are less than earth-shattering, there's not even the need to send out the pros.)

How big is this trend likely to get? A recent research report by IDC predicts that by 2005, unit sales of photo cell-phones will outnumber unit sales of digital and film cameras combined. When the devices are as ubiquitous as VCRs (and it's heading quickly in that direction in gadget-happy Japan), news organizations can count on their audience members to regularly e-mail them news-worthy shots.

Learn This Word: 'Moblog'

Weblogs come into the picture here in the form of "moblogs" (short for mobile Weblog). A moblog is typically a photo blog where an individual or group of people post images taken with photo phones, plus accompanying text (or even audio).

The moblog concept has caught on in a big way since first introduced in 2002. Many individuals maintain moblogs, and new moblogging services like TextAmerica.com make it super easy to have a moblog; to publish an image, you simply use your photo phone to e-mail it to TextAmerica.com. Some moblogs on that service allow anyone to post a photo -- for example, the Traffic Jams Everywhere moblog
solicits photos from motorists stuck in traffic; Billboards of the World seeks photos of ... interesting billboards, of course.

While photos of traffic jams around the world could be just about the most boring content imaginable, this concept deployed by a local-newspaper Web site actually could be useful. Imagine setting up a moblog to take in photo-phone images of traffic jams and traffic accidents. Assuming some minimal text submitted with photos from motorists stuck in traffic (to identify location), you have a moblog that offers a quasi-real-time visual traffic tool to supplement other traffic reports. (The idea is for commuters to check the traffic blog before heading out of the office.)

Public moblogs, populated with content from a news site's audience, could be on a variety of topics. For instance:

* Celebrity sightings locally. (See Celebs Sighted at Starbucks for an example -- but note that that particular moblog is a spoof.)

* Food. Readers submit photos of their dishes as served at local restaurants.

* Sports. Parents submit photos from little-league games for a kid-baseball moblog.

Think especially of temporary, event-driven moblogs -- say, of a parade featuring shots sent in by attendees; or fan photos taken at an NFL team's public pre-season practice sessions; or images of a political convention taken and submitted by delegates while they're still on the floor.

In all these moblog examples, online news editors need to exercise some caution and some control. You want to make sure you filter out spoof photos, pornography, etc., of course. And to eliminate a long list of boring, amateurish photos, you'll probably want to screen the submissions and only publish the best. Then the public moblog becomes compelling content.

Moblogs aren't just for the public. Think about letting your professional staff -- reporters, columnists, photographers -- create them to supplement their traditional reporting. For instance, a city hall reporter might send in images taken during her reporting that go in a moblog that supplements text coverage in print and online. A society columnist's Weblog might also include photos snapped during parties he attends. A restaurant critic snaps shots while dining for a review. Even a newspaper staff photographer might use a moblog for instantly publishing breaking-news images live from the scene via photo-phone, well ahead of online or print publication of higher-resolution traditional photographs.

Good Writers Who Don't Work for You

One of the more interesting experiments I've noticed is the amateur blog published by the professional journalism site. If news sites are looking for interesting, inexpensive (or maybe even free) content, blogs written by local individuals may be one answer.

Local entertainment site Lawrence.com is deploying this model with several of its blogs, which are written by members of this college-town community (Lawrence, Kan.) -- such as the University of Kansas student who writes a teen/20s-oriented sex blog. The majority of the site's Weblogs, which are featured prominently on the home page, are written by local freelancers.

During the Iraq war, some news sites published blogs written by soldiers stationed in the Middle East, their wives, and even parents. The Web site of WCPO in Cincinnati carried a WarBlog written by a soldier from Cincinatti, for example.

The concept of community members writing for professional news organizations is hardly new. Even at the outset of online news publishing, some of the pioneers invited non-professionals to write columns. The early online operation of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (this was pre-World Wide Web) featured a cadre of online-only columnists -- often community members who simply wrote for the joy of it and wanted a venue for their words. And many small papers have a long tradition of running columns by unpaid (or minimally paid) "community correspondents."

Blogging actually makes it easier for community members, because of the nature of the format. Blogs -- typically consisting of a series of short items -- take less time to write than traditional columns. So the bartender, the veterinarian, the child psychologist, the taxi driver, or the park ranger can more easily work a blog into their lives -- and offer online readers something worthwhile.

Using Blogs to Attract a Younger Crowd

Chances are, if you say "blog" to a group of people in their teens or 20s, most of them will know what the word means. The percent in-the-know of an older group almost certainly will be lower. So some news sites -- most notably Lawrence.com -- are using blogs as a ploy to attract a younger demographic.

In Athens, Ga., home to the University of Georgia, the local newspaper, the Athens Banner-Herald, recently introduced the AthensMusic.com Weblog, which focuses on the local music scene and "is an attempt to bring younger readers into our brand," according to Director of Online Services David Bill. Bill is the primary blogger now, but his intention is to open it up to local music fans "to add their thoughts and news." He's contemplating paying some contributors a modest fee. The music blog was launched over the summer, and the true test of the new feature will be when students return to school in a couple weeks, and the Weblog is marketed to them.

The Vertical Blog

For a handful of journalists, Weblogs have led to a new career independent of mainstream media companies. Rafat Ali, London-based writer, publisher, and sole employee of PaidContent.org, is journalism's poster boy for career independence from news companies. He's says he's making a decent living writing a Weblog/newsletter on the narrow area of new-media paid-content strategies. PaidContent.org gets enough advertising -- because it serves an industry need -- to support him.

News companies could learn something from Ali's experience: That there's plenty of room on the Web for vertical journalism, and there's money to be made from it. A newspaper Web site, for instance, might identify narrow coverage areas where there's a local market need -- and hire a talented journalist who specializes in that area to run an Ali-like blog under the news company banner.

There's benefit to the parent media outlet from such a strategy: Excerpts or highlights of specialized blog reporting can be published in the parent newspaper. For instance, a Detroit newspaper-site blogger who covers auto industry news on a daily basis can occasionally offer scoops to the paper. A local-nightclub-scene blogger can periodically show up in the paper's entertainment section. All this from a self-supporting vertical blog.

The Inner-Workings Blog

In what is a significant blog trend, some news organizations are opening up the curtain a little bit -- using Weblogs by key editors to report on the inner workings of a newspaper or media operation. While not yet widespread, this is a technique that's useful for showing newspapers to be something more than faceless corporations.

Speaking of faceless, that's how the public perceives many editorial boards -- those bodies that decide on a newspaper's editorial-page positions. In a brilliant move to open up the editorial board kimono, The Dallas Morning News recently started DMN Daily, written by members of the board -- who publicly discuss and debate among themselves the issues of the day. What a great way to humanize the nameless editorials of the newspaper and its Web site.

'Action Line' Blogs

Finally, here's an interesting idea that comes from Allan Maurer, a technology journalist for LocalBusiness.com and Triangle Tech Journal in North Carolina: an "Action Line" consumer-help Weblog, where the audience helps answer consumers' questions. Action Line columns have long been a staple of newspapers, but with one "expert" responding to questions (by researching the answers). The Internet equivalent done in blog format can tap the collective intelligence of the feature's readership. (There would still need to be a columnist or editor overseeing the process, vetting out spoof replies and inappropriate comments and posting the valuable answers.)

Go With the Flow

I've presented lots of ideas in this column, but I've barely scratched the surface. Use your imagination and start blogging!

July 31, 2003 at 10:09 AM in Journalism | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home

July 30, 2003

Pentagon Scraps Online Terror Futures Market

This is a very interesting concept, which of course has been shot down as politically unconsionable. But if you can get pas the pathetically poor deveopment of the model, there is a concept here which is precisley the benefit which internet can bring. Instead of trading in finance, how about trading in opinions. Educated opinions of those who are permitted membership, and of course the output should not be public, at least not all of it. Gathering and synthesising the worlds best opinions, would subliminally uncover real facts too, and could uncover new trends which are otherwise not picked up through traditional intelligence gathering.

July 30, 2003 at 08:24 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 28, 2003

The electronic genie

The e-revolution has opened up archival treasures to easy access by millions The Pandora's box: will this digital gold too-easily

There is a story that neatly summarizes the challenges archivists face as they grapple with the digital revolution. Digital isn't simple as it sounds, and open standards which didn't exits in 1986 are a critical advantage of the internet world.

The Electronic Genie
The e-revolution has opened up archival treasures to easy access by millions The Pandora's box: will this digital gold too-easily

There is a story that neatly summarizes the challenges archivists face as they grapple with the digital revolution.

In 1986, the British Broadcasting Corporation created the Domesday Book Mark II, an electronic version of the original record of English lands that was written at the instigation of William the Conqueror in 1086. The BBC's version contained 25,000 maps, 50,000 pictures, 60 minutes of video and millions of words. It cost 2.5 million pounds to create.

Only 17 years after its creation, the Domesday Book Mark II can't be read. The BBC computers used for the project no longer work and the disks on which it was stored are not readable by other computer systems. But the 917-year-old original is still available to researchers in London's Public Records Office.

Welcome to the archivist's digital dilemma. For as much as some local archivists and librarians admit they must embrace the e-revolution, they are not comfortable with it in its present state.

At its best, they say, it can provide a lightning-quick and cost-effective set of tools for accessing and duplicating yesterday's treasures for the greater benefit of all the masses today and tomorrow.

But what some Toronto archivists also see is a technology that, for all its good points, can also be complex, expensive, and frighteningly impermanent. It's this last complication — working against the very raison d'etre of archiving — that leaves some archivists undecided as to whether digital is a blessing or a curse.

"Reaching a judgement is not straightforward," says Carole Moore, chief librarian of the University of Toronto's Robarts Library.

"By digitizing archival holdings and making them available on a Web site, you're extending access. It also makes it possible to offer materials that are too fragile for handling in their original format. But digitizing also increases the challenges."

Trying to understand those challenges is a dizzying task. It cuts across all the principles and practices of archiving.

Moore says you must break the issue into two categories: preservation and accessibility. On the last point, she and other local archivists agree that, just as it has changed the way society creates and disseminates information, digital technology has ushered in a new era of archival utility.

Never has so much current and historical data been so freely available to even the most casual of researchers, businesses, and browsers, thanks to the Internet portals of archival institutions around the world.

In the area of preservation the problems arise, thanks to the relentlessly rapid evolution of the technology and the daily creation of millions of digital-only documents for which there are no analog back-ups. The problem is that digital programs are no sooner born than they are replaced.

July 28, 2003 at 07:40 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

AOL is dead

It just doesn't know it yet

I was starting to not believe my own prediction which dates back to 1997 that AOL could not possible survive. Their model, which replicates and competes with the world wide web just seemed too expensive and well, redundant. In return they provide a custom interface which they claim makes it simple to navigate (sounds like user design, which many companys have realised) and sell their access to members at a premium. My guess is that 90% of AOL users are starting to look more and more at the www and less and less at AOL content .... and the premium for AOL is why?

Well two news stories over the weekend indicate AOL user base is falling. It also seems they have been inflating their number of users by counting some of those free CD's they hand out. Its the old gig of adding new registered users to the total, and not deleting the ones who stop using. All the smart companies have moved to "active" usage" - x users in the last month for example. No other stat matters.

Did AOL hype its member numbers?Executive admits `cleaning up' files

Sources allege deep discounts

JULIA ANGWIN
WALL STREET JOURNAL
NEW YORK—AOL Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit may have hyped subscriber numbers.

Don Logan, the executive who oversees AOL and Time Inc., hinted at that this week when he said one reason for the company's unexpectedly high subscriber losses was the result of "cleaning up the files."

People familiar with the situation said part of the cleanup involves the termination of subscribers generated by a little-known initiative. Starting in 2000, AOL began selling limited-usage online accounts in bulk for as little as $1 (U.S.) to $3 a month to marketing partners, including large retailers. A regular limited-usage subscription then cost about $10, while a regular subscription was about $20. The partners then could offer the service to employees for a discount and pocket the difference. It isn't clear how many of those subscriptions were offered to employees or even activated. No rules govern reporting such subscribers.

People familiar with the situation said AOL generated at least 830,000 subscribers through these sales, mostly during 2001 and 2002. That would have accounted for 16.7 per cent of total subscriber growth, which was slightly fewer than 5 million, during that period. Currently, AOL has 25.4 million U.S. subscribers, down from a peak of 26.7 million on Sept. 30, 2002.

July 28, 2003 at 07:39 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 27, 2003

Pirates of the Internet

The bill says if you share a single tune with your pals online, as millions do every day, you are a felon. Penalty: up to five years in jail

Whats interesting is the sheer magnitude of the issue and despite the noise from American lawyers, can it be stopped, or do they have to accept a shift in the business model.

Pirates of the Internet
The bill says if you share a single tune with your pals online—as millions do every day—you are a felon. Penalty: up to five years in jail

By Steven Levy
NEWSWEEK

Last month I attended a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee with an intriguing title: "The dark side of a bright idea: Could personal and national-security risks compromise the potential of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks?"

I CERTAINLY WAS AWARE that some members of Congress wanted to snuff out the grass-roots phenomena of people's swapping copyrighted songs on the Net. But I assumed that the crime of file-sharing, joyfully committed by an estimated 60 million pirates, was mainly a problem of lost revenues for the music industry. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, giving the opening testimony, argued otherwise, calling file-sharing networks a grave security risk to this nation. In reality, the hearing was nothing but one of several signs of a new hardball offensive against file-sharing for the same old reasons: protecting the business model of the record labels.
What was the alleged national-security issue? Strictly yellowcake. Researchers testified that because of a confusing interface in file-sharing services like Kazaa, a clumsy user could inadvertently expose private files to everyone on the network. In theory, this could even happen to a government worker using Kazaa for personal use on an official computer--thus exposing our deepest secrets. No one was able to cite an instance where a government secret was actually exposed by this method.

By the end of the session, the only committee member in attendance, chairman Orrin Hatch--himself a songwriter who sells CDs on his personal Web site--zeroed in on what really bugged him: people sharing copyrighted songs on the Internet without paying for them. Then he ran an idea by one of the panelists: what if you had a system that could detect whether people were getting songs without paying for them and could warn those infringers that what they were doing was wrong? And then, if they didn't stop, the system would remotely "destroy" their computers.

"No one's interested in destroying people's computers," said the panelist.

"Well, I'm interested in doing that," said the senator. "Warn them, do it again, and then destroy their machine! There's no excuse for anyone violating our copyright laws."

Fortunately Senator Hatch hasn't yet codified his Dr. Strangelovean no-due-process piracy antidote into upcoming legislation. But in the House, Reps. Howard Berman and John Conyers have introduced a bill that encourages a different approach: jail 'em! Among other provisions, the bill lowers the bar for criminal prosecution to the sharing of a single music file and allocates $15 million to go after copyright offenders. Representative Berman says that he anticipates that prosecutors will go only after someone who, knowing the consequences, uploads massive amounts of music. But the bill says in black and white that if you share so much as a single tune with your pals on the Internet--as millions do every day--you are a felon. Penalty: up to five years in jail. (Better fill up your iPod before you go.)

Meanwhile the Record Industry Association of America, the trade and lobbying arm of the big music labels, last week sent out hundreds of subpoenas to Internet service providers and universities to find the identities of those sharing music so it can drag them into court and sue them for thousands of dollars. Is suing your customers the best way to run an industry?

My guess is that the vast majority of those 60 million file sharers would never steal a physical object from the store. In a mixture of self-interest and rebellion they've taken the measure of the record industry's karma (overpriced CDs, a history of ripping off artists), noted that stealing files isn't like stealing stuff (maybe they'll buy a disc later) and concluded that file-sharing isn't that bad.

Carey Sherman, president of the RIAA, and his buddies in Congress think the time for patience is over. "We've reached a point where we have a legitimate marketplace for downloading music, and we want to give it a chance," says Sherman, referring to the spiffy services like Apple's iTunes Music Store, the new Buy.Com store and subscription services like Rhapsody. But the game is just starting, and the best way to make sure that these services come up with compelling innovations is to match them off against the Kazaas of the world, which are far from perfect (the quality is erratic, they put spyware on your computers, they're loaded with porn). You can compete against free--ever hear of bottled water?

Ultimately the Internet is going to be great for music lovers, artists and even the record labels, if they are willing to hang loose while new business models emerge. But right now the RIAA and its congressional water carriers are hitting the wrong notes. It makes no sense to bring thousands of people into the dockets--and maybe the prison system--for turning on a friend to the fuzz tones of the White Stripes or the inspirational melodies of Orrin Hatch without a license. There are better things for prosecutors and the courts to focus on.

Like real national security.

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July 27, 2003 at 07:49 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 25, 2003

Trophies of dead grim fact of history

Internet replaces wooden pikes

War ... is also about symbols'

OAKLAND ROSS
FEATURE WRITER

"In olden days, victorious soldiers used to saw off the heads of their fallen enemies, mount them on wooden pikes and parade them through the streets, while brandishing their weapons and cheering their gods.

Not much has changed.

The only difference, nowadays, is that they don't use wooden pikes.

They use the Internet.

"That's the first thing I thought of," said Bert Hall, a professor of military history at the University of Toronto."

There have been other examples of how internet is altering the speed with which people around the world can learn about news but this one is a good example. Within minutes of the photo's being made available by DoD they were on the 'net and being viewed around the world.

July 25, 2003 at 06:50 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 22, 2003

Sears is banking on the future

JENNIFER WELLS
Toronto Star

You can put your ear to the jungle telegraph and hear not a peep from the country's big banks on the big news out of Sears Canada Inc.

The retailer, as we learned last week, is applying to Ottawa, via the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), to establish a federally regulated bank, a decision that will ultimately wend its way to the minister of finance for final approval.

The Sears Canada board met yesterday to pass a resolution to seek the federal charter. The company has already had one meeting with OSFI and intends to submit a draft proposal in the next month or so.

The first iteration of the Sears Bank will be aimed at consolidating, and goosing, its MasterCard and Sears card operations, a move not unlike that taken by Canadian Tire, which was granted OSFI approval late last month to launch Canadian Tire Bank.

In the case of Canadian Tire, the retailer was eager to streamline its card operations across the chain of associate stores, and it made no promises or predictions of extending its range of financial services into deposit taking or mortgages.

"Don't look for us at the corner of Main and Anywhere anytime soon," the company's communications director told the Star's Rob Ferguson. Upon examination, Canadian Tire Bank seemed little more than a bit of corporate housekeeping.

Sears, on the other hand, has been careful not to put a fence around what Sears Bank could be one day.

A corporate spokesperson yesterday reiterated the chain is "not ruling anything out in the future," a chilling phrase where big bankers are concerned, but positively heart-warming for consumers. Mark Cohen, the company CEO, said last week that establishing a bank "will enable Sears to bring enhanced competition to the Canadian financial services marketplace," which the big banks have repeatedly said they welcome.

The big banks have to know that in the U.S. there's a big push, accompanied by a big fight, over whether to let retailers like Wal-Mart become banks, too. The mighty Wal-Mart, which outpaces any financial institution you can name in the U.S., has been trying to become Wal-Mart Bank for years, most recently when it tried to buy Franklin Bank of California. State legislators said, upon consideration, "No."

But a current bill before Congress considers allowing non-financial institutions to acquire so-called Industrial Loan Companies, or ILCs, and to lift current restrictions that contain existing ILCs to their home states. If passed, the bill will surely launch Wal-Mart as a category killer in savings and chequing accounts.

The battle lines are drawn. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan doesn't care for the idea, as the parent company, the nonfinancial institution, would be beyond the reach and scrutiny of the Federal Reserve, whose job it is to ensure the financial strength of the organization — and the security of depositors' funds. A past president of a banking group in Washington said green-lighting Wal-Mart Bank "would have the potential to bring, if not the Black Death, at least the plague to thousands of community banks."

Wal-Mart sees it differently. "I'd like to do it more along the Wal-Mart way than other peoples'," said the CEO.

It's the strength of the brand the community banks fear, of course. Or trans-national Big-Box Banks, as observers have taken to calling the Wal-Mart threat.

This is in contrast to those banking kiosks introduced on a state-by-state basis — the CIBC's unsuccessful Amicus kiosks in Winn-Dixie stores in Florida and Safeway stores in California, for example — that were launched on the premise that grocery-laden shoppers might be willing to chat with a financial adviser on the way out the door. As it turns out, they weren't.

Of course, we here in Canada already have Big-Box Banks. They haven't yet had to deal with the competitive threat of a retailer treading on their turf, or at least not in a pure sense. President's Choice Financial, which issues its MasterCard through President's Choice Bank, is partnered with the CIBC's Amicus Bank for such services as savings and mortgages.

U.S. observers have suggested that retailers might actually be in a position to do a better job of marketing to consumers. Surely on this Canadians and Americans can agree. Additionally, a company like Sears carries wares that require deep consumer consideration — to buy or not to buy that couch. Some people have bought a house in less time.

The first task for Sears Canada will be to urge the migration of its legion of inactive cardholders.

Of the 9 million Sears cards issued, 4.2 million are "active." The rest lie dormant in sock drawers or deeply forgotten wallet portals. But that 9 million figure gives the retailer a tantalizing 83 per cent penetration rate amongst Canadian households.

And thanks to parent Sears, Roebuck and Co., which owns 54 per cent of Sears Canada, the company has a deep well of experience from which to draw. The long ago experiment by the U.S. company to sell financial products via brokerage Dean Witter is dead but not forgotten. This time round, Sears, Roebuck has sold its credit card portfolio — private label and MasterCard — to Citigroup Inc., leading to speculation that Sears Financial Centres are on their way. You can bet that with more than 30 million inactive Sears card holders in the U.S., Citi will be aggressively moving to increase what is already a $29 billion (U.S.) portfolio.

Sears Canada will soon be providing OSFI with its business plan — pro forma financial statements; an analysis of its target market; a three-year operational strategy. OSFI's examination could take three months. After that, who knows.

If consumers are lucky, they will one day get a taste of what true competition in banking is really all about.

July 22, 2003 at 07:42 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Phone & net services split

CRTC takes aim at competition - Sympatico not tied to home line

TYLER HAMILTON
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Forced to keep Bell Canada as your local phone provider just so you can keep your Sympatico high-speed account?

Consider yourself unshackled.

The country's telephone watchdog has ordered Bell, Telus Corp. and other established phone carriers to sell their respective high-speed Internet services to all customers, irrespective of where they get their local residential phone service.

That means if you move your local phone bill to Sprint Canada Inc., you'll be able keep your high-speed Sympatico account with Bell, which has treated the two services as inseparable.

Charles Dalfen, chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, said the ruling was about removing obstacles to fair competition and giving consumers more choice. The move "should enhance competition," he said.

It's the latest in a series of regulatory decisions this year that have slapped new rules on established carriers, part of an effort to boost competition in the local residential phone market, where Bell has a 98 per cent grip in Ontario.

"I'm thrilled with this decision," said Bill Linton, chief executive of Sprint Canada Inc. and its Toronto-based parent, Call-Net Enterprises Inc.

Sprint Canada began offering residential telephone service in May, 2001, and has more than 171,000 local subscribers across the country. Call-Net has long argued that Bell, by refusing to sell its digital subscriber line (DSL) service to Sprint local subscribers, has significantly impaired the development of local competition in Canada.

Call-Net filed an application to the CRTC in January to argue its case, which was supported by Halifax-based cable firm EastLink Inc. and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa.

Citing 2002 data, Call-Net said 17 per cent of customers who cancelled local service with Sprint Canada said they did so because they couldn't get DSL from Bell.

Call-Net also found that 11 per cent of potential customers decided against joining Sprint for the same reason.

The problem becomes more pressing as high-speed services gain popularity over dial-up Internet services, Call-Net said.

The regulator found that Bell and the other incumbent carriers have been "unjustly discriminating against their competitors and giving themselves undue preferences."

This position was supported by the Competition Bureau, which filed an opinion on the matter.

"They're moving in the right direction, and I applaud it," said Linton, adding that he expects the commission will continue to level the playing field with other rulings later this year.

Sheridan Scott, chief regulatory officer for Bell, said Canada's largest phone company didn't feel it had an obligation to separate local from DSL service but, given the CRTC order, will do its best to comply.

"The commission decided that this is a matter they would deal with, and we respect that," said Scott, adding the ruling is consistent with past CRTC decisions aimed at promoting competition. The decision takes effect immediately, but Scott said Bell will have to resolve some technical issues first.

Willie Grieve, the head of government and regulatory affairs at Burnaby, B.C.-based Telus, said it could be some time before the carriers are in a position to technically comply.

"We can't do it right today," said Grieve, adding that Telus will take the next week to assess what system modifications will be needed. "There's a day coming where we will, but how long it is between today and that day is an open question."

Analysts considered the ruling positive for Call-Net, but many described it as a small victory that won't have a huge impact on the company's revenues.

"It will help them, but it's not the goose that laid the golden egg," said Mark Quigley, research director for the Yankee Group in Canada.

Call-Net needs to offer a high-speed DSL service of its own — packaged along with local, long-distance and wireless services — before it becomes a compelling story for consumers, he said.

July 22, 2003 at 07:40 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 20, 2003

Blogging

This is a concept which has far-reaching ramifications for internet. Self publishing in such a simple manner makes a mockery of Vignette and the process we are going through to install it right now.

July 20, 2003 at 12:18 AM in Blogging & feeds | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 19, 2003

The death of convergence?

Cinram have purchased the DVD/ CD manufacturing division of AOL Time Warner. In the small print they also picked up exclusive rights to produce media from other AOL Time Warner movie divisions.

When AOL bought Time Warner it was hailed as the architypical internet era convergence play ... well we can safely now say that experiment as it turned out to be, is dead. Its not that Steve Case didn't get it .... he just didn't get it right. Convergence is happening at the device end, but who says that means the 'manufacturing" end has to be converged? Nothing in business is that logical. Case didn't think about the cultural aspects which are dramatically different in the media environments. Also just because he says converge, doesn't mean that anyone including him, knows where to start.

July 19, 2003 at 07:10 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Contradictory statistics

Sears is going into the Banking bsuiness, and "The department sector as a whole is in decline". This in the Star today, but then on the same Page 9, "American recession ended back in 2001" announced by the US NAtional Bureau of Economic Research.

Certainly it is more and more evident that economic measurement is more and more dependent on what is being measured. So we have Department Stores looking at Banking, and 2 years later we know the recession is over.

There are seismic shifts taking place and it might not be until 2050 that we can look back and truly appreciate what is happening right now.

July 19, 2003 at 06:57 PM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 18, 2003

Oh, give Rogers a home, where wireless users roam

Access needed to two networks Carriers urged to work together

TYLER HAMILTON
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

The head of Rogers Wireless Inc. says mobile phone carriers in Canada need to suppress their competitive urges and figure out a way to let wireless users roam between cellular networks and Wi-Fi "hotspots."

Nadir Mohamed, chief executive officer of Rogers Wireless, told the Star yesterday that public Wi-Fi networks, known as "hotspots," are here to stay and will eventually result in mobile phones that can hop between cellular frequencies (ideal for voice and text messaging) and high-speed Wi-Fi frequencies (better for Web surfing, video streaming and software downloads).

Making it effortless for customers of all carriers to jump between these two network standards will require industry co-operation, Mohamed said.

"If you look at the customers of any one of the (mobile) carriers, what we all want to do is make it easy for them," he said. "As you get into an airport, a convention centre or restaurant, how do we create an environment that makes it easier for the customer (to switch to Wi-Fi)?"

Rogers has been quietly testing Wi-Fi technology but hasn't publicly announced any plans to enter this nascent market.

Hotspots are emerging everywhere — from McDonald's to Starbucks to Via trains — but small upstarts and large incumbents alike haven't been able to make money from them. A study estimates revenue from hotspot services will reach only $64 million in 2007, up from $1.3 million this year.

For now, Rogers Wireless is finding plenty of growth in its core mobile market. The company, which released its second-quarter results yesterday, had revenue of $548 million in the quarter, up nearly 14 per cent from $482 million a year earlier.

Operating profit increased 38 per cent to $179.8 million from the previous year's quarter. Net income was $57 million, boosted by a $53.5 million foreign-exchange accounting gain related to the revaluation of its U.S. debt against a stronger Canadian dollar, from $733,000.

The company added 64,100 subscribers in the quarter and more of those customers signed up to the company's lucrative post-paid plans. Average revenue per customer rose nearly 4 per cent to $46.95.

Mohamed drew attention to sales of mobile data services. Text-messaging (SMS) and mobile Web surfing represented a third of the $14 million in data revenues generated in the quarter, with the rest coming from the use of RIM BlackBerry, Handspring Treo and Palm Tungsten wireless devices.

Last year, data revenue for the entire year was less than $30 million.

"We'll more than double that this year," said Mohamed, adding that shows such as Canadian Idol — which promote wireless text messaging as a way to vote for contestants — is giving SMS a boost.

July 18, 2003 at 08:29 AM in Wireless | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 17, 2003

The human side

Always on internet has one huge disadvantage as I saw tonight, and its the same whenever this happens. It wasn't "on". Typically I will turn to my PC periodically, during ads on tv or whatever, and check news, check email, or post a blog. So when I cannot get access its like having the phone cut off, or no hot water. Your life gets atached to it, and when its not there, its very frustrating, and deeply annoying.

July 17, 2003 at 11:28 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Shifts in business types

Today, in the business section, Motorola slips, Fod profits down 27%, Greenspan fears "devastating deflation", 23,000 manufacturing jobs lost in June - amongst all this negative press, which is quite typical this year, CSI Wireless shares soar 20% on doubling of profits. This company is small, very small. But there might be a point here - they make GPS devices, which can be used to track things, anything in the marine, agriculture, and automotive markets. Tracking things will always need wireless connectivity, and will usually finish the track using an internet connection. Wirelss and internet go together very closely now.

July 17, 2003 at 08:28 AM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 16, 2003

Gartner Group: Online banking goes mainstream in US

Mar 10 2003: A recent report from Gartner indicates that 17 percent of Americans used online banking services by the end of 2002.

According to a new forecast from the company, consumer use of online banking will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14 percent up to year-end 2007. By that time, some 30 percent of Americans (67 million individuals) will be using online banking services.

Gartner predicts that penetration will be higher among key demographic segments. Among consumers with annual household incomes between USD50,000 and USD75,000, more than one in five use online banking.

In households with annual incomes above USD75,000, online banking usage is 29 percent.

By year-end 2007, more than 50 percent of Internet users in these key demographic segments will bank online, according to Gartner.

The report also indicates that trust in online banking services is associated with prolonged use of the Net. Gartner’s research reveals that fewer than one in 10 consumers who started using the Internet since 2001 use online banking.

By comparison, more than one-third of those with five or more years of Internet use conduct banking transactions via the Web.

July 16, 2003 at 08:30 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Datamonitor: Europe's online banking population to rise

Mar 28 2003: Datamonitor forecasts that there will be 84 million Internet banking customers in Europe by 2007.

According to the research company’s latest study, the number of online banking customers will reach 60 million in 2003, up from 23 million in 2000.

The UK and Germany are Europe’s biggest online banking markets although the Scandinavian markets have the most Internet bankers per head of the population.

In Sweden and Finland in particular, there are more than 0.4 online banking customers per head of the population.

Datamonitor says that while Internet banks must continue to focus on getting the basics of Internet banking right, they must also begin to develop new services and functionality which will appeal to the growing population of relatively experienced online bankers.

July 16, 2003 at 08:29 AM in Financial Services | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Accenture: Customer satisfaction driving egovernment

Apr 09 2003: Canada leads the world in terms of overall egovernment maturity, according to a new study from Accenture.

For the third year in a row, Canada was judged to have the best egovernment initiatives.

Accenture’s analysis considered a variety of factors, including how well each government’s services incorporate customer relationship management (CRM) practices, as well as the level of maturity with which each government delivers electronic services.

According to the study, Canada’s eGovernment initiative is differentiated by its customer-service vision; methods for measuring success of services; broad, integrated approach to offering government services through multiple service-delivery channels; and a cross-agency approach to online services.

Further, the government has placed its citizens and businesses at the core of its eGovernment initiative, identifying services for individual customer segments, and government executives view eGovernment as an evolutionary process that is part of a broader service transformation effort.

Rounding out the top 10 countries in terms of overall egovernment maturity are Singapore, the United States, Denmark, Australia, Finland, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Ireland.

Accenture also found that customer satisfaction is the key factor driving the development of online government services around the world.

Approximately 93 percent of government executives surveyed by the company said that improving satisfaction was a key factor in influencing adoption of online government services.

Eighty-three percent said that customer demands for new and better services was also a factor driving the development of services, while 77 percent cited the need to meet performance targets.

Only 51 percent of executives surveyed by Accenture said that the pressure to reduce costs was a factor influencing adoption of online government services.

July 16, 2003 at 08:28 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Canada trumps US in broadband use

Apr 08 2003: New research from comScore Media Metrix indicates that Canada has a higher percentage of broadband Internet users than the US.

According to the company’s latest study, more than half of Canadian Internet users have high-speed broadband connections.

As of January 2003, broadband users represented fully 53.6 percent of the Canadian online population, compared to just 33.8 percent of the US online population.

The study also reveals that Canadian broadband users consume more online content than their American counterparts. Collectively, Canadian broadband Internet users account for 63 percent of all time spent online in Canada, whereas their US counterparts account for 54 percent of Internet usage time in America.

As of January 2003, Canadian Broadband Internet users spent 55 percent more time online than dial-up users and viewed almost twice as many Web pages over the course of the month.

The study indicates that Canadian Broadband users are also more likely to engage in activities involving streaming content and online shopping, while dial-up users are expectedly more likely to spend their time online with activities that are less impacted by speed.

July 16, 2003 at 08:26 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Internet Telephone - VOIP

Today Vonage announced in the US plans to introduce a flat rate local / long distance plan for calls anywhere in North America. Cost is $39.99 and this service is avaialbel over any broadband internet connection. IDC Canada called this a "disruptive technology" and indicated its not proven yet that it can meet the regulatory needs relative to 911 service for instance.

Canada has around 50% broadband uptake now amongs internet users. Services like this which lever internet must just be a matter of time. Some analysts still question this business model, but this is the same as questioning the music business model for CD's. That horse has left the barn, and the telecommunications horse is just waking up.

July 16, 2003 at 08:20 AM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 15, 2003

Easier than manuals, and more

I have a pretty good quality teapot, and decided it needed cleaning. It is made in one piece, out of a specially cast metal alloy, and manufactured in one place in England. I could not recall the cleaning details, so picked up my laptop and had the answer in 30 seconds from the company website. Whats intersting about this, it was at 7am, before breakfast, and I wasn't quite awake.

The concept of locating the manual and then reading it for the information is impossible to comprehend at that time. Whats also interesting, is that while looking for the cleaning instructions on the web site, I saw the ccatalogue information, price list, and order form. Without realising I naturally and subliminally associated the convenince of getting the information with the propsect of future purchase. If I need another one, or the sugar bowl, I will buy from that web site.

July 15, 2003 at 07:53 AM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

July 14, 2003

Voice XML

Listened to IBM today talking about VXML, and CCXML. Concept is simple; a web page created in VXML, which looks like HTML, just different tags, is able to present "voice" mesages on the telephone. So an IVR sustem can be written in VXML using similar skill sets to internet sytems people.

July 14, 2003 at 07:35 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Clan

ScotClans - Clan Henderson - Clan History

Gaelic Name: Mac Eanruig Hear name in Gaelic
Motto: Sola virtus nobilitat (Virtue alone ennobles)
Badge: Cotton grass
Lands: Caithness and Glencoe
Origin of Name: Henry's son

History
Henderson, Henry and Hendry are names so closely tied and so widespread it is not possible to determine one single line as being the first. Through its Gaelic translation into English, the name MacKendrick is revealed as another variation of Henderson. The Hendersons of Caithness and surrounding areas claim their descent from Henry, son of George Gunn, the chief of Clan Gunn and ‘Crowner’ of Scotland in the 1400s, who was deceived and slain by the Keiths.

Meanwhile, there were Hendersons in Dumfries-shire, the opposite end of Scotland.

In 1494, James Henderson became Lord Advocate and founded the line which flourished in Fordell, Fife. Born to this family in 1583 was Alexander Henderson, who drafted the National Covenant of 1638 with Johnston of Wariston. With this and his work towards the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and the Confession of Faith, he became the Presbyterian Church of Scotland’s most influential representative of those political years.

Claiming descent from ‘Big Henry’, son of King Neachtain, are the principle family of Hendersons, Clan Eanruig of Glencoe. King Neachtain reigned in the 700s and is said to have built Abernethy, the Pictish stronghold.

When the Hendersons came to Glencoe, the heiress of their last chief had given a son to Angus Og of Islay. Their grandson was Iain Abrach and his patronymic, MacLain, became the designation of the MacDonald of Glencoe chiefs.

In the years with the MacDonalds, it became tradition that the Hendersons, known for their size and strength, formed the personal bodyguard of the chief. Standing six feet and seven inches tall, the powerful Big Henderson of the Chanters was MacLain's piper and protector, and fell with the chief in the cold February night of 1692 in the Massacre of Glencoe, the treacherous outrage ordered by King William of Orange.

At the time of writing, the present chief is a Doctor of medicine, living in Australia.

July 14, 2003 at 11:45 AM in World Affairs | Permalink | TrackBack (133) | Top of page | Blog Home

July 13, 2003

Web Lifestyle

Internet is best experienced when always on, such as with ADSL, or Cable. Then it becomes pervasive and as available as TV television or tap water. Booting up a computer, then dialing in througha modem is how most people learned about internet, but it is a very slow experience, and puts hurdles in the way. The convenience of the computer being always on, email always up to date like a phone call, & instant access to information transform the internet experience. Whe a wireless network is layered on, and you can experience freedom from wires, then internet is always on and always where you are. On the deck, in the garden, or in any room.

This level of convenience means that internet is always the most convenient way to do anything, or look anything up. Whether its news, the question of the day on CNN, following the Indy car race, or checking the TV guide. Internet, or more properly, the web becomes a way of life; the web lifestyle.

July 13, 2003 at 11:06 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Thoughts on MP3's

Once I got over the novelty of free music, other aspects become evident. How to catalogue the music for example. MP3 has no naming standard, either for the file name or for the cataloging information. So it becomes a very time consuming and frustrating job to get them properly catalogued. The next problem is that they are all on the PC, yet the stereo and CD player are not connected. So how many MP3's are listed to on either small MD players, or through tinny PC speakers.

Clearly there are hardware issues to sort out here and solutions such as Alpha Tron will bridge the connection between the PC and the stereo system. But the filing and cataloguing problem still doesn't go away. Traditionally music was sold in CD's, tapes and albums, which could be nicely stacked. People are not going to rely in Windows to file their music and go through the exercise of renaming files to get them into a form where they can be easily located and played. Windows Media player and others allow the "genre" to be edited; this is interesting. With my CD's I cannot pick out the "easy listening" ones or the "alternative" ones without manually sorting through them all. Digital music opens up this new avenue.

Its time the music industry stopped fighting the inevitable, and started to think what value consumers need, particularly as they get older, and think about how to sell that. For example: what is the value for me to replace all my CD collection in digital form, full catalogued and backed up in case my PC crashes? That is starting to sound like the basis of a value proposition which baby boomers would pick up in a nano-second.

July 13, 2003 at 07:40 PM in @ My Views @, Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Media

MP3, downloadable video are just two examples. How are internet, and freely avaialble bandwidth changing everything. What original assumptions from 95 - 98 were wrong?

July 13, 2003 at 07:10 PM in Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Business Models

In its heyday, internet was credited about dramatically changing everything, and in particular business models and how business operate. One aspect of that has been shown to be false - business still has to make money, and the concept of merely getting millions of users to your site, doesn't guarantee profits. Examples are etoys.com & next card. Both had great sites, but they had something else in common; they didn't realise that when customers click to recieve something, they expect to receive it, and in fact through internet, expect to receive it even faster. The concept of fulfilment led leaders to realise that a commercial internet site means much more than a set of nicely put together web pages. The web site must fit with the business model, and with the business operation.

The implications are enormous for this conclusion. The assumption that most people have following the dot com crash is that internet failed. In fact the opposite is true because those companies who failed to realise that internet changed everything ensured their failure. This is particularly true with traditional companies. if they do not embrace internet and re-tool their operation around internet, they will not survive. This is my fundamental premise … internet changes everything, and I am going to explore this.

July 13, 2003 at 07:09 PM in @ My Views @, Business Models | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home