Googlization...

I am becoming aware of a shift in my application usage behaviour. I am being gradually Googlized.
It started with Search, which started me blogging on Blogger, and using Writely; search expanded into Google Desktop, which displayed the mail that I received, through Gmail, which integrated chat, which became Jabber-ized, which allowed me to use Mxit to communicate from my phone, which started me on Calendar, which got me thinking about shared Spreadsheets...
I've also started to watch Google Video and downloaded Picasa to view my pictures.
I still use Skype as my main IM and Voice tool, and PayPal for online payments (and eGold too), but how long will it be before Google checkout becomes more convenient after I switch to GoogleTalk for IM?
It will be a while before Skype is knocked off the top of VoIP (longer than I thought initially) and PayPal integration might extend it's shelf life.

In a world where industry is being globalized, the virtual world is being Googlized.
I'm sure this could equally be applied to Yahoo, and for certain demographics, Amazon and eBay, but for me it's becoming more Googley every day.

I still use Windows and MS Office applications, but I'm seriously considering moving to Ubuntu or perhaps even an Intel Mac. Last time I seriously considered it, I saw a beta for Windows XP and stayed with MS. I'm not so sure about Vista.

I'm pretty sure that by 2010, I will be MS-free. Whoever takes over from Bill has his/her work cut out - not to keep me, but the large number of businesses and individuals who are already thinking along the same lines....

The importance of piracy

Having recently purchased an old, secondhand, PC, I was shocked to discover that the copy of Windows that came with it, was in fact not genuine!

This is Asia and frankly we are generally more surprised when something is genuine than when it is fake. I read on James Seng's blog that in China it's all about relationship, logic and law. I think that applies in most asian countries, and in Thailand, if you have the right relationships, the law doesn't really come into play at all.

But MS need to be careful here. They have good relationships here in Asia. People like their software, generally, and hundreds of millions of people use it. I seriously doubt that MS got hundreds of millions of license fees, but the licences they do get are because of the ability of people to get their hands on cheap, pirated software.
If it becomes impossible, or even unpleasant, to use Windows in Asia at an affordable price (hint: current licensing cost equates to about 1 months wages for most people in Asia), unless the law is observed, then MS will lose a lot of relationships. That will damage them far more than a few pirated copies of their software.

What's the best way to improve Linux uptake in Asia? Help MS by reporting all vendors selling counterfeit Windows products...
It would be interesting to see what Microsoft did if there were a whole lot of prosecutions - "Microsoft isn't free, pay your dues...or switch to something cheaper!".

Or slightly less ethical, what if someone wrote a virus that shut down all unlicensed versions of Windows?

I think piracy is what the supermarkets term a loss-leader (though what is the cost of Windows?).
MS has not been stupid enough to shut down all counterfeit Windows installations (which would not be hard to do), so I'm presuming they are aware of the irony.

Dear Lloyds,

Thailand sunset
Originally uploaded by Miek37.

Wish you were here.
Well actually I really wish that I could stay here and still do all of my banking in the UK. It seems you have a bit of trouble with my identity.
I have your Phone banking service, where I have to authenticate myself, I have the internet banking service, where I have to authenticate myself. Yet there are some things that I apparently have to walk in to a branch in the UK for.
Like right now, when I want to cancel my standing order from the me in the UK to the same me in Thailand (I have a bank account in Thailand in my name).
Can I leave an instruction on the internet application? No.
Can I leave an instruction on the secure phone banking system? No.

What is it about my signature that somehow makes it more secure than either phone or internet verification?

I'm tired of having to verify my identity in multiple ways, every time I want to do a simple transaction. We need a secure internet identity that is trusted by the organisations we do business with, and those organisations should allow us to conduct all our business on the strength of those authentications.

Half-measures. Half-arsed.

Got a short little span of attention....

Techdirt has been banging on about this for a long time, and I agree 100%.

Ads are content.

More than that, ads are probably a very big part of what people are going to watch in the future. People have very short spans of attention, and adverts are produced specifically to cater for it.
If TV is going to be personal, and I think it is, then it will be delivered in much the same way that music is right now.

• Shorts, or adverts will become the most viewed content
• 'playlists' or schedules will be shared between people
• people will increasingly move away from 'corporate packaged' playlists - equivalent of an album in music
• viral marketing will far outweigh placement (i.e. make your ads funny!)
• Some of the most seriously valuable content will be old adverts, outtakes from films/series, old news and disaster reports

Adverts will no longer need crap sitcoms to 'carry' them, they can exist in their own right. Placing your adverts in the places where the 'viral fire' will burn most fiercely will be pretty good skill to have.

Media buying has never been such fun!

'My Mate Jeff Citron' - Daniel Berninger

Om writes a piece on an article by Daniel Berninger defending Vonage and Jeffrey Citron.
'Skype and the voice offers of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft do not represent competition as they do not offer a substitutable service.' - says Daniel. So 911 access is the key to market success?
I don't know any law that requires I have a phone, therefore there is no law that requires I have 911 access. So, if I can have naked broadband, then I can use any VoIP service. The government (generic as opposed to US) could prevent me from having a geographic number but how long will that be relevant?
The substitution argument is transitory.

Also, if Vonage stopped spending the marketing dollars, how many subs do you think they would get?
Skype and G/Y/M/A are not targetting the same segment that Vonage does, but Skype is starting to move closer. If Skype decided to go after Vonage customers, how much would they have to spend to take them away? Probably a lot less than Vonage paid to get them from the telcos.

Let's just watch how quickly the Vonage directors divest their options, that will be a good indication of how long they expect Vonage to hold or exceed its current valuation!

The Brits 2006 awards...

or should that be the Darwin awards.

Following up on my recent post on the BBC live, streamed, broadband delivery of World Cup games, I found this on the BBC sports editors blog. It seems like he works at the BBC?

01 Jun 2006, Aashish Chandarana, Innoavtions & Broadband wrote:

Hi - in respnse to the questions on quality.

We are still trying to see what works best. While we appreciate some people have really fast connections, not everyone has yet and it is a question of making sure we get the balance right.

Naturally, we are also trying to make sure as many people as possible can watch it.

The difficult thing with streaming online is being able to handle a large number of concurrent users. This also affects our decisions on quality.

We'll keep you posted on what we come up with!

With less than 2 weeks to go before the first games (when it was posted), the BBC's attempt to provide the largest ever simultaneous broadband viewing event in the history of the internet, still wasn't sure of it's delivery mechanism.

I think this kind of confirms my earlier suspicions.

Please, BBC, abandon this before it gets embarrassing!

Macchiavelli alive and well at the BBC?

I just read this piece of news from the BBC about broadcasting the world cup on broadband. Streamed, no less, live!
There's a low key reference to this on the BBC website too.

So what's going on here? Is this some foolhardy attempt to prove the viability of IPTV? They are just going to be chucking this stuff out there on the web, with seemingly little preparation or forethought.

Maybe they think there are only going to be a few thousand people who will view it online?

Oh, and it's apparently restricted to UK license payers, though no mention as to how that will be achieved.

Or perhaps there is a more sinister motive here. By flooding the UK network with attempts to view matches online, the quality and speed of other services will be impacted, thus forcing people to go back to watching the match on the old media of the TV.
Is it in fact a sophisticated DoS attack on UK ISPs?

I expect it will be switched off after the first 'unprecedented demand' and coverage will be limited to 4 minute highlight downloads. Unless they are doing multicast (?possible?) then it will be likely unwatchable anyway.

Also just wait for the telco responses of 'shows the need for IMS framework and guaranteed QoS on the web'.

If the BBC had announced that they had a deal with Akamai to do the above, then it might be believeable, but buried in the BBC worldcup website, I seriously doubt whether the delivery, uptake and international demand (where there's a will there's a way) have been realistically analysed.

We shall see, but it could be a highly damaging move on the part of the BBC.

How to make money on Vonage...

Vonage stock is on its way down, to where we don't know, but the real question is whether they can turn it around.

Competing with cableco and telco isn't going to be enough to grow their business to the levels necessary to justify even their current pricing.
Given a choice between Skype and Vonage, with all the new Skype-certified hardware coming out, there aren't going to be that many people who would choose Vonage for anything other than the payment options (or FUD about Skype and Kazaa)

If you believe Vonage can change their business model to compete effectively with the Next Generation of 'telco' then a Bear Naked Straddle might be fun at the current level!

If you think Vonage is heading downhill towards the abyss of doom, forget the straddle and just go for a bear naked put. You may have to enter pretty low, as there are a lot of naked bears out there!

It seems to me, on a purely anecdotal basis, that Vonage customers use the service because it's cheaper than PSTN and gives them the services they need with minimum hassle. The adverts probably help too!
This really means that they are taking a particular segment of the PSTN population. These people are interested in having something that does what it says on the tin when they plug it in. They are not the early adopters - they already churned to other more interesting services!
The things that will make this newer group churn are poor customer service and intermittent service failure; Oops, isn't that exactly the things that Vonage customers complain about??

Don't you just love options!