Another Business Model

By | November 23, 2011
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My friend and fellow technology columnist Charles Wright is exploring a new business model to support his work: Support us, and get a nice reward

The beginnings of a business plan are beginning to emerge, here in the Bleeding Edge cave. We’ve decided that we’re not going to get much in the way of income, unless we can offer services or information beyond all the free stuff. So we’ll start with the digital copy of the Bleeding Edge columns. The columns will no longer appear on The Age and Sydney Morning Herald web sites. Instead, we’ll offer an entire year of them – emailed directly to subscribers – for a $15 annual fee.

They’ll include more information than appears in the print version, which is all too often cut for space reasons. And we’ll round out the offering with additional bits and pieces that we come across after the columns are printed.

It’ll be very interesting to see how it goes. Like Charles, I’m a journalist cum blogger turned independent operative with some institutional backing, so we’re there on the bleeding edge of trying to eke a reputable living on a fast changing stage. Best of luck with it, Charles.

Hotel Complaints, Blackmail and Bribery

By | November 23, 2011
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Why is it that big chains in the service industry assume that when you write to them complaining about something that you’re just out for a freebie? The thinking seems to go: this person is trying to blackmail us. So bribe them.

Case in point: Just got back from a weekend at five-star hotel in central Java. I’ve been there plenty of times before; it’s a quality hotel, very well run and the only big name chain in the area. But while they’ve done a great job of creating a serene ambience — a view of a volcano as you enter the lobby, a gorgeous garden and golf course, the trickle of fountains mingling with the tinkling of Javanese gamelan along the walkways — they use a system of summoning drivers and taxis that is usually seen in a mall.

It’s basically a tannoy system, a request for a driver or taxi puncuated at beginning and end with a distorted xylophone scale, climbing and ascending like a man riddled with gout. It’s normal stuff in Indonesian office blocks, urban hotels and malls, where few people actually drive themselves, but thoroughly out of place in the paddies of central Java. If it was far from the hotel it would be bearable, but It’s sufficiently loud to be heard in at least a third of the hotel rooms, starting early in the morning until late at night.

So, we complained, quietly and reasonably, to the front desk and resisted their invitation to change rooms. Why should we when the solution was as simple as turning down the volume of the loudspeaker? Anyway, they promised to look into the problem, but of course it was never resolved, the xylophone rising and falling from early in the morning, so I fired off an email to the chain’s U.S. head-office. Nothing too harsh, but making it clear that it was undermining our confidence in the hotel that something so straightforward couldn’t be addressed — or a reason given as to why it couldn’t be fixed.

Upshot: an email from head office that didn’t address the source of our complaint at all. Instead:

I would like the opportunity to restore your faith in [hotel chain deleted] by offering you a complimentary one room upgrade the next time your travel plans include a [hotel chain deleted] hotel to compensate you for what you encountered. We ask that you make your future reservation for a standard room at the lowest rate you can find. Then contact the [hotel chain deleted] Customer Service office with the confirmation number, and we will upgrade you to the best available room that the hotel has to offer, based upon availability. Please let me know if you would like to accept my offer.

No mention of whether they’re looking into the problem we raised, or asking for more information about it. Just the simple assumption that an upgrade would shut us up. Sure, we’ll take the upgrade but why won’t you take our input seriously, at face value? Why is customer feedback considered a threat, assuaged by a freebie?

Lesson for today: Maybe feedback is just that. We customers want things to be better next time we stay; that’s why we let you know what’s right and what’s wrong. Not all of us are trying to blackmail you. We just want a nice place to stay.

The Sandwich Board Goes Hi-tech

By | November 23, 2011
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I thought we had gotten beyond the era of people walking around with advertising hoardings hung around their necks like some medieval punishment, but apparently it ain’t so. Adwalker (motto: ‘You’ve got to find some way of saying it without saying it’, which apparently is something that Duke Ellington said) says that by

wearing the Adwalker i-pack, our personnel engage consumers at premium Out Of Home locations, delivering the highest quality brand experience through Adwalker’s Interactive applications.

Actually, it’s not quite as awful as it sounds, and probably this is the direction that the advertising world is likely to go in: The Adwalker patented media platform is worn as a compact body pack, enabling services and applications that include brand advertising, point of sale, data capture and multi media messaging. Like so:

Adwalker has signed a three year access agreement with British airports under which the folk above will be able to wander around the airports harassing passengers. Now you won’t be sure whether the person coming towards you with some device tied to their chest is a terrorist or a marketing person. In either case, I would advise running.

A Map Full Of News

By | November 23, 2011
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As you know, I’m a huge fan of newsmaps — efforts to convey news information using more visual approaches — and here’s another excellent idea, from a guy called Jeroen Wijering, who, according to Cool Hunting

is a recent graduate of the Design Academy in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. One of his most recent projects is a Flash-based news map called What’s Up?. New stories are highlighted on the map, and a balloon appears with a headline; clicking on the balloon sends you to the source of the story.

What Iove about it is the feel that something is happening somewhere in the world every minute. The map is peppered with green and blue dots, the green dots forming a map of the world. Dots continually blink to yellow, orange or red, indicating a breaking story:

Map

Great stuff.

Cracking RFID With Your Phone

By | November 23, 2011
1 Comment

RFID tags and their security implications are returning to centre stage again. Adi Shamir, professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute, has shown that it’s possible to crack passwords on RFID tags using a cellphone. In theory this could mean anyone with a cellphone could monitor traffic between a tag and a reader and collect the information being transmitted. As EE Times’ Rick Merritt writes (via Digg)

“I haven’t tested all RFID tags, but we did test the biggest brand and it is totally unprotected,” Shamir said. Using this approach, “a cellphone has all the ingredients you need to conduct an attack and compromise all the RFID tags in the vicinity,” he added.

Shamir said the pressure to get tags down to five cents each has forced designers to eliminate any security features, a shortcoming that needs to be addressed in next-generation products.

Quite a few of the comments on the Digg link are of the “why should we care?” variety:

I still dont understand what the big fuss is about RFID security. I mean who cares if someone knows that you just bought milk and eggs or that you are carrying around the latest Playboy. What could be tagged with RFID that people would so desperately need to keep private? I think that people are wrapped a little bit tightly around the issue.

This kind of response is infuriating, but predictable, and the reason why there’s still a huge gulf between the value we attach to our personal data and the value companies in the world of data collection attach to it. It is precisely the detail of our lives that is valuable to others; this detail — whether we bought milk, eggs or Playboy — comes together to form a very detailed profile of the consumer. The consumer is also a bank account holder, a patient, a credit card applicant, a driver, an employee. When all this information gathered on the individual is collated, it forms an alarmingly precise picture of their habits, their problems, their foibles — do you want a potential employer to know you read Playboy?, a life insurer to know you consume lots of fatty foods? — which might, just might, in the future prove the difference between a job, a loan, a credit card, a house.