More On Google’s Masterplan

By | November 24, 2011
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BusinessWeek pick up the theme of Google taking on the world. With the ability to track shipments and airplanes in real time via Google, the search engine keeps eyeballs on its website longer. But “Google is providing this new shipment tracking service even though it doesn’t have a partnership with FedEx. Rather, Google engineers have reprogrammed it to query FedEx directly with the information a user enters and provide the hyperlink direct to the customer’s information.”

But, BusinessWeek point out, “with every new service, Google takes a slice of someone else’s pie. Its ability to find pizza places within any given Zip code ultimately eliminates the use of YellowPages. Using it to find word definitions diminishes the business proposition of online dictionaries.”

The argument goes that “Google becomes the omnipresent middleman and a clear and present danger to just about any company that relies on the Internet for commerce.” But where is the revenue? I think BusinessWeek is right in saying the money will be in providing the gateway to those sites. Most folk I know go to Google first, indeed have it as their homepage. The more you can access from that fast-loading, uncluttered page, the more you’ll use it as your homepage. Who cares where you go next?

It has nothing to do with stickiness in the way we used to think of it. Google doesn’t need people to stay at Google. But folk like UPS and FedEx need to have the link with Google — especially if their competitors have it. For them Google becomes their customers’ first stop. Whether it’s cinema tickets, airline tickets, packages or whatever, Google will act as a kind of fast-searching gatekeeper for other sites. Those other sites may not have much choice — they don’t already, with the site: hack on Google working as a better search engine for individual sites than the site’s search page — but they’ll all draw benefit. And presumably Google will collect a toll, in advertising or something else.

It’s the New Portal: Empty , except for what you need, and fast.

Nokia Sets An Example For RSS

By | November 24, 2011
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Here’s a sign of what a company can do with RSS, winning fans, distributing information and building bridges. Technical consultant and blogger Russell Beattie points to a wonderful page by Nokia, containing all of Nokia’s documents, announcements and toolkits via a bunch of different RSS feeds.

As Russell says, “There’s sooooo much to be gleaned from Nokia’s site it’s incredible.” He points to just one document, a presentation Music, video, streaming contents services Demand in Asia Pacific which has some fascinating facts about current mobile data services world wide:

  • Approx 1 billion SMS/day globally

  • Mobile ring tones are already a USD 3-5billion business

  • UK ring tones market will overtake the CDs singlesmarket 2003

  • UK: over 780 million WAPpage impression /month in June 2003 (130% growthin 9 months)

  • Est~10 millionmobile Java downloadsglobally / month in June 2003

  • Over 75 operators have launched mobile Java services

  • Over 140 operatorshave launched MMS(Aug 2003)

  • mmo2 reportsapprox 5 MMS /monthsper active user

  • Over 20 operatorshave launched mobile video content services (MMS video, streaming)

There’s enough there for a dozen columns. But what I like is that Nokia have taken the trouble to present all this information in an accessible way. My grumble with Nokia until now is that their sites are not intuitive — unlike their cellphones — but you can’t say that anymore. I wish more companies would do this kind of thing. It’s not rocket science but it is helpful.

Are Privacy Fears About RFID Tags Just Hype?

By | November 24, 2011
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Reports that delegates to the World Summit on the Information Society conference in Geneva were unwittingly wearing RFID tags which could have tracked their movements, attendance at meetings or seminars, visits to the john etc etc has raised some debate about RFID (Radio Frequency ID), privacy, security and the rights of the individual to know what the tag around their neck actually tells people about them.

My posting, which didn’t actually make any specific comment about the news, prompted this from Mike Rowehl of Bitsplitter who says, among other things, that “sure, there are plenty of issues to be worked through with RFID, but it’s hardly the boogeyman that everyone makes it out to be. A cell phone can just as easily (and in the future, more easily most likely) be used to determine a users location”.

Actually, Mike, I’m not sure that’s right. Cellphones work in large areas, and can narrow the location of a phone (and its user) down to quite a small area, but RFID works in small, enclosed areas. As one of the delegates, Olivier Piou of Axalto told the conference last Friday:

Wireless technologies also present a similar threat to privacy: while it is relatively easy to turn off a cellular phone (because all of them have an ON/OFF button!), radio-frequency identification systems – also known as RFID or contactless systems – are activated from a distance. It becomes so very easy to install a reading antenna, in the subway or in any place like in this conference room, to detect who is there without awareness and consent.

Numerous books and movies have predicted that our civil society would not be wise enough to protect its basic universal human rights in this digital age. However, the more we have powerful tools available to us, the more we have the duty to use them for the best of humanity. This is why I wanted to raise your awareness today.

This is why also, we at Axalto believe that it is essential that digital identity be designed to ensure trust and confidence in modern digital systems, and that it be combined with conventional physical identity into a secure portable object that citizens can voluntarily present to be identified, to authorities in the physical world and to on-line services in the virtual world.

That this comes from an industry insider — Axalto is the new name of Schlumberger unit SmartCards, of which Olivier Piou has been president since 1998; he has been in the smart card business since 1994. (Smart cards are microprocessor cards used mainly for ID) — should give some weight to concerns raised by the use of RFID at the summit. That the summit itself, supposedly concerning itself with the information society, should not be more aware of a) the privacy aspects of its tags and b) unable to answer questions raised by privacy advocates, does not inspire confidence.

While I don’t agree with the more outlandish claims that RFID is a new kind of big brother, there’s little doubt in my mind that it’s a technology which needs some serious attention before it can be deployed in public.

Zone Labs Snapped Up – Firewalls R Us?

By | November 24, 2011
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My favourite firewall, Zone Alarm, is being bought by another firewall maker, Check Point Software Technologies [CNet News.com].

It looks to me as if there’s quite significant consolidation within the security software industry, not just from the point of view of big guys buying the smaller guys, but of companies trying to create products that offer an all-round ‘security solution’. Symantec have long peddled this type of idea, but their 2004 embodiments have increased the coverage to include cutting out spam, spyware and even pop-ups. With Check Point focusing on server-side software it makes sense that they grab Zone Labs, whose strength is software for desktops and notebooks.

Expect to see software companies trying to push more integrated software that offers this kind of overall solution to corporates and to ISPs. While it obviously makes sense for companies to farm out these kind of problems — viruses, spam, any kind of disrupting influence on their networks — to single companies. Internet Service Providers will doubtless see a market to sell something similar to the individual user, keeping such rubbish out of their inbox and away from other subscribers.

My only worry is that such ‘packaged solutions’ may not offer the best individual component: Just because a company makes all the products you need, doesn’t mean they’re all great. I use Norton Antivirus but stick with Zone Alarm because it tells me more about what’s going on.

Getting Dumb With PowerPoint?

By | November 24, 2011
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I’m a fan of Edward Tufte, the guru of charts, but I’m still not sure about his view of PowerPoint. The New York Times Magazine has another article on his recent polemic against Microsoft’s presentation software. Tufte claimed, as the NYT piece says, that Microsoft’s ubiquitous software forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension, infusing PowerPoint with ”an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”


Not that Microsoft gets it either: NYT quotes Simon Marks, the product manager for PowerPoint, as saying that the opposite is ‘data density’, shoving tons of data at an audience. You could do that with PowerPoint, he says, but it’s a matter of choice. ”If people were told they were going to have to sit through an incredibly dense presentation,” he adds, ”they wouldn’t want it.”

NYT’s conclusion: If you have nothing to say, maybe you need just the right tool to help you not say it.