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"Canadian consumers spent more than $3-billion on Internet shopping last year," is the lead for an article in today's G&M entitled On-line spending soars 25% in '03. Still, the downer follow up is: "Even so, 'total electronic commerce spending represents only a fraction of the $688-billion in total personal expenditure in Canada last year,' the federal agency [StatsCan] said."
So what, that's half a percent of the consumer (personal expenditure) market. Nobody in their right mind expects e-commerce to overtake what it's taken a century to build up nor for that matter to be more than a portion of total consumer spending. It's patently ridiculous.
But, focus on the facts:
1. 4.9-million households (40% of all) shopped online last year. Of that 65% (3.2-million) households purchased something.
2. 21.1-million orders online last year -- over the 16.6-million the year before.
3. 5 out of 6 households that purchased online PAID online as well (allegedly a barrier).
Yes, it's small. But, there are people in the water and the conditions for joining (broadband penetration, more sophisticated offers and value, security enhancements, company) are much better. Zero to $3-billion in under a decade. And only getting faster.
Brin, Buffett, Dell, Ellison, Gates, . . . Page, Walton . . . What? I didn't make the billionaires list AGAIN!!!
Oh right, it's Americans. Well then . . .
I've had conversations about the "utility" approach to broadband Internet access in the future ("Like plugging in a lamp . . .") with colleagues. This story about the hydro utilities' activities in the space is -- foreboding, I think is the word. Networking on the grid.
Of course, we in the Eastern international grid are abundantly aware of the fragility of that grid after August 2003. Think about it.
Anybody who doesn't believe in the ultimate victory of the mobile channel (Let's qualify that statement: victory as a primary multi-type communications channel, not eliminating but outstripping Web, paper, etc., etc.) is daft. Consider this snip taken from a presentation by Mike Neuman, Bell Mobility's CEO, yesterday:
At Bell, data traffic is growing by a factor of between two and three every six months, and revenue per user from data services will match revenue from voice in five years, he [Neuman] said.The full G&M story is here: Telecom sector sees wireless revolution.
For several years I've been watching and trying to make a case to a much more conservative business establishment that "smart-cards" are coming and it's time to get a good seat on the train. Been hard to do due to technological ambiguity, costs, etc., etc. So, it's heartening to see that the credit card guys are no longer just experimenting over here (in Europe chipped credit cards are now passe), as this TorStar piece points out: Credit fraud has moved from petty to high-tech. Here's the snip for why the move:
Advances have been made over the years, such as adding magnetic stripes and holographic images to cards to make them tougher to copy.All aboard!!But one by one, those security devices have been compromised by sophisticated criminals able to find cheap ways to mimic such features, and card companies have had to look for new ways to fight fraud.
The next step, Fry says, will be computer chips in cards and personal identification numbers similar to those already used for debit and banking cards.
The most ironic part of the report from the Canadian e-Business Initiative (covered here: Canadian firms slow to adopt technology: study) is that Canadians themselves have taken to technologies like bank machines and the Internet at very rapid rates and high numbers.
Hmmmm...
Found out earlier today -- well after the TorStar broke this item -- that the deal for Rogers to buy Microcell was announced and requires only shareholder approval at the Rogers Wireless end. Here's the story from TorStar: Rogers offers $1.4B for Microcell
More information about cellular use on airplanes: SMS and surfing go sky high!. Right now, according to the article, Airbus Industries has tested SMS and GPRS (I guess) on their planes. As the story says:
Passengers will be able to use their mobiles to chat, send text messages and access the internet during flights. Airbus which has tested the technology on a A320 aircraft plans to introduce the system next year.Of course this means there will be absolutely NO REPREIVE from the 'crack-berry' addicts continual thumbing through email.
Immediately below, we noted that MS's penchant for being an extreme capitalist organization put it at odds with market creation that requires participation in open standards that are beyond the (ownership and) control of any single organization. Well, more news: the Caller ID initiative (which may have had potential for addressing spam on a systemic level is tail-spinning into oblivion. The odd-coupling between MS and AOL on this plan appears officially over according to this from The Inquirer: AOL dumps sender ID.
What, this is a surprise?
Memo to self, from Bill Gates, re: intellectual property viz. Sender ID.
Oh no, not again. When will we ever learn that the first go round was dumb luck and good timing. We walked into a great game and played our hand exceptionally well -- although nobody knew it at the time.
Looks like we've managed to hold on the wrong cards again here; push on the wrong roll; whatever. Seems the IETF is passing us by as a tech standard for Sender ID. (See ref. from the Inquirer: Microsoft snubbed on Sender ID. Note to admin: why am I always getting this information from the Web? Where's our intelligence and research department on these things?) Look at what they're saying:
[Andrew] Newton [one of the co-chairs of the working group] said that it is possible that Sender ID could be used as part of a standards-compliant tool for thwarting spam, but the IETF settled on a standard that does not include potential patent risk.
So, what the hell's the value of the patent if the market doesn't develop -- or worse, if the market develops and we're not part of it!! Man, it'll be like the Internet all over again. How much cost and grief was it to buy IE into the dominant spot? Couldn't we have avoided that just by getting in first with everyone else instead of trying to control . . .
What metaphor to choose: Donald with a broken leg? Mike Eisner announced his two year farewell the other day, largely appeasing Wall Street and the red-cloaked investors. Not adequate for Roy Disney, who is now reinvigorated to take "Sancho" Gold and tilt at the timeline. See NYTimes story here: Critics Call for Early Ouster of Disney Chief, and a quote from Disney's letter to the board:
"We ask you to immediately engage an independent executive recruiting firm to conduct a worldwide search for a strong visionary leader capable of guiding this company as it faces the challenges ahead," they wrote in the letter. In an interview, Mr. Gold said, "The company should not suffer another two years with a pall hanging over it."
These long good-byes are killer (just as Canadian prime minister Martin).
Interesting news out of Grand Haven, MI, in today's TorStar. The town of 12,000 is now a completely urban WiFi (WiMax) hotspot. It is connected Nirvana: everywhere you go from home to the coffee shop to the football stadium, you can be connected for a single monthly fee. It's one small step for . . . The link: Resort town becomes wireless `hotspot' and the snip:
It struck a deal with the city to put up hundreds of antennas in public spaces, and market the signal to the public starting at $19.99 a month. Using one big high-speed fibre cable connected to the Internet, it now beams out a signal on the same unlicensed frequency range wireless phones and garage door openers use, providing high-speed Internet access for Grand Haven's 12,000 residents.What the successful experiment appears to represent is the inevitable: That high-speed Internet access beyond just pockets of hot spots is finally here.
What it also represents is a sea-change in the way the public will likely get its Internet fix in the near future — something not lost on city officials here in Toronto and elsewhere, such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York and other places in the United States, Canada and beyond.
We've been fixated by the "globalization" potential of the Web for the past near-decade. But, as the politicians' aphorism says, "it all local." That goes for commerce and community as well. Thanks to some MIT researchers with 3-years to check, apparently the Web is local too. The story, from the TorStar, is here: World Wide Web links locals: MIT.
Three years of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has revealed that communities can benefit from certain online services."There are all these really interesting and positive social benefits," said MIT professor Keith Hampton, who headed up the research.
This, from the SF Chronicle, especially in a speedy environment like Internet2, is the early warning (maybe even death knell) for the local video store: TiVo, Netflix may join forces / Downloadable movies over Net
The bells, the bells . . .
All we can be sure of is that in a short while there will only be three primary mobile telephone operators in Canada (with a "label" in there for kicks): Telus unfazed by idea Rogers might try to top Microcell. Where Microcell will end up is detail. Logic says Rogers, given their compatible, GSM formats.
I don't want to rush to judgment, but the last woman standing in last year's premiere instalment of The Apprentice, Amy Henry, is flogging a new book that might as well be entitled, Sexual Aikido in the office -- at least based on the few hundred word exceprt I read today in the G&M: What women can do. This is the sidebar to a larger story in which she figures large. The thrust of which is a pout about how she's bright and articulate (admittedly), etc., but still gets considered as "eye candy."
Wasn't this the same young lady who flaunted it in slinky clothes and provocative poses?
Reported on this guy and his caller ID spoofing capability/service a few days ago here. Turns out that the NYTimes created a problem for the poor entrepreneur. It seems that while some businesses are very interested (bill collectors),some people are not thrilled by the potential and are willing to threaten Jepson with his life. Reported in Citing Threats, Entrepreneur Wants to Quit Caller ID Venture.
Does an entrepreneur have to be willing to die . . . to make funders believe?
. . . as is. That's the catch. Too many prophets of doom around prognosticating the ultimate demise of the Internet. Their reasons are varied, including it's technical incapacity (SMTP? for this?), the quantum of viruses and worms that plague us, etc., etc. And, depending on the day, they get a full hearing from those who -- typically -- have good cause to wish for that result.
It's hard to argue with them because any argument about the future is conjecture and baloney. The "winner" is the one with the best load of historic support in the instant. However, the argument typically is a binary one: The Internet (as we see it today) will/will not survive. And that's the key. It won't.
What will happen is that it will lead to something else that's Internet-like but addresses the current shortcomings. That's the nature of evolution in nature and in the history of everything human: a step gets taken, fixed, and we move on.
Here's the article that prompted me: The Second Coming of the Internet, and the snip:
The Internet2, as its known, is presently available to 200 odd member institutions. The Internet2 community has developed a high performance network called Abilene. An important goal for the Abilene network is to provide a backbone network for the internet2.Obviously there's more. But, the important thing to remember -- or find out, if this is your first encounter -- is that there are gnomes in Switzerland who are working on the next version of the Internet.
Oh oh! Highly esoteric theoretical math and topology study has the potential for ungluing e-commerce. That's the gist of two reports out of Great Britian that point to potential proofs for the Riemann hypothesis and the Poincare conjecture (forget it: not worth explaining). Here are the story links: from the Guardian, Maths holy grail could bring disaster for internet and from VNUnet, Mathematical breakthrough could bring disaster for ecommerce.
"Why?" you ask. Here's the simple explanation (a snip from the Guardian):
Mathematicians could be on the verge of solving two separate million dollar problems. If they are right - still a big if - and somebody really has cracked the so-called Riemann hypothesis, financial disaster might follow. Suddenly all cryptic codes could be breakable. No internet transaction would be safe.I'm usually on the pulpit of broader knowledge and education in the "irrelevant" soft areas of Classics, History, Literature, and Philosophy. These little stories point very directly to how something abstract and unrelated to real business, might be worth paying attention to.
I've seen this before: airlines changing compensation and incentive (Sun-Sentinel: American adds $5, $10 fees for buying tickets by phone, at airport counter). But, in their most impressive attempt, the airlines blinked during the ensuing standoff with their primary channel: the travel agents who's commissions were being severely strictured. More recently, the airlines were able (aided in large part by being practically bankrupt and everyone knowing it) to enforce commission changes, which the agents then passed dutifully on to the consumer. This time is different.
American announces that it will charge fees for buying tickets directly from American at the counter or on the phone. It follows Northwest, which announced a similar scheme recently. The difference is that Northwest also charged travel agents; American isn't.
Here's why this change is going to stick (barring the American Society of Travel Agents succeeding in getting an injunction from the Justice Dept.):
1. American's fee addition has the appearance of channel propriety. Agents can't feel threatened for their 50% of American's business. But, the price driver will shift more than the current 30%(!!) of consumers on the Web to the Web. It could reach as high as 40 - 45% without affecting agents. But, that dynamic is unlikely. More likely, as the Web bookings increase in proportion, the number of agent-based bookings will decrease as well. (Of note, many corporate agencies already are paid on a fee for service basis so they will book through the airline's Web interface anyway -- or at least look for cheaper fares there.)
2. A smaller player jumped in first -- to see how it would work out -- and the largest player in the industry followed with a more elegant change.
It will be interesting to see the actual number and the velocity at which consumers abandon the walk-up counter and phone lines. After all, $5 or $10 is not an extraordinary amount of money on a purchase of hundreds of dollars. It would have an impact on so many other services that have settled into status quo statis over the years.
Interesting technology being touted in the NYTimes: A Commercial Software Service Aims to Outfox Caller ID. Star38, out of California, has a service that changes caller-ID information on the outbound portion of the call. Now, I've seen this kind of spoofing done with email, but this is new. The last (that is most recent) frontier is that 100-year old device: the telephone.
We've seen signs of life in the VC community before, and despite a tenuous series of economic reports. But, mainline NYTimes reports that there's lots of activity in this item: The Rreturn of the Venture Capitalists. The snip:
Investments by venture firms rose 22 percent in the second quarter of this year, to $5.8 billion, from $4.7 billion a year earlier, according to the MoneyTree Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association.The article also says that VCs are, although getting more aggressive, still circumspect and discriminating among investments. Notably though, at least according to this report and story, they're doing a little early stage investing -- which is more recent.For all of 2004, analysts project an 11 percent increase in investments, to $20 billion, from $18 billion in 2003.
Am I too old to appreciate that female characters from video games (let's be honest, cartoons) are going to be featured in "the nude" in October's Playboy? Or is it -- at the risk of offending the average 29-year old male gamer -- empirically nuts? Media in Canada has the news here: Gaming characters pose nude for Playboy.
The NYTimes carried this story on Monday (Aug 30): For Now, Unwired Means Unlisted. That May Change. Here's the sentence that is most significant in the story:
In October, most major cellphone carriers plan to start compiling a publicly accessible listing of wireless phone numbers.As the article points out, this is causing not a little bit of hand-wringing both with cell-phone users and with carriers.
All but Verizon have apparently agreed to cooperate with the directory listing, which casts doubt on the whole thing. Still, if it were to be happening, consumers are at sixes and nines on the matter. On the one hand, our old friends and acquaintances are getting harder to find: only 65-percent of American households are listed in the white pages; a lot of (younger) people are forgoing land lines in favour of a single mobile phone. On the other hand, we're not sure that we want the telemarketers to get to our mobile phone numbers which, like our e-mail accounts, are not just addresses they are personal addresses. [More about this philosophy at a later time.]
It's probably worth thinking about before going ahead: once the genie's out of the bottle . . .
Not to belabour the issue, but it's everywhere so I'll take a quick turn. Here's the Grey Lady's (or is that a British paper's nickname?) take: Hollinger Files Stinging Report on Ex-Officials. What understatement!
Point 1: It's going to be hard getting out from under this one. No amount of highly articulate bluster and convoluted reasoning is going to overcome this indictment -- unless it's utterly untrue malice as Ravelston suggests in its response.
Point 2: Hubris is as old as Western Civilization. And, obviously, as a parade of CEOs being similarly "persecuted" attests, it doesn't wear well with the prevailing schadenfreude zeitgeist viz. corporate executives.
What's needed in the next 10 or 20 years -- probably sooner given our attention span -- is a latter day Orson Wells to take up the story for "the moving pictures." Citizen Black . . .
Pierre Trudeau once asked western farmers a question that (taken horribly out of context) showed him to be callous and arrogant. That he may have been, but not for the reasons around the question. Some may recall the words, "Why should I sell your wheat?" I'm not going to get into the misunderstanding and context here except to say that the essence of the statement was: you do it, we're here to help not do.
So, it's disturbing to read into a statement from the new PM (who never met a public challenge he wasn't ready to pick every side on) that results in a headline like PM asks for proposals to boost funding for athletes. On the one hand, it's pandering to an audience whipped into a frenzy on the subject. On the other hand, it's a weasely way to get out of a straight answer: "we're going to take proposals . . ." Not saying no, not saying yes; just deferring. (And, truth told, given that Martin was accosted while watching a hockey game, it's probably a reflex action honed by years in the political game. My own reflexes tend toward an entirely different, more definitive immediate outcome and greater opportunity to eat those words later on. But that's me.)
Still, regardless of the situation -- media ambush (of the highest "public servant," mind you) -- it's refreshing to have a leader make choices, vocalize them, and let the cards fall as they may. That's the very nature of a tough decision: there are as many who will be pleased as displeased. If it weren't that close, it wouldn't be much of a choice and best left to those for whom no-brainers are mere operations. I think, FWIW, that may be part of the enduring -- and bewildering -- allure of Ralph Klein.