TeleMedia Strategy
The Bleeding Edge of Disruption

By Uday Bhaskar   Mon, Mar 23, 2009

I was driving my daughter to her guitar lessons the other day when she tuned the car radio to Kiss FM. Pretty soon the car was filled with a voice urging all the single ladies to put a ring on the thing they loved. My daughter started bopping her head, and I asked her who the artist was. She pulled out her iPhone, pointed it to the speaker, and turned to me with a triumphant grin. She had this application called Shazam, which was able to recognize the song. This application told us that the artist was Beyonce, and that the song was “Single Ladies”.

When you tap your feet to Beyonce’s song, it is easy to forget that her voice went through a long journey before reaching your ears. The recording studio captured her song along with all kinds of sound effects on their hard drives, after going through an almost magical electronic transformation on their digital audio workstations. This digitally stored piece of music then got copied on to thousands (and in the case of super star artists like Beyonce, millions) of CDs, and – increasingly in recent years – to the repertoire of online music stores like iTunes, from where avid fans like my daughter could download directly to their MP3 players, computers or smart phones, one track at a time. Once downloaded, the bits and bytes making up that file are reassembled into the vibrating patterns that reach your ears through the iPod headphones, recreating the voice of Beyonce.

A single three minute track like “Single Ladies” gets translated into several millions of 0’s and 1’s sitting on a hard drive or an MP3 player, as opposed to a few grooves on a vinyl disk or a few inches of a cassette tape. That is, if you are only talking about the audio portion of the song. If you add the video, that number jumps to hundreds of millions of 0’s and 1’s as opposed to a few feet of a VHS tape. In general, representing voice, video or data in digital format requires a lot more storage space as well as network bandwidth than the equivalent analog format. Why then is the world moving away from analog to digital?

To answer this question one has to understand the history of how communication technology evolved over the last century. Whether it is sound, video, text or any other form of data, in order to send it from one location to another, you need to represent it in a form that can be transmitted, and if necessary stored for a period and converted back to the original format for the receiver. The technologies used for this purpose could be electrical, mechanical, optical, magnetic or some combination of all of these. The original telephony and telegraph technologies for instance used electrical circuits to represent the sound waves of the voices being transmitted from one speaker to another, with devices on either end that translated sound waves to electrical signals and vice versa. The representation of sound in the electrical signals was proportionate to the source sound wave properties. In other words, louder sounds were represented by higher currents. Similar technology was used in radio transmission, where sound waves were converted to electrical signals of proportionate or analog strength and then converted back to sound waves of equivalent strength on the receiving end. Early television technology was also similar, with the combination of the picture elements and the sound elements represented in multiple analogous electrical signals.

Around the mid twentieth century, computers brought another dimension to the communication paradigm – the sending and receiving of data, as opposed to voice or video over long distances. Early computers also followed the analog path, with data represented by proportionate values of electrical, mechanical, magnetic or optical signals. In fact, many early versions of computers were analog computers built for special purpose computing within a specific field of study. Typically built with combinations of potentiometers, operational amplifiers, and function generators, they used the basic properties of electric circuits like voltage, resistance, current etc. to represent the input data, and by manipulating these values through different circuits, basic arithmetic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division were derived based on how these properties varied across the circuits.   

Because analog computers represent data using equivalent electrical or mechanical properties, there is greater flexibility in managing complex calculations. For example, a single electrical signal might represent a single day’s production of a machine, or the gross domestic product of China, by merely turning up or down the voltage on the circuit. By contrast, in a digital computer the two numbers will have dramatically different representations, as everything gets reduced to a string of 0’s and 1’s.

As the use of computers grew, however, it became apparent that the precision required to maintain the integrity of data in an analog computer made it cost prohibitive for largescale use of such computers. Wear and tear of the mechanical components would over a period of time change the electro-mechanical properties of the components (like increase the resistance), which in turn would change the value of the data that one could represent within those components. Also, analog restricted the use of computers to computationally intensive “real time” applications such as numerical integration, with little or no need for long term storage of the results or the input data. By contrast, applications like payroll or general ledger involve relatively simple calculations, but require consistent and reliable results repeatedly over a long period, with both the inputs and the results needed to be available long term. Analog computers proved to be ill suited for such applications as they are not designed for precision and reliability over time, but rather for the speed and accuracy of processing complex calculations.

Digital computers on the other hand rely on representing data in Boolean terms – that is to say, everything is converted into a pattern of 0’s and 1’s, which can be represented as the presence or absence of a characteristic such as current, light, magnetic charge, a hole on a punched card, etc, as opposed to the value of that characteristic. Thus, whether a circuit at a given time carries one milli ampere of current or 10 milli amps is not as significant as whether it carries any current or not. This means that wear and tear of the components does not impact the reliability of data, as an increase of resistance or reduction of voltage would not change the fact that current is still flowing through the circuit. This engineering simplicity made it possible to design versatile computers that could perform a wide range of arithmetic and logical operations reliably over a long period of time.

Once everything was reduced to the presence or absence of a property as opposed to the value of that property itself, mass production of components that could store or process 0’s and 1’s became much easier. From vacuum tubes to integrated circuits to microprocessors, technology evolved rapidly to make computing faster, cheaper and more versatile. My daughter’s iPhone is perhaps a million times more powerful than the ENIAC, which occupied more than 2000 cubic feet of space, weighed about 30 tons, and consumed 150 KW of electrical power. The iPhone on the other hand weighs about 5 ounces, and holds 30 gigabytes worth of data.

Reducing everything to binary makes not just the storage of data simpler, but also its transmission from source to destination. Granted that having to convert a song or a picture or someone’s voice into 0’s and 1’s means that you need more bandwidth to convey the same information than if you used an analog means of transmitting that data, but that is more than compensated by the reduced overhead for managing the transmission. If voice, video and data are all converted to binary format, there is no need to have different networks and different equipment to manage the transmission and delivery of any form of content from one place to another.

A common pipe can carry all sorts of traffic, leaving the translation to equipment on either end to worry about. A cable company delivering TV signals to your house can also deliver telephony or high speed internet. Likewise the familiar twisted pair copper network connecting your telephone to the rest of the world can also carry video or high speed internet to your home. All of a sudden, your friendly neighborhood telephone company and your entertainment service provider can each do what only the other could do previously. As for the challenge of bandwidth, that’s a matter of technology – optical fiber today can carry a thousand times more traffic than twisted pair copper and today’s 4G technologies deliver live video to your smart phones, allowing you to watch American Idol while still stuck in traffic.

Digital transmission has another very significant advantage over analog transmission. In analog transmission, if anything happens to the signal on the way (such as a drop in voltage, for example) there is no way to recover from the error on the other end. Because digital transmission consists of 0’s and 1’s, it is possible to provide additional information along with the data (such as checksums) can help in validating the signal on the receiving side and recovering from any transmission errors. This means greater clarity in the voice, video or other content you receive.

The engineering simplicity of dealing with just two variables at a time trumps the mathematical limitation of dealing with just two variables at a time. Because each component of the network delivering the data from the source to the destination at any given point has only two degrees of freedom, it is easier to standardize the equipment, the interfaces, the signaling, and the error checking.

All in all, creation, storage and transmission of content (voice, video or data) is more efficient in the digital format than in an analog format. Less is indeed more sometimes.

By Paul Morrissey,   Wed, May 06, 2009

You know times must be tough when the magazine for the UK media announces it is to close. Recently, the UK Press Gazette announced that after 43 years it is to cease producing a hard copy magazine and will become an online channel only - bringing the curtain down on the only B2B title for the nation’s journalism profession.

This surely must be a sign of the times when the only magazine written by trained journalists for trained journalists shuts its doors, blaming a “declining market” for its demise.

But are online platforms now giving publishers an easy escape route - a lifeboat that saves more holes than souls as it plugs the gap of rising costs and declining return? The web is becoming the accused assassin of traditional publishing companies as their owners “make their excuses and leave”.

The economics provide a ‘no-win, no-fee’ solution as profit margins are exponentially increased - gone are the erratically variable costs of print, paper and distribution and stripped out are the costs of design and marketing - who needs subscriptions and a loyal readership base when a popular online site’s vac section generates revenue for next-to-nothing?

Surely it can’t be true that the most profitable media houses will be the companies that invest in a decent content management system and stay one step ahead to tweet away on the latest communication platform.

But look behind the closure and the departure of the UKPG and look at how the traditional media is scrabbling and scrambling for a sustainable way to exist profitably - and online really does appear the only lifeboat turning to the sound of the whistles.  Despite now being a decade old, the online trend appears to be still emerging - link relevant content with relevant audiences for relevant advertisers.

In the US, Time Magazine has taken up the apparent demise of print journalism with a cover story and recent report predicting the potential demise of eight to 10 of the most endangered papers in the US.

More content is now consumed online than radio, television and print combined - the Web is where the consumer’s content needs are provided first and foremost.   To effectively monetize content, the first step is connecting that content with relevant audiences - getting content linked to targeted audiences,  people interested in that content, via Web 1.0 (search) methods or more sophisticated Web 2.0 social interaction. 

Then publishers can embrace a more sophisticated approach to integrating targeted and effective advertising linked to relevant content. Running bank loan adverts against health content and drug promotions within financial stories is still largely the random online advertising placement schemes seen today on the majority of traditional media sites.

Those who engage in successful partnerships with advertisers to help them get beyond simple visibility metrics to real consumer engagements that result in sales or related conversions, will emerge from this latest transition and succeed where the likes of the once-mighty UK Press Gazette have failed.

By Earl "Woody"   Mon, Mar 23, 2009

In the old days (all of 10 years ago), aspiring professional musicians followed a well-established formula.  To become a working musician, it made sense to go to a music school at the college level, even if the student did not plan on completing the course work required to get the accompanying degree.  Underlying this formula was a key assumption.  Simply put, the value proposition was that students pursuing this path, on average, progressed much more rapidly in terms of skill and career than their counterparts who tried to use other methods of learning.

Why were students who participated in lessons and college able to make greater strides than the do-it-yourself and school-of-hard-knocks folks?  It seems there were several factors: the benefits of a music degree, the ability to observe and play with guest artists, proximity to rare information, immersion and exposure to broader musical influences, networking among future leaders, direct feedback from peers and experts in a “safe environment”, an environment that forces the student to reach the professional standard or move on.  While it is clear that each of these factors is changing with the Internet and Web 2.0, it is not yet clear how music schools will compete with or incorporate these capabilities as a means of staying relevant and improving the learning experience.

Benefits of a Music Degree?

Music degrees (the piece of paper) have almost always been a credential needed for teaching other musicians, people who want to be in the symphony orchestra, and little else.  For musicians who hoped to perform, but wanted insurance that they could work in the music field, a degree was a good idea.  While this hasn’t changed very much, it is interesting to note that the requirements for a teacher’s pedigree are increasing at the high school, community college, and university level.  These days, the high school level teaching frequently requires a Music Education degree (specialization), while the community colleges are looking for Master’s degrees as a minimum.  For people with a Performance or Composition degree, they may find themselves limited to teaching lessons these days.  While the use of a music degree has not changed much, the demand for learning music from professionals with degrees may be changing in a significant way. 

Guest Artists and Rare Information

Music students at the college level are able to observe and interact with visiting lecturers and clinicians on a regular basis.  This access to the best musicians in the world used to be unique to the university music student.  Think about it.  You might be able to pay $75 or more just to see a top performer like Yo-Yo Ma at a local performance playing prepared, rehearsed pieces in any city in the US.  For students at a performing arts college, they would likely get to participate in a lecture, some clinics, and potentially either take a lesson, or perform with the artist.  Here is where the traditional advantage was always in favor of the more in-depth experience available at the music college.  Given state budgets and other economic pressures, schools are struggling to keep up the pace of guest artists that were seen in the past, even though tuitions are soaring.

In the Internet Age, students can go to YouTube and search the string “Yo-Yo Ma” for free.  At the time of writing, over 30,000 results came up, with over 100 of these clips being the informative, lecture/clinic style that is typical at a college.  Many thousands of the results in YouTube may be poor quality and some may not be Yo-Yo Ma at all.  The odds are, however, that in this large aggregate, there are likely some tremendously powerful, inspirational, and educational clips.  All of these are free and require no curriculum or class attendance or proximity to a top music college.  Similarly, typing in any instrument type (aka “drum”) in a video web site will yield tens of thousands of video clips, many of which are educational in nature.  Some of these are on par with the quality of lessons one can get from a private teacher or college professor.  While this availability of instructional content most certainly effects the private lesson teachers the most, it’s clear that high quality “how to” information is no longer exclusive to the top teachers and universities.  It’s important to note that, at present, the viewer of YouTube content can’t interact in a meaningful way with the subject of the YouTube video in any reliable or meaningful way

Similarly, music schools typically have large libraries of rare recordings.  Many out of print and limited release works were only available in these great libraries and typically, non-students are not allowed to explore them.  Here again, the Internet is the great leveler of playing fields.  Truly important works of all styles are finding their way onto Internet Radio stations, online video sites, and so on, while iTunes, Amazon, and other retailers are putting more of the re-issues into the digital formats of today.  With limitless “shelf-space”, all of these venues are expanding to include the known universe of recordings.  The same concept applies to rare books, compositions, scores, and so forth.  It’s hard to imagine ever needing to go to a physical library. 

Immersion and Exposure to Broader Musical Influences

Music school provides a total immersion in music that is a continuing differentiator.  It is hard to overstate the value of being in classes in the morning, rehearsals and practice in the afternoon, with jam sessions or gigs in the evening.  Campuses offer students a space to rehearse and the ability to set up rehearsals or jam sessions with ease.  Similarly, most music schools have a symbiotic relationship with a local music scene, which allows the more aggressive or higher quality students to perform in a public setting.  This type of ecosystem does not yet exist in the Internet world.  While students can immerse themselves in self-study, it’s not so easy to have daily playing and rehearsal opportunities in their local scene with high quality musicians.  It will be interesting to see if the Internet can expand into this space over time.  For the near term, it appears that the immersion in the arts is still most easily achieved on campus. 

Similarly, guest artists, teachers, and other students are constantly sharing names and reference points for the budding musician to “check out”.  A broad musical exposure is critical to any accomplished musician.  After all, the whole notion of studying music is about getting a larger toolset than the three chord rock bands out there.  The cocoon of a Music College inundates students with the urgency and thought leadership about what content to explore.  One of the main off-hours activities at music schools is “the hang”, where aspiring musicians share their favorite music and recent finds.  This sharing is a real shortcut for students to find out new styles, artists, and genres that they have not previously heard.   At this moment, the Internet is not as effective at leading enthusiasts to new and relevant music, compared to a network of knowledgeable and active listeners to recommend, share, and encourage exposure to important music.  Meanwhile the Internet world is making tremendous strides in this direction.  iTunes Genius, Pandora Internet Radio, and many other applications have (human and machine) algorithms to take input on music that you like and can find other music that has common elements.  This evolution from the basic Amazon recommendations of “other people who bought what you bought also bought ___” has the potential to provide a free and market-based contextualization of all the music that a student has not yet heard. 

Networking

Students at a music school find themselves surrounded by future employees and employers.  Virtually all musical work in the professional world is by recommendation and referral.  As such, the music campus maintains a current advantage, as the networks from the top music schools are one of the most powerful ways to get connected to local, national, and international scenes.  As an example, the University of North Texas’s Music program produces some of the finest musicians in the world.  Assuming a student played in the right groups and made the right connections at UNT, there is a ready-made community of alumni in every city in the world that can help a relocating musician find immediate work of some kind.  Without a connection to an international network, it can be much more time-consuming to get connected in a new community.  In 2009, it seems that Facebook, YouTube, and other informative/interactive web sites may have the capability to connect musicians who have otherwise never met; however, it does not appear that these sites can yet bridge the trust gap as strongly as the university-based relationships.  Over time, these types of social networking and connective web sites may provide a real substitute for the built-in networks associated with a music school.  At present, the networking advantage remains with the universities.  As existing alumni figure out how to use these tools, it will be interesting to see if the music college networks become even more powerful when matched with the Web 2.0 tools.

Feedback

The most relevant and continuing differentiator for university music programs is feedback.  To say it plainly, candid and detailed feedback is the main difference between the experience of aspiring performers who attend music school and those who do not.  The constant critique students get in auditions, lessons, performances and rehearsals help accelerate learning and toughen the performer in a way that is needed in the professional world.  Performers in any field get a lot of critique, so a thick skin is needed.  In the online world, there is no real parallel for all of this.  In the physical world, the only critique you get sometimes is the phone not ringing or not getting a second performance with a group.  At music school, the culture is to give and receive performance evaluations constantly.  While we can imagine interactive and high quality music lessons online in the near term, it’s pretty hard to imagine getting the same feedback for groups of musicians.  eSessions.com and other software enable web-based, multi-site musical collaboration (both time-shifted and in real time) - these types of over-the-net venues are mostly suited for replacement of the physical recording studio.  YouTube and other video sites are about the closest you can get to individual and group feedback and that process is very random.  While it feels good to get some “thumbs up” feedback from novices, professional grade music students mostly benefit from well thought-out and balanced feedback that is only available at universities.   

The Professional Standard

In the 1970’s, there was a vibrant recording scene in most major cities.  Local businesses needed jingles, while movie studios, TV shows, and so forth needed large numbers of studio musicians to compliment their messages.  Record labels existed at the local, regional, and national level, so the competition to get a record deal kept a steady stream of demo work available, which often used local “hired guns” to fill in critical skills or resource gaps.  We all know that this changed drastically in the 1980s when the synthesizer, drum machine, and later, affordable home studio and editing equipment became widely available.  For the last two decades at least, the market for “professional grade” performers has shrunk dramatically.  While music colleges continue to set the standard for what is the acceptable professional quality, the market for skills such as sight reading, interpretation for standard work, and so forth is decreasing. 

Implications

Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital, and others have pretty much proven that the youth of today are learning differently.  Students are downloading one example single for 99 cents instead of acquiring a vintage album in its entirety, viewing videos of performances for free, and reading artist biographies on Wikipedia.  I hope some researchers are actively exploring the pedagogical impacts of these changes.  What’s definitely true is that the “cost of learning” has changed, in that one no longer has to attend a great school to acquire the right information and content, or get exposed to interesting and skill-enhancing new music.  With an Internet connection and time, many of the core drivers for a music degree can be obtained - for free, without moving, and without investing years of your life in a degree plan.  What’s more, you can watch and listen to as many great performances and lectures as there are hours in the day, with no library hours and without waiting for that next guest lecturer to show up. 

The key question for universities is whether or not students can find all the right improvement ideas and information online.  The big value proposition for schooling has been - "you learn faster by spending money/time here".  Is that still true?  Given the current advantages of schools for networking and feedback, can that be translated into web-based alternatives?  If so, what can schools do?  Will the only music students in 10 years be the population of musicians who hope to teach or play classical music?  Can people learn without a guide?  Is access to content enough?

By Ken Accardi,   Sun, May 03, 2009

There’s a $19B silver bullet in the Obama stimulus package that provides incentives for doctors and hospitals to move to Electronic Medical Records and the deal is pretty sweet.  Bottom line is that if you implement this for your doctor’s office, the government will write you a check to pay for it.  There are lots of good things I’d do if I’d be totally reimbursed.  How about solar panels?  A hybrid car?   

The bottom line is that this is an incentive that is pretty much guaranteed to work - we will have Electronic Medical Records in a couple of years, and $19B will flow into the economy to pay for software, computers and consulting services. Yeah!

So how do people feel about this?  Well, the smart people at NPR, Kaiser Family Health and Harvard School of Public Health were curious about this too, so they surveyed 1,238 people to find out.  The results are in and 75 percent of respondents said that moving to electronic medical records was somewhat or very important.  Pretty good so far!  But then they asked whether this would lower health care costs and 70 percent said no.  In fact, 35 percent said they expected electronic medical records to increase health care costs.  Can’t win ‘em all…

At the end of the day, putting information in a computer doesn’t generally make things cheaper, and in the case of electronic medical records, the value will come when health information can be shared.  I attended the Health Information Management Systems Symposium (HIMMS) in Chicago early in April and the main message, not surprisingly, was “I can do your electronic medical record – pick me!”  But, happily the main topic of conversation among the health care information technology geeks was that it’s time to talk about interoperability.  So maybe we are stimulating some good thinking after all.  Way to go Obama!

Two of the big hits of the show were Microsoft and Google.  Now, nobody is generally surprised when Microsoft and Google make splashes in technology shows, but in health care this was somewhat of a first.  Both of these companies were there to talk about their offerings for Patient Health Record systems.  Google calls theirs Google Health, and Microsoft’s offering is called Microsoft Health Vault.  So what are these, and how do they relate to electronic medical records?

Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault are systems that allow patients (meaning all of us), to control our own health information.  We can sign up today and start sharing information about our health histories.  That’s all well and good, but who wants to type in their health history? Not me!  The better news is that you can connect to ever growing list of collaborators with Microsoft and Google and pull your information from there.  Maybe they’re onto something.  I asked one of the guys in the Microsoft booth how they were going to make money with this, and the answer I was given was “Nobody knew how to make money with the Internet in 1996, but eventually people figured it out.”  Of course many people learned how to lose money too…

I personally have a fairly optimistic view here, not only about how money can be made, but more importantly how healthcare can be changed for the better.  And the reason I’m writing about it here, is because the convergence of technologies talked about in Telemedia Strategies are key enablers for the transformation.  Check back in coming months for a series of visionary articles about this transformation.  I’ll give you a hint where this is going.  Rather than the doctor and the hospital being the central figures and venues in the way health care works, the patient will become the central figure and the home will become the venue. Stay tuned!

By Greg Lisovoy,   Mon, Mar 23, 2009

Welcome back to ‘Content Is Everything’!  Now I suppose some of you were thinking, I’m not coming back – I’m just somehow … here.  Well, that is quite alright actually and in fact hang tight, because it will be clear soon enough what we in this column are all about (hint:  content ;).

Remember last issue when we were discussing the rather digitally enhanced lives of our friends Dick and Jane?  They were eager recipients of some rather fun and diverse forms of content – I recall news, email (ok, not always fun), e-services and of course some very rich media in the form of audio and video entertainment. However, what really caught my attention was the mention of Short Codes and American Idol.

I’ll review the moment for you.

Jane received some news, or I guess you might say ads, regarding upcoming TV programming, because using her cell phone she had voted for an American Idol contestant on a prior show.

Hmm, voting, I think I understand that part, I’ve seen it on MTV when I pick my favorite videos.

How about the short codes, aka Common Short Codes (CSCs)? Why..Yes, I actually know what it means, and folks when you’re my age (over 30), that’s a little scary.  How do I know this stuff?

So, it immediately reminded me of an earlier time, a phase in my life when it was said that I just might be well , yes …"a “geek”.

Here’s how I remember it, because it was the first time I, myself, had any suspicion that I might be a little more technically aligned or inclined than the average Joe.  I was in college and my roommate

It was then, after the watch broke, that he turned to me with this devious tone of entrapment, and kind of jokingly said,  “ You wouldn’t happen to have one of those tiny like watchmaker screwdrivers would you?  I did.

“Yes” I replied not really thinking.  But once again, here was the scary part.  He then said, “Well, do you know where it is?” I almost cringed - in fact, I did know.

And not too quickly, especially after judging his already sideways glance, I responded with, ‘I think so, let me look’, and as I reached for the exact drawer and exact tray where it was kept, I added: ‘I think it was left in here after we moved in.'

Well  okay, not such a sad story after all, but  these days I sometimes get that same sheepish feeling when I realize  I know more about the terminology that goes along with gadgets like cell phones or even what a Short Code is. If I add to that my actually knowing how to cell phone vote, get some information about a product using my cell phone or even how to use my ‘numeric’ keypad to buy something then I must logically come to a sad realization. You can say it, I just might be a Geek?   

So maybe after all these years I might had better just seek my comfort zone and get used to it. After all , it’s not too often, that  anyone has  the audacity to ask me what I am doing right after one of these sometimes  intense number punching purchasing sessions  on my phone. From now on, I’ll just say, “I’m buying something “and assume they know and can even imagine the exciting and complex interchange I had just embarked upon called ‘Opt-in‘ marketing.  

But in case you don’t -   here’s what I know:

SMS , CSCs and the  world  of  ‘Opt-In’ Marketing

I assume you have become acclimated to the world of short messages or SMS . I know, the kids have that QWERTY stuff imprinted in their DNA, especially their finger DNA. We adults only have to remember the short part of Short Message Service. That’s what CSCs are all about.  And shortly,  I will get to the Opt-in part of this story. First, here’s the quick low down on CSCs.

CSCs are just short phone numbers, usually four to six digits, that cell phone subscribers use to send SMS messages to, in order to receive information, sports scores, weather alerts, or to participate in contests or receive merchant offers, coupons and even tickets. You usually hear or see the short code on a variety of media channels in both electronic and print media. These can be TV and radio ads, signage, even common retails items like cups, bags and tray liners are often used to advertise a number.

Do American Idol and MTV ring a bell?  Have you ever wondered how they get ALL those people to vote or respond?  People are becoming more and more accustomed to SMS and in the case of CSCs, because they are fast, convenient and easier to remember that phone numbers, CSCs have greatly increased our response to promotions. Finally, using the CSCs also puts us in control because you can customize the information that you want to receive.

CSCs are provided and managed by an ecosystem of companies and aggregators including the Common Short Code Administration (CSCA).   An aggregator is a company that is connected and approved to send SMS messages to at least one wireless carrier, and many aggregators are connected to several carriers.   Any company can use a CSC, but it must be obtained from this ecosystem by applying for a CSC and then submitting the CSC-based campaign or promotion to a wireless aggregator or carrier for review and testing.

So now if you accept that it’s all about convenience, let’s get to the Opt-In part.

Opt-In of course means by your choice and when it comes to selling, it’s an interesting scenario to me because of an interesting truth. Think of this question. Are you annoyed when people call you at home to try and sell you something? Most would say yes.  Now, how about an ad on radio or TV?  – not quite as annoying right?  So, that to me, is the essence of Opt-In Marketing – it is NOT annoying because it is our choice.

Using SMS, CSCs, the media power of campaigns, channels like MTV and American Idol, sellers can initiate an offer to purchase games, tones, apps  or even  coupons and tickets . All we have to do is send our SMS message to the CSC, wait for the offer to return in the body of the SMS, and reply to get some stuff. If we are not interested, do nothing. Quite amazing.

And what else?  Well, check this out. Using CSCs you are also able to receive very pointed information from the web about almost anything. That’s right! Here’s how and it’s called DOTGO.

DOTGO is one of the newer ways to leverage the power of a CSC and it works for virtually any person or company with a domain name. You, the phone user, armed with just your numeric keypad (and you thought your non-Smartphone was dumb :) will be able to send and receive information to and from any individual, company, or organization with an internet domain name.

Now, in case you think I am still joking, try it yourself - just send a text message starting with an internet domain name to the phone number DOTCOM (368266) .  Do it now.

1.       Compose a new text message to the phone number 368266, "D-O-T-C-O-M"

1. Type the internet domain name "google" as the body of the message.
2. Send the message and wait for a response.
3. You’ll get some instructions on what to do in the message

Ok now that you are an expert, there’s a DOT CSC for every domain DOTEDU (368338), DOTGOV (368468), DOTNET (368638), or DOTORG (368674) . There are probably more by now.

Is that too cool? And if I didn’t explain it enough, just go to this link for more information.

http://dotgo.com/publishers/?gclid=CLCJ-ZKu5JgCFRhhnAodLWzjcQ

Let’s wrap up with a question: When was the last time you went to a theater and managed to make it completely through the feature without some sort of ring, bell or vibration going off in your pocket?

Can’t remember? Well guess what, you just might be a geek! J

Thanks for stopping by and next time we are going to explore the ring tones, how they are made or better yet… how you can make them and what they are all about.

Stay connected!

Mon, May 04, 2009

Here we try to talk about how to best serve the customer, but many times it doesn't stop there.  Customers are an independent lot and sometimes they want us to help them help themselves (read that last part again).  So what about self-service?

From the customers’ perspective, going to the Internet is not the only place they want to manage their account. Remembering to pay a bill, update an address or change a profile doesn’t happen only when we are online….but anytime and anywhere that those random “I-forgot-to’s” pop up in our memories and thoughts.

The customer expectation and trend for “real time everything” is that they should be able to check that task off the list anytime and anywhere too.  The implication is that service providers need to provide self service capabilities everywhere linked by hand-off flows and relevancy.

It's not just customers driving this trend.  Companies across all industries are looking to expand their self-service capabilities.   No doubt many of you have been involved in many anxious corporate initiatives lately aiming to reduce costs. I don’t know about you, but the number of e-mails crossing my Outlook screen with the subject “Need to reduce calls to call centers by xx%” has been astounding.   This is not a new need - just the increasing pressure on all of our OPEX budgets given the dire economic times.

For a few years, the popular answer to that question was call center optimization. A thorough analysis of operations could find areas for process optimization, automation, training, CSR motivation and reorganization that will positively affect Average Handling Time (AHT) and First Call Resolution (FCR). This answer hasn’t gone away it’s just no longer the popular buzzword.

Today’s popular answer: call deflection is self service. Ah, if only our self service website was better then that will solve all our problems and reduce calls into care.   There continue to be many ways to improve online customer personal account management including:

• Benchmarking against best in class (both in and outside your industry)
• Studying the natural customer processes and mapping those back to operational processes to find areas for rationalization and optimization
• Analyzing channel usage by customer segment to improve design
• Leveraging real time customer feedback methods now on the market to feed continuous improvement
• Increased rapid prototyping and real customer testing for improvement
• User Experience improvements
• Don’t forget driving self service adoption through all external communications
• And reliable hand-off’s from self service to care or retail……

Which brings me back to the point of this story – customers want to reduce those tasks and Outlook reminders wherever they are. They may be on the street and a storefront reminds to them to check on a problem. An SMS or text reminder of their account balance encourages them to pay a bill at that moment.

A successful self service strategy looks at how to give the customer the opportunity to interact, buy things, solve problems and manage their account by any means, including:

• Popping in a store (without the queues or explanations to staff) through automated kiosks and drop-off/pick-up bars
• Creative vending machines
• Good old fashion IVR
• Online
• How about self service widgets on other sites and affiliates that your customers regularly visit?
• Via the handset itself
• Call to Text (visual displays and proactive text reminders to take action but please, please with a link or shortcut to actually do it)

The operational success of that self service strategy then depends on the quality of the process and natural flows presented to the customer especially between channels. Just as we as an industry are striving to make different channels aware of real time customer activity (e.g. the CSR has the information that a calling customer has just upgraded their service online)….to reduce more calls into care, those processes must be tested and if an action is suspended in one channel, the customer should be able to finish it in another. 

In summary: Self service must be mobile, easy and instant – just like we want it.

Mon, Mar 23, 2009

Over the last months I have been observing from afar what a lot of ‘experts’ are calling the next ‘revolution in the entertainment industry’, but I can’t help thinking that we have been here before!

As the drive for cinema audiences becomes more competitive in the entertainment industry we are seeing studios and distributors trying to differentiate themselves in this media space and attract people to the Cinema. One interesting example of this is the re-emergence of the 3D film.

The 3D genre has been around almost as long as movies themselves.  Would it surprise you to know the first attempt to commercialise 3D was back in 1922? The film was called ‘The Power of Love’ so this is not new. We have had resurgences of these phenomena in the early 1950 and then in the 1980 but none of these attempts to drive us to watch films through the bespectacled focus of 3D Glasses has worked up thus far.

In the whole history of 3D presentations, many ways to convert existing 2D images for 3D presentation have been tried, but none have survived. However with combination of digital source material and cost effective digital post processing a new wave of conversion products are now available and we may see the ‘3Ding’ of many old favorites on our screens again.

We are now seeing multiple films produced in 3D through different techniques such as InTru 3D and IMAX features filmed with the Reality Camera System. Some recent examples of this are ‘Monsters v Aliens’ from Dreamworks Animation’s (presented through what they term the first ‘InTru 3D) and ‘Jonas Brother’: The 3D Concert experience which is a Disney Digital 3D and in IMAX3-D release. So the studios are getting behind this indeed.

DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg expects there to be 12 to 18 3D feature films by 2010.  So is this going to catch on?  The authors view is that although digital distribution and digital projection systems enable this type of innovation, it is playing at the edges of the media and is one way of getting the audience to the Cinema rather than watching at home.

There are some attempts to create a 3D home market but this is difficult and would require you to effectively have two copies of the film on one disk (something we are not equipped for yet) or use a set of anaglyphic paper glasses--the kind with blue/red or green/red lenses—which are included with the DVD case.  Not for me I am afraid.

This is another example of driving us, the audience, from a ‘broadcast media’ to a ‘narrowcast media’ recipient, where different formats and channels are segmenting the audience into small focused channel groups and the overall audiences for each of  these techniques is in fact narrowing!

So back to my original question 3D or not 3D?….Not 4 me, see you in the next edition.

Mon, Mar 23, 2009

Revenue assurance and fraud management has become a strategic imperative for communications service providers in the current down economy. According to lightreading.com the worldwide annual costs of fraud to carrier companies amount to anything between $70-$100 Billion, and telecom fraud is the single biggest cause of revenue loss for wireless operators. According to FINA, a leading fraud and security industry association, operators lose as much as 6-8% of their annual revenue to fraud. With current tightening of household budgets, 6% is not a number anyone can ignore.  This is above and beyond the costs of handling data breaches and insider threats - not to mention damages to the brand.

It is therefore not too surprising that while IT budgets have gone way down as a result of the global downturn, security budgets are actually up. In fact, security budgets always go up. It used to be primarily because good security is a must-have in order to operate a business. Later, the main reason became various regulations that operators had to comply with. It is very tough to go back to a regulator and tell them that you did not comply with mandates and hence had a data breach. But today, this is coupled with the third reason – the need to grow revenue by cutting down on the loss due to fraud.

There is one unfortunate behavioral pattern involving security and compliance. Because the last 5 years have been so dominated by regulations and compliance, many security organizations have put compliance ahead of security. While this is obviously wrong, it is very easy to see why this happens – it's just human nature. Good security is an amorphous thing and is not well defined. Compliance requirements on the other hand, are either pretty well defined or at least there is usually an external entity that interprets the regulation to a form that you can just “follow orders” - and people prefer to be told the scope of what to do than have to figure it out themselves. Because compliance became a main issue at an executive level and because it is easier to address than good security, many companies (sometimes unknowingly) addressed compliance and not security.

Of course, the two are very tightly related and there is a lot of commonality. However, it is very important to remember that good security DOES imply compliance while compliance with regulation (internal or external) DOES NOT imply good security. This may not be obvious – but is a well known fact to all security practitioners.

As an example, every year SANS publishes yearly predictions. Right at the beginning of the year SANS posted a prediction by David Hoelzer that a major corporation who is fully compliant with PCI/DSS will experience a major data breach (http://www.sans.edu/resources/securitylab/2009_predictions.php). And indeed, as described in (http://www.enclaveforensics.com/Blog/files/1c297703cb06cddea9b71a4b055adf03-21.html), Heartland Payment Systems announced that they experienced a major compromise, even though they are PCI/DSS compliant. [PCI/DSS is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which defines technical and operational requirements that were created to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud, hacking and various other security vulnerabilities and threats].

OK – great – so let's be secure, not just compliant. The question is how to translate this very simple sentence to practical measures – and that's not that simple. It is a combination of good management/governance with technical best practices. Managers prefer compliance projects because they are very well defined – you have a target that is fairly clear and you know how to track progress. Best practices get around most of this issue – they give you a very concrete set of instructions that you can follow while their focus is usually wider than a single compliance requirement. There are a few good sources for best practices including Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG - http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/index.html) and standards published by the Center for Internet Security (http://www.cisecurity.org/). 

Another good approach is to take multiple regulations and compliance requirements TOGETHER and generalize them all into one set of instructions, and implement that as a project rather than having to deal with multiple different projects all addressing one regulation. If you add to that good management and oversight/governance (and that is not a trivial thing), not only will you be far more secure but the project itself will cost less than the aggregate cost of the multiple projects.