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Lessons for eComm “Lightning Talk” speakers
Earlier this year at eComm 2009, I gave my “lightning talk”. At the end of the day, I have to accept that I did a terrible job. An eComm “Lightning Talk” is a 5-minute presentation. My problem was, I really just condensed a 15 minute talk down to five minutes. While I did cut out a lot from the larger talk, I didn’t focus the presentation enough. I practiced and practiced the talk and successfully completed the presentation in five-minutes, but it tried to present too much information across too many directions.
If I give another such lightning talk, I will focus the entire thing down to one main point. In the above talk, I waste too much time on the “how” (the implementation) without enough focus on the “what” (the result). This is of course because I’m a geek and I find the “how” really interesting. But what is significant about the research I was presenting here is really the “what” - and I failed miserably in getting that point across. In fact, what this research was about was very much in tune with what Lee Dryburgh likes to call intention-based economics:
What we care about with intention based economics is human psychology and behaviour, both individual and in aggregate. … what we need to build for is access to ever more personal information, i.e. about the human behind the endpoint. Privacy does not exist looking long-term. Ever more personal information is the new currency, which underlies intention-based economics, and people will increasingly trade it for free access to services.
… telecom networks receive vastly more human attention coming in from the edges and transit much more “intention data” than Google, in the form of telecom signaling. But it’s latent, not acted upon and thrown away. They actually throw away their most precious asset and plan to continue charging for their long-term least worthy asset (voice transmission).
This research looked at “intention data”. Instead of throwing away this telecom signaling information, as the telecom companies currently do, this research used the data to study actions of the “human behind the endpoint” to include historical analysis as well as making predictions, i.e. determining intent.
The signaling data of who is talking to who, combined with their locations, recent movements, and so on, can be used to predict future actions (intent). For example, a certain flurry of a certain kind of activity might suggest that a group of friends are probably going to go see a movie together. Advertisers would be interested in such fore-knowledge, one would think.
I think it’s particularly interesting that we were able to do this in the real world, using real phones available today, and doing so without the user’s active involvement and without the permission or participation of the carrier, i.e. as an independent third-party with no special relationship to the carrier. We did it by supplying users with modified edge-devices (phones) that provided “ambient awareness” streams. These phones didn’t require GPS - we used cell tower and bluetooth proximity for location data. We didn’t need a very large sample to get meaningful results. Everything we did in this research could be done by the carriers and of course they may be doing it already and we wouldn’t know. This research shows how practical intention-based economics is and that it may not be as far off or as abstract as we think.
This research basically turned humans into “sensors” emitting data about their location and, more importantly, who they are talking to (and texting with), all as a surreptitious side-effect of carrying around a mobile phone and performing their every day routines. In general, besides location, other behaviors are very powerful indicators (behaviors like “what are they taking pictures of?”). A single data point may not provide much insight, but when viewed over time, and in relation to other human actions and behaviors, it becomes incredibly powerful. With this power comes responsibility. As Lee says “Privacy does not exist looking long-term.” This research doesn’t attempt to answer that question. Rather, it explicitly intends to raise awareness that it must be addressed and, given the results we were able to obtain in this research in fairly short time and with relatively modest resources, it needs to be considered sooner rather than later.
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We did this research as contract work - if you’d like to learn more or perform similar research contact us here: sales@telEvolution.com
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SabSe Technologies Acquires Jaxtr
I find it sort of interesting that I had a post about Jaxtr sitting in my drafts, from back in December 2008. Back then, the one-time darling of VoIP whose investors included some of those investing in Skype before it, had reported that it had laid off 13 workers (about 30% of its workforce) and that the much heralded CEO, Konstantin Guericke, had stepped down.
That draft was titled “Jaxtr revisited” and referred to the company’s burn rate:
Jaxtr raised $10 million in their Series A in August 2007. In September 2007, I said they would burn through that within a year, and it looks like they did, because they had to take another $10 million in June 2008.
In that post, I was highlighting some potential trouble spots ahead for Jaxtr, including the fact that they’d soon need even more capital and there would be challenges raising it in this climate, especially with a continued “burn cash now for some future unspecified opportunity later” business model. I also discussed little details like the potential for rampant fraud, once they start charging. I never got around to publishing that draft.
Of course we don’t know if these things contributed to the sale of Jaxtr to SabSe Technologies, Inc. (www.SabSeBolo.com) announced yesterday, for an undisclosed sum, but it seems like they could have.
SabSe was co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia, an original co-founder of Hotmail. They are in the free conference calling business. All the access numbers listed on the website are in India. A large percentage of Jaxtr users are also in India and in Pakistan. I’m guessing SabSe makes money on termination and are hoping to use Jaxtr’s local numbers, in some related manner, perhaps expanding their conference calling services beyond India.
Nokia handset sales down 19 percent
Alec Saunders provides his analysis of Nokia’s recent report that profits fell 90 percent in the most recent quarter. I agree with Alec’s points. I would add that this news fulfills my predictions (here and here) that it’s not about the hardware. If it were, Apple would already be in trouble. The iPhone doesn’t compare on a hardware level to Nokia’s high-end phones. As I said before: Apple isn’t winning because their phones are better. Apple is winning because the experience is better. iPhone has opened up a whole new world of uses for a mobile phone to ordinary consumers. People are doing things they never dreamed of doing before on a mobile phone (even if these things were technically possible on the phone they had before).
Nokia is playing a hardware one-upsmanship game, while Apple has swooped in on the flank and utterly redefined the handset landscape.
And the really bad news for Nokia is that even if they are able to realize they are playing the wrong game, they are in no position to be any good at the new game that Apple has created. Apple knows how to build good-enough hardware. More importantly, they know how to market it and they have their own distribution - all things out of Nokia’s reach. And the nail in the coffin? The App Store. Not only do they not have one, but Nokia doesn’t own enough of the parts to create one, nor do they have the expertise for operating one.
Nokia’s numbers will continue to slide as the DIY niche continues to narrow. I’m not smart enough to know how to get them out of this situation, but I can make one suggestion: Make your platform the easiest to build for. Get rid of “Symbian Signed” and let a third-party app marketplace thrive. Don’t make it easier to get certs - get rid of certs entirely! This is one place Nokia can immediately leapfrog Apple - not follow, but lead. Get rid of approval and let anybody write code and let the market, the community, rate the apps, and let end-users decide which ones they want to install based those community ratings.
iSpykee - Open-source Spykee for iPhone
I finally finished making my previously mentioned iPhone hack for Spykee into a form I could release for public consumption. It’s still not perfect, but at least I’ve removed external dependencies so it can be installed without too much difficulty.
Spykee wifi robot interface for iPhone and iPod Touch
Basically you run the “controller” software on your LAN (the same LAN as the Spykee robot) and then use your iPhone to control and interact with your Spykee robot from anywhere.
The “controller” software is available as open-source and can be used on Mac OS X or Linux/UNIX systems. As far as I know, this is the first release of an open-source implementation of the (binary) Spykee protocol. This software is provided in “C” under the BSD license, so it could be used as a basis for other home-grown Spykee applications, including motion detection, stealthy audio snooping etc.
iSpykee currently supports moving the robot, by touching areas of the video image: left, right, forward, and back; changing the robot motor speed (”Turbo mode”); turning the headlight on and off; taking a snapshot of what Spykee is seeing; turning “Video surveillance” (motion detector) mode on and off. It also supports a “low bandwidth” mode that can be useful when using iSpykee from a slow network connection (such as Edge).
Please check it out and join the iSpykee Google Group.
Update on my eComm presentation
This has not made it to the eComm site yet, but here’s what my 5-minute lightning talk will be about:
Mobile phones are practically ubiquitous. Everyone carries them and most of them are turned on and connected 24×7. Today’s mobile phones, even the least expensive ones, have sensors, spare cycles, and connectivity. These resources can be applied to a wide variety of Social Telemetry Applications, to powerful, and potentially even troubling, effect. We present findings of a real-world deployment of such a system.
And here’s a sneak-peak of the talk:
eComm presentation Wednesday, March 4, 4:55PM Salon E
I look forward to seeing you there.
Nokia N97 - when will they get that it’s not just about a touchscreen?
Om has a nice post about the forthcoming Nokia N97 Superphone to be released “sometime in the second quarter of 2009.” He says:
As for the 5800 Xpress, a friend of mine recently brought one to the U.S. and after I played around with it for an hour, my response was meh! The touch was OK, just like it’s OK on any other device, but it’s not as responsive as the iPhone. So no, it’s not an iPhone killer, not by any means.
The N97 however, seems, like a worthy competitor… it will be sold in the U.S., where it’s going to cost $650; it will go on sale in June 2009…
I agree with these comments, but I would add that none of these other mobile players, whether carriers or phone manufacturers, seem to understand what battle they are fighting. They seem to think it’s about touch screens and hardware. Even Om emphasizes the touch screen issue:
The very fact that Nokia is only now getting out touchscreen phones shows that as a company it is stuck in bureaucratic quicksand, with a culture of consensus that makes it difficult to respond to new challenges. Nokia — and I have been following them for a while — has become one of those companies that, much like Microsoft, is good with announcements, not so great with the follow-up.
Stuck in a “bureaucratic quicksand” perhaps, but it’s really more than that. Nokia is selling just another piece of hardware. At one time, that mattered, because that’s how the industry worked. Apple changed all that and nobody has really grasped the magnitude of it yet. Apple changed everything about the mobile landscape. It may seem the same, but it’s not. It seems few people really appreciate what happened. That’s good for Apple - bad for the all their competitors. As long as Apple’s would-be competitors continue to respond in 20th century ways to the new 21st century mobile phone landscape, Apple will continue to run roughshod over the industry.
Nokia is offering a Do-it-yourself solution, where users have to bring their own carrier, service plan and applications. That’s never going to be an “iPhone killer” because it’s not the same market - it’s not the same battle at all.
The problems for Nokia and any would-be “iPhone killer” don’t end with simply realizing the situation they’re in. Once they realize it, they will also realize they can’t compete on the same playing field. Apple owns the hardware, the distribution, and the service plan. (I know people get an AT&T plan with iPhone, but it might as well not be. It is an iPhone plan.) Nokia can’t do this. They don’t have distribution or control over the service plans. The carriers can’t do this. They don’t have Apple’s expertise at controlling the hardware. And most importantly, none of them have the App Store.
It’s not about the hardware. If it were, Apple would already be in trouble. Compared to many other mobile phones, including many of those from Nokia, the iPhone is a piece of junk, hardware-wise. Apple isn’t winning because their phones are better. Apple is winning because the experience is better. People can actually use the iPhone. Ordinary non-technical people are doing things they have never done before on a mobile phone - things they would never do on a Nokia or other DIY solution.
Nokia may do fine in the DIY niche they’re in - but they will never have anything approaching an “iPhone killer” unless they make a bunch of acquisitions and change who there are.
Spykee iPhone Hack
At left you’ll see my first cut at a rudimentary Spykee mini-console for iPhone. If you’re familiar with the standard PC or Mac Spykee console app, you’ll recognize many of the functions.
This app only implements a sub-set of the full PC and Mac consoles. I basically wanted to get some minimal functionality working before going too crazy with the UI and more esoteric features. Here’s what it will do:
(1) Move the robot, using the left, right, forward, and back buttons. Each press of the button moves a fixed amount.
(2) Turn the camera LED light on and off.
(3) Tell Spykee to take a snapshot.
(4) Turn ‘Video surveillance’ mode on and off.
Most importantly, the app shows you on the iPhone what the Spykee is seeing. It does not stream video in this version. It updates the “viewport” image periodically when the scene changes (or on demand with the ‘Update’ button). This keeps bandwidth usage down and still gives you a view of what the robot is seeing — and it even works on slow Edge connections.
It’s got another feature to help when controlling Spykee from a slow iPhone connection, where using the ‘Resolution’ button, you can flip between a lower resolution (but much less data) image and the normal full resolution Spykee view. This, and other features of the app, are demonstrated in the video below.
I made a video to show that, while this is still a hack, and is not ready to distribute by any means, it does actually work in real life, with a live robot. If I just provided the above screenshot, there’s no way to tell if it’s just a mock-up.
The video shows some of the basic functions as well as limitations. Even with those limitations, it is pretty cool (if I do say so myself), to be able to sign in and view what Spykee is seeing from anywhere, with just the iPhone without lugging around a PC or Mac, and even on a slow Edge connection.
UPDATE: Finally released. See: http://mrblog.org/2009/03/15/ispykee-open-source-spykee-for-iphone/
100 Million Apps Installed from iPhone App Store
Steve Jobs today reported that in the first 60 days, iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded more than 100 million applications from the App Store.
My guess is that’s more mobile phone application installations than all mobile phones combined, certainly for the same 60-day period, and perhaps for the life of the mobile phone industry.
What do you think? Does anybody have numbers?
Why iPhone is not “boring”
I’ve seen several comments and posts recently suggesting that iPhone is just another boring story.
I believe an historic day passed us by last week. Sure, Apple opening up the iPhone App Store received some press, but I haven’t yet read anything that really “gets” the significance of this event. There’s all kinds of moaning and groaning about the quality of apps, the price etc. and while there may be truth to these gripes, the fact most people are missing is that, unless Apple screws it up in some big way, the world changed last week.
I consider it as potentially significant as the effect the introduction of WWW and Mosaic had on the Internet. Last week, Apple changed everything about the mobile phone ecosystem and I don’t think very many people noticed - yet. That world will never be the same, just like the Internet was never the same after HTTP.
The other players, whether device makers or carriers, are not even on the same planet - it seems like they aren’t even aware of the situation. They aren’t even asking the right question, to say nothing of having the right answer. There are hundreds of millions of mobile phones with Java on them - and nobody knows it. Most people have no idea how to buy anything for their phone beyond ringtones (if they even know how to do that). Their phones probably have the capability to run apps - but there is no place to get them. Well, or say in the case of Symbian phones, there are too many places to get them.
Apple is changing all that with the iPhone store. And gripe all you want about the warts of the current apps or the prices or whatever, all that mises the point. Ordinary people now know how to obtain apps (free or otherwise), how to install them - perhaps more significantly, the entire idea of adding apps to a phone is now “normal” - it’s now part of the collective consciousness.
And developers have a place to put them, not “yet another place”, but the place, the one and only place. I always said iPhone was about iTunes from the start.
Of course this is about distribution and execution - Apple has the right capabilities to create this “perfect storm”. Unlike carriers, Apple knows how to build and manage software and services (can you say iTunes?). Unlike other device makers, Apple has their own distribution and marketing - they don’t need to rely on the carriers to market their device.
The future of Mobile is now Apple’s to lose and the rest of the mobile space better be worried.
Execs provide (more) excuses for why users aren’t interested in video-calling
Continuing in my recent theme regarding the dead end that is talking-heads video-calls, we find the VP of Nokia’s Nseries speaking in Barcelona attempting to explain why customer’s haven’t embraced the feature even though it has been available since 2005. According to techdigest.tv in Customers didn’t embrace video-calling as they’re vain Nokia’s exec said:
Users “aren’t interested” in video-calling, mainly because they find the angle a handset must be held at for the best quality video-call “isn’t very flattering”.
UPDATE: in short, he was saying people don’t use videoconferencing because it makes them look fat. How funny to read this today, since this is exactly what I said just a couple of weeks ago as my top two reasons why talking-heads video-calling will never take off:
- real people are not attractive - we are not movie stars or models. people on TV are not normal. we are not used to seeing normal people on “TV” (in the form of real-time video).
- we are not directors. we do not know how to properly produce video content, how to light it, frame it etc
Other excuses given by Nokia for why video-calling hasn’t been embraced included:
“[The technology] hit the market too early”
“There wasn’t enough support from carriers”
“The marketing push wasn’t big enough”
We have seen this all before. Video-calling has repeatedly failed to meet expectations. And each time we see the experts grasping at straws as to why. Comments like “maybe it will still be a success” from Nokia’s Sari Ståhlberg suggest that we’re sure to see it repeat again. Instead of learning, they believe their own spin and use the excuses like the above to throw more good money after bad on this fundamentally broken idea - video-calling is a classic case of a “solution in search of a problem”. It’s irresistibly cool - unfortunately, it’s a money sink without a market
