>>>One k-12 analogy to Robb's referenced Intranet K-log of "higher yields of relevant links/data for customer service inquiries" is our mlk FiRiWi (Find it. Read it. Write it.) log, an application of Manila blogs to create student workspaces for finding, storing, reading, paraphrasing, rearranging, writing, revising, editing and publishing research.  Late this year, our 6th. grade students began to use FiRiWi for I-Search projects.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
8:35:57 PM    comment   

It's probably too early to declare a comeback for Bluetooth. But recent developments indicate that the long-awaited arrival of Bluetooth may finally be upon us. Will it gain widespread adoption? That will hinge on the degree to which carriers and manufacturers continue to incorporate it into their newest designs. Without that support, Bluetooth could toil in obscurity for a long, long time.

8:28:27 PM    comment   

His main topic (he wanders):  Performance marketing and News.  Book reviews and book sales.  Movie reviews and ticket sales.  Those are the simple tie-ins. 

Here is the uncharted area:  granular reports (below article levels) on the conflict in Kashmir and packaged background material on the conflict (what Rahul Dave did on my weblog in regards to Kashmir was great background -- but there aren't always very smart people on hand to provide this). 

My view is that people are smart and they want to learn.  That's why news organizations should provide the background on important topics.  The Web allows news organizations to package it.  Interview video or audio clips.  Maps.  Interview notes.  Packaged research reports on the topic.  Packaged access to closed feeds on breaking info on the topic.  All the info a reporter digs up is valuable.  Outsource its development to a smart weblogger.  Would I buy that?  Yes.  Would you buy it?  Yes, if you want to know everything you can about the topic.  If you want to be smart when you talk about a topic -- this applies to blogging (rather than shoot from the hip, get smart about a topic and then blog it).

I know that as an a Forrester analyst, I interviewed 40 companies for each report.  Almost all of that data was lost in producing the report.  That's lost opportunity.  People will pay for this.  In a research setting, it is worth $10k a year per client.  Online it is probably worth $9.95.   But over 100k customers, this is worth $1 m. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
8:18:19 PM    comment   

Measuring 17 x 32 x 5 mm, the Elara Bluetooth application module is based on BrightCom's new IntelliBLUEú BIC2102 application processor, along with an RF module and up to 1MB of flash memory. This "daughter board" design easily connects to a customer's system board via a system connector and is compact enough to be built into a small product, such as an HID peripheral, serial dongle, host or device USB dongle or a PCM/CVSD voice module for an audio headset and gateway.

6:02:35 PM    comment   

Boingo partners with TSI, a cellular clearinghouse: Boingo's partnership with TSI, announced today, will allow Boingo to build a closer relationship with cell companies. TSI works to settle fees across cell networks, allowing seamless roaming. Boingo works to integrate wireless hot spot networks into their single-login, single-bill system. Cell companies that wanted to offer hot spot access as part of their plans will be able to work via TSI for billing and settlement, an important step in Boingo's expansion and the further integration of cell and Wi-Fi.

5:37:37 PM    comment   

While writing my thoughts about SOAP being a first-tier technology, I hoped that someone would catch up on it and think through my ERP example. People did this and responded to me by email: What if the customer wants to be notified as soon as the order is fulfilled? What if the manufacturer wants to notify the vendor or shipper that the order isn't ready to be picked up on the planned date? Isn't this something that calls for callbacks?

Maybe, but do we really need protocol-based callbacks for this? I guess not, but let me state my reasons for believing this:

The supply-chain management examples from above describe two new business cases: 

• Notify the customer that his order is about to be sent
• Notify vendor and shipper that this order is delayed from the originally planned date

The handling of these would really be possible with SOAP callbacks - that is, if there were a thing like this.

But what happens if or when your customer's VIPs call your staff from their mobile phone while travelling through the country? My co-CEO does this all the time: He spends a lot of time on the road and to do something reasonable with this time, he calls the various vendors to talk about some issues and maybe places some orders as well.

In this case, the vendor wouldn't get the callback-pointer to which they should send their SOAP messages when the orders are about to be fulfilled.

So, the point is: using callbacks to map business processes to a procotol will trash your supply chain as soon as you accept orders by out-of-band channels like a phone or email. Oh, this isn't a problem for you as you don't accept orders by phone anymore because all your customers already switched to placing them via Web Services? Thought so ...

So, I guess that Web Services will just be yet another means of triggering a business process but you will still have to support all your other channels like fax, phone or email.

So, let's look again at the "notify customers of order fulfillment"-business process. How can this one be designed? I guess it goes something like this: check our database for the chosen means of notification for this customer and do whatever is appropriate: send and email, send a fax, ...

Every time I talk about business processes I somehow start to sound like those three-letter-company consultants who don't care too much about the implementation, so I better go back to technology again:

You have this ERP application which allows your staff to enter an order and you now implemented an additional SOAP endpoint so that your customers can place orders automatically. In any case, you will want to send a confirmation back to your customer as soon as the orders is about to be shipped.

You will quite certainly also have a database which specifies how your customer wants to be contacted. This however is a second-tier decision which has nothing to do with either the GUI or the SOAP endpoint in the first tier. No matter how the order enters yours system, the way of contacting your customer should be the same. At the end of the day, this means that you will have the customer's email address, fax number, etc. in your database. As you also allow notification by SOAP web services, guess where the SOAP endpoint address for the customer should go ...

So, once again, do we really need protocol-supported callbacks to make Web Service based business processes a reality? I still guess not. Quite the other way round, they will probably make things worse.

Will we need callbacks for LAN-based applications? Yes, I guess so - but this isn't a problem because you will be using a real distributed application protocol like .NET Remoting, DCOM (and COM+), RMI (and EJBs) or CORBA for these parts of your apps.

5:04:00 PM    comment   

Today, Joel posted some strong opinions about SOAP:

The real problem with SOAP is that it's a completely inadequate remoting system. It doesn't have events (which makes it useless for large classes of applications). It doesn't support references (ditto).

Well, I guess at least for .NET there's Remoting which takes care of this issues.

That said, I have to affirm you that I Like Web Services.

I just see the applications somewhat differently than some people want you to see them. For me, a SOAP service only provides an interface to some backend tiers, compareable somewhat to the GUI of a classic application. Let's say you write an ERP software: what services would you publish via SOAP endpoints? Your complete internal object model or parts similar like the ones which are accessible for your users by using the GUI?

I guess one should only publish services which have a somewhat closer resemblance to business processes (BP). That is, for example, Google published a SOAP API which allows you to access the same BP which you would normally access using your web browser (it's "fetch a list of pages which match my query"). Google definitely wouldn't allow you to access their internal object models or databases.

So, back to the ERP system. In this case, you'd probably publish interfaces that allows the automated entry of orders by identified customers. Again, that's something which would normally be done using your GUI - but this time with the instant benefit that your customers can now place the orders themselves.

When now thinking about Joel's comment again, I guess the question is: Are events necessary in Web Services?. I guess they aren't. Web Services are fine for cross-company computing and cross-platform computing (ever used a DCOM component from an application developed in Perl running on Linux?). For intra-company, LAN based computing with its rich GUIs and fixed sets of application development platforms, there are better ways.

The fine thing is that you can use whatever your platform offers: Running on .NET you have the feature-rich System.Runtime.Remoting and Enterprise Services, on Java there's RMI, EJB and such. If you're still on VB 6 or VC++, go for DCOM/COM+ and if you want cross-platform you could also choose CORBA. The best thing about it: You can still use SOAP endpoints to publish entry points for your business logic, no matter what distributed application platform you chose for implementing them inside your LAN.

To summarize my point: most of the time, a SOAP web service should be a first tier implementation - just like a GUI. An exception can be seen in the integration of programming languages which couldn't work together before. But that's a different story ...

5:00:51 PM    comment   

>>>Beefy bodyguards guided Klein into the dimmed cabin of his midnight blue Agusta A119 Koala (helicopter). Within moments, it lifted off, joining other airborne limousines darting over the hazy skyline. Klein is one of hundreds of new helicopter commuters in Sao Paulo (the city has 250 heliports, in contrast NYC has 10), the world's fourth-largest metropolis, where the rich and powerful soar high above exploding urban ills.

En route to his mansion in Alphaville -- a walled city where the privileged live behind electrified fences patrolled by a private army of 1,100 -- Klein quietly stared out the window. His pilot clipped low over the honeycomb-like slums and clogged highways below. More than halfway through a nine-minute commute, the copter grazed over a cluster of inner-city prisons. A squad of machine-gun-toting guards stood near a perimeter wall, their gaunt faces squinting upward as Klein's copter buzzed by.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
4:41:50 PM    comment   

Time spent. 

20 phone calls:  A day (including voice mail tag).

200 e-mails:  3-4 hours (relevant e-mails only, including inefficient repetitive replies due to a lack of viewable archiving).

50 weblogs with 10 posts a day (500 entries):    20 minutes to scan.  20 minutes to post responses.

Finding information. 

Phone calls:  Limited to voice mail inbox.  No record of previous conversations.  Limited to personal interactions. 

E-mail:  Limited to personal e-mail only.  No public archive.  Most e-mail tools have horribly slow search features. 

Weblogs (K-Logs):  Internet search (Google on the Web or Intranet) extremely fast.  Leverages the contributions of the entire corporation.

Departing employees. 

Phone calls:  Lost.

E-mail:  Lost.

Weblogs:  Archived for posterity. 

I think what we are developing here is an efficiency hierarchy of communication.  For sharing knowledge with a large group of constantly shifting individuals; weblogs win hands down.  For introductions (invitations to further interaction) and ongoing interactions with specific individuals, e-mail works great.  For immediate resolution of a complicated situation, use the phone. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] [OMJ: My Organization]
4:39:10 PM    comment   

Question:  And what about Internet connectivity? Do you see it through the cable wire, or the telephone wire, or some other wire?

Diller:  I think it's going to come from lots of places. I think that, from what I have seen, cable-modem penetration is growing, is efficient, people love it as a service. But it is wildly overpriced. It racks in at forty dollars a month, and the profits are huge. But the customer likes it. You would have thought that the telephone company would be right there from the first hour of the first day offering high-speed connection. I don't know where you live, but in New York City try and get a DSL connection in your house. It took me three months, and every part of the experience was a train wreck. So they have not done that. And cable has.

Question:  But what is government's proper role? Should government be involved and engaged and policing some of these mergers?

Diller:  Absolutely. I mean, I actually think that there is a real argument to be made for separating production and distribution, particularly when you have a situation where if A.T. & T. and Comcast combine twenty-two million subscriptions and Time Warner has twelve million, there'll be complete concentration one way or the other from the cable and pipe distribution. I believe there'll be complete concentration in the sky to compete with it. Because I think that's the only way you'll have any effective competition. So, when you've got that kind of power, distribution power[~]and, by the way, even if you get competition, it is still going to be a business in which the margins are extremely good[~]then I don't believe you should also have the ability to own programs as well, except in a very minor way.

Question:  Let me make sure I understand that. So Comcast, which owns, say, QVC ... or AOL Time Warner, which owns cable and Warner Bros. and other network and television assets, should be asked to divest? Is that what you're saying?

Diller:  Yeah. We were recently trying to look at the effects of all of these things. We looked at programs that were owned by cable M.S.O.s [multiple-system operators] and programs that were not owned by M.S.O.s. And the differences of preferences were so categorical in every case[~]the disadvantage of anybody who has an unaligned program service, as against an aligned program service, is so glaring.

Question: So where do you see the impact of technology? We've seen the impact of technology on the music business. Do you see it actually enhancing the movie business?

Diller:  Well, I would hope that the movie companies do not act as the music companies have[~]they were protective and said that they were going to stand on the railroad track with their arm out while technology ran them over. But the movie business is engaged now in figuring it out before it happens to them[~]before you get the digital files up there and able to be downloaded with any speed and with any clarity, before that develops. And I'm hopeful that the film business will get out there with products that will keep tech piracy at reasonable bay. I think that's achievable. I mean, you think about the film business[~]technology has been the movie business's greatest friend ever. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] [OMJ: My Organization]
4:36:40 PM    comment   

>>>Still, the part of this growth that finds its way into company profits is in greater doubt. America[base ']s productivity growth may have risen, but the fruits have so far gone mainly to workers and consumers, rather than to profits.

Yet the Fed would probably be happy to see some increase in inflation. America[base ']s GDP deflator, the broadest measure of inflation, rose by less than 0.5% at an annual rate over the past two quarters, its lowest for almost 50 years. This is getting close to deflation.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
4:32:05 PM    comment   

>>>As anyone who has spent any time with a major will tell you, these are immensely profitable businesses that have absolutely no inclination to change anything they are doing--ever. Record companies make obscene amounts of money manufacturing little silver disks, sending them out through distributors that they own, and getting retailers to push them over the counter at $16 a pop (and paying those retailers a pittance in the process). A truly great business.<<< 

Frankly, this is exactly the kind of business that will continue to face consumer backlash in the new economy.  They are inefficient and have erected artificial barriers to competition in order to charge excessive prices.  Until albums arrive on my hard-drive at $2-3 a pop, they won't get any of my business.  Nothing in between works.  This may take ten years, but in the meantime I will continue to use Kazaa. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
4:30:09 PM    comment   

>>>But until now there has been no holistic approach to networks [~] just efforts to make storage or servers more efficient on their own, Horn says. And though the recession has shrunk technology budgets, financial constraints often encourage this kind of enhancement to efficiency. "The biggest demand for automation often occurs in economic downturns," he says. "I can't go to a company that doesn't say, 'I need to automate. I've got to get my costs down.'"

To some extent, computers and other machines already "sweat," after two generations of automating blue-collar jobs. And technology keeps climbing the occupational ladder. Asked how firms are making money by implementing new technology, Chris Meyer says, "There is a simple answer: the automation of white-collar work." Already, travel agents and stockbrokers have seen their business eroded by online travel and trading sites. Meyer adds that as the professional-services technologies improve, other occupations [~] including doctors and lawyers [~] may join automation's hit parade.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
4:27:05 PM    comment   

He also expressed a recognition of the dynamics of The New Economy II:  >>>Asked to reconcile the relative optimism of economists with the lingering pessimism of business executives, the Fed chief attributed the disparity in part to the continuing profit squeeze, even amid improving economic growth, because of the difficulty companies face raising prices. "The pricing power of business has been materially reduced," Mr. Greenspan said.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
4:12:44 PM    comment   

>>>This time, rising real wages are absorbing much of the productivity gains. BusinessWeek estimates that if real wages had been flat over the last two years, corporate profits would have been boosted by about $145 billion, or 20%.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
3:59:06 PM    comment   

So who needs streaming video on a phone? The killer app for 3G may turn out to be--surprise--voice calls.

Those third-generation services, combining Internet and wireless technologies, were to ring in a new era of communications. Instead, rising skepticism about their prospects, together with the staggering sums paid by carriers in spectrum auctions, helped precipitate the telecom crash.

But the story may have an accidentally happy ending. The unanticipated killer application of 3G is likely to be voice, the killer app of first- and second-generation systems. This will please both investors and those eager to see effective competition to the local phone monopolies.
12:03:42 PM    comment