iPhone - Update No. 14 (Geocaching)

I was sitting on the Sporster in the middle of a parking lot about ten miles from the lake when a man approached me with a troubled look on his face. He was late for an appointment and wanted to know if I knew where the Northeast Eye Institute was. Unfortunately, I had never hear of it but told him I would be glad to look it up in Google Maps for him. He said, "the Internet on a call phone?". In a few seconds I had the location and a phone number which I clicked on asked them where exactly their office was and I relayed to him how to get there. He shook my hand with a big thank you and a grin on his face. As he walked away, I grinned too. The iPhone is a very high utility device. The other lesson for me was confirmation that the mobile Internet is huge and has now grown to it's infancy.

The reason I was sitting in the parking lot was to look for a nearby geocache. Geopher Lite is a GPS based iPhone application which allows you to find geocaches "quickly and easily" on the go. It actually wasn't that quick and easy but when I got back to the lake a few hours later I checked for iPhone updates. Sure enough there was an update for Geopher Lite which incorporated some of the obvious deficiencies. This is the great thing -- apps are always brought up to date with a touch of the phonetop and developers are constantly going to be making improvements. I can see that tight integration with geocaching.com is just a, probably short, matter of time. If I was in the handheld GPS business I would be concerned. The iPhone is going to disintermediate a lot of businesses.

Epilogue: Speaking of gouaches, I found a very interesting one yesterday titled "William Howard Taft's Forefathers and Family". Finding it was not much of a challenge but seeing the small cemetery across the road from the Lake Wallenpaupack Observation Dike was quite a surprise. I have driven by it hundreds of times and did not even know it was there. The cemetery was built by the Taft family more than 150 years ago and holds the remains of the great, great, great, great grandfather of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, along with about ten other family members.

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Geocaching , Hiking , Mobile , People , iPhone July 31, 2008 05:50 PM

iPhone - Update No. 13

I am sticking to my story -- the iPhone 3G is fantastic. There are some issues however. The iPhone is much more than a "cell phone" -- it is a platform. The six basic elements of the platform are the iPhone itself, the network (AT&T in the United States), iTunes, the "App Store", MobileMe and, most importantly, the applications.

Some are saying that since the new iPhone 2.0 software is available for the original iPhone that there is no need to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. It is true that there is no need to but there are a number of good reasons to. The new iPhone uses the new "new AT&T" 3G network which is claimed to be twice as fast -- as something. Speed claims are rarely delivered upon but no doubt that the 3G network is faster. The receiver in the iphone is also better even when communicating with an AT&T non-3G tower. I have noticed at least one bar improvement here at the lake where there is no 3G tower. The WiFi implementation is better too. Not sure if it is the hardware or software that is improved but it is much more reliable and doesn't get confused about whether to use the cellular signal or the WiFi signal. I am getting ahead of myself but one of the neatest new applications is TruPhone. TruPhone allows you to make a phone call from your iPhone via WiFi even if there is *no* tower of any kind. This happens. I was visiting friends in New Hampshire last weekend and we had brunch at a nice place in a remote area. There was no AT&T or roaming partner signal. None. No service. The restaurant, however, had a very nice free WiFi signal. With TruPhone you can make calls to anywhere in the world at a very low price -- pennies per minute. If you are calling another TruPhone user, it is free. I made some calls with it today and the quality was quite good.

There are other reasons to get the new iPhone. It is a bit thinner and more rounded and feels really nice to hold. It is a joy to use. The 3G has a real GPS receiver so when you use maps it is not an estimate of where you are based on cell phone tower triangulations -- it is using satellites to pinpoint exactly where you are. This opens up a slew of "location based" applications -- where is the nearest pizza place? What are the nearest geocaches? How do I get from where I am to wherever? The battery life is claimed to be better but I am not so sure of that. The iPhone has so much more to offer that I think the usage will be higher and maybe effective battery life will actually be less -- that is the case for me so far. Good idea to have a car charger on hand. One of the irritating things about the original iPhone is that you can't plug your favorite headset into it without a special adapter. The new iPhone accepts any headset and does so without any adapter. Bottom line, it is a really great device. There are many iPhone killers out there and more coming but I don't think they will match the overall experience of the Apple iPhone.

The network is another story and I have written about it in not so glowing terms in each iPhone update. I do think they are getting better. As I have always said, it depends on where you live. In the Northeast, Verizon has better coverage but AT&T is putting up new towers -- one just came online two miles from where I live in Connecticut. Naturally, major cities are covered. I also detect that AT&T customer service is really trying hard to satisfy their customers. The overall model of the industry is bad -- limited choice, get locked into two year contracts, and penalties if you want to move to something better.

iTunes continues to dominate online digital music sales but is facing more and more competition. I have been buying my music from Amazon. They have a nice downloader that puts the mp3 music directly into iTunes and there are no digital rights management restrictions. I like this because I can put purchased music on the iTrike. One of the other great applications on the iPhone is Pandora. This has become my music of choice and I play it through the Squeezebox. The Music Genome Project is awesome. If you love music, I highly recommend it.

iTunes is is integrated tightly (as all things Apple are) with the App Store. Both present easy ways to spend your money from your iPhone. I see this as a huge emerging trend. Call it m-Commerce (mobile commerce) if you want. While sitting in the dentist office awaiting your turn you can buy music and applications from your iPhone. An eBay application let's you spend your money -- or monitor your auctions-- there too. On launch day earlier this month there 500+ applications available for the iPhone. There will be many thousands of applications. So far, about 25% of them are free and supported by various flavors of advertising. You click to find the nearest pizza place and Apple gets a slice of the pie. Some are expensive but add huge value. I bought an aviation application for $69.99 that does everything a pilot can imagine. You can file flight plans with the FAA, check weather radar, airport runway lengths, pilot advisories, and much more. I am not a gamer but millions of people are and the iPhone accelerometer allows you to shake or wave the iPhone as inputs to the game. I have to admit that the Phone Saber is fun, albeit a bit geeky -- lets you take on Darth Vader. The impressive part to me is that the applications are stored in the iPhone but also in iTunes. When you sync you are syncing calendar, email, contacts, and the applications. When you click the App Store icon on the phone it tells you if any of your apps have an update available. When you do a search at the iTunes Store, the search results are organized by artists, albums, movies, etc. and applications.

On the flip side, organization is an issue. So far I have 55 applications. I expect to get many more. The human mind is amazing in terms of icon recognition. You just know that the Phone Saber is at the upper left of the fourth page of applications. But at some point it is overwhelming. I expect Apple or perhaps a third party developer will soon introduce an "app launcher" that allows you to tag an application as news, weather, financial, aviation, game, etc. and let you drill down to what you want.

Last, and I hope not least is MobileMe. Apple says it is the "Simple way to keep everything in sync". The vision is great -- your photos, contacts, email, and calendar are all pushed to your iPhone from the "Cloud". You can make a change on the iPhone and it shows up in Outlook or you can make a change in Outlook and it shows up in your iPhone. Those that work for companies that have Microsoft Exchange or IBM's Lotus Notes already have this kind of capability but there are millions of us who are "independent" and have our own mail server or use gmail, or Yahoo! or any of numerous other services. With MobileMe we can be like the "corporate" world but we can set our own policies and practices. We can have Exchange or Notes without Exchange or Notes. The cloud approach is clearly the next big thing (see prior stories on this and also by Irving), but Apple has stubbed their toe big time on this. There are numerous analysts, bloggers, and experts who have ripped them apart about the failings. As previously reported, I struggled with MobileMe the first few days but then it began to work properly for a few days albeit with some hiccups. Beginning this week it is not working properly. Calendar entries get duplicated, synchronization is sluggish or doesn't work at all at times. It is not like Apple to fail big time like this and I am sure they are scrambling to straighten things out.

I got an email from MobileMe@InsideApple.Apple.com the other day asking if I would be interested in a trial of MobileMe! Seems they didn't check their subscriber list first. The MobileMe web site says that "1% of MobileMe members have limited access to MobileMe Mail. Full service will be restored to these accounts on a rolling basis over the next few days". 99% and in a few days were good in the old days but not these days. I decided to try the online chat support to see if they could help resolve my problems. After sending my initial "instant message" I got a reply saying "A MobileMe Support Representative will be with you in approximately 26 minutes. We look forward to answering your questions". I got a reply while I had stepped out of the room for a minute and then had to start over and wait another 26 minutes. After 3 hours and 14 minutes the support rep said he had to escalate the problem to a specialist who would contact me by email. More than two days have gone by and I have had no email from Apple.

This all reminds me of the Fall of 1995 when we were preparing ibm.com to host the Olympic Games of 1996. It turned out to be the largest web site ever built. We had 54 outstanding engineers working on it and it turned out to be successful. Fortunately, we were able to convince the company to make a large investment in the infrastructure. I remember saying that "we don't how many people will come to the web site, we don't know when they will come, nor do we know what they will do when they get there". It was "trial by fire". That was 13 years ago. The lessons learned in 1995 served IBM well and it is now the largest web hosting company in the world. IBM doesn't always call it cloud computing, but they have built the largest clouds on Earth -- in the clouds. Apple has a lot to learn. I am confident they will. Their brand loyalty depends on it.

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IBM , Internet Technology , Mobile , Personal Computing , iPhone July 30, 2008 08:53 PM

IBM Happenings: June 2008

Thanks to Michael in Alameda, California for noticing that the June "IBM Happenings" had not been posted. A definite oops. The posting was ready to go a month ago but never got going. I'll blame it on summer books. The month started out with the Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles and then was filled with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The list of announcements made during the month is here. One of the most interesting things IBM did in June was to release a Global CEO Study. Being the largest information technology solutions provider in the world, it is imperative for IBM to have a keen understanding of the priorities of the top management of it's clients. The idea is to stay ahead of the curve and have the skills and resources in place to meet upcoming demand. IBM sent senior people to interview 1,130 CEO's from 40 countries to capture insights on how the challenges CEO's face today will impact the future of business.

Complete index of IBM Happenings

IBM July 28, 2008 03:22 PM

Book Update: July 2008

So many great books, so little time! I used to say there is no substitute yet for enjoying a hard-cover book. I take it back. Reading on the Kindle is the best. The number of books on Kindle has doubled in the past month to 146,576. I now make it my exclusive source for book reading. Every once in a while I post a list of books I have been reading. They all have reviews at Amazon that are much better than I could write, so I just update my database with summary comments and a rating of how I liked them.

I found the the last handful of books quite extraordinary. Randy Pausch, the professor at Carnegie Mellon University who inspired countless students in the classroom and others worldwide with his work in virtual reality and entertainment systems died on Friday of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47. I had first heard about Randy in a Wall Street Journal review of his book, The Last Lecture. It was his way of leaving a legacy for his young children so they would know who their father was and what he was about. The lessons of the book hold a lot of value for all of us. I highly recommend this touching book.

The Last Patriot by Brad Thor is quite a thriller. If you like terrorist plots linked with history -- Thomas Jefferson and Islam in this case -- you will love this one. It is hardly a light book. In fact the gripping intrigue won't let you put it down until you finish it.

On the business front, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky gives many insights about social networking. I had heard Clay speak at Supernova in San Francisco last month. We have been kindred spirits over the past fifteen years.

Man of the People: The Life of John McCain is not one of the books McCain wrote but rather is a biography by Paul Alexander written four years before the current campaign got underway. I found it fascinating. Whatever you may think of his political views, he is quite an extraordinary human being.

A Prisoner of Birth by Jefferey Archer is an imaginative Archer classic. I have enjoyed all of his books but found this probably the best ever. A young man at a bar with his girlfriend and her brother is framed for murdering the brother and goes to prison. The life he lives there and the people he becomes close to are a great story on their own but nothing compared to what happens when he escapes in an identity swap. The new life he then lives focuses on revenge at a very creative level. Great book.

The summer is still young another novel underway -- The Shack by William P. Young. Comments to follow in the next book update.

patrickWeb favorite books

Favorites , People July 27, 2008 03:55 PM

Supernova 2008 - Part 5

I learned a lot at Supernova as I do every year. It is difficult to explain the depth and breadth of what transpired at the conference, but hopefully I will hit some highlights and provide links where you can learn more. One of the many interesting topics was "networks" -- something that we take for granted. Three experts talked about the diversity of very large types of networks including baggage routing networks of an airline, electrical grid networks, natural gas distribution, the global aviation system, the Internet, and of course our social networks. The big picture is that social networks are evolving to the point that the entire World Wide Web is likely going to become the Social Web.

A social network is a structure consisting of nodes (people or organizations) that have a common interest or increasingly a dependency. The tie that binds us can be one or more of many things: values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, food likes or dislikes, buy or sell trading, links to each other's blogs, epidemiology, or airline routes. The resulting ontologies are very complex. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families to countries. The use of the networks is beginning to be a key tool in collaboration to solve problems, how people achieve their goals and even how organizations are run.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all the relevant ties between the nodes (people). One of the first social networks was Linkedin and I have been a member of it from nearly the beginning. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get several invitations to become a "friend" or "colleague" with another Linkedin member (or Plaxo Pulse or Facebook). To gain the real "network effect" I recommend being selective in dealing with these invitations. Otherwise you end up connected to everybody which is as valuable as being connected to nobody. There are many people who are looking for people to send press releases to or to throw you into a recruitment pool or just be able to say they "know" someone or is their "friend" because they saw your name in the paper or saw you at a conference. The real power is not in the numbers per se but to really know someone who knows someone who knows someone and to have the credibility with the person you know such that they are willing to help you to connect to someone else. I have 178 trusted friends and colleagues in my Linkedin network. Two degrees away -- friends of friends; each connected to one of my connections -- there are more than 60,000 people. Three degrees away -- members who can be reached through a friend and one of their friends -- is 3,200,000 people. If you are discerning about it you can develop considerable social capital.

There are many issues in the social networking space. One of them is that there are so many networks. If you take a look at the end of this story you will see -- and if you like the story and click on the green icon, a dialogue box offers you three functions. You can send an email link to the story to friends. A second choice is that you can post the story to your own blog. Perhaps most important is the third choice which is to post the story at one or more of your favorite social networks. The dialogue box displays icons for the various social networks -- Facebook and thirty-nine other of the top forty networks! A few mouse clicks and you have the ultimate chain letter. I think ShareThis has great potential.

How many social networks should you belong to? Certainly not forty. I belong to Linkedin, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook, and MySpace. Four is enough for me. But is it? There are many niche networks -- such as A Small World -- that will be of interest to m any. But do you want to create a profile of your personal information at each of the networks you choose? And keep them up to date? And tell your connected friends what you are doing and exactly where you are (latitude and longitude) and what music you like or even what song you are listening to at the moment? To me the glass is half full. I am hopeful that protocols will emerge such as OAuth, OpenID, and OpenSocial that will level the playing field. We will be able to use one single "sign-on" for all our web sites and create *one* profile and have control over which networks and which parts of the profile it appear in. For example, it would be nice to create a comprehensive profile that is encrypted and totally under the user's control. You may choose to have your favorite songs be accessible through Facebook but not your medical records from Google Health and your Google Health electronic medical record to be accessible to your primary care physician and your hospital but nobody else. The application you create for your consulting business or a new game you created could be available through *all* the social networks.

Social networking is the next turn of the crank of the Internet. By combining networks, such as a mobile phone networks, mobile payment systems, the Internet and a network of people all sharing a common cause, a viral effect can take place resulting in a lot of money or assistance flowing to the need -- political, emergency response or (hopefully) humanitarian.

Security and privacy issues with social networking? Another story to come soon.

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Blogging , Conferences , Internet Technology , Public Policy July 23, 2008 09:35 PM

iPhone - Update No. 12

It is now more than 84 hours since I got my hands on the iPhone 3g. The bottom line is that the phone itself is a masterpiece -- really great. As expected, there are many applications available in the "app store" and many thousands more to come. That is the good news. The bad news is that apple.com is failing big time.

The activation and iTunes problems are well documented in the media but I am surprised that there is not more coverage of the MobileMe issues. MobileMe is a key part of Apple's strategy. It is basically a "cloud computing" offering that enables you to put all your email, contacts, calendar items, and data files at me.com which is Apple's name for their cloud. Once in the cloud, you can then synchronize everything with Outlook. If you make a change in Outlook it goes to the cloud and then down to your iPhone. If you make a change on your iPhone it goes up to the cloud and down to Outlook. If you go to a kiosk at the airport or use a computer at a friend's house and make a change, both your iPhone and Outlook are updated automatically.

I took the bait -- hook, line, and sinker. After installing the MobileMe software on both my iPhone and PC, I synchronized with iTunes. This resulted in all my contacts and calendar items being removed from the iPhone -- they would now be replaced by an update from the cloud. One big assumption -- the cloud (Apple servers) has to be working -- and it wasn't. This is the problem I anticipated in the last post. Apple does not have their act together in maintaining their cloud. I called support today and they said "MobileMe is not working -- all the servers are down". Not good. The great thing about clouds is that you do not have to worry about Windows, your varivous PC issues, etc., but the bad news is that you become totally dependent on the cloud provider -- in this case, Apple -- and they are not a proven player. At this point, all my data is in the cloud and none of it is on my iPhone.

This all reminds me of the Fall of 1995 when we were preparing ibm.com to host the Olympic Games of 1996. It turned out to be the largest web site ever built. We had 54 outstanding engineers working on it and it turned out to be successful. Fortunately, we were able to convince the company to make a large investment in the infrastructure. I remember saying that "we don't how many people will come to the web site, we don't know when they will come, nor do we know what they will do when they get there". Dave Grossman, of our team, called it "trial by fire". That was 13 years ago. The lessons learned in 1995 served IBM well and it is now the largest web hosting company in the world. Apple has a lot to learn.

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IBM , Internet Technology , Mobile , iPhone July 13, 2008 10:58 PM

How To Remove AOL Advertising - Part 2

A number of readers have sent me feedback about the AOL advertising trailer in their email. One person was extremely happy and had been trying to get rid of the ads for a very long time. His response to the blog post was "Bless you!". Not sure if deserves a blessing but a number of people are really thankful to get rid of the obnoxious ads from the email they send. Two people told me that the link to remove the trailer did not work. I can't explain why it works for some and not for others. The only suggestion I can make is that if you are now aware of what is going on and want to stop it then try the link one more time. If it doesn't work then call AOL support and ask them to remove the trailer for you.

Media , Personal Computing July 12, 2008 10:28 AM

iPhone - Update No. 11

On July 5 of last year I received the iPhone and wrote ten stories and updates about my experience with it. With today's release of the second mobile wave from Apple, a new set of stories begins. There is no Apple store within one hundred miles of where I am spending the summer but there is an AT&T store twenty-two miles away in Mt. Pocono, Pennsylvania. I arrived at the store at 6:45 AM to get in line behind 16 people who were already camped out. I brought a beach chair and the Kindle so waiting was not so bad. The painful part was hearing them say that their systems were crashing and it was taking more than a half-hour per customer to get a phone and get it activated. With the original iPhone you could activate it yourself through iTunes but this time AT&T is taking no chances that you might hack the phone and activate it through one of their competitors. So much for the convenience of ordering and activating from home.

The store opened at 8am and people were let in by security five at a time. The manager of the store went down the line outside and asked each person what they wanted, explained their various rules on eligibility, etc. They treat it as quite an honor to be able to get an iPhone -- and they charge accordingly. The manager said it would take 15 minutes per batch of five people. The first person came out at around 9:30! The manager explained that they were having systems problems. That is an understatement. I would not want to be the CIO at Apple or AT&T today. A half-hour later the manager reported that the problem causing the delays was iTunes at Apple. "Everyone is trying to activate phones at the same time". What did they expect?

At 10:30 it was my turn. I asked for the 16GB Black iPhone 3G, the sales associate picked up the phone to ask for it, and seconds later someone put it on the counter. It turned out to be the last one. Lucky me. I handed over my AMEX card and driver license. Then the AT&T system crashed. A half-hour later, after I had signed an agreement and charge, the sales guy said that they had discovered a shortcut that would speed things up -- he could do a partial activation and then I could just sync up with iTunes to complete it. I got to the lake and discovered that the new iPhone did not yet work and the old iPhone did not either. The AT&T store had partly activated the new phone and in the process deactivated the old one. No problem. All I had to do was download the new version of iTunes and connect the new iPhone to the ThinkPad and activate with iTunes. For the next couple of hours I tried repeatedly but iTunes was not responding. The Apple servers were swamped. Bottom line after eight hours I had two iPhones that did not work. The "upgrade" cost $18 plus a new two-year commitment plus an upgrade to the monthly data plan of $15 -- a 75% increase. The data plan upcharge is justified because the 3G network is so much faster than the "Edge" network that has been criticized here many times. The only thing is that the new 3G network is not available in many places.

At the nine-hour mark I was able to connect to the iTunes server, activate the phone, and synchronize all my contacts, calendar, and email. This is Apple's strength -- making things easy by tightly integrating all the pieces. The downside is that you have to get locked into the "new" AT&T. I do think AT&T is improving and putting a lot of emphasis on customer service. The service question at this stage is with Apple. They have proved they are not flawless when it comes to systems management. Seamless integration of devices and software is one thing -- seamless integration of millions of users all trying to connect at the same time and making unpredictable demands of the "cloud" is something much more challenging. They are not off to a good start with iPhone 2.0 after all the hype.

In spite of the challenges, the iPhone 3G gives a great initial impression. There are a number of nice new features and, as predicted, a flood of new applications in the "app store" which is tightly integrated in iTunes. I am quite impressed with the first dozen or so that I have acquired. Some of them are expensive but many are actually free. I expect to see many thousands of highly useful applications that will drive millions of people to get iPhones.

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Mobile , iPhone July 11, 2008 06:57 PM

How To Remove AOL Advertising From Your Email

In the last Supernova story I opined about how bad TV advertising is. The broadcast networks are not the only culprits who are bombarding us with their messages. In fact one of the worst perpetrators is AOL. Millions of people use AOL for their email service. No problem with that but AOL appends an ad at the end of every email their users send. I got an email from a fellow board member this morning and the epilogue said "Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars.". How bad is that? My distinguished colleague sending me used car ads!

This is a classic case of Opt In vs. Opt Out. When you get an AOL email account, they automatically Opt you In to include advertising at the end of your emails. It is possible to Opt Out but it isn't easy. They intentionally make it hard or at least do not intentionally make it easy. I asked my friend if he realized he was being "used" as a carrier for AOL advertising -- for which they are getting paid and he isn't. Like many others that I have asked that same question, his response was "I am aware and very annoyed by it but don't know how to get rid of it". I decided to do some research to see if I could help reduce the AOL spam from our inboxes and outboxes. The simple answer is for AOL users to click here and then uncheck the check box and click save. Three simple mouse clicks and a lot of senders and receivers will be happy.

Net Attitude , People , Personal Computing , Public Policy July 7, 2008 10:53 AM

Supernova 2008 - Part 4

The "Reconstructed media" session was about the future of TV. The panelists were from YouTube, Sevenload, and Current TV. All three see TV -- as we know it -- as a thing of the past. Current.tv is a bottoms up media approach where "you make the news" by voting on, commenting on, or submitting a story. Part of the business model change is being driven by the fact that TV today is very inefficient as an advertising channel. According to one of the speakers, 99% of advertising dollars are wasted because people either don't watch it or watch it but are not in the market for whatever is being advertised.All three are determined to "reconstruct" -- aka blow-up -- the current model of television.

I wrote a story here called "The Future of Advertising" in October 2006. I was pretty negative about TV advertising and now I am even more so. In theory you can just record everything but even then it is annoying to have to fast forward through the ads and sometimes have to backup and replay and then forward again to get what you want. The advertisements are mostly insulting to one's intelligence. There are no insights into anything and they grate on people's nerves. Honestly, I have to say that most of the ads are obnoxious -- as bad as spam. The shotgun blast ads aren't fraudulent but they add no value to our lives. Zero. Do we need broadcast television to tell us the latest interest rate at ditech.com or to be reminded four times per hour that Scottrade is "all about value" or to be constantly told to ask our doctor about this pill or that pill? The bottom line is that most of us don't rely on the TV as a source of ideas for things we need. There may be some people that actually enjoy advertisements. That is ok, but the rest of us want to "opt out".

When it comes to news, sometimes it is hard to get on TV. Odds are that you can flip through a half-dozen cable news channels and find no news. Just ads. TvNewsLies.org claims that CNN = “Contains No News”. After eliminating ads, ads about the news, tabloids, and other chaff, one hour of CNN "Yields Less Than 5 Minutes of News". My preferred news source is news.google.com which I have been using for years. It is ad supported but it is ads that don't get in your face. You can drill deeply into the news and if you don't like one source's point of view you can easily get another. This contrasts with "So and so made a statement today about the oil situation and you won't believe what he said". Parenthetically, and we are not going to tell you what he said until you listen to three minutes of irrelevant advertising. At this point in e-tirement I pretty much know what things I need or want and if I don't know then I know how to find things. Broadcast advertising is dead. They just have not admitted it yet. The next phase will be situational ads where the actors in movies will be extolling products and services. It will likely be transparent and I am not looking forward to it.

Many of the startup companies and large amounts of venture capital are focused on how to "reach" us. Their favorite word is CPM, the cost per thousand advertising page impressions. They truly want to intrude on us. They want us to watch a video clip before we can watch the video clip link we clicked on. Forbes magazine prints "Your statement of benefits" on envelopes. This is designed to make you think the envelope contains health insurance or mutual fund information. It actually includes a subscription statement so that you can get the benefit of paying for their magazine. They can't wait to strike deals with AT&T and Verizon to put ads on our cell phones.

Is there no end? The most optimistic sign lies in social networking. As much as I do not like advertising in my face, I would not mind seeing a link to a book that my friends have read, or learn about interesting places they have been, or wines, or concerts, and other favorites. Advertiser support of social networking has the potential to actually be of value. I hope so, because the tolerance level for traditional TV and Internet advertising is at the limit for many of us. More on social networking coming up.

Conferences , Favorites , Media July 1, 2008 03:19 PM