patrickWeb

How To Remove AOL Advertising From Your Email

2008-07-07T14:53:00Z

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.

Supernova 2008 - Part 4

2008-07-01T19:19:45Z

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.

MP3 for Sale

2008-06-30T14:38:47Z

The shift to digital music is well underway, but -- believe it or not -- the total digital music business is still only about 15% of total music sales. Physical recordings accounted for 82% of the $20 billion in total recorded music sales last year. Needless to say, the mix is shifting. Apple announced that it has now sold 5 billion tracks of music.

The good news for consumers is that competition is increasing and we are getting more and more choices. Single track downloads grew 53% last year and Apple is not the only contender. I have been buying music lately from Amazon. Their music is pure MP3 and has no digital rights management. The first time you visit you download a free music player. From then on it is really easy. Yesterday I found some excellent Doo Wop albums. I bought the music with one-click and it was automatically downloaded to iTunes. I then updated the iTunes Doo Wop smartlist. The list automatically updates to a random selection one gigabyte in size which I then copied to an SD card which I then put in the MP3 player on the Trike. The price is 89 cents per track with competitive album pricing. They also have a Special Deals Program.

Supernova 2008 - Part 3

2008-06-27T15:32:49Z

Discussion about the mobile Internet is taking an increasing amount of the agenda at technology conferences. The scope is increasing dramatically with not just 3-6 billion mobile phones but with more and more of them having GPS, cameras, accelerometers, and other kinds of sensors to come. Nokia described a research project in which 150 students have been driving around and providing anonymous information about where they are and how fast they are going. The result is a centrally integrated traffic prediction database available to everybody who is driving. Other possibilities include tracking of influenza and hypertension through personal health monitoring and real-time weather monitoring.

Most of us in the U.S. grew up with the PC as our primary way to connect to the Internet. Mobile phones are already the primary networking device for hundreds of millions and soon billions of people. The mobile Internet will be a natural for many of those people and most of them will likely never own a PC. 80% of the world's population now has mobile coverage in 220 countries.

One major difference between the U.S. and developing countries is in the use of SMS text messaging. Africa, for example, is way ahead of us. They are using SMS as an integral part of their financial services infrastructure. At the end of the evening with Matimba Mbungela at Moyo's during a recent trip to South Africa, the server came to the table with a wireless credit card reader. After the card was swiped, Matimba's mobile phone received an SMS text message confirming that the charge had been made to his credit card account at the bank. South Africa has embraced mobile as a key part of their banking infrastructure. In fact any debit or credit to your bank account or credit card results in an SMS message. Not everyone in South Africa has an Internet connection but tens of millions have a mobile phone. The security is good because most people don't share their phone. In India, farmers use SMS to determine the market prices of various crops and weather information to assist in planning their activities. SMS has enormous potential for applications of all kinds. The New York Times, Fox News, and others are using SMS for news and election alerts but when it comes to SMS for data oriented applications, other countries are well ahead of the United States.

I envision SMS having broad applicability. There are so many places that people spend time waiting. At the hospital for an x-ray or blood sample, at restaurants, the auto garage, department of motor vehicles, and many others. A simple text messaging system could buzz your phone to let you know it is your turn. You could also be alerted about auctions that have been completed, checks that have cleared, stock prices that hit a target, a family member being discharged from the hospital, an elderly relative needing your assistance, and countless other applications. An SMS message from a service person that you requested to go to your house to fix the furnance could alert you that they have arrived and your reply could unlock the door to your house. SMS messages are "simple". They don't have the "baggage" of emails with all the headers and footers. They can contain text and data in an uncluttered way. There are many ways to send SMS messages from your PC also. I use ipipi.com which is an international Text Messaging Service that lets you send and receive SMS from your desktop.

Temporarily Out of Service

2008-06-27T14:02:35Z

Two nights ago, for some mysterious reason, my entire web site disappeared from the server. I have been using the Dreamhost shared hosting service in Southern California for a couple of years now and have been quite pleased with the price, performance, reliability, and support, but they were as puzzled as me as to how it happened. It took me a few hours to notice the problem and some more time to get things back to normal -- there are thousands of docuemtns, audio, video, and other content. I apologize for any inconvenience to visitors and readers. As always, incidents like this show the critical importance of regular backups. Dreamhost makes what they call snapshots every hour, day, and week. After nearly fourteen years of adding content to the web site I would hate to lose it!

Supernova 2008 - Part 2

2008-06-24T19:33:20Z

Supernova began last Monday morning at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center. There is no sign of recession in the Mission Bay area -- construction cranes everywhere. The 300 acre former rail yard was created in 1998 as a redevelopment project and seems to be flourishing. It has attracted a lot of biotechnology research and development and is the headquarters of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. It also has fiber to the premises communications.

Kevin Werbach kicked off the conference with his view of the "Ten Challenges for the Network Age". If it wasn't already, Supernova made it clear that decentralization is happening and that there is an accelerating shift underway to network-based computing, services, business processes, marketing, entertainment, social relationships, connectivity, and culture. The shift is changing our assumptions about how the world works. There are big opportunities ahead for those who grasp the shift and peril ahead for those who don't.

A panel with Bob Iannucci from Nokia, Esther Dyson, and Clay Shirky (New York University) how the Internet is changing the way the world works -- especially how people are doing things differently. In Clay's new book "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, he tells a story of how a woman left her cell phone in a cab and someone stole it and started using it rather than trying to find out who owned it (which would have been easy). The woman's friend took the matter as "wrong" and launched a campaign on the Internet through blogs and social networks to get the thief to return the phone. Based on messages the person had sent from the phone it was determined who she was. Her MySpace profile led to where she lives. The police would not take the case. They said it was just lost, not stolen. The bloggers did not give up and eventually brought the NYPD around. The phone got back to the owner and the thief was arrested. More than one million people followed and/or participated in the effort. Talk about "Power to the People"! (which I have been writing about for fifteen years). ! highly recommend Clay's book.

In a similar manner, Facebook groups are providing valuable input to businesses and surely will cause them to change direction on some issues. Intel found this out years ago when they denied problems with the then new Pentium chip. They were forced to come clean. Collective opinions will be making more and more of a difference. Another emerging business tool is the the Virtual Company Project which is building online tools to provide governance for a virtual company. People with common interests and appropriate skills will be able to develop a business and collaborate online to provide products and services.

On the political scene the bloggers of America have been having a heyday for the last five years and are becoming more and more effective. In 1999 there was considerable strife in Kosovo. Part of the strategy by the government was to control information so that the people would not know exactly what was going on. Journalists were expelled from the country. The independent radio station, B92, in Belgrade was closed down. Local media was either shut down or censored. But the radio station set up a web site and began to publish text, audio and video. They reported when air raid sirens were going off. Up to the minute news was provided to the population. There was no way to shut down the Internet site because the government didn't’t know where the server was. If they had known and shut it down another server would have been put back online. From a coup in Thailand to London bombings, information becomes available and it becomes public. In Zimbabwe text messages went out to tell people where to vote as the government tried to keep it a secret. Governments can put people in jail but they will not be able to confiscate 3-5 billion cell phones. As long as there is information the Internet provides a way to share it. Power to the People.

One of the most subtle but most powerful capabilities of today's Web 2.0 that was not available ten years ago is tagging. People take pictures with their phone and upload them to Flickr. They then apply tags: London, bombing. Someone else finds the pcitures and adds their own tags: train, terrorism. As more people find, view, and tag, the pictures become more valuable -- they gain more context. This is a key element of social networking. Not only can people report something, but they can also join in a collaborative effort to find a criminal or a loved one. Awesome stuff and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Book Update: 2Q2008

2008-06-23T14:58:56Z

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. Now that there are just shy of 50,000 books on Kindle I make it the exclusive source. 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. The last half-dozen or so books have been very large and deep ones. This weekend it was time for an easier read so I put the latest Dean Koontz novel -- Odd Hours -- on the Kindle. Koontz is nothing short of amazing and this latest tale is one of his best. It is hardly a light book. In fact the gripping intrigue won't let you put it down until you finish it.

Supernova 2008 - Part 1

2008-06-22T17:30:13Z

Last Sunday evening was a bad night for air travel for most all of the United States. I happened to be in Albany and had a flight to Cleveland connecting to San Francisco. It is a long story but the net is that a 4:15 PM departure from Albany ended up taking me to Newark and then to California arriving to the hotel at 5:45 AM. The bad part is that stories like this are not that uncommon these days. Airlines can't control the weather and occasional maintenance issues are to be expected. The frustrating part is the lack of good communications on the ground at the airports and the lack of integrated systems resulting in getting different information -- kiosk, overhead displays, ticket counter, at the gate, airline lounges -- for the same flight. The gate display in Albany on Sunday at about 7:15 PM showed the 5:15 PM flight as being "On Time". Many of you have stories that can top this vignette -- there are a number of my airline stories here in the blog.

This was the seventh year for the Supernova conference -- I missed one of them a few years ago. The conference is run by Kevin Werbach who is a leading expert on the business, policy, and social implications of emerging Internet and communications technologies. Kevin has a good track record of anticipating key trends along the path to the Network Age. Supernova attracts CEOs, bloggers, entrepreneurs, academics, practitioners, visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders. Like all conferences, the best part is catching up with friends and colleagues and comparing points of view.

There are a couple of unique things about Supernova. It is the only conference that connects with one of the world’s foremost business schools -- the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The other unique feature is how "connected" the attendees can become with the speakers and each other. Supernova offers a live video stream, an IRC channel, a twitter feed, live blogging, interviews, and a Yahoo Pipe to enable attendees and remote participants from all over the world -- there were 400+ people from 15 countries in San Francisco -- to all jump into the conversation.

This paragraph summarizes some of the key things that I think are most important of the many things discussed at Supernova. The mobile Internet is gaining a head of steam. The new iPhone coming in a few weeks plus a slew of iPhone killers plus a big push by Microsoft will accelerate mobile even faster. Social computing is mushrooming. There are serious discussions going on in the development community about how (not whether) to standardize identity, authorization, and applications across the various social networks in some sensible way. Privacy has always been an issue but as storage cost approaches zero, everything we say or do will be saved. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. The telecommunications operators continue to consolidate and continue to offer poor customer service and a lack of choice. More on each of these topics to follow over the days ahead.

Other conference related patrickWeb stories

Net Attitude on Kindle

2008-06-10T20:40:12Z

The Kindle is quite an amazing device (see "Kindlized") and I am irrevocably hooked. In addition to buying a growing number of Kindle books, I now have one for sale. Net Attitude continues as a book but I suspect the Kindle version will have the edge going forward. The patrickWeb blog will also soon be available for the Kindle. Amazon is having growing pains as try to ingest a lot more blogs than they expected. The blogs will be updated daily so that Kindle users will always have the latest postings for all the blogs they subscribe to.

iPhone - Update 10

2008-06-10T01:23:39Z

There was a lot of news from Apple today about the new iPhone 3G. Bottom line -- it is everything I predicted plus a lot more. Can't wait to get one. There will be plenty to say about the announcements and I will begin sharing thoughts soon....

Roku

2008-06-09T22:00:00Z

About fifteen years ago one of my children worked at Blockbuster. One day I told him that Bockbuster would be history because people would be downloading their movies from the Internet. Yeah, right Dad. Ok, I was a bit ahead of my time. In the intervening years there have been numerous companies started to offer various ways to get movies via the Net but none have gotten much traction. The most successful innovation has been Netflix which offers 100,000 movies and an incredibly efficient distribution system for DVDs. The barriers to a downloading or streaming approach have included technology cost, inadequate bandwidth, complexity, device incompatibilities, and intellectual property concerns.

Then along came the Netflix Roku. The snazzy new device may be like manna from heaven for movie lovers. I have had previous experience with Roku. A few years ago I installed a Roku box for pictures. It enables the display of digital pictures on any TV in the house via the home local area network and can be a nice thing at holiday time. The Roku for Netflix movies is a fraction of the size and allows watching up to 10,000 movies or TV episodes on any TV in the house, if you have a video distribution system, or if you don't then you can use the Roku with the TV of your choice -- home theatre, HD, non-HD, any TV. I took the Roku out of the box, plugged in the power supply, and connected the cables to the video jacks. You then need to connect the Roku to the Internet. You can either plug it into your home LAN or connect via WiFi. The hookup took about three minutes. The TV then displays a code which you enter at netflix.com and you are then activated. A new tab is added to your account at Netflix labeled "Watch Instantly". You make a selection and it shows up on the Roku screen on your TV. You push the play button on the Roku remote and the movie starts streaming. I was watching a movie within five minutes of taking the Roku out of the box.

Streaming is different than downloading. There is no hard drive on the Roku. The movie comes from a server at Netflix directly to the Roku. Some buffering obviously takes place as I detected no jitters or pixelation. I was quite impressed with the quality. Looks like a DVD. Does this mean the end of DVDs? Yes, but it will take quite a while. Music is shifting to digital but there are still a lot of CDs sold. The transition for DVDs will take longer for a number of reasons. Streaming requires a stable and reliable one million bit per second connection. In theory, any DSL or Cable Internet provider should be able to provide that but in practice it is spotty. The trend is certainly in the right direction. HD streaming is not yet available but surely it will soon. That will require more bandwidth. So far only 10% of the Netflix collection is available for streaming. Not sure how fast they will be able to convert the rest.

The pricing is good. If you already subscribe to Netflix under any plan of $9.99 per month or more then you get unlimited streaming at no extra cost. The Roku unit is $99 plus shipping. Movies and TV episodes are selected via the web site just like picking a DVD. All things considered, I think Netflix and Roku hit a home run. Not perfect but you can see the beginning of the end of DVDs.

The Home Office

2008-06-01T18:00:55Z

I have been experimenting with the design of a home office for decades. Since most of my hobbies (except motorcycling) take place at home and also being a longtime believer in telecommuting, the home office is where I spend the most time. It did not make sense to me to have an expensive living room and use it once per year and have an inexpensive home office that gets used every day -- when not traveling.

Even though WiFi is a big help, there are still a lot of wires, cables, devices, and power supplies scattered around an office. In a previous home I had built a false wall beneath a desktop and was able to hide most of the cables. It was not perfect but it convinced me that much more could be doneto make a home office efficient and comfortable.

At the end of 2001 it was time for e-tirement and I decided to design a home office in the new home we were building. With the assistance of Neal Zimmerman, a home office architect in West Hartford, Connecticut, a lot of ideas came together. Neal is quite famous as an office designer and is author of At Work At Home. The project has lead to many press inquiries which in turn resulted in two TV stories and quite a few magazine features about the room where I spend most of my time. There are references to the coverage in both the home automation and "in the news" categories of patrickWeb.

The latest story just appeared last week and is called "Designing a Dream Home Office". The interview and story were done by Diana Ransom at SmartMoney.com.

IBM Happenings: May 2008

2008-05-31T14:52:24Z

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 May 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.

It was the largest study of chief executives ever conducted -- spanning 32 industries. This was not SurveyMonkey -- it was face-to-face interviews. The study revealed that 83 percent of CEO's expect substantial change in the future, and are optimistic they can successfully manage change. The catch is that the CEO's report that their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace. The gap between the rate of change and the skills available is growing. This is bad news in some respects, but certainly good news for IBM which increasingly gains it's revenue and profits by filling skill gaps for clients.

A somewhat surprising insight from the study is that CEO's believe that the most important changes are occurring within their existing customer base. Two kinds of customers are emerging. First is the ‘information omnivore’ who craves knowing everything about everything and spends a good portion of their time (maybe most of their time) online. The other customer is the ‘socially-minded’ customer. This type of person can't get enough of providing and retrieving information about where they are, where their friends are, what they are doing, what their favorite things are, and arranging a rendezvous in both virtual and real world places. The CEO's plan substantial increases in investments to reach both of these customer types. This spells opportunity for IBM. Take a look at a video clip with more insight about the CEO Study.

Speaking of CEO's, two of the technology industry's finest got together on stage at the Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles. Eric Schmidt of Google and Sam Palmisano of IBM have more in common than you might think. Eric cut his teeth on IBM's largest scientific computers and has been a devotee of advanced computing architecture throughout his career. Sam has a conviction about the role of information omnivores and social computing. The common ground is cloud computing. The two companies announced an initiative to promote new software development methods which will help students and researchers address the challenges of Internet-scale applications in the future. The goal is to improve computer science students’ knowledge of highly parallel computing practices. IBM and Google are teaming up to provide hardware, software and services to augment university curricula and expand research horizons. The University of Washington was the first to join the initiative but the program is spreading to other leading schools around the world. The project combines IBM’s historic strengths in scientific, business and secure-transaction computing with Google’s complementary expertise in Web computing and massively scaled clusters. It seems very likely that the IBM-Google collaboration will change the way large-scale computing is exploited over the years ahead. Here is a video clip of what Eric Schmidt had to say at the Los Angeles meeting.

Complete index of IBM Happenings

Reflections

2008-05-28T19:01:59Z

I began to write "reflections" in 1997. Some were about visits to an IBM customer, a university campus, or just to reflect on some issue of the day that struck me at the time. The Reflections were not an attempt to be profound.... just to share. Needless to say, this was a precursor to blogging. Some of the postings in patrickWeb are based on reflections but eventually they will all get edited and moved to the blog for posterity. Here is the list of Reflections from 1997 to 2002.

Worms and Potato Chips

2008-05-28T18:25:56Z

Packaging is one of those things that most of us probably don't think about a lot. That set of plastic, glass, paper, Styrofoam, cardboard, and poly-whatever that contains and protects things we buy. I think of packaging in two categories -- that which something is stored in and that which something is shipped in. I am sure that packaging experts have a much more sophisticated way of describing it but that is my simple way of categorizing it. I suppose we mostly take packaging for granted but I am beginning to think it is actually a profound topic.

I began thinking about packaging as something discrete some years ago. Strictly in the "something is contained in it" category. What initially got my attention was a cereal box that I found great difficulty in opening without destroying it and its subsequent ability to keep the cereal fresh. I have since taken it as a personal challenge to be able to open a cereal box with no resulting damage. This is a non-trivial challenge - maybe an art. If it is a science then I haven't found the instructions anywhere. One starts by using a sharp knife with a long blade. You carefully slide the knife under the tab in the center of the top of the cereal box. Then you slice the material to one side while applying a slight upward pressure via the tab. Repeat for the other side. I give being able to do this without damaging the box top about 75% odds at best. You are now almost a third of the way through the task at hand. Now that you have freed up one of the flaps you have to free the other flap by tearing it from the side flaps. Completing this without damage is also about 75% odds if you are quite careful. You are now two thirds of the way to the cereal. Last comes opening the bag inside the box which actually contains the cereal. This is often the hardest part. If you grasp the two sides of the bag and pull very very carefully you have about a 50% chance of opening the bag without tearing it. After opening the main part of the bag you need to open the corners of the bag so the cereal can flow smoothly into your cereal bowl. Putting the collective probabilities together gives you a 50-50 chance at best of having an open cereal box that pours the contents smoothly and can be closed to protect freshness. Some packaging!

I could go on about jars that require a hammer to open, pill bottles that can only be opened by children, fresh fruit containers that have to be squeezed until they break to open, etc. etc. etc. I suspect those who suffer from arthritis of the fingers could make my examples seem trivial.

I received an Open It for Christmas last year tat is used to open things that come packaged in blisters, clamshells, boxes, DVD cases, and numerous other things that are un-openable -- packaged with the vendor in mind -- and with no thought about how the consumer might open the package without injuring oneself. The Open It is made from hardened and plated precision alloy steel, has honed, angled, and offset jaws, and an ergo-comfortable handle. It has a built in retractable utility knife and an interchangeable Phillips & slotted screwdriver. (You can click here to get a complete product data sheet). If you have ever suffered "wrap rage", suffer no more. It really works. The only catch is that the Open It comes in one of those packages that you need an Open It to open it!

But there is a much bigger packaging issue becoming part of our lives. The issue initially struck me when I had received my very first order from net.grocer. I had ordered an assortment of salsa, condiments, and potato chips. An Australian newspaper wrote a front page story (business section) about how an Internet "visionary" had ordered potato chips on the Internet. The amazing part to me was not that the potato chips arrived unbroken but rather the packaging. I feel like I want to signal the future importance of "packaging" in the way the gentleman in "The Graduate" signaled the importance of "plastics" to Dustin Hoffman.

I opened the two large cardboard boxes and unpacked all the items. Everything exactly as ordered. I was quite pleased and proud of my e-commerce prowess (e-business hadn't been invented yet) in walking the talk and acquiring all of my favorite goodies (especially potato chips) online. I was reveling in my predictions about how everybody would buy everything on the Net. Then I got a lump in my stomach. I looked at these two large cardboard boxes on my kitchen floor. And, the piles of poly-whatever "worms" (many people call them "peanuts"; I call them "worms") that were all over the place. Some stuck to my hands, arms, and clothing. What was I to do? My wife would be home soon and have a lot of questions about my plans to clean up the mess I had created in the kitchen. All the glory I felt about acquiring Tabasco and potato chips would be nothing compared to the wrath she would unleash about the mess if I didn't get busy. No problem. I'll just clean it up. All I have to do is separate all the various packaging materials into their respective categories, burst the cardboard boxes, put the "worms" into a bag so they don't end up decorating our lawn, and then stow everything away in our recycling center. Shouldn't take me more than a half hour. Let's see -- how much time did I save with my Net Grocer purchase anyway? Surely I am still way ahead?

Then there is the purchase of something really simple -- say a cell phone battery. What is the ratio, on a volume basis, of the packaging material to the battery? 2 to 1? 5 to 1? 10 to 1? 100 to 1?And then there are the "worms".

So, what is the answer to all this? First of all, shopping on the Net is here to stay and should be. Retail online now exceeds $100 billion. It is more than great -- in spite of the packaging. You can shop when you want. Selection is wide and deep and shipping is generally good (especially with Amazon). At some point web sites will enable us to establish fulfillment models where we can set up a schedule for things we just want to show up outside the garage door on a scheduled basis. Paper towels, a case of oil, printer paper, stockings, and of course potato chips. I envision receiving an email at some point from a web merchant saying "Mr. Patrick, we have been shipping you two bags of potato chips per week for quite some time. We have calculated that you could save considerably on your shipping cost if you were to up that to 12 bags per month instead. Click here if you would like us to modify your fulfillment model as suggested." But then still, there are the "worms".

Hopefully marketing will come to the rescue. Good marketing involves paying attention to the "end to end process", e.g., not just assuming that the job is getting the package to the customer but going the next step and helping the customer unwrap the package, get rid of the packaging material and start enjoying the merchandise that was delivered. There have been many new business models on the Net and I am confident we will see successful marketers keep uncovering more and more ways of satisfying their customers, by looking at possible annoyances, and solving them. We also need some breakthroughs in the packaging area. As more and more arrive at the door via package delivery companies, what will we do with all the "worms"? As people buy more and more on the Net will they get turned off by all the packaging materials they have to deal with? There is room for leadership here and breakthroughs are possible. I used to be so frustrated with opening the half gallon orange juice cartons. Did I say opening? I meant mutilating. Then along came International Paper with a breakthrough idea -- the screw cap on the carton. Great! Now what we need is self destructing "worms" and instantly collapsible cardboard. National Starch & Chemical has a product called Eco-Foam which is a starch-based biodegradable packaging material. Metabolix uses microbial fermentation of sugars to create totally biodegradable alternatives to petroleum-based plastics. The ultimate will be "worms" that do not stick to your clothing and can be put down the drain without hurting the environment.

Note: This story was originally written as a Reflection on July 31, 1999 and then edited on May 28, 2008

Microcapital

2008-05-19T11:41:54Z

The final speaker at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles was Nick Donofrio, the company's Executive Vice President for Innovation and Technology. Always an emotional, enthusiastic and at times nostalgic speaker, little did the audience know that the next day IBM would announce that Nick will be retiring on October 1 after a fantastic career of forty-four years. I have no doubts that he will end up involved in many activities and will find that he may need to go back to work to regain some spare time.

One of Nick's many leadership roles at IBM has been with the Global Innovation Outlook program. One of the recent GIO events brought together a diverse group of global thought leaders for a series of brainstorming sessions about the future of innovation and economic advancement in Africa. One of the greatest needs identified was to provide access to capital and financing to more of the African population. It was clear that there could be significant growth and transformation if there was a more open, scalable, lower-cost microfinance hub serving the African continent.

IBM and CARE have announced plans to enable microfinance institutions to dramatically lower the costs of providing financial services to large populations in the region who have no access to banks. The goal of the new Africa Financial Grid is to help alleviate poverty and promote economic development in the Sub-Saharan Region. The two organizations plan to establish an Africa Financial Grid built around a shared services and infrastructure model designed to significantly reduce operating costs, streamline lending processes, scale rapidly, and integrate with other resources such as credit bureaus, financial institutions and international payment networks. The Grid will also eventually be able to link with mobile payment providers in Africa to enable customers to repay loans or transfer money via mobile phones. The project will initially target 11 countries with a combined population of more than 400 million people.

There are millions of people with business ideas and aptitudes but with incomes of less than $100 per month, it has been impossible to get financing. A small loan can make a big difference. For example, a loan of $50 enabled a mother of six to purchase fabric and sell embroidered products. Based on her success she was able to get subsequent loans and expand her business. Very small loans can have a big impact but it has been too costly for financial institutions to make the loans practical. The combination of technology and expertise that IBM and CARE bring to the table has the potential to change the model and have a huge impact. One more example of how the Internet continues to empower people.

The World in 2050

2008-05-15T15:21:34Z

The flight to Los Angeles last week was long but on schedule and it provided some time to make a dent in reading World Without End (sequel to The Pillars of the Earth) by Ken Follett on the Kindle. Holding the 10-once e-reader is a joy and the battery lasted throughout the six hour flight. The physical book -- 1,024 pages -- would not be a joy to hold for hours.

The purpose of the trip was to attend IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference. The event was attended by roughly 1,000 business partners, IBM executives, members of the press, and information technology analysts. See "IBM Happenings - May 2008" for a list of some of the announcements made by IBM during the meeting. At the end of the first day was a special event at the University of California School of Cinematic Arts. The invitation only event included 100 or so analysts, members of the press, faculty members and students. IBM and USC had been holding discussions to map out a collaboration between some of the most creative minds in Hollywood with some of IBM's top scientists. Having known some of them for years I was really pleased with they selected. The moderator was Dr. Bill Pulleyblank, mathematician, computer scientist and predictive analysis expert. Bill is known for having managed a project in which a supercomputer named Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a six game rematch. The panelists were all quite distinguished. Don Eigler, IBM Fellow, was the first ever to precisely manipulate individual atoms and spelling the word "I B M". Jeff Jonas, IBM Distinguished Engineer, expert in security and privacy, created much of the technology used in capturing criminals in Vegas casinos. Sharon Nunes, Head of the Energy and Environment business at IBM is a research expert in materials science and is working on numerous projects to save the environment. Last but not least was Ajay Royyuru, who leads IBM Research's computational biology team and IBM's liaison to the National Geographic Genographic project. Ajay participated on a past panel which I had the honor to moderate at Demo.

The breadth and depth of the panel could have kept the audience spellbound for quite a few hours. Will the future be like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future, Incredible Journey or Star Wars? How can scientists help filmmakers create prescient depictions of the future?

Much of the discussion revolved around the merger of biology and systems. Some of the breakthroughs discussed included using nanotechnology to assure the availability of clean drinking water everywhere on the planet, self-healing spinal cords, and life span stretching well past the century mark? The human genome has been mapped but that is just the beginning. In effect the mapping provides the parts list of the human bodies. The next phase of research is to figure out what all those parts do and how they fit together. Not only will regenerating entire body parts be possible but embedded processors under our skin will make it possible to gain significant human augmentation of our capabilities. A project in Europe called Blue Brain is using IBM supercomputing technology to built a simulation model of the human brain. This is a very big undertaking but someday it could lead to curing some of the most dreaded diseases that afflict our societies.

Computer processing is already awesome but we haven't seen anything yet. A Mini Cooper has more computing power than Apollo 13 had. At the exponential pace of growth of computing capacity we may actually reach the Singularity in the next couple of decades.

Security and privacy are obviously crucial elements to the research agenda. We will be able to have an embedded super-PDA that can record every conversation you hear or say during a lifetime. Existing databases make it possible to specifically identify a person by only knowing their zip date of birth and gender. So much for witness protection programs. The good news is that ubiquitous sensors can make the world is less dangerous place. Yes, the government can watch the people, but the people can watch the government too.

I think we are very fortunate that IBM focuses vast sums of money and thousands of top notch people on solving some of the tougher global problems. There is money in some of it and long term business value is created but along the way societies around the world benefit greatly from IBM's work toward the greater good. Take a look at the most recent report on this to get an idea.

As for film making, I learned a lot in talking with some graduate students at the reception. They are all hoping to be as successful as Steven Spielberg, and no doubt some will. The surprising thing I learned is that the best quality movies are still captured on cellulose acetate based film. It is rare these days to see a professional photographer use anything other than a digital camera and apparently with wide angle, high contrast movie making, the industry is not quite there. Consensus was that it would be all digital within five years. Computers already play a huge role (no pun intended) in film making either for augmentation of scenes or for creating the very characters of the movie.