We continue to get some good reaction to this report we just released. Michael is a good guy and covers the messaging space pretty thoroughly through his research, writing, and blog. This article is in Network World’s Unified Communications newsletter. Per my previous post on this MarketInsight report, let me know if you’d like a copy and I’ll forward it along if you want to avoid the form on our website.
A better world without a Blackberry?
Great post from Bankers Ball on what the world would be like without these "helpful" little devices. Here’s the link for the full post.
My favorite – "I wouldn’t fear the blinking red light"
“MeMail” and the personalization of email
Good article today in the Wall Street Journal (thanks Cindy) on the use of graphics, links, and logos in email signatures. As the one responsible for marketing/brand at this company and others, having a standard signature block (or several options as I have learned to do) for employees to use in their email signature can be an exercise in futility – even when trying to promote a link or marketing program as we do here at MessageGate. Enforcement is difficult and it ranks pretty low on the list of priorities. That said, there are some issues about unchecked use of these types of things.
When we first began to do our Activity Profiles, we were surprised at both the count and volume of image files causing us to implement a threshold approach to ensure the results were digestible (meaning that there were too many occurrences of .jpg and other image files to be meaningful). There were so many images of both valid logos and random cats, flowers, and animated icons that we chose to focus only on those deemed egregiously large as a starting point. Much like me, our customers’ policing of the signature block is part of the brand management program but hardly a priority item and can be invisible to those that are concerned with it.
This story tackles the issue of personalization and how it is moving beyond mainstream email, phone, IM, etc. details to avatars, quotes, and other such images in the name of further personalizing the message. Maybe I am old school, but don’t really believe the bottom of a company supplied email is the place for you to champion personal causes to unsuspecting recipients or to share pictures of kitty cats doing funny things. Mostly because, contrary to what most folks think, the email is not yours – it is a company business record and they are accountable for what is in it. You’d be surprised how much of this exists in corporate email and what both the bandwidth and storage implications can be. Using our threshold approach above, we see entertainment files (audio, image, video) accounting for upwards of 20% of corporate email volume (GB/TB). Even if signatures account for just a portion of it, that’s a lot of crap to transport and store in the name of personalization.
The mobile phone has now conquered Mt. Everest
If this isn’t an indication of the expanding coverage areas for mobile devices, you can now place a call or send a text message from the peak of Mt. Everest. Couple of interesting points in this story from the BBC- the message Rod Baber left on the Motorola-sponsored voice mail box included descriptions of the following:
1. The view (what he was looking at)
2. How cold it was (the temperature)
3. What he would do back at base camp (what was next)
So, I guess we now have an answer to the question of what you talk about from the top of Mt. Everest. Remarkably similar to what people do while getting on a plane or any other mundane activity and choose to be on the phone.
"Just getting on a plane here…pretty crowded flight with lots of kids. Cold here but looks like rain is stopping. Can wait to get to the lake this weekend."
Many years ago as a consultant, I worked with a few of the then red-hot mobile satellite communications companies that wanted to bring wireless service to the world via low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. While doing the market study work, we identified this little trend call terrestrial network build-out and that it would rapidly fill the coverage void present at the time (1997-98).
Not to mention that
satellite phones were huge, expensive to buy, expensive to use, and
didn’t work inside (oops). Motorola rolled the dice with Iridium at that time and along with other backers dropped more than $5 billion into the project. Who wouldn’t have wanted one of these "little" beauties?
Too busy to work
A good friend described one of her friends in this way. So much going on that there wasn’t really time for a job. Seems a reasonable life goal….
This, of course, assumes you have the means to see a paycheck as a luxury or are otherwise able to generate (or receive) some cash to live on that gives you a load of free time.
This is an eye-opening article from SFGate I picked up via WallStreetFighter on what those people are doing that you see out on the street during the workday. Different cities have varying amounts of this type of traffic and we have all seen it. Cities like New York and San Francisco certainly do. Even Seattle has its fair share. If you are like me, you have wondered the same thing both with a little jealousy and amazement – what do these people do? There was a great ad several years ago (still looking for clip) of an SUV in Manhattan with a kayak and bike on top and a guy in a suit looking at it longingly and thinking to himself "It’s Tuesday, people work on Tuesday." Well, not everyone.
This is an entertaining read and sheds some light on what those people in the coffee shop are really doing and what their story is. Also, fair warning, it may make you want to smack these people too.
One text message every four minutes – an (a)typical teen?
Good article in the Washington Post yesterday about the popularity of text messaging among teens and the implications on the parents from out of control bills. The story "For Texting Teens, an OMG Moment When the Phone Bill Arrives" profiles a high school junior named Sofia that racked up an $1100 bill at 15 cents a pop.
If you ever wanted a clear picture on the evolution of communication, here it is. I posted earlier on this topic with the Generational View of Electronic Communications.
I took the data in the article and did some quick math with a few assumptions to get to Sofia’s number of a text message every 4 minutes. She used 6,807 in one month so let’s assume a 30 day month and that she has 16 waking hours to text (maybe she texts in her sleep, but let’s go with 8 hours off for sleep). I’m also assuming this is both sent and received as the wireless companies charge on both ends (at least Verizon does).
That’s 227 messages per day, 14 messages per hour, or 1 about every 4 minutes.
Welcome to mobile instant messaging by the next generation.
It’s not about voice minutes, it’s about data. The wireless companies are loving it with traffic doubling last year to 158 billion text messages in the US (according to the CTIA) leaving the still strong 20% growth in minute usage in the dust. Other interesting nuggets in the story are about texting being the second most popular use for a cellphone right behind using them to check the time (silly me, I use a watch). Also, text messages are not given their own line item on a bill complete with time stamp and destination like a call detail record – they are reported in a bulk number with no line item detail leaving parents with little understanding of the who and when.
Too connected? Implications from the Estonian cyber-attack
There has been something a bit disturbing happening on the world stage for the past several weeks. Estonia has been under attack from, what seems, the Russians. The only difference is there are no tanks, troops, or missiles. This is the coming in the form of targeted and direct denial of service attacks on government ministries, news providers, and even financial institutions. Estonia is, according to the Washington Post, one of the "most wired societies in Europe." Whether this is state-sponsored cyber-warfare (the Russians deny involvement) or the product of rouge or nationalistic factions in either Estonia or Russia is secondary when you look at the apparent havoc it has created from government email disruptions to financial institutions shutting down on-line banking.
The ramifications of this are pretty huge. NATO seems to be scrambling with how to react to this kind of "hostile action" because it is not a direct military confrontation. The reasons for the Estonia/Russia animosity are many including most recently the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial that has proven to be a bit of a flash point. Ross Mayfield has covered this episode in detail and here is a story in the NY Times on it.
From the Washington Post article:
"The Estonian government stops short of accusing the Russian government of orchestrating the assaults, but alleges that authorities in Moscow have shown no interest in helping to end them or investigating evidence that Russian state employees have taken part."
Think for a moment how our connected society here in the US would come to a halt if our email streams stopped, our on-line banking and information sources were unavailable, and we generally had difficulty in maintaining the connections we have built both by habit and technology over the last many years. Requires some serious thinking and preparation as more access points are made available and we become ever more connected as a population.
Beat the bridge race tomorrow
Marel and I are running this race tomorrow over by the University of Washington with some friends. Should be a good time and an 8k is a nice way to start the day. We plan to get across the University Bridge before it goes up at the 2 mile mark and 20 minutes or so after the start. If you are running it, see you there. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so tomorrow morning.
Update: Had a good time this morning. Although this seems like it should be cake to do the first 2 miles in under 20 min – adding in lots of folks running, the always slow first mile b/c of lots of runners, etc. this was closer than I thought it would be. We did make it and enjoyed finishing into Husky stadium (the rain even held off – more or less). This was the 25th year of this race for a great cause – The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Learn about email classification
I was recently interviewed by Dan Keldsen formerly of the Delphi Group/Perot Systems and the guy behind BizTechTalk about how you can apply intelligence to archiving with email classification. Here’s the link to the audio and here is the link to his blog and short write-up on our chat.
RSS explained – pictures tell the story
This is a great video to understand what RSS does from a local Seattle company Common Craft . Breaks how RSS works and how to get set up down to its basics. I love the visual and simple approach that takes something that could be viewed as difficult and makes it mickey mouse easy.
From Common Craft:
There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don’t. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don’t know where to start.
Picked this up from Info Governance via Lexblog.
Venture Vice 