Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Diebold gives up on voting machines
Diebold has thrown in the towel on its troubled voting machines business. It has sold the whole division to its competitor, ES&S. Diebold electronic voting machines have been plagued with problems, and the company says it is writing off tens of millions in losses, due primarily to lawsuits from disgruntled local governments who bought the machines only to find out they are a security nightmare.
Those of us that warned for years that electronic voting machines were a recipe for disaster can take little comfort in being right. Unfortunately, taxpayers are the big losers, as local governments spent hundreds of millions of dollars on untested equipment, much of which has had to be replaced already. It is not that the technology is inherently flawed--indeed, there are a few simple ways to make electronic voting machines reliable and auditable, like producing a paper record of votes entered. Buying technology and relying entirely on vendor promises can lead to unpleasant surprises.
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The tediousness of "legitimate" spam
I had eighteen emails in my inbox this morning, and sixteen of them were "legitimate" spam. By "legitimate" I mean each email was advertising a legitimate service, and their address, phone number, and valid email return address was included. Most of them come from businesses the company has ordered something from in the past, and the rest are probably harvesting the company "contact us" email address from legitimate sources or buying it from address list resellers. Of the sixteen emails, only two were anything I would have even the mildest interest in. Email is so cheap that there is little reason not to send out many thousands of solicitations. But there is a real cost, and it is shifted in email to the recipient.
But the lesson here is that I delete this ruthlessly, usually without even reading them. And some firms that I have ordered from and so see me or the company as a repeat customer are the worst. I don't want or need a "weekly specials" email, week after week, month after month. I unsubscribe from these lists, and some emails stop, but others pop up. And unfortunately, I don't see any solution to the problem.
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eBay to sell Skype
eBay has announced it is selling Skype. The auction giant bought the VoIP phone company several years ago for $2.6 billion, has already written off $1.4 billion and apparently hopes to get $2 billion in the sale--Meaning Skype never made eBay much money. In a related story, Skype has announced it is doubling its rates for international calls, where the firm makes most of its revenue.
Skype calls can be crystal clear or maddeningly noisy, and part of the problem is that Skype carries a lot of traffic across the public Internet, meaning so-so quality as a voice call traverses several different non-Skype networks. It is not a problem inherent to VoIP--done right, VoIP phone systems can be better than traditional copper-based land lines. But Skype has one of those "we'll give a lot of service away for nothing and make it up in volume, or international calls, or subscriptions, or something" business models. Skype's biggest asset is excellent VoIP software--it is an excellent tool that supports text chat, voice calls, and video calls. If they figure out their business model, the firm will do well.
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Home-based businesses driving $2.5 billion software market
This story says that software for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch has grown to $2.5 billion. This is a market that did not exist just two years ago. What the article does not mention is that most of the programmers writing and selling software for the iPhone are working from home, and many of those businesses are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
This is where broadband becomes important. These home-based software businesses have to have reliable, high performance broadband connections--to coordinate activities with other programmers and co-workers also working with home, to upload and download software, and to access online business services (e.g. accounting, printing, etc.) that enables these work from businesses.
Economic developers: What is your strategy for attracting these new home-based businesses? Are you working with local builders and developers to ensure that "Internet ready" homes are available? Are you supporting a regional effort to improve access and affordability of broadband? Do you have a virtual business incubator that is designed to help home-based entrepreneurs grow successfully?
Communities that market their quality of life, their recreational resources, and that have open access broadband have a recipe for growth.
New technology creates new markets and new opportunities
Sirius XM has introduced something I might consider buying--it's a dock for an iPhone/iPod Touch. As I've said repeatedly, I don't want more gagdgets in my life. I have too many already. I want fewer, more capable pieces of technology. I've avoided a satellite radio because my car does not have one built in, and I have not wanted another one trick gadget in the car with another charger and cables taking up space. But this little dock is brilliant--it plugs into the 12 volt adapter in your car, charges your iPhone, and turns your touchpad iPhone into a Sirius/XM radio.
This devices highlights the brilliance of the iPhone as the first open cellphone platform (Apple now has competition from Google's Android phone and Palm's Pre). The iPhone as a platform rather than a dedicated phone has created new business opportunities, and by extension, new jobs.
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Broadband is killing TV, slowly but surely
A sure sign that interest in TV is waning is the fact that major media firms like Disney, Viacom, CBS, and Time Warner have announced a partnership with some of the biggest advertisers in the country (Proctor & Gamble, AT&T, Unilever) to create a new ratings system that will more accurately measure viewer habits. The current Nielsen system is decades old, and the complaint is that it does not accurately measure the effect that DVRs and broadband are having on viewing habits.
People are not watching less "TV." In fact, they may be watching more when you add in video on demand services like Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu. But content developers and advertisers can't really tell from the antiquated Nielsen ratings system.
Design Nine is already working with some of the most innovative and technologically advanced IP TV service providers in the country. Firms like Cisco are building sophisticated new video on demand head end platforms for providers. Over the next ten years, TV as we know it is going to morph into a much richer, interactive, on-demand service that will blend access to "TV" shows, movies, live performances (e.g. NASCAR races, concerts, etc.), gaming, reality shows, and audience participation format shows like American Idol.
Where will this be available first? Communities with high performance open access broadband networks will have it first, because they have the business model to accommodate these new IP TV providers and the open access networks will have the bandwidth to make them work.
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Sony ebook takes on the Kindle
Sony has announced it's $400 ebook. Intended to compete with the Amazon Kindle, the device costs $100 more than the Kindle but works with several open ebook formats, giving users access to a wider range of books.
Both devices are likely to founder. Everyone is sick of lugging around multiple devices, and worse, all the special cables and chargers needed for them. I'm kicking myself for buying a small Nikon camera without checking on the data cable--the camera uses a proprietary cable instead of more common mini-USB cable, meaning I now have to lug around yet another cable.
Enough information is leaking out now that it appears very likely that Apple is going to release a tablet device either this fall or in early winter. When it is released, it will kill both the Kindle and the Sony ebooks. A Apple tablet will support email, Web browsing, and probably thousands of applications, as opposed to the ebooks that do only one thing. We just don't have enough room in our bags and briefcases to lug around a laptop and an ebook device, and for a lot of us, a capable tablet will replace both the relatively heavy laptop and will also serve as a very capable ebook reader.
Book publishers are playing along with Sony and Amazon right now because they have to, and it's a good way to gain some experience with the economics of ebooks. But a more popular device that supports many book formats, not just one or a few, will swamp the competition. It's only a matter of time.
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Local open access broadband makes cloud computing work
Here is an interesting article about a study of current "cloud" computing services, which "seem to come up short. This really should not be a surprise. Businesses that think cloud computing services are going to be a panacea for their IT problems are going to be very disappointed.
First, cloud computing is just the latest IT industry buzz phrase, and is the latest in what is now a forty year history of selling old wine in new bottles. In this case, we are talking about very old wine indeed. Cloud computing is just the mainframe. And the mainframe was redefined in the early eighties as the mini-computer. And the mini-computer was redefined in the early nineties as client-server computing. And client-server computing became Web applications. And Web applications became Web 2.0. And Web 2.0 became cloud computing.
But all of those buzz phrases were and still are architecturally quite similar. The user is connected at a distance to a central repository of data. However, as the distances between the user and the data have grown, network latency, or how long it takes data to travel across the network between user and repository, has become a big problem. The Internet offers virtually no control over latency, for a whole variety of reasons, including the fact that the Internet was never, in its original design, intended for real-time transaction-based processing (cloud computing).
The answer is robust local, high performance open access broadband networks, which allow two things to happen--you can move the cloud closer to the user, and you can control and limit latency. Distributed cloud computing improves performance and reduces or eliminates the single point of failure that is being designed into some cloud environments. Apple, for example, is building a giant data center in North Carolina. But what happens if that facility loses power in a major storm? Apple and other cloud competitors like Amazon and Google do create redundant data centers, but a few massive data centers can't solve the latency problem the way putting cloud servers on local open access networks can.
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Digital music downloads increase
Digital music downloads continued to gain a larger share of the music sales in the U.S. While CDs still are the most popular way to buy music, digital downloads increased in the first half of 2009 by 50%, up to 30% of music purchases. The iTunes Store is now the largest retailer of music in the country, with 25% of the total market.
The success of iTunes is due in part to the increasing availability and affordability of broadband--without it, the iTunes Store is unusable. Music downloads are a great example of how broadband creates new opportunities that did not exist just a few years ago. Broadband enables new jobs and new businesses.
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Electric car infrastructure does not exist
This Scientific American article discusses something I and others have been saying for years--the 100 year old electric grid we use for residential and business power was not designed for electric cars, which have extremely high amperage power draws. It is not so much that the grid can't handle one or two electric cars in a neighborhood; it can, and the load is not much different than things like welders or potter's kilns. But the grid was not designed for say 35% of residential homes plugging in their electric cars every evening at 5:30, at the very same time that residential electric use already peaks.
Part of the solution is broadband. Resilient, reliable fiber broadband connections to every home will enable electric providers to talk to home power controllers. The home power controllers will have enough smarts to turn the car charging on and off at the direction of the power company so that the load is balanced throughout the night, when electricity costs the least to generate.
That's right--broadband is part of the energy independence solution.
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