Dortch's Digressions

Sometimes, Technology Works TOO Well...

Earlier today, I came across a job opening I found interesting. (In case you haven't been following my career development at www.DortchOnIT.com, I got laid off from my Aberdeen Group analyst job in January.) Clever me thought, "I'll write a blog entry about the company, then point to it as an example of how well I understand what they're doing and can help them do it." So I wrote and posted the blog entry, then went back to the company's Web site to begin the official job application process -- only to find that in the ensuing hour or so, the job was no longer open.

Frankly, I was too stunned to be very disappointed...

Apple and MacWorld: Who Needs Big Trade Shows Anymore, Anyway?

So Apple has decided that Steve Jobs will not give the Macworld Expo 2009 keynote address in a few weeks, and that the company will pull out of the 25-year-old show altogether after the 2009 edition. And speculation runs rampant across the Web and print media worlds, about (1) Steve Job's health and (2) that of Macworld Expo itself. I'll ignore issue (1) because it's none of my business, and focus on issue (2).

The large computer industry trade show has been a dying dinosaur for years, but has stubbornly hung on in many cases. However, there are now too many factors mitigating against the success of such events. These range from the abilities of companies such as Apple to turn retail stores and Web sites into far more manageable, controllable, and profitable "mini-expos" to growing requirements to reduce or eliminate costly, low-productivity business travel. (I mean, the MacBook Pro on which I'm composing this very screed already has built-in Internet connectivity, a microphone AND a camera...)

But don't cry for Macworld just yet. There is an awful lot of value to be gotten out of the event, even should Apple disappear from it entirely as a participant, or radically reduce its participation. I'm old enough to remember when networking pioneer all but owned the NetWorld trade show, but that event retained value beyond Novell itself, especially when it was combined with Interop, another pioneering big industry event. So there's semi-relevant precedent for the possibility of an Apple-free (or "Apple-reduced") Macworld continuing on successfully, at least for a while.

All depends on how Macworld Expo 2009 actually plays out, and what Apple does, if anything, before, at, and after said event. (If you want to read similar, more granular, and "closer-to-home" musings on this subject, I highly recommend "Apple at Expo: What went wrong?" by Jason Snell of Macworld.com, a corporate cousin of the company that runs Macworld Expo.) But regardless of how things play out at Macworld, what's happened to Macworld is definitely indicative of a larger truth: with few if any exceptions, the larger and/or more focused on a single vendor the trade show, the more likely that its days are numbered. And those numbers, if used to measure years of remaining longevity, are in the low to very low single digits, at best.

Sprint Nextel to Troublesome Customers: You're Fired!

So Sprint Nextel has "fired" some 1,000 of what it says are its most troublesome (and apparently troubled) customers. The company said in published reports that these customers made as many as 40 to 50 calls to the company's customer service team every month. And yet, there are folks out there in the blogosphere chalking this up to callously typical Big Business behavior, and stating with falsely ironic wistfulness that it must be nice to be able to fire customers at will.

A few things.

1. ANY business has the right, if not the ethical responsibility, to part company with any customer that business cannot satisfy. As long as the business makes the customer contractually and financially whole, which Sprint Nextel has done with its 1,000 former customers, why stay in a relationship that's not working? (Hold on, hold on -- let's stick to business relationships here, people!)

2. Sprint Nextel says it researched its customer base and complaint call logs extensively before doing this. The fact that the company was able to find 1,000 people who averaged 40 to 50 complaint calls monthly out of a claimed subscriber base of 57 million seems to indicate at least some research was in fact conducted. It should have taken a fair amount of digging -- any wireless carrier where a majority of customers were that unhappy would have gone out of business before most of us would have heard about them. (Fill in your preferred former carrier here.)

3. What happens if customer service and satisfaction levels increase measurably for the 56,999,000 or so Sprint Nextel customers still under contract? Will critics of the move lapse into grumbling silence? (Unlikely.) Will Sprint Nextel seek out the next 1,000 most complaint-prone customers and send them warning? (Possibly.) Will other wireless carriers or other types of companies follow Sprint Nextel's lead? (Unlikely, at least "out loud" among wireless carriers; possibly, in other cases.)

4. This is not about Big Bidness trampling the individual, something that constantly troubles me personally, make no mistake. Nor is it, I believe, anything about getting people to suck it up, shut up, and stop complaining about what they perceive as poor service. I do that all the time, but would have to give up blogging, if not working full-time, to get to the level of 40 to 50 calls a month. This is about a company using business analytics, business intelligence (BI), and customer relationship management (CRM) tools and processes to identify a relatively minute set of apparently extremely, chronically unhappy customers, and walking away from them rather than draining significant resources continuing to try to satisfy them. If it were your business, and you could, why wouldn't you, if it offered a chance to make life better for you and the vast majority of your customer base?

That last is not a rhetorical question. If you have an answer you'd care to offer, as Ross Perot said when he ran for President, "Ah'm all ears!"

Want to Help People? Help Them Get Online!

It occurs to me that one of the best way we can help the disenfranchised, individually or in groups, is to help them gain access to and experience navigating the Internet and the Web. Many organizations that offer services to such people can do so most effectively online. Also, many local and regional governmental organizations do more and more business online, and disenfranchised people often need to deal with such agencies. So being online can only help there, too.

How best to help? If you know of a local non-profit organization that aids the disenfranchised, and you have online skills to share, visit its Web site, then e-mail or call someone and offer to help. In addition, the next time you see a disenfranchised person outside your favorite caffeine emporium equipped with fee-based Internet/Web access, find out if they have any online expertise. If so, buy them some online time along with or instead of that coffee or snack. If not, point them at some local training resources and/or books at the public library. If you've got basic computer books you no longer need, or money to buy some, maybe you could help start a mini-lending library at a local shelter or service-providing organization.

If you live in an area where free wireless access is supported by local governments and/or companies, make sure local service agencies for the disenfranchised, as well as sources of food and education, not only receive good signals, but have access to the necessary hardware and software as well. You can buy the stuff yourself, if you're flush and generous. Otherwise, maybe you could work with a local non-governmental organization to have a fund-raiser specifically for technology accessible to the disenfranchised through one or more local service providers to that constituency.

Having spent several periods of borderline to hardcore disenfranchisement growing up, I know from personal experience that access to services and knowledge can sometimes be more empowering than money. Such access can also lead to more and better access to money, not to mention food, housing, medical care and other critical steps to enfranchisement and independence.

I'm sure you can come up with some other ideas, too. Care to share? Send them along and/or post them here. Thanks, from me and from those you may help without ever meeting or knowing them.

Apple's iPhone: Yes, But...

Yes, the iPhone's cool and all, but...

1. If you aren't already an AT&T/Cingular Wireless subscriber, is a $500, unproven telephone worth switching networks for, no matter how cool it is?

2. Does it do anything that you know about that you've been able to duplicate otherwise or live without until now, but for some reason can't duplicate or live without once the iPhone is available?

3. If you use corporate e-mail, unless you're the CEO or the CFO or similarly senior/powerful, is the IT department going to jump through sufficient hoops to make your e-mail and calendar accessible from your iPhone before you get frustrated enough to break something...or someone?

4. Can you honestly look at yourself in the mirror and swear that you were in no way disappointed or frustrated any of the previous times you bought the first edition of some cool technology, only to see cooler and/or equally cool but cheaper technology appear almost immediately? (Hey, you early iPod adopters -- lose the earbuds, I'm talkin' to you!)

The iPhone is the Paris Hilton of new, cool, geeky gadgets. It's certainly fascinating to look at, and it's danged good at generating publicity for itself and those behind it. But I'm still waiting for proof of substance that I find meaningful or compelling. I'm not saying such substance isn't possible, or that it won't be there eventually -- just that it ain't there yet. So I, at least, will wait, and see, and wait to see.

What about you? Let me know, via e-mail and/or a comment post. Especially if you turn out to be one of those irrepressible early iPhone adopters, once you finally get yours...so to speak...

YouTube, UTube, and Tiny-Brained Flamers

So there's Google's YouTube, the online locus for video, amateur and otherwise. Then there's UTube, otherwise known as Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corp. According to a story I just heard on National Public Radio (NPR)'s "All Things Considered," which you can read online, there are people out there who get the two confused – and then flame the good folks at UTube. By sending nasty e-mails, and/or filling "for more information" online forms with vulgarity directed at UTube. Because the flamers can't find the videos they're looking for. Because, in other words, UTube isn't YouTube, and the flamers are too clueless to click around the UTube Web site the one to three times it would take to figure that out. (Sorry about all the sentence fragments – I can barely type or write, I'm so stunned.)

Some of the flamers know that UTube isn't YouTube, but are still upset. This is because UTube has filed a lawsuit, seeking compensation for the money it's had to spend on additional server space, to accommodate all of its recently acquired new "visitors." So those flamers are apparently concerned that a division of a multi-billion-dollar company with a per-share stock price currently above $500 is going to be taken down by a tiny company "committed to being the number one supplier of used Tube, Pipe and Rollform Machinery in the world," according to the clearly labeled and written "Our Company" page of the UTube Web site?

Despite years of effort by numerous worthy people to convince folks to be respectful of others online, this still happens. Sigh. I'm not going to ask whether or not these flamers are really so clueless that they can't or won't tell the obvious difference between YouTube and UTube. I'm not going to ask any of the ancillary questions that occur to me, about the flamers' educations, upbringings, or acculturation. And of course, everyone unable to read and/or cut off from all media gets a pass as far as I'm concerned, to the extent that that matters.

Instead, I'm only going to ask one question. Do I refer collectively to these flamers as YouMorons, or UMorons?

Two Takes on Modern Technologies and Real Life

Earlier today, at a blog I write about business process management (BPM), I used the example of the French government banning BlackBerry handheld wireless e-mail devices from its ministries and other buildings, fearing U.S. surveillance of those e-mails. Never mind that the system's been approved by security agencies in multiple countries, and that it employs encryption stronger than that used at some online banking sites.

Sigh. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, though, I stumbled across another, far more apparently positive example of technology colliding with real life.

My colleague and friend Ron Exler, author of the authoritative blog on everything geospatial, "The Geo Factor," tells me that where he lives in Maryland, Bank of America has deployed ATMs that let depositors insert checks with no envelopes or deposit slips. The ATM scans your check, displays what it thinks the amount of the check is, gives the depositor a chance to correct or verify the amount, and prints out a deposit receipt that includes an image of the check.

To me, this is a prime example of what modern technology is supposed to do -- give us options, while enabling automated systems to duplicate, if not improve upon, things we used to rely upon other human beings to do. If you've ever waited in line in a bank to deposit a check at the beginning, middle, or end of a month -- or especially if you've waited in line to do almost anything else -- this is something you should find it easy to appreciate.

Sometimes, electricity or fire provide light and heat. Sometimes, they can burn down a building. All depends on how they're deployed, and the thinking behind that deployment.

The Traditional Recorded Entertainment Industry: R.I.P.

"The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead….

"The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

"At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, 'The consumer’s conscience, which is all we had left, that’s gone, too.'"

-– Tony Sachs and Sal Nunziato (owners of an online music retail business and former operators of a bricks-and-mortar music store), "Spinning Into Oblivion" (contributed opinion piece), The New York Times, Apr. 5, 2007.

"You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

-– "George Taylor" (the U.S. astronaut played by Charlton Heston), Planet of the Apes (movie), 1968.

Can Print News Publications Be Saved? Should They Be?

Hmm. The venerable and respected InfoWorld's killing off its print edition. Other newspapers and magazines are doing the same, or just dying outright. Meanwhile, though, The Boston Globe has begun marketing its online edition as an add-on to its print edition, increasing online subscriptions by 145 percent, according to the folks at MarketingSherpa. And there are multiple, spirited debates taking place across the Web and the blogosphere, about what is likely to and should or should not happen to print newspapers and magazines. (Some of the most lively discussion has followed some opining from columnist David Lazarus at SFGate, the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle, another newspaper reportedly in trouble.)

In any case, maybe someone can explain to me why print publication owners have waited this long to do anything serious about the challenges to their "empires." Instead of or in addition to gutting editorial departments and relying more and more on packaged story sets provided by "others," why haven't they recruited frequent opinion contributors as bloggers or columnists, and sought sponsors for these? Why haven't they started working with journalism and business schools to change how graduates are trained, so they don't enter a not-so-brave new world with a bunch of old-world skills and attitudes about how things work in their world? And why, oh why, are they still bothering with legal wrangling about who has the rights to link to what, when they could just, for example, make their archives completely "open source," and therefore far more attractive and useful to readers, researchers, students, and others?

These are not new ideas, and I am not the first or the only person to consider them. In my darker moments, I fear that the reason they aren't yet being seriously considered by larger numbers of those involved is the same reason why the recorded music and movie industry is still so largely flummoxed by new technologies -- apparently intractable mental inertia, or the inability or unwillingness to face and embrace change. Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes, evolution means waiting for a critical mass of dinosaurs to die or otherwise get out of the way...

Steve Jobs and Digital Rights Management: You Can't Have it Both Ways

OK, NOW I'm really confused...

Steve Jobs of Apple wants the recorded music industry to consider getting rid of its various, insidious, and ineffective attempts at digital rights management (DRM), formerly known as "copy protection." This would open up the online music market considerably, and be something Apple would embrace wholeheartedly, Jobs said.

Wonderful ideas, all. Also only a matter of time, if the entertainment/"content" industry's history with home media recording and playback technologies ranging from the phonograph to television to the VCR is any accurate indication.

However, the very same Steve Jobs won't let non-iPod users become iTunes customers, not even if they were willing to pay a financial premium. That would open up iTunes considerably -- but it just might slow iPod sales, which generate far higher profits for Apple.

Apple's Jobs also won't let Macintosh users run virtual copies of the Mac OS X operating system. Now, there are all kinds of good reasons to be able to run virtual copies of OS X, for enterprises supporting Mac users and for consumers as well, as a quick search for online info on "virtualization" should make clear. This would especially be true if I could run Mac OS X on less expensive PC hardware -- you know, like the Intel Corp. chips now inside all the new Macintosh systems.

But of course, this might hurt Macintosh hardware sales.

It's not impossible to do technologically. There are already OS X images online that will run in virtual environments. They're not sanctioned or supported by Apple, and they almost definitely violate Apple intellectual property rights. But they demonstrate a curiosity, if not an actual desire, for features Apple could provide and support, but is not. (Microsoft is almost as bad, by the way -- you can only virtualize the more expensive versions of Windows Vista, for example. You can read a very informative blog about this by "The PC Doctor," Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, at http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/wp-trackback.php?p=257.)

DRM is like global warming -- it seems that all but the most die-hard contrarians have admitted that
both exist, and are inherently damaging to the larger ecosystem. But where DRM is concerned, at least some IT industry leaders appear to be speaking inconsistently. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have both been reported as not thinking very much of the current state of DRM, as reported by Playfuls.com. However, some of my industry contacts indicate that in the closed negotiations going on among IT and content vendors and standards promulgators, things are very likely to get much worse before they get any better for business users or consumers.