…for and from the curious

A metered bandwidth nightmare

I woke up in the middle of a dream last night. I was imagining how our (Internet)world would look like if Verizon/Comcast/Time Warner/ATT had it their way with metered bandwidth.

1. All the nice images were gone. Remember the Internet of 1996 and the first version of Netscape? Things looked surprisingly familiar.
2. Every website had a bandwidth label on their homepage explaining the impact if someone would turn images at their browsers.
3. Advertisers were offering me $$$ to click on the links to their ads - compensating me for my bandwidth cost.
4. A had a bandwidth-meter sidebar installed in Firefox.
5. File sizes were becoming more popular as a discussion topic than calories.
6. My cache was connected to my wife’s computer. She could read what I had read before without accessing the Internet.
7. Videos were store on external hard drives and traded in the neighborhood. There was some real P2P going on.
8. Wireless Cafes had limits on how much I bandwidth I could access per drink purchased.
9. People with extra bandwidth were posting and inviting others to use it. They gave them access to their wireless networks and cars were parked in front of peoples home with guys access their laptops from there.
10. The trend to hack wireless networks and use their bandwidth led to a decrease in Wireless use.
11. People started to fight and argue over bandwidth use in offices, homes and in the streets. Every other sentence started with “dude”.

Ok that was just a dream. But if metered bandwidth becomes the new standard things will begin to shift. I was in the hosting business one time and still have my own dedicated server. Bandwidth comes with a cost. And our increase need for bandwidth triggered by on-demand video is currently not met by technological breakthroughs generating more GB at a lower cost.

If you’ve been at a data center you can imagine their power bill. Verizon digging up the country to lay down Fiber doesn’t come for free either.

Something has got to give. I am not taking my bandwidth for granted any more and I am glad that I live in a low-tech neighborhood without by hackers breaking into my wireless network (Boulder beware!).

Got something to add to the list?

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Getting your point across with “Made to Stick”

A book that looks like it has duct tape stuck to the cover looks interesting but that alone didn’t make Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath a NYT bestseller.

The authors looked at various stories and evaluated what made them “sticky”. They use 6 criteria on their checklist: Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, story.

This book won’t provide you with ideas. But it will provide you with some very valuable pointers on how to increase your chances of your ideas taking off. It is an fairly easy read peppered with real time examples. Of course some of the stories overlap with what you’ll find in other marketing bestsellers but they all look at the same companies with slightly different angles.

There is a helpful 5 page summary at the end of the book that serves as an instant checklist and will also refresh your mind in a little while.

No need for a long story here: If you’ve got a point then you might want to use Made to Stick to get it across. Otherwise: Where is the point?

Note:
Of course there is a website and a the authors are also maintaining a blog even though they haven’t posted in over 4 months. They must be on to something new or they’re gone fishing.

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We’re grounded - 20 + 1 thoughts and predictions on not so mobile no more

I am in marketing and not in the transportation business. But almost everything I am coming across these days somehow ties into our increased transportation cost.

Therefore I decided to unclutter my brain and put a random list of trends and developments together. Let’s see how many points you agree with and what you can add to the list.

Here we go:

1. Local clusters
 of all kind will become increasingly important
   Local communities will become the anchor of people’s lives again. You’ll hang out more with your neighbors so you might want to choose wisely. I just started a local community website at Ning. And I bet Ning is seeing a lot of similar sites popping up pretty already. Talking to you neighbors also keeps your social skills alive since you are doing everything else online;-)
2. The days of long commutes are over
   Entire neighborhoods where built on the assumption that people would drive over an hour or more to work and back. These communities better attract some business and create some local jobs or their property values will tank.
3. The government will save a lot of money
   The US government just re-opened the bidding process for air re-fueling tankers. Who needs these if there is nothing to re-fuel with?
4. We’ll have more time at our hands
   Less driving around means more time off the road. How are we going to spend it? When are we going to listen to our podcasts? Read the rest of this entry »
   Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

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“small is the new big” reviewed - 2 years later ;-)

Wow. It is 2008 and I am reviewing a book from 2006. I am also reviewing a book that gathers 184 blog posts. Why would anyone put this in a book format and why would anyone publish that? Guess what: It is from Seth Godin. So there’s got to be something to it. The book is called “small is the new big”. It is recommended to read the book in small doses. I disobeyed this rule and read it in 2 or 3 days. Simply because I got sucked in. Sorry Seth.

Many books suffer from the “one big idea stretched over 300 pages” syndrome. That is obviously not the case here. 184 ideas, riffs & rants stretched over a little over 300 pages is a pretty good ratio. This book reads like poetry.

It lets you get into the mindset of one of the great thinkers of our (Internet) times. If you feel sluggish or uninspired then this is the book to read. You’ll get your mojo back and will end up inspired at your desk, wanting to do something. Not a bad thing for $22.95 or less. Enough said. Get your mojo back!

So why would you buy a book that’s essentially available for free online?
You need to get away form your desk to get back to it. Reading online, at your computer is what many of us do all day. In many cases that’s not very inspiring because it is routine.

Do I have to go on?

Note:
I am not into affiliate marketing and don’t make a dime from writing this. Stupid, I know…

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Zappos vs. the life of the others

It is hard to pick a marketing bestseller these days that doesn’t have a chapter about Zappos in it. Of course the web is plastered with the Zappos story as well. I’ll save you from republishing the story of “the retailer that considers itself a service company” for the 115th time.

My point is: What is wrong with the rest of the world? Don’t you get it? Why don’t you give all these marketing gurus something to write about and create something down that alley by yourself?
Of course there is no point in completely copying Zappos philosophy and values one on one. But how about some “take the best and leave the rest”?

To understand the magnitude on how different Zappos really is you might want to look at their environment. We all know most of their competitors are pretty old school - really old school, not like in the movie;-).

But how about their vendors? These are the guys that interact with the buyers at Zappos on a daily base. I happen to have a bit of inside information that I am glad to share with you.

Take a look at Zappos 10 core values and how they compare to the “classic” footwear companies (of course there are exceptions - you know who you are):

Zappos: Deliver WOW through service
Footwear industry: “Why would we want to do that? We’d actually have to listen to people telling us how nice we are? What a total waste of time!” Read the rest of this entry »

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Notes from a Twitter convert

When I first heard about Twitter I  thought: No way, Jose! What a useless fad! I even mentioned it in this blog;-)

:: Is this were we are heading?
:: How can 140 character messages be meaningful?
:: Isn’t this exhibitionism on steriods?
:: What happens to my downtime and privacy?
:: Do people really need to know what I am doing at all times?

These were just some of my thoughts. I am clearly an “onliner”  and I was rock solid against it.

Since I wrote the above in past time you might have realized that things have changed a bit lately. See the Twitter plugin in the column to the left

What made me join?
I knew a lot of very smart friends of mine would be on there but that alone wasn’t good enough. Let them!

But then I ended up in a room with about 50 people at the Boulder Brainjam and many of them were passionate about the same thing. The experience of seeing Twitter live in action changed my mind quickly and I decided to give it a try.

This new form of communication and it really raised some additional questions for me:

:: Looking at my RSS reader - can I handle more content cluttering my day?
:: Will I loose track and totally waste my time?
:: Is this really going to be “useful” at all?
:: Is this worth my time?
:: How do I decide whom to follow?
:: Etc, Etc….

Enough questions. Time for some answers. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Mobile, This n That | 1 Comment »

Parenting and online conversations: Fears, benefits & parallels

Today is father’s day and I got inspired to write this article by reading many comments on Twitter.

I have been thinking about how listening to the radio with my daughter is a showcase for parenting that works but also can serve as a guide for many marketers that are thinking about engaging in any variation of groundswell activities.

Bear with me. In order to make this meaningful I need to provide some personal data first.

HISTORY

My dad plays guitar and listens mainly to Jazz. I was never allowed to touch the radio in the car. At home I listened to my favorite music in secret - Django Rheinhardt and the Beatles were my first big musings. I didn’t want my dad to even agree with my taste of music. I wanted to explore this on my own. He told me what to like and what not.

In marketing this would be a company shouting at their clients. When the client would have a chance to talk back it would be dismissed at irrelevant: “ Our customers don’t know what they like because they are not educated. They don’t know what they want.”

I don’t exactly want to trash my dad on father’s day either. He did what he felt was the right way. He left me with a taste of music that lead to a library of thousands of CD’s and ten thousands of MP3’s. Without him I wouldn’t know albums like Don Ellis’s Autumn. He instilled a love for music that made me spend 100% of my allowance for many years on LP’s. Homework or record store - easy choice! Thank you dad for me being completely broke all the time;-)

FROM ZERO TO DAD IN 2 SECONDS
I met my wife 5 years ago and was completely sold right away. At this moment I also stepped into the role of being a step dad. My daughter was 7 at that time. I remember the first time she asked to change the radio station when we were driving. I scolded her: This is “my” radio in “my” car (after all, that’s how my dad used to operate when I was a child). I sounded like my dad. Read the rest of this entry »

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3G iPhone: Now mobile marketing needs to follow…

For quite some time now we have been discussing mobile marketing concepts with the majority of our client base. conceptbakery did a little bluetooth beamer demonstration in Germany a few years ago. We sent a fake mobile virus around. The problem was that the hardware simple wasn’t there yet - the reach to a broader audience was limited. Only South Korea and Japan have adopted cutting edge mobile marketing concepts - simply because their hardware is ready for it.

Things have shifted with one little announcement this week: Steve Jobs told us that he ended the skimming phase of the iPhone market entry and is going mainstream now. Read the rest of this entry »

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Groundswell provides outstanding conversation material

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research wrote the captivating book  “groundswell - winning a world transformed by social technologies”. It describes the changed relationship between companies and their customers better than anything I have read so far.

It provides a blue print for companies on how to create a successful interactive online relationship with their clients. No matter wether B2C or B2B, no matter what industry, no matter what product or service.

The authors stress the importance of listening. They make the case that there is no unique approach for all target groups but that you need to figure out the social technographics profile of your consumers first - and then develop a tailored solution according to it. They provided an online tool that serves as a great starting point.

The book provides some great case studies that help with the magical questions:
How much will this cost us?
What is the exact benefit? Read the rest of this entry »

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Book review: Personality not included

Rohit Bhargava is the author of the leading “Influential Marketing Blog” (IMB) and is a founding member of the 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy. That means he is no “feather weight” in the world of marketing.

His first book “Personality not included” is a solid attempt to explain to marketers why many of the old corporate habits of dealing with their customers and the general public iare obsolete. Who came up with all the stupid policies anyway? If you are in marketing you might not find that book ground breaking because it just reiterates what you can read in the blogosphere pretty much every day. Rohit is not as radical as Seth Godin would be.

Actually Rohit is a very good showcase for his own book: He has a mind of his own and has no problems sharing his thoughts. At the same time he works for a large organization with over 10,000 employees. He is a watch and learn case for many guys who think that blogging and working a corporate job simply don’t go together.

This is a book that everyone in business can read and get something out of. It is not too academic or plastered with acronyms that nobody but 50 people in the world would get.

So if the book is not ground breaking in my eyes, why should you read it? Read the rest of this entry »

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