"Net Neutrality" in the Netherlands

Network neutrality is a complicated issue, despite occasional efforts to paint it as a simple matter of content freedom. The Netherlands, for example, recently has decided to ensure that over the top applications such as Skype are usable on fixed and wireless networks.

That is heralded as a network neutrality move. In the U.S. market, such rules already are part of the Federal Communications Commission "Internet Freedoms" principles, which state, among other things, that users should be able to use all lawful applications."

The Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation decision seems aimed at services such as Skype, which the rules specify are allowed to work without interference from access providers.

Of course, that is not the heart of debates over network neutrality, which really becomes an issue because network management practices and application management sometimes overlap. Strong versions of network neutrality, which would prohibit any traffic shaping at all, even at the request of the end user, would complicate delivery of quality of service for any real-time service.

Users might not care so much about quality issues with "free" video clips, but they might not be happy paying for a video service that freezes frequently because there is congestion on the network. Nor are users likely to be any happier paying for video conference or calling services that suffer from impairments.

Some argue that bandwidth fixes all these problems, but that isn't true. Given enough bandwidth and a reasonable buffer, any pre-recorded form of video will work fine, almost always.

Real-time services, on the other hand, suffer from latency impairments because there is no way to buffer the bits. In such cases, quality of experience measures, such as delaying other types of less-important traffic, will improve end user experience. But strict forms of network neutrality might forbid even that practice.

The Netherlands To Enact Law That Ensures Net Neutrality

"Mobile First" Content Implications: Be Visual

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking for some time about a “mobile first” strategy. Schmidt underscores his point by noting that all today’s top software engineers are applying their craft to mobile
platforms "only."

The key implication for content marketers is to master the ability to “tell your story” visually. Hemmed in by 12-sound bytes and 140-character tweets, your brand’s messaging needs to be visual to break through. The mobile dominant realm requires that marketers create new context for the diverse forms of messaging that are so crucial to maintaining customer attention and brand impact today.

Here are two powerful ways you can begin creating visual stories that reduce complexity and drive memorability. Also included are two key points for making your visual storytelling more compelling. One way of describing the advantage is to note that visual processing 10 million bits per second.

Auditory processing rates are 125,000 bits per second while verbal processing occurs at 300 words per minute.

Winning In a Mobile First Environment: Create Visual Stories | MENG Blend:

Google’s Mobile Payments Strategy Ready?

Google apparently is ready to articulate its mobile-payments strategy, and is reportedly going to unveil a service with Sprint and several major retailers, including Macy’s and Subway, on May 26, 2011.

The service will let consumers with Google’s Android operating system and near field communications (the Nexus S) pay for goods and redeem coupons with their handsets.

Sprint has said it was working with a variety of handset makers and technology companies on NFC payment systems. Google has said it plans to introduce the service in five cities, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Google does not appear to be banking on transaction fees as part of its revenue model. Instead, Google is looking at ways the service could boost its digital advertising business. The planned payment system would allow Google to offer retailers more data about their customers and help the retailers target ads and discount offers to mobile-device users near their stores.

Significantly, that makes Google a partner to the card issuers, Visa and MasterCard, not a competitor.


Google earlier had been said to be using hardware and software from companies including VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech as part of the service.

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Friend Recommendations Drive Local Business Visits

Social shopping can be hard to understand, but the point of mobile-enhanced shopping is that it builds on the ways people who buy things locally decide to do so. Fully 52 percent of consumers surveyed by CityGrid, for example, say that the primary reason they would try a local business is a friend’s recommendation. That far outstrips any other type of channel by at least 500 percent.

The revenue model for any mobile service provider or mobile-based app also is sometimes hard to envision, but it is, in large part, as simple as shifting a portion of today's spending on local advertising, for starters.

Word of mouth, in other words, drives lots of traffic. The whole idea of mobile-enhanced shopping apps is to build on that natural activity in a more systematic and structured way.

On the other hand, there also is quite a bit of evidence that consumers rely heavily on search when looking for a local business to patronize. Data from local search engine optimization firm BrightLocal shows that the top two traffic sources to local businesses were Google Places and Google search. Facebook provided only two percent of visits to local business websites.

Overall, BrightLocal found that 59 percent of Internet users search on Google at least once a month to find a good local business.

Friend Recommendations Drive Local Business Visits

Square Aims to Replace POS Terminals

Square has been growing fast, but now is launching "Square Register," a replacement point of sale terminal for retailers. Some will point out that "replace the merchant terminal" strategies are inherently difficult, as merchants generally have proven highly resistant to payment schemes that require them to change out their POS terminals.

Still, Square's approach aims at "adding more value," particularly by enhancing a retailer's relationship with paying customers. The approach might not get traction, but it illustrates an important element of the evolving mobile payments space, namely that the actual transaction is only part of the total value proposition.

Historically, Square’s readers always stored every purchaser’s receipt for merchants and allowed merchant’s to send a copy of the receipt to the purchaser via SMS and email. It was fairly simple.

Now, using Square Register, merchants can access Google Analytics style data with an inventory angle, such as how many units of a certain type of product were sold, and to which types of customers.

Square’s Disruptive New iPad Payments Service Will Replace Cash Registers

5% of Tablet Usage is "at Meetings or Class"

Lots of tablets are being sold to business users. Still, perhaps five percent of tablet usage, in terms of time, occurs when "at meetings," a Nielsen survey suggests.

But 24 percent of tablet owners say they use the devices at meetings, about the same percentage who say they use their smart phones at meetings.

Tablets can be used in business, no question. But most tablet usage seems to be entertainment related.

Smart phone owners say that 20 percent of the time they use their smart phones is while watching TV, compared to 11 percent lying in bed.

eReader owners indicated only 15 percent of their eReader time was spent watching TV, though they spent a 37 percent of their device usage time in bed.

Tablet owners said 30 percent of their time spent with their device was while watching TV compared to 21 percent lying in bed.

In the U.S., Tablets are TV Buddies while eReaders Make Great Bedfellows | Nielsen Wire

Half a Million Apple Apps, and Angry Birds is at Top of Download List

Latest FCC Global Broadband Report Nuanced, Careful, Sure to Disappoint Some Observers

The latest Federal Communications Commission report on global broadband suggests the United States ranks about ninth for mobile broadband adoption among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries and 12th for fixed (DSL or cable) broadband on a per-household basis.

But assessing broadband availability is more complicated than it used to be, in large measure because of mobile broadband, an area where the United States is forecast to lead, at least in terms of fourth generation Long Term Evolution deployments.

Also, using only the OECD data, which FCC report authors say is the best overall, the United States ranks first out of 28 in cable modem coverage, sixth out of 16 for fiber-to-the-home coverage and eighth out of 29 in 3G mobile wireless coverage.

Some would argue that, for any number of reasons, including population density and continental size, the United States will not typically, if ever, rank at the very top of any global measure of tele-density.

Where did the United States currently rank on per-capita measures of broadband penetration in early 2010? 15th, as it turns out; precisely where it has long ranked in terms of fixed-line voice line penetration. If that seems unremarkable, consider that a 15th-place ranking is sufficient for observers to see few problems with voice service availability. In other words, the "problem of voice access" is solved even when the United States ranks only 15th globally on common measures of tele-density.

None of that is to suggest there are not real or potential issues in rural areas, issues with the price of the faster services or issues with adoption. But based on historical comparisons, the data is entirely consistent with the realities of service in a continent-sized nation with lower population density than many other nations, and regulatory policies in some areas that support government-lead or supported network investment more aggressively than is possible in the U.S. market.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Moore's Law, Cooper's Law, Zoning Law

Spectrum efficiency typically doubles about every 30 months, where Moore's Law suggests computing or storage capacity doubles about every 18 months.

Ability to place new cell towers does not double every 30 months, according to a rule of thumb called Cooper's Law.

For reasons of zoning rules, neighborhood objections and money, the ability to build new towers to increase capacity without additional spectrum is limited.

There is no Moore's Law for steel towers or electricity or construction costs. Some estimate that the cost to each national mobile provider of additional capacity, gained by shrinking cell sizes, without adding spectrum, is as much as $40 billion.

To be sure, spectrum costs money, and new towers would have to build at some locations, even with new spectrum allocations (networks operating at different frequencies require different topologies, all other things being equal). So there is no way to avoid additional investment.

All that explains why the Federal Communications Commission believes it is imperative to license new spectrum, and why AT&T thinks it has to move now to acquire T-Mobile. It's a real estate deal, more than anything else.

Square Adds Digital Wallet Features, Pay by Name

Up to this point, Square arguably has gotten the most traction from smaller and non-traditional retailers who need the ability to accept credit and debit card payments where they are, without investing in the full retail point of sale infrastructure, using just the Square appliance and an iPhone. But Square also is developing ways for retailers to use an iPad as a functional equivalent of a POS terminal, in addition to iPhones.

The new wrinkle is that the iPad software also allows businesses to update their inventory, add specials, and track customer behavior, moving into the analytics function. Square also is offering a sort of peer-to-peer service that allows retailers to accept payments from customers who already have received credit card information on file.

The new "Card Case" app allows users to see nearby businesses, read menus, store electronic copies of all your receipts and pay by giving the retailer just a name. The merchant then can access credit card information the customer already has provided to the merchant.

Square’s big plans to kill the cash register

Watch Out When Valuations Aren't Based on Earnings

There isn't a social media bubble, a PwC consultant says. But watch out when experts start using metrics other than those based on earnings. That's what happened during the 1999 technology bubble as well. People started inventing metrics not based on earnings, because there were no earnings.

Obviously, some firms do have actual earnings. But many do not. So beware when people start saying "price to earnings" ratios aren't the best way to value firms. That's the same slippery slope that lead to disaster last time. PwC partner Ian Coleman says "value per user" is a reasonable way to value firms. Watch out. That's bubble talk.

PwC: This Is Not A Bubble, Valuations May Be Justified

How Small Businesses Look for Customers

Fully 86 percent of small and mid-sized businesses (500 employees or fewer) rely on their websites to look for new customers, a survey of 300 business managers and owners suggests.

But small business owners and managers use a wide range of channels to look for new customers, a study by Bredin Business Information suggests.

But 74 percent use email and search marketing. Some 57 percent use blogs and LinkedIn.  As you might guess, executives are not as satisfied with the channels as they want to be.

But given typical marketing industry rules of thumb, virtually all of the channels are effective. For example, you might think the fact that 29 percent of respondents think blogs and other forms of social media are effective, a huge drop from the 2010 surveys, as an indication that the channels "don't work."

But compared to a direct response "success" rate of perhaps one percent, 29 percent effectiveness is quite high. Still, the 2011 survey results indicate that an initial burst of enthusiasm in 2010 for various forms of social media now has settled down.

That's normal for any emerging channel: there is too much optimism at first. Then reality sets in and marketers learn to use each tool in the right way, with reasonable expectations.

http://www.bbionline.com/press_05032011.htm

Shopping has Become More Social

A study by Yahoo finds that consumers are less impulsive in their shopping behavior because of the Internet, but also has become much more social, with 49 percent of users sharing their views and opinions about products.

Consumers routinely are checking consumer and expert reviews before committing to purchases, for example, and social networks are a particular enabler of such sharing.

"We found that 49 percent of consumers give advice to others, motivated by a feeling of solidarity with other shoppers," the Yahoo study says.

Long and Winding Road: The Gamesmanship of Shopping

25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years

With the caveat that futurists often are quite wrong (we were supposed to be flying instead of driving cars by this time), the next 25 years might include dramatic changes in the computing fabric, including smart phones with the processing power of supercomputing and personal fixed terabit and gigabit mobile connections, some predict.

25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years

But 25 years is a long time in technology. By 2020, the Internet might have evolved in ways that are more linear extrapolations of today's trends. See http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/010410-outlook-vision-predictions.html?page=2.

Will Google Make the "Tablet" a Peripheral?

Motorola's Atrix is a smartphone that docks to a "notebook" peripheral. Will Google try something similar, and make an Android the central processor for a "tablet" that is a display? It is at least possible, given some new intellectual property Google has purchased.

Patents Google seems to have purchased would allow a smartphone to Though the drive any number of "peripherals," ranging from tablets to notebooks to typical PC peripherals or machine to machine devices. Though the notion will be unsettling to many within the consumer electronics and computing ecosystems, such a move would make sense for several reasons, among them more options to deal with the issues of screen size, battery life and input-output choices from the one device everybody carries with them, all the time.

Google buys Modu's patent portfolio for $4.7 million

Such an approach would "solve" a problem many users might have, namely the requirement to carry multiple devices, in a variety of form factors, when traveling or out of the office. As a practical matter, many simply solve the problem by carrying only a smart phone most of the time, then swapping a tablet for a notebook when away from the desk for longer periods, making the smart phone and the tablet the two essential devices.

Traveling then raises the issue of which other devices one chooses to carry, in addition to those two. The ability to dock a powerful smart phone with peripherals could make some of the choices easier, and should, in principle, also reduce the cost of the overall set of solutions.

http://www.intomobile.com/2011/05/22/handson-htc-flyer-tablet-7inch-screen-15-ghz-and-stylus/