A Networked World

#NetHui Lessig on fire

I've been a huge fan of Larry lessig since I first found the net back in 1995. So when he was booked for NetHui I was a lot more determined to turn up on the Friday than I would otherwise have been.

While I expected most of what he had to say, albeit updated, the last 10 minutes were seriously unexpected.

I never expected to hear a guy with such a huge reputation who comes from the heart of the online world to stand up in Auckland and beg us to help rescue his nation from its evolving disaster driven by systemic corruption. Watch it.

Embedding the payment option

One of the challenges of Micropayments has always been that the transaction costs quickly exceed the transaction value, and that makes great sense for the transaction processor and is totally stupid for everyone else. I've never understood why Telcos, which have solved the micropayment problem years ago didn't put their transaction management services online for everyone and make a bundle.

Well, actually, that's not true, I know why they didn't, it meant losing control of the thing that mattered most to them, the services on the network. As soon as they encourage others to use their payments systems they implicitly encourage others to create services that the Telcos don't own and THAT was anathema.

So, once again, they get trumped. PayPal’s New ‘Open’ Payment Platform Gets Microsoft’s Endorsement

PayPal has ... it’s got its eyes on the newly booming apps and cloud computing market.

The eBay-owned company is opening up its platform to third-party developers this fall, so that everyone from individual app-makers, to social gaming companies and software startups will be able to plug global payment options into their applications from the start.

That means users in different countries, with different currencies, and even on different devices (including mobile phones and set-top boxes) will be able to start paying for apps and services as quickly and securely as they’re used to doing on the desktop.

And during the kickoff of a developer training session for the new “PayPal X” platform, it got an endorsement from arguably one of the most powerful companies in software development today: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), which announced that it will be supporting PayPal X in its own cloud-computing platform, Windows Azure.

If they can enable us all to embed a payment option such as 'flick earl 20c for an interesting post" or "that YouTube video was worth 10c" and if they can make it simple enough for bunnies like me to USE, they will be on to something really interesting.
Video version

telcos step in it again

When are we going to learn that letting telcos run the network is a really, REALLY bad idea? The shocking cost of smartphones.

The phenomenon known as "bill shock" is racking up new victims as mobile users succumb to the temptations and traps associated with next-generation smartphones.

Popular devices such as the iPhone and the HTC Dream provide one-touch access to internet and social networking applications which can prove far more costly to access than voice services.

A bewildered mobile phone user recently sought advice on a technology user forum after being hit with a bill in excess of two thousand dollars. In his post entitled: "Virgin shocker bill $2458.67" he said he had accessed the internet while on holiday in Cairns, and hadn't realised his $450 cap plan applied only to voice calls.

Christoph Dwertmann, a technology research engineer, also experienced a substantial increase in his monthly bill after he bought an Android G1 phone which had been shipped from the US by a specialist local supplier. Mr Dwertman said T-mobile, the original distributor of the phone, had programmed the handset to send out automated SMS messages, which were then charged to him at an international rate, resulting in a $120 bill.

[...] The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) said mobile user complaints for 2008 rose by 50 per cent over the previous year, with a large percentage of these concerned with billing and payments. Much of the confusion among consumers stemmed from misunderstandings over the term "cap", said the TIO.

In telco speak that is the maximum value you can use per month before you are subject to metered call or data charges. Depending on the plan, it may apply only to voice, SMS, or data, or cover all three.

Here's the news, most of us don't speak "telco" any more than we speak sanscrit. Apparently telcos don't speak plain English either.

Apsrt from the gee whizz factor, which is currently being hammered out of its customers very quickly, the fact is that WE don't distinguish between voice, SMS and data, in fact you'd be hard pressed to get a distinction from 70% of all users and 95% of those over 40.

We. Just. Want. To. Use. The. Damned. Phone. In the ways in which it has been designed, but we DON'T want to have to recalculate our bills every time we make a decision about what we are going to use it for.

There's a reason those contracts are so mind-nuimbingly complicated, its the same reason your credit card is full of hidden charges until you step over some otherwise trivial line.

Profit.

The more "mistakes" you make, the more often you step outside the limits of your contract, the more money they give themselves the right to make. We are at war with too many of the people who want to sell us stuff.

And they CAN'T explain the contract to you honestly, hell I'd bet most people selling them couldn't explain it accurately if their life depended on it, because IF you really undertstood what it meant you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

So once again the telcos swap short term numbers for long term customers as we all get the idea that network access should be a flat fee and the traffic should be charged at a bulk rate, and what the hell we do with that traffic is entirely our business.

Whether we want to use Skype for voice calls or transferring files or whether we are twittering, or web browsing or watching a movie we have downloaded or filing our tax returns or doing the banking or any damned thing at all, makes no difference to us. None. Zero.

While the telcos see our seamless communications as ways to rort us for a couple of thousand on one bill as a great idea, their road to hell will continue to be greased by their own slaver.

Phone apps and bad timing

Telecoms people seem to be fated to climb on bandwagons just as the wheels start to fall off. Like this for instance; Handset vendors go app store crazy.

The world's biggest handset vendor, Nokia, is the latest gadget maker to jump on the app store bandwagon, announcing plans to open its own marketplace in May.

Billed as an extension of its mobile services platform, the Ovi Store will allow content providers and developers to upload their own applications and sell their wares to Nokia using consumers and enterprises. The Ovi Store will consolidate the vendor's current content services, including Download!, MOSH and WidSets to a single channel.

Available content will range from applications, games and videos to widgets, podcasts, location-based applications and personalisation content for Nokia Series 40 and S60 devices. The Nokia N97, available in June, will be the first device to include the storefront preinstalled, with tens of millions of existing Nokia Series 40 and S60 users able to use new service starting in early May.

Ahem

Seems we don't actually use the apps much, sol where did they get the idea that this was the next BIG thing?

A MUCH more interesting question is, given the downturn, what happens to our networks when the big telcos start falling over? How many Governments have a transition plan for them to go with their props and piles (of our money) under banks and car companies?

Telco Strategy - Slam Revolving Door

Scott McNealy may have had some strategic advice for the Telcos the other day, but it looks like it is way too late: Sprint “Simply Everything We Can Do To Keep This Sucker Afloat” plan.

When its three major competitors in the wireless game started offering unlimited cell plans for a flat rate of $99.99 a month a week or so ago, Sprint Nextel, with a shrinking pile of chips, had the usual choices — fold, call or raise.

Today it chose to raise, introducing a plan at the same price point called “Simply Everything,” which offers unlimited voice (like Verizon Wireless and AT&T) and messaging (like T-Mobile), but also unlimited data use, Web surfing, Sprint TV and Music, GPS and more.

“This is a bold, unprecedented move,” said CEO Dan Hesse.

[...] We are removing the barriers for customers to feel free to use all of the features of their phones.”

All of this might have made for a rare day of positive Sprint headlines were it not for the fact that the announcement was accompanied by some truly ugly quarterly results and a pile of related bad news.

Why is it that when hidebound businesses like Telcos start making "bold and unprecedented moves" they tend to look more like leaping out of the way of the falling curtain.

OK, who spiked McNealy's beer?

I have huge respect for Scott McNealy, so this came as a surprise and a bit of a shock: Telcos falling behind in Internet race. No, not the title, that's a given in this world, but what he said about it.

Telecommunication companies need to go beyond just providing bandwidth and look into acquiring Internet destination sites that are heavily trafficked, Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy said on Wednesday.

Hmm, hands up all those who think that any company not capable of creating a high traffic site from scratch would be able to manage successfully one that they bought from someone else. I thought so. Scott is usually more astute than to suggest that.

"I have explained to every telco that either you become a destination site, or the destination site will become a telco," McNealy said at a news conference at Sun Microsystems' Worldwide Education and Research Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Internet destination sites are already gaining on telecommunication companies, McNealy said, giving as examples eBay integrating Skype's VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) technology and Google trying to buy wireless spectrum and help build cables across the Pacific Ocean. Microsoft's attempted acquisition of Yahoo would create another behemoth that could compete with carriers, such as by combining Microsoft's technology with Yahoo's existing VoIP and messaging services.

No argument there, and the next bit is pretty well conventional wisdom and economics 101

"I think the telcos have to make sure they don't get marginalized to being just bit providers and bandwidth providers," he said.

Again, hmm, if they weren't going to get marginalised and become bit pipe players, I'm pretty sure that somewhere within their ranks they would have found people who would be able to implement such a strategy. Oh wait, AT&T had one, but they fired David Isenberg for stating the obvious that Scott just summarised.

But then THIS!!!???

On the other hand, carriers may be able to head off Internet sites by limiting the bandwidth available to them, so destination sites may need to affiliate with the carriers, he added.

Good god, did he just suggest a carrier strategy of blackmailing and shaking down popular websites? Did he just throw out the whole net neutrality argument in exchange for a blatant financial survival strategy based on interference in the end to end model and not even comment on it?

And how does that brush off fit with this?

During a speech earlier in the day, McNealy slammed the U.S. government for not being interested in adopting open-source software. McNealy said the farther he goes from Washington, the more governments get interested in open source

I have to hope that the reporter or the editor didn't get it. Its a worry either way.

I get phone calls

I had a call last night from Timothy O'Callaghan, Partner, Piper Alderman, the law firm that sent the vague and  rather snotty note the other day about the Aussie Yellow pages post.

With an apology.

Apparently I was sent the note in error, it was NOT unauthorised use of the trademark at all;

Your article was identified as an occasion of incorrect use of the "Yellow Pages" trade mark,  but not infringing use. Our instructions were  request you to:

1. use the ® symbol next to the trade mark "yellow  wherever it is used in order to demonstrate that it is a registered trade mark in Australia; and
2. use the name of the product as a noun (eg "the Yellow Pages® Directory")

Mhmm. Like THAT will fly. I was very polite on the phone, he even thanked me for my attitude, but I did point out that Yellow pages is now a generic term, a bit like Google really, or Xerox.

For the record, the reply.

Hi Tim

At 05:25 p.m. 3/12/2007, you wrote:

Letter attached as discussed today.

Thank you for the way in which you responded to my telephone call.

My pleasure. It was good to hear that it was a foulup; happens in the best ordered families.

As to the request for the form of use of the Yellow pages name, as I indicated, I probably wont go that far.

In the first place the use of trade names in news and commentary pieces is very rarely cited as you request.

To instance only "The seeds of discontent" by Simon Webster, an opinion piece from Today's SMH, who cites numerous registered trade marks without the form of attribution you request.

• Monsanto.
• The Land
• Tour de France
• Roundup
• champagne
• The Young Ones
• Coles

Interestingly they don't even capitalise Champagne and the only names distinguished are a newspaper and a TV show which are italicised.

To do as you ask would set me well outside the mainstream of such material. I'm afraid yellow pages needs to make some more effective efforts to understand and participate in the online world.

If they need a strategist, I'm available.
=)

Cheers

And if they want advertising, they can pay for it.

Unauthorised use of the Registered Trade Mark "Yellow Pages"

I guess it had to happen sooner or later

I just had an email from one Sue Cremer, Personal Assistant at Piper Alderman which promotes itself as the "Best Professional Services Firm in South Australia 2007"

They claim that this posting last year Endangered Species - Australian Yellow Pages infringes their client's trademark by my "use" of their trademark and that the posting might mislead poor widdle you to believe that I have an association with their client, Yellow pages or Sensis.

Now it beats me how I am "using" their trademark beyond "quoting" it in a series of screen shots to demonstrate that their search tools are really not up to snuff. I am certainly not pretending to be a business directory or to provide phone numbers and other details to anyone who uses my site, and if I HAD a business relationship or "association" with the companies I would expect that it would damned quickly have been severed for publicly giving them a zinger.

But I'm always interested in learning something new so here's the challenge; what's their problem?

Oh, and at the end of their pdf attachment they invite me to signal my co-operation by writing the same on the letter and faxing them a copy back. Right, like I'll sign up to fix an unspecified example of an unspecified infringement to satisfy a company that already has more money than god and spends too little of it on putting together a decent web strategy.

Or could it be that they just don't like being criticised and are trying to use an irrelevant piece of law to shut me up? Nah, that would be unprincipled and stupid, I might blog about it, couldn't happen.

Update

This is what they sent

This is what they got back.

Please explain in what way I am infringing the use of the trademark. I am not conducting any business as a telephone book, telephone directory, business directory or any other kind of telephone number search tools, nor am I attempting to pass myself off as the "yellow pages" I do not offer search of the yellow pages or anything like it, nor do I attempt to sell advertising, listing or any other kind of service as yellow pages or anything of that kind.

The page to which you refer is a criticism of the efficacy and adequacy of the Yellow Pages search tools on the date specified and in doing so demonstrates the efficacy by quoting (via screen shot) the points that I wish to make. No reasonable person could possibly mistake my blog for the Yellow Pages and even if they did, could not possibly find any such service there.

Under fair use provisions I am entitled to "quote" from a source and identify that source correctly so that there is no doubt about the point, intention or organisation to which I refer. I do that, and no more.

Furthermore you suggest that my "use" of the trademark Yellow Pages or a mark which is substantially identical or deceptively similar to your clients registered trade marks, infringes your clients trade mark rights.

Can I ask you to be specific please? What "use" of the trademark itself am I making, or is the trademark I am using substantially similar or deceptively similar to your client's? Or perhaps it is all three. Then we come to the term "use". Please be good enough to specify the "use" to which I am putting this actual, or similar or deceptive trademark and whether said trademark is the actual one, or some similar or deceptive one.

Finally you suggest that such use is "likely to mislead members of the public into believing that there is an association between your organisation and our clients."

I would be fascinated to learn from you the nature of the "association" implied, expressed or entailed in the article to which you refer. Please specify both the kind of association and the specific language used to imply that that would be likely to lead people to that assumption.

Frankly, that is absurd on its face and indicates that you have not bothered to read the article that you refer to. At no point do I claim to have such an association (beyond that of interested user), nor do I hint, imply or invite the reader to assume such a relationship. However, if you can specify the precise language to which you refer I will be more than happy to reconsider.

I am, however, critical of the product/ service being offered by Yellow Pages as inadequate to the environment in which it is being offered. Could it be that your clients are not happy with that criticism and, rather than engage with me about it, or responding to the criticism as they are both entitled and enabled to do in the comments on the posting, they have resorted to using your offices and an irrelevant piece of law in an attempt to intimidate me into shutting up and going away?

A Broken System

There are days when I really believe that businesses really don't want my money. This beggars belief.

In NZ in October last year we bought my wife a cellphone with a  Vodaphone prepay account and used it while we were there. Mostly because her Aussie phone was locked to the Optus network and unlocking it is a major operation because the telco wants to close down as much competition as possible.

So yesterday we charge it up because today we are going to NZ for a week, and try to top up the account. We go to Vodaphone NZ's website and try to login. OF COURSE we have forgotten the password. But that's OK because the website will text one to you.

It did. It arrived. We tried to use it. The site refused to accept it. Twice. So we can't top up the account.

Then we call their customer support. But they are closed for the day at 6PM because, you know, nobody EVER has a problem after 6PM. OK, I need to do it today.

Ming gets a 3G Hit

In a discussion a while ago someone came up with a suggestion for something that could only be done by a 3G Phone. My, "thank god, a reason for 3G at last" was met with a sudden, thoughtful silence by the 5 cellphone company people who were buying me lunch. But it could have been worse, it could have been the Ming experience.

Sometime last month I was bored and decided to check what my mobile phone actually could do. It is not an expensive phone, but a rather recent one with 3G. Which means it can access the net with a useful bandwidth and it has video and stuff like that. So, it can be a video phone for one thing. But actually I didn't run into anybody I had a chance to try that with.

But it can also just play videos. There's a bunch of TV channels, and there are music videos and stuff like that. So I watched some of those, and clicked around a little bit to see what was there. I think I spent an hour doing that.

Pretty crummy on a small screen like that, but I thought it was cool that it could do that. Until I got the bill, that is. I had accepted a €4 charge for some categories of videos, all I want, all day, which sounded ok, and I expected to see that on my bill. Plus, I imagined I might be using up my calling minutes.

But, no, that hour of poking around in stuff I thought was largely free cost me over 100 euros. The killer was the billing by kilobyte, at a ridiculously high rate. Which means one has to be pretty insane to sit and watch crummy videos at several euros per minute. So, one thing is to have fancy technology. Another is that it might be billed in such a way that it is totally useless. Having a 3G phone essentially gives me nothing.

Here's the problem in a nutshell. 3G has cost so much to roll out that the only way the telcos will make the $$ back before hell freezes over is to soak the user dumb, or bored, or experimental enough to get carried away with it.

Unfortunately for the Telcos, that is a self innoculating experience. Throw in the fact that voice calls are a trivial percentage of available bandwidth on a 3G network, and should therefore be charged out at practically nothing, and you get a very nasty hole in the business plan.

One of these days they are going to have to write all that investment off the books; it will NOT be a pretty sight.