Finally getting a little mobile banking love. April 4, 2007
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“AT&T will be bringing a mobile replacement for credit cards, checks and cash soon to that AT&T-branded phone, as the carrier is partnering with some big-name banks for what could be the largest mobile banking push in the US so far. AT&T customers will be able to manage bank accounts and pay bills through Wachovia, BancorpSouth, Regions Financial and SunTrust banks using an application on their handset (we’re thinking a J2ME app). The good news: AT&T’s partnering with three of the top U.S. banks combined with free usage of this new mobile banking app will most likely draw more customers to its wireless Internet services — and we’re sure AT&T had that in mind here.”
About time. The Japanese have been doing this for ages.
So how long until its possible to go around with just your phone and no wallet?
Five years?
Investment and the Media April 20, 2006
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So this entry is going to be a bit of a strech by my mind has been wrestling with various investments. So to tie it to my Comm/Media blog concept how do recent changes in the media investment world play out financially over time.
Om Malik (by Robert Young???) had a thought provoloking entry tangentially related here:
http://gigaom.com/2006/04/15/is-network-10-also-network-20/
So if the web is the way TV is going to be accessed (and it is) does a large amount of web traffic inevitably preceed financial success in media? Can I use Alexa rankings to predict media company (or even other tech related companies) stock prices?
http://www.alexaholic.com/nbc.com%20+abc.com%20+cbs.com
Says ABC cheats and leverages espn etc. Does this mean they are ahead, yup I think it does.
Some other charts of interest…
http://www.alexaholic.com/amazon.com+ebay.com?y=r&r=5y&z=50
http://www.alexaholic.com/dell.com+apple.com+hp.com+ibm.com+sun.com?y=r&r=3y&z=30
Anyone know how to easily mash these up with stock prices?
Engaging Players/Viewers March 27, 2006
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Much of the evolution of media is clearly about the movement from completely passive to progressively less passive forms of entertainment. TVs to WoW.
With that in mind, games and traditional media entertainment will continue to blur and lose a meaningful seperation, becoming a spectrum rather than disctinct channels.
With that, more robust ways of engaging with players/viewers will become increasingly critical to successful media products. (Thinking SMS voting for American Idol as an example.) An interesting analysis would be which engagement techniques gaming products use which could translated to slightly more passive forms could provide some amazing insights.
To help make this clearer, here is a great (highly linked to) presentation at ETech
http://shufflebrain.com/etech06.htm
This is a GREAT presentation, simple and clear as all great presentations are. Actually seems obvious after the fact but again, sign of a great presetnation in my mind…
So how can we use these tools in new ways and in the blending world of the TV/game/MMOG/MySpace landscape?
Flexible Organizations and WoW March 13, 2006
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Joi Ito world famous blogger and VC had a recent entry about leadership and how it works in guilds in the World of Warcraft. It fits really well with alot of my thinking about how leadership is evolving and small flexible, reconfigurable groups are where it is at.
http://joi.ito.com/archives/2006/03/13/leadership_in_world_of_warcraft.html
Before you dismiss this out of hand as a strained metaphor the trends of emphasis on knowledge assets rather than physical ones, specialized knowledge and outsourcing to the best fit, small is the new big, even megatrends like the retiring boomers (less employees, more choice for them) all work to fuel this potentially fundamental change in how organizations must work to flourish.
Of course I may just be hearing what I want to hear because that flexible lead by consensus rather than lead by hierarchy really fits my style of leadship and how I enjoy working. The change will take time but it can’t happen fast enough for me, even if the US suffers as a result.. But what is the world without personal bias.
(Actually that is a whole seperate discussion about how more noise and news outlets actually enables bias in modern society rather than elimnates it but that is for another day.)
Aggregators as self discovery February 5, 2006
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(I had this sitting in notes and after reading someones post on similar ideas:
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/02/handling_feed_o.html
I figured it was overdue.)
I am a big bloglines user. I check in nearly every day. I have more feeds than I have time to read. Therefore there is a survival of the fittest where only the most attractive and consistently good feeds get my attention. I frequently go back and delete those feeds with tons and tons of unread messages.
In fact beyond the quality (there are some feeds I ALWAYS read) there is also a sweet spot in the pacing to those that stay on my page. Generally it needs to be more than three a week because otherwise at some point I ask, what was this again, ah… forget it. But if its too many a day it probably gets skipped and backs up.
At times this feels almost like self discovery. I reveal to myself at meta interest level my interests with thousands of quick choices at the detail level. Emergent interest.
Turns out although an engineering manager by trade I am really more drawn to marketing and creative pursuits. I knew this at some level although the marketing part is more acute than I would have imagined were it not proven out by a thousand little choices in the last year…
