Posted by John Patrick on Nov 26, 2004 in
IBM 
Innovation is one of those words that is a bit hard to internalize. Merriam-Webster says innovation is the introduction of something new or a new idea, method, or device. That would be a narrow definition — perhaps even obsolete. Innovation is much more than invention or introducing new technology. Some would say that innovation is more of a state of mind. An attitude. One thing is for sure: innovation is happening more quickly, it is more open and more collaborative.
All three of these factors — speed, openness, and collaboration — are caused by or driven by the Internet. Speed for sure. A new idea emerging in a country we never heard of can be globally recognized in minutes. The openness factor is really about standards. The Internet is not the first thing to be built on standards but it is arguably the most significant. As one travels around the world you can find cars with the steering wheel on different sides, railroad systems of different track sizes, and electrical and telephone connectors of every size and shape. The Internet, on the other hand, works exactly the same way at every corner of the Earth. Collaboration is one of the many applications of the Internet, enabling people in different time zones to share workloads and ideas. The old model of tightly controlled intellectual property is falling by the wayside to the new model of innovation.
To better understand what the new model of innovation may mean for business and society, IBM convened the Global Innovation Outlook (GIO). . The concept was that IBM would open up its legendary technical and business trend analysis processes to outsiders and collaborate with them to gain insight to then share with everybody. Over the course of 10 meetings in 24 days on 3 continents, more than 100 leaders from business, academia, government, and other organizations joined with IBM’s top researchers and consultants to examine three areas that affect the key aspects of society that are ripe for innovation:
the future of healthcare, the relationship between government and its citizens, and the intersection of work and life.
The findings from these discussions were released on November 16, 2004 at a major event at Rockefeller University in New York City. I felt quite fortunate to attend. It was very nice to see many former colleagues from IBM, the media, consulting firms, companies, and universities that I have worked with over the years. The meeting was kicked off by Nick Donofrio, Senior Vice President for Technology and Manufacturing at IBM. Nick spearheads many important issues at IBM, including IBM Research, and engages actively in science, technology, and governments around the world. The keynote address, "The Changing Nature of Innovation" was given by Sam Palmisano, Chairman and CEO of IBM. This was followed by a summary of the GIO findings described by Ginni Rometty, Managing Partner for IBM Business Consulting Services.
The remainder of the day included three excellent panel discussions. The full story shows the subjects, moderator and participants on the panels. The GIO conference did not attempt to provide all the answers or offer solutions to major issues raised in the three areas. The conference certainly placed IBM in a very good light and showed off the company’s unique combination of world-class technology leadership and deep expertise in business and industry. The deep relationships IBM has with a broad range of clients, governments, universities and other ecosystem members around the world resulted in a really top-notch set of participants. The value of the conference will come from the continuing and expanded dialogue which will wrestle with the questions, implications and even contradictions inherent in the topics discussed. There is no doubt that the collaborations coming out of this will make the world a better place.
You can download the Global Innovation Outlook paper here.
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 20, 2004 in
e-Business 
The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce has announced that their estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2004 was $17.6 billion, an increase of 4.7 percent from the second quarter of 2004 and 21.5 percent from the third quarter of 2003. E-commerce sales in the third quarter accounted for 1.9 percent of total sales. This impressive double-digit growth rate is more than triple the growth of retail sales overall. Soon — probably by the end of the current quarter — e-commerce will be more than two percent of all retail sales.
Why isn’t it 20% instead of 2% ? There are many reasons — only some of them not technology related. The number of people with "always on" Internet connections is a factor. Ease of use and concerns about security, identity theft, and privacy also contribute. I am optimistic that these issues will be adequately addressed. As eBay and Amazon continue to grow and show real profits to the world, business leaders are paying more attention. The free markets will drive competition and then innovation will kick into high gear. We have barely scratched the surface of what is going to happen.
While e-commerce is important and will continue to grow rapidly, it is not the most important capability of the Internet for humankind. How about if linking millions of personal computers together and combining their unused capacity could lead to a cure for cancer or create a vaccine for SARS or smallpox? We know it could happen in years but a new breakthrough might accelerate the timetable dramaticlly. IBM’s announcement of the World Community Grid earlier this week may turn out to be the most significant use of the Internet ever. Much more on this in an upcoming story.
Other
patrickWeb e-business stories
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 19, 2004 in
Travels 
The Vasa Museum houses the world’s only surviving 17th-century ship and is one of the foremost tourist sights in the world. It is one of those places that you have to see to believe. I put some pictures in the photo gallery, but as usual my photographic skills are weak. There are some professionally taken pictures here.
The mighty Swedish warship, the Vasa, was the most powerful vessel of her day. Commissioned by King Gustavus Adolphus in 1625 as one of a fleet of battleships in the war against Poland, she was constructed by a very experienced Dutch shipbuilder named Henrik Hybertsson. The Vasa was capable of holding 445 crew members and weighed nearly 1,200 tons. The ship was covered with majestic carvings which were believed to have been painted in bright colors. It is quite a spectacle to see.
Tragically, the ship keeled over and sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, killing nearly fifty people. In 1961 the wreckage was salvaged by the Swedish Navy and preserved in a temporary museum until the opening of the Vasa Museum in 1990. The ship was in remarkably good condition for having been submerged for more than three hundred years. Apparently, the Baltic Sea does not provide a good habitat for salt water worms that typically eat away at sunken wooden ships. In addition to seeing the huge ship in the museum, you can also see a 1:10 scale model of the Vasa, showing what she would have looked like in all her glory. Exhibitions, interactive computer models, displays and audio-visual presentations tell of the salvage operation, life on board ship and sea battles of the period. You could easily spend a whole day in awe at this wonderful museum.
In the 17th century there were no scientific methods of calculating a
ship’s stability. It was not uncommon for large warships to heel over and
sink. Cargo ships were designed to carry the cargo very low in the ship but warships were designed with the guns placed high to improve their military effectiveness. The Vasa actually had two rows of guns — 64 huge iron cannons in total. There were several tons of stone stored in the bottom of the ship for ballast but it was not adequate. It is believed that as the ship began to sail, the winds pushed the ship over, the guns came loose and rolled to the other side causing the ship to lean further, and then water flowed into the lower gun ports holes and the ship sank
An inquiry was held but final accountability was never established. There was plenty of blame to go around. Admiral Fleming could have stopped the ship after some initial
stability tests indicated there would be a problem. King Gustavus Adolphus was anxious to acquire a ship with
as many heavy guns as possible and had personally approved the design of the ship. Shipbuilder Henrik Hybertsson could be blamed for building the hull
too narrow — he died a year prior to the inquiry making things more complicated. Some would blame Captain Söfring Hansson for sailing a brand new
ship with open gunports. One thing is for sure. With todays digital design and simulation tools such a diasaster would have been averted.
Other
patrickWeb travel-related stories
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 18, 2004 in
Travels 
There are so many interesting things to see in Scandinavia that one could spend weeks or months exploring them. The main purpose of the trip was to spend a day with the Opera Software management team and board of directors. That was an extremely long day but hopefully productive for all participants. One thing is certain and that is that all of us share a common vision for the potential of the Internet and the role that the Opera browser technology can play on many different kinds of devices. There is much more about Opera Software and the Opera browser in other parts of patrickWeb.
Norway is a great country and the photo gallery doesn’t begin to capture the majesty and significance. The flight to Copenhagen was two hours late but we still made the connection to Bergen. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and after a couple of hours in a holding pattern, we were diverted to Oslo. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Bergen is beautiful but November is known for bad weather. Things were cloudy and cold in Oslo too but we were able to take walking tours around the city and learn a lot about it. A "day pass" made it easy to get to the major parts of the city by bus as launching points for walking.
Oslo has a rich culture and many delightful shops, restaurants, and museums. One of highlights for us was the Viking Ship Museum. The Tune Ship was the first of the ships to be excavated — in 1867. Several more buried ships were found over the following twenty years. Plans began early in the century and by 1932 all the ships were in place. As soon as you walk in the door of the Viking Ship Museum you immediately face the Oseberg Ship. It is hard to imagine how such a magnificent vessel was built a thousand years ago but even more difficult to think about how the Vikings sailed the oceans and survived the weather and sustained themselves. The Vikings were a hardy crew for sure. Numerous thematic exhibitions at the museum help to envision life at the time.
The Resistance Museum is housed in a very old building at the Akershus Castle in Oslo. Next to the museum is the spot where Norwegian patriots were executed by the Germans during the second world war. It was easy to spend a couple of hours looking at the many pictures, exhibits, maps, and artifacts of the German occupation and the grass roots movement by Norwegians to protect their country. Underground radio stations were a key part of the "network" used to send messages. The equipment I saw reminded me of my ham radio days nearly fifty years ago. If the Norwegians of 1940-1945 had the Internet, their freedom may have come more quickly.
For two of the nights in Norway we stayed at the home of friends who live high above the City of Oslo in Holmenkollen. One of Norway’s National Days is called "Holmenkolldagen" named for the area where our friends live. Skiing is a national pastime in Norway. As early as 1866 ski jumping competitions were held in Christiania, near downtown Oslo. To insure consistent snow conditions, the competition moved to nearby Holmenkollen, where the first jumps at the "Holmenkollrennet" took place in January 1892 with well over 10,000 spectators present. As have more than one million people per year, we visited this amazing ski jump facility and the outstanding museum which shows the full history of skiing in Norway.
The world’s skiing elite meets at Holmenkollen every year, and the 50,000 spectators turn it into an annual celebration. Holmenkollen has held the World Championships in 1930, 1952, 1966 and 1982, and the Winter Olympic Games in 1952, when more than 100,000 people paid to watch the jumping and another 40,000 packed the viewpoint of the Gratishaug Hill. My knees can still feel the walk up to the top of the jump 180 feet high but the breathtaking view of Oslo and the fjord below it worthwhile. My wife and our friend braved the ski simulator while I watched. The weather was not clear but I managed to get some pictures into the photo gallery.
From Oslo, it was on to Stockholm for a couple of nights.
Other
patrickWeb travel-related stories
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 16, 2004 in
WiFi 
Less than 24 hours after returning from Scandinavia and chronicling about the $40 per day cost of broadband, I checked into the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City (to attend a meeting early the next morning). I was not at all surprised to see broadband Internet access available in the room of this landmark hotel, but I was more than surprised to see the price — $9.95 for twenty four hours. One does not normally expect bargains in the "big apple", but compared to Norway and Sweden, it was a good deal. The charges in Scandinavia last week required daily entry of credit card information while in New York it was a couple of mouse clicks and the fee was added to the room bill.
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 15, 2004 in
WiFi 
WiFi is becoming more and more prevalent, not just in coffee shops, airport lounges, and hotel lobbies but also in hotel rooms. Some hotels offer WiFi for free as an enticement to stay at their property. Others charge a fee. Last week in Scandinavia, I found WiFi to be pervasive but the cost was off the charts. At the Radisson SAS in Oslo, the charge was 240 Kroners for twenty-four hours. That translates to approximately $38. Not per month — per day! The charge included tax of 24% — (taxes are even higher on gasoline which costs nearly $6 per gallon). Without tax, the WiFi cost was nearly $31. Some of the high cost is attributable to the weakness of the U.S. dollar but even at strong dollar levels of the past, WiFi would still be quite expensive. In Stockholm the cost was 275 Crowns which is more than $39 per day. Rather than an enticement to stay at a particular hotel, it appears that someone is gauging the broadband-hungry traveler.
Other
patrickWeb WiFi stories
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 7, 2004 in
Mobile 
The Sony Ericsson P910a is a joy so far.
The 910a is a mobile phone and also a personal digital assistant (PDA). I actually think of it as my mobile office. It not only can receive email, it automatically checks for new email on whatever schedule you specify. It is "push email" ready. That is a fancy term that means it can use the BlackBerry service. In other words, it can be a BlackBerry without you having a BlackBerry. Nothing wrong with the BlackBerry — they are great — but I have always preferred more computer-like devices. The feature of the P910a I find most innovative is the "flip" lid. On the outside it has the normal keys you would expect on a mobile phone. Flip it down, and it has a full QWERTY keyboard on the reverse side. As you would expect it has a digital and video VGA camera. The 320×208 color screen is dazzling with a sharp and bright 262K colors. All in all, Sony Ericsson has done a really good job of integrating the best of everything.
The list of features is long:
Picture editor,
Sound recorder,
Picture gallery,
Picture Phonebook,
Picture wallpaper,
Backlit display,
email,
SMS long (Text Messaging),
MMS (Multimedia Messaging),
Video streaming (for watching the news),
Handwriting recognition,
Predictive text input,
MP3 Audio,
MPEG4 Video,
Java™,
Bluetooth™ wireless technology, Infrared port,
GPRS for
High Speed Data,
USB support,
Vibrating Alert,
Touchscreen, the innovative
Jog Dial,
Voice control,
Calculator, Contacts,
Calendar,
Tasks,
Speaker phone,
and Alarm clock just to name a few. And of course it has great web surfing with the Opera browser. The Opera browser is really what drove me to the P900 and now the P910a. I was not enthusiastic about using the web with a mobile phone for quite a few years, primarily because the browsers that mobile operators provided were really crude, to put it mildly. The Opera mobile browser is an Internet standards-based browser. You have to try it to believe it (on the desktop too).
The Memory Stick Duo™ allows you to store pictures, movies, music, and files of any type. You can use the P910a to create and review spreadsheets, read pdf files, and of course store email and web pages. Having a good-sized storage medium makes all of this very practical. The unit comes with 32 megabytes but you can add much more at attractive prices. I got a half-gigabyte memory stick from
memorysuppliers.com They had a very good price and a good web site.
The most important factor of all about the P910a was the availability of the 850MHz GSM Network — in addition to
GSM 1800 and
GSM 1900. The P900 had 900/1800/1900, which is great in Europe but very poor in the U.S. I have seen a huge improvement in signal strength since switching to the 910a. The really neat thing about GSM phones is that you can change without even talking to the operator. In my case, this is a big plus because AT&T Wireless is very hard to reach and once you connect with them they often do not know too much about anything technical. With a GSM phone, you just take the SIM card out of the old phone, put it in the new phone, and you are finished. Turn it on and it works.
Posted by John Patrick on Nov 4, 2004 in
e-Business 
We all have experienced "airline woes", and like my fellow travelers, I continue to look forward to the day when I can write a story about how great airline
web sites are. Hopefully, the story will also describe how well the airlines have integrated all of their information systems and processes so they present themselves as a single seamless interface to their customers. I have complete confidence it will happen, albeit a bit less confidence that all airlines will be able to afford to do what they need to do.
Airlines have a complicated business
and are under enormous financial pressure. Even with the elegant and theoretically simplistic web services technology, there is a huge effort ahead to create a modern and seamless
integration across the many systems and applications that airlines run. Progress is being made but you can see the legacy systems and vocabulary peeking through the facade. I was talking with an American Airlines agent the other day about some travel arrangements (unfortunately, I was not able to get the information I needed through aa.com). The agents continue to do a great job but they also make it clear that they do not have web access and any questions about the web site have to be directed to a different department at a different phone number (this is not unique to American Airlines). At the conclusion of the discussion, the agent said she would send me an email confirmation with all the details of my upcoming trip. Since my wife would be traveling with me this time, I asked the agent if she could copy my wife’s email address. Sort of. The agent told me that they can only do one email at a time and no copies are possible. The email would take up to 24-48 hours. I could call back the next day and ask that another email for my wife be put "into the system".
You can tell that the airline is not using a completely modern-day email system. There are other clues. The "To:" line of the email says JOHN @ PATRICKWEB.COM. The email is likely being generated from the airline’s mainframe system (which decades ago was predominantly UPPER CASE). Nothing wrong with mainframes, of course. To the contrary, it is great that they have integrated their powerful mainframe back end systems with the web front end. Some cosmetic changes are needed to clean things up so that the web users have confidence that the airline is speaking their language. Part of this is technical, and part is just plain attention to details and grammar. The email said "This is a American Airlines/American Eagle itinerary notification only and does not constitute ticketing". Perhaps the sentence was made generic so that it could also say "This is a United Airlines…..". How about making it "This American Airlines/American Eagle itinerary is for notification only and does not constitute ticketing"? Sometimes the simple things — like good grammar — send us the right signals. It would be nice if the company marketing department, not just the IT staff, has read and approved web pages and email content for grammar, spelling, style, and appropriateness.
Not to pick on airlines, here is my all-time favorite page — at a multi-billion dollar e-tailer web site that was offering gift "certificates online". I clicked, and here is what I got. "You would need to contact the store where you are wanting to get the gift certificate from. We currently do not offer the purchase Gift Certificates online. If you have any further questions or would like to offer feedback, please email us".
The airline industry is highly competitive and so every airline is working very hard to make their web presence effective. Although making great progress, airlines have
a long way to go to become on
demand businesses. What is an on-demand business? It is very
simple to say, although it requires a huge amount of work to achieve. An on demand business is one that allows you to engage with them whenever you want
from wherever you are with whatever kind of communications link you have
and with whatever kind of device you may be using to do what you need to do with simplicity and productivity. Another
way to say it is that an on demand business simplifies your life and
saves you time. Again, it is easy to say and hard to do. I continue to say that we are
just five percent of the way there. Not long ago I thought it was just two
percent,
so I do think the businesses of the world are making significant progress.
