The Classical String Quartet

The first story about music here in patrickWeb was called "Running with Mozart" and it was published on August 17, 1997. There are quite a few other music related stories since. Some are about concerts, some about my conducting experiences, and many about the digital music.

Most of us think of MP3 or iPods when we hear the term digital music, but there is another kind of digital music. Actual music scores from hundreds of years of ago have been located, scanned and made available as PDF files for anyone who wants to examine them or perform them. The string quartet was one of the most widely-cultivated genres of chamber music during the Classical period, with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all being substantial contributors. The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University Library has made a fantastic collection of sheet music for the string quartet published between 1770 and 1840 available online. I found it quite interesting to check out the crisp PDFs of some very old works — the oldest published piece of music in the collection is from 1770 by Antonin Kammel (Czech Republic). Click on the link “Explore the Collection” on the left hand side of the homepage. Thanks to the Scout Report for uncovering this great resource.

Other music related stories at patrickWeb

Google Voice (or is it Google Data?)

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of technologies that enable voice communications over the Internet (and corporate intranets). Strong double-digit growth has placed VoIP into everyday life for many millions of people. In the early days I used Packet8. Then a VoIP system was created by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a group of software engineers based in Tallinn, Estonia. I happened to be in Tallinn as part of a Baltic cruise a couple of years ago and wondered why the cobbled streets of a nearly thousand-year old small town on the Baltic Sea was lined with brand new high-end sedans. Later I realized that Tallinn was a mini Silicon Valley and home to the development of Skype. Skype became my “phone” for SMS messaging but especially for calling home from abroad for free. Skype was a game changer. A potentially even bigger game changer is Google Voice.

I have used a number of the VoIP services over the years but an impediment has always been that there was no way to use an existing contact list. With Google Voice you get instant synchronization with your Gmail contact list. When you start out you get a phone number — you can pick most any area code you want. The new number then becomes your “universal” number. When someone calls it your cell phone, your office phone, you home phone, and vacation home phone all ring. You answer and hear who is calling and press 1 to accept the call. Or for some people that you designate, the call goes straight to voicemail. For others only your cell phone rings. You can add your contacts to different groups and have each group be treated differently. You can “ListenIn” on voicemails as they are being recorded and then decide to enter a conversation. When you receive a voicemail you get an email containing a machine transcription of the message. It is not perfect but good enough that you can tell who it is and what the call is about. You can block callers, record conversations, or add them into an ongoing conference call — up to four callers can be added to the free conference call. The history tab in Google Voice shows all of your inbound and outbound calls. Needless to say you can search through the history of all your calls to refresh your memory about a conversation you had a year ago. SMS messages and all of your calls have shared inboxes, trash, history, and spam folders just like gmail.

The feature I like the most is that you can install X-Lite — a free VoIP program that runs on your PC — and add the associated SIP number as one of your Google Voice phone numbers. When a call comes in while you are at your PC, a dialogue box pops up on your display. You click “answer” and then the call can be handled with a headset (I use a Plantronics noise-canceling model) which provides hands-free high quality audio for me and the caller. Another nice feature is that you can make a Google Voice call from your iPhone (or any mobile phone). All U.S. calls are free. A call to Norway is two cents per minute. With free conference calls and a boatload of other free features, Google Voice is going to put the heat on the telephony monopolists. It will also put pressure on eBay’s $2.5 billion acquisition of Skype for which they later took a $1.4 billion write-down.

Speaking of the telephony monopolists, there have been rumors — denied by AT&T — that the giant phone company told Apple not to approve Google mobile for the iPhone. Apple says it is looking into it. Apple’s concern is that Google mobile is so tightly integrated and user-friendly that it takes away from the iPhone’s branded look and feel as a phone. This is just the beginning of a clash between Apple and Google. As for AT&T, they like innovation as long as it is not at their expense. Google mobile would let people call Europe for free or close to free while AT&T charges $1.49 per minute unless you sign up for a monthly plan. Google Voice, Google mobile, Skype, and the many other innovative VoIP providers see a phone call as just another form of data and moving data around the Internet is very cost effective. AT&T sees a phone call as a voice service and they are trying desperately to protect their revenue by stifling progress.

The Wall Street Journal just published an excellent editorial on this subject called Why AT&T Killed Google Voice. The sub-title to the story is “Telecom operators are yesterday’s business. It’s time for a national data policy that encourages innovation”. Author of the story Andy Kessler says the Federal Communications Commission is investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity and that the result ” may finally end the 135-year-old Alexander Graham Bell era. It’s about time.”.

Kessler says “AT&T is dying” and that they are “dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy”. The problem is a lack of competition. Unlike all other Internet and data-related companies where there are thousands of competitors, when it comes to ownership of the spectrum — the wireless pipe to customers — that is hardly the case. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile joined AT&T in bidding some $70+ billion since the mid-1990s for spectrum. The cost gets passed on to us in the form of higher fees. They have not had to compete on price. Google Voice is the new competition offering voice service for free by leveraging their huge data handling systems resources and advertising revenue.

Kessler says we can live with overpaying for mobile but “it’s inexcusable that new, feature-rich and productive applications like Google Voice are being held back, just to prop up AT&T while we wait for it to transition away from its legacy of voice communications”. Now the FCC and its new Chairman Julius Genachowski are getting involved. Hopefully the outcome will be deregulation not regulation. Many will call for a new national communications policy. But even that’s obsolete and Kessler comes at it differently. “There is no such thing as voice or text or music or TV shows or video. They are all just data. We need a national data policy”. There are four parts to Kessler’s idea.

End phone exclusivity. Any device should work on any network — yes, including the iPhone. Data should flow freely.
Transition away from giant companies owning airwaves and move to a standards based unregulated model like WiFi.
End municipal exclusivity deals for cable companies — yes, including Comcast. Recognize that “TV channels” are a thing of the past. Enable people to pay for what they want to watch and not have to pay for dozens of “channels” they don’t watch.
Encourage much faster data connections to our homes and phones. Kessler says it should more than double every two years. To homes, five megabits today should be 10 megabits in 2011, 25 megabits in 2013 and 100 megabits in 2017. These data connection speeds are technically doable today but are being held back by obsolete voice and video policies made to satisfy the telecom giants and their legions of lobbyists.

I agree with Andy Kessler that technology doesn’t wait around — “so it’s all going to happen anyway” — but it will take years too long given the current course and speed. The best thing the new FCC could do would be to adopt the four pints above and then put itself out of business. New services like Twitter don’t need to file with the FCC. Neither should new “voice” services. Voice is just another kind of data. Let’s treat it that way.

Why AT&T Killed Google Voice

IBM Happenings: July 2009

 The month of July was another busy one at IBM with a flurry of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. See the list of press releases here and an index for prior months here. In addition to the major focus on a “smarter planet“, IBM is investing in society. The company’s social performance is right up there with it’s financial performance.

Right after the fourth of July, IBM issued its annual Corporate Responsibility Report, detailing the company’s social performance results and strategies in the areas of governance, supply chain, environment, community engagements, employment policies and practices, and public policy. The 40-page report features IBM’s Corporate Service Corps, a program IBM characterizes as a corporate version of the Peace Corps with the goal of developing a next generation wave of IBM leaders while at the same time addressing critical societal challenges in emerging markets. The company is integrating business and social strategies to make significant and lasting impacts in communities. For example, in the Sichuan province in China, the area stricken by a powerful earthquake last year, teams of IBMers engaged in the relief and recovery effort using their technology skills. The development of the skills also presents economic opportunities for IBM so the corporate citizenship goes hand in hand with business.

The report also outlines how IBM is minimizing its environmental impact by developing innovative technologies to conserve more energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reusing and recycling IT equipment to reduce product waste, and utilizing environmentally preferable materials in its products and processes.

The company report describes how it provides employees with skills training, health and wellness programs, and opportunities to gain global experience. IBM also supports healthcare reform and has been advocating “Patient-Centered Medical Home” (PCMH), a model based on the concept of comprehensive primary care. I am enthusiastic about this initiative because it offers the chance to replace today’s poorly coordinated, acute-focused, episodic care with coordinated, proactive, preventive, acute, chronic, long-term and end-of-life care. This approach is fundamental to the transformation of the U.S. healthcare system. Many believe this can be best accomplished by strengthening primary care. The “medical home” is an enhanced primary-care model that provides comprehensive and timely care and emphasizes the central role of teamwork and engagement by those receiving care.

The full corporate responsibility report is at http://ww.ibm.com/responsibility/

Other IBM Happenings for the month

One Summer Night Doo Wop

The day started out with a jet ski ride up the lake followed by a motorcycle ride to search for a geocache whose location had stymied me for the last few attempts. I had not read carefully enough that the latitude and longitude in the geocache description were for the parking area at the the Carlton Drake Park in Newfoundland, not for the location of the geocache. The Three Flags geocache actually has latitude and longitude of
7BeH Ar.CHo
74Re HO.AmN. Look like gibberish? I thought so too until I looked at the work done by Dmitri Mendeleev. A very clever puzzle had been created. I was happy to find the cache once I had solved the puzzle.

Later in the afternoon we drove down to Mt. Pocono Municipal Airport to meet some friends who flew in from Connecticut to join us for the One Summer Night Doo Wop Extravaganza in Stroudsburg. at the Sherman Theatre. This was my second visit to Stroudsburg, a small Northeast Pennsylvania town near  Interstate 80 not far from the Delaware Water Gap. Parking on Main Street was no problem and the Gaelic dinner at the Siamsa Irish Pub was outstanding.

I love classical music concerts, but Doo Wop is a close second — at the time they always seem superior to any kind of concert. Last night’s concert
featured Barbara Harris & The Toys (“A Lover’s Concerto”), Sammy Sax & The MD’s, The Del Vikings (“Come Go with Me” ), Vito Picone & The Elegants (“Little Star”), and a fantastic local group called Joey & the T-Birds.

The Origins of Doo Wop are debated but most would agree that it evolved from a merging of pop, gospel,
blues, jazz and swing elements in the late 1940′s and early 50′s. Doo Wop music is innocent, joyous, romantic and, some would say, almost spiritual. Doo Wop is vocal group harmonizing at it’s best.

Watching Doo Wop performing groups on stage is inspiring — these senior citizens are professional and proud. Their voices have been preserved for more than fity years. They have a glitter in their eye and a spring in their step. I admit that I choke up listening to them. A little arithmetic can quickly show that most of the performers were 60+ and some may have been 70+. Some looked it, some did not. All of them had great voices and rhythm. If you look at their concert schedules on the web sites you can see that they are performing almost constantly — one group claimed 208 concerts last year. Why are they doing this? Why don’t they stop and retire? It is possible some lived past their means or had not invested in their future during the hay days and now need the money. Others may do it out of loyalty to other members of their group. Some may not know what else to do. Most however, are probably doing it because they love it. You could see the sparkle in their eyes and the rhythm in their step. As the audience raved, the performers were inspired, and the cycle continued. It was a great night. Thankfully, our friends had a safe albeit very late flight back to New England.

Other
patrickWeb stories about music

Paper Thin

Three of America’s great business magazines have been around for a long time — Forbes since 1917, BusinessWeek since 1929, and Fortune since 1930. I started reading them in 1967 when I completed engineering school and joined IBM. I stopped reading Forbes and Fortune regularly some years ago but have remained faithful to BusinessWeek for more than forty-two years. While some have criticized the magazine from time to time I have always found it an easy to read summary of what is going on in the business world. The business news coverage has been consistently good but what has not been consistent is the number of pages — the current issue has 68. It used to be hundreds of pages. BusinessWeek has become "paper thin".

24/7 Wall St published an online story "The Sun Sets On BusinessWeek, Forbes, And Fortune" in May in which it claims BusinessWeek is in the worst shape of the three business magazine giants. Its advertising pages are said to have fallen 16% in 2008, are down 38% this year through the end of April, "and in the most recent issue, the drop was an extraordinary 63%". All of the magazines have an online presence but so many advertisers have moved online that advertising rates have declined. Industry experts say that Business Week has lost money for two years and will lose over $20 million this year if its advertising continues in a nose-down dive.

If the sun does indeed set on the three great business magazines, they will certainly not be the first to fall. The first issue of PC Magazine back in the summer of 1981 was a thrill to read and it was sad news this past November when Ziff Davis Media decided to cease publishing the magazine. “The viability for us to continue to publish in print just isn’t there anymore,” Jason Young, chief executive of Ziff Davis, said in an interview.

The problem is not just the recession, in my opinion. Certainly the economic times have accelerated things but the fundamental problem with advertising is that much of it is not effective. I would dare say most of it. Various consultants tell advertisers how many people are reading a magazine or watching a TV show. With a magazine there is no way to know. TV viewership gets sampled but I question any conclusions other than when an advertisement starts during my watching of CNBC, I hit the mute button. I watch 6 PM evening news starting at 6:20 and fast-forward over the ads. Some years ago there was a story about Buffalo, New York where someone measured the use of the city water system during the Super Bowl. For some reason water usage spiked upward during quarter ends and at halftime. If it could have been measured, no doubt that refrigerator compressor usage went up during these periods too.

It is true that some ads are watched and enjoyed and in fact WebMediaBrands (where I am a director) has made a business out of the phenomenon. Ads of the World — a part of grahpics.com — allows visitors to view top ads, news about ads, and learn how to create great ads. Aside from people who love ads, most people do not like ads that are blasted out in shotgun fashion. There may be ten million people who are candidates for a particular product or service but 200 million are presented with the ad. Advertisers don’t like it either. That is why they are cutting back and causing the advertising recession. What advertisers do want is targeted ads. They want to advertise a new sports car to only those people who are ready to buy a car, can afford to pay for it or finance it, and who are inclined to want a sports car. The technologies of the Internet and supercomputing are laser focused on making targeted advertising possible. The emerging question will be whether the right to privacy will ultimately prevail. Stay tuned.