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patrickWeb
It was a beautiful day for riding the trike. The motorcycle log is getting close to 70,000 miles. As an added bonus to the ride, I got to see 8-day-old granddaughter, Cali.
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Fax Spam
There are many posts here in this blog about spam, in particular from a public policy point of view. I have always opposed laws to regulate spam because of a belief that they don’t work. My view has been that technology can solve the problem. This has mostly turned out to be true. Since I have been using gmail, I get almost no spam. Spam email, that is. Now a new phenomenon has surfaced — fax spam.
Yellow-Pages-USA is offering to create a Facebook page for me listing whatever services I may have to offer. They send their offer via fax. I have been using eFax for nine years and find it a very good service. I wish there were no faxes–I have not owned a fax machine since I got eFax–but sometimes they are essential. If you have to fax something to me I give you my eFax number and the fax comes into my email inbox as a PDF file. If you have to get a fax, this is the way to get it. Somehow Yellow-Pages-USA got my eFax number and has been sending me unsolicited offers on a regular basis. They request that you fax your personal information back to them to set up the Facebook page they are offering. I have faxed them several times asking them to please remove me from their list and confirm they have done so. Not surprisingly, they do not respond.
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OCLC in Seattle
Posted by John Patrick on Jun 23, 2011 in Conferences, Education, Internet Technology, Media, People, Travels
It is a privilege to be able to participate and contribute to various boards. It is also a way to learn new things, meet interesting people, and gain new perspectives. That has certainly been the case since I joined the board of OCLC. The board held a special meeting in Seattle this month. I got there a day early to meet some relatives in the area, one of which just started a new career with Amazon. More on that another time. The early arrival also made it possible to visit the 1962 World’s Fair Space Needle. I can not resist commenting on some of the engineering aspects of the futuristic Needle. The underground foundation was poured into a hole 30 feet deep and 120 feet across and it took 467 cement trucks an entire day to fill it. The foundation weighs as much as the Space Needle itself and provide sa center of gravity just above ground. The revolving restaurant was balanced so perfectly that it can rotate with a one horsepower electric motor. The 605-foot tall Needle has elevators that travel 10 mph, 14 feet per second, 800 feet per minute, or as fast as a raindrop falls to earth. A snowflake falls at 3 mph, so when you go up during a snowstorm it appears to be snowing up. The Needle is built to withstand a 200 mph wind and in 2001 it easily withstood an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale.
The OCLC board of trustees and CEO Jay Jordan spent all day Sunday in committee meetings and then Monday in the board meeting. I always learn a lot at OCLC meetings. Fifteen years ago some pundits — myself not included — were saying that libraries were history — as in toast — they were not long for the emerging digital world. Been to a local or college library lately? They are full of people and many are expanding their facilities. Library use has doubled over the past decade. What happened to the digital “vision”? It turns out that the digital and physical can get along together quite well and OCLC is playing a key role in helping libraries adapt to the changes ahead.
Sinc
e OCLC announced it was making its cloud-based library management services available to early adopters just 10 months ago, 32 libraries have committed to using OCLC Web-scale Management Services (WMS), the Web-based cooperative library management tools for meta-data management, acquisitions, circulation, license management and work-flow improvement. The early-adopter phase has now ended, and July 1 will mark general release of these innovative cloud-based services. The big picture idea behind WMS is to offer member libraries a single unified solution to help streamline routine tasks—like acquisitions and circulation. By moving these functions to the Web, libraries are able to share infrastructure costs and resources, as well as collaborate in ways that free them from the restrictions of local hardware and software.
On our final day in Seattle, we were fortunate to have a tour of Microsoft Research. Lee Dirks, director of Education & Scholarly Communication in Microsoft’s External Research division graciously hosted our visit. Lee was Microsoft’s archivist from 1996-1999 and before that was Preservation Services Manager at OCLC from 1995-96. Now that I am a student again, I found the academic search project Lee’s team is working on to be quite interesting. Academic Search is a free engine developed by Microsoft Research Asia to help users quickly find information about academic researchers and their activities. It is also a test-bed for their object-level vertical search research. With Academic Search, you can find top researchers, their papers, conferences, journals, and even relationships between researchers who may be co-authoring papers.
OCLC Homepage
WorldCat
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IBM at 100 – A Day of Nostalgia and Optimism
Posted by John Patrick on Jun 21, 2011 in Aviation, Healthcare, Home Automation, IBM, Media, Motorcycles, People, Public Policy
I was not exactly sure what to expect when I arrived at the world famous T. J. Watson Research Center at IBM last week. I have been there many times over the years but never to a birthday party. I walked in to the arrival tent where light refreshments were being served and the crowd of 350 invited guests began to build. One of the first people I saw was Allen Krowe. Allen had been CFO of IBM and then Vice Chairman of Texaco. I was his assistant back in 1981. I remember the day that he turned 50 years old and thinking that was very advanced. That was 30 years ago and NOW I am 15 years older than he was then. Then I saw Spike Beitzel. Spike had been a sales manager in Philadelphia for IBM’s insurance industry customers, the same position that I held some years later. Spike is a pilot, as was Allen, and many other senior IBM executives, including Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Spike is 83 and still flies his own airplane. It was nice to talk about aviation. It was a privilege to say hello to three IBM CEOs — John Akers, Lou Gerstner, and Sam Palmisano. There were four current and former heads of IBM Research there. One of them was Ralph Gomory. I am not sure how old Ralph is but he got his PhD in mathematics from Princeton in 1954. Whenb he retired from IBM in 1989 he became president of the Sloan Foundation. The pattern became clear — this was not just a birthday party for IBM; it was an alumni reunion for executives that worked for IBM over the past fifty years. Then I ran into the former heads of IBM Japn, IBM China, IBM Italy, IBM Brazil, and various other parts of IBM from around the world. Former Chairman Thomas J. Watson, Jr., said in 1957 that IBM “is a company of human beings, not machines; personalities, not products; people, not real estate.” That observation was true long before 1957 — and it remains so today. Although every IBMer makes a difference, there is a list of IBM Builders that were the pioneers who helped to fashion the IBM of the 21st century. Most of them were were among those in the tent; it was humbling to be in their midst and a thrill to shake their hands. Everyone had a smile on their face. It was a happy and nostalgic day that none of us will ever forget.
The main event took place in a really big tent. There were 2,000 members of IBM Research in attendance. During the opening ceremonies Sam Palmisano asked the thirty members of the Watson family in attendance to stand; everyone appreciated the heritage of the company. The family must have been proud to hear about Watson, the advanced Q&A system that triumphed at Jeopardy, and will surely change the way medicine is practiced as it transforms anecdotal medicine to personalized, evidence-based medicine. The program included some excellent videos about the past, present, and future of IBM. Senior VP Jon Iwata interviewed three journalists, Kevin Maney, Steve Hamm and Jeffrey O’Brien about the research they had done to write their new book about IBM called Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company. I have known Kevin for quite a few years. When he quoted someone in his columns at USA Today, you always knew that he would not use information out of context. Steve Hamm wrote the story about my home when he was at BusinessWeek. He now works for IBM. It was an alumni event with journalists too! Another panel with Senior VP John Kelly focused on IBM research efforts around the world, in particular about IBM’s advanced work on environmental and healthcare initiatives. Sam and senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy Ginni Rometty painted a rosy picture of IBM’s future. IBM also cares about the future of others. As part of its Celebration of Service, 300,000 IBMers around the world — nearly three quarters of its global workforce — volunteeried in more than 5,000 projects in 120 countries, helping millions in need. Since the beginning of the year, IBMers, retirees and their families have donated more than 2.5 million hours of service to communities worldwide. A lot of conofidence was exuded that another 100 years of innovation and growth are underway.
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Apple Event – June 2011
Posted by John Patrick on Jun 12, 2011 in Gadgets, Internet Technology, ipad, iPhone, Media, Music, Personal Computing, Social media
The annual Apple worldwide developer conference opening keynote drew a crowd of 5,200. It would have been much larger if the auditorium had the capacity. The extraordinary video is a “must see” if you are interested in either the Apple products or the marketing that surrounds them. The two-hour video is an exemplary model for how to communicate. Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them. Not a new idea, but executed by the Apple executive team with incredible precision, enthusiasm, and clarity. They also added an important element to the classic three-element communications model. Demo it to them. You get the feeling that the executive team knows exactly what they are talking about and are passionate about it.
Next month we get to see Lion and I for one can’t wait. It sounds like Apple is really listening to what customers want. For the iOS 5 update, we will have to wait until “the Fall”, but it also has a large number of exciting features. The big one is integration with iCloud. The immediate question many people have is what does iCloud mean for Dropbox? There are many unanswered questions. Google, Apple, and Amazon are at war to win our hearts, minds, and bits for their clouds. Some will say that iCloud is a makeover of MobileMe but I believe it is much more than that. iCloud will be continuously streaming billions of bits to all of our Apple devices — songs, photos, emails, web page and reading material bookmarks, calendar updates and reminders, contact information, tweets, and much more. While Google, Apple, and Amazon will strive to get our more and more of our loyalty, there are many parts of our digital lives that they don’t touch.
Every Saturday morning, I update my Quicken data on the MacBook at the kitchen counter. After I close Quicken, the file is immediately updated at dropbox.com. A bit later, I head into my office and access Quicken on the iMac. All the data is there, updated and ready to use. The same file is also on the iPhone and iPad and a handful of ThinkPads that are scattered around the house. Cloud computing does not mean putting everything in the cloud instead of on your computer — it means putting data in the cloud so that it can be replicated to all your devices. Your data is no longer where you PC is — your data is where you are. Some photo afficianados will prefer to use Picasa instead of iPhoto. Some will use Google Docs instead of Apple Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Some will use Amazon for their music. For me it will be Pandora. I plan to try iCloud as soon as possible and will surely use it for my purchased music, probably for photos, and probably not for documents. Definietely not for Quicken and various specialized files like my web site content, GPS data, etc.. All the boards I serve on distribute materials via pdf files. When I receive those by email I detach them to dropbox.com folders. I then synchronize Goodreader with dropbox on the iPad so that all the pdfs are local on the iPad for use at board meetings. I am enthusiastic about iCloud but I do not see it taking over my digital life, at least not yet.
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Conversational Marketing Summit – 2011
Attending conferences is the best way I know of to stay on the edge of what is happening in the world. Reading content on the Web and exchanging messages is vital but there is no substitute for attending a few conferences per year where you can talk to people at meals and breaks plus interact with sponsors and speakers. This was my second year to attend the CM Summit, a conference run by John Battelle. John has a long history in journalism and the media industry and is founder and chairman of Federated Media, an Internet advertising company which appears to be prospering. John brought together a good set of sponsors and 32 excellent speakers. The conference included news and views from some of the industry leaders in digital marketing. The two days included thought provoking case studies, insights, and conversations with major brand advertisers, agencies, and digital media companies.
The conference started bright and early Monday morning in the Hudson Theatre at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan. A full stream of the confeence is available here, but I will touch on a few highlights — mostly things I tweeted about (@johnrpatrick) from the iPad during the conference. Conversational marketing is all about a dialog between consumer, marketer, and publisher. You could also say it is the new advertising model. Major brands like American Express, P&G, Sony, Visa, and General Motors all talked about how they are morphing from traditional advertising to developing digital conversations between their brands and consumers via the social media. You could say it is a matter of survival. Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom Mediavest, a multi-billion agency summed it up by saying that “business is not what it was”. She talked about how advertisers are more willing to consider new channels such as content, conversations, and real-time communications between a consumer and a brand. “Everyone will have an IP address”, is the advertiser’s way of saying that they want to connect directly with individual consumers. A lot of the presentations had to do with targetting. Advertisers really want to send a custom advertisement directly to our mobile phones based on the then circumstances of you and their products. I did not hear one of the presenters question whether consumers are happy about that. The privacy issue is getting a lot of attention, as it should. The new phrase is online behavioral advertising (OBA), and a new icon to signify OBA on compliant web sites will provide a link to a page to learn who is targeting you and where data about you is collected. It will also show your cookies and what they contain and enable you to opt out. People want transparent brands that reveal their intentions and actions. OBA will help make that happen.
Rob Cicone from AMEX said that 44% of small businesses use Facebook and 15% use LinkedIn. Your Buzz is a new Amex tool to help small biz manage their presence across all the major social networking tools. Their goal with the free service is to build a relationship with the small business that will eventually lead to the business accepting the Amex card. David Karp, Founder of tumblr, talked about how they have built a place to post things, customize your web page, and build a community. They claim to be the 26th largest web site with 7 billion pageviews per month, 80 million unique visitors per month, and 45,000 new users per day. Facebook has no guarantee to be the biggest and best social media in perpetuity.
A Finnish company called GetJar has an app store for mobile. They said the app industry is $30-50 billion with 50 billion app downloads projected for 2012 and said apps are media, not content. Not sure that is a significant distinction. I do agree with them that apps are in the early stage; like websites 15 years ago. With Apple’s new Lion and iOS 5, they are sure to get the Lion’s share. Adam Bain from Twitter discussed the new deep integration of Twitter with iOS 5, which means you can tweet from within an app. Could be profound. Hope it is not an exclusive arrangement. I have always thought of Twitter as a protocol for the Internet.
Pepsi talked about real-time marketing. Lady gaga walking down street with a Pepsi. Someone at Pepsi notices and minutes later, tens of millns of people see an ad based on a Pepsi tweet. I thought most significant was that Pepsi and GM and the other big brands were represented by young “with it” marketing execs. I am sure they are not the “chief” marketing officers. Some had weird titles like global director of brand awareness and innovation. A mouthful but important that the major companies are trying hard to figure out how to capitalize on the new social media, because it is really big. Guy from Yahoo! wav very bullish. Head of sales for Facebook said that they reach more people everyday than American Idol. They are running 30 billion status updates per year.
The highlight of the conference was William James Adams, Jr., better known by his stage name will.i.am or as a member of the hip hop group The Black Eyed Peas. He had an uncanny saavy about marketing and innovation. I was greatly impressed with his focus on philanthropy and helping inner city kids with education and housing.
