My Favorite LBS Services

This is the big travel weekend, so a short review of my three favorite LBS services seems in order. In the New York metro area there are four main destinations, each with its unique lingo. For the Labor Day weekend people leave “The City” and go either “Upstate” (which for City dwellers is anywhere that is more than 1 mile north of the Bronx!), “Out to the Island” (which is what you say if you go to Long Island but don’t have a place in the Hamptons), “Down the Shore” (that’s the Jersey shore), or “in the mountains” (either the Poconos or Catskills – Since there are no coal miners in the city – the phrase “in the mountains is curious)

Location Based Services – Ready for Primetime?
For years I’ve been bullish about the coming onslaught of mobile based location based services. Visions of personalized talking billboards , a la the movie “Minority Report”, seemed within our grasp.

 The requirements for wireless 911 location services seemed to be the necessary catalyst for infrastructure and device capabilities. Despite the hype the rollout has been disappointing.

Why?

 Maybe an analogy to the SMS market of the late 1990’s can provide some clues.

SMS took off as a service when three major events happened. First , and most importantly was inter- carrier cooperation and transport of SMS; Secondly, the emergence of SMS applications beyond user-to-user testing (such as Upoc, text alerts, banking, etc), and lastly a value chain that includes market and connectivity enablers such as mobile marketing firms and SMS aggregators. 

For LBS service we need carrier location transparency, location aggregators and applications that go beyond driving directions and kid finder services. (More on those in later blog). There are, of course, privacy concerns with providing location information to third party application and content providers. The ability to turn location sourcing on and off on the handset should have helped ease the fears. The ability for carriers and/or consumers to blacklist LBS service providers that misused the information would also be necessary.

It seems as though the technology, policy and legal concerns should be easily overcome. So, I ask again, why have these services not developed in a timely manner?
One possible depressing conclusion might be that there may not be the pend-up depend for LBS services that many of us in the wireless industry have predicted and assumed to exist. While I have to acknowledge this as a possibility – I am still strongly in the pro-LBS camp.

Another possible reason is that the policy and legal issues have strangled the market of LBS. Wireless Carriers are conservative by nature (and necessity) and are likely to move at a “prudent” speed for such a service. Since there is real economic incentive to deploy services that increase ARPU, I want to believe, also, that this is not the case. We are seeing lots of navigation and enterprise applications being introduced throughout the market.
Therefore, that leaves the lack of a developed cross-carrier LBS value chain that enables innovative application providers to capitalize and a well-oiled economic and technological model.

Will this model come from within the wireless carrier business model, or outside? It is possible that in handsets will have the capability to provide GPS information over a data channel that is outside of the carriers’ control. How might that business model look for the industry at large?

 Markets and technology do have a way of emerging, either as a controlled introduction from within the existing value chains, or as a disruptive technology that supplants the existing market. It will be interesting to watch which path LBS services take.

 
In my previous blog I presented a slice of the diverse life we have in New York. Living and working in New York provides a Mobile company such as Upoc Networks an advantage in providing innovative services that reach a diverse marketplace.

 

 

 

Many companies spend endless hours training and talking about diversity in the workplace; we live it, at work and at home.

When I think of diversity I add other factors such social-economic background, age, education, work experience and sexual orientation. My awareness of our total diversity is obviously incomplete, but I would venture to say that we would be hard pressed to find more than a couple of employees who were similar in all aspects.  This is the workforce we draw from, this is the city where we are headquartered, and most importantly , this is representative of the marketplace in which we compete.

We did not sit down as a Management team and place various diversity hiring goals, it has been not necessary. I have observed throughout my career that if your existing organization has diversity, it will attract and retain diversity.

There are obviously many companies and regions that have diversity, but no city has the history and the reputation of being the world’s melting pot.

New York is a city with over 100 nationalities, every major religion (and probably more than few that are not so “major”), every ethnicity, culture, race, creed, sexual orientation, political affiliation and social/economic status. 

What is perhaps truly amazing is that this patchwork quilt of cultures co-exist in relative harmony within New York.

Moslems and Jews, Blacks and Whites, Japanese, Chinese and Koreans, Catholics and Protestants , Serbs, Russians, Hispanics, the list goes on and on. In other areas of the world the same groups might be at war, but in New York they seem to blend and even feed off of each others culture.

It must be something in the water!

New York, New York.

Just another weekend in New York-

While this entry has little to do with mobile applications – I decided to share a slice of the uniqueness of New York.  It does , however go to the heart of why New York, with all of its diversity and culture enables mobile companies to be competitive.

Last Sunday my family decided to go to “The City” to see a Broadway Matinee play.    On our way in we got caught in traffic and the usual 90 minute (20 mile) drive stretched to over 3 hours.  We missed our play but decided to hang out in Manhattan.   We walked two blocks from the theater parking lot and were greeted by approximately 500,000 joyous parade goers.  This Sunday was the Dominican Republic day parade.   The music was as much felt as it was heard.  The cheers were deafening and the parade floats and marchers seemed to stretch forever.  You did not need to speak Spanish or be Dominican to just enjoy the Mass celebration.  

After about 30 minutes we walked the two blocks to the Madison Avenue street fair.     Madison Avenue was closed for approximately 20 blocks (over a mile) and became home for food vendors with the  cuisine of Mexico ,Italy, , China , Thailand, Poland, Israel, France,  Greece,  ;  and various American flavors from New Orleans, New York (where else can you really get a Knish?) and Southern BBQ.   Needless to say, we did not go hungry.  Music form every ethnicity played from stalls that sold anything and everything.   We stopped along the way to listen to a Klezmer Jazz band that was outstanding.

After we satisfied our palette, we started to walk back to 6^th Avenue and decided to stop by St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  They were having a special Spanish Mass that we watched for a couple of minutes before we continued our walk. 

Before we got back to 6^th avenue, the gravitational pull of the Nintendo flagship store attracted by teenage son.  We successfully extracted him without monetary damage to any credit card.  We showed the family Rockefeller Plaza and then walked the last block back to the DR day parade.

After another hour we left to go home.   Where else could you go through such a diverse range of the DR parade and the Madison Avenue street fair by just walking 2 blocks?  New York New York , it is unique.

My next blog will go deeper into the competitive values of a diverse community and employee base.

Guest iPhone review from The Doc

This blog entry is from my brother.  He is a Doctor who recently acquired an iPhone.  I asked him to write a review from his point of view. And here it is …

As a physician (anesthesiologist), I have tried using both a Blackberry and a Palm Treo with only varying success as a useful tool for me; then along came the iPhone ...

The needs of physicians and different specialties vary, so our needs are different from a businessman.

Everyday,  I was carrying three devices to work: my cell phone, my Palm Pilot, and my iPod. Now, I carry one device.

The cell phone has long ago done away with the need for long-range pagers. My office or a nurse can call or text messages me on my cell phone at any time. This is true on all devices.

The Good:

The iPhone is great, yet I still use my old iPod in the operating room. Yes, we play music in the operating room. Patients enjoy listing to something familiar during their procedures. The operating room is my “office”;  I spend 80+ percent of my time in an operating room during the day. Myself,  the surgeon, the scrub and circulating nurses all enjoy listening to music during the day.

Because the operating room is truly my office, as I spend 7–10 hours per day in the OR, my “connectivity” needs are different than someone who has access to a laptop or desktop computer during the day. This is the area where the iPhone excels. I can get my e-mail, text messages, phone messages, etc. very easily on the iPhone. The other area which I find the iPhone to be far superior to its competitors is in its Web-browsing capability. Our hospital has an EMR (electronic medical record). I can access this from the OR by using my username and password. The ease of expanding the screen and point and touch (instead of point and click) is great. I can check orders, test results, check EKG's physician consultations, and radiology reports online very easily. This was not possible, or very difficult, on the Blackberry and Treo. I can also do online physician order entry and “electronically sign” my orders with the iPhone. Even though I cannot download a medical application, like the drug database epocrates, onto the iPhone, I can access it online very easily using my username and password.

The iPhone has really made my life much easier. Instead of scurrying around in-between cases to get to a computer to get info, I do it with ease. If there is something missing or awry with my next patient, I know about it ahead of time, can call the nurse in the preadmissions unit or consulting physician, and get clarification before the patient is ready to go to the OR.

The Bad

What comes on the iPhone is what you get. I cannot download medical applications, like drug databases or text material onto the iPhone the way I could on my Palm Pilot.

Why did they make the headphone jack too deep – so that I need to buy a $15 extender??

The iPhone is not friendly when answering a phone call in the car. It takes too many steps. First, I have to slide the unlock button, then answer the phone, then tell the iPhone whether I want to answer it by my Bluetooth, the speaker phone, or the regular phone. This is a 55-mph wreck waiting to happen, and I’m too young to be an organ donor!

 It also doesn’t have the one-touch “Call my brother at work” voice commands. With all the bells and whistles that this well-designed device has, it should have voice-activated calling!

The phone function works well and the quality is good, just not in the car!!

The name on my locker was “Spence.” My coach did not know my real name! He had to ask me so they could print the program for the upcoming games. The other players on the team all had their own “team” names: “Moose,” “Sparky,” “Mole,” “Mud,” “Scooter,” “Sticker,” “Blade,” etc.  It was the persona we each adopted within our social network.

Years later when I played “beer league” hockey, we had a social network that would have only existed in the context of creating a team. The team had some corporate types like myself, blue- collar construction workers, several criminal defense lawyers, and many of their clients! This was a collection of 18 guys that would never network together in “real life.” Like my college team, we only knew each other by our team nicknames. We played together for almost 15 years and won 12 championships.

The years we lost were when some players violated probation! After each season we invited our wives or girlfriends to an end of year dinner. This dinner was always an interesting exercise in social networking. As you can imagine, the female companions of the team members had about as much in common as the players, but easily bonded around the topic of men chasing a small frozen piece of rubber around cold, damp arenas.  My wife always got frustrated when I would introduce her to the other players. The reason was simple – I did not know their real names!! It was always, “Hi, Dear, this is 'Stinky'; 'Stinky,' this is my wife" and “Dear, this is bone-crusher ...."  and she would reply, “Hi, Mr. Crusher!” This group was very tight in the context of ice hockey, but once the season ended, so did our association.  No context equals no social networking. That is the lesson I learned.

Many of today’s social networks have an explicit (such as LinkedIn) or implicit (Facebook) networking context. With a context that is understood by its members, a social network has longevity. If you remove that context, the network will cease to exist. If a network forms (like my earlier comments about CB radio) around a weak context, then the fade will become big, then die.  

My hockey network had context that bonded the group. When the context was removed, that social network became a collection of nice memories, and a few trophies.

Here is the list:

Immediate family, extended family, school friends, religious network, sports team members, high school friends, college friends, work colleagues, business networks, and neighborhood friends.

One observation I made was that the number of active social networks was at the highest and potentially most volatile in my teen years and early 20s. These are the social networks that set the foundation for adulthood. How I related to each social network was slightly different. 

Sometimes the social network would define who I was, and sometimes the opposite was true. Even the name I was (am) known by in the different social networks varied.

 The obvious example are: Steve (Parents and Family), Dad (Kids) and Spence (School, High School and College Friends).  

Thinking about Web 2.0 in real life social networking terms yielded me an epiphany. You can imagine how difficult it is in anyone’s teen years to be labeled and categorized within a particular social group. The virtual social networks are a way out of that dilemma for teens. They permit high school and college students to take more direct control of defining who and what they are. 

It allows them to redefine themselves at will. It grabs control from the mass network at large and creates a better sense of ego. It is no longer the roll of the “in crowd” to define the social network and status of others. 

The virtual social networks are the great equalizer in the social status game. This is a game that is most important to high school and college age students.  

Next installment is the most interesting social network I ever belonged to …

How many social networks are you a member of?

There are two perspectives you can use to answer this question. You can answer the question by number of commercial virtual social network services: AIM, MySpace, Friendster, Dada, LinkedIn, Upoc, Blogger, Match.com, etc. The second perspective to answer this question are non-electronic (i.e., traditional) social networks: friends, family, schoolmates, church or synagogue members, work colleagues, etc. 

My question is what is the intersection of the virtual with the real?

In my view, when real connections are reinforced with electronic social networking, the bonds of both are stronger. How often does this happen? We have seen many examples of real social groups using Upoc as a social networking tool. That is, a tool for facilitating already existing relationships (church groups, teams, work groups). This is mobile Internet technology facilitating the real world. We have seen many companies form Upoc groups to coordinate staffers at conventions; sales teams use text group messaging for pricing information; and teams have used the service to send scheduled information.

One trend we are now seeing is families using group messaging within the family calling group to communicate via text.

As social networking crosses the chasm to become the facilitator of traditional social networks, its already significant usage will explode by many orders of magnitude. This is a good thing for all the players in the market of social networking.

In my next installment I will share some interesting social networks I have belonged to and what they taught me about the nature of this new medium that everyone is buzzing about.

There are several reasons why the CB radio phenomenon died out. Here are my top reasons and why they relate to today’s big social networks:

The stated motivation for entering the social network was not consistent with the activity of the network. Uh? Let me explain. Most people bought into the commercial promotion that the CB was a safety and security device. You could somehow contact help if you broke down on a lonely deserted road. Help was just a “breaker, breaker, good buddy, please save my butt!” call away. So, you would tell your friends and family, “I’m getting this to be safe!” 

Of course that was a total lie.

The CB was a social networking toy! You could play at creating and honing a new persona every time you pushed the transmit button. You could be Southern (which was the favorite, especially of Northerners, or you could be "the boss" or the man "the man"). Women were treated with equal status (especially if they knew the 10-20 of "smokey and his camera"). While there were no doubt illegal or immoral activities, the norms of the community and the total openness of communication served as a self-regulation. It gave the user of CB radio freedom to be however they wanted to be. It was the first mass social network with anonymous communication that created its own social norms.

The times that I actually discovered who I was really talking to, well, became kind of boring.

The main usage as a social networking device let to that need being more powerfully filled by the explosion of instant messaging in the late 1980s and 1990s. Social networking was no longer limited to 5 miles of random road, but the whole world. 

Strike One for the CB  

The consumers who actually used the CB because of safety reasons probably discovered that relying on random strangers to help you in your hour of need is as likely to bring “bad guys” as it is “good guys” to your rescue. Another device was now being marketed as the safety device you should have in your car – the mobile phone.  The mobile phone is of course a social networking device with one-to-one precise communication. It was better to call the AAA to fix your car than rely on “Cruisin' Cougar,” “Lusty Lady,” or “Bandit Eye.”

  Strike Two for the CB

 The CB Social networks were random and without context other than you were traveling somewhere and didn’t want to get a speeding ticket. This is not the form of social networking that creates “sticky” bonds. No one really grew attached to their “Good Buddies.” It was rare that you would find the same person twice, and if you did, it could just be another person with the same handle. In general, you did not care – no context means no passion about a topic and no ties amongst the members. Thus, when alternate means of random social networking emerged, or safety devices became available, there was nothing underneath all the hype of the CB craze to sustain it. 

 Strike Three for CB.

 Some more thoughts on today’s social networks in my next installment.