Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Walmart backs off RFID technology
Walmart has backed off its mandate that all its suppliers use RFID (Radio Frequency ID tags) by next week (note: NY Times site requires registration). It turns out, among other problems, that the tags don't work very well.
The theory is wonderful--Walmart employees, instead of tediously counting stock or handscanning barcodes, would simply walk down the aisle of a store waving a wand and accurately count what is on the shelf.
In practice, no manufacturer's equipment has been able to provide 100% accurate counts, and Walmart itself says it has never gotten above 60%. As the article states, what's the point of all this if you can't even account for 40% of your inventory?
This is another example of the IT industry making promises it can't deliver, and you have to wonder why Walmart did not do more due diligence before telling suppliers to pony up millions if not billions of dollars in a complete revamp of their own IT systems to accommodate the tags.
As always, be cautious of buying new technology from vendors if you have little or no experience using it, and do not have qualified in house staff to evaluate it. Vendor promises, as Walmart has found out, are not always worth much. Disclaimer: Design Nine provides technology neutral technology advice to our clients.
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WiFi in Texas state parks
Texas continues to be a leader in rolling out public WiFi. Several months ago, the state announced it was going to offer WiFi at highway rest stops. Now it will also offer it in some state parks. The reasons are shrewd--state officials have decided to invest to boost tourism among some very narrowly targeted groups that want more access while out in the parks, with birders and "snowbirds," the winter RV crowd among those mentioned.
The article also has some interesting stats on the deployment of WiFi, the costs, and who is using it.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I'll be posting irregularly over the next week and a half. Thanks for all your support over the past year. Traffic and readership on the site has quadrupled since this time last year, and I am deeply grateful that so many of you find this site of value.
All my best,
Andrew Cohill
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Return of the phone booth
Ellen Goodman, in her syndicated column, writes that some restaurants are installing phone booths so that customers who want to talk on a cellphone have a place to go and do so without disturbing everyone else. A nice idea, and a neat compromise between those who feel they can't even get through a meal without answering the phone and those that feel they can.
Public phone booths in some cities are being hooked up with DSL lines by the phone company and are being turned into WiFi hot spots. Another neat idea, and a sensible one for the phone company, which already has the phone line to the booth that is needed to provide the Internet access.
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WiFi and cellphones: Dueling technologies?
Esme Vos at MuniWireless thinks that the real reason behind Verizon's fevered opposition of community wireless in Philadelphia is that Verizon is terrified of cheap VoIP over WiFi.
I'm inclined to agree. I've been saying for a while that the whole cellular marketplace is in deep trouble. The cellular companies are frantically trying to lash overpriced and relatively low bandwidth (a few hundred kilobits) data services onto a system never designed to deliver data (just like they are frantically trying to squeeze more data onto legacy copper systems). Meanwhile, WiFi already delivers megabit data services effortlessly, and VoIP works pretty well in a well-designed WiFi network.
Why would you settle for inadequate and expensive cellular if cheap WiFi services are available throughout your area?
Like the problem that the cable and phone companies face with their outdated copper systems, the cellular companies face the same discontinuity with cellular--how do make the jump (i.e. copper to fiber, cellular to WiFi) without losing your customer base and your investments in the old system?
A company that understands competition and has a corporate culture of competition would figure that problem out and be determined to compete. But the phone companies have decided that rather than reform their own outdated corporate culture, they'll simply make it illegal for communities to chart their own future.
What's the root problem here? It's lawmakers who are not adequately informed about the community and economic development issues at stake. Which is why I've always said broadband is not a technology issue, it's an education issue. Communities and regions need to make sure their elected leaders are educated on these issues.
Want to get started? It's easy. Organize a local "Take a lawmaker to lunch" program and have a rotating group of folks who are well-versed with the issues take lawmakers to lunch once a month. In a year, I guarantee you will have had a significant impact.
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Sun Rocket VoIP--$199/year
Sun Rocket, a Voice over IP company, has the VoIP universe abuzz with their ambitious business plans to expand from 3 to 50 metropolitan markets in 2005, and the company says they intend to be a player in 300 metro markets in the United States. Particularly interesting is their flat rate annual fee--for $199 a year ($16.58 a month), you get flat rate, unlimited, nationwide calling.
If you ever wanted a reason to justify some modest community investments in broadband infrastructure, how about cutting the average phone bill from somewhere well above $50/month (local, long distance, taxes) to about $17/month.
Do the math. How much capital would that unleash in your community and region to spend on other things, like business expansion, more goods and services from local companies, and new jobs?
And if you decide to sit back and let the cable company and phone company re-monopolize broadband in your community, how long do you think they will play fair and let competitors offer services like this over their infrastructure? A community-managed, broadband transport infrastructure keeps the playing field level and fair and gives businesses and residential service users real choice.
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Don't wait in line at the Post Office
If you hate waiting in line at the Post Office to mail packages, don't. The U.S. Postal Service has online label and postage services that are just terrific. Now that I have an account with my credit card information saved, it takes about a minute to print out a bar coded shipping label complete with postage. If you get it done early enough in the day, put a sticky note on your mailbox and the postman will come right to your door to pick up the packages. Or if you are running late (as I am today with Christmas gifts), you can walk right in the post office, drop them off, and walk out. It's a wonderful benefit of having broadband, and the Postal Service is to be applauded for offering the service.
Incidentally, it's a boon for small business as well. The Web application has an address book to store frequently-used addresses, so for small to medium-sized boxes, this Web app can be your shipping department. Note to economic developers: do all the small businesses in your region know about this service and know how to use it?
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Cellphones appear to damage DNA
According to European scientists who have concluded a four year long study of cellphone radiation (the same gigahertz level frequencies used in microwave ovens, by the way), cellphone radiation appears to cause damage at the DNA level in cells, and not all of it was repairable by the cell. This means you end up with mutated cells in your body, which is one suspected cause of some cancers. Scientists agree more study is needed. The cellphone industry has no response.
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Distance matters....or does it?
The Roanoke region recently competed for a Dell manufacturing facility, and lost out to North Carolina, which offered Dell a whopping $242 million in tax credits. That's an awful lot to pay for just one firm that could easily pick up and leave after a few years. Imagine what a few hundred small businesses with good business plans could do if given ten or fifteen years of tax relief.
But that's not the story today. In today's Roanoke Times, an article says that one of the issues with Dell was access to an airport that could handle long range 747 freighters--one of the biggest commercial airplanes made. Not only does Dell get parts from suppliers worldwide, they ship their computers all over the world.
This is a good example of how the global marketplace is changing things. Forty years ago, it was rare to make goods in one country and ship them to another. Most manufacturing plants made things for regional or national consumption. You can tell how much things have changed when ordinary items like paper towels and batteries come with packaging printed in three or four languages.
Geography is still important, but not the way we think. You no longer have to be close to markets, because the entire world has become a single, large marketplace. But while many products and services can be delivered via the internet, not everything can, so regions have to consider transportation facilities in a new way. In Roanoke, airport capacity was, according to the newspaper, not on the list. You can bet it is now.
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Google desktop search has a security hole
Google released a piece of software a few months ago that would let you use Google to search your own hard disk, with results displayed just like Google displays search results from the Web. Sounds good, right?
Aside from the obvious privacy issues (Google swears they won't do anything with the data except target ads to you better, but they can change that policy anytime they like), I'd never let a third party search my own hard drive.
Cnet has an article about a serious software flaw in the software that would let a third party capture the results of what is stored on your hard drive. Not only that, the third party could then instruct the Google software on your hard drive to do searches and return the content not to Google but somewhere else.
Google is working on a fix. The article also notes that Microsoft and Yahoo! are working on similar software. There is really zero benefit to consumers from this. Standalone software that searches the content of hard drives has been around for ages, and the Mac comes with this capability built in to the operating system. There is no free lunch here. The "free" software gives the provider (Google, Microsoft) a window into your personal and business information. Somehow the promise that they won't do anything bad with it does not convince me, and "better ads" is not something I've ever woken up wishing for....."Boy, I hope I get more and better ads from Google today!"
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