TrendWatcher

Gexa Energy - Is failing in the customer service game the next trend?

2007-06-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

Gexa Energy makes some of the worst decisions I've ever heard of. They've made 3 huge mistakes:

1. Failed to give extraordinary customer service when it would have been very helpful to do so.
2. Failed to make a simple decision that would have kept a customer, possibly for life.
3. Failed to recognize the PR power of the internet.

My wife and I wanted to purchase a house. We put a contract on it and I called Gexa to hook up our energy on the day the contract was to be executed. On that day, I was informed that the person selling the house we wanted had declared bankruptcy and was going to be unable to sell the house. I called Gexa to inform them that I was going to be unable to buy the house and that I didn't need energy service at this time.

Mistake 1: Apparently they have a 'policy' that once the day of service initiation is reached they need 3 business days to shut it off. Give me a break. Pick up the phone and find out if the services has even been initiated. Chances are it hasn't. I called early in the day. If it has been initiated, pick up the phone and get it unconnected. I bet all they have to do is click a button.

At one point in my conversations with Gexa they said:

"Gexa strives to treat all our customers the same and we can't in good faith give you special treatment."

Hog wash! I have a special situation, treat me special. If you want to keep me as a customer you need to do that. I think Gexa wants to treat everyone the same so they can just send a bill at the end of the month and not have to do any real work.

A few weeks later I get a bill in the mail for $42.44. I don't have the bill in front of me but I believe there was a $15 connection fee, a $15 disconnect fee, some energy, and some taxes. I was a little ticked off as it was impossible for them to have actually provided me with any service seeing as I never owned the house.

At this point we had a new contract on a new house and it seemed reasonable to me that since I had these charges at a number of utilities providers that it would be great if they could waive the charges from the failed transaction and apply to the new transaction.

I called SBC(AT&T)...no problem. They waived the connection fee from the first transaction and applied it to the new house.

I called Atmos energy. They were a little snippy about it, but after a BBB complaint they decided to waive the charges.

I called Gexa.

Mistake 2: This is where you can claim a customer for life. I can't tell you have absolutely great I felt about AT&T after they were so accommodating to my special situation. I've had some rough customer service experiences with them in the past but this one incident really cleared a lot of that up. I'm even considering spending $400 to buy myself out of my Sprint cell contract in order to switch to AT&T when the iPhone comes out. I never would have considered that before they helped me out.

Gexa lost me. There are about 30 energy providers in Texas and many are less expensive then Gexa. You'd think that forgoing $30 in fees would be worth roping a customer...possibly for life. But apparently not to Gexa. They want to treat me just like everyone else..ie they want to screw me and my wallet. I offered to use them at my new residence in exchange for waiving the fees from the first transaction or paying the first bill in exchange for waiving the connection fees at the new house. I was flat out told no. They didn't want my business. They wanted my $42 dollars.

I filled a BBB complaint but they just responded with what they had said earlier.

Mistake 3: The reported me to a collection agency. I called them and spoke to Sabrina G. She's the one who said Gexa wanted to treat everyone the same. Sabrina, this article is for you and all the dolts at your company that told you to say that. You'll never have my business and I hope this article keeps others from going through the same customer disregard that I've gone through. I hope it was worth my $42 dollars.

Earth to .... Earth?

2005-10-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

Hello? No one wants a cd or a dvd or any thing else that erases itself or destroys itself. Apparently Microsoft hasn't figured this one out yet.

Microsoft and the vanishing disc

RFID and Beer

2005-10-03T05:17:00.000-07:00

This isn't the most serious article, but the fact of the matter is we are going to be seeing more things like empty beer mug sensing technology.

RFID and wireless broadcast is making a lot of things possible. If you think to yourself "wouldn't it be cool if...", try thinking how RFID could be used. You could have the next big idea.

Internet by Google

2005-10-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

So, if you've heard the rumors that Google is going to offer some free hot spots, there's more. They have now bid to do the internet access for all of San Francisco:

Google: Free WiFi For San Francisco? Sure, We Can Do That

Music on a Stick

2005-09-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

To follow up on my post about ipod shuffles being a step toward gas station music fodder in the future, we have this article. The Rolling Stones are releasing their new album on a flash memory stick. Where people are going to stick this memory stick is sort of a mystery to me. It is also a mystery as to why they are selling it for $35. If it were there whole back catalogue it would be different.

Which way is up? - Hybrid Autos

2005-07-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

This article is an interesting read. The Hybrid Auto industry is really heating up, but some think it is headed in the wrong direction. Apparently some of the gas savings is being set aside in exchange for more performance. I say, who cares? If the market is supporting the industry, take the money and run. When we can produce a great performing hybrid engine we'll be able to produce a really efficient one as well.

Where is the Hybrid industry headed?

Also, check out this site for more info on Hybrid Autos.

iPod Shuffle

2005-01-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while, but this caught my attention. The iPod Shuffle. For $99 you can fit about 5 albums on a device the size of a pack of gum. How long until these are hanging in gas stations with the whole collection of Styx on them? I may submit my patent now.

FastHoustonian Scott Allen on FastCompany.com

2004-10-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

Over at www.FastCompany.com, Scott Allen and his partners have some great observations and recommendations when it comes to social networking.
LinkedIn has topped 1 million users. Many more socially oriented sites crossed the million-member point a while ago, including Meetup, Friendster, and Tickle. The band REM recently announced that they will be previewing their new album on MySpace. OpenBC has gone truly global, supporting German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese on their site. Enterprise-oriented tools from Contact Network Corporation and Leverage Software have already garnered multiple paying customers. And tens of thousands of people are developing business relationships in ways they never did before....And yet most Internet users still haven't even heard of them.

They emphasize that most people don't understand the tools yet.
Business networking sites are not living up to the expectations of many people. They don't effectively represent electronically the complexities of interpersonal relationships. They create awkward social situations that don't exist face to face -- such as how to deal with an explicit request to be someone's friend, something most of us haven't had to deal with since third grade. And they don't prevent spam.
But the fact that they're not yet living up to their potential shouldn't blind us from the real immediate benefits to be gained. Let's look at some of the unique benefits online networking sites offer that traditional face-to-face relationship building does not:
- searchable directory
- high visibility at low cost
- receptive audience
- easy group-forming
- visibility of your entire network.

I agree with him, especially about the searchable directory. Computers have enabled us to create and maintain much larger networks than the bulging rolodexes of 10 years ago. But you can't keep up with the backgrounds and interests of a few hundred people in your head. You have to find some mechanism that allows you to network intelligently.

Read the whole article!

GE becoming an energy company--again?

2004-08-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

"Wind turbines...are propagating at a greater rate than any other electricity-generating technology: global capacity surged 25 percent just last year. And Europe, with its high fossil fuel costs and generous government subsidies of “green power,” is the epicenter of this growth, accounting for two-thirds of wind power facilities installed in 2003."

--According to Tobias Hurter in MIT's Technology Review, and GE is surfing this wave:

Today, GE Wind Energy is one of the company’s fastest-growing divisions and is heading for world market leadership, having picked up another 9 percent of market share from 2002 to 2003, according to BTM Consult in Denmark. And in March, the company acquired the U.S. photovoltaics manufacturer AstroPower and now sells complete photovoltaics systems for homes. “In ten years, we will rule the world,” predicts Vlatko Vlatkovic, GE global technology leader for electronic and photonic systems.

Keeping Up with the Entrepreneurs

2004-08-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

FastHouston's own Scott Allen keeps up with all things entrepreneurial. A good place to start is his Houston Entrepreneur Calendar. His personal blog is at Online Business Networking.

The Darwinian Approach to Innovation

2004-08-17T06:26:00.000-07:00

At Fast Company's Innovation Station, a new part of the magazine's web site, there's a fun article by Australian Richard Watson, CEO of the Global Innovation Network. He talks about why it's so difficult for companies to keep innovating: one of the defining characteristics of business is a preoccupation with orderly process ("If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."). So it's hard to imagine corporate cultures embracing randomness
Watson is also co-author of a wonderful trendwatching newsletter called brainfruit. Their main publication is expensive, but they also put out a fun little free email called Brainsnacks. Here are some excerpts:Image convergence: Here’s a good example of product convergence – Bushnell instant replay binoculars. As well being a fine example of 8x magnification, the binoculars capture digital stills and give 30-second video replays. Source: Popular Science (US).

Job of the future #1 – Bio-prospecter: Making predictions about the future is tricky but one certainty is bio-prospecting. This is the ‘mining’ of areas like rainforests for unknown plants, compounds and microbes. Top of the pharmaceutical companies’ wishlist are compounds that fight cancer or are antibiotic , fungicidal or anti-parasitic. Source: New Scientist (UK).

Tight knit crowd: We mentioned the knitting craze before (the new yoga apparently) so we were interested to hear about the Knitting Café in New York. Yes, sip a skinny latte while you knit one and pearl one. Source: Celo (Aus).

Changing Economics of the Mass Media

2004-08-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

The New York Times carries this article from the International Herald Tribune: "Quiz Show Thrives as Germans Stay at Home."

...[O]n German television, a call-in quiz channel is the nation's fastest-growing broadcaster.

The channel, based in the Munich suburb of Ismaning, is called 9Live. This month, viewers in Austria, Germany and Switzerland will call its switchboard tens of millions of times, paying 49 euro cents a call (about 60 cents), to participate in the station's live quiz shows. 9Live splits revenue from the calls with the German phone carrier Deutsche Telekom. Callers are lured by a chance to win jackpots that, so far, have reached 100,000 euros ($121,000) and by the promise of TV fame, no matter how fleeting....

"We're getting 18 to 20 million calls a month," Ms. zu Salm said. "I think it's an enrichment in the German programming palette to have this type of TV format."
Besides a clear indication of what we'll be seeing on ABC in a few months, this trend is also part of a movement away from media depending on advertising. Subscriber and pay-to-play funding are becoming increasingly important. In his column this week on ClickZ, media analyst Vin Crosbie notes,

This is a revolutionary change in the media business. It began about 10 years ago, when consumers gained access to the Internet. The change will be patently obvious by 2024. We're now only beginning the second decade of this perhaps three-decade-long generational change.

Ours is a turbulent time. Most media companies haven't foreseen, or still don't foresee, this change; don't want to; or are built on business models this change will obviously destroy. The shift from intrusion to permission marketing has already destroyed magazine publishers' sweepstakes coupons businesses; is destroying the telemarketing business; has begun eating into the TV commercial advertising business (think TiVo); and will soon begin to shatter other media businesses based on intrusion.

Discuss

Often Overlooked Resources in our Backyard

2004-08-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

In the August issue of Inc. magazine, we're reminded that small businesses can get free technical assistance from NASA through the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP). Operating through the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, you can get up to 40 hours of technical assistance, with problem resolution promised within 90 days. Click here to find out more and read a few success stories.

A look into the future

2004-08-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

Discuss
This article is an interesting read. It looks 5 years into the future and tries to predict some of the things that might emerge in the ‘search’ area.

Bike Messenger finds his voice

2004-08-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

Wired News reports on a New York bike messenger who "uses a homemade, wireless, bicycle-mounted dot-matrix printer to spray protest messages in the street."

A webcam mounted on the back takes a picture of the chalked-up road and sends it, along with GPS coordinates, back to Kinberg's website. Whoever wrote the message will then be able to e-mail a picture of his or her protest as an e-card. There will also be an interactive map of all the messages printed, Kinberg said.

"I'd been researching bike culture in New York and noticed a big overlap with activist culture," said Kinberg. "This project blends technology and activism. If Paul Revere were alive today, he wouldn't be on a horse, he'd be on a bike."
Thanks to Tim Manners of Reveries for a heads up on this story.

Corporate Art Goes Participatory

2004-07-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

Corporations like IBM and Philip Morris (Now Altria) are famous for sponsoring art exhibitions, including the blockbusters which allowed institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art become so well known outside their neighborhood.

In their newsletter this week, Trendcentral notes a growing trend for brands to help people exercise their own creativity. For instance, fashion company Diesel is providing large walls (bigger than billboards) in four major European cities and inviting customers and artists (especially customers who are artists) to submit designs, with the winners being put up for several months of public display.
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If you're an artist or musician looking for sponsorship, check out other participatory art programs from Diesel here.

Ingenious Fan takes over Local Marketing for his Favorite Musician

2004-07-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

How close are you to your favorite musician? If you're like Marv Danielski and myself, you just pay attention to his or her name when it comes up in the news. We rely on the record industry to promote our artists to us. As MIT professor Ian Condry points out in the article "Cultures of Music Piracy," we may be selling ourselves and our musicians short.

When Marv missed the release of Steve Winwood's album by six months, he considered he'd been cheated out of six months of enjoyment, and he decided to use his marketing clout to do something about it. Marv is Vice President of Marketing and Creative Services for Hearst-Argyle Television, which owns a couple dozen tv stations from Boston to Sacramento.

And Marv is no ordinary fan, as you will see. According to an interviewer at Marketing Sherpa, Marv, who is 50, "fervently believed that Winwood's music transcends age barriers. So he wanted his campaign to reach far beyond boomers." Marketing Sherpa collects case stories about break-through marketing, but what amazes me about this story is how it's driven by love, not profits.

Fired up, he cut a series of deals with key partners including:
Winwood's label Wincraft Music
US distributors Megaforce Records
retail chain For Your Entertainment (FYE)
Access Hollywood's parent company NBC Universal
Internet Broadcasting Systems (who power Hearst's TV station Web sites)
The idea was to place promos for the album on Hearst's 25 local TV stations and their sites, plus the Access Hollywood show and site. "It was unprecedented, bringing together all these major entities into this mini-network, but I thought the experiment could work."

And work it did. After he got permission to distribute through file-sharing one of the best songs from the album, he also got an interview from Steve Winwood and some exclusive back-stage footage from a concert, all of which allowed him to launch a multi-channel campaign in the markets where Heart-Argyle has TV stations. (Sorry, not Houston.)

Results:

According to Neilsen Soundscan reports, About Time album sales in the US have doubled since the campaign began. Since the album was already a year old at campaign launch, it's fairly obvious the campaign was the driving force.

Are YOU doing everything you can to share the joy of your favorite music?
Discuss

New Freedom for Tourists in San Francisco

2004-07-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

Recently, USA Today reported on a new invention available in San Francisco that combines three existing products in a clever way. Nathan Withrington combined the concept of a self-guilded tour (using an audio tape or CD you can start and stop), little miniature golf-cart-like electric cars, and a global positioning system. So as you tool one of these little GoCars around town, the GPS detects where you are and dashboard software plays tourist information.

The system keeps tabs on where the car is to within 17 feet and adjusts its talk accordingly. It even gives suggestions on where and when to turn to see more sights. "This is such a great idea," says Ireton, who is vacationing with her husband and two daughters. They rented two of the cars, which have a top speed of 30 mph, to get an overview of the city. "It tells you a lot of interesting stuff, and they're easy to drive. It was fun."

The inventor, a 31-year old former technical recruiter who loves to tinker with motorcycles, is amazed by his own success. He originally ordered eight cars and programmed the software to cover only the most heavily tourist-trafficked areas of the city. Now he's turning customers away. "People say they'll keep the cars out for two hours, and then they're gone all day."

What a concept for a rant!

2004-07-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Duane Gilmore points out that Fast Company magazine founder Alan Webber, now a USA Today editorial board member, published an editorial in USA Today on Monday, July 12:

...you'd almost expect corporate leaders to embrace the sunshine of the Web the way they embraced its productivity improvements. Trying to keep secrets, it turns out, is a fool's game. It adds costs, creates distractions, reduces customer loyalty, alienates employees — and, by all accounts, turns out to be an unwinnable game.

What's even more compelling is the realization that there is another way to do business. In this era of information transparency, running your company with real integrity and sound basic values actually turns out to be a good business strategy.
Says Duane, "Wow. Honesty and integrity as a business strategy? What a concept. I could really go off on a rant here, but I'll save it for blogger one of these days."

Duane, your day is coming sooner than you think!

Discuss

Innovation Summit Webcast Tonight.

2004-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Discuss
If you are a member of the AlwaysOn network, then you may have seen this already, but if not, here is the link to a webcast they are having tonight. I have a prior engagement and will miss it. Let us know if anyone says anything worthwhile.

New Innovation@Work Audio Magazine

2004-07-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

FastHouston director Charlene Paulus has brought to our attention a new publication called Innovation@Work. For $199 a year, you get a monthly audio CD that includes an "e-magazine" with links and tools.

The first issue includes an interview with John Seely Brown, a review of the terrific new book "Ideas are Free," a creativity tool called SCAMPER, and a reprint of an article from the MIT Sloan Management Review called "Strategic Innovation and the Science of Learning." The authors, Vijay Govindaragan and Chris Trimble, share Clay Christensen's recommendations that innovators need to develop "theories" and learn by testing them:

"Theory-focused planning represents a significant departure from conventional planning practices, starting with the idea that planning within strategic experiments must emphasize learning, not accountability."
What about learning inside FastHouston? As an educational nonprofit, should we attempt to compile a library our members could use? There are literally hundreds of publications about innovation coming out right now, more than any one of us can purchase...would you buy a membership card to use an "innovation library"?

Discuss

More Threads to Follow

2004-07-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

Trendwatcher is glad to have Austin back to provide some HARD news of trends you can soon put your hands on! Now back into the ether with Theresa. I have just found a bunch of fun trendwatching sites courtesy of a blog called re:invention.

Check out
--The Herman Trend Alert and related site FutureSpeak.
--For events on the leading edge AND music downloads, try Flavor Pill.
--The latest in pop culture is scanned at Lucian James' Agenda.
--Then at Trend Central, I'm pointing you to the coolest Vocation Vacations, where you can try out your dream job!

Mini Projectors

2004-07-08T05:11:00.000-07:00

Discuss
Mini projectors

I’ve been away for a while and the updates have been thin. Thanks to those that have kept at it while I was incognito.

If you missed this article on hand held projectors, give it a read. This has huge implications if the technology works out. We already have camera’s in our phones, it looks like projectors are next. I also think that there are some applications for advertisers. I think that you will soon see posters turning into moving advertisements, especially in cities with mass trasportation. I also can see students projecting the baseball game onto the back of the person sitting in front of them.

Maybe we can come up with some other cool uses for a pocket sized projector. Post them over at Innovation Oxygen.

Modest Trendsetters Don't Want to Know Who's Reading

2004-07-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

Run, do not walk over to the NY Times, swallow hard and do your free registration, so you can read this article by Randy Kennedy before July 11. That's when the Times rolls it into the archive and you have to pay for the privilege of reading it.

"Asian-American Trendsetting on a Shoestring" is about the goofy, lovable guys in Los Angeles who publish Giant Robot.

Mr. Nakamura described the magazine as "the punk-rock kids in the corner who didn't get invited to the parties," but more often it has seemed that the magazine is the one not inviting people to its party.
With their reflexive self-deprecation and finely tuned cultural antennas, both men are aware of the danger that the underground culture they write about is becoming more mainstream, in part because of their efforts. And they are wary of their own success: of being seen, God forbid, as somehow grown-up and too serious. They own an art gallery and two stores, one in Los Angeles and another in San Francisco, that sell the kinds of Asian comic books, toys, books and clothing they often write about. (The actress Lucy Liu has been spotted in the Los Angeles store.) The men are also scouting sites for a third store in New York.

"I think we'll be fine," Mr. Nakamura said of the magazine's continued existence on the cutting edge. "But I'm not sure. We'll see."
They admit they don't have a plan, other than resisting the pleas of publicity companies to cover more mainstream Asian products. They just keep to cool stuff in and throw the bad stuff out.

Giant Robot now draws serious advertisers like Adidas, Sony and Universal Studios, but Mr. Wong said the magazine had not conducted a reader survey to identify its subscribers, although he said he believed about half are not Asian-Americans.

"Maybe it would ruin it for us if we actually knew who was reading it," he said, laughing.

Social Networking - Fad or Trend

2004-07-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

I recently had the opporunity to sit down with my niece who is in her senior year of college and talk with her about generational differeneces. One of the greatest influential forces on her generation is communication technology. She comes from a generation that doen't know a world without e-mail, cell phones, and personal computers. More so for my younger niece who designs web pages at conducts half a dozen simultaneous conversations on instant messaging. This technology generation grew up in a world where individuals are far more connected and networked with each other. The rate at which information and ideas diffuse within this group is phenomenal.

Those of us from an older generation may question the business model and value or application of the emergent social networking phenomena. After all, many of us have parents that instructed us not to talk to stangers and to have proper introductions. These rules do not apply in the new age electronic world, where on-line conversations and communications occur in cyberspace. I know have acquantances I only know through electonic communication. It seems that the current "fads" around social networking technology are a reflection of the subtle but profound underlying changes in the very fabric of social relationships. To the "technoid" generation, it is not new or different, but just a natural extension of what they already do.

Thoughts?

Dan Lewis

Discuss

Social Networking Trend finds its Legs

2004-07-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

Recently I've had a flurry of requests from friends who are in LinkedIn to connect my digital profile to theirs. It does appear that social networking is starting to become more "real."

At AlwaysOn, columnist Christopher Carfi is in the middle of a three part series on separating the hype and the innovation in social networks

Social networking has a Sisyphean hill to climb if people feel that the social networking technology itself can spontaneously "create" community. Rather, what we will see in Stage 3 and future stages is that social networking technology will primarily provide a mechanism to strengthen the weak ties that abound in an extant community.
This quote reminds me of a remarkable (and long) paper published by a British think tank called iSociety, You Don't Know Me, but... Social Capital & Social Software. In they say the really amazing thing about social software is watching it to see how it can enable society to accomplish things we couldn't do before we were electronically connected.

Other than maintaining connection with people over a longer period of time, what new things do you expect to be able to do in the future because of social software?

Discuss

Designing a More Secure World

2004-06-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

An article in last week's Wall Street Journal (sorry, subcribers only) covered a trend in architecture to design buildings that are impervious to terrorism. The writer, Mark Maremont, missed the fact the trend represents an important design innovation. The importance of using design to improve the quality of life was really brought home to me while reading this article. Mark found plenty of goofy fun with it, as well.

The 35-foot-long, bifurcated chunk of black granite in front of the FleetBoston tower here strikes many passersby as just one more baffling example of modern art.
"It looks like a kayak, or maybe a broken boat," says Boston lawyer Michael Litchman. "Honestly, I have no idea what it is."
No wonder Mr. Litchman is puzzled. He's looking at a new phenomenon in the American urban landscape: security disguised as art. The massive sculpture, carefully placed in front of the shallow main stairs, is intended to keep a terrorist from driving into the skyscraper's lobby with a bomb.
Everything old is new again...
The intertwining of security and architecture is a throwback to antiquity. From medieval English castles to the Great Wall of China, structures throughout history have been built with defense in mind. Only in relatively recent times have cities and buildings been constructed on the assumption that they were safe from attack.
Many of these buildings sound like fun places to visit...
In Seattle, a new 20-story federal courthouse scheduled to open this summer comes with a thicket of cleverly hidden protection. A perimeter of sweet gum trees, concrete benches and stainless-steel bollards forms the first line of defense. Should a suicide car bomber smash through those, he would face two options: Try to ford a "waterlily pond" that doubles as a security moat, or navigate through a grove of 80 trees carefully staggered to prevent a vehicle from getting a clear shot at the main entrance.

Then there's the sunken sculpture garden, designed both to please the eye and trap a vehicle in the soft grass. Even the building's sign is part of the security system: Twenty feet long and made of stone, it forms part of the western perimeter.

"If something does happen and they're able to break through all that, they have to figure out how to get up 18 feet of steps," says Rick Thomas, the building's project manager.
Then again, those 18 feet of steps may keep me out as well.

Is the World getting Too Normal?

2004-06-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

A June 14, 2004 article in The Guardian (well worth reading in its entirety) reports a decline in "weirdness." They find fewer reported sightings of ghosts, space aliens, and other paranormal beings such as the Loch Ness Monster.

This January the official Loch Ness Monster fan club admitted that in the preceding 18 months they had heard of a meagre three spottings. "There has been an unusually low number of sightings, all of which were made by local people," admits Gary Campbell, club president. "It appears that no tourists at all have seen anything unusual."
Reports the president of Society for Psychical Research, the UK's most prestigious ghost-busting association,

"The society used to get maybe 60 to 80 reports of ghosts in a year," he says. "Now we get none. None at all. A remarkable decline. It is still very strange."
Lest you think the Brits are just losing it,

In Indiana in the US an amateur association of scientific ufologists known as Madar (multiple autonomy detection and automatic recording) has seen a steady and accelerating fall-off in UFO activity since the peaks of the mid-70s. Likewise, New Jersey's skywatchers have openly wondered whether to call it a day.
The Guardian goes on to interview a good variety of scientists and journalists who propose a wide variety of explanations including the unlikely possibility that people are just less gullible these days.

Faster, Freer

2004-06-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

The trend of faster internet access with fewer wires continues(not less cost). Cingular has struck a deal to bring 2 megabit/second access to the masses by 2005.

Innovating on a Trend

2004-06-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Today's Houston Chronicle covers the commercial launch of a major innovation in response to the trend of importing liquified natural gas.

Kathleen Eisbrenner lost her job at El Paso when the company had to slash its developments because it over-extended itself on debt. But Eisbrenner's innovation soon found a new sponsor, George Kaiser, chief executive and primary owner of the Kaiser-Francis Oil Co. in Oklahoma.

She, working with others, formed a company, Excelerate Energy, which, in turn, acquired the rights to the LNG system she helped create at El Paso. Eisbrenner is the president, while Excelerate's two vice presidents, Rob Bryngelson and Jonathan Cook, also came from El Paso and they helped to develop Energy Bridge.

The first Energy Bridge — a floating, offshore port that receives imports of liquefied natural gas — is on track to debut in the Gulf of Mexico 116 miles off Louisiana in January. The company, based in The Woodlands, hopes to build a series of Energy Bridge ports in the United States and elsewhere.

The Chronicle article focuses on explaining the technology and its competition, but wouldn't it be wonderful to hear the story of how Eisbrenner found a new sponsor for her project?

Too little technological innovation??

2004-06-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

In his online column for Fast Company, Michael Tsonga says that the computer and communications industries are bogged down and addicted to complexity, where complexity = job security. At a conference of Chief Marketing Officers, they told him it's not just engineers, but that investors and sales people also find complexity a reassuring sign of value in deciding which products to fund and push:

Yes, you heard it from the horse's mouth: We can't make things easier, because our investors and sales people don't like it that way! These market vagaries conspire to constrain growth in technology innovation and ultimately the entire economy.

Which is why the recovery feels so tentative. The absence of the technology piston from our growth engine is causing a lot of sputtering.

He seems to be saying that much of what passes for innovation is really just feature creep, and that it's draining precious creativity away from attending to user needs for utility-like information services. (You know, where computing power is easy to use as electricity.)
There's been precious little innovation since Xerox PARC's efforts ended up in Windows and the Macintosh. Oh yes, we have transparent windows and nicer-looking buttons, but the architecture is largely the same.

At the corporate level, the situation is even worse. There, complexity reigns supreme as consultants and engineers trip over each other with JavaScript, XML, Visual Basic, and other tawdry tools that make things very hard to do.

I find it easy to believe that people want to build on existing systems instead of blowing them away and trying to replace them with something new. (And probably failing on the first few tries.) So as a society, how can we give people a sense of security, confidence that they'll still have a job, a retirement account, a health plan, even if they obsolete the product line that's been providing those benefits in the past?

Chance as an Innovation Tool

2004-06-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

The MIT Technology Review has a terrific article by Michael Schrage, free for all to read, although much of the magazine web site is for subscribers only. (Except their wonderful free newsletter, which is how I found this article!)

...now more than ever, “The prepared mind favors chance.”

That’s not mere wordplay. It’s the essence of a new generation of data-driven strategic innovation. It’s no longer enough for innovators to be sensitive to potentially provocative correlations; today’s innovators must explicitly generate them en masse.
The most interesting implication of this trend is that organizations that have more resouces can generate more variations will have a much higher advantage over the garage-level innovator.

The discontinuity emerges from the vast breadth and scope of data that a Merck, a GE, an Airbus, a Wal-Mart, or a GM can reliably generate. There’s an extraordinary clash and convergence of opportunity and intent. On the one hand, innovators are seeking laserlike precision in the focus and specificity of their innovation initiatives. On the other, it’s become so cheap and easy to collect data on every aspect of an experiment’s progress that the question has become, Why not? Data diversity that would once have been dismissed as chaotic noise is now understood to contain meaningful signals.
So what do you think? Will innovation become a numbers game?

Discuss

Reasons to raise our taxes

2004-06-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

Discuss
This article in the New York Times(Reg Required) discusses the fact that it is hard to make money providing wireless internet access because so many people are giving it away. In New York City you can walk down the street and get access from any number of free access points. Many local governments are getting on the band wagon and doing their best to provide services to their citizens. If Houston decided to ‘wire’ the city with wireless, do you think it would help the cities image? Do you think that it would help bring people out of the suburbs and back to the city core? I’d chip in a couple extra bucks every year if I knew I could take my laptop anywhere and get work done.

From a trends stand point, I think the commercial opportunity is going to be installing the equipment for governments and not in providing the actual services to end users, much like the way the highway system works.

Trends vs. Fads

2004-06-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

Discuss
This article discusses Trends vs. Fads. When I read it I see a whole lot of Fads and not a lot of Trends. The trends we want to look at here at this site are trends that will leave a lasting effect on world. The fact that socialites in New York are really into mauve this year isn’t something we’re looking for. There are a number of links at the end of the article that are of interest and I’ll add them here.

• DailyCandy is a free daily e-mail service spilling the beans on fashion, food and all things hip.
• Trendcentral is a free daily e-mail newsletter covering lifestyle, technology, style and entertainment, particularly for Gens Y and X.
• Daypop offers a Top 40 list of the hottest blog topics including links, archives and performance indicators from previous updates.
• BlogPulse allows visitors to search, analyze, chart blog content and includes ready-to-go trend analysis such as "yoga vs. Pilates."
• Google Zeitgeist charts the most popular searched items on Google on a monthly basis, plus offers access to archived Zeitgeist lists.
• Yahoo! Buzz Index is a daily ranking of searched terms through Yahoo! based on total searches and percentage of change from the previous day. A free weekly e-mail buzz report is also available.
• Small Business Trends is a business trend-tracking blog for entrepreneurs and small and mid-sized businesses that's updated even on the weekends.
• Emerging Trend Advisor by Find/SVP is a monthly e-mail newsletter written by industry experts covering business trends. The newsletter is free to all Find/SVP clients, but non-clients can sign up for the latest newsletter online.
• PollingReport.com is an independent, non-partisan Web site revealing American trends through regularly updated polls. PollingReport.com also offers a bimonthly subscription-based newsletter.
• Trendwatching.com offers a free monthly e-mail newsletter covering consumer trends and related business ideas. The Web site also offers a preview of the current newsletter in case of commitment reservations.

Unless the trend you target can sustain itself, your business is going to have a hard time adjusting when the trend has run its course.

RSS: Innovation in the wild

2004-06-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

Discuss
Paul Kedrosky has a column in this month's Harvard Business Review called ‘Feeding Time.’ He discusses the new trend of RSS feeds. RSS feeds are XML files that sit out on the internet. Programs poll the feed and notify users when updates have been made. This site has an RSS feed, as do most blogs. Companies can publish their press releases via an RSS feed and Kedrosky’s article discusses the possible effects on business.

My first thought when I read the article was to roll my eyes. I remember the ‘push’ hype from ’96-’97. You can read more about the similarities in this article. This article also points out some innovations that are taking place to counteract some of the similarities. Here is another article discussing the subject and offering some innovative solutions.

This looks like another good innovation exercise. If we are going to save everything, and publish everything, how are we going to keep it all straight?

Trendy New Product Gets Gamers Better Networked

2004-05-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

In his web log at the AlwaysOn Network, Rafe Needleman sights a hot new product for gamers called Xfire. This is a wonderful example of cross-pollinating disciplines, in this case online gaming and instant messaging, to create a new and more valuable experience.

Xfire, made by the eponymous company formerly known as Ultimate Arena, is an application that gamers run on their desktop, like an instant messenger client. The application tracks what game you are running and lets you see which games your friends are playing. You can just click on any friend's name and, if his (or her) game server has room on it and you have the game software, you'll find yourself in the same game, on the same server as your friend, so you can play with your pal. ...

Unlike most other instant messenger applications, Xfire is game-friendly. With other IM clients, if you're playing a game and a message comes in, a message window will pop up, which could crash your game. Xfire just beeps you. And more importantly, it watches what game you're playing so that your friends can find you ...

Xfire is free to users and is growing well—the product has been out for four months and has been downloaded over 500,000 times. So where's the money? Of course, gamers want their pals to be running Xfire so they can find each other. This means that the application should spread virally (and current download numbers indicate that it is). Xfire sells advertising in the client software, and it is highly targeted.

And here's the peer-pressure angle: if a bunch of your friends have a game installed that you don't, you won't be able to play with them. Xfire, though, will alert you—it will tell you, "Five of your ten friends are playing Far Cry, and you don't even own the game." Then it will sell the game to you, and make you one of the cool kids. Of course, the company takes a big cut of these transactions.

Discuss

Verizon vs. The Baptists

2004-05-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

Discuss
The last line of this article made me laugh. The content made me think. The short version of the story is that those wireless routers that you can pick up for $60 are actually little computers that you can modify and turn into a fully functioning ISP. The author thinks this concept is a threat to phone companies.

Dan Lewis pointed out in this post on our e-group, InnovatinOxygen, that “Invention refers to the generation of a new idea or new way of doing things. Innovation refers to the actual adoption and use of the invention in practice.’ The author of the article suggests churches handing the routers out at fund-raisers. He’s kidding a little bit and innovation goes way beyond just handing stuff out. What would make a product based on this concept accessible to the public? Does it go beyond plug and play?

"Good to Great" surpasses sales of "In Search of Excellence"

2004-05-27T06:21:00.001-07:00

In an article by Kevin Maney in USA Today, Harper Collins announced that the book by Jim Collins, "Good to Great" has surpassed sales of Peters and Waterman's landmark book "In Search of Excellence." "Good to Great" has now sold 1.5 million copies and sales are expected to reach 2 million by the end of the year.

The popularity of "Good to Great" is being driven not by traditional buyers of business books but by leaders in a wide variety of organizations, including churches, schools and sporting teams, who find his perscription for "greatness" to be "achievable."

Notes Kevin Maney,

Word of mouth keeps carrying the book into other fields. It has played a role in transforming the Seattle Opera, social services in Columbus, Ohio, and a hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn.

It sells better, according to Nielsen Bookscan data, in Indianapolis, Nashville, Cleveland, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Oklahoma City than it does in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Along the way, the book's first sentence seems to be entering the lexicon. "I truly believe good is the enemy of great," says the LAPD's Berkow. "You can get complacent at good. If you want to be great, you can't be complacent."

You'll be expected to recognize these new buzz words to be trendy:

Level 5 leadership
(a leader who is humble but iron-willed, ambitious for the organization, not necessarily for himself or herself)
Get the right people on the bus
(getting the right people on the team is more important than determining what the organization will do)
The hedgehog concept
(figure out the one thing you can do best, and put all your energy behind it)
Culture of discipline
(Great organizations build a strong culture that guides every member's actions)
Technology accelerators(Once everything else is in place, technology can act like booster rockets)
The flywheel
(Keep pushing in the same direction, building momentum with every action and decision)

Discuss

Saving Everything

2004-05-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

Discuss
This article(Reg. Required)(thanks slashdot) on the CeBIT America technology trade show got me thinking about digital storage. Imageos, Inc. has built a van that has 13 cameras and takes pictures every 15 feet. They want to put pictures of 50 million buildings in America online. That is a lot of data and would require a staggering amount of hard drive space. This isn’t the first time I’ve been blown away by something like this. Many thought that Google’s recent announcement that they were going to give anyone who wanted it 1000 megabytes of storage for email was an April Fools joke(Gmail).

This is a trend that is going to continue. A lot of people are going to make a lot of money simply because they are going to be the first to say ‘Hey, why don’t we save all of x.’ The cost of hard drives are going down and some of the things we can do now are bordering on the ridiculous. 10,000 songs on one device? 140 hours of recorded TV? I’ve been using computers for last 17 years and the last two years, for the first time, I haven’t had to clean off my hard drive a single time.

Any ideas on what people will be saving next?

Open

2004-05-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

Discuss
I saw this article on Slashdot about an open source interface to Project Gutenberg.

If you haven’t heard of it before, you should check out Project Gutenberg. The concept is pretty simple: Put public domain books online. This project is, I’m sure, done ‘for the greater good’ and the contributors have little incentive for profit. But how much more successful would their project be if they could find a way to profit from their work?

Open source has been a trend for a long time, and I think that it is one that is going to continue for a long time. If open source contributors can get creative and find a way to generate some cash from their projects without compromising their free content, the movement could explode.

There are a number of types of ‘open’ that are currently being pursued:

1. Software -> sourceforge.net
2. Information -> Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia
3. Learning -> MIT’s OpenCourseware

Let's get creative and come up with some ideas on how these services could make some money to further their cause without compromising the free ‘thing’ that they want to be free.

What happens when the trend is over?

2004-05-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

Discuss
There are some things that are staring us in the face so blatantly that it is easy to forget them. There are about to be a lot more elderly people than there has been in the past. I often ask my self why I’m not investing thousands of dollars in the medical services and medical device companies. I soon remind my self that the reason is that I don’t have thousands of dollars.

Attempted humor aside, this is a huge trend and, barring a medical miracle in the next 10 years, it is going to happen. A lot of people are going to make a lot of money. But what happens when the trend is over? How do we manage for a boom when we know the bust is coming? I’d love to hear some ideas on how to do that. Post them in the comments.

Cool Communities

2004-05-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last year, FastHouston was honored that Rebecca Ryan, a well-known consultant to communities and companies on how to attract talent, stopped by our FastHouston meeting and shared her observations about what companies have to do to attract the "next generation" of talent.

She's just published a new article in the Business Expansion Journal about what businesses will be demanding from the communities where they locate:
Your company's smartest people ache to be around other smart people, at and after work. In surveys of more than 4,000 knowledge workers less than age 40, we asked, "What makes a community cool?" More than 60 percent said they valued communities where they could hang out with "people like them" and network with other knowledge workers. It's why organizations like Young Professionals of Milwaukee has grown from zippo to 2,400 in two years.

She admits that many communities still don't "get it" but that competition for talent will soon force both companies and cities to upgrade their environment toward providing a sound infrastructure that promotes diversity and creativity. She believes, that despite the trend of offshoring professional jobs, in a few years, professionals will have their choice of high-paying jobs. Here's to hoping she's right on that trend!!

ESPN Motion and Video On Demand

2004-05-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

I need to do some more research into exactly what is going on, but it looks like ESPN is making its first attempt at a real video on demand feature. ESPN Motion isn't anything new. I think I've been using it for about 6 months now. I have a small application running on my computer that regularly downloads high-quality sports highlights. It is a great feature if you missed the game. First it was just highlights, then they added commercials that you could skip, and now the commercials are required.

Today they put up a human interest story. The story is interesting, but the fact that they did it is even more interesting. If you go to espn.com, download motion, and then explore the story, you will find 6 segments about Brad Hurtig and his battle to play sports without both hands. Before each you have to watch a commercial. It will be interesting to see how often they have features like this one.

How Trendy are Trends?

2004-05-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

I received a package from Fred A. Rogers today. In it was a bunch of brochures and a cd. Apparently Fred has a monthly trends cd that he sends out. Has anyone heard of this guy or listen to his cds? I’m going to listen to the cd and I’ll let you know how it goes.

New Forms of Advertising

2004-05-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

How about a TV commercial that airs in fast forward mode--you have to record it and play it in slow motion to extract the complete message, in this case a recipe for Hellman's mayonnaise?

How about distributing $50,000 in one dollar bills each carrying a peel-off sticker about an event, in this case a TV movie on USA Networks?

These are some of the innovative ideas for distributing an advertiser's message to its audience coming out of a company called the Media Kitchen. You can read more about them at MediaPost, or visit their web site.

The important trend identified by the Media Kitchen is toward forms of advertising that give consumers more control. (Another example, Ultramercials.) An excerpt from the MediaPost article:

[Media Kitchen founder] Woolmington said his media strategists are embracing "consumer control" as a "good thing." It's good he said, because consumers appreciate advertisers who direct their messages to them and speak to them as equals, and in a way that acknowledges that the consumer is actually in control of the process.

How does he know this? Well aside from being really smart, he's investing in some new research to help direct his agency and his clients along this uncharted territory. He shared a bit of those findings recently during the ARF's annual conference in New York. The research, conducted in partnership with InsightExpress, is part of an ongoing series of studies on how consumers relate to advertising when they have the technology and the wherewithal to avoid it. So far, it concludes that consumers want advertising they can control. You just have to think differently about what it is and how you serve it to them.

Consumers Who Would Like These TV Ad Approaches
18% Traditional :15/:30
37% Interactive TV
27% Imbedded Sponsor Logos
26% Video On Demand
Source: The Media Kitchen and InsightExpress from a series of consumer surveys conducted online.

What will Google do with all that money?

2004-05-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

They may save us all a lot of money. They’ve made an email service that everyone should be using and probably will be using. They’ve got the best search engine in the business. They’ve made everyone a web author with blogger. Now they are letting users create their own user groups.

While many people see google as the anti-Microsoft, they actually are following a similar business model. Let someone else test the waters and then come out with you own, better product.

Yahoo->Google Search
Price Watching sites -> Froogle
Hotmail -> Gmail
Yahoo eGroups -> Google Groups

I haven’t used Google Groups yet, but it seems to be integrated with their Usenet archives. Their Usenet archives are a godsend, especially if you are a computer programmer. It will be interesting to see how the groups develop. Will they stay centralized and broad, or will they fragment? With Google’s search technology does it matter?

Any Guess on what Google might take on next? If you were Google what would you do with 2.5 billion dollars?

2004-05-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

The new issue of the Trendwatching just came out. Published in Amsterdam, it's a great way to plug into worldwide trends and not get bogged down in the U.S. business news. The latest issue is always posted here.

Video Phones

2004-05-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

I know...I know. That title may have just cost me all credibility. The truth of the matter is that people have been anticipating the video phone for entirely too long. The biggest problems to date have been poor image quality and inability to penetrate the market.

It looks like someone may have the solution and you’re probably not going to like who it is.

Even though I hardly have time to play anymore, I always like to keep one eye on the happenings in the computer game industry. A lot of new trends evolve out of the industry and turn into something else entirely.

This week is the holy grail of weeks for keeping an eye on the industry. It is the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. All the big companies are there and they are making all kinds of announcements. One of these announcements was Microsoft revealing its desire to add video phone capabilities to its Xbox live system. This is a big deal because there are already over 1 million subscribers to Xbox live. That means that they have broadband and an Xbox. I believe another 10 million have an Xbox without the live service. Xbox live is also available in 22 countries.

I won’t predict that the X-box will be the video phone that we’ve all been waiting for since 1905, but the technologies that spin off of it will be interesting to watch.

New Way to Look for Work

2004-05-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

ProfGuilds is the new name of a successful jobs networking group formerly called Software Product Marketing eGroup. It started in Silicon Valley as an online networking group to help marketing professionals in the software industry find new jobs. They've found great success in leveraging free online social software tools to publicize their skills to potential employers, share information and support one another's job search. Now they're found enough success to feel they can "syndicate" their tool set to other professionals groups:

The Software Product Marketing eGroup has quickly become the most successful online resource for finding top software marketing talent. SPM is a non-profit, community-based egroup unique within the genre in that it is run like a professional company – but with zero budget, volunteer staff, and completely in cyberspace. Independent research, outside surveys and direct feedback have confirmed the success of SPM in placing high-quality candidates in the right jobs.

SPM delivers value to its 4,000 members and manages its 100 volunteers using free, nearly free, or sponsored, web collaboration tools. Extensive use of a wide variety of collaboration tools has enabled SPM to not only be successful, but to operate at zero cost and completely virtually. For details on these tools and in-depth white papers on how SPM uses them, please visit the collaboration tools section of this website.

Although SPM currently operates without a budget, there are several revenue streams that will be brought to market in the next few months. Building on its success in the software marketing niche, SPM also plans to expand to other verticals. First, to those that are closely related to software marketing (hi-tech sales, software engineering) and later, to all career areas. Offerings for SPM and its sibling sites will also greatly expand to the point that these sites become the place where career-minded professionals turn first to expand their knowledge, find employment, make connections, and create and maintain their online working persona.

ResumeBlog is one of their most innovative tools. It's a home site for a blogroll to the resumes of many of their members, all posted using Blogger software (also used for this web log).

Blogs are more "open" than websites or proprietary social networking sites, which is manifested in numerous ways:
1) Ingenious bloggers can and do create open source / freely available blog tools, of which we can take advantage (e.g., BlogRolling)
2) Blog data can be collected and transferred elsewhere with a relatively small loss of information (contrasted to the current capabilities of Ryze or LinkedIn)
3) Blogs can be dynamically linked together, which is hard to do with webpages and data maintained within different tools -- even our development of the ResumeBlog(TM) is done in an "open organization" mode
4) Blog sites take advantage of Google's PageRank algorithm and allow things that previously required proprietary software, software engineers AND a pretty big effort on the part of the member. The database of SPM ResumeBloggers we have created is virtually free at the user level - no engineers, no database software, nothing more than free blogs, free blog tools, and Google.
5) Blogs are designed to be shared; they are our conversation with each other and the world. Tools that leverage the internet are tools that are designed to be used simultaneously by groups, not just by individuals.

Also, be sure and check out the wonderful "Guiding Principles" of the group at ResumeBlog.

The People Have Spoken

2004-05-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

In case you don’t follow baseball, Major League Baseball made a deal with Columbia Pictures to put the logo for Spiderman 2 on the bases for a number of games this season. This made some baseball fans mad, and yesterday, MLB and Columbia scaled the promotion back.

There have been a number of instances lately where a public outcry affected corporate America. It’s clear that consumers have a strong voice, but unfortunately the voice isn’t unified. People tend to look at these things like elections. You cast your vote and then don’t worry about it. The constitution and our laws take over after the election and keep those in charge from going against the will of the people. Unfortunately there isn’t a constitution to keep corporations true to their word.

I don’t remember the date, but earlier this year/late last year, Walmart was about to roll out RFID tags in some of its stores. There was huge public outcry from the privacy people and they got a lot of consumers on board. As a result, Walmart delayed the roll out. Well, now nobody is paying attention and Walmart is rolling them out.

Political parties do a great job of keeping people organized. Sure they have there problems. It’s hard to find a place to hang your hat if you are pro-life and economically liberal or pro-choice and economically conservative, but for the most part a two party system at least keeps people interested.

If someone can figure out a way to keep consumers organized, we can wield a whole lot more power. Corporate America isn’t going to be too happy about it, but they will deal with it. I see a couple of hurdles:

1. People don’t have the time to stay involved.
2. There are too many issues to be dealt with.

Reducing the time it takes to be active in the consumer discussion and focusing the issues could go along way in giving Americans some of their voice back. Any bright ideas? Post them in the comments.

How Big a Trend IS Online Social Networking?

2004-05-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

BURST! Media, an Internet ad services company just completed a survey of 9,200 Internet users. They found that 19.2 percent had visited a social networking site such as Friendster or Tribe.net. (I think that's surprisingly low. Doesn't almost everyone go over there to at least LOOK?) About half the people who visited actually joined.

Jupiter Research looked at social networking earlier in the year and found that 32.7 percent of online users "expressed interest" in using social networks, and that 21.3 percent of online users are looking for dates on the dating sites.

These statistics were reported at MediaPost, which serves the online advertising industry. BURST! found that advertisers are more likely to find younger people at the social networking sites, with one of four people under age 24 having visited a social networking site. Still, my perception is that the "fad" is over and growth will come slowly for these sites as they struggle to find a true and lasting contribution. My guess is that a couple will find their way and survive, but we should now start to see a some of them go belly-up. Jupiter Research thinks that social networking sites sponsored by the portals such as Yahoo and Google have the best chance of surviving, but I think the survivor will be the site that delivers the best value for its members.

Boom Time

2004-05-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read a good article in the Harvard Business Review called “It’s Time to Retire Retirement” by Ken Dychtwald, Tamara Erickson, and Bob Morison. It mainly focused on things that HR could and should do to wade through the up coming labor shortage that will occur when the Baby Boomers start retiring.

HR changing is a good start, but it is going to take a cultural shift to get people to rethink retirement. HR can make all the changes it wants, but if someone feels that they have the RIGHT to stop working at 65 and yet they are still working at 70, HR is going to have to deal with some bitterness.

I don’t think that the professional world is going to have much of a problem retiring retirement, but the middle to lower middle class, wage earning Americans are going to get pretty uppity about it.

It is safe to say that the Government isn’t going to do a whole lot to help us here. Corporate America wields a ton of power and they may be able to accomplish some change, but it will be slow. As a nation, we need to identify and create some cultural trends that will begin to affect the way people view working after the age of 60.

There is already a trend of ‘people not having enough money to retire’, but we need some positive reasons to keep working.

Take a minute or two to brainstorm and come up with a trend that could be helpful to increasing Americans’ desire to keep working and post it in the comments.

The Rise of Independent Invention Labs

2004-05-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

The May 2004 issue of Technology Review notes (free registration required) that many corporate research directors are breaking away from large corporations and their focus on developing ideas for an existing market to start their own skunk works where they can follow their insights to totally new and unexpected inventions. Here are a few of these new employers:

Invention Science, Bellevue, WA
Walker Digital, Stamford, CT
Invent Resources, Lexington, MA
Generics Group, Cambridge, England
Sarcos Research, Salt Lake City, UT
Deka Research and Development, Manchester, NH

Thanks to Many Worlds for a heads-up on this trend.

Spam Whitelist – What is Microsoft Thinking?

2004-05-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

TrendFunction: Antitrend*Whitelists

Raise your hand if you like getting unsolicited emails?

Me either.

I don’t care if it is from the GAP, Amazon.com, or Joe’s Place for Canadian Drugs. I don’t want it in my in box.

Microsoft is about to have its Hotmail service’s business model shaken up by Google’s Gmail and they come up with THIS to entice people to stay? I have a feeling its not going to work. If Google knows what’s good for them, and they seem to know that very well, they will exploit the heck out of this. I’ve been using my Gmail account for two weeks and I’ve only received one spam message. It went straight to my spam folder and I never had to read it. Google is trying to solve the spam problem and Microsoft is trying to make money off of it. I’m really pro-Microsoft and this makes me scratch my head.

Note to marketers: I don’t care how legitimate your business model is, if you send me an unsolicited message it is spam.

Facilitating Open Learning: Part 2

2004-05-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

I came up with the following solution while dwelling on the concept of open learning:

A web community where those who want to continue learning on their own terms can congregate, learn, and display their accomplishments to the world.

This solution answers the problems discussed in part 1.

1. Most people aren’t self starters.
2. One of the biggest parts of education is interacting with other people and sharing ideas.

There is an incredible invention that solves these two problems that people seem to forget about these days. It’s the Internet. Despite the hard times that Internet companies have fallen on recently, one thing that the Internet continues to do better than anything before it is to bring people with similar interests together to form communities. When you are daily watching the advancement of your peers and interacting with them, self starting becomes much easier. The interaction of people on the Internet may not meet the real-time tradition of university learning, but the fact that discussions, questions, answers, and conclusions can be captured in digital form brings a number of advantages to the table.

3. Another part of education is the accountability that a professor provides.(i.e. grades)

The professor problem is a little harder to solve. One thing I have seen while participating in internet communities and online multi-player games is that people love to help out, they love to get credit for helping out, and they love to talk about the things that they know. Professors get paid to teach while mentors do it because they love to see their knowledge go to other people(this is not to say that most professors aren’t also mentors, most certainly are). People know a good teacher when they see one and this new community could allow people to give “Mentor Points” to those that help them through a course.

4. MIT publishes the list of materials used, but rarely are ALL the materials needed available for free. Many resources are copyrighted works available only through educational libraries.

This is a tough one as well. I don’t know the rules about libraries and what is allowed and what isn’t in reference to copyrighted works, but this community could build up its own library and allow the checking out of resources through applications like netLibrary.com.

5. What would you do if someone told you that they gave themselves an ivy league education? I’d chuckle at lease a little bit.

The solution to this problem provides the lynchpin to the business plan for such a community to come into existence. More and more people will consider Open Learning if they have a way to prove that they have studied certain things and completed the courses. For a fee, this new community could publish the “Participation Scores” of individuals to the world. A link to this report of participation can easily be put on a resume for future employer to look at.

Feel free to tell me why I’m stupid and this will never work.

Fun new word: Googly

2004-05-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it isn't a new word, but a new definition. Currently:

googly

n : a cricket ball bowled as if to break one way that actually breaks in the opposite way

New:

googly
adj: some one who goes on and on about a topic.

Another said, "He's[Bill Clinton] like a walking Google. I don't care what word you put in, he will keep going and going."

Facilitating Open Learning: Part 1

2004-05-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

TrendFunction: Outsourcing + Open Source + Reeducation

If you haven’t checked out MIT’s OpenCourseWare yet, you should. MIT, one of the leading institutions of higher learning in the world, has published the details of over 700 courses. For the self-starting person there is the opportunity to give yourself an virtual ivy league education in everything from Anthropology to Artificial Intelligence. What an incredible opportunity! In an environment where more and more jobs are going overseas there is a huge need for people to re-educate themselves and expand their horizons. MIT’s OpenCourseWare is a great resource for this. There are a few obstacles that would-be-ivy-leaguers need to overcome before setting out on their personal renaissance.

1. Most people aren’t self starters.
2. One of the biggest parts of education is interacting with other people and sharing ideas.
3. Another part of education is the accountability that a professor provides.(i.e. grades)
4. MIT publishes the list of materials used, but rarely are ALL the materials needed available for free. Many resources are copyrighted works available only through educational libraries.
5. What would you do if someone told you that they gave themselves an ivy league education? I’d chuckle at lease a little bit.

I’m sure there are a number of other obstacles, but I’d like to discuss solutions to these 5 specifically. Solving these five could put us well on the way to a more affordable higher education. I have some ideas that I think would help, and I’ll post them tomorrow. In the mean time, give your ideas in the comments.

Predicting the Social Impact of Internet

2004-05-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

Many large corporations, including IBM, HP, Microsoft, Cisco, Best Buy, General Motors and others have come together to fund the Internet Home Alliance, a research firm that's trying to predict how homes and public spaces will be redesigned based on the demand for increasing connectivity to the Internet.

I found out about this from a trendwatching site called Reveries which pointed me to an article in the Technology section of the NY Times: "A New On-the-Job Hazard: Turning into a Mall Rat." (Free registration required, and the article will be archived for purchase after a week.)

The article shows me that the researchers are pretty clueless about what makes an appealing public connection site, but these guys are pouring money into research and it's a good idea to keep an eye on their press releases.

E-Paper

2004-04-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

I read an article on Slashdot the other day that lead me to a couple of articles on e-paper. Its very interesting stuff and if they could get the cost down it will be very useful. I then started thinking about e-paper in conjunction with daily lubricants, and came with, what I think, is an interesting idea.

The days of balancing your checkbook have started to go by the wayside as people begin to manage their finances in real time. Looking at your checking account for 5 minutes a day can free up a few hours of one weekend a month. What if it took less than 5 minutes? What if your credit card/debit card had a display on the back that showed your last 10 purchases and your current balance? How do you do it? Wi-fi/Bluetooth + epaper + smart card. You’ve got some privacy issues to deal with(maybe the ink fades after 30 minutes), but I think it would help some people out. You have to spend less time looking at your balances online and the $10,000 balance on the MasterCard staring you in the face might persuade you from buying that Grande Latte that don’t REALLY need.

You heard it here first, self updating credit and debit card, © 2004 Austin Fatheree, Patent Pending, etc.

That is all well and good, but what are some other ways that we can use this concept of self updating epaper to make our lives easier? People keep talking about how this will change the way that we read books, but I think that it is going to make a much bigger impact in other areas first.

Nanotech

2004-04-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last Night I went to a presentation on Nanotechnology by Dr. James Tour of Rice University at First Presbyterian Church here in Houston. His presentation was aimed at the above average lay person(at least from an educational stand point). He covered Passive Nanotech(no moving parts, coatings, paints, etc), Active nanotech(Nano Trucks, Nano Machines), and Electronic Nanotech(computers, memory, etc.). It was a broad overview and he was mainly trying to give the group a general understanding of Nanotechnology, but he did present a couple of conclusions that I thought were interesting from a trends standpoint.

The first was that passive nanotech is the area for personal investment at the moment. Dr. Tour and his colleagues have been doing a lot of research into carbon nanotubes and they have found a number of practical applications, including making rubber tires 4x stronger with out losing any elasticity.

The second conclusion is that active nanotech is not an area for personal investment at this time but it is a great area for our government to invest in. The technology is in its infancy and the practical applications will not be hitting the market for a large number of years.

The third conclusion was that there are a ton of practical applications for electronic nanotechnology, but that for the next 10 to 15 years development in silicon will continue to outpace what we can do with nano tech. Five years ago he started trying to develop a non memory that would allow for a gig of memory the size of a pen. It was unthinkable for silicon at the time, but now that they are able to make the nano memory at that size, silicon can fit 4GB in the same space. This is also a great area for our government to invest in and in 10 to 15 years it should be profitable for personal investors as well.

Anyone know of any passive nano tech companies? He mentioned that a colleague had started one in Katy.

Innovation is Trendy

2004-04-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Those of us who understand innovation need to get on the bandwagon quickly because innovation is being hyped as the solution to all our economic problems, including the offshoring of professional jobs. This tidal wave of hype amuses me because I think is based on fundamental truths but is being totally oversold. Nevertheless, if we want to surf this wave to prosperity, look what's being reported by a prominent research company (AMR) at CIO.com:

Despite its cherished position as the driver of so much new value, innovation is still managed with fragmented, disconnected, and expensive tools. As a result, the average time to market for a new product is close to two years, while failure rates for new product launches run around 75 percent. Too much money and time is spent with too little control of product innovation.

In a recent cover story about outsourcing, Time Magazine asserts, “The move to outsourcing forces a company to use its resources where they count most, like product development.” This sentiment may be widely shared, but many companies are finding that the information systems and business processes they rely on for product development are in poor shape.

from "Innovation and Job Creation" by Kevin O'Marah, AMR Research Analyst, in the Analyst's Corner at CIO.com

Gmail and the end of spam

2004-04-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

I was able to get a beta account for Google's new Gmail service. I've been using it and it has a ton of great features. One that I'm trying to test out right now is the way that it handles spam. I'm very optimistic about its abilities although I haven't seen it in action. The theory is that someone gets a spam message and they click 'report as spam'. Google scans the message, records the key words, and then sets up a filter that other email has to go through. So when I get the message a little later, google runs the key words through their search engine and if a marked as spam email gets a high score, the email goes directly to my spam folder.

Keep your eyes out for any reports on the success of this model and post them in the comments. If Gmail is successful, email may be moving off of your desktop and pc out onto a web server very quickly.