November 21st, 2003
A joke was posted on Slashdot today titled What Should I Do If the Internet Goes Down?. One paragraph caught my attention.
Televisions, strange boxes that sit in your parents’ living rooms, were once used to provide entertainment, long before DVDs and Playstations were invented. Televisions have the capability of broadcasting streaming information similar to the content on multimedia websites. With a “remote control,” a wireless device that is like a small one-handed keyboard, you may be able to surf a limited number of “channels,” while you deal with the loss of your connection. Unfortunately, television is only a one-way media.
Is this funny or an indication of the future to come? As expected of any incumberant, the first response from most TV station is denial.
I wonder if these TV executives actually spend time with their kids. If they do, they don’t need Nielsen to tell them the obvious.
November 15th, 2003
Found an interesting article called Internet Apocalypso aka the ClueTrain Manifesto. I know I know, I am about four years late reading this (it is published online in 1999 and was the best seller in Business Week in 2000 and have been translated to a dozen of languages).
But have things change over the last four years? Zilch! Intranet is still intranet around with corporate good-doers telling staff how to keep in-line.
It is easy to say “embrace change” and “speak the truth” but in reality, not many organizations (or people) can really swallow transparcy and truth. Changes need time…
October 19th, 2003
Today, I catched up with my blogroll (which I lag very behind due to spending all my free time on the bayesian plugin), and was kind of surprise to see this on ITU Newsblog.
Public IP telephony would create a wide open door for new competitors to walk in and take away all the value that the carriers can bring to voice services. In theory, someone having a phone with an Ethernet socket needs only a high-quality IP service and a server to provide IP address to be able to use the phone to place unlimited calls to any other phone. The internet backbones are already in place and, since voice uses very little bandwidth, the industry would move to flat rate pricing: “All the calls you want to make for only US$9.99 a month!”
Wow, ITU actually got it half right!
What they should do is take this to the next obvious development, that it cost less then US$200 to setup your own VoIP server + handset (and getting cheaper) and soon people will be asking “Why are we even paying US$9.99 a month when we can just do it ourselves?”
I think the concept of the telco or what we called “a voice company” may not even exist in the future.
October 12th, 2003
I wrote about Outsourcing in Part 1 of Predicting the future a month ago and I thought it is about time I write a sequel. So here is Part 2: “local industry”.
Like Part 1, lets look at industry revolution and how railroad changed the business landscape. Railways bring people closer together and allow goods to travel further. Where you used to do business within 30km, you now do business 300km away with equal ease. Companies faced not only competitions from the same town but from other similar companies other towns.
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October 11th, 2003
Andy Grove, CEO of Intel, warns the danger of outsource:
The U.S. software industry is about to lose jobs and market share to foreign competitors unless the government acts quickly to fight protectionist trade policies and double U.S. productivity, he said.
Actually, I wrote about the trend of outsourcing in Predicting the future a month ago.
I argued that protectionist policy won’t work in our global society anymore. Protectionist policies will only make U.S companies less competitive globally and hence a slow and silent death for the industry.
What U.S software industry should do, really, is to move up the value chain, from programming to design. This is no different from products been prototyped and designed in U.S but manufactured in China or Taiwan.
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October 5th, 2003
There is an interview with Bill Joy in Fortune magazine called Joy After Sun. While it does not really say much what he wants to do next, the interview reveals his views on the challenges facing Sun, Microsoft and the Internet.
October 3rd, 2003
“Smart network or dumb network? Whats your view?” I asked Don Tapscott during lunch yesterday.
“Everything, both device & network, is getting smarter. Some devices will remain dumb however.” replied Don and immediately, I feel embrassed asking such a silly question. “Isn’t it so obvious!” I told myself.
Or is it?
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September 28th, 2003
John Patrick has a very interesting blog today called “Youth at the Gate” (CIO Insight).
When I am growing up as a kid (and I am not that old btw), we play five stones and “goli” (marbles). We play police & thief catching in the field or varity of sports. Kids today grow up with Nintendo, Playstation and Internet. How their generation going to redefine the world in 10 or 20 years is beyond our imagation.
This is why it is important we listen to them. Sure, Asia Pacific Next Generation charter is to groom the future AP Internet leaders but more importantly, APNG provides us a chance to learn and listen from them.
IBM isn’t the only one listens to them. Microsoft did and come up with ThreeDegrees.
September 14th, 2003
It should not come as a surprise that we are in the juncture between industry revolution and information revolution. But what this really mean?
For centuries, production of goods are done by artisan usually aided by immediate family members. Yet, within 50 years of industry revolution, this was replaced by factories with unskilled workers. Factories which increased output at incredible low cost. The most significant invention during the industry revolution was no doubt the railway, as it brings people closer and allows trading to be done across great distance. Railway changes the economy and society forever.
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