Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Too far in front of the curve

Even the best technologies can fail if they are too far ahead of the marketplace

Today Telstra’s CEO David Thodey launched the company’s new public Wi-Fi network that the telco hopes to roll out to two million locations across Australia.

In using Telefonica’s Fon service, the idea is to equip customers on landline connections – ADSL, cable TV or Fibre – with a public wireless hotspot. The telco can then offer public Wi-Fi as a service.

With well over half the country’s Internet market, Telstra can deliver reasonably good coverage with such a network in the same way BT does with their Wi-Fi that’s already providing this service in the UK with the same technology.

Today’s announcement isn’t the first time Telstra has launched a municipal Wi-Fi service, five years ago they launched a product that quietly slipped into obscurity.

At today’s launch, David Thodey mentioned that previous service and put it down to the immaturity of the technology.

Several generations of Wi-Fi technology later, it may be the new product is more reliable and stable than the last failed attempt and sees far better take up rates.

Which leads us to a truism in the technology industry – everything old is new again.

In fact, most of the technology we talk about today such as cloud computing, social media and citywide Wi-Fi has been around for years under different names.

What makes say cloud computing today more successful than software as a service a decade a go is that the current technology makes the products more reliable and accessible.

That’s another affect of the Gartner hype cycle, that as one technology recovers from the trough of disillusionment it gets renamed and spawns the adoption of a bunch of other neglected concepts or ideas.

As with much in businesses, the adoption of technology is as much a matter of timing as it is expertise.

Three business lessons from the New York Times

The New York Times Innovation study has important lessons for all business owners and managers.

“The New York Times is winning in journalism,” starts the newspaper’s much discussed internal Innovation Report. Then in great detail it goes on to describe how the audience is being lost to upstarts like the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed.

Given the number of digital forests that have been felled discussing the report in the last week, it’s not worthwhile giving an in depth analysis of the study – particularly given Nieman Labs’ comprehensive dissection of the document.

What does stand out though are a number of over-riding themes that apply to almost any business, not just struggling traditional media outlets.

Being digital first

A constant mantra in the NY Times report is about being ‘digital first’ – if you’re thinking about that today, then you’re probably too late in your industry.

Every industry is now digital: If you’re designing widgets, you’re doing it on CAD system; if you’re selling real estate, you’re listing online (one of the great killers of the old metropolitan newspaper model) and if you’re selling doughnuts, you’re placing your suppliers’ order electronically and maybe 3D printing your icing patterns in the near future.

There isn’t one industry that isn’t being radically changed by digital technology.

Breaking down silos

One of the areas that’s been most resistant to digital change, and yet is the most threatened, is management.

Silos within organisations are a triumph of management power and make it difficult for a business to be dynamic when it’s necessary to negotiate with different fiefdoms just to change the colour of paperclips.

Those silos are fine when industries are cosy and there’s little competition but when disruptors enter the market those management empires become a dangerous, and expensive, weakness.

The New York Times study spends a great deal of its pages discussing how to break down silos within its own organisation and this is something every business owner or manager should be exploring.

With modern communication, information management and workplace collaboration tools many management roles are no longer needed.

For smaller businesses, this is the greatest strength when competing against larger corporations as Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and Business Insider have shown in stealing the market from the New York Times.

You need to be found

One of the toughest conclusions from the NY Times study is that the quality of content actually doesn’t matter in the marketplace; The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed do an excellent job of taking the NYT’s work, repackaging it and redistributing it in a way readers prefer.

That might be a transition effect – it’s hard not to think that should original content creators like the NY Times be driven out of business then Buzzfeed will have to start employing more journalists and Arianna paying her writers – however right now gloss beats quality.

Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post are attracting audiences because their stories are easy to find online and their headlines almost beg you to read them.

For non-media businesses, the lesson is you need to be found; you may be the best restaurant, electrician or accountant in town but if you’re on the fifteenth page of Google in search results for your industry and suburb then you’re doomed.

The New York Times faces its own unique set of challenges, as do the publishing and media industries, many of the lessons though from the NYT Innovation paper though can be applied to many businesses.

Riding the slowkansen

Taking the long route between Newcastle and Sydney via the Broken Bay ferry

Newcastle, a 160km north of Sydney is a drive easily done in less than two hours but for masochists and commuters there’s the three hour train trip affectionately known as the shitkansen by the locals.

The train trip itself has parts that are genuinely spectacular as it winds through the hills and rivers of the New South Wales’ Central Coast, albeit at speeds that are slower than in the 1933 timetables.

One of the reasons for the slow and spectacular trip is the Hawkesbury River and Broken Bay and that presents a natural barrier between Sydney, the Central Coast and Newcastle.

That natural barrier also presents an opportunity for a third, prettier route between the two cities using the private ferry service that runs between Central and Sydney’s northernmost suburb of Palm Beach.

Catching the slow train

Starting from the original Newcastle Railway Station, the trains run twice an hour during the day with one ‘fast’ service taking two-and-a-half hours and slow trips taking three.

Inside the trains things are relatively comfortable although quite grubby. The purple colour scheme are the refurbished older carriages, the original 1970s ones being in a fairly awful green. The news trains feature a modern vandal proof colour scheme although the seats are more uncomfortable for a three hour journey.

Another weakness with the train service is the spartan facilities, apart from graffiti covered toilets there are absolutely no passenger amenities so bringing your own food and drink is essential along with fully charged electronics as there are no power outlets available.

Amazingly, rather than improving the railway service to the state’s second biggest city the government plans to abandon the last five kilometers and replace the trains with buses. If there was one example of the 1960s thinking that dominates Australian politics, this venal and ill-thought out proposal is a wonderful example.

The Central Coast

While the parts of the ride between Sydney and Newcastle are spectacular, the stretch south to the Central Coast are the boring parts featuring little more than housing estates and low grade scrub until arriving at Gosford where the train runs alongside Brisbane Water until Woy Woy.

On alighting the train at Woy Woy, the immediate impression is a town that won’t win any heritage awards with its neglected main street and an anonymous shopping mall. All of which is a pity as its location between the hills and waterways is sensational.

Sadly there’s little reason to hang around so getting a bus to Ettalong is the best thing to do.

From Woy’s Woy’s dismal transport interchange – a fate that waits Newcastle’s truncated railway service – buses leave every few minutes for the 15 minute journey to Ettalong. If you have a Sydney transport travelpass then your ticket is valid on the private bus service.

Ettalong

If you’re stopping for lunch or a break during the journey, Ettalong isn’t a bad choice with a lot more coffee bars, restaurants and bakeries than the rather depressing choices at Woy Woy.

Since this writer’s last visit to the town three years ago when its centre was struggling with many empty shops; its fortunes have improved dramatically and it’s gone back to being a good destination for a day trip in itself.

Catching the ferry

The ferry itself is a twenty minute trip including a brief stop at the village of Wagstaffe. Its route winds through the sandbanks of Brisbane Water before getting to the open water of Broken Bay.

Midway across the bay, the ferry passes Lion Island and the mouth of the Hawkesbury River before entering Pittwater and the Northern Suburbs of Sydney.

Palm Beach

The wharf at Palm Beach is a classic wooden structure in a lovely location. Across the carpark and road is a general store, the Barranjoey House restaurant and a fish and chip shop.

For a takeaway meal, the fish and chip shop is nicer than the general store but you can enjoy either at the park alongside the ferry wharf.

For a sit down meal, Barrenjoey House has an expensive restaurant along with a bar with an outdoor seating area if you’re looking for a cold drink while waiting for a bus to Sydney.

The bus to Sydney

The bus back to Sydney takes about 90 minutes. It isn’t the most comfortable journey however the views of the city’s gorgeous Northern Beaches are worthwhile if you’re sittiing on the left side when heading south.

Once past Long Reef, the journey is mainly suburbia except when crossing the Spit and Harbour Bridges. A more interesting option that will add another hour to the journey is to switch buses at Warringah Mall and travel to the city via the Manly Ferry.

Taking the Slowkansen from Newcastle to Sydney isn’t the trip for anyone in a hurry with it adding up to two hours to an already slow three train hour journey but it’s a lot more interesting than the regular way to travel between the two cities.

Microsoft and home automation

Microsoft play catch up in the home automation market with their Insteon partnership

An major Internet of Things story this week was Microsoft’s partnership with home automation vendor Insteon.

This is a fascinating development for Microsoft, particularly given the lukewarm market adoption of Windows tablets and phones.

While Microsoft have some substantial advantages with their internet of things offering for the industrial and commercial markets, home automation is a crowded field where the company is playing catch up.

For Insteon, a partnership with Microsoft doesn’t matter while they have open standards along with support for both iOS and Android, for Microsoft though they have a lot way to go to make a dent in a market that a decade ago many thought they would have dominated.

The Australian Internet of Things Forum

The first Australian Internet of Things Forum is launched

The first Australian Internet of Things was held in Newcastle today which I MC’d and managed to give a quick presentation on my Geek’s Tour of Barcelona.

Big Data was the big message from all the day’s sessions with every speaker touching on the challenge of understanding and securing the vast amounts of data collected.

It’s interesting how the technologists — and most of the material was quite high level — have identified this as the main problem facing management with the Internet of Things.

A key take away from the forum is that the clear opportunity for entrepreneurs with the IoT lies in giving businesses the tools to understand the data.

One of the reasons for the event was to launch the Kaooma Project that aims to link local businesses to the Internet of Things. The local business angle is something that needs to be explored in more depth.

If you need government money, do you really have a business?

A business that relies on government funds isn’t really a business.

Australia’s new Federal government handed down its first budget yesterday with savage cuts to scientific research, training and business support.

I dissected the implications of the budget for businesses in a piece for Technology Spectator with the conclusion that modern Australia is turning its back on technology, the young and the entrepreneurial.

None of which will come as a surprise to this site’s regular readers.

Some of the critics of my Tech Spec piece made the point that if your business relies on government grants then you aren’t really an entrepreneur.

I’d tend to agree with that, having spent a few months working for a state agency responsible for business development programs I realised that for most businesses the time cost of applying for and administering a government grant was often greater than the value they received from the programs.

So government grants aren’t the entrepreneurial manna that many people believe.

What’s worse, governments can axe these programs at short notice which leaves the businesses short handed. Which is exactly what happened last night.

Indeed that’s the problem for Australian businesses, each time a government changes the new administration axes the previous one’s programs and this lack of certainty and continuity is one of my concerns about the viability of Australia’s startup scene.

The truth is though, if your business does need government funds to survive then you’re at the mercy of bureaucrat’s whim rather than the rigours of the market.

If you’re comfortable with owing your existence to a bureaucrat then you probably don’t really have a business and you certainly aren’t an entrepreneur.

Gadi Amit – the designer as a contrarian

Gadi Amit sees being contrary as important at a time when industrial design is changing radically

Gadi Amit, founder of San Francisco’s New Deal Design, has been on the forefront of designing many of today’s wearable devices including the Fitbit, Lytro Camera and Google’s modular Ara phone.

Ahead of his visit to Sydney to speak at the Vivid Festival last June, Gadi spoke about his philosophy on design and the future of wearable technologies.

“As a matter of method we always try to look for the contrarian point of view,” Gadi says about his approach to a new project.

“The initial point of view is better served by being tested against a contrary point of view, in about fifty percent of the cases we find the contrarian point of view actually wins.”

Cherishing sustainable devices

One of the key challenges facing designers today is creating sustainable product and Gadi sees the answer lying in developing durable, adaptable products.

“I’m focusing most of my work on maintaining the usage of the object for as long as we can and extending its meaningful life to people.”

“This way we make sure that that it’s usuable, it’s beautiful, it’s loved and it’s cherished.”

Google’s Project Ara is an example of Gadi’s philosophy of extending a mobile phone’s life by building the device up from modular units that allow handsets to adapt to users’ needs.

Rejecting big data

One of the effects of wearable and smart devices is the explosion of big data, Gadi sees this as problem for users and the result of a mismatch between the development of software and hardware.

“The hardware design is actually ahead of the software design. Software is still lagging behind and still spewing data all over the screen.”

“I think people don’t want more data, they want less data. They want meaningful cues that will be served with very little fanfare. You don’t need to know you walked 10,000 steps, you need to know if you’ve walked enough or not enough.”

Gadi cites the early design of the Fitbit where the software showed a flower blooming to indicate the wearer was meeting the fitness objectives as an example of a simple and elegant way to convey complex information.

Moving to a world of unlimited screens

One of the opportunities Gadi sees with wearable devices is how methods of conveying complex information are going to change radically.

“There’s greater understanding that we have to distil user interfaces into something more basic,” Gadi explains. “It’s a new design process that involves a lot of experimentation with the human body and hardware.”

Escaping the boxes of design

What excites Gadi about the design industry today is the diversity of opportunities.

“Ten years ago an industrial designer dealt with maybe four or five types of boxes – you might design a mobile phone, which was a small level box, you might design a laptop which was a mid level box and you might design a PC which was a bigger box.”

“I remember one executive describing the world to me as ‘we have four screens; there is the large TV screen, there is the PC screen, the notebook and the mobile. That was the grand unifying theory of the universe.”

“What we have now in the studio are objects the size of a human finger that are made of soft material and have amazing kinematics and we have objects the size of a fingernail that are still interactive with humans.”

“I’m really excited about it.”

What happened to Australia?

Australia turned insular in the 1990s, can its luck continue well into the 21st Century?

Today I have a piece up in Technology Spectator on PwC’s Expanding Australia’s Economy report, the headline for which probably guarantees I’ll never get a job in a large Australian corporation again.

While the headline – which wasn’t mine – is inflammatory, there is an element of truth to it as Australian companies have become far more insular and comfortable in the last twenty years.

It wasn’t always like that, for a brief period in the late 1980s and early 1990s corporate Australia was prepared to take on the world. But something happened in the mid 1990s.

John Winston Howard

One of the key turning points was the election of the Liberal government in 1996, John Howard’s fundamental belief was that things were better in the 1950s and Australia should return to those days. He delivered.

The Australian people thought his vision was a great idea, having become exhausted by the reform agenda of the 1980s Hawke and Keating Labor governments that had opened and reinvigorated the economy.

Howard was helped by the Labor Party abandoning its reformist agenda with its successful 1993 campaign against the Liberal’s policy of changing the tax system. As George Megalogenis pointed out in his book The Australian Moment, Paul Keating’s populist victory over John Hewson demolished any appetite for meaningful reform among Australia’s political classes.

Cosy clubs

The centerpiece of Keating’s economic reforms was the compulsory retirement savings system; while the idea was good in principle, the practice of private fund managers looking after the savings has meant most of the investment has been concentrated in the top ASX stocks.

As a consequence, Australia’s top companies were relieved of the chore of answering to stroppy shareholders as their registries were dominated by their friends from Sydney’s Balmoral Beach Club and the hallowed halls of the Melbourne Club.

Domestic duopolies

Compounding that problem was another failure of the Hawke-Keating years of allowing domestic monopolies to develop on the basis that Australian companies needed a strong local footing in order to compete in global markets.

For a while that worked until Australia’s now powerful duopolies decided it was more profitable to exploit their domestic market strength rather than competing as global players. This happened around the time Keating won the 1993 election, by time Howard became PM the practice was well established.

The combination of tame shareholders and comfortable markets is why Australian corporations haven’t responding to global pressures; they simply don’t have to. Which leads us back to the conclusions of the PwC report.

Australia needs to lift its game. We are lagging behind our peers globally and are not considered a leader of innovation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its Science, Technology and Industry Outlook 2012 rates Australia as average against its key drivers that measure competency and capacity to innovate. Change is required.

It’s difficult to see where change is going to come from for Australia while everyone – business leaders, politicians and the population at large – are comfortable. As the long as The Lucky Country stays lucky it can afford not to invest in the 21st Century.

Amazon’s death grip

Booksellers, and readers, are learning the consequences of Amazon’s domination of online book retailing

Hachette Book Group is the latest victim of Amazon throwing its weight around the bookselling industry reports the New York Times.

While it’s not the first time this has happened, Amazon’s willingness to bully suppliers – and disappoint customers – is a taste of what happens when one company controls a choke point in the distribution network.

In the early days of the internet we believed the web would eliminate the middleman, instead the net put the existing intermediatries out of business and gave us a new, global breed of gatekeepers.

The galling thing about Amazon is the company has barely made a profit in its 20 years of operation, one wonders how profitable it will be once should the operation manage to wrest control the entire bookselling industry.

In many ways, Amazon is a cautionary tale for everyone trading online; beware of allowing any one platform too much power over your business.

Securing the industrial internet

GE’s acquistion of Wurldtech is another example of just how seriously engineering companies are taking security in the internet of things, hopefully those building consumer systems are paying attention too.

One of the big concerns with connecting devices to the public internet is security, particularly when equipment that was never intended to be on the net is suddenly wired up.

When the world’s computers started to be connected to the Internet in the mid-1990s it became apparent very quickly that most of the operating systems then in use were hopelessly vulnerable to security problems.

The worry is the same thing will happen today with the Internet of Things, particularly with household equipment which – if the PC industry’s experience is anything to go by – will open up whole new fields of risk to homeowners.

While having your kettle or home networked hacked could be painful, it’s nothing compared to the risks of infrastructure or vital equipment being compromised.

So GE’s acquisition of security company Wurldtech is an important development as it focuses on the software aspects of its products and the Industrial Internet – GE’s own term for the internet of things.

Techcrunch’s Ron Miller has a good run down on GE’s purchase of Wurldtech where Neil McDonnell, the CEO of the acquired business, describes the company’s two pronged approach to security.

First, they do testing to discover vulnerabilities in the system and they certify sites that are secure. Secondly, they provide specific security solutions around a system such as a substation or pump.

For GE, Wurldtech will help them secure existing infrastructure and equipment that’s being connected to the net, what they learn should also help designers of the next generation of equipment build security into their products.

Connecting bridges to the internet of things

A project connecting sensors to the Sydney Harbour Bridge shows the potential of the internet of things.

On Networked Globe today I have a description of NICTA’s Sydney Harbour Bridge Monitoring Project where the research agency is rolling out 800 sensors across the structure to reduce maintenance costs.

The project a good example of how cheap sensors and abundant computing power is changing workplaces, connecting the bridge to the Internet of Things makes it easier for asset managers and engineers to understand what is happening to their structure.

While the project promises a lot, it’s only a fraction of what’s possible as the sensors are only measuring movements so there’s a lot more they can do.

The big promise though is for smaller structures than the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Around the world local governments are struggling to maintain their assets, if NICTA can develop a feasible monitoring product then many agencies will be looking at how they can reduce their budgets.

While we tend to focus on connected kettles and other household devices when we talk about the internet of things, the real benefits and profits lie in the ‘big iron’ industrial and infrastructure applications.