Category: Internet

Do kids really need laptops in school?

Computers are seen as essential to education, but are we mistaking the tools for the methods.

Are laptop computers really essential to educating our kids? Fairfax media reports this weekend that the Australian Federal government’s laptops in education scheme is near collapse.

What stands out from the story are the quotes from educators;

Chatswood High School principal Sue Low said her school was providing laptops to students in year 9 but the uncertainty over future plans was unsettling.

“Laptops are now just as much of the culture of education as are pens and paper,” she said. “To not have certainty over how we will administer laptops to our students is very disruptive, and we need that certainty as soon as possible.”

Some schools have come up with their own solution to the problem. One NSW school has made arrangements with a private provider under which parents can buy a laptop for $1341 or rent-to-buy for $90 with monthly payments of about $50.

That computers are important is not a debate, but are we putting to much emphasis on the tools and not enough on what education is trying to achieve?

One educator said a decade ago that they could teach an 80 year old to use a computer in a few hours, but an illiterate 15 year old may be lost for life. This is truer today than it was then.

Computers are flooding our lives with information and the tools to gather that information are intuitive and don’t need 12 years of school to master.

What we are all need are the critical and mathematical skills to filter out the dross and misinformation that floods onto our screens.

Old and young have the belief that if something is on the web, then it must be true. The biggest challenge for parents and teachers with the web is convincing kids that cutting and pasting huge slabs of Wikipedia into an assignment isn’t research.

Not that this is just a problem in the classroom – plenty of politicians, business leaders and time poor journalists have been caught out plagiarising Wikipedia and other websites.

In recent times I’ve been to a lot of ‘future of media’ events where the importance of ‘data journalism’ has been raised. What really sticks out listening to these is how poorly equipped both young and old journalists are to evaluate the data they’ve gathered.

This isn’t just a problem in journalism – almost every occupation needs these skills. We could argue those skills are essential for citizens who want to participate in a modern democracy.

Computers, and coding skills, are important but we risk giving students the skills of today rather than giving them the foundations to adopt the skills of tomorrow.

We also risk making technological choices that risk education departments, schools and kids being locked into one vendor or system.

Giving every child a laptop is not a replacement for them having the critical, literacy and numeracy skills to participate in 21st Century society.

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Can Yahoo! disrupt the disruptors?

Business partnerships require bringing something of value to the relationship, Yahoo first has to define its strengths before searching for partners.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer packed out the room for her interview at the World Economic Forum this week where she spoke about some of the challenges her and the company face.

One of the areas she sees for Yahoo! is in collaborating with other tech industry giants.

Mayer also is making a point of collaborating with companies such as Apple Inc., Google and Facebook, instead of competing.

“It ultimately means there’s really an opportunity for strong partnerships,” she said.

The problem for Yahoo! is that it doesn’t have a lot to offer companies like Apple, Google or Facebook – they are steaming along on their own and have moved ahead of the areas which Yahoo! dominated a decade ago.

Generally in the tech industry partnerships are more the result of the sector’s also-ran coming together in the hope that their combined might will overcome the leader’s advantages.

It’s the same philosophy that thinks tying the third and fourth placed runners legs together will make them faster than the winner.

A good example of this is Microsoft’s tie up with Nokia over the Windows Phone. If anything, the net effect has put Windows Phone and Nokia even further behind Apple and Google in the handset market.

Even when two tech companies have united to exploit their individual strengths, the results usually end in tears. Probably the best example of this was the IBM and Microsoft joint venture to develop the OS/2 operating system which eventually sank under IBM’s bureaucrat incompetence and Microsoft’s disingenuous management.

Those two examples show how partnerships only work when each party has something valuable to contribute and all sides are committed to the venture.

Marissa Mayer’s task is to find Yahoo!’s strengths and build on them, then she’ll be in a position to enter partnerships on an equal basis.

Whether its worth entering into partnerships with the big players though is another question. It may well be that Yahoo! has more to offer smaller businesses and disruptive startups.

Entering into a desperate alliance with Apple or Facebook could possibly be the worst thing Yahoo! could do, the company is no longer a leader and now needs to be a challenger or a disruptor.

Facebook’s locking competitors out of data feeds is an example of how complacent the big four internet giants are becoming, Yahoo! are in the position to upset that comfortable club.

The value of partnerships is that we all have weaknesses and strengths, a properly thought out venture builds on the various parties’ strengths and covers their weak spots. Right now Yahoo! has more weaknesses than strengths.

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2013 – the year of the incumbents

Deloitte consulting’s technology, media and telecommunications predictions for 2013 sees smartphones, tablet computers and televisions causing a data crunch.

Bigger, quicker and more congested are the predictions from consulting firm Deloitte’s 2013 Technology, Media and Telecommunications survey.

In Sydney last Friday, the Australian aspects of the report were discussed by Clare Harding and Stuart Johnston, both partners in Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice.

Most of the predictions tie into global trends, with the main exception being the National Broadband network which Stuart sees as addressing some of the bandwidth problems that telecommunication companies are going to struggle with in 2013.

Technology predictions

For the technology industry, Deloitte sees 2013 as being a consolidation of existing trends with the trend away from passwords continuing, crowdfunding  growing, conflict over BYOD policies and enterprise social networks finding their niches.

Some technologies are not dead; Deloitte sees the the PC retaining its place in the home and office, with over 80% of internet traffic and 70% of time still being consumed on desktop and laptop computers.

Deloitte also sees gesture based interfaces struggling as users stick with the mouse, keyboard and touchscreen.

Media predictions

Like 3D TV two years ago, the push from vendors is now onto smart TVs and high definition 4K televisions. As with 3DTV, much of the market share of smart and hard definition TVs is going to be because television manufacturers will include these features in base models.

Deloitte’s consultants see 2013 as one where “over the top” services (OTT) like Fetch TV and those provided by incumbents delivered start to get traction on smart TVs with 2% of industry revenues coming from these platforms.

Catch up TV is the main driver of the over the top services with 75% of traffic being around viewers watching previously broadcast content. This will see OTT services firmly become part of the incumbent broadcasters’ suite of services.

The bad news for some incumbents is the increase in ‘cord cutters’ as consumers move from pay-TV services to internet based content.

Smartphone and tablet computer adoption which is expected to treble will be a driver of OTT adoption as viewers move to ‘dual screen’ consumption, the connections required to deliver these services will put further load on already strained telco infrastructure which is going to see prices rise as providers respond to shortages.

Telecommunications predictions

The telecommunications industry is probably seeing the greatest disruption in 2013. With smartphones dominating the market world wide as price points collapse.

One of the big product lines pushed at this year’s CES was the “phablet” – while the Deloitte consultants find it interesting hey don’t seem convinced that the bigger form factors will displace the standard 5″ screen size during 2013.

As a consequence of the smartphone explosion is that apps will become more pervasive and telcos will try and build in their own walled gardens with All You Can App to lock customers onto their services.

With smartphones moving down market, largely because of the cost benefits for manufacturers, Deloitte also predicts many new users won’t access data plans given they’ll use the devices as sophisticated ‘feature phones’.

Data usage will continue to grow, particularly with the adoption of LTE/4G networks, although much of the growth will still be on the older 2 and 3G networks as lower income users choose plans which don’t require high speed data.

The looming data crunch

There is a cost to booming data usage and that’s the looming shortage of bandwidth, Deloitte sees this as getting far worse before it gets better.

With bandwidth becoming crowded, prices are expected to rise. In the United States, the “all you can eat” nature of internet plans is being replaced with “pay as you go” while in Australia data plans are becoming stingier and per unit costs are rising.

The London Olympics were cited as an example of how the shortages are appearing – while the Olympic site itself was fine, outside events like the long distance cycle races strained infrastructure along the route. We can expect this to become common as smartphones push base station capacity.

Where to in 2013

Deloitte’s view of where the telecom, technology and media industries are heading in 2013 is that incumbents will take advantage of their market positions as technology runs ahead of available bandwidth.

In Australia, governments might be disappointed as telcos internationally aren’t interested in bidding huge amounts for bandwidth. As Stuart Johnston says “globally what we’re seeing is that carriers are not as willing to spend. It’s not the cash cow that governments are expecting.”

For government and consumers, we’re going to get squeezed a little bit harder.

While things do look slightly better for telcos, broadcasters and other incumbents there’s always the unexpected which eludes all but the most outrageous pundits, it’s hard to see what the disruptive technologies of 2013 will be but we can be sure they are there.

The main takeaway from the 2013 Deloitte report is that smart TVs, 4K broadcasting, tablet computers and smartphones are going to be the biggest drivers for the technology, media and telecommunications industry for this year. There’s some opportunities for some canny entrepreneurs.

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What happens when software is wrong

A phone company software glitch puts one man’s life and the safety of thousands at risk. It reminds us that computers are not always correct.

The Las Vegas Review Journal yesterday told the story of Wayne Dobson, a retiree living to the north of the city whose home is being fingered as harbouring lost cellphones thanks to a software bug at US telco Sprint which is giving out the wrong location of customer’s mobile devices.

While it appears funny at first the situation is quite serious for Mr Dobson as angry phone owners are showing up at his home to claim their lost mobiles back.

Making the situation even more serious is that 911 calls are being flagged at coming from his home and already he has had to deal with one police raid.

While the local cops have flagged this problem, it’s likely other agencies won’t know about this bug which exposes the home owner to some serious nastiness.

That a simple software bug can cause such risk to an innocent man illustrates why we need to be careful with what technology tells us – the computer is not always right.

Another aspect is our rush to judgement,  we assume because a smartphone app indicates a lost mobile is in a house that everyone inside is a thief. That the app could be wrong, or we don’t understand the data to properly interpret it, doesn’t enter our minds. This is more a function of our tabloid way of thinking rather than any flaws in technology.

The whole Find My Phone phenomenon is an interesting experiment in our lack of understanding risk; not only is there a possibility of going to the wrong place but there’s also a strong chance that an angry middle class boy is going to find himself quickly out of his depth when confronted by a genuine armed thief.

For Wayne Dobson, we should pray that Sprint fixes this problem before he encounters a stupid, violent person. For the rest of us we should remember that the computer is not always right.

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Pennies for Apps – how Apple and Google dominate online income

Apple and Google dominate our online revenues while the creators of content fight over pennies. Is this a passing phase?

“App Store tops 40 billion downloads” trumpets Apple in a media release curiously timed to coincide with the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show.

While impressive, those figures aren’t great for developers. As writer Ed Bott points out they are getting 17.5 cents per download.

Making things worse, that return is trending downwards. Tech site Giga Om put the return at 20 cents a year earlier.

Giga Om also points out App Store returns are skewed towards the big successful game apps, meaning the majority of app developers are scratching for pennies.

This phenomenon is also happening with online advertising as Google Adsense partners find their income dwindling for pay for click adverts.

On top of declining revenues, there’s the cut that Google and Apple take. In the App Store, Apple’s take is 30% while Google pocket over 50% of Adsense revenue.

Working for pennies has become the norm for for creators like musicians, writers and app developers in the digital economy. The long tail is fine, but it barely pays the bills for all but a few outliers. Everyone else needs a day job.

In some respects this isn’t new – writers, poets, musicians and painters have generally starved in their garrets throughout history – but the Twentieth Century model of intellectual property, record labels and broadcast empires offered at least a decent living to many.

Right now the 21st Century model seems to be that creators can go back to starving, while the big four online conglomerates make the profits previously shared around by the movie studios, record labels and book publishers.

Maybe though the rivers of gold which are making Apple and Google’s managers rich may turn out to be just as vulnerable as those of the newspapers they’ve displaced.

It may well be that the current dominance of the App Store and Adsense are a transition effect as we move to other business models. It’s difficult to see right now, but we can’t rule it out.

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Is Facebook the new Microsoft?

Are the internet giants – Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon following the same path as Microsoft did in the 1990s?

One of the problems with dominating your field is that to find new growth opportunities involves becoming distracted with your core business and damaging your reputation. This is what hurt Microsoft over the last decade and now threatens the internet’s big four.

App.net CEO Dalton Caldwell wrote an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg describing how the social media giant is trying to wipe out competitors through bullying them into being acquired.

If a business doesn’t succumb to Facebook’s seduction, then they risk being wiped out by the social media giant setting up their own version of the product which they can push out to a billion subscribers.

Jason Calacanis explores this strategy with Facebook’s launch of Poke, designed to compete with the instant messaging service Snapchat.

In many ways this is the same model that Microsoft employed in the 1990s as it worked towards dominating the desktop computer market – bully innovators into selling to them and, if that fails, copy the product and crush the opposition.

It worked for Microsoft because they controlled the distribution channels through their tight relationships with computer manufacturers.

Microsoft created their own applications, or features in their products, which would be bundled onto Dell, Gateway or Compaq computers. Once users had functionality built into Windows or Microsoft Office then they didn’t have to buy a third party app.

Bundling network protocols destroyed the business models of LANtastic and Novell, in the browser wars Microsoft killed Netscape by putting Internet Explorer on the desktop and in the office suite predatory pricing killed WordPerfect and Lotus while resulting in acquisitions of companies like Visio.

This way of business cemented Microsoft’s domination of their desktop, office productivity and server markets at the turn of the century. It was a true river of gold that continues to flow today.

Unlike the personal computer software markets, bullying or buying your way into market dominance doesn’t work online as the barriers to entry that protected Microsoft from competitors are nonexistent on the web.

Both AOL and Yahoo! learned this the hard way as their acquisition sprees through the dot com boom didn’t prevent them from sliding into irrelevance.

A good example of how hard it is for the Internet giants to execute a plan for world domination is the rise and fall of Google’s Knol as described by Seth Godin, who thought his own Squidoo startup would be crushed by the Internet giant. It turned out not to be so.

For the web incumbents the fundamental problem are, as Jason says, that they are not focusing on their core businesses and they have plenty of Plan Bs as Seth Godin described.

The manager who fails with Knol or Poke moves onto another division with a pat on the back and a safe claim on their bonus. The startup founders on the other hand are fighting for survival.

All four of the Internet’s giants have similarities to Microsoft in the 1990s as every single one dominates its niche and wonders how to expand outside their core business – for Google, and possibly the other three, there’s the added problem of managerialism as a large cadre of managers worries more about maintaining privileges over competing in the marketplace.

Managerialism ended up crippling Microsoft and continues to do so today, whether Facebook and Google can avoid that fate remains to be seen.

A bigger problem for Facebook is losing trust – Microsoft’s conduct, particularly with WordPerfect and Netscape in the late 1990s made a generation of developers and entrepreneurs cautious about dealing with the company.

For many that suspicion remains and is one of the barriers the company now has to overcome in the smartphone and cloud computing markets where it is one of the crowd of scrappy challengers.

In the social and online worlds, collaboration is one of the keys to success. If Facebook, or any of the others, lose the trust of the community then they’ll become irrelevant a lot faster than WordPerfect or LANtastic did.

Becoming irrelevant is the real worry for Facebook’s tenured managers and their investors.

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Has Yahoo got its mojo back?

Yahoo’s offer of three months free access to their Flickr Pro photo sharing service could be the start of CEO Marissa Mayer’s plan for the company’s recovery.

One of the disappointments with Yahoo in recent years has been management’s inablity to effectively use the impressive portfolio of online assets that they’ve built up over the last 15 years. Could this be about to change as Marissa Mayer finds her feet as CEO at Yahoo?

A first step may be Yahoo’s free offer of Pro accounts on their Flickr photo sharing service which is coupled with a new iPhone app and a marketing drive.

Their timing is exquisite as Instagram, the file sharing service of the moment, struggles with privacy concerns. Flickr offers far better control over photographers’ rights than Instagram or most other social media services.

While the Flikr offer won’t reverse Yahoo’s long term decline on itself, it could be the start on a long journey of re-establishing the company’s credibility as one of the leading web companies.

2013 promises to be a turbulent year for the big four online empires as Apple adapts to life without Steve Jobs, Amazon fights on a number of fronts, Facebook tries to justify its massive market valuation and Google digests Motorola while dealing with declining internet advertising rates.

If Mayer and her management team can get a coherent strategy that realises the strengths of Yahoo’s product portfolio, then the company might be in a position to challenge the Internet’s big four.

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