Paul Wallbank – Communications Professional
Comms, journalism and writing
Urbanspoon was one of the original restaurant review sites and it was a good resource for figuring out was good in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
Over time it fell behind and became irrelevant as other sites took over and it was neglected by its owners.
Now it’s been taken over and will be shut down by Indian startup Zomato.
The hospitality industry is tough and complex, something that’s not getting easier as keen young startups from unexpected places are entering the market.
The launch of date of Windows 10, possible Microsoft’s last operating system, has been set for July 29
Possibly Microsoft’s last big operating system release, Windows 10 will be available on July 29 the company announced today.
The product, which will be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1 users, has an OEM price tag of $109 for the home edition and $149 for the professional version according the Newegg website.
For Microsoft, the race will be on to get Windows 10 onto as many devices as possible to meet its ambitious targets. How it goes with phones and Internet of Things devices remains to be see.
The economics of cheap data change industries the same way abundant energy defined the Twentieth Century
I’m preparing a corporate talk for next week on the changing economy and one theme that sticks out is how the Twentieth Century was defined by cheap energy and physical mobility as mains electricity and the internal combustion engine became ubiquitous and affordable.
The picture accompanying this post illustrates that shift, Sydney’s Circular Quay a hundred years ago was just at the beginning of the automobile era. The previous fifty years had bought trams, the telegraph and reliable shipping but the great strides of the Twentieth Century were still to happen.
At that stage the steam engine and advances in electrical transmission had bought reliable power to the masses, although it was still expensive. What was to come over the next fifty years was that energy was about to become cheap and abundant. That drove the suburbanisation of western societies and the development of industries around the availability of cheap power and a mobile workforce.
At the time though information was still expensive, the control of broadcast networks by a few license holders and print operations by those who could afford the massive costs of producing and distributing magazines or newspapers made data difficult to get and worth paying for.
Today we’re at the start of a similar shift in information; it’s no longer expensive or difficult to obtain.
What that means for the next thirty years is what industries will develop in an economy where information is basically free and ubiquitous. Just as cheap energy created the consumerist economy, we’re going to see a very different environment in an age of cheap data.
A US radio documentary describes the costs of technological change
What happens when the robots come to take our jobs? To find out, the US National Public Radio program Planet Money went to Greenville, South Carolina to find out.
As expected there’s a shift in the skills needed and jobs that were once assumed to be safe no longer exist. It’s worth a listen if only to understand the costs of an economy and industries in transition.
Crowdfunding is increasingly becoming a legitimate way to fund a project
How successful can crowdfunding be for IoT hard? We looked at some of the downsides of campaigns recently and story in Smart Company on some of the IoT gadgets at the recent Internet of Things World exhibition showed how many of projects are being funded by the crowd.
The notable thing about the projects at the conference was how many had not only been successful crowdfunding projects but had also smashed their targets.
The lesson from that is a successful campaign has to catch the imagination and excitement of the crowd, not just be a worthy idea.
How many if these products end up being successful remains to be seen, the test will be how accurately the founders have estimated their costs.
If it were just the enthusiasm of the funders, then the projects are almost certain to succeed.
Paul Wallbank regularly joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife on to discuss how technology affects your business and life.
Along with covering the tech topics of the day listeners are welcome to call, text or message in with their thoughts and questions about technology, change and what it means to their families, work and communities.
If you missed the May program, it’s now available on our Soundcloud account.
For the May 2015 program Tony and Paul looked at some of the gadgets coming out of the Internet of Things, what your social media posts say about you and Mary Meeker’s big Internet Trends report.
Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.
We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.
You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.
Outwards looking businesses are better suited to dealing with change a report claims.
Only one in four Australian businesses are prepared for change says a report released today by telco Optus.
The Future of Business report is based upon interviews with over 500 business leaders across twelve industries and exposes a disconnect between managers’ beliefs of how ready their businesses are to confront change and the reality.
Over four hundred of the respondents felt ‘confident or highly confident’ in their organisation’s readiness for change while the survey found only 23% of these organisations are actually ‘highly ready’.
Organisations that appeared to be highly ready tended to be outward focused with almost all of them citing the desire to meet customer needs as the top trigger for transformation while less change ready businesses are primarily driven to change in order to reduce costs.
“Change ready businesses are not only prepared for, but also anticipate and predict change. Disruption is happening everywhere and businesses of every size and in every industry need to be prepared to deal with rapid technological change and shifting consumer expectations,” says John Paitaridis, Optus Business’ Managing Director.
While the Optus survey doesn’t produce any great surprises it does emphasise how the dynamics of change work, organisations that are outward focused are more likely to identify and understand change than those looking inwards.
Listening to the marketplace and society almost always beats those counting paperclips.
Google joins the vendors looking to power the Internet of Things
Later this week Google will announce an Android based IoT operating system later this week at their I/O Conference, Netimperative reports.
In doing so they’ll be joining Microsoft, GE, BlackBerry and a host of others in looking at providing the software that runs the Internet of Things.
The carving up of the IoT continues.
In the world of the sharing economy every participant needs to be in the top ten percent.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd can’t get an Uber because her feedback score isn’t high enough.
Similarly, when the Philadelphia Citypaper’s Emily Guendelsberger went undercover as an Uber driver she too found feedback scores determined how much work a contractor won.
Guendelsberger found a driver with feedback score of 4.6 risked being dropped by Uber while Dowd discovered her rating of 4.2 meant drivers didn’t want to take her.
Both these numbers are out of five and translate to 84% for Dowd and 92% for drivers.
If you’re the type that works from the baseline of giving three out of five for delivering a service as described then adding points for exceptional performance or deducting marks for a poor experience then you’re messing with the system.
With the Uber scoring model – and one suspects this is the same with most of ‘sharing economy’ feedback mechanisms – the baseline mark is a perfect five with small increments deducted for poor performance.
Basically the curve is squeezed up to the right. Business Insider reported last year that only one percent of trips receive a rating of one or less and five percent below three.
In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon every child is above above average, it seems in the world of the sharing economy almost every participant is in the top ten percent.
BlackBerry’s hoped for device resurgence isn’t happening
The woes of BlackBerry continue with the company announcing it will be laying off an undisclosed number of staff in its device business.
It appears the resurgence isn’t happening.
Startups need to be careful about being too arrogant in the face of laws, conventions and plain old good manners
Uber and other car services are claiming US disability laws don’t apply to them The Daily Beast reports.
It’s hard to think of how Uber can do more to alienate the community with the service pushing legal boundaries in many cities, avoiding taxes and trying to skirt employment laws.
The danger for all the new wave of companies in their trying to dodge laws is they are inviting restrictive legislation, particularly if they’ve alienated the community and electorate.
It may well be time for companies like Uber, SideCar and Lyft to start showing a bit of humility and tact. Hubris and arrogance may come back to haunt them.
Traditional watchmakers are confident they can beat Apple
Our watches will outlast the Apple watch warns Montblanc’s CEO Alexander Schmiedt in an interview with Bloomberg.
Schmeidt is basing his view on his watches’ durability, “I don’t think that customers are going to be ecstatic to throw away watches in one to two years when the technology is obsolete.”
It’s a brave call and what Schmeidt’s views risk is that standard watches may become niches items. He could be right though and Apple’s watches might prove to be toys for technologist.
The market will decide.
