Tag: communications

Ships flags and twitter – how communications evolve with technology

Ships’ flags, morse code and Twitter show how our language evolves around the technology of our time.

An innocuous, short 1917 message between Admiral Jackie Fisher and Windows Churchill, then British Minister of Munitions, tells us much about how language and communications evolve around the technology of the day.

The focus on the page linked is the World War I use of OMG – Oh My God – which became common with SMS text messaging, and it illustrates how our language evolves around the limitations of the era’s technologies.

Fisher’s message short, sharp and succinct message is good example of this – a legacy of spending a career communicating between ships by flag. By necessity, messages had to be brief, accurate and work within the limitations of the medium.

At the time Fisher wrote that note, ships’ officers were adapting from flags to the radio telegraph where morse code created a whole new argot to take advantage of the medium and its limitations.

Which brings us to today, where similar economies of communications have evolved around the SMS text message, Twitter post or social media update where OMG, LOL, BRB are part of the common dialect.

Jackie Fisher’s message to Winston Churchill is a good reminder of how we’re all creatures of our time.

Image of nautical flags courtesy of c_makow on sxc.hu

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Facebook as the family newsletter

The online and traditional media frenzies over the royal baby show how times are changing for the media and families.

This week’s Royal birth was a curious mix of the old and modern – a cringing fawning by the media over the family and baby which wouldn’t have been out of place of place in a black and white 1950s newsreel  coupled with a modern frenzy on social media.

In the social media world, the Washington Post reports there were almost one million mentions of the royal birth on Facebook in the hour following the news. It’s an interesting reflection of how communications have evolved.

Where once we shared news of life events by letter, then telegraph and later the phone; we now broadcast our own news over social media services, particularly Facebook.

Increasingly for families, Facebook has been the main way people keep in touch with their more distant friends and relatives. Your cousin in Brazil, aunty in Germany or former workmate in Thailand can all keep up with the news in your life through social networks.

The Royal family itself is an example of this, having set up their own Facebook page for the new arrival and it shows of how ‘weak ties’ are strengthened by the social media connections.

Another aspect of social media is the ability to filter out noise. If you’re like me, the royal baby is about as interesting as origami classes but  I was spared most of the hype by not looking at broadcast media and sticking to my online services where it was just another story.

While being able to filter out what you consider ‘noise’ risks creating écho chambers’ it also means the online channels are becoming more useful for both relevant news and family events.

That’s an important change in personal communications we need to consider. We also have to remember those baby photos we post to Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest are now licensed to those services as well.

One of the great challenges for this decade is balancing the privacy and security aspects of these new communications channels with the usefulness of the services.

In the meantime though they are a great substitute for a family newsletter.

Image courtesy of Hortongrou through sxc.hu

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ABC Nightlife – killing email

Can we get rid of email? Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank discuss how we can shrink our inboxes on ABC Nightlife.

For the July 2013 Nightlife spot Tony Delroy and I be looking at email – reduce the volume of email we receive or should we abolish it altogether. Join us from 10pm, July 25 on ABC Local Radio across Australia.

Should you have missed the spot, it’s available for download at the ABC Nightlife website and listener’s questions are answered on our follow up post.

In the United States, the Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig claims he’s never sent an email in his life. While Bud is an older worker with plenty of staff to print out his electronic messages, many of us are looking for ways of getting out from under the daily deluge of messages.

While executives of major sports may be able to get away without using email, most people working in modern organisations can’t. So different companies have introduced different ways of reducing the amount of email flowing around their organisations.

French company Atos is moving to completely ban internal email with CEO Thierry Breton claiming he hasn’t sent an email since 2008. In Australia, Telstra head David Thodey is winning acclaim for his use of enterprise social media service Yammer.

Tony and I will be looking at how all of us can reduce our email load with filters, social media and business collaboration tools. Some of the questions we’ll be covering include;

On the topic of social media and collaboration tools, Salesforce claim some major business benefits from their Chatter app, including thirty one percent of users claiming few meetings which in itself is a major productivity improvement.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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Are apps killing the text message?

Have we seen the peak of the mobile phone SMS use?

One of the great accidental successes of our times has been the Short Messaging System – or SMS – which was designed as a control function on GSM mobile phones.

In 1993, telcos in Finland started offering SMS as a feature and Nokia began supporting the service on their phones.

Text messaging quickly became a worldwide success as mobile phone users found sending a text message was often more convenient that calling someone.

As the marginal cost for providing SMS is effectively nothing, the feature being built into equipment, the service was a goldmine for mobile phone operators. However the tide might be turning as apps take over.

This was emphasised in a submission by telco Optus to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on some regulatory changes governing mobile connection costs where the provider raised the point that the rate of SMS growth is slowing.

First, while SMS usage has grown significantly since 2009, the rate of this growth has slowed significantly over the last year few years. This slow-down is largely due to greatercompetition from IP-based over-the-top (OTT) messaging services.
Over The Top services is telco jargon for apps that replicate phone functions, like Skype or Viber and these are expected to start taking a chunk from telco revenues.
While Optus’ submission is somewhat self serving as they are using the claim as an argument to get more protection, it may well be that telcos are seeing the age of what was the golden goose of SMS coming to an end.
If so, it will be the death of a technology which, for a short time was a very lucrative one.

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Latently obvious – the importance of data networks

The internet of things is going to see more emphasis on reliable and fast network connections.

One of the big buzz phrases of 2013 is going to be “the internet of everything” – where machines, homes and even clothes are connected to each other.

In the near future, we’re going to be more surprised when things when things like cars, washing machines and home automation system aren’t connected each other.

To get all these things talking to each other requires reliable communications with low latency – quick response times – so technology vendors are seeing big opportunities in this area.

Last night Blackberry launched its new platform and the beleaguered handset company’s CEO Thorsten Heins was adamant in his intention to focus his business on the internet of machines where he sees connected cars and health care as being two promising areas.

Blackberry isn’t alone in this with the major communications providers and telcos all seeing the same opportunities.

Cisco has been leading with their role in ‘the internet of things’ and much of their Cisco Live conference in Melbourne two weeks was spent looking at the technologies behind this. The company estimates the “internet of everything” will be worth 144 trillion in ten years.

Rival communications provider Ericsson sees the revenue from this sector being worth $200 billion by 2017, so it’s not surprising everyone in the telecommunications industry want to get a slice of it.

The question is though how to make money from this? Most of these communications aren’t data heavy so metering traffic isn’t going to be the deliver the revenues many of these companies expect.

If offering priority services with low latency is the answer, then we hit the problem of ‘net neutrality’ which has been controversial in the past.

Whichever way it goes, businesses will want to be paying a premium to make sure their data is exchanged quickly and reliably. For many organisations data coverage and ping speeds are going to be the deal breakers when choosing providers.

The ‘machine to machine’, or M2M, internet market is something we’re going to hear more about this year. It’s clear quite a few executives are staking their bonuses on it.

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Super connecting cities

How can cities re-invent themselves in the connected economy.

I’m chairing a panel this week in Newcastle for the New Lunaticks on How Cities can Become Super Connected where we’ll look at how a city can develop its broadband infrastructure and how the local economy can grow in a global, connected marketplace.

The challenge for a city like Newcastle is great as in many ways the city’s economy is a microcosm of Australia’s – a massive restructure of the local economy over the last forty years has left the region with a consumer driven suburban society and the massive coal resources of the region have made the city the biggest coal exporting port on the planet.

Much of the wealth flowing out of the port to India and China isn’t being distributed into the city and the Newcastle central business district is suffering from years of underinvestment and neglect by the business community and governments of all levels.

So the rollout of the National Broadband Network offers an opportunity for the city and the local economy to reposition itself. The question on the panel is how?

Waiting for Godot

The first aspect is that waiting for a government agency or telephone company to come to town is risky; recent history shows Newcastle gets no favours from state or Federal governments so expecting the region to be a priority for the National Broadband Network is unrealistic.

Indeed this has proved the case so far with no planned rollout locations for the NBN announced in the Hunter region to date.

At present higher speed Internet access comes through ADSL over the telephone lines and Telstra’s 4G mobile network in the downtown part of the city.

So it’s up to the community to create the conditions and demand for faster broadband.

Building the infrastructure

One way to make Newcastle more attractive to the providers of high speed internet is to make the supporting infrastructure easy to access. The local council can work on this by making streets, building and underground services like conduits accessible and available.

Part of encouraging investment in the local telecoms infrastructure includes an attitude from council that doesn’t put unnecessary barriers in the way of developments.

This isn’t to say local residents’ views should be over-ridden; if a city is going to be successful then it need the support of the residents.

Who funds the network?

While the city waits for the NBN or expanded 4G services to arrive, what happens in the interim? Should local and state governments build a temporary Wi-Fi network to cover the Central Business District?

If so, why just the CBD? Why not key industrial, commercial and shopping centres in the suburbs? Over the last forty years, Newcastle residents have shown they prefer to work and shop outside the city centre.

Of course the biggest question is who is going to pay for such an interim network. Putting the load on already stretched local governments guarantees the project will be strapped for capital.

Open data, open processes

An area where local governments can encourage growth is by being open and innovative themselves.

By making data available they encourage local developer communities and attract entrepreneurs who see a welcoming environment.

More importantly, having open procurement and recruitment processes that encourage local business to apply for government work and suggest innovative ways to work is one way industries in the region can be encouraged.

Connecting communities

Even with the best infrastructure you’re not going to build a vibrant economy without the community working together.

If we look at successful industry clusters such as Silicon Valley or the Pearl River Delta today, or historical successes like Birmingham in the 18th Century, we see industries built around a small core of determined entrepreneurs utilising local resources.

For Birmingham this was access to coal, iron ore, skilled labour and waterways to ship the products out. Silicon Valley’s role developed because of its access to high technology defense spending, good quality education facilities, a highly educated workforce and a free wheeling capital market.

Cities like Newcastle have to identify what the local economy’s strengths are and how these can built upon. It needs government, business and educational groups to be co-operating.

A liveable city

The key to all successful cities is making them attractive to entrepreneurial, skilled and younger workers. In some respects Newcastle has aspects that can attract these groups.

For Newcastle, and other centres, the challenge is to use their advantages to attract the human talent that will build the networks that matter.

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Closed for business

How many businesses left money on the table over the Christmas break?

This post originally appeared in Smart Company.

Many industries hoped this Christmas was going to be their saviour – across the country businesses in the retail, tourism, real estate and many other service sectors hoped they’d see an upbeat end to a tough year.

When you’re doing it tough you don’t turn customers away, yet thousands of businesses did that over the Christmas and New Year break by not updating their website to reflect their holiday trading hours.

Almost every business I encountered over the break had little – if any – information about their Christmas trading hours. In holiday towns where visitors are unfamiliar with the local businesses many cafes, restaurants and service businesses didn’t have a website or a local listing despite customers searching for them on iPads and smartphones.

Smart Company’s sister site Property Observer discussed this problem in the real estate industry where tenants were being left with problems over Christmas because there are no emergency contact numbers shown on websites.

What’s even more amazing about real estate agents in holiday areas is many pack up for a week or two and miss possible vacation rentals or even sales to enthusiastic out of towners. Who would have thought real estate agents would let commissions pass them by?

For me, I found information lacking on sites for both small and big businesses. To check the opening hours of Myer stores for instance required downloading a PDF file, Australia’s biggest retailer surely can spare a few hours of a junior’s time to updating the opening hours in their already inadequate store finder.

Similarly the City of Sydney fell down on their swimming pools, with their fabulous Victoria Park and Boy Charlton complexes both showing the wrong opening hours. This customer took his business to Leichhardt and North Sydney instead.

Most of the local shops did poorly as well – few had any mention of opening hours at all let alone Christmas trading times. Those who did open probably missed business because people assumed they were closed or found another place online.

Not updating a website would have made sense ten years ago when even the smallest change meant a fat bill from your web designer. Today online publishing tools like WordPress and Drupal mean there is no reason for you or your staff not to log on and make minor changes like revised hours or holiday specials.

If you still fear a fat bill each time you ask for a change to the website then it’s time to sit your designer down and discuss making some changes to the way your site works – not to mention some strong words about your billing arrangements.

Having up to date content isn’t just good for helping your customers, it also adds credibility to search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing which like sites that are regularly updated.

Almost every business has something to say during the year, whether it’s a new product line, welcoming a new staff member or having a special offer. There are also seasonal factors like Christmas, back-to-school, end of financial year and whole range of annual events that affect your industry.

The beauty of the web right now is that we aren’t constrained in what we want to say about our businesses, so next Christmas let your customers know great you are and which days and times you open.

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