Does regular data protection apply to location-aware ads? January 25, 2012
Posted by Mark Hillary in Internet, Current Affairs.Tags: mobile, advertising, GPS, facebook, smartphone, online, data protection, starbucks, cafe, location, places, foursquare, fan
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In 2010 I wrote on this blog about some of the difficulties associated with facial recognition and privacy. Although biometric scanning is becoming more important, it’s still not really the method of choice for advertisers who want to recognise a consumer in a particular location.
That solution is far more mundane, the good old Smartphone.
In the past couple of years, location based services such as foursquare and Facebook Places have made it easy for users to check-in and let their friends know where they are located, based on location-aware mobile devices.
What’s interesting though is that there seem to be few issues of privacy for advertisers to worry about, if some basic rules are followed.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario. You are a ‘fan’ of Starbucks cafes on Facebook. You go to one of their branches and check-in on Facebook Places. You notice that the café chain has pasted a voucher on your Facebook wall that can only be used within the next one hour at a specific location…
To some this might seem an abuse of information. The café chain knows where you are and the exact time so they can make a time-bound offer to a specific branch, but think for a moment… the consumer has already clicked ‘like’ on the Starbucks fan page to indicate that they like the brand, and they volunteered their own location information to Facebook Places.
If the consumer has volunteered all this information, then surely they are going to be delighted when the chain rewards them – rather than having any concern about being stalked by a coffee company – Starbucks or anyone else.
Though social media is involved, all the standard principles of data protection still apply even in this case. Soon advertising may be not just directed to an audience of one, but to one person in a specific place at a specific time too.
Photo by Piero Fissore licensed under Creative Commons
Changing face of retail January 20, 2012
Posted by Mark Hillary in Current Affairs, Internet.Tags: amazon, argos, discount, dotcom, jessops, john lewis, multichannel, online, retail
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Everyone knows the retail environment is changing. Those of us who can remember the heady days of the 1990s will recall that clicks were supposed to entirely replace bricks at one point – Amazon was predicted to spell the end of the traditional bookstore.
And though many retailers are struggling today, it has more to do with the economy in general than the Internet stealing their business forever. But the smartest retailers are finding ways to combine the best of the online experience with the service that can only be delivered on the high street.
Sometimes you want to see and touch a product before buying it. Perhaps it is a big investment, so you want to try it out first. This is why camera chains like Jessops have always prided themselves on having staff that know about the products they sell – you get a bit of free consulting every time you go into a branch to ask a few questions.
But these days many customers are coming in to look and feel a product before going away to think about the purchase, only to go online scouring the web using price comparison sites. High-priced items such as electronics can almost always be found cheaper from discount retailers.
Retailers like Argos and John Lewis are trying to combine the best of the web with a real in-store or added value experience that combines old-fashioned retail with the bulk discounts available from buying and distributing centrally.
I personally would be prepared to pay more for a product from John Lewis, knowing I have the backup of a reputable brand, and the ability to buy online, but be treated as a customer in-store too. The question is, how much more… the odd per cent here and there maybe, but what if the difference was 25 per cent?
That’s a tough decision, but I’m sure the major retailers are already thinking about this. They had better be.
Photo by Sindy licensed under Creative Commons
Is outsourcing coming of age? December 19, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Current Affairs, IT Services, Outsourcing.Tags: bpo, ceo, cio, cloud, crm, hr, offshoring, Outsourcing, salesforce
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As we head into 2012, it’s worth taking a moment to consider just how much the entire outsourcing market has changed. This is the year that the cloud really shifted from being an entirely separate concept to being intrinsically linked to the process of outsourcing.
A senior manager who made budget decisions always led the traditional market in services. It might be the CIO or the business line head – like the HR head for example – but it would always be a senior figure with a well-planned objective for the future state of the company.
This led to the traditional outsource, where an entire business process would be analysed, passed to the third party, and delivered by a service company – whether on site or remotely.
But ever since the growth of tools such as salesforce.com the model has been changing. Salesforce turned everything around by being a system that could be used over the web, with no need for any additional software, and paid for by user by the month… simple, clear, and without the need for big plans, vendor comparisons, or training programmes.
Salesforce is used by sales teams who buy it themselves on their own budget. They don’t ask a CIO to buy the system and then have maintenance teams install it.
So are cloud products like this really outsourcing? I believe so. If sales teams are trusting a third party with their information and using those tools as a part of what they do then it is just the same as if the CIO had outsourced CRM to a partner.
But it is a much more disparate world in which individual business line staff are making decisions about the tools they use to get the job done, making the job of those trying to control all of this much harder than before.
Outsourcing is not dead, it has just embraced the cloud and it now changing into something new.
Time travel with Facebook December 13, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Current Affairs, IT Services, Software.Tags: facebook, hiring, hr, jobs, privacy, timeline
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Facebook has launched their new Timeline feature to the world this week. Much attention has focused on the improved look and feel of the user interface, particularly the large cover photo that now dominates a Facebook profile.
But much less attention has been paid to the more interesting aspect of the Timeline – the ability to move back in time to any point and see what the user was doing at that time. In effect, Facebook has created an open diary because you can go back in time on your friend’s profile to see what they were posting on the system last year – or even on a specific date.
This is an interesting development, not least for those interested in privacy. It used to be that you updated your Facebook and as the update dropped off the screen because new ones replaced it, that would then be lost forever. Now users can move back and forth in time examining every little post you made.
Many web watchers have already warned avid social networkers about the danger that they will arrive at a job interview only to find the interviewer has found some compromising photos online. But with the ability to move back and forth in time scanning the entire online history of a person, this danger just became a whole lot more real.
Optimism for the future of sourcing November 23, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in IT Services, Outsourcing.Tags: age, health, IT, ito, Outsourcing, security, terrorism
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There has been an air of optimism in the IT service provider community recently, quite at odds with what we all read in the press on a day-to-day basis. It seems that there is still a lot of work to be done in the international outsourcing community.
Partly, this is driven by the global nature of the market. Economies such as China and Brazil are becoming huge consumer cultures and growth there is creating a need downstream for more and more IT services – to support the retailers, logistics firms, and other industry sectors all experiencing strong growth.
But this optimism remains tempered by a sense of foreboding, that the IT services industry has to change if it is to grow and succeed in the long term. There is an emergence of some important new markets, being driven by what might be termed ‘mega-trends’ in society – trends that go beyond the geographic alone.
While some service firms can only hope for a recovery in retail or banking, it’s going to be these mega-trends that really shape the future of the industry.
First, the ageing population in developed ‘western’ societies. By the middle of this century it is estimated that fewer than half of all Germans will be economically active. The majority will be either elderly or children, neither contributing to government finances. So how can a developed country like Germany continue to expect economic growth at the same time as maintaining the existing social welfare standards – all with fewer people working and contributing to the economic welfare of the nation?
Second, sustainability is back on the agenda. European governments have been implementing a system of carbon reduction commitments that will force companies to audit and reduce their carbon use. This push from government will change corporate culture across the entire European region – and beyond.
Third, international terrorism is not going away just yet. We need better security systems that are smarter, and yet still affordable.
These three major trends are going to change the shape of IT services in future. But how many executives on the buy or sell side of the outsourcing equation have considered just how much their own marketplace might change this coming century?
Laptop thief caught by technology November 15, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Current Affairs, Hardware.add a comment
This story in the Daily Mail demonstrates a couple of interesting principles, that your hi-tech equipment is never really offline and just how easy it is to control a device remotely across the Internet.
Analysts call this concept of everything being accessible, the Internet of Things. It refers to almost any electronic device having an Internet Protocol (IP address) so it can be uniquely identified, and of course to also be connected.
In this case, the man who lost his laptop computer to a thief was able to connect to the computer and use the built-in webcam to take a picture of the thief. After this was sent to the police, he ended up being able to recover the stolen equipment. Of course the newspaper presented it as a good news story – all the more remarkable as distances of thousands of miles were also involved.
But we don’t think of distance when sending an email. Using the Internet is not like the old days of making a fixed line telephone call, with a different price depending on the physical distance between the two fixed points.
Thanks to tools such as Slingbox, it’s becoming fairly normal for many to access their own TV and video collection from anywhere. Your TV might be in London, automatically recording shows you like while you are away in Hong Kong on business. With remote access enabled, you can use a laptop to hook up to the TV allowing you to watch your recorded programmes.
This is all normal now. But the Internet of Things goes far beyond just being able to access TV programmes remotely. Imagine if every lock in every door was IP-enabled, if every security access in every office was IP-enabled, if every financial transaction was made on an IP-enabled device… the list goes on.
Soon, almost every electrical product will be IP-enabled and the possibilities for applications are endless. Soon the newspapers will be full of ads for fridges that can let you know whether you need any butter or not, not just computer engineers getting their stolen computers back. What may seem fantastic is about to become normal.
Turn off the networks – says who? October 21, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Hardware, IT Services.Tags: bbc, bbm, blackberry, britain, disorder, facebook, london, police, power, riot, shutdown, social networks, twitter
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A recent poll by the BBC found that most British citizens would like to the see the police respond to riots with water cannon, tear gas, curfews and even a third suggesting the police should be firing rubber bullets.
With the British riots still quite fresh in the mind of most respondents and the police being criticised for a soft approach, it’s no surprise that the average man on the street wants a tough approach – regardless of how all these measure might appear to be the beginning of a police state.
But it was interesting to see that 55% of the people polled by the BBC also believe that the police should have the power to close down social networks such as Twitter, Blackberry BBM, and Facebook.
It seems like one thing for the public to be asking the police to take tougher action on rioters, but if the public are now asking for the police to have control of the Internet then will the politicians respond? It would clearly be popular with the public, but is it right?
Those in favour of this measure are clearly arguing that many of the riots were arranged or exacerbated by communication on social networks. The one to many broadcast ability of these networks and the ability for messages to be passed on and re-broadcast makes them far more powerful than the telephone or basic text messaging.
But did the police ever turn off the telephone network in the past when there was a riot, and where would this power stop? Who would give the command to suggest that a minor civil disturbance has gone past the line and now all social networks need to be closed?
In my own experience, the messages I was seeing on the Monday night of the London riots were mainly councillors and local businesses, all out there on the street and sending messages to help people stay safe. All of this would have been impossible if the networks were down.
This is one of those moral questions that make people realise the power of blogs and microblogs – instant, available to all, and easy for others to pass on. The world has yet to really absorb the power of one to many communications, but I hope the positive outweighs the negative in public perception soon as the measures being proposed are dangerous for democracy itself.
Better to be safe than Sony October 17, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Hardware, Internet.Tags: bbc, blackberry, bravia, breach, creative destruction, data, hacking, marx, personal, playstation, recall, research in motion, rim, sony, tv
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The last few weeks have featured one technology disaster story after another and two of the big ones involved Sony – no stranger to controversy after their Playstation network was hacked earlier this year and the personal payment details of about 77m users were compromised.
Even worse, none of the data was encrypted – a basic error for a company with so much personal data.
Their latest woes surround the recall of around 1.6m televisions because of a fire risk, more of a smoking set than smoking gun. The incidents are clearly not connected, but it is causing immense damage to the brand itself, once the very measure of global quality and expertise in electronic products.
And if Sony are feeling the heat then think of how the executive team of Research in Motion are feeling. The makers of the Blackberry smartphones are recoiling from the pain of tens of millions of their users losing all Internet access (including email) for several days last week.
Blackberry has been suffering for the past few years anyway. The traditional corporate users have been switching to iPhone and Android handsets and the brand has failed to resonate as ‘cool’ with the young. Couple this gentle descent with the recent outage and they might be facing a tailspin – certainly in confidence if not in actual user numbers yet.
Most users – personal or corporate – are locked into contracts, but at the contract expiry they are free to explore other options and this could be extremely damaging for the company in a year or so.
The old expression about capitalism coined by Marx was that ‘creative destruction’ ensures that older ways of doing things get destroyed by the new. We always expect new innovative companies to come along and shake up the world of technology, but when the giants of technology start shaking the ground through their own mistakes and errors many would suggest that they deserve to suffer.
Staying alive – retaining innovation in IT September 22, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Internet, IT Services, Software.Tags: apple, commodore, dos, excel, google, ibm, imagine, innovation, ipad, IT, microsoft, nokia, office, operating system, pr1me, tablet, technology, wang, windows, word
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The history of information technology is littered with the names of companies that were once great and fell on hard times. Whatever happened to Imagine Software, Wang, Pr1me, Commodore, and many others?
Of course one of the greatest success stories in IT, and possibly in any business environment, is Microsoft. They grew from small roots, and a fortunate licensing deal to install their operating system on IBM PCs, and the rest is history. Now, almost all new PC-based computers come with Windows pre-installed.
But the world is changing. Microsoft has been talking publicly about their ideas for Windows 8 and it does not seem clear whether the world is listening any longer.
Almost 4m people in the UK use a tablet-based device and the dominant operating systems are from Apple and Google – with their Android system that is also becoming the key smart-phone operating system.
It would be wrong to suggest that Microsoft is finished because they don’t seem to be able to compete in the tablet and telephone market, but the entire computing market is changing. For years Microsoft has enjoyed the twin cash cows of Windows and their Office platform of office automation software – Word, Excel, and so on.
Windows is clearly becoming less relevant and valuable, but so too is the shrink-wrapped software market. Office automation tools are available free, in the cloud, from people like Google and at a low cost from other suppliers.
How do once dominant companies react to such changes in the market? If anyone can do it then Microsoft can. They have cash, intelligent people, and an attitude that focuses on innovation.
But do they have the will to entirely change the company? One only has to look at a company like Nokia to see that ignoring a changing technology market can bring industry giants to their knees. For the sake of the industry, let’s hope that Windows 8 really is as revolutionary as the Microsoft bosses suggest.
Is Facebook copying Google? September 15, 2011
Posted by Mark Hillary in Internet, IT Services, Software.Tags: circles, copyright, facebook, friends, google, intellectual property, IP, lists, patent, plus, smart lists
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For a long time now, Facebook has offered users a way of sharing content selectively. You can construct lists of your friends, to divide them up into friends, colleagues, and acquaintances for example, allowing the possibility to share personal information only with your family.
But it was always clunky and took a lot of time to sort users into the correct lists, very few people ever actually used it, preferring instead to just trim their friends. Not any more.
Facebook has just launched an improved system called smart lists, helping to automate the process of grouping your friends together, but Google is not happy. Google launched their Google+ social network in June and one of the key features of the network was called ‘circles’ – easy to define social circles that allow you to group your contacts by how you know them.
Google is crying foul and suggesting their idea has been copied and Facebook is responding by saying that they have just improved existing functionality. Who is right and how can intellectual ideas be protected?
There are laws around intellectual property, most people know about copyright, patents, and trademarks, but it feels as if our current raft of laws are archaic and out of step with the online world.
If there really was a legal challenge over the concept of grouping your friends separately to your colleagues then it is likely that a legal battle could rumble on for years and be entirely irrelevant by the time any judgement is passed. And if that’s the case then there really is very little to protect ideas – any company that wants to succeed will ride the wave and take a chance – or face failure because of a desire to comply with pre-Internet laws.
