Orient Expression

Amazon has disrupted book sales in the UK and around the globe, to the point where a shipping container of stuff arrives almost everyday at New Zealand Customs to check through all the books that those eager Kiwis have ordered in an effort to avoid the massively overinflated prices for books that are already in their own language. Now they want to take on Tesco in their back yard with the ability for customers to order their groceries from their online portal. Looks like you can only order non-perishables, so no emergency pint of milk [yet]. So rather than getting your joint of ham for the Sunday lunch looks like it would be a can of the old Monty Python favourite. So make that Spamazon.co.uk

In the move to New Zealand we decided to keep one of the mobile numbers here. The operator, DTAC, has been quite creative with options to retain the number at minimal cost. The first plan they offered was zero monthly charge and to retain the number you have to keep the account active with at least one transaction every 90 days. Not a bad plan if you were going away for three months or less. However we won't be back until August at the earliest. After describing the problem in the outlet the CSR suggested to transfer the number to pre-paid. This is the best model for convergence for me allowing me post-paid functions with pre-paid as a payment method. It seems that this operator is starting to understand the pre or post is no more than a choice on how I wish to pay, the services should not be differentiated based on service line, good news. This pre-paid package, called Simple, allows you to keep your balance and your number active for one year, that's 365 days. Sounded p

The past couple of months have seen the entire country unplugged from the internet more times than I care to count. You can always tell it's a national problem when you phone the call centre and end up being on hold for 10 minutes or so. I don't know if this is to stop being hassled or because there really are a lot of people reporting the problem. Suggestions of using IVR updates to handle some of the calls "If you are phoning about internet connection difficulty, there is a problem and we are working on it. Please check back for updates" would be a good option, however it falls on deaf ears. What I'm not sure of is the cause of the problem. Lack of infrastructure investment More people going online Fragility of links out of Thailand There certainly is a lack of investment in infrastructure. One calculation suggests that if everybody that could go online went online at the same time each user would get 1.2Kb of bandwidth. As an example to get the copper wire

Google's latest venture is project Knol . A Knol is a unit of knowledge. Google are encouraging people to contribute within their particular expertise. Sound familiar? many people are comparing this to Wikipedia which is a very different model. Wikipedia is all about collaborative authoring. Knol is individual contributions posted up on Google to be returned in the page ranks at the top of the search results. Knol is informed, authoritative wisdom of the individual. Wikipedia is well meaning, keen, hard working content aggregators looking to share in a collaborative effort. What is the aim behind the project? Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project. Udi Manber, VP Engineering. What is the real aim be

As part of the process of changing jobs I am try to move central control from my soon to be ex-company laptop to my own machine at home. I have already followed a good set of instructions on moving my iTunes library, even though I lost all of my podcast subscriptions. Overall the process was greatly simplified by the fact that I use a USB disk to hold all of the podcast and music files. The next big thing for me is to break the ties from my browser(s). I use bookmarks a lot and was looking for something useful to keep my bookmarks in synch. I was playing with the idea of using Jetpaks which I have found to be extremely useful for collating and aggregating links I am using for specific research. But before I took the plunge I had a quick walk around to see if this was something easier then the good old export/import process. I found many, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, including Foxmarks and Google Browser Synch . I decided to try out these two: BookKit 2Go synch Boo

Back in March of this year the BBC posted an article on their supersite about the problems with Microsoft Vista and access through the UK broadband providers. "Other net service firms have also admitted that the appearance of Vista has caused some hiccups for users." The problem is coming from the new system not being able to run the installation discs that are supplied. Now in May my family in the UK have purchased a new Acer laptop from Tesco and are still suffering problems getting online, all because of a disc. The real problem is that nearly all of the providers in the UK send you an installation disc and an USB modem for service provision. The installation of the modem requires the disc and this is where the problem arises with Vista. The dictionary.com entry for Vista has the following defintion. "a view or prospect, esp. one seen through a long, narrow avenue or passage, as between rows of trees or houses." "a far-reaching mental view: vistas of the

Last night as events unfolded here in Bangkok the military coup targeted mobile phone, international gateway and TV operations in effort to keep some control. I was talking to a friend in the UK when the phone went dead. I thought nothing of it then around one hour later I got the sniff of tanks rolling down the streets of the city. Thai TV was on a loop of pictures of HM the King and the occasional message from the coup leaders. The military took control of at least one TV station that was repeatedly playing a message from the fallen leader and the telecoms gazilliionare's building (HQ of his mobile phone giant and TV station) were put under guard. I thought that the mobile networks had been locked down but then realised it was just another repeat performance of the years of under-investment in interconnection routes between the now overly busy operators. Next to go was the satellite feed, also owned by the now ex-Prime Minister. This lost me access to CNN and BBC World, howeve

I thought I'd have a go at using the Windows Live Writer to add blog entries. The configuration to be able to blog to blogger from here is pretty easy, we'll see if it works as well as it would imply. I have tried this with Writely, now Goolgelized, and it work from time to time but was not consistent. I have the same (if not more) options for editing in Live Writer. I want to see if I can unlink myself from having to log in to Blogger all the time, of course as you can expect the toolbar that includes folio and the blog tools is only visible in IE as far as I can tell.

I have just had an absoulte shock :O Living in Thailand (particularly Bangkok) you get used to the fact that Copyright really means the right to copy stuff and that IP is more likely to mean Internet Protocol (although even that's a leap) rather than Intellectual Property. I have just paid full price for three CD's of Thai artists distributed in Thailand. The distributors are GMM Grammy and More Music . Like a lot of people today I listen to music at work, this generally means MP3. Unlike most people I don't like to be bound to Windows Media Player (the evil empire) and often spend a lot of time on Linux (be it Ubuntu or SuSe ) which don't have Windows Media Player [obviously!]. So imagine my surprise to go through my usual routine of using AudioGrabber to convert my purchases to MP3 so that I can listen at work from my hard drive or play on my MP3 player during the many hours I spend on planes and the less hours that I spend in the gym (more's the pity me) to

In an interesting twist I thought I would do some background reading on Wireless Facilities Inc, commonly (you could say Jargon) known as WIFI after yet another shameless act to grab a phrase in common practice, stick a trademark on it and see the $$'s roll in. I wonder if they've ever thought of their abbreviated name, and how similar it seems to WiFi which is trademarked by the WiFi Alliance back in 2003...... This shameless practice should be stopped or before long every word in the Oxford English Dictionary will carry the ™ sign. I wonder who holds the trademark on ™ sign???

There's been a lot of talk on Net Neutrality and it's all gone quiet. I don't see why everyone is so surprised Net Neutrality is the Techno equivalent of "selective listening" something that we all learn from a very early age and continue to practice through life. Working in a tricky project right now where I am employed to advise the client on how they should be implementing their chosen product to give them the best of functional match and easy maintenance and upgrade paths. However the client employs a lot of selective listening and it got me thinking of "Advice Neutrality" ©™® and why baby Bell react the way they do. Many decision have already been made before I joined the project and no amount of discussion and persuasion is going to change their minds as it might be more work upfront (short term pain, long term gain) or it might mean that they lose their position of power (they are the SI) as the real client won't have to go for them for chan

Geoff Long wrote in the the Bankok Posts, Database (every Wednesday) in the emergence of "the Long Tail" into a wider audience. He is predicting that the term will become more widely used that today. The term was defined last year and the first cited example is that of a surge in the popularity of a book on climbing several years after it was written and referenced in a much more recently published book. The long tail is ideally suited to many forms of content today. Examples are MPS downloads and Books (electronic and some printed) where you can easily develop the concept of a back catalogue that generates interest. I know that I have 'discovered' a new author several books into their series and wanted to purchase and read everything else. This is certainly the case with Lee Child, David Baldacci and Stephen Leather . This behavior leads me to the conclusion that the Long Tail is the ideal viral marketing technique. For me Skype was pretty viral. I have been u

Three of my favourite bloggers have posted statements about quality , pricing and what the telco's need to do about it. I particularly like Martin's phrase of Telco 2.0 and what this means for the current cash-cow approach that the average Telco 1.0 operator sees as their subscriber base. Look back at Singlepoint (a Caudwell company). They set themselves up as an MVNO with a main differentiator being cost. Buy the MOU's from T-Mobile at a discount and sell cheaper than the original MNO. They then sold the shop to Vodafone for a huge profit. The main revenue stream for them wasn't voice or line rental but handset insurance. Now look at the present situation here in Thailand. With increasingly poor first time connection success and diminishing completed call success across networks (interconnwhat?) and a similar story within the Number 1 mobile operator, AIS, when subscribers on the same network can't connect. The frustration is starting to build within the us

I am a frequent user of Skype. Living and working in Thailand I find it a very good and CHEAP service to call back to the UK for family and business contacts. I'll correct that I found it good. The last couple of weeks I have been suffering with extremely poor service quality, so bad that I have to revert to traditional PSTN technology. In of itself not bad but way too much money for the 3 hours I would spend on the phone talking to different parts of my UK family. This isn't Skype itself. I am in and out of Taiwan and I never have the same problems there. I also have free in room broadband and WiFi. The Hotel allows me to make VoIP calls from their own infrastructure and I can us Skype for clear and cheaper yet calls from the room. The problem I suspect lies in the incumbent duopoly of CAT (Communications Authority of Thailand) and TOT (Telecommunications Organization of Thailand). Both are starting to feel the pressure from trying to run profitable business in a [slowly

Throughout our lives we are surrounded by increasingly complex technology. This is true for Mobile Phones, Software and how services are offered. What happen to the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle? Not so long ago technology evolution was driven by need. As an industry the software development sector has created an environment where platforms change faster than the consumer (the coder) can keep up with the changes. This has left companies in a situation whereby they can no longer estimate how long it takes to produce something as the code and technology underneath the demand is constantly changing and the developers always want to be at the bleeding edge. For example there is a company that has created a front end onto it's billing platform such that a CSR can perform their job. The complexity is reasonably low and could be written in Java Script. But this company has been ruled by the developers so we have Struts, Java web tiers, EJB's and all manner of code parts insid

It's getting to that time when I should start looking for my new handset. I choose the word carefully as today you are very lucky to find just a phone. Most handsets today are either a phone and media player, a phone and a camera (sometimes video), a phone and a PDA the list of combinations goes on and on. Now this might be great in the marketing room "what can we do next?" but the point that is lost on many of the manufacturers is this; people want a phone first the rest is secondary. Many of the hybrid handsets look good, can have great MP3 playback but suffer in size, ease of use of the main function (phone calls) or have poor battery life because of all the other gadgets hanging off of it. It's very similar to the Swiss Army Knife, the knife is often too small to be used for much over opening your letters, the screwdriver is hard to use because the size of the body means you can't get to a lot of the screws on objects, the pliers have little leverage because t

Content providers in Thailand are struggling to stay afloat after a restructuring of the revenue sharing between the mobile operators and themselves. Firms like Advanced Info Service (AIS) have been offering content on their 2.5G networks here for sometime. This has spawned a number of content partners to spring up. The previous arrangement were of the order of 65% to 80%. The new arrangement sets a 50:50 split of the revenue between proivder and operator. The operators say that this is due to the operating costs of their networks and that up to now this has been a trial offering. It smells more like a knee jerk reaction to falling revenues from voice. When will the market wake up and realize that paying for voice is dead. The secret to the success of operators going forward will be in the successful channeling of content, where voice is but another type of content. This is a worrying trend. If the pinch continues then I see that most of the content partners will not survive long. This

The newly merged SprintNextel is the old style Telco that still makes a significant portion of their revenue from voice, the Arthritic Worm has turned on Vonage and two other related VoIP companies by means of a court action. They have a suit based on seven patents and are moving to block the VoIP provider(s) from using their network. They have also filed for an unspecified amount of damages. This seems to be a very public attempt to salvage their voice revenues from the churn to VoIP calls. Something similar was aired in Europe about the then new kid on the block Skype. The decision there was that the olny way Skype was going to be stopped was to shutdown the Interent. The perception was that it was already too popular and the public backlash would be too great. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the case, filed in Kansas, it will be seen as a gauge on the risk from VoIP technologies to the dinosaur voice carriers. Time will dictate that voice is not special. It is simply a

Just minutes after I published my thoughts on slow adoption of digital TV in the UK this feed from the BBC came in. So there is now a timetable for some of the technology stoppers, if my perception is true, to be solved before there are a lot of very disgruntled TV watchers in the UK. I guess we could all install many aerials and have a one device, one aerial mode of operation but that seems a bit heavy handed. I''m certainly going to keep an eye on how this develops.

Not so many months ago a Thailand Telecom Giant categorically denied that they had any intention of entering the domestic fixed line telephony service space. Today they announce the creation of three new subsiaries; *** Wireless Communication Network Company Limited *** Wire Network Company Limited *** International Network Company Limited A bit of a mixed message. The move is made in light of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), aka the Magnificent Seven, are now in a position to start providing operating licenses for Thai operators. This is the same NTC that passed a new in-inventory number tax that will cost the incumbent 5 Billion baht in tax payments and thereby defer their IPO plans by [another] 6 months. At a time when most country operators are realising the day of the VOIP and wireless freedom is looming the NTC is still attempting to tidy up last centuries technologies.