All the time the future was waiting in the past
Just over five years ago I made the suggestion that was to launch 500 (so far) BC Tips. How about a twice-weekly e-mail pointing to one piece of good practice each time, I said, with some commentary about why we think it’s worth your pausing over on the way to the ‘trash’ button. The first one went out on 22 May 2003.
We’ve since expanded the brief to cover dumb practice as well – who wants to pass up the chance to learn from someone else’s mistakes, never mind that the odd turkey is more fun to write up.
Of course, there was marketing intent behind the idea – it’s a regular reminder that we’re smart and still open for business – but BC Tips has stuck around. Sometimes it’s been a pain to sustain, most especially when there’s client work to deliver, but it does seem to have built up a regular following.
So, how to mark the 500th Tip? I could invite everyone over for a knees up at my place in Second Life, except I don’t have one and they probably wouldn’t come along (does anyone apart from unreal estate agents?). Or reminisce around my Top 10 of All Time, except that’s what you do when you’ve run out of steam or your name’s Led Zeppelin.
Instead, I fired up my own version of the Wayback Machine and revisited some archived press releases from that time in May/June 2003 to see how far the internet has moved on.
The snippets I gathered below reflect a typical find when flipping back through any set of predictions. Most make us think we’ve come a long way in five years: the surprise expressed in e-mail’s importance as a business tool; wifi hotspots on railway stations; the very earliest customer service based on text chat; the hint that blogs could change how we consume news; theoretical discussion on the possibilities of social networks.
But others underline the painfully slow progress of some long-touted concepts: mobile web about to take off, e-books too; the ‘convergence’ of television, internet and mobile. Of course, these really are about to blast off now – or at least the countdown continues. Give it five years and we’ll see.
Live Web Interaction: Is It Worth It?
Instant Messaging. The strong use of IM by consumers has made it a viable channel for customer communications that suppliers can expect to be installed on a customer’s computer…. Through 2003/04, we expect customer interaction centers to experiment with IM as an agent tool. By 2005, we expect virtual agent technologies to be extended to instant messaging, enabling escalation from virtual service personnel to real service personnel through IM. [Source: Tech Update 1 May 2003]
Email dominates the business environment
The widespread use of email grows even wider every day as a critical business tool. But to the surprise of many and the chagrin of Ma Bell, a recent survey from META Group finds that 80 percent of 387 businesspeople surveyed believe email is more valuable as a business tool than the telephone for daily business activities….
“We were surprised by the magnitude of the ratio of those choosing email over the phone,” says Matt Cain, META Group SVP. “Clearly, email best suits a changing business climate characterized by geographically distributed workgroups, extreme mobility, the need for rapid information dissemination and a desire for reusable business records.” [Source: inside1to1 13 May 2003]
Apple Finds the Future for Online Music Sales
Apple Computer seems to have the future of online music in its hands for the moment. Its new service, iTunes Music Store, has been the first real success story in the long effort to sell music over the Internet. In just its first month of operation the service, by the company’s estimate, has sold three million songs online, at 99 cents each…. Apparently trying to stay in the record industry’s good graces, iTunes removed a service it had previously offered customers. Called Rendezvous, the service enabled listeners and their friends to access one another’s music and listen to it — but not download it — from any computers. [Source: The New York Times 29 May 2003]
Telekom Austria starts online video-on-demand service
Telekom Austria broadband ADSL subscribers will have access to a new video-on-demand service, Aon.tv, starting from 7 June…. Included in the subscription is a digital video recorder with which users can record up to 2 hours of streaming video and play it back via their PC. [Source: Europemedia.net 28 May 2003]
The Baghdad blogger lives
This week’s bigger news is that Salam Pax is still alive….
For those who have not closely followed the story, Salam Pax is the handle of a Baghdad blogger whose daily updates from Iraq’s capital turned him into something of a cult Internet figure.
….That a “nobody” like Salam Pax wound up providing a more nuanced view of his world – better than either the authoritarian inanities of the Iraqi information minister or the Geraldo-besotted dispatches of the commercial television networks – testifies both to the specific value of Weblogging as well as to the broader impact the Internet may yet have around the world. [Source: CNET News 9 May 2003]
Online communities gets real
Long the preserve of geeks and gadget guys, virtual community is being updated for the internet mainstream majority by new “social software” which can create valuable social capital in communities and help business work smarter, argues a new report by The Work Foundation’s iSociety research project which is funded by Microsoft and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
…. The report – You don’t know me but… Social Capital and Social Software – claims that social software – such as weblogs, business networking tools, and community sites – which has learnt from everyday relationships, can bridge the gap between “online” and “offline” worlds by integrating the humanity of face-to-face networking with the usefulness of the internet.
Report author William Davies said: “The idea of a virtual life makes no sense to most people in Britain: they don’t really want to get married, meet new people, or make money entirely on the internet. Instead they want to make the internet work for them. Social software which understands how people like to live their lives can help bring the “virtual world” back home.” [Source: PRNewswire 29 May 2003]
Virgin leaps on board with Wi-Fi
Virgin Trains is rolling out wireless networks at several of the [UK] railway stations it serves, and is also aiming to crack the holy grail of Wi-Fi access on a moving train.
The train operator announced last week that it is installing Wi-Fi hot spots at Birmingham International and Manchester Piccadilly. These will give high-speed Internet access to Virgin customers if they are on the station concourse, in one of the station’s cafes, or in the first class lounge. Both sites should be live within a few weeks. [Source: ZDNet UK 3 June 2003]
The Bulls and Bears of Mobile Content
Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t. Get into mobile content, that is. The pros and cons of it were given at the IFRA conference by Constantine Kamaras, VP of IAB Europe, and publisher of Sports.gr, the biggest sports site in Greece. [Source: Paidcontent.org 15 May 2003]
Many Channel Surfers Are Web Surfers
A mouse in one hand, a remote control in the other? According to research there is considerable simultaneous overlap among the mediums.
Data from more than 7,000 consumers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK, gathered and analysed by KNOTs Europe identified convergence, particularly in France, the Netherlands, and the UK, with the most widespread simultaneous TV/Internet usage exhibited among the 25-to-34 year old range. [Source: CyberAtlas 29 April 2003]
Siemens helps to put TV on mobile
Spotting that the mobile phone industry is rapidly developing a thirst for video content, Siemens has teamed up with German TV channels, 13th Street and Studio Universal (part of Universal Studios) to turn TV shows into a mobile format. [Source: theinquirer.net 9 May 2003]
Ebooks catch on, but only for hardcore fans so far
Within 12 hours of Cory Doctorow’s posting his new novel on his Web site, more than 10,000 free digital copies were snatched up by online readers.
Nearly five months later, the site (www.craphound.com/down/download.php) has passed along more than 110,000 copies of the science fiction book, titled “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”
But while Doctorow’s story illustrates the potential for e-books, it is not an accurate reflection of the market.
E-books, hailed in hi-tech precincts as the electronic alternative to traditional publishing, have failed to live up to their early billing as a replacement for the printed page, despite their popularity with gadget-obsessed pioneers. [Source: Reuters 27 May 2003]
Posted on June 19, 2008 15:16 by Keith Craggs | 0 comments
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