Conversationware

RSS is abit like having your paper delivered when normally the local shop is sold out

Here is another video, this time an RSS primer to pass on to all our laggard friends and families who haven’t been playing with readers yet.

The video is pilfered from these Common Craft people.

I wanted to experiment with including a You Tube video in a post, so here it is. The one I chose to use as an example, so you may have already seen it, is a backgrounder for Web 2.0 technology. Reviews were mixed :-), but it’s relevant at least.

This is thanks to a plugin for wordpress found here. It was the plugin that I most easily understood - which is as good a reason as any to recommend it.

All I need to do now, is work out how to create and post demo videos to you tube.

People often tell me that they want one presence tool to use - that their screens are full of different interfaces.

I can see the point, but really I think you probably do need two at least. If you’re at work, it doesn’t seem right to be available to all your buddies and family…does it? I mean interruptions can take 20 minutes to get over and back to being fully focussed on your work, which is hardly fair to the employer.

At work, we have settled on a single tool for work activity, and this seems to be well regarded in terms of only being used as instant messaging if important, and to see when people are on the phone. It is distinct and walled.

In addition, we all probably have another tool for friends and family, switched off or rarely used during the working day. Although because we all have a choice of dozens, it will probably fall to people like Trillian Software and Meebo to persuade us to use a single interface to inter-connect to all of them.

When considering Speech Recognition as an interface for anything, just think about how it is to be used, by whom and where they’re calling from.

Having used Speech Recognition to access Exchange email, calendar, contacts, my CallXpress voicemail and corporate directory for the last two years (we had Exchange 2007 functionality 2 years early from AVST), I have to say that it has been a learning experience.

The first thing to relate is that it is often more comfortable as a solitary activity.

Somehow, you can hear your own voice change when talking to a machine.

It is the trepdiation that you’ll forget the right phrase to use, along with slower and louder speech, which means you end up sounding almost like ‘British person talking to foreign person’. Like an idiot in other words, and after a very short while, a self conscious idiot.

The worst thing is knowing that any slips will result in you having to repeat yourself.

Repeating oneself (no pun intended) is irritating to have to do, not to mention the fact it also attracts instant attention from anybody around you - and thus aptly demonstrates to your colleagues that even a dumb machine can’t be bothered to listen to you.

The funny thing is, most people wait for the machine to finish talking even if they know they can interrupt and they know what the machine is going to say. Such manners abound in the UK, even to inanimate objects that you can’t see!

If you are in a car on your own, this technology is fantastic, hands free and driving licence points saving and reduces home login time sorting through email because you deleted them somewhere near Oxford.

Trust me though, using it in public is about as cool as walking along with a £10 bluetooth headset over the ear.

Del.icio.us is so simple, the potential usefulness passes you by at first. It’s the sort of service that makes you wish you’d spent more time reading the instructions six months ago when you first signed up.

A little introduction here, if you don’t know it.

See a webpage, click a button in your browser, save it with tags, and always find it again. All that useful stuff you can’t remember where it was? Not any more…very cool.

Using a reader, and subscribing to what colleagues and family find interesting, that’s a very simple way to reduce overloaded email inboxes!

However, if there is any element of competitive intelligence involved, then why not keep it in the family and install (10 users free), bookmarking, specifically for within the company.

Cogennz collective intelligence is a British Web 2.0 product, good show, and obviously therefore a step ahead

Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper, I have harboured visions of a telephone handset built in next to a screen, which I could pick up, anytime I wanted more information from a website owner and immediately speak to someone connected with the page. I wouldn’t have to know or enter the number.

A little more daydreaming would see the the right hunt group in the call centre or company product sales, called automatically based on the page - of course, and when they answered, a screen would come up on their CRM (remember that?), which would have the screen I was looking at, as well as my details.

There is definitely movement and services like Sitofono, are a very simple implementation of it, without the bells….well, er, it is actually the bells, and not the whistles. Click for the owner to call you.

Then, there is a quote from a product website called Contactatonce.com, who markets a solution that allows website visitors to IM, or chat, with people in the organisation in real time. An excerpt,

A sales rep for one of the ContactAtOnce! enabled car dealerships in Atlanta forwarded me a conversation he recently had with a prospect. Excerpting:

[07:00:30 PM][SalesRep] What do you think of this instant connect tool ?
[07:00:38 PM][Customer] It is really great
[07:00:52 PM][SalesRep] Good to hear, we are trying it out.
[07:00:55 PM][Customer] The only reason why I chose your dealership is because I can talk to you now
[07:01:05 PM][Customer] If not I would not even have contacted your company
[07:01:10 PM][Customer] so 1 positive for this

Sometimes, the customers say the most eloquent things…

I like this - but it is wise to let the visitors speak to you first.

For instance, with Meebo, a web based IM system that allows you to build in a client to your blog or website (it’s down there on the right hand side somewhere), you get audibly notified when someone is on your page - don’t worry, I forget to log on most days and I rarely notice in the hubbub

However, I did notice on Sunday for a change, and after about half an hour I decided to interact. At which point the visitor scarpered instantly, and who could blame them. It’s a bit like stalking in reverse isn’t it?

Imagine if you will, browsing to a website, you see a head turn, and say - “can I help you?”

I’m just looking, you say….

How ghastly can you get, if I wanted to be in a shoe shop, I’d go shopping more than once a year. Not all daydreams are worth going on with.

This link is to a very neat article (thanks Alec) , which points out that the result of worker mobility and remote working, is a growth in conference calls and a demand for presence solutions.

There is a year’s worth of telephone call log data from Cap Gemini’s 9,000 strong organisation to base this on, and so excellent data to work with.

Replacement of ‘face to face’ meetings with an increase in telephone calls and audio conferencing is an obvious one, but also, it is argued, because 80 percent of calls end up in voicemail this is driving users to pre-book calls in advance, driving costs up through multiple calls into conferencing bridges from mobile phones.

Presence is described as bound to emerge as a key element of any provider of communications services.

Trouble is, I’m positive that the Telco and mobile companies don’t see a problem with growth of calls and conferencing! “More conference calls”, “paying for calls twice” must be music to the ears.

   Solid Gold

 In fact, any presence solution, resulting in less calls going to voicemail, and less calls overall, must be an unattractive proposition for the Telco or Mobile Operator.

It will probably fall on companies to implement their own Unified Commmunications solutions, (he says hopefully) making presence enabled, on net, conference calls free of charge, together with binding their own mobile calls to the enterprise to reduce costs.

In a book called the tipping point, it is argued that sudden explosion of a social or business trend can be viewed in the same light as a disease epidemic might be.

An example in the book is sales of hush puppies going from 80,000 a year to zillions a year through a very small number of influential people making a small noise in the right place.

A couple of months ago I saved myself £300 in repairing a TV. It was out of warranty but googled and spotted 20 other users on a forum with the same problem. We’d all bought a TV in the exactly the same month, and whereas 10,000 other buyers never had a problem, we all did.

Obviously a batch issue - when I sent them the link to the forum Curry’s rolled immediately offered a free fix.

Now although this wouldn’t have happened two years ago. When the engineer turned up, he’d apparently billed lots of other people £300, so not everyone has got the hang of the internet as a consumer tool yet.

Corporate blogging is still very small in nature, probably? nowhere near even 5%, but in general, company behaviour is now seen to be taking account of internet happenings. Nowhere is this better described than in this article

Following the tipping point theory, there are some very violent increases or decreases in market share coming in the not too distant future.

For honest and hard working companies, karma is on it’s way, but help it along a little by being open about how honest and hardworking you are. Blogging is good for your search rankings and by getting there quickly, it will give you credibility before competitors.

There is a lack of innovation in the communications world, as indicated by some of the industry watchers, here at techdirt and amusingly here too, around Telcos and PSTN.

What about innovation from premises based IP Telephony PBX providers, after all businesses pay through the nose for LAN and WAN upgrades and shiny new telephone systems.

Apparently though, according to Cisco at the latest presentation, the real benefits to businesses going forward are now acknowledged to be the applications and not the plumbing, and so the move towards renaming solutions from IP Telephony to Unified Communications goes on.

There is an echo here of when the department of unemployment renamed themselves to the department of employment, but the thought counts (with some honourable exceptions I know).

There’s an analogy in my previous post, and I’ll give that another go here, and compare Communications to a new kitchen (it beats using cars again). Hope i don’t overdo it..

Companies want to have a very functional kitchen (communications) arrangement - sure there are components to decide over, but the overall effect and usefulness for the whole family is paramount.

We’re looking to the plumbing companies, (Cisco IP Telephony of course) and kitchen sink and appliances manufacturers (Microsoft and other software applications) to work together. An average new kitchen is usually good value at about £10K, and you cut your cloth accordingly.

Trouble is, we already have a deal in place for new appliances - so we’re slightly caught out in the investment stakes already.

What we really want is the kitchen sink to plug into the existing plumbing, and have enough left over for the 5 ring hob in a central island with a groovy extractor (sorry).

We don’t really want to have to renew all the plumbing in the house, but we will if it makes a big difference to the overall effect - maybe.

The existing old pipes currently do not work with our new appliances (we can’t even click to dial) - so what are the options?

Do the new pipes work with the new appliances? Not without an adaptor - and how much does the adaptor cost, well, how about £40K? I heard this actual figure from a prospect recently, so it is heresay, but to open an API port…it’s a bit steep isn’t it…just for an adaptor?

 £40K?

Ah.

So, the old pipes don’t enable the new appliances, but the new pipes don’t either? It actually stinks, but then badly put together plumbing can do that can’t it.

IPT manufacturers seem to want innovation, but only if it has their label on it. Fine, but it’s like buying a car, and being charged twice as much if you want someone elses steering wheel. It just ain’t the way to win loyalty. Get real.

If you don’t believe me - see what it costs if you want to plug a SIP phone into a Cisco Unified Communications manager. The software port licence cost to connect the SIP phone is SIX times the cost of connecting their own phone. I was there when they explained this to a frankly silent room of customers.

Also, does a SIP server expose telephony endpoint status….only in a very limited way, and not so anything extremely useful can be deployed.

Developers steer well clear in this sort of commercial environment, and innovation is effectively stifled until the IP Telephony companies get around to integrating that new company they bought.

Sorry, correction, integrating six new competing and conflicting architecture companies they bought.

In this sort of environment, it does seem ripe for a change.

I’m blatantly borrowing this quote from someone who was also borrowing it.

The phrase is aimed at us marketing and sales types who fall into the trap of falling in love with technology from time to time.

“We keep talking about 1/4 inch drills - and keep arguing over different ways to describe the specifications of the drill.  The market is buying 1/4 inch holes - and cares little about the tools that are used to produce them. ”

Being in technology, you might still be tempted to argue that the market is focussing on the wrong ‘bit’…

..but , good reminder thanks, we’d better start selling holes.

Wait a minute, does that mean customers will buy whichever solution has the  best holes or just the most holes?

Looking at companies who got very big over the last 15 years, I suspect the latter.