eBiz Tomorrow by Chris Salazar

It looks like the news has broke out in the blogosphere that Jeremiah is moving on to PodTech.  Although we will miss him at Hitachi, I am proud of Jeremiah.  As a corporate web evangelist, he has definitely paved a way for the Community Marketing program at HDS.  Hopefully, things will continue to grow.

Jeremiah has been an inspiration for me since I started working at HDS as an intern in Summer 2005.  He took me under his wing and fed my mind with knowledge about HDS, my career, and being a professional in corporate america.  Two summers later, he provided me with an opportunity to join HDS full time when I graduate in December.

Now as a friend, I wish Jeremiah all the best.  Keep up the great attitude and never stop challenging yourself.  You’ve been an inspiration to many…

The internet is everywhere…Jeremiah once said that the Web will soon be amorphous and ubiquitous…I think it’s already ubiquitous. Cell phones, mobile PCs, palm pilots, and all sorts of gadgets now have internet access 24/7 and just about anywhere.

Unfortunately, many cell phone customers are facing several on-going issues with their services. Perhaps as gadgets continue to get more fancier, they face more problems?

Monday’s (October 23rd) edition of the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article, “The 10 Biggest Problems with Wireless & How to Fix Them.” Here are the top 10 probs with wirless cell phones:

1. Spotty Coverage: Let’s face it, carriers cannot 100% of the United States’ terrain, but they can definitely try. Yet, consumers can install antennas both on their phones and homes to increase the wireless coverage in their area. In addition, TensorComm has developed a tool that will automatically detect and work to strengthen wireless access automatically. This tool should be released in 2007-2008.
2. …And No Coverage: To avoid heartache, consumers can check the availability of wireless in their proximity first before purchasing plans from companies like Cingular and T-Mobile. Make sure to check the wireless capability of your area before signing up!
3. Poor Customer Service: Often times, consumers feel that instead of helping to fix problems, customer service agents provide more excuses instead. So, carriers have recently invested a tremendous amount of resources into improving their customer service including short-code dialing and automatic services.
4. Lengthy Contracts: Most carriers charge anywhere from $150-$300 for early contract cancelations, but now new consumers are offered with a 30-day grace period allowing them to cancel accounts without any charges. For existing customers, Sprint provides users with a three-month rate-plan trial period in which they can make changes to their account without renewing their contract.
5. Damaged Phones: Carriers now offer insurance for damaged phones, but those with no insurance are forced to buy new cell phones. However, smaller companies are starting to offer repair services for cheap prices for damaged phones, especially water damage.
6. Surprise Charges: Many companies are now offering a variety of security options to limit the amount of surprise charges made including: Sprint’s call guard, Flexible plans, PIN IDs for purchases, and roaming options. These tools should help limit extra charges, therefore, enhancing the wireless experience.
7. Complicated Bills: Carriers are currently striving to make their bills as simple as possible. This is especially key as older generations are starting to use cell phones. For example, instead of using “Airtime Minutes,” carriers should use “Minutes Used.” These simple changes will make the overall experience with cell phones more pleasurable.
8. Missed Calls: Unfortunately, telephone lines and cell phone memory become congested and can stop working properly for a short period of time. To remedy this problem, carriers are working on providing tools that will send voice messages by text and other ways to keep an archive of emails sent.
9. Weak Batteries: The more gadgets offered, the less time the battery will last. Perhaps buying a backup is needed.
10. Overloaded: Wireless cell phones are becoming more fancy and complex than ever, which makes them more prone to frequent overloads. The simpler the phone, the less problems consumers will face.

I would like to hear your thoughts on wireless cell phones. Which service provider do you have? What problems do you face? What’s being done about it?

In a recent survey of over 1500 employees, its been found that money is not the primary motivator for employees. Yes, this was surprising to me, but here’s the top five primary motivators…LET ME KNOW IF YOU AGREE!

1. A learning activity and choice of assignment. Employees value learning opportunities in which they can gain skills to enhance their marketability. The ability to choose work assignments is a plus
2. Flexible working hours and time off. Employees seem to value time in general, whether its at work or personal time. Flexibility around their work hours will allow them to better balance personal obligations with work responsibilities.
3. Personal praise. People like to feel theyre needed and that their work is appreciated. Yet employees report that their bosses rarely thank them for the job that they do.
4. Increased autonomy and authority in their job. Greater autonomy and authority tell employees that the organization trusts them to act independently and without the approval of others.
5. Time with their managers. When managers spend time with employees, it does two things: First, it provides recognition and validation. Second, it provides support through listening to the employee’s concerns, answering questions, and offering advice.

Do you agree with these motivations?

Personally, I believe that managers should be careful with these factors, because too much praise or too much flexibility can backfire and cause an employee to loose motivation and not be productive.

As an upcoming professional almost entering into the workforce, I am becoming more aware of consumer needs.  Therefore, I am seeing a lot of business opportunities for entrepreneurs.  In fact, I may want to start my own business in the near future, but how?  Creating a new business takes a lot of initiative, time, effort, and patience.

Yet, I stumbled upon some advice in my International Business book that is valuable:

• Don’t rush familiarity:  when addressing people in the business world, always be formal (unless you know them on a personal basis).  Your first impression will often stick with you and your business.
• Build relationships: what matters most isn’t money, buting building personal relationships and being refered by someone who you’ve done business with.  Build a strong network that lasts.
• Expect limited resources:  use the internet to facilitate communication with businesses.  You cannot expect people to contact you, contact them on your own.
• Establish who is in charge:  establish who is in charge of all aspects of the business.  When contacting other business professionals it is important that the person in charge communicates with them instead of a company rep

As I think more about becoming a future entrepreneur these tips are very important.  Yet, succeeding does depend a lot on personal will power and perseverence.  Although the tips above may vary by person, thinking about what makes an entrepreneur successful and developing a plan is probably a good first step.

Michael Arrington from http://www.techcrunch.com

“What’s next for web apps: building tomorrow’s Flickr”

(note I will have pictures of Michael’s Winner’s and Loser’s soon..)

Shared Attributes of Winners

• Passion for what they are doing
• Doing Something Extraordinary (Purple Cow)
• Removing serious friction
• Great Founder Dynamics (”higher slow, fire fast”)
• Never Raised Big Money or Raised it After They Won
• Perfect Revenue Model Not Required
• and…launched their company with a post on TechCrunch (hahaha!)

Shared Attributes of Losers

• Poor Founder/Team choices
• Lifestyle/Ego Entrepreneurs
• Raised Too Much Money
• Spent Too Much Money
• Don’t Over business-planned
• Forgot about scaling (Friendster)

What Server Platform? What Client Platform

• PHP = popular server
• AJAX = popular client
• Sleeper = Adobe Apollo

Market Saturation

• Avoid
  • Social Networking
  • Social Bookmarks
  • Video
  • Photos
  • Blogging/podcasting platforms
  • Portals
  • Feed Readers
• Big Potential
  • Platforms
  • Desktop Apps
  • Office Efficiency
  • Cloud Storage –> Microsoft, Google, Box.net, Omnidrive coming soon
  • Identity
  • Developer Tools
  • Market Destruction
  • ENTERPRISE = important

I am currently blogging live from the Future of Web Apps Conference in San Francisco with Jeremiah Owyang who is also blogging live. I am providing you with this information in real time from my first web conference! The most recent information will be at the bottom of the page. Please check back!

There are even some participants from Lunch 2.0, which Jeremiah and Hitachi Data Systems hosted just yesterday!

SPEAKER: Dick Hardt, blogs at http://blame.ca/dick
Representing http://www.sxip.com

Emerging Age of Who
What is Identity?

• Past behavior predicts future behavior
• Digital identity = yahoo, flickr, google (vitamin), delicious
• Identity 2.0 = users in charge from centralization (easy to manage identities), allow identities to be cross compatible with other sites (bring ebay reputation throughout the web)
• Ebay = separate accounts, no sign on across like yahoo

My Thoughts

Dick’s presentation was very energetic, fast paced, and “different” (which is great for a preso to start off with). He used some analogies that were different including pain killers, vitamins, and Viagra. Identity 2.0 is emerging and I am anxious to see how online identities will integrate, that’s if they do.

SPEAKER: Kevin Rose from http://www.digg.com

• What is digg? How did it start?
  • October ’04, experiment with $2000 (developed project spec, basic utilitarian design, $99 hosting plan
  • New site, everything is created and promoted by users, users can “digg” stories, customize homepages, track users
  • My profile has own associated RSS feeds (sites I’ve dugg, commented on, friends page, etc)
• Feature Decisions
  • No advertising, all word of mouth
  • Tools for self expression
  • Stay away from “me too” features (adding tags, etc) – what benefit does the feature has? (tags to online banking = bad idea)
  • Simple and rewarding – one click (comments and buries)
  • Destroy the garbage
  • Experiment – stack, swarm, bigspy, activities of users
• What’s Next? Digg Labs à Stack & Swarm (Awesome!) + Diff Effect
  • Real-time activity of users
  • Graphs, charts, analytics
  • Learn how users are gathering around stories
  • Provides real time info of the new stories that are being digged
  • Learn more about users interests from stories that are digged
• Story suggestions and friend suggestions (like Amazon)
• Connecting users with other users b/c of interests (different from Friendster, Myspace, etc)
• Stats à 500k users, 10M pages per day, 1M daily users
• Tip for scaling = PDF “Inside LiveJournal’s Backend”
• Will be an open API coming soon
• Custom feeds through search (search for apple with 500 diggs)

My Thoughts

First off, Kevin is really young! It’s amazing to hear the story of how he created Digg and what’s next in Digg Labs. The analytics available is very web 2.0 and fun! I am not an avid user of digg, but I think I will take another look at it.

10 things you didn’t know about RSS

• 1. No correlation between click through rate to HTML site and number of subscribers, very erratic and fluctuate
  • Reason people go from a feed to the site is worth looking into to, something happening that cannot be explained
• 2. Consumer devices can drive the market, the power of releasing a device like RSS and iTunes + iPod supporting podcasts (people didn’t realize they were using RSS)
• 3. More text in the feed, gets more TOTAL traffic
  • Adding more text, increases subscribers to feed because the feed audience is different from daily browsers
• 4. Podcasts are more evenly distributed across categories than text RSS feeds
  • But, text feeds will soon become more distributed
  • 15% of podcasts are video, so video is growing, video will eclipse audio podcasts in a year
• 5. Different feeds and different types of content have different breakdowns about how they are read on feedreaders
  • RSS is a global phenomenon, more blogs in Japan and China than N. America and Europe together, RSS has become bigger than blogs!
  • In consumer feeds, aggregator breakdowns are from mass media mediums like yahoo
• 6. There over 3,000 RSS clients out there
• 7. And a LOT of bots
  • Click on content and find relationship between RSS feeds
  • The average click through rate of an RSS item is 7%, ALL BY BOTS, be careful when reading stats on who is a real person and who is a bot
• 8. MyYahoo! leads by a large margin for subscribers in RSS
  • Personalized homepages like MyYahoo are large subscribers, Firefox trails
• 9. RSS is being read on Mobile
  • 2,900 mobile user agents reading RSS feeds
  • Top clients = Nokia podcasting client, Sony Ericson, LG, Sony, Motorola
• 10. Publishers are making money with RSS
  • Using RSS to drive traffic to their site, but they will find that these are separate audiences, people reading feeds are those who can reached on daily basis (they like to read feeds), but average browser is a different audience

Mor Naaman representing Yahoo! and demonstrating “ZoneTag”

Demo of ZoneTag Mobile Client

• Use mobile devices to help create, find, discover, share media = future of web apps
• ZoneTag Basics
  • 2-click upload, smooth experience
  • Photo uploaded with location and time metadata
  • Can set privacy settings, title, and add tags
• ZoneTag Advanced
  • Tag/annotate your photos from the phone: easy with tag suggestions
• Where do these tags come from?
  • From the user, users friends, other people who visit the same location = user generated!
  • Stuff around you, upcoming.org, from RSS 2.0 feed (Calendar, hangouts)
• Where do tags go?
  • Back to the orginal RSS items (Upcoming.org)
  • Action Tags
    • Trigger a call to a web service
    • Command Line - from your phone
• ZoneTag for all
  • runs on Nokia Series 60 phones
  • Available as a prototype API - put it on a plaform

“How we built Google Calendar” http://www.google.com/calendar

• Designed to manager your own personal schedule and share it with others
• Requests to build calendar from customers, started off with a vague idea, then started the plan
• “If you are in marketing, you are doing your job IF you are spending money and talking to customers” — quote from Carl (it made Jeremiah laugh)
  • talked to college students at Stanford, student leaders, professors, working couples to see what they were using to coordinate their activities
  • performed a “diary setting” of open ended questions, but found that some students did not keep calendars even though they were busy…good information for research!
• Key Themes emerged:
  • People said calendars werent necessary b/c they were a pain to keep up to date especially when it combined others (friends, family) = big investment of time –> Google wanted to create something that was painless and saved time
  • Recognized that people have a personal connection to a calendar –> the look and feel of it is necessary because they have a connection to it
• 4 things the calendar must do
  
  • had to be fast, visually appealing to the user
  • had to be drop dead simple to get info onto the calendar
  • has to be more than boxes on a screen, wanted to make sure the events put into the calendar add value (notifications, reminders,  and  easy to share)
  • important to design a product in a consumer oriented  world, where not everyone has the same needs and wants
• Invested time and energy on Google Infrastructure from 5 to 5 million users
• Focused on interaction and the operations of the calendar, then worked on the UI design (how to make it look good)
• Once you build the product, launching the product is difficult, but PRIVATE BETA testing is essential to get feedback before launching it live = IMPORTANT
• Insight #1 = Easy is the most important feature
• Insight #2 = Know your real competition
• Insight #3 = Visual Design Matters
• Insight #4 = Build products for people who don’t want to use them
• Insight #5 = Timing Launch Properly
• Insight #6 = Driving Usage

The Lunch 2.0 + Web Expo ended today at Hitachi Data Systems, but it was a success. I heard several people mention it was the biggest Lunch 2.0 yet! Robert Scoble even mentioned that he did not expect such a big turnout. Great thanks to Jeremiah Owyang and the HDS team for organizing the event.

This was my first big web event and I cannot wait for more opportunities. The opportunity to see several web companies, even some startups, was great. Listening to their ideas was interesting, especially seeing a preview of some new Zoomr tools from Thomas Hawk!

Here are some links to remember the event and/or experience it for yourself:

• Robert Scoble’s thoughts on Lunch 2.0
• Lunch 2.0 thoughts from Thomas Hawk
• Julio Garcia’s post on Lunch 2.0
• Flickr photos tagged with “Lunch20″
• Zoomr photos and Zooomr Blog

I took about a hundred pictures from the event so I can relive it each day as my FIRST web event. This is only the beginning, as tomorrow I will be blogging live from the Carson Summit Web Apps Conference.

THE FUTURE OF WEB APPS

This will be my first Web Conference so I am very excited! I may even try some live blogging, who knows!

This event will feature keynote speakers from the top web companies including: Google, Technorati, Wordpress, Flickr, digg, TechCrunch, Yahoo, Feedburner, and many more.

Find out how Google Calendar was created, how to build tomorrow’s next Flickr, the story behind WordPress, and 10 things you didn’t know about RSS, from FeedBurner’s co-founder.

When?

September 13th-14th from 10am-6pm.

Where?

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
Lyon Street,
San Francisco CA 94123

For more information on this event and how to register, please visit here.

Web Geek Jeremiah over at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara is planning a lunch 2.0 expo that will surely be filled with laughs, games, info, and tons of conversations! Everyone is invited from web geek to interns, just be ready for a casual lunch expo.

If you are still undecided, look on flickr to see pictures from previous lunch 2.0 parties. If that doesnt convince you enough, take a look at the companies who will be there:

• Topix.net
• Box.net
• Pandora
• Plaxo
• Podtech
• Riya
• SimplyHired
• Zazzle
• Zooomr
• Zvents

Some of the companies I have not heard of, which is exactly why I will be going! This will be my first lunch 2.0 event, so keep a look out for me…I’ll be wondering around the game area!

What is it?

Lunch 2.0 + Expo for everyone! Tons of people to meet, several web companies, and free food!

When?

September 12, 2006, from 12-2pm
Where?

Hitachi Data Systems, 750 Central Expressway, Santa Clara, CA

This is definitely a milestone in my life, being featured in a book. Ted Demoupolos is set to release his book titled ” What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting: Real-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere” in November (pre-orders are now accepted on Amazon.com).

A few months ago, I had a friendly phone conversation with Ted about intern blogging. I had the opportunity to talk about how I have leveraged blogging to enhance my internship experience…all in hope that other intern bloggers will follow my lead.

I’m very excited to see the finished outcome! Especially, since I will be joined by some of the top bloggers in business, including: Dennis McDonald, Robyn Tippins, Debbie Weil, Easton Ellsworth, Mike Sansone , Martin McKeay, Dan Sweet, Tracy Sheridan, Shel Israel, and Jeremiah Owyang.

*patiently waiting for the official book release*