This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Discussed during the show notes:

+ Social Media Breakfast-Minneapolis/St. Paul (SMBMSP) last week

+ Best Buy’s new Twitter initiative

+ MagentoCommerce

+ Upcoming Wordpress meetup/unconference on Thursday, July 30th at 6:30pm

+ GDGT.com

+ Vendor Relationship Management

+ Posterous

The event was originally slated to be held indoors at Deluxe, but free tickets for the 125-person capacity room sold out on the group’s online sign-up site within two hours. So, organizer Rick Mahn and sponsor PartnerUp (a Deluxe company) scrambled to accommodate demand. They quickly decided to open up the event by holding it outside, and then promptly sold out all 250 tickets. 

Just what is a “Social Media Breakfast”?  As explained on the group’s web site (a social networking site, of course!): “It’s where folks get together to talk about using social media and social networking tools in their business or careers. It’s about networking, it’s about learning, and mostly it’s about people.”

The SMB concept has taken off nationally, now with 25 chapters. But in early 2008 the Twin Cities group was one of the first to get started — the third, actually, after Boston and New York City, according to Bryon Person, the founder of Social Media Breakfast. Person spoke at the local “SMPmsp 15″ event at Concordia College in St. Paul on May 16. (Person is based in Austin, TX and is a blogger, podcaster, speaker, and social media evangelist for LiveWorld. He is @BryanPerson on Twitter.)  Person also said the Twin Cities SMB group has held the most meetings of all the chapters, and consistently has the biggest attendance.  Thus, one could conclude that Friday’s outdoor event was the biggest SMB breakest ever held nationally, since attendance was about twice that of the largest previous SMBmsp event.

Speakers at the “SMBmsp 16″ event included Tim Brunelle (@tbrunelle on Twitter), pictured at right below, who spoke on “The Impact of Social Media on the Advertising and Marketing Industry,” and Minnov8’s own Steve Borsch (@sborsch on Twitter), at left, who presented on the topic of “Personal/Professional Hubs: A Place to Aggregate Your Digital Life.” 

Borsch commented later, after he had left for Chicago immediately following the breakfast. “Wow, what a great event. Thank you to PartnerUp and Deluxe for going way above and beyond the call of duty to host this gathering and making it such a success.”  As he was presenting, Borsch said he was thinking: “Gee, if I’m sweating up here in the shade, imagine how they must be feeling!” The sun was amazingly strong, even so early in the morning. He said later on the SMBmsp site’s blog: “This event just goes to show the level of interest, the strength of our community, and that each of you recognize how fundamentally important is the shift being exhibited by the onrush of social media… Or it was all just about free hats and bacon?”

Borsch uploaded a PDF of his Apple Keynote presentation, which was shown on the Jumbotron (he’s shown here readying for his talk), and it is viewable and downloadable at that link above.  “I was using my iPhone to control the presentation with the ‘Keynote App’ from Apple. You can see one slide and your notes — flickably scrollable to advance the slide or scroll your notes — or, in landscape mode, to see the next slide queued up ready to go. It runs over wifi.”   [Yes, that's our Steve Borsch -- the ultimate geek!]

For more on SMBmsp, you can read all the tweets posted about it by simply going to search.Twitter.com and entering either “SMBmsp” or “SMBmsp16″.  You can also see some great photos here: a Flickr set by Jamie Thinglestad.  The closeup photo above of the two speakers, and the two shots below are Jamie’s, used here with permission; all other photos are from my own Flickr set.

I asked Phil Wilson, fellow contributor to Minnov8, for his reaction to SMBmsp 16:  “It was great to see so many new faces coming to check out what’s happening in our social media community.  I hope that they can come back to really get a sense of how easy it is to connect with the group.  I prefer a more intimate setting where we can better discuss the topics presented, but it was fun to be part of ‘Social Media Palooza’.  I’ve never seen a keynote presentation on a jumbotron!  Steve’s presentation was spot on. I also thought Tim Brunelle had some great information and insight. For anyone interested in using social media for business or ‘brand’, it’s vital to keep in mind the impact it will have on marketing and advertising.”

Anyone may join the “SMBmsp” group by registering for free at its site.  There are currently 827 people who have done so, according to the Members page.  The site has a regular podcast, and also a blog where any member can post.

“Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) announced today that it has partnered with Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA, CMCSK) to develop broad principles for the TV Everywhere model to guide the distribution of its television content online.  The agreement between the companies will make it possible for Comcast customers to access programming from Turner Broadcasting’s award-winning entertainment networks free online and on demand.  In addition, Comcast announced it will begin a national technical trial of its “On Demand Online” service in July carrying programming from Time Warner’s Turner networks TNT and TBS.“

For our take on this issue, read “Sorry. No Internet Video for You.” In a nutshell, the cable companies are making all sorts of moves (e.g., bandwidth caps; caching infrastructure at the cable head-end; so-called “authentication” schemes) in order to control internet video distribution over their cable internet connections. If you don’t think this will harm any competing providers or innovators — whether major network initiatives like Hulu or upstarts like Revision3 — then you’re not paying attention.

The only possible option to counter the dominant, monopolistic footprint Comcast and Time Warner enjoy and to keep the internet conduit from becoming a toll-road benefitting a few — and that those few are clearly capitalizing upon in a way sure to fail (think “authentication” won’t be hacked in a nanosecond?) — appears to be the Federal Communications Commission and Congress.

As a sidenote, I worked for a company called Clothier-Herold Co in the early 1980’s on the side of the firm that represented this little company called “Apple Computer.” The other side of the rep business sold Visicorp (Visicalc, etc.), Microsoft (which, upon going public, I thought would never make it) and a bunch of PC-oriented lines of product. In addition, our firm represented Open Systems, though none of us ever met Ann at the time.

A strategy consultant for prestigious clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Price Waterhouse, and numerous start-ups, Ann has co-authored the book Object-Oriented Software and has written articles for numerous publications. Ann received a BA in mathematics and in business administration from the College of St. Catherine, and an MA in education and international economics from the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), which also subsequently awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Laws. She currently serves as a director of Voltage Security, Krillion, Mulesource and Star Analytics, a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Thomas www.stthomas.edu, and co-chair of SD Forum www.sdforum.org.

In this Idea Projects video, Ann talks about cloud computing and how by moving technology from location-based servers to a virtual environment, with expanded if not universal access, the opportunities for innovation increase exponentially. As a software funder she sees a trend towards 100% presence on any device at any time.

Turns out that’s not the case.

Though I consulted with Yugma in 2006 and learned first-hand how many competitive offerings there are in the screensharing and web conferencing space, I still was enamored by Yugma and its cross-platform support, along with the ease of use they built in to using it. I’ve kept tabs on their progress for the last couple of years, taking great pains to not write about challenges and difficulties they were facing which I’d learned previously from founder Lingaraj Mishra, since confidences are a key part of my value system and an obvious imperative for the management consulting work I do with clients (i.e., I keep my mouth shut).

An unfortunate turn of events occurred recently when a letter to shareholders was publicly outed by WebConferencingTest and they did this press release stating why they were removing Yugma from their rankings (which I learned about today via this post at SkypeJournal and then learned more from this article at TMCNet).

I reached out to Lingaraj today to get the straight skinny from him about what’s occurring, what’s next, and whether Yugma really does have one foot in the dead pool with the other one poised to step in.  No question the many hundreds of thousands of Yugma users are a key asset, but like many with a freemium model alongside a pay one, in their case the free users are 10x the paid ones (not an uncommon ratio in today’s web world). In our discussion, Lingaraj assured me that the service is up-n-running with the same key infrastructure as always, and they’re servicing their user base fully.

Turns out that letter to shareholders was part of the usual internal struggles that occur with investors, debt holders, and those brought in to take things to the next level without, ahh, performing. One of the disgruntled must have assumed that airing dirty laundry in public would somehow be any sort of win for anyone…which it never is and in my experience inflicts damage.

Cash is king and the lack thereof is Yugma’s issue. Their infrastructure costs outweigh the revenue coming in the door since services of this type are bandwidth hogs and making a web conferencing or screensharing experience seamless and robust requires co-located servers in multiple points-of-presence, a dynamic infrastructure that can scale when demand dictates, and a continuing maintenance program to make certain everything runs like a champ.

With Skype building-in screensharing, Adobe offering Connect available for up to 3 users from within most of Adobe’s products, and dozens of vendors in the space with these top twelve offering pretty stiff competition, the challenges for Yugma are not for the faint of heart and Lingaraj’s stick-to-it-iveness proves he’s not letting go of those challenges.

What’s next? He’s identified the precise number which he needs to get him to the period of economic growth that even the most casual observer knows is likely to appear early in 2010. His needs and burn rate are now modest and an investor who understands the possibilities of Yugma in our accelerating connected world, the strong user and customer base they enjoy, and the extension Yugma could provide to collaboration vendors (as one example), could buy in to a world-class technology for a song.

Much has been made, as it should, of how this campaign took advantage of a relatively untapped medium and how it reached its audience with the message of the Democratic President. And no one had better stories to tell than Scott Thomas (SimpleScott). Scott held the position of Design Director during the Obama campaign and is currently writing a book about the experience.

Scott took to the stage armed with a confident understated attitude and a slide deck that would help him tell the story of a campaign that moved at the speed of light and expected its online efforts to move at the same pace. “We were truly building an airplane…while in flight!” noted Scott. Throughout his presentation it was obvious that the message of “Change” heralded by the Obama campaign was not just a campaign slogan limited to bumper stickers and yard signs.

A diagram provided a quick reference for the crowd to see the many fronts on which the interactive campaign was being waged. Scott noted that the team, which grew from 2 to 16 over the course of the campaign, was placed right next to “old media” at the campaign headquarters. One can only imagine the thoughts running through the heads of those working in the traditional media departments regarding Scott and his band of “pink fuzzy unicorns” (the mascot of the design team) and internet geeks as they addressed social media sites, built online ads, posted hundreds of hours of video and so much more in a span of mere hours. Compared to the usual “news cycle”, being able to build, post, analyze, and re-task on a dime probably made the traditional media folks a bit nauseous.

Great attention was paid to delivering what Scott termed the “Core of the brand; Deliver a clear and concise message focused on ‘We’ rather than ‘Me’” Those familiar with the interactive and social media space easily recognize what it has to offer in delivering this kind of message.

Scott’s presentation laid out the many pieces that went into establishing “a consistency and balance to exemplify stability and experience.” For example, color consistency was a very important element across all of the design work. I was particularly struck by the many iterations of the main Obama site that were showcased in a sampling of what Scott noted were “46 or 47” Photoshop designs that were kicked around. From two and three column designs to placement within those columns all of the elements were discussed at length within the team.

In fact, as a result of those design meetings Scott noted the revelation that “The fold was dead!” referring to the age old newspaper terminology that migrated to site design that described everything visible on screen before scrolling. The team found that there was no way to get all of the vital information condensed into that space and that by making that content compelling enough the scrolling was immediate. In fact, Scott eluded that they even designed with the scroll wheel on the mouse in mind.

The MIMA crowd was also privy to aspects of the campaign that we in Minnesota were most likely not even aware of due to the non-battleground nature of our state in the campaign. We got glimpses of the VoteForChange.com ads that incorporated real quotes from real voters detailing why they were registering. Scott noted that they constantly worked to “Involve the users in the campaign.” He said “Being able to participate was crucial!” noting that you’re really able to hear the voice of the people. His message continually returned to the need to dialogue with people.

Scott concluded his presentation on a more personal note, taking time to share his point of view on the pitfalls and, most importantly, possibilities of this interactive space. He noted great concern that our “constant accessibility is beginning to wear on us”. People are experiencing incredible information overload and as Scott noted “Everyone is talking but no one is communicating.” He also made specific mention that while information should be open and shared, “No one should own our friends and no one should own our trends.” He told the crowd that “We are the architects of this brave new world.” and as the Obama campaign encouraged voters, Scott encouraged the gathered crowd…“Let’s go change the world.”

These findings illustrate a departure from the stagnation in home high-speed adoption rates that had prevailed from December, 2007 through December, 2008. During that period, Project surveys found that home broadband penetration remained in a narrow range between 54% and 57%.

The greatest growth in broadband adoption in the past year has taken place among population subgroups which have below average usage rates. Among them:

• Senior citizens: Broadband usage among adults ages 65 or older grew from 19% in May, 2008 to 30% in April, 2009.
• Low-income Americans: Two groups of low-income Americans saw strong broadband growth from 2008 to 2009.
  • Respondents living in households whose annual household income is $20,000 or less, saw broadband adoption grow from 25% in 2008 to 35% in 2009.
  • Respondents living in households whose annual incomes are between $20,000 and $30,000 annually experienced a growth in broadband penetration from 42% to 53%.

Overall, respondents reporting that they live in homes with annual household incomes below $30,000 experienced a 34% growth in home broadband adoption from 2008 to 2009.

• High-school graduates: Among adults whose highest level of educational attainment is a high school degree, broadband adoption grew from 40% in 2008 to 52% in 2009.
• Older baby boomers: Among adults ages 50-64, broadband usage increased from 50% in 2008 to 61% in 2009.
• Rural Americans: Adults living in rural America had home high-speed usage grow from 38% in 2008 to 46% in 2009.

The Pew Internet Project’s April 2009 survey interviewed 2,253 Americans, with 561 interviewed on their cell phones.

As I read the report, it was clear that this acceleration in broadband adoption is, in my view, being driven by a number of variables: economic downturn causing a seeking of alternatives, efficiency and cost savings; friends, family and colleagues online (many using social media) creating compelling reasons for others to connect; and a continuing growth of online services in news, information, entertainment and more.

All that said, the important thing to Minnesota innovators is that people are increasingly online at home and participating, and that’s important to all of us in the internet and web innovation space!

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off today).

Discussed during the show notes:

• Apple’s new iPhone 3Gs:  Selling previous iPhone’s online so as to upgrade; Crunchgear on tethering; Anandtech article
• Social Media Breakfast MSP this Friday
• TOSBack, a ‘Terms of Service’ tracker, which is a website that monitors changes in TOS
• Cory Doctorow’s book Craphound, read as a free audiobook and downloadable here and his website/blog here (with all of his books listed since once you start reading/listening to them, you’ll keep going).

“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

-Bill Joy, co-founder, Sun Microsystems

If you’re in business or lead an organization, you’re undoubtedly aware of the always on, always connected culture of participation online. The growing number of people participating in social networks, with social media and generating their own content in the form of blogs, videos and even scrapbooks, is fundamentally shifting how we are connecting with one another, getting our news and alerts, are being influenced by people we trust as we seek before we buy, and increasingly is how we’re making our voices heard when we like, or don’t like, something a company or organization is delivering to us.

Rather than stumble along with rudimentary methods of engaging customers, prospects, employees and other constituents, many organizations are turning toward commercial software vendors who have created a completely new class of hosted software offerings in a category called, “idea and suggestion management.”

If you’ve read Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott, or even the seminal book on the topic, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, than you’re staying abreast of the acceleration in companies discovering ways in which they can embrace their customer base and ecosystem for fun and profit (but mostly the profit).

In a growing number of conversations I’m having with business leaders, virtually all of them are either engaged in some form of outreach to their customers, prospects, partners and employees or they have initiatives in place geared toward learning how their organization can effectively engage people in new and online ways. With enough input from unleashed online participations coupled with smart decision-making within organizational leadership ranks — especially in product management or strategy creation areas — the ability for a company to build and deliver the right products and services goes up dramatically.

One oft-cited example of harnessing the collective intelligence of ones customer base is the Chicago-based t-shirt company, Threadless. The way their business model works is simple: the community of 850,000 people participating online at Threadless “vote” on their favorite t-shirt design (submitted by designers within the community at a rate of around 600 designs per week) and those are the t-shirts that are printed and sold. Threadless is essentially “offloading” their design to the community and enabling the community to be their defacto product managers, deciding on what they (the market) wants. 

After experiencing a public relations disaster in the tech community dubbed “Dell Hell“, Chairman Michael Dell took the reins of the company, revamped customer service and accelerated corporate transparency through blogging and other outreach. One of their most successful deployments is called IdeaStorm, a website which empowers the Dell customer, prospect, and partner base to engage in idea submission. The community votes on the best ideas. After registering on the site, users are able to add articles, promote them, demote them and comment on them, giving Dell an unprecedented amount of feedback and data about their products, services, brand, competition and more.

I thought it a good idea to visit this topic now on Minnov8, especially as there are signs the economy is growing and savvy leaders are looking for new ideas, fresh perspectives and different ways to engage with customers, an audience or an ecosystem and be effective and because of this new class of software which promises to enable an organization to engage people online.

In Minnesota, Best Buy is the “poster child” for this sort of engagement on a host of fronts. From the employee-only social network BlueShirtNation (now called “Mix“) to Giftag to the relatively new and well executed IdeaX (similiar conceptually to Dell’s Ideastorm), to Chief Marketing Officer, Barry Judge, who blogs and uses Twitter, they’re highly focused on driving forward and engaging on as many fronts as possible and truly understand how their customers and employees participate online and they’re ensuring the company is at those customer touch points.

Though Best Buy is quite public with their offerings — along with an unusual level of transparency and engagement with the community and an internal culture that supports these sorts of risks — even more traditional companies like General Mills are also rolling out initiatives like MyBlogSpark to engage women who blog (dubbed “mommybloggers”) in order to cultivate these key, household decision-makers on family nutrition.

But how would you get started?

Back in March, the site ReadWriteWeb had a guest author, Tom Powell from Co-Innovative, who wrote this fabulous post on the topic of idea and suggestion management and categorized leading vendors with an extensive writeup. Powell pointed out three categories of idea and suggestion management vendors and, while this category is mostly an enterprise-class software one, most have smaller versions that allow small businesses to get started as well. I’d encourage you to read the post, look at the vendors, and gain a sense of this category and what is being offered (and look at their client lists to see who else is using this sort of software).

At a minimum, there are several ways you can engage people online immediately without big software fees and these are effective regardless if you’re a Mom-n-Pop organization or a Fortune 100 company:

• Blog. Yep, the tried-n-true blog is remarkably effective for your organization as well as empowering individual functional areas in your company (or people in customer service, marketing and sales) to tell stories, be real and get messages out
• Twitter. I know, I know, everyone seems to be getting a Twitter account but there are automatic ways to alert your Twitter followers when you post to your blog(s). You can use associated services to send an audio, video or photo ‘tweet’ to them too. It’s a solid way to connect to the community and make it easy for them to follow you
• Multimedia. There are just no excuses anymore to not deliver video, screencast tutorials or product overviews, audio podcasts, image slideshows and more to enrich what you’re delivering, tell the stories around your brand, company or service, and help people engage with your organization and buy your stuff.

Make it easy for people to interact with you and they’ll tell you what they want, what they’re interested in, and what they hate about your products and services. If you don’t enable them to tell you, they’ll tell everyone else.

• Public Radio Tuner (#2 in iTunes store, 2M+ downloads, iTunes link)

• General Mills Betty Crocker Cookbook (iTunes link)

• Cisco/Linksys Media Hub Control

• Blausen Medical (high resolution medical imagery/videos, iTunes link)

• Smarter Agent Real Estate*

• Bacardi*

*Shipping this week.

This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.

Discussed during the show notes:

• Apple’s new iPhone 3Gs
• iPhone Developer Center
• Worldwide Developer’s Conference 2009 (WWDC) (Keynote stream here)
• Palm Pre (Palm Developer Network) and Google Android and Android Developer site
• Examples of iPhone venture funding: Smule lands $3.9M; Booyah gets $4.9M from Kleiner Perkins iFund; game publisher Ngmoco raises second round of $10M (first was $5M from Kleiner Perkins & Maple Investments)
• Skype and their new, open source SILK codec (developer site here).

Of course you’re paying attention to the always-on, always connected culture of participation online that is fundamentally shifting how we connect with one another, get our news and alerts, are influenced by people we trust and increasingly making our voices heard when we like or don’t like something a company or organization is delivering to us.

If you’ve read Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott, or even the seminal book on the topic, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, than you know about the acceleration in companies looking to figure out how to embrace their customer base and ecosystem for fun and profit (but mostly the profit).

In a growing number of conversations I’m having with business leaders, virtually all of them are either engaged in some form of outreach to their customers, prospects, partners and employees and learning how to engage them in new and online ways. With enough input and smart decision-making, the ability to build and deliver the right products and services goes up dramatically. I thought it a good idea to visit this topic now, especially as there now signs the economy is growing and we’re beginning to experience growth in our trend forecasting businesses, typically one bellwether pointing the way in the housing sector.

Best Buy is the “poster child” for this sort of engagement on a host of fronts. From the employee-only BlueShirtNation (now “Mix“) to Giftag to the relatively new and well executed IdeaX, they’re highly focused on driving forward and engaging on as many fronts as possible.

Though Best Buy is quite public with their offerings — along with an unusual level of transparency and engagement — General Mills is also going out with initiatives like MyBlogSpark to engage women who blog (dubbed “mommybloggers”) in order to engage the typical decision-maker in a household and are the ones who usually drive the family nutrition.

Back in March, the site ReadWriteWeb had a guest author, Tom Powell from Co-Innovative, who wrote this fabulous post on the topic and categorized leading idea and suggestion management vendors with an extensive writeup. 

Powell pointed out these three categories of idea and suggestion management vendors:

Centralized Aggregators:

• Get Satisfaction
• SuggestionBox
• FeVote
• Featurelist

Anyone can start a product or company page on these sites to submit ideas, suggestions, or complaints, which are then voted up or down, Digg-style, and commented on. Companies pay for access to this data, more powerful features, and the ability to “claim” pages and register official employee moderators. Like review sites such as Epinions, conversation happens on these sites with or without you.

Tool Providers:

• SalesForce Ideas Management
• UserVoice
• IdeaScale
• Get Satisfaction
• Kindling

These systems provide similar functionality to that of the centralized aggregators listed above but are controlled and run by the companies themselves. They include features such as ratings (or up/down votes), moderation, the ability to limit the number of votes per user or the access of certain groups, time-limited contests, and automatic searching for duplicate idea submissions.

Integrated Innovation Management Suites:

• Imaginatik
• BrainBank
• SalesForce Ideas Management
• Brightidea
• Spigit

The idea management portion of these suites generally have more robust capabilities, such as weighting the contributions of users according to expertise and trust, creating virtual currency systems, providing enterprise-class security, and customizing captured information. By integrating idea capturing and prioritization into a more robust and sophisticated system, companies can then evaluate the cost of ideas, put ideas through a formal review process, and track their performance from conception to execution.

So which aggregators should you be paying attention to? Which has the greatest reach? The strongest offering?

Read more of Tom Powell’s post here to discover more.

Metcalf tells the story on his “about” page on the site:

Years ago I flew from Minneapolis to Williamsport, PA to visit my brother. It took me 8+ hours to search for flights and figure out various travel dates and airport combinations. I thought…

“Why are travel sites so difficult to use (and understand), when I can find anything on Amazon or Google in a few seconds?”

I wanted to see the big picture, I wanted to know all of my options at once. My frustration with the whole process of understanding flights and airfares led me on a seven-year journey to create Flyspy.

If you would like to know why this took so long and why it’s so difficult, read the blog.

Check it out and put some intelligence on your side before you buy that next airline ticket.

The available session videos and slides from each track are listed on this page and they’ll be updating this session list with all the sessions for Google I/O so check back frequently.

The categories are:

• AJAX + Data APIs
• Social
• App Engine
• Enterprise
• Google Web Toolkit
• Tech Talks
• Wave
• Mobile
• Client

If you’re a Minnov8 reader, your lifeblood is probably internet-centric. Heck…if you have a PULSE you’re probably an internet user and would care deeply if any internet service provider was allowed to be in control over what you can-and-cannot-do over your internet connection.

Well, don’t just sit there….

Friend of technology, the internet, Minnesota and Minnov8, Mike O’Connor, is on the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force representing the metropolitan area user base and had this on his blog today and I urge you to take action:

Just got this note from Dennis Fazio.  I think it’s perfect so I’m just passing it along to you.  Time to speak out peepul!

Mike, You might want to encourage everyone to enter their comments to the FCC. A large number of citizen comments can help to counter the “everything’s just fine” mantra from the big telecom carriers. Here’s the Ars Technica article  with a nice background summary:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/reformers-isps-clash-on-national-broadband-plan.ars

The Notice of Inquiry is here for those who want to read through it:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-31A1.pdf

But really all you need to do is submit your comments about what you think the future of broadband networks should be by going here:

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi

It’s easy and quick You can upload a file, or more simply, type or paste a comment into the field provided.

You will need the proceeding number for field #1 and that would be:  09-51

A large number of knowledgeable citizen comments on the necessity of changing public policy to recognize broadband packet data networks as an essential public utility requiring active government investment, intervention and regulation might have some good effect.

Just so you know that I’m not asking you to do anything I wouldn’t do, peek at the letter I just submitted via the FCC website using Dennis’ link and the 09-51 code: 

Acting Chairman Michael Copps
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554

Dear Chairman Copps,

Strategic visionaries, futurists and social anthropologists concur that the internet is the conduit through which a dizzying array of services, communications, learning and play is already being delivered and growing by the day.

Rather than comment on all categories, let me instead choose one, television, as it is illustrative of the promise as well as the threat to innovation that could exist without thoughtful regulation in place and soon.

The major cable companies already own the largest deployment of infrastructure in existence which came, in no small part, with significant governmental assistance to ensure unfettered granting of rights-of-way in order to build out that cable footprint.

While fiber to the home has increased dramatically in areas where population density warrants the investments, the telecom companies have not been able to compete on a level playing field since copper’s capacity cannot match cable’s and the investment necessary to deploy fiber is decreasingly unlikely as consumers cancel landlines in favor of mobile and VoIP options.

With internet delivery of video accelerating (see #1 below), it’s clear that the cable companies have a lot at stake if competing video providers have unfettered access to the cable infrastructure.

THREE ANTI-COMPETITIVE STRATEGIC MOVES
While I truly do laud the investments the cable companies are making (e.g., my provider, Comcast, is deploying DOCSIS 3.0, and the upcoming 4.0, promising speeds of up to 160mbps up-n-down; building two new data centers in Denver, CO and Philadelphia, PA to accelerate on-demand video delivery and caching) and I completely understand that many of these investments are an absolute necessity if Comcast is to position themselves strategically.

What’s potentially the motivation behind what I’m suspecting is an attempt by companies like Comcast to be the internet video distributors of tomorrow? One word: revenue. In Comcast’s case, more than 50% of their revenues are driven by video distribution. Comcast has zero incentive to provide an uncontrolled, level playing field for others to distribute their video content through the cable that Comcast owns.

The anti-competitive moves?

1) Creating BANDWIDTH CAPS (e.g., Comcast 250GB cap) and claiming “less than 2% of customers even come close to that cap” creating the false impression that they’re being generous when, in fact, they’re seeing the trendlines in video delivery (as well as an explosion of competitors from Hulu to Revision3) and are undoubtedly preparing to do battle to preserve their monopolistic hold on video distribution through their internet carrying cable infrastructure

2) AUTHENTICATION. Because of the fast growth of media center services (e.g., Boxee, PlexApp, XBMC) which allow consumers to connect a PC to their HDTV and stream internet video….to major offerings like those from Hulu, Joost and YouTube’s HD quality, if the cable companies and other network providers have their way, our internet access to these competing providers will need to be “authenticated” — verifying that the location of our internet connection also subscribes to cableTV — before you’d be able to watch video through your internet connection.

Like most strategic moves, this ‘authentication’ one seems benign on the surface. My provider, Comcast, seems to be primarily positioning the use of authentication only for their Hulu knockoff, Fancast, rather than for the competitive sites like Hulu itself. The way that authentication would work is that you’d start streaming a cableTV subscriber-only show or movie to your computer or media center, but then find that it would only be accessible to you if you also had a cableTV subscription!

How benign is this strategic and likely anti-competitive move? In my view, it’s not benign at all but rather setting the stage for the next phase of video delivery — already begun through the internet and accelerating rapidly — and for those who already control your internet connection to be in charge of what content can be delivered and whom can deliver it.

3) CACHING: Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) augment the end-to-end internetwork by distributing big digital files on a variety of servers, which then optimize content delivery to the end user by placing these files (caching ‘em) closer to the places where people would consume them over Comcast’s (or any ISP) network.

At the recent Minnesota High Technology Association (MHTA) Spring Conference, David Diers, Comcast VP of Business Services for Minnesota, presented on a panel about broadband.

In an answer to a question I brought forth about CDN’s and caching, Mr. Diers expounded about their local Twin Cities servers that can store “10,000 hours of video content” and that they’re building “two data centers” (one in Philadelphia and one in Denver) that will allow them to “store more content locally” (i.e., in local areas like the Twin Cities metropolitan area). Though Mr. Diers was fairly clear that this initiative is intended for their Comcast On Demand service, the enormity of video files in general (and streaming video’s potentially negative impact on Comcast’s network) will most likely make non-Comcast on-demand videos (e.g., Hulu, AppleTV, popular YouTube ones, etc.) would make them prime candidates for local caching within Comcast’s network.

This certainly sparks a lot of questions that we need clear answers to, especially from an ISP in such a controlling position:

* Will Comcast actually cache video’s they don’t own the rights to?

* Are there copyright issues with doing so?

* How would video caching impact a provider’s ability to deploy analytics and measure usage, advertising metrics and other key performance requirements to offer a viable service?

* Would Comcast charge fees for providers to be cached, perhaps being dependent upon Comcast’s analytics rather than having free choice to select competing ones?

* What will be the potential negative impact on innovation, from a cost, distribution and delivery perspective, on startups? With companies like Hulu, Move Networks, Revision3, Joost, TWiT.tv — as well as the tools vendors that are already beginning to emerge due to the explosion of innovative internet video delivery — zero foresight on regulation would mean abdicating control to the cable companies and other ISP’s.

——————————–

The FCC’s challenge is separating the infrastructure from the applications layer and thinking about these as two, discrete layers requiring distinct regulations. Without mitigating the cable company (and other ISP’s) control over which innovators and disruptors are allowed to deliver on the infrastructure, tiny and modest improvements and growth are certain to be the norm. Separating the infrastructure and applications layer holds the promise of continued internet innovation on a mass scale.

–
Steve Borsch

#1:According to new research, the number of global broadband households will near 440 million by 2010 and top 1.2 billion by 2030.  During that same time, the number of broadband-enabled home networks will grow from 150 million in 2010 (34% of broadband homes) to more than 1.0 billion in 2030 (83% of broadband homes).  With such infrastructure in place, the opportunity for broadband-enabled services – especially video – will grow dramatically.

URL: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/705752/video_enabled_home_network_nodes_a_global

#2: Minnov8.com article, “Sorry. No Internet Video for You.”

URL:  http://minnov8.com/2009/04/24/sorry-no-internet-video-for-you/

Competition in the mobile phone space is heating up and the smartphone — a mobile phone with computer-like functionality — coupled with ever faster wireless network speeds are changing the way we access news, information, connections with our friends and family, and so much more.

A quick story illustrates one amusing (though not to my wife) use of my iPhone when I first got it. We were at a dinner party when the conversation came around to a particular song, but no one could recall who sang it. As the conversation continued I quickly used the web browser to Google the song name and roughly 30 seconds later blurted out, “Woody Guthrie!”

“Yes!,” everyone cried out simultaneously. “How did you know that,” one woman asked and I whipped out my iPhone to show how I’d quickly and almost instantly found the answer and we then had an interesting conversation about how the world was shifting toward one where we all could have instant access just like that.

A few years ago smartphones were few in number and came from manufacturer’s like Palm (e.g., Treo) and Nokia — and devices powered by Windows Mobile — were robust but somewhat limited in functionality and required an (arguably) geeky nature to use fully. The Blackberry device by Research in Motion (RIM) was a more limited one as far as applications go, but its external keyboard (to many the most important feature) and easy access to email (which was “pushed” to the device automatically) made it the perfect communication appliance for daily business use.

When Apple demonstrated and delivered the game-changing iPhone in June of 2007, its surprising ease of use and simple way to manipulate applications (e.g., pinching and zooming in on a photo or webpage) made a device like this easily accessible to the masses. Because of quick sales of the iPhone and a developer kit to build applications, Apple quickly saw a huge array of applications delivered on the device (more than 25,000 to date). Because of the simplicity of the device and the base of applications already available, sales accelerated to the now installed base of 21.2 million units and the announcement Monday, June 8th of a third generation model (and the second generation lower price point of $99) has caused most observers to see those numbers doubling within a year or so. 

Though the device is seen by many as perfect, many others decried the screen and software based keyboard and wished for an external one. Others wanted devices more “open” as in open source software and thus this infant smartphone marketplace has significant growth within it.

Last week came the new Palm Pre, a smartphone that is the first to most closely emulate the key ease of use and simple application manipulation first delivered on the iPhone. Google’s Android — a software platform rather than an integrated device — is also geared toward smartphones and many of its features rival the iPhone’s (and now the Pre’s).

Now that the devices have moved quickly toward a place where average users (vs. geeks only) can set up, use and even maximize usage of these smartphones, a fast network to use them on is key as well. The third and fourth generation wireless mobile phone networks are, in fact, already here (though lacking in ubiquitous coverage) and the devices plus fast networks means that we all are walking around with computers in our pockets or purses that are, in effect, extending our minds.

This article I’d read came as a surprise when I learned that one of Apple’s fastest growing iPhone market segments were comprised of people that didn’t own a personal computer or couldn’t afford a broadband connection. But the iPhone IS a computer and provides email, web browsing, video watching, Twitter use and all of the other things people feel they must have to be a part of our connected society, and thus allowed them to be a participant.

I’ve been in conversations with educators about technology and social media — and about the current paradigm of cramming kids’ brains with facts — and my asking why we need to teach rote facts about the countries that surround, say, the Baltic Sea when it can be instantly looked up? Are there ways to focus on how to search, ways to seek and verify authentic material, and move toward an educational model that would assume an always on, always connected student population?

In our working world, enlightened companies are realizing that providing a solid and good experience to employees with access to information and work processes (and email, of course) allows the employee to access and deal with a task, communication or even idea when they have a moment or when inspiration strikes, rather than hope that all that can be stored up and dealt with when they’re in the office.

Tapping into the streams of consciousness of people one follows on Twitter, reading blog posts and staying abreast of news and other information, means that all of us are more aware of the meaningful inputs of others whom we find value.

Then there is just the simple utility of having movie showtimes, a dictionary, time zones, airfare lookups, stock tickers, and even games, means that smartphones extend our minds so that we’re no longer tethered to a desk for computer and internet use in the same way that the mobile phone for voice made us free from a phone line.

Look for us next Saturday with an all new show (by the way, I just noticed that those are a man’s hands holding the binoculars up to that young woman and seems sort of creepy!).

The event will be held at Nicollet Island Pavilion and feature Scott Thomas (aka SimpleScott). According ot MIMA you’re invited to “take a look at how the Obama campaign looked before (Scott) and other designers, joined the team for the last election season.” and promises “You’ll see how it was, how it evolved, and the lessons learned along the way. ”

Scott Thomas, aka SimpleScott, was invited to join the New Media team at Obama for America during the campaign and it led to him becoming the Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign.

Google describes the Sandbox: “The Developer Sandbox is a new addition to Google I/O. Comprised of “pods” -- demo station areas grouped by product theme -- the Sandbox featured a wide range of developers who have built applications based on technologies and products featured at Google I/O. Representing large and small companies, individual developers, and a diverse group of apps, these developers were on hand at the Sandbox to demo their apps, answer questions, exchange ideas, and meet attendees in person. We interviewed many of the Sandbox developers on the ground at Google I/O to pick their brains on their applications, challenges, and best practices.”

View and listen to Ben and Curtis’ descriptions:

New ways to share, trade and aggregate information using Internet-based markets are exploding. These powerful Web 2.0 network knowledge markets help companies, schools, governments and individuals to acquire and master ever-growing bodies of knowledge. These prediction market capabilities achieve mastery knowledge management (KM) and collective intelligence with stunning speed, efficiency and accuracy.

Collective Intelligence Summit: Leading Enterprise Prediction Markets
I happened upon this press release about a summit event at the U of MN about prediction markets. Though the marketing of this event is so laughingly bad that I had to go BACK to the press release to figure out how much it costs ($399) — since this event page is confusing, poorly laid out and appears to be targeted at a group of people already in-the-know — the potential of receiving benefit from attending it makes slogging through this inadequate communication worthwhile.

While this summit might seem a bit esoteric or academic (which it just might be), if you’re working on collaboration, enterprise social media or connected innovation, this is something you might find invaluable.

From their site:

What are Prediction Markets? Also known as information markets (PM), decision markets, idea futures, and virtual markets, prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. Assets are created whose final cash value is tied to a particular event, outcome or parameter (e.g., total sales next quarter). The current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter.

People who buy low and sell high are rewarded for improving the market prediction, while those who buy high and sell low are punished for degrading the market prediction. Evidence so far suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate as other institutions predicting the same events with a similar pool of participants.

One of the oldest and most famous is the University of Iowa’s Iowa Electronic Market. It has been predicting the results of American presidential elections since 1988 with greater accuracy than polling companies.

DETAILS:

Where: Carlson School of Management, Executive Center Room 2-206 (Directions)

When: Thursday 18 June  2009, 8:00am – 5:00pm

Registration is here (Secure, online registration is required and includes meals, refreshments, materials and Wi-Fi)

Questions?: Please Contact Sarah V. Jones, sarah.jones@pmclusters.com, Tel: 978-468-0267, Fax: 206-984-2429



Today’s hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, and Phil Wilson (Graeme Thickins is off today).

Discussed During the Show Notes:

• Tim mentions Serious Eats and the mention of local vendor ChefShack (Twitter @chefshack1 and website), “A Minneapolis-based truck operated by two chefs with 20 years of experience in notable fine dining kitchens.“

All Things D releases:

1. Steve Ballmer interview and announcement of Bing (not-yet-live site; Virtual Press Kit for Bing)
2. Roger McNamee and Jon Rubenstein (Palm investors) interview and Palm Pre discussion as well as a new demo

• Google Wave introduction which Techcrunch’s Mike Arrington positioned as something that stole the thunder from Microsoft’s Bing announcement (read “What Just Happened? Thursday was Supposed to be Bing Day.“)

• J Wynia and Garrick Van Buren’s interview from 2006 with J)