Hands on First Thoughts with the Nexus One

• Presentation and boxing of the device is fine, looks the part, the un-boxing drew oohs and ahhs from non geeks
• Easy to find and set up the home wireless network
• Moves you straight to a google account set up
• o2 iphone sim doesn’t seem to support any data connectivity 
• The SD card didn’t quite sit in the mount correctly which created several errors on the phone, until I reseated the SD card the phone created several error messages in applications and it also crashed the phone a couple of times.  now the SD card is in the correct position I have not had to reboot.

• The iphone feels slightly heavier and the screen is noticabley smaller
• Lack of multitouch not a major problem with N1 for me, zoom in and out works fine
• N1 touch screen seems a little more sensitive which makes the scrolling easier and a more comfortable experience
• With the iphone I can press the home button twice and the screen is enabled (easy) on the N1 I have to press the power button located at the top of the phone (bad) this small thing turns a constant activity from a one finger double tap into a Full hand maneuver (to be fair to the N1 voice search has quickly told me how to spell maneuver)
• The four soft touch buttons take some time to get used to and they are central to the operation of the phone
• I don’t think the ball is central to the operation of the phone and should be removed, it seems an un-necessary nobble
• I haven’t had a great time to spend with the virtual keyboard yet but first impression is that the iphone keyboard feels easier to use. This may very well be an unfair comparison to make at this stage as I have spent many hours learning to use and adopt the iphone keyboard.

Good Points:

• Easy access to Android app market
• Voice enabled apps get an early thumbs up
• Open android marketplace seems to encourage innovation (beebplayer app is fantastic)
• Camera is great
• Google maps is much better on N1.

• Can’t edit google docs from N1, this should be enabled from the get go
• I want apps specified, optimised for N1, the flip side of an open Android apps market and multiple devices/android OS versions meants that you have to scroll through lots of apps that don’t seem relevant to for droid etc
• Quite a few software hang ups already, quite a few forced app shutdown and one total reboot (related to SD card that was not installed, no such problems after the SD card was 
• Still waiting for flash…coming soon in H1 2010 we are told 
• Fragmentation of android infects the app market, creates confusion and possibly dilutes the experience
• 4Gb memory card is a poor effort compared to the iphone gs 16Gb.

Lack of itunes:

• I use itunes every day for managing my music and podcast downloads.  The N1 has no comparable application, a couple of applications (Google Live and Doubleswitch) attempt to fill the void but they aren’t really fit for purpose yet.  Google Live shows promise but is a Google Labs project and it looks that way at the moment.  This is a big hole for me and will prevent me from switching to N1 for the time being.
• No google voice for the uk yet…come on Google (I do have a Ribbit account so will check that out over the next couple of days).

2010 UC thoughts

• Industry
  • Customers will continue to ask for greater UC interoperability and the vendors will continue to under deliver
  • Towards the end of 2010 the growth in Enterprise video will be recognised as a significant challenge for IT departments
  • To cope with bandwidth demands IT departments start to consider and migrate from MPLS to Internet based networks
  • (Bad) Enterprise IT shops will continue to invest time and effort in defining what cloud computing is without delivering to their customers/users.  This does not mean cloud based IT will diminish, far from it IBM, Google, Microsoft and Cisco will collectively sell large numbers of cloud based software.
  • Fortune 500 will continue to play catch up with their Enterprise mobile strategy – blackberry, iphone, droid, windows systems are creating mass confusion within the Enterprise mobile segment and the Nexus One will only continue to add to the need for a strategy that encompasses a multi software, multi device approach
  • It will be the year of touch, multiple tablets will be released in the consumer space and this will inevitability flow into the Enterprise
• Google
  • Chrome OS, Chrome, Apps and Android will dominate the headlines and start to register on the Enterprise strategy and product road maps
  • Search revenue will continue to fund Google’s push into the Enterprise UC market
    • Challenges
  • Can Google integrate their Apps into a mature Enterprise offer
  • Will Google be able to develop a service and channel offer that large scale enterprises can have confidence in
  • Can they find the skills and experience that enables Google to compete in the Enterprise market
• Microsoft
  • OCS 2010 to launch in Q4
  • Bucket loads (millions of seats) of BPOS will be sold in 2010, predominately driven by Exchange and Sharepoint with OCS seen as a nice to have.
  • Plenty of windows7 will sell which will help drive further OCS sales
  • The new OCS 2010 client may attempt to take the sting out of Google Wave and Live Meeting will be on the way out
    • Challenges
  • OCS 2010 launch requires significant channel investment by Microsoft – if they want to complete in the entire UC market they have to bulk up their experience within the voice vertical
  • Customers will continue to challenge MS to deliver the latest OCS features on the BPOS platform
  • Will Tandberg continue to support OCS?  If not, expect a large hole in the OCS video portfolio that will have to be filled
• Cisco
  • Cisco will continue to play catch up in UC, which may take another 2/3 quarters to work out but they will invest and eventually get it right
  • Beginning in Q2 Cisco will launch a first salvo in the UC space with CUCM 8 and in Q4 will launch a second salvo with webex email/conferencing etc
    • Challenges
  • Rationalize their UC product set – Cisco currently have too many products and too many teams  don’t seem to communicate that managed to generate another 60 products in Q4 2009. Customers want to reduce complexity and wish to purchase a consolidated product set (Free advice to Cisco label all your voice/video capabilities including CIMA, CUMA, CUPS et al simply under CUCM)
  • Its not about phone numbers any more.  Simplicity of intra and inter company contact facilitated seamlessly by presence, instant messaging, voice and video.  When I email someone today I don’t need to know their IP address, it would be great if i didn’t have to remember a plus ten digit number
  • Understand when and where cloud based offers are relevant for their product set and again consolidate the offers
• IBM
  • IBM will continue to develop a strong set of software products and continue to win service and consulting based business
    • Challenges
  • Can they stop the shift away from Notes to Exchange
  • Can they win a major customer away from any of Microsoft’s UC product set
  • Does middleware really work in the UC world

Setting up publishing from google docs to wordpress 2.9

Voice is changing within the Enterprise

I’ve been working recently on several voice projects for large corporates. For many years I have not been overly impressed with the business justification for the move from TDM to VoiP. The issues of reliability, cost and reduced VoiP functionality made me fell uneasy, even though I come from a data – as opposed to voice – background.

Now I finally think VoiP is a dead duck. My definition of VoiP being the replacement of TDM fixed phone technology with IP based fixed phone technology. Product developments by Cisco, Microsoft and even Google over the past twelve months are starting to render VoiP obsolete.

Finally Unified Communications is coming to the fore. I’ll define UC in a later post but for now here is a quick presentation on where I think fixed voice is going over the next 4 – 5 years.

More to come on this subject.

EA Sports business challenge

EA Sports have a well established and mature catalogue of computer sport franchises.  Madden and FIFA are the big sellers, with NBA Live, NCAA Football, NHL and Tiger Woods all contributors to annual sales.  The problem EA have is that the annual release cycle for each franchise is seemingly creating a jaded feel to the games, even though many of the games contain a large number of improvements. Madden last year was good example. A new art direction gave it a great new look but many people questioned was there enough of a change to justify a new purchase. 

The incremental nature of improvement within a game seem at odds with an annual purchase. To help combat this dislocation Peter Moores has created a new approach where the development studios communicate early and often with the community.

To this end EA Sports are utilising a large number of social media tools:

• Peter Moores, head of EA Sports has a regular blog that contains full and frank discussion about the EA Sports business
• Over the past couple of months developers of the 2010 games have started to blog early about their games
• EA Sports have a presence on Playstation Home
• They stream interactive content such as news within their games
• Developers are encouraged to particiapte within the community forums
• Gamers can upload their favourite plays within the game to show off on youtube
• EA Sports have invested heavily to provide the most comprehensive online play for gamers
• Within the 2009 series FIFA and NBA included a constantly updated player form and play feature

While these are welcome additions I suspect social media alone is not enough, the annual release cycle may be flawed, they may have to find a subscription payment similar to a MMORPG and investigate further in game sponsorships and advertising.

Such a change will not occur overnight, many people still want to buy the annual release from a retail outlet, however a growing number of gamers no longer see the value of the annual release. The social media tools the EA team are currently deploying could be the start of a strategy that could change their entire business model.

btw I’m a sport nut so I love Madden, NCAA Football (only available in the UK via PS3 import), Fifa (much improved but still does not feel dynamic enough), NHL (be a pro mode), EA Cricket and Rugby when available.

Creating a twitter stream with Wordpress

In the space of a few hours with a combination of Wordpress, RSS and a couple of Wordpress plugins any business can create a twitter stream that collects information from several different RSS feeds and provides an automatic twitter update. The functionality is similar to Yahoo pipes or twitterfeed but crucially for the Enterprise this functionality can be provided behind the firewall rather than rely on third party services.

This solution could be used to aggregate multiple content stream generated within the Enterprise and streamed to twitter. PR releases, news items, product updates, service updates.
What I haven’t looked at yet is streaming content to an internal twitter service. If achievable this solution moves from a simple automatic twitter tool to a company wide Enterprise work flow system.

To prove the concept I have taken three NFL streams (NFL Network, National Football Post and ESPN NFL) and aggregated them into a single twitter stream at nflfreeagency. The Wordpress output can be found here.

Here’s a quick overview of how the solution works:

Stage One: the basics

• download and install wordpress 2.7 onto your web server

Stage Two: managing the multiple RSS streams

• three plugins are required that will allow you to manage RSS feeds and display on your Wordpress blog: SimplePie Core, SimplePie for WP and WP-o-Matic
• when the three plugins are installed browse to WP-o-Matic in settings and enter the feeds you wish to manage
• once entered WP-o-Matic will create a new blog post for every new RSS entry

Stage Three: getting your blog posts from Wordpress into twitter

• download Alex King’s TwitterTools plugin and install within Wordpress, make sure you check the options to create a new tweet for every new blog entry

Wordpress in the enterprise

Wordpress is a great platform. Considering all the money and time spent on enterprise software it is amazing to think that Wordpress can provide many of the same features and functionality and yet is rarely spoken as a serious option.

Below is by no means an exhaustive list of how Wordpress can be applied within the business environment. I will attempt to keep adding to this list as I go along.

General business functionality

1 – General blog platform (well kind of obvious I know)

2 – Take the wind out of Yammer’s sails and create an internal twitter clone

3 – Nice and easy ecommerce website

4 – General team/news site

5 – Video web site (e-learning etc) – Video in the enterprise is going to be a big growth area over the next couple of years and IT teams could do a great deal worse than establishing their early thoughts on a Wordpress platform.

6 – Idea site (digg functionality)

Vertical specific

1 – local news
2 – sport webpage
3 – local sports club
4 – real estate

Mind the IT Gap: Introduction

I’ve witnessed a new growing anxiety within IT departments over the last few years. Apart from worrying about the usual stuff: costs, viruses, delayed projects, handling faults etc etc there is a new challenge – the power home user. The power home user challenges the IT department to provide an IT capability similar to what a user can have at home. At home they typically have a broadband connection, a wireless network, applications in the cloud that can be accessed from anywhere with a mobile device, choice in the browser they use and google provides access to information. All for what they consider a relatively cheap price: £30 a month broadband, £35 a month on a mobile device, the largest expense being the hardware device, £700 – £1000 for a laptop or £300 – £400 for a desktop which they refresh every 2 – 3 years.  They don’t care too much about the operating system but are probably on windows XP or Vista which they only upgrade if and when they upgrade their hardware.

This type of user isn’t the geeky type of person who are likely only to reside in the IT department, they are a typical office worker in a standard environment and when they get to work they feel frustrated with the technology they have at their disposal.  This type of feeling was experienced by the Obama team when they moved into the White House, where an Obama aide was quoted as saying the gap in technology was comparable to Xbox and Atari.

The type of frustrations power home users experience at work:

They require multiple sign offs or certain managerial ‘privileges’ to receive mobile email access.  iphone support is ‘on the IT roadmap’ (translation – will be supported when it is too late)
They are often constricted to a single browser
Company applications are often bespoke and do not support good usability
They try and search their intranet and hardly ever seem to find what they are looking for
The network their office sits on is slow and prone to failure
It takes several minutes to log onto the corporate network

Even greater challenges for the IT department:

The power home user doesn’t even include the cohort of users that are just hitting the workforce, sometime referred to as Generation Y or Millennials, those that have grown up exclusively with the internet, who are likely to find corporate IT provision even more alien to their standard computing consumption.

The question is will business simply shrug it’s shoulders and tell such workers to suck it up or will IT departments adjust their habits and provision to adapt to their growing base of users that demand more?

Opportunity Database

Intel WAN traffic 2004 – 2008

Intel publish their IT performance each year. I’ve extrapolated the Wide Area Network figures and I am not surprised to find the explosive growth in demand that the Intel IT team have had to meet in WAN traffic. I do hope they negotiate a good deal with their WAN provider that at least includes year on year reductions in price per terabyte.

Thanks to Intel for the openness in providing the data, the report is valuable for the whole IT industry.