I am in Australia this week speaking at a series of Internet security conferences in different cities about email encryption. While being away from home has made it hard to stay on top of the news, I did hear that Yahoo has officially spurned Microsoft’s $44 billion takeover bid. So I began to think carefully of who should try to buy the long-standing Internet portal company. Here are my top suggestions, some of them serious, some not.
- Proctor and Gamble. What better place to land than someone that advertises the most products in the most markets? And while the DOJ might have some anti-trust issues, particularly with other consumer products companies that would feel slighted over P&G-hoo, at least they could say this is the cleanest merger in history.
- Anheiser-Busch. Along similar lines, we might as well have someone that at least knows how to run a variety of major businesses (they operate their own railroad, as an example – how far of a stretch is it to run data transportation company?) and also understands how advertising works. It would also be a big plus to replace A-B’s miserable Bud.tv with a video sharing site that is actually worthwhile, too.
- AT&T. They already work with Yahoo to provide email addresses for their DSL customers. They certain have similar goals in terms of world domination, lousy customer service, and buying up lots of smaller companies and not knowing what to do with them. This way Yahoo could get a leg up on its competitors by prioritizing its own net traffic. This could have the side benefit of killing off the Equal Access legislation, and just letting AT&T control everything, just like it was 1950 all over again. (just kidding, somewhat)
- Intuit. The financial news portion of Yahoo would fit nicely in with the world’s Quicken and QuickBooks users. And Intuit could improve Yahoo’s content focus in other areas, too.
- Cisco. They have lots of cash, they buy lots of other networking companies, why not have something in their portfolio that can really connect everything together? They certainly understand Internet business models, and could add Yahoo’s APIs into IOS to provide portals-in-a-router. Plus, they were also started by a couple of Stanford geeks, so there would be some nice chemistry too with Filo and Yang.
- Sony. They have almost redeemed themselves after the copy protection debacles of yesteryear. Why not pull out the online music piece of Yahoo and really make it all possible?
- Amazon.com. They sell everything else on earth, so why not combine forces? There is some natural synergies with the music storefronts, they could tie in Yahoo IM to notify people of their purchases, and they resell DSL services too.
- Ron Paul. He is doing so well raising money over the Internet, why not own a real portal company?
- Tuvalu. The small island country already owns dot TV domains, why not expand their reach and have some real Internet clout? Given the revenue stream from all the folks who want their domains, they might be able to afford a competitive bid.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Ten years of corporate email progress
I am off to Australia later this week, in preparation of a series of seminars that Joel Snyder and I will be doing there. My portion of the talks will focus on email and file encryption. Australia is in the process of beefing up their privacy laws and creating a uniform code for the entire country that will necessitate deploying encryption for most business communications.
The trip comes almost ten years to the day that I started working on my book "Internet Messaging" with Marshall Rose, who was one of the inventors of the POP protocol, the underlying fabric of what every Internet email product uses today. So I thought it would be worthwhile to see where we have come in the last ten years with corporate email.
Ten years is a couple of lifetimes in the tech world, but it is interesting how much hasn't changed in the corporate email universe.
Sure, some products have left the landscape: Netscape Messenger and CompuServe's WinCIM have been replaced by Google's Gmail and other Web-based emailers. Microsoft Exchange has taken plenty of market share from Notes, now firmly part of IBM's software product line and Groupwise is nearly extinct. The notion of primarily LAN-based email, such as cc:Mail and MHS, is also gone.
Ten years ago, we had spotty Internet connectivity and unreliable gateways. Now it is taken for granted, intrinsic to any real email product, and no one would roll out email in their organization without it. Email used to be part of a secure perimeter of services that a corporation could protect and defend. As the level of Internet integration has increased, the perimeter is no more, and now corporations are trying to implement endpoint security measures.
Many businesses are running Internet-only email products such as Communigate, which works with Microsoft Outlook and Internet clients. Ten years ago, cell phones were still used mostly for voice calls: now texting and IM'ing from a phone predominates, and applications such as Twitter make it easy for people to communicate their doings in real time to a mass audience.
Speaking of Instant Messaging, it has become firmly rooted in many corporate cultures, largely because the email traffic has ballooned beyond control and because people want immediate real-time answers from their co-workers. And as corporate teams have become more distributed, IM can connect them in ways that email never could.
Ten years ago, we were careful about putting personal information online, because for many people it was still a pretty new experience, and because people who participated in Usenet discussions knew their words would be recorded for posterity. Now Usenet is the province of spammers, porn and peer file stealing services, replaced by Facebook and other social networks. And nowadays we have become careless and give out routinely this information, especially as teens and college students dominate in these applications. We have already seen some privacy implications and more are on their way.
Today we see situations where our IP address, our online purchase history, our postal address, and various account numbers are included in email messages that anyone can easily read with the right tools and time and determination. The proposed Australian laws, as an example, are making collecting customer information more of a liability than an asset for corporations that want to do business inside their country.
Rich email – the ability to send a message with clickable links and graphics – has become de rigueur, but spammers and phishers have made it less desirable by embedding their malware into these links.
Speaking of spam, that hasn't changed much in ten years, only just more of the mail stream than ever. There are dozens of tools to try to block and cleanse this junk, but it still is a war of attrition and an arms race to stay ahead of spammers.
Another thing that hasn't changed much in ten years is email encryption. PGP Corporation has gone through several transformations of its own in the past ten years, and now has a wider product line, including its Universal product and other tools to manage the crypto infrastructure. Companies such as IronPort (now a part of the growing Cisco family), Tumbleweed, and Voltage Security are making a good living selling corporate solutions that offer some form of encryption products.
Despite all of these products being far better than they were ten years ago, for the most encrypted email is still nowhere to be found, and is still implemented only in the rarest of circumstances. I think I can count on one hand the number of people who I regularly correspond with encrypted emails, and that is probably being generous.
In the ideal world, email encryption would be available for communication anytime and from any machine, not just the PCs that are running specialized software tools. It would work across different products with some level of confidence. A product would allow its users to provision themselves without having to call in IT support or someone who could wade through all the numerous options. It would be easily managed by thinning IT staffs or outsourced to competent staffs, and available at low cost too. None of these statements were true ten years ago, and they still are largely unrealized today.
Finally, one thing that remains constant is how email is the universal notification system for so many applications that we now use. Most of the social networks can be set up to send you email when a friend joins your network, or adds you to theirs. Everything from shared document services to Internet faxing to common calendars to CRM tools makes use of email messaging infrastructure in some fashion.
The trip comes almost ten years to the day that I started working on my book "Internet Messaging" with Marshall Rose, who was one of the inventors of the POP protocol, the underlying fabric of what every Internet email product uses today. So I thought it would be worthwhile to see where we have come in the last ten years with corporate email.
Ten years is a couple of lifetimes in the tech world, but it is interesting how much hasn't changed in the corporate email universe.
Sure, some products have left the landscape: Netscape Messenger and CompuServe's WinCIM have been replaced by Google's Gmail and other Web-based emailers. Microsoft Exchange has taken plenty of market share from Notes, now firmly part of IBM's software product line and Groupwise is nearly extinct. The notion of primarily LAN-based email, such as cc:Mail and MHS, is also gone.
Ten years ago, we had spotty Internet connectivity and unreliable gateways. Now it is taken for granted, intrinsic to any real email product, and no one would roll out email in their organization without it. Email used to be part of a secure perimeter of services that a corporation could protect and defend. As the level of Internet integration has increased, the perimeter is no more, and now corporations are trying to implement endpoint security measures.
Many businesses are running Internet-only email products such as Communigate, which works with Microsoft Outlook and Internet clients. Ten years ago, cell phones were still used mostly for voice calls: now texting and IM'ing from a phone predominates, and applications such as Twitter make it easy for people to communicate their doings in real time to a mass audience.
Speaking of Instant Messaging, it has become firmly rooted in many corporate cultures, largely because the email traffic has ballooned beyond control and because people want immediate real-time answers from their co-workers. And as corporate teams have become more distributed, IM can connect them in ways that email never could.
Ten years ago, we were careful about putting personal information online, because for many people it was still a pretty new experience, and because people who participated in Usenet discussions knew their words would be recorded for posterity. Now Usenet is the province of spammers, porn and peer file stealing services, replaced by Facebook and other social networks. And nowadays we have become careless and give out routinely this information, especially as teens and college students dominate in these applications. We have already seen some privacy implications and more are on their way.
Today we see situations where our IP address, our online purchase history, our postal address, and various account numbers are included in email messages that anyone can easily read with the right tools and time and determination. The proposed Australian laws, as an example, are making collecting customer information more of a liability than an asset for corporations that want to do business inside their country.
Rich email – the ability to send a message with clickable links and graphics – has become de rigueur, but spammers and phishers have made it less desirable by embedding their malware into these links.
Speaking of spam, that hasn't changed much in ten years, only just more of the mail stream than ever. There are dozens of tools to try to block and cleanse this junk, but it still is a war of attrition and an arms race to stay ahead of spammers.
Another thing that hasn't changed much in ten years is email encryption. PGP Corporation has gone through several transformations of its own in the past ten years, and now has a wider product line, including its Universal product and other tools to manage the crypto infrastructure. Companies such as IronPort (now a part of the growing Cisco family), Tumbleweed, and Voltage Security are making a good living selling corporate solutions that offer some form of encryption products.
Despite all of these products being far better than they were ten years ago, for the most encrypted email is still nowhere to be found, and is still implemented only in the rarest of circumstances. I think I can count on one hand the number of people who I regularly correspond with encrypted emails, and that is probably being generous.
In the ideal world, email encryption would be available for communication anytime and from any machine, not just the PCs that are running specialized software tools. It would work across different products with some level of confidence. A product would allow its users to provision themselves without having to call in IT support or someone who could wade through all the numerous options. It would be easily managed by thinning IT staffs or outsourced to competent staffs, and available at low cost too. None of these statements were true ten years ago, and they still are largely unrealized today.
Finally, one thing that remains constant is how email is the universal notification system for so many applications that we now use. Most of the social networks can be set up to send you email when a friend joins your network, or adds you to theirs. Everything from shared document services to Internet faxing to common calendars to CRM tools makes use of email messaging infrastructure in some fashion.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Network security is a lot like tough love
For those of you that are parents, have you ever considered how keeping our networks secure is a lot like trying to provide tough love to our children? When we are raising our kids, knowing when to say no is one of the hardest things we have to do. We also have to let our kids make their own mistakes, and when they do how they have to face the consequences. Finally, blended families through remarriage have their own special issues. (My thanks to my friend Carol for the original idea.)
Now, let’s consider what this means for us as network and IT professionals. Learning how to say no is understanding how to block the wrong kinds of traffic entering our networks, such as malware and viruses. And today’s threats are also coming over Instant Messaging and peer-to-peer connections, so there is that to consider. It is always tough to say no to your kids, and your users, and even harder when your users always want to hear yes when we are saying no, too.
Learning from our users mistakes is also particularly difficult. We have to review our firewall and access logs and make sure that network exploits haven’t happened on our watch. Part of this is also understanding when we don’t have sufficient resources for this kind of monitoring and being able to make a case to outsource this function so that we can spend our time elsewhere.
Part of tough love parenting is teaching our kids how to face consequences of their actions, and part of our jobs as networking professionals is showing our management the consequences of their actions too. If our firewalls and other protective gear is outdated, that decision will have certain consequences. If our desktops are more than five years old and haven’t been patched with the latest protection, that will have consequences too. If we have deployed virtualization without careful analysis, that will ripple across the data center when there are problems.
Finally, there are the special issues that blended families and step-children bring to the table, and that has its analogs with how mergers and acquisitions play out in the corporate world. What if my newly acquired subsidiary is running Juniper and I am a Cisco shop? Or if they outsource all their Web servers and I still run them inside my data center? Or if I have been using a smaller vendor that is now bought by HP or Cisco or Oracle, just to name a few companies that have been on buying binges as of late?
How does this translate for our daily interactions with our users? Part of being a great parent is being able to listen to the subtext, and understand what your kids are really saying to you when they ask you questions. The same can be said for our users. I remember one of mine from the middle 1980s who didn't like any of my suggestions for how to use his PC. What he really was telling me is that he wanted to make his own mistakes, and learn from the experience. Of course, he formatted his disk and wiped out his data along the way to learning how not to do that, and I had to hold my tongue.
Another facet of IT-by-parenting is understanding that security-by-obscurity is not going to work. On the Internet, especially today's Facebook-Twitter-always-in-your-face Web 2.0 version, everyone knows your business, and even your personal life too. You need a plan, and you need to protect your networks accordingly.
Yes, being able to provide tough love is, well, tough. If you want to hear more about this, it coincidentally is the topic of a speech that I am giving on Thursday at the Sonicwall sales conference in San Francisco. If you can’t make it, I can bring this talk to your meeting and customize it for your audience, too.
Now, let’s consider what this means for us as network and IT professionals. Learning how to say no is understanding how to block the wrong kinds of traffic entering our networks, such as malware and viruses. And today’s threats are also coming over Instant Messaging and peer-to-peer connections, so there is that to consider. It is always tough to say no to your kids, and your users, and even harder when your users always want to hear yes when we are saying no, too.
Learning from our users mistakes is also particularly difficult. We have to review our firewall and access logs and make sure that network exploits haven’t happened on our watch. Part of this is also understanding when we don’t have sufficient resources for this kind of monitoring and being able to make a case to outsource this function so that we can spend our time elsewhere.
Part of tough love parenting is teaching our kids how to face consequences of their actions, and part of our jobs as networking professionals is showing our management the consequences of their actions too. If our firewalls and other protective gear is outdated, that decision will have certain consequences. If our desktops are more than five years old and haven’t been patched with the latest protection, that will have consequences too. If we have deployed virtualization without careful analysis, that will ripple across the data center when there are problems.
Finally, there are the special issues that blended families and step-children bring to the table, and that has its analogs with how mergers and acquisitions play out in the corporate world. What if my newly acquired subsidiary is running Juniper and I am a Cisco shop? Or if they outsource all their Web servers and I still run them inside my data center? Or if I have been using a smaller vendor that is now bought by HP or Cisco or Oracle, just to name a few companies that have been on buying binges as of late?
How does this translate for our daily interactions with our users? Part of being a great parent is being able to listen to the subtext, and understand what your kids are really saying to you when they ask you questions. The same can be said for our users. I remember one of mine from the middle 1980s who didn't like any of my suggestions for how to use his PC. What he really was telling me is that he wanted to make his own mistakes, and learn from the experience. Of course, he formatted his disk and wiped out his data along the way to learning how not to do that, and I had to hold my tongue.
Another facet of IT-by-parenting is understanding that security-by-obscurity is not going to work. On the Internet, especially today's Facebook-Twitter-always-in-your-face Web 2.0 version, everyone knows your business, and even your personal life too. You need a plan, and you need to protect your networks accordingly.
Yes, being able to provide tough love is, well, tough. If you want to hear more about this, it coincidentally is the topic of a speech that I am giving on Thursday at the Sonicwall sales conference in San Francisco. If you can’t make it, I can bring this talk to your meeting and customize it for your audience, too.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Come see the spyware side at Sears
The news late last year about a community Web site from Sears hasn't been good, and should be a sobering lesson for any would-be eCommerce merchant. Security researchers uncovered issues with the site, MySHCcommunity.com (Sears Holdings Company is what the buried acronym stands for). Users can "optionally" install some very pernicious spyware on their computers that will track their browsing history and purchases.Harvard B-school professor Ben Edelman's blog describes the installation process in copious detail here.
Sears' documentation for what exact information is being tracked by the software is buried inside a license agreement that few will read, and even fewer will understand if they do. It is also, according to Edelman and others, misleading and potentially illegal. Ever wondered why companies that produce this spyware use different names? It is so consumers can't easily figure out what is being delivered to their PC. The MySHC software goes under different names, such as VoiceFive and TMRG, Inc. yet seems to be similar to ComScore's RelevantKnowledge affiliate marketing software.So what can we all learn from this debacle?
First, protect your customer's privacy or you won't have any customers to worry about. Australia is just one of many places around the world that is beefing up its privacy laws this year to protect unintended data collections and breaches. IT managers need to be involved in the creation of new applications that touch customers and vet these things properly. They also need to understand the regulatory and compliance implications of collecting all this customer data, and where this information is stored both inside the corporation and how it is shared with any partners or consultants, too.Second, any corporation should by now have a clearly worded privacy policy that is brief, to the point, and not written in legalese.
Security researcher Benjamin Googins from CA talks about how users will see one of two different privacy policies, depending on whether or not the spyware is installed on their PC by MySHC.
Finally, call a spade a spade. If you are going to conduct research on consumer buying trends, then do so in a way that doesn't monitor their computers: Sony found this out the hard way a few years ago. Since the blogosphere pounced on MySHC, Sears execs have defended the practice, claiming that few users actually go through the process of installing the software. That is a lame excuse, and time for some straight talk and to retool the site and remove the software.It shouldn't take a Harvard professor and an engineer with a packet analyzer to make Sears come clean about its privacy policies.
Sears' documentation for what exact information is being tracked by the software is buried inside a license agreement that few will read, and even fewer will understand if they do. It is also, according to Edelman and others, misleading and potentially illegal. Ever wondered why companies that produce this spyware use different names? It is so consumers can't easily figure out what is being delivered to their PC. The MySHC software goes under different names, such as VoiceFive and TMRG, Inc. yet seems to be similar to ComScore's RelevantKnowledge affiliate marketing software.So what can we all learn from this debacle?
First, protect your customer's privacy or you won't have any customers to worry about. Australia is just one of many places around the world that is beefing up its privacy laws this year to protect unintended data collections and breaches. IT managers need to be involved in the creation of new applications that touch customers and vet these things properly. They also need to understand the regulatory and compliance implications of collecting all this customer data, and where this information is stored both inside the corporation and how it is shared with any partners or consultants, too.Second, any corporation should by now have a clearly worded privacy policy that is brief, to the point, and not written in legalese.
Security researcher Benjamin Googins from CA talks about how users will see one of two different privacy policies, depending on whether or not the spyware is installed on their PC by MySHC.
Finally, call a spade a spade. If you are going to conduct research on consumer buying trends, then do so in a way that doesn't monitor their computers: Sony found this out the hard way a few years ago. Since the blogosphere pounced on MySHC, Sears execs have defended the practice, claiming that few users actually go through the process of installing the software. That is a lame excuse, and time for some straight talk and to retool the site and remove the software.It shouldn't take a Harvard professor and an engineer with a packet analyzer to make Sears come clean about its privacy policies.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
How to create a viral video
Ever wonder what it takes to create a viral video? As someone who started out in college as a physics major, it is gratifying to see people like Stephen Voltz, Fritz Grob and Walter Lewin become famous, at least on the Internet. These people might not be household names like the Spears clan, but at least they are doing things that I can be proud of.
Voltz and Grob are the guys behind Eepybird.com, the people that combine Mentos with Diet Coke to create geysers of exploding soda and some very entertaining videos. Their videos have been downloaded millions of times and enjoyed by people all over the globe.
Paul Gillin and I got the chance to chat with them this week on our TechPRWarStories.com podcast series. (For those of you that haven't yet subscribed, each week we talk about new media topics that would be of interest to public relations and marketing professionals, as well as interview leading luminaries and interesting people.)
What is fascinating is how quickly the duo became famous: within a week of uploading their first video, they were booked on all the major talk shows (and this is back when these shows had writers so the competition for guests was tough). Voltz and Grob talked about having excellent video production values isn't quite right for their audience: like so many things on the Internet, Just Good Enough Production is really what counts, and getting across a Just Plain Folks sensibility is really the best path towards more click-throughs. Plus, seeing all that spraying soda helps, too.
You can download the podcast here and hear directly from them about why they do what they do.
Contrary to popular belief, the duo has had plenty of support from the marketing arms of both Mentos and Coca-Cola companies. As you might imagine, they consume a lot of product for their backyard experiments, and they told us that a lot of planning and testing goes into setting up the final shots that you see online – sometimes these three minute videos take months of preparation. They now devote themselves full-time to their experiments, and have gone on the speaking circuit and done them live at various cities, soaking volunteers with soda geysers.
Lewin is an MIT physics professor who is also a download king, but his videos are educational rather than pure entertainment. His videos are the actual lectures that he gives his undergraduates, and are part of the MIT Open Courseware project. MIT has put 1800 of its courses online over the past several years, and now has some of them available in ten different languages including Thai, Chinese and Spanish. If you need to brush up on your intro to physics, you can start with this link here.
It is nice to see all three guys become notorious, and I mean that in only good terms.
Voltz and Grob are the guys behind Eepybird.com, the people that combine Mentos with Diet Coke to create geysers of exploding soda and some very entertaining videos. Their videos have been downloaded millions of times and enjoyed by people all over the globe.
Paul Gillin and I got the chance to chat with them this week on our TechPRWarStories.com podcast series. (For those of you that haven't yet subscribed, each week we talk about new media topics that would be of interest to public relations and marketing professionals, as well as interview leading luminaries and interesting people.)
What is fascinating is how quickly the duo became famous: within a week of uploading their first video, they were booked on all the major talk shows (and this is back when these shows had writers so the competition for guests was tough). Voltz and Grob talked about having excellent video production values isn't quite right for their audience: like so many things on the Internet, Just Good Enough Production is really what counts, and getting across a Just Plain Folks sensibility is really the best path towards more click-throughs. Plus, seeing all that spraying soda helps, too.
You can download the podcast here and hear directly from them about why they do what they do.
Contrary to popular belief, the duo has had plenty of support from the marketing arms of both Mentos and Coca-Cola companies. As you might imagine, they consume a lot of product for their backyard experiments, and they told us that a lot of planning and testing goes into setting up the final shots that you see online – sometimes these three minute videos take months of preparation. They now devote themselves full-time to their experiments, and have gone on the speaking circuit and done them live at various cities, soaking volunteers with soda geysers.
Lewin is an MIT physics professor who is also a download king, but his videos are educational rather than pure entertainment. His videos are the actual lectures that he gives his undergraduates, and are part of the MIT Open Courseware project. MIT has put 1800 of its courses online over the past several years, and now has some of them available in ten different languages including Thai, Chinese and Spanish. If you need to brush up on your intro to physics, you can start with this link here.
It is nice to see all three guys become notorious, and I mean that in only good terms.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Vendors as tech publishers
I have known Sam Whitmore my entire journalism career -- we both were at PC Week (Sam actually was one of its founding editors) in the middle 1980s. Sam runs his own shop called Media Survey, where he interviews tech and business media and tracks trends for PR professionals and others. He asked me to write a series of articles about the evolution of vendors becoming their own tech publishers. They ran on his subscription-only mailing list late last month and are reprinted below with his permission.As the major tech publishers go through additional layoffs, shut down publications and generally disinvest in their editorial product, the most experienced journalists are going to work as analysts and joining and creating vendor-driven editorial projects.
These projects are not always some custom-published vanity efforts but attempts at real editorial efforts to extend brand awareness and fill the void left by the tech pubs. Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce.com, and Oracle all try to mimic the level of professionalism and technical authority of the trades. These vendors are all worth taking a closer look at -- but know that you may never see it all: in Cisco's case, at least one former trade editor has been hired to publish content behind a gate exclusively for customers, employees and partners."You have greater impact on the industry as a whole when you're writing reviews and working at a major trade publication," says Lori MacVittie, a former Network Computing labs analyst who now works out of her home as a technical marketing manager for F5 Networks. "Now we have a much narrower role working for F5," she says. "And you realize that you are going to have some bias, and try not to say nasty things about the company we work for."
More often than not, the journalists who succeed in vendor-land are the technically savvy ones. Peter Coffee, whom I hired back in the late 1980s at then-PC Week has been with Salesforce.com for most of 2007 and does a brilliant job blogging and video-posting about Web applications development.
Former InfoWorld marquee columnist Jon Udell has been with Microsoft for about as long, and continues to write about data access and programming issues. Reading their blog posts show their depth of understanding of arcane issues that isn't your average bedtime reading, even for many seasoned IT professionals.
While at Network Computing, MacVittie and her husband Don often played the role of analysts, because of the high quality of advice they gave to vendors. "When we were at CMP, we used to talk about how much we wanted vendors to open that kimono and show it to us," says Lori. Now that we are at F5, she says, she has a new appreciation for complexity and how difficult it can be to make sense of it all.
The tech pub world is evolving beyond just blogs and podcasts, and likewise, we'll have a hopefully rich mix of vendor-sponsored content from a wide variety of sources. Let's hope that tech PR pros, in concert with their clients, can play an important role in the overall discourse.
Part 2. Why journalists leave their tech publishers.
While some tech journalists have found a new home on the vendor side, others have become reportorial industry analysts. Maybe we should call them "journanalysts." Why do they leave?
Former eWeek lab analyst Henry Baltazar is now with The 451 Group in San Francisco as a storage analyst. He says that "although my audience as analyst is smaller -- since most of the content I produce only goes out to our subscriber base -- our readers (VCs, investment banks, vendors, end users) have influence over the markets I cover." He is also writing in more depth and has more time to cover the companies than he had at eWeek.
China Martens left the IDG News Service this summer to join The 451 Group in Boston. Martens says she has "more influence as an analyst, since the level of engagement is very different. There is a sense that as an analyst you get much greater insights into the 'why' of decision-making, and of course there is more time to engage with people, too. We also don't quote anyone in our reports so there is not the same pressure as in journalism to come up with the killer quote or two."
She also makes the point that The 451 Group keeps her objectivity intact: "I couldn't work anywhere where there were any restrictions in place on what I could say, and fortunately I've still never had to." Unlike some analyst firms like Gartner or Forrester, The 451 Group doesn't take vendor payments for specific research reports.
Deni Connor left Network World this fall. She remains there as a freelancer, writing a twice-weekly storage newsletter. But now Deni works for herself, as principal analyst for Austin, Tex.-based Storage Strategies NOW. "This is something that I wanted to do for a long time," she says. "And really, it is pretty much what I have been doing when I was a journalist, providing technical content to readers." Connor did PR for a networking vendor back in the day when Token Ring was still a viable technology, and ran an internal publication for Novell, too.
It is this background that has encouraged her to put out her own shingle. "I am fortunate that I have marketing experience and know-how, and am comfortable promoting and marketing my own business," says Connor. "Other journalists that don't have this background may find that a limiting factor."
Part 3. What does this all mean for PR professionals trying to get ink – or page views – for their clients?
Well, for one thing, it is going to be harder to keep track of where to pitch stories, and also harder to get these pitches across the transom. You should first hone your skills at tracking the blogging community: use a blog search tool, start posting comments on the more influential ones, and go meet them at the conferences that the bloggers who are working in your market niche attend. In China Martens' case, she has had to find a whole new set of AR contacts: "the analyst relations and public relations folks at the companies I cover are completely different, so it feels almost like I am starting over, establishing fresh relationships with companies that I've tracked for many years."
Second, it is too late now, but the most successful PR types are those that have developed good personal relationships with these editors before they depart CMP, Ziff et al. If you want to pitch the vendor-sponsored editors, make sure you fit into their niche and have something that can complement the overall message and product line that they represent. This means understanding your client's overall partner, channel, and distribution ecosystem and being able to find how your client's news nugget can apply to these third-party players.
For example, a new SharePoint add-in product can be pitched to people writing about collaboration (such as someone like Chris Miller who writes IdoNotes.com), to Microsoft-centric bloggers, and to major ISVs too. You need to cast a wide net, and spend some time tracking this stuff down. Which means now more than ever you need to understand the overall context for that news nugget, too.
Third, if you don't know how to use RSS feeds to keep up to date on what these folks are doing, now is the time to learn. We have put links to the RSS feeds of the journalists that we mentioned on purpose (rather than provide links to ordinary Web URLs), and if you haven't tried an RSS reader, I recommend starting with Bloglines or Google's Reader. To make things easier, you can check out the consolidated links on my Pageflakes page and see what you might find appealing.
These projects are not always some custom-published vanity efforts but attempts at real editorial efforts to extend brand awareness and fill the void left by the tech pubs. Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce.com, and Oracle all try to mimic the level of professionalism and technical authority of the trades. These vendors are all worth taking a closer look at -- but know that you may never see it all: in Cisco's case, at least one former trade editor has been hired to publish content behind a gate exclusively for customers, employees and partners."You have greater impact on the industry as a whole when you're writing reviews and working at a major trade publication," says Lori MacVittie, a former Network Computing labs analyst who now works out of her home as a technical marketing manager for F5 Networks. "Now we have a much narrower role working for F5," she says. "And you realize that you are going to have some bias, and try not to say nasty things about the company we work for."
More often than not, the journalists who succeed in vendor-land are the technically savvy ones. Peter Coffee, whom I hired back in the late 1980s at then-PC Week has been with Salesforce.com for most of 2007 and does a brilliant job blogging and video-posting about Web applications development.
Former InfoWorld marquee columnist Jon Udell has been with Microsoft for about as long, and continues to write about data access and programming issues. Reading their blog posts show their depth of understanding of arcane issues that isn't your average bedtime reading, even for many seasoned IT professionals.
While at Network Computing, MacVittie and her husband Don often played the role of analysts, because of the high quality of advice they gave to vendors. "When we were at CMP, we used to talk about how much we wanted vendors to open that kimono and show it to us," says Lori. Now that we are at F5, she says, she has a new appreciation for complexity and how difficult it can be to make sense of it all.
The tech pub world is evolving beyond just blogs and podcasts, and likewise, we'll have a hopefully rich mix of vendor-sponsored content from a wide variety of sources. Let's hope that tech PR pros, in concert with their clients, can play an important role in the overall discourse.
Part 2. Why journalists leave their tech publishers.
While some tech journalists have found a new home on the vendor side, others have become reportorial industry analysts. Maybe we should call them "journanalysts." Why do they leave?
Former eWeek lab analyst Henry Baltazar is now with The 451 Group in San Francisco as a storage analyst. He says that "although my audience as analyst is smaller -- since most of the content I produce only goes out to our subscriber base -- our readers (VCs, investment banks, vendors, end users) have influence over the markets I cover." He is also writing in more depth and has more time to cover the companies than he had at eWeek.
China Martens left the IDG News Service this summer to join The 451 Group in Boston. Martens says she has "more influence as an analyst, since the level of engagement is very different. There is a sense that as an analyst you get much greater insights into the 'why' of decision-making, and of course there is more time to engage with people, too. We also don't quote anyone in our reports so there is not the same pressure as in journalism to come up with the killer quote or two."
She also makes the point that The 451 Group keeps her objectivity intact: "I couldn't work anywhere where there were any restrictions in place on what I could say, and fortunately I've still never had to." Unlike some analyst firms like Gartner or Forrester, The 451 Group doesn't take vendor payments for specific research reports.
Deni Connor left Network World this fall. She remains there as a freelancer, writing a twice-weekly storage newsletter. But now Deni works for herself, as principal analyst for Austin, Tex.-based Storage Strategies NOW. "This is something that I wanted to do for a long time," she says. "And really, it is pretty much what I have been doing when I was a journalist, providing technical content to readers." Connor did PR for a networking vendor back in the day when Token Ring was still a viable technology, and ran an internal publication for Novell, too.
It is this background that has encouraged her to put out her own shingle. "I am fortunate that I have marketing experience and know-how, and am comfortable promoting and marketing my own business," says Connor. "Other journalists that don't have this background may find that a limiting factor."
Part 3. What does this all mean for PR professionals trying to get ink – or page views – for their clients?
Well, for one thing, it is going to be harder to keep track of where to pitch stories, and also harder to get these pitches across the transom. You should first hone your skills at tracking the blogging community: use a blog search tool, start posting comments on the more influential ones, and go meet them at the conferences that the bloggers who are working in your market niche attend. In China Martens' case, she has had to find a whole new set of AR contacts: "the analyst relations and public relations folks at the companies I cover are completely different, so it feels almost like I am starting over, establishing fresh relationships with companies that I've tracked for many years."
Second, it is too late now, but the most successful PR types are those that have developed good personal relationships with these editors before they depart CMP, Ziff et al. If you want to pitch the vendor-sponsored editors, make sure you fit into their niche and have something that can complement the overall message and product line that they represent. This means understanding your client's overall partner, channel, and distribution ecosystem and being able to find how your client's news nugget can apply to these third-party players.
For example, a new SharePoint add-in product can be pitched to people writing about collaboration (such as someone like Chris Miller who writes IdoNotes.com), to Microsoft-centric bloggers, and to major ISVs too. You need to cast a wide net, and spend some time tracking this stuff down. Which means now more than ever you need to understand the overall context for that news nugget, too.
Third, if you don't know how to use RSS feeds to keep up to date on what these folks are doing, now is the time to learn. We have put links to the RSS feeds of the journalists that we mentioned on purpose (rather than provide links to ordinary Web URLs), and if you haven't tried an RSS reader, I recommend starting with Bloglines or Google's Reader. To make things easier, you can check out the consolidated links on my Pageflakes page and see what you might find appealing.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Using a cell phone overseas
If you are traveling overseas and don't want to pay a ton of money for your cell calls, this column is for you. I got started down this path because of some upcoming speaking engagements in Australia in the new year, and I wanted to be prepared and be in touch. Soon, it turned into A Project, and now I share the results with you, my gentle readers, for your own benefit should you find yourself in similar straights.
You have the following alternatives
- Buy a phone calling card once you get to your destination and use it from payphones or your hotel,
- Don't do anything and use your existing US phone,
- Buy a new SIM module for your existing phone, or
- Buy a new SIM module and a new phone.
Why bother? If you have ever taken your cell to Canada (or even further a field), you know why: the per-minute cost for calls is ginormous. And while it is nice to be in touch when you travel around the world, there are lower-cost ways to do it.
The calling card is a decent option, depending on where you are going and what your hotel charges for both toll-free and local calls. Some are still back in the profiteering stone ages and charge almost as much as the cell providers on a per-minute basis, even to make a local call or to connect to the calling card provider. You should know that some calling cards may not work with some pay phones, according to Dan Dern. He also reminds me that you might want to invest in a DMTF tone generator if you need to call back to a stateside answering machine – some foreign phones don't generate the correct touch tones. You can use the Java applet on your computer here.
The other options will only work if you have at least a tri-band phone on either T-Mobile or AT&T/Cingular networks. If you are using Verizon or Sprint, you need a new phone. Most of the world's cell phones (except in Japan and a few other places), work on what is called the GSM networks that operate at either 900 MHz or 1800 MHz. The US and Canada GSM networks operate at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. So if you have a phone that can work on at least three of the four bands, you should be set to roam abroad.
So we arrive at the last options, and here is where things get interesting. Before I get any further, let me explain that your cell phone has two important pieces: one is the phone itself, and this makes a difference with the number of radio bands that it works on. But the second piece is the SIM card that is inside the phone, and if you are like most normal people you probably haven't given this little thing much thought – until now. This SIM card is what is used by the phone to store your address book and also gives your phone your inbound number and identity on the cell network. It is about the size of a microSD memory card.
If you replace the SIM card that came with your phone with a card that works in the country you are visiting, you get several benefits. First, you don't pay roaming charges for local in-country calls, although if you are calling back to the States, you will pay international long distance charges. Second, if people in-country are trying to reach you, they don't pay for the international calls either. (Some of the networks overseas have the more enlightened method of calling party pays, but we won't go there for now.) You also don't use any minutes on your American cell accounts, which can be good if you have a limited number of minutes – when you travel, you don't think about all the time you are on calls. The trouble is if you are going to several different countries, then you need different SIMs and have to keep track of the numbers too. That gets onerous.
So there is another solution: buy a SIM card from Maxroam.com. This Irish vendor offers a universal SIM that will work across the globe, and has lower per-minute rates no matter where you are. Plus, like the VOIP services, you can set up your number to automatically forward to a series of numbers, so that you can be more easily reached as you travel. You don't have to sign a contract, the SIMs are inexpensive (about $43), and you can add more minutes to your account easily over the Web and charge your credit card. It took me a few minutes to setup and activate the SIM online: you pick a US-based number for your phone, and pay for another number in the country or countries that you are visiting. They have a wide selection. Each additional number is just a few dollars per month to maintain.
There is just one catch. Chances are, your cell phone is locked to your carrier that you are currently using. This means if you try to take out your SIM card and replace it with this Maxroam card, your phone won't work. You might be able to receive calls, but not make outgoing calls.
So how do you get your phone unlocked? You can pay for a special code that you enter and here is where things get dicey. Until recently, American cellular carriers claimed that unlocking was illegal. The laws are changing, but still many of the companies that provide this service have the feeling of going to the seedy side of town where goods are bought in cash through an open car window, not that I conduct my business in this fashion, you should know. There are a number of unlocking providers, here are just a few and what they charge per phone to unlock:
- Uniquephones.com $15
- Gsmliberty.com $25
- Cellularunlockcodes.com $20
- Unlockexperts.co.uk $13
- Cellularlocksmith.com $20
- Cellphonerepair.org $25
I have tried a few of these, and haven't had good experiences. All of them work by first charging your credit card the fee, and then sending you the code via email. Sometimes they take their sweet time in sending this code. Uniquephones "lost" my order, and only when I emailed their executives and spoke to them personally (they are based in the UK), did I get my code delivered.
There are other services that have downloadable software, but that seems even more trouble. Once I got my code, it took seconds to enter it on my AT&T phone, and it was running on T-Mobile's network with my new number from the Maxroam folks. Sweet.
If you are reluctant to do business in this fashion, then you have another option, and that is to still buy the Maxroam SIM card but get a new phone that comes unlocked. If you are a Verizon or Sprint user, this is really your only option. There are many Web sites that offer to sell you unlocked models. The least expensive phones that I could find (that were at least a tri-band GSM model) were on TigerDirect.com – they were selling a Motorola V180 for $50. And Amazon.com has a Motorola V220 for $70. Neither of these phones are going to win any design awards, but they will do the job.
Plan on taking a few weeks to negotiate all of these options, so don't do this a few days before you have to leave the country. And you might want to bring along your current SIM card, just in case.
You have the following alternatives
- Buy a phone calling card once you get to your destination and use it from payphones or your hotel,
- Don't do anything and use your existing US phone,
- Buy a new SIM module for your existing phone, or
- Buy a new SIM module and a new phone.
Why bother? If you have ever taken your cell to Canada (or even further a field), you know why: the per-minute cost for calls is ginormous. And while it is nice to be in touch when you travel around the world, there are lower-cost ways to do it.
The calling card is a decent option, depending on where you are going and what your hotel charges for both toll-free and local calls. Some are still back in the profiteering stone ages and charge almost as much as the cell providers on a per-minute basis, even to make a local call or to connect to the calling card provider. You should know that some calling cards may not work with some pay phones, according to Dan Dern. He also reminds me that you might want to invest in a DMTF tone generator if you need to call back to a stateside answering machine – some foreign phones don't generate the correct touch tones. You can use the Java applet on your computer here.
The other options will only work if you have at least a tri-band phone on either T-Mobile or AT&T/Cingular networks. If you are using Verizon or Sprint, you need a new phone. Most of the world's cell phones (except in Japan and a few other places), work on what is called the GSM networks that operate at either 900 MHz or 1800 MHz. The US and Canada GSM networks operate at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. So if you have a phone that can work on at least three of the four bands, you should be set to roam abroad.
So we arrive at the last options, and here is where things get interesting. Before I get any further, let me explain that your cell phone has two important pieces: one is the phone itself, and this makes a difference with the number of radio bands that it works on. But the second piece is the SIM card that is inside the phone, and if you are like most normal people you probably haven't given this little thing much thought – until now. This SIM card is what is used by the phone to store your address book and also gives your phone your inbound number and identity on the cell network. It is about the size of a microSD memory card.
If you replace the SIM card that came with your phone with a card that works in the country you are visiting, you get several benefits. First, you don't pay roaming charges for local in-country calls, although if you are calling back to the States, you will pay international long distance charges. Second, if people in-country are trying to reach you, they don't pay for the international calls either. (Some of the networks overseas have the more enlightened method of calling party pays, but we won't go there for now.) You also don't use any minutes on your American cell accounts, which can be good if you have a limited number of minutes – when you travel, you don't think about all the time you are on calls. The trouble is if you are going to several different countries, then you need different SIMs and have to keep track of the numbers too. That gets onerous.
So there is another solution: buy a SIM card from Maxroam.com. This Irish vendor offers a universal SIM that will work across the globe, and has lower per-minute rates no matter where you are. Plus, like the VOIP services, you can set up your number to automatically forward to a series of numbers, so that you can be more easily reached as you travel. You don't have to sign a contract, the SIMs are inexpensive (about $43), and you can add more minutes to your account easily over the Web and charge your credit card. It took me a few minutes to setup and activate the SIM online: you pick a US-based number for your phone, and pay for another number in the country or countries that you are visiting. They have a wide selection. Each additional number is just a few dollars per month to maintain.
There is just one catch. Chances are, your cell phone is locked to your carrier that you are currently using. This means if you try to take out your SIM card and replace it with this Maxroam card, your phone won't work. You might be able to receive calls, but not make outgoing calls.
So how do you get your phone unlocked? You can pay for a special code that you enter and here is where things get dicey. Until recently, American cellular carriers claimed that unlocking was illegal. The laws are changing, but still many of the companies that provide this service have the feeling of going to the seedy side of town where goods are bought in cash through an open car window, not that I conduct my business in this fashion, you should know. There are a number of unlocking providers, here are just a few and what they charge per phone to unlock:
- Uniquephones.com $15
- Gsmliberty.com $25
- Cellularunlockcodes.com $20
- Unlockexperts.co.uk $13
- Cellularlocksmith.com $20
- Cellphonerepair.org $25
I have tried a few of these, and haven't had good experiences. All of them work by first charging your credit card the fee, and then sending you the code via email. Sometimes they take their sweet time in sending this code. Uniquephones "lost" my order, and only when I emailed their executives and spoke to them personally (they are based in the UK), did I get my code delivered.
There are other services that have downloadable software, but that seems even more trouble. Once I got my code, it took seconds to enter it on my AT&T phone, and it was running on T-Mobile's network with my new number from the Maxroam folks. Sweet.
If you are reluctant to do business in this fashion, then you have another option, and that is to still buy the Maxroam SIM card but get a new phone that comes unlocked. If you are a Verizon or Sprint user, this is really your only option. There are many Web sites that offer to sell you unlocked models. The least expensive phones that I could find (that were at least a tri-band GSM model) were on TigerDirect.com – they were selling a Motorola V180 for $50. And Amazon.com has a Motorola V220 for $70. Neither of these phones are going to win any design awards, but they will do the job.
Plan on taking a few weeks to negotiate all of these options, so don't do this a few days before you have to leave the country. And you might want to bring along your current SIM card, just in case.
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About Me
- David Strom
- David Strom has looked at hundreds of computer products over a more than 20 year career in IT and computer journalism. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Network Computing magazine, and now writes for Baseline, Information Security, Tom's Hardware, and the New York Times.