The Digital Revolution ?¢Ç«®Çƒ˙ A series of Disruptive Events

Since the invention of the Gutenberg printing press the world has seen a continuously increasing rate of technology driven change resulting in the highly technology driven environment we live in today. It is fair to say that the Gutenberg printing press caused a revolution in printed material. It was a disruptive event. Mechanizing the printing process forever changed not only the process of printing but the availability of affordable printed material. The first book to be printed, the Bible, now accessible by the masses likely spurred on the Protestant revolution. Students at Universities also now had access to a breadth of scholarly printed material, in business contracts could be standardized, documents printed and for all the newspaper industry came into being.

A disruptive event is a change in technology that has a pervasive, long lasting, cascading and irreversible effect on the direction of technology, on society and the status quo.  Some effects are subtle e.g. the long term effects are visible but the cause may not be readily identifiable, while others have an immediate and visible impact.

This is the first of a series of planned articles discussing the impact of the digital technology revolution as a series of disruptive events that continue unabated, even accelerated, today.

While there are a number of candidates who may be identified as the creator of the first major digital event, none in my mind rises to the level of Herman Hollerith (1860-1929).  Hollerith worked at the United States Census Bureau from 1879-1882 and became engrossed in finding ways to reduce the time and labor involved in census analysis by automation.  His objective: find a solution for the 1890 census.  Why was this effort important?  The last census (1880) was not completed until 1887.  Seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned based upon population as determined by the last census so the 7 years to complete the census was totally unacceptable having left many states in limbo regarding their representative allocations.  To compound the problem, the US population had increased by more than 12 million since the last census and the shift of population westward was well underway still further increasing the difficulty of taking the census.  

To solve this dilemma the Census Bureau decided to sponsor a competition in order to find a way to dramatically reduce the time required for taking and processing the census data.  Hollerith, in his travels by rail, had observed the use of what was called a “punch photograph”.  Conductors would punch notches in the edges of a passenger’s ticket which physically described the passenger in sufficient detail to allow only the described passenger to use that particular ticket.  A passenger’s height, hair color, build, eye color, etc. could all be coded onto such a ticket by punching the indicated places around the edges of the ticket. Hollerith theorized that a similar scheme might work for the census.  He designed an approach and was awarded two patents, one in 1884 to use holes punched in paper tape to record and mechanically read that information, and the second in 1887 using holes punched in a paper card instead of tape.  The card needed to contain enough information to be useful for the census, so he settled on using the size of a US banknote; apparently he also saw an additional benefit by fitting cards in the same size boxes as used by the Treasury Department.

Herman Hollerith won this competition handily using his system of punching, reading and sorting the cards. The official 1890 population count was completed in three months and the total population of the United States was found to be 62,622,250.  In another two years all the census data was processed and organized.  The cost was $5 million below forecast and saved more than two years time.  He had not only solved the problem of the 1890 census but his solution was the basis for compiling census data for the next 70 years.

 
Shown above is the card tabulator with 40 dials for counting, one for each of up to 40 hole positions in the card. The pantograph punch for punching cards one hole at a time is on the left side of the table, a card reader is on the right side of the table and the sorting machine stands to the right.  The dials were each wired to 40 possible holes in the card reader.  In this early implementation each possible hole represented something to be counted.  It could be a state, county, city, country of origin, family size, ethnicity, age, sex etc. The pantograph had a mask which defined the content of each hole. Every time the reader sensed a hole the appropriate counter would increment and a pocket of the sorter would open according to the category identified by the holes punched.  An experienced operator could tabulate up to 80 cards per minute and then transcribe the results from the dial counters.  The initial card used 22 columns with 10 punch positions available per column.  This was gradually increased until it reached 45 columns with 12 positions per column.  A print of a card from the 1900 census is shown below.

 
The cards were pre-printed with fields outlined according to the application.  Forty-five columns were available in this design.
 

The picture above shows more detail regarding the design of the machinery.

Hollerith incorporated his business as the Tabulating Machine Co in 1896. Interestingly; the company did not sell but rented its equipment and maintained the exclusive right to produce the cards. This did not change until the Justice Department sued IBM in the 1950’s to make the tools for the manufacture of the cards available to competitors.  In 1911 the company merged with other companies to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Co.  In 1914 Thomas J. Watson joined the company and, through his leadership, dramatically enhanced its business.  In 1924 the name was changed to International Business Machines, becoming the IBM we know today.  The card design was extended to 80 columns, the holes were made rectangular and the design patented in 1928.  It remains the standard to this day.  Over time several attempts were made to either copy the Hollerith design or come out with alternatives but they never achieved the success of IBM.  Most notable of these was the Remington Rand Co. that extended the original card design to 90 columns by splitting each physical column into two groups of 6 holes each.  While Remington Rand achieved some success they were never able to match IBM in the marketplace.

What the punched card did was create a document that could be a basic business and accounting instrument regardless of the size of the organization.  A card was able to represent for example an account, a transaction, a part, an invoice, a check, a bond or a security and as a result businesses and governments could begin to automate their fundamental processes.  It eventually became known as a ‘unit record’ and IBM named the line of equipment designed to process the cards as Unit Record Equipment.  

The period after 1890 was one of dramatic economic growth putting great stress on businesses to keep up with the changes.  The transition to punched cards greatly facilitated the task of keeping up with sales, orders, inventory and accounting procedures.  The government used hundreds of machines during World War I to keep inventory, medical and psychological records.  So successful was this transition to punched cards that by 1918 over 100 million cards a month were being produced.  As the applications grew in volume the machines handling the cards became more and more sophisticated, ultimately being able to produce reports by the thousands of pages and process cards up to 1000 cards a minute.  All data was transcribed to punch cards. The card became the perfect medium for entering, manipulating and storing data.  There was no other medium that so perfectly encapsulated business information.  By long before the 1950’s every industrialized nation was totally dependant upon these cards and the equipment that processed them.  IBM was a juggernaut in the marketplace not only because it had the lion’s share of the business, but it also owned all the equipment due to its rent only policy and was the sole producer of the punched cards.  Cards had become the universal medium for handling data, and IBM machines processed the data.

This set the stage for the computer revolution that was to come.   When the computer arrived cards were the only vehicle for storing and maintaining programs.  Cards were the only source of data and until the 1970’s when direct entry through terminals became available. Until then cards were the only way to feed the now prevalent computers.  More about this phase later.

In summary, Herman Hollerith was truly a giant when measured by the impact of his invention.  The introduction of the punched card was a disruptive event that changed the course of history.

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I have been a Treo user since the Handspring Treo 300 first came out.  Moved to the Treo 600 right when it became available, then the 650 once again right away.  I love the ability to use the entire smartphone with one hand and no stylus (of course, I can use a stylus if needed).  The only thing I don’t like about the Treo is the fact that it runs atop Palm OS, which in my mind is severely lacking.

Enter the Sprint PPC-6700 Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphone.  It has most everything I like about the Treo, a keyboard, nice screen, 5-way navigation button, and wireless options to connect to headsets, car kits, etc.  The PPC-6700 even has an option I wish my Treo had: WiFi.  When I was in a local Sprint store recently I decided to pick one up.  I have 14 days to try it before I can no longer return it, and the end of those 14 days is almost upon me.  Do I keep it or return it?

Before making this decision, I analyzed exactly how I use the smartphone in my everyday life.  My largest usage of the device is e-mail, followed by the phone itself, then calendar and contacts.  Being able to run the device for a full day without charging it is a pretty big deal as well, I can’t be stopping every 4 hours to wait for my smartphone to get a charge, and I don’t want to carry an extra battery with me everywhere I go.

The PPC-6700 does a fantastic job at contact management; she thinks exactly like I do when syncing all of my contact and calendar data.  Unlike the awful Palm hotsync process, the 6700 keeps everything in sync while you’re plugged into the computer.  If you’re plugged in and you make a change to your Outlook calendar, that change will appear in real time on your 6700.  Add or change a contact, it changes in real time on the 6700 as well.  You can browse the device and even view the miniSD card, or install applications on it directly from the Windows desktop.  This is a vast improvement over the Palm way of doing things:  hotsync, pray, repeat.  If I didn’t know better, I would say that Apple built the syncing software for it runs a lot like an iPod: plug it in and it just works (sorta).  My only gripe here is that unlike an iPod, the 6700 would randomly disconnect from the computer.  For no reason it would just stop syncing.  I would have to unplug the smartphone and plug it back it to get my computer to recognize it for 10 minutes, maybe an hour, then it would stop syncing again.  Minor annoyance, but still a vast improvement over the Palm hotsync process (if you can’t tell by now, I hate the hotsync process).

But what about my 2 big items: e-mail and phone?  E-mail is severely lacking on the 6700.  On the Treo 600 and 650 I have access to a fantastic e-mail program called Chatter E-mail.  This program allows for true push e-mail without the need for any special software on the server or any NOC.  It uses the IMAP Idle command to keep your smartphone and e-mail client constantly up to date.  This works great with Exchange (even 5.5), and most IMAP servers out there.  If the e-mail server your service provider uses does not support IMAP Idle, then you can do a scheduled pull, but not push e-mail.  No monthly fee, no complex setup, true push e-mail from almost any server that supports IMAP Idle (I have only found a handful of mail servers that don’t support this).  Push e-mail is a huge deal to me as I need access to server downtime information.  If a single server under my control dies, I need to know in real time.  SMS messages work here, but there is typically a 2 minute lag.  With push e-mail I typically know is a server is down within 30 seconds.  One would think that being a Microsoft OS and the huge Microsoft base of programmers someone would have created a push e-mail solution for Windows Mobile 5.0.  One would be thinking wrong.  There’s GoodLink, but it does not work on WM 5.0.  There’s the built in Exchange push, but we’re still waiting for a component to be released in early 2006 to fully enable this feature (although it is hacked together a bit now).  So from an e-mail standpoint, the PPC-6700, due to its use of Windows Mobile 5.0, has no good program.

How about the phone itself?  Honestly, this is a wash between the Treo 650 and the PPC-6700.  When the 650 was first released there was a huge problem with audio quality, but that has since been resolved.  Now it’s OK.  Not great, but OK.  The PPC-6700 is about the same.  The sound quality is not nearly as good as my wife’s cell phone, but it’s not bad.  I wish someone would build these devices with the thought of phone first, PDA second, but they all seem to get it backwards.

The next problem I have with the 6700 is the battery power.  I can run my Treo 650 for about 1 full day, or in my world 16 full hours before I need to recharge it.  Most people can run their Treo for 2 to 3 days between charges, but due to the mass amount of e-mail and phone calls I make, the battery gets drained fast.  The PPC-6700 ran about 3 to 4 hours before I had to charge it, and that was with most of the wireless radios off (Bluetooth and WiFi).  This is a jarring experience and simply won’t work.  What happens when I’m at CES and need to send messages back and forth?  I suppose I could just work in the morning, then take the afternoon off since my phone would be completely dead at that point.  The battery power in the 6700 is sad to say the least.

There are a lot of other interesting points to be made on the design itself.  I had to hack around and find a good balance between memory usage and display cache to get the device to work at a speed that was acceptable.  Oddly enough, when you first take the 6700 out of the box, it feels very, very slow.  To fix this one must go into the registry, change the display memory, and soft-restart the device.  Once this is done, it’s actually faster than the Treo 650, in my opinion.  This should have been done for me from the start.  The keyboard slides out from the side, which then rotates the screen.  I thought I would love this as it’s the natural way you want to view web pages.  Instead I found that the web pages rendered just as poorly at 320×240 as they did at 240×320, but now since the keyboard was sideways and longer, I could no longer type with one hand.  You must use both hands to type on the 6700, whereas on the Treo 650 this can be done with just a singe hand.  I also found that the 6700 can not be used without the stylus.  The 5 way navigation will work well most of the time, but in many applications such as Pocket Outlook and Pocket IE the navigation would not go where I needed it to, or just get stuck.  Once again, two hands were needed to operate the device.

The hard part for me is letting this device go.  I could live with two handed operation, possibly wait for a push e-mail client or for MS to finish their push support in Exchange, but the extremely poor battery life makes this device a dud for me.  I love the way the system syncs, it’s done so well that my schedule has been dead on for the last week and a half.  No more forgetting to hotsync, no more forgetting appointments or contacts, this device is darn sexy when it comes to syncing.  Upon reflection, I found that most of what I liked about the device was a Windows Mobile 5.0 feature, and most of what I didn’t like was a hardware problem.  I guess I’ll just need to wait for the Palm Treo 700w to come out on Sprint (or beg and plead TE to get me a Verizon version).  I love Windows Mobile 5.0, I just need one-handed operation, a better mail client, and much longer battery life.

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Om Malik has posted a pre-review of Wink, a new search service that ranks web sites based on how often users bookmark web pages using their Wink accounts. Using bookmarks as a measure of a page’s importance is an interesting metric. It seems reasonable to assume that good content gets bookmarked more often than bad, so good content should float to the top of results over time.

A big challenge for this search metric is the lack of participation in bookmarking networks. Without a LOT of votes, the quality of the rankings will likely be inconsistent at best.

Malik shapes Wink’s model and similar sites as being part of a “people vs. Google” movement, where a networks of people attempt to out-do Google Search by using votes, bookmarks, or other human behavior rather than a faceless algorithm. Malik expresses his pessimism about the potential for this type of ranking system based on the lack of mainstream interest in social bookmarking and tagging. However, this really isn’t - or shouldn’t be - a mutually exclusive strategy for ranking content. For example, a site like Wink would be worthless if it ONLY displayed content that has been bookmarked. People would reach dead ends or marginal results most of the time if Wink didn’t supplement their search results with results from . . . Google.

The “people vs Google” argument concept bugs me because it ignores the main factor that makes Google Google: link popularity generated by people. As John Battelle explained in his best selling book on Google, The Search, Google’s PageRank system is designed to measure web page citations. The more times a web page is cited on other web pages, the more important that web page becomes. Additionally, citations from important pages are more valuable than citations from less important web pages.

Can a relatively small network of web users tagging and voting on web pages create more relevant search results than Google’s calculation of the citations on billions of web pages? If the the goal is to provide the most relevant results on anything someone could type into a search engine, the answer is clearly no. However, there may be some interesting exceptions for certain types of searches. For example, Digg.com’s voting system does seem to make it easier to find news that’s worth reading within the topics they’ve tackled so far, and it seems like it will effectively scale to other topics. Del.icio.us does a relatively good job identifying must-read content in specific subjects using shared bookmarks.

Will Wink.com’s combination of search, tagging, and voting take search to the next level? If bookmarking and tagging increases the relevancy of search results, will we see Yahoo using metrics from their newly acquired del.icio.us to rank results? Will Google use aggregated Bookmarks data they gather in user’s Personalized Search History as a metric in their algorithm? Are they already?

UPDATE: Wink’s founder and CEO, Michael Tanne has responded to Malik’s original post. Definitely worth a read.

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Aloha! While vacationing in Hawaii over the holidays, I have been struck by three prominent branding trends here in Honolulu:
 
1. Chanel Sunglasses

They are everywhere. Women are wearing them. Men are wearing them. Even kids are wearing them. I am amazed by how much eyewear is emblazoned with the distinctive, instantly recognizable logo.

I recently read “When you are wearing Chanel sunglasses, you are speaking everyone’s language.” So true in Honolulu!

 
2. Louis Vuitton Bags

 
Even more prominent than trend #1 is the always stylish Louis Vuitton bag. Even those NOT in the know, KNOW that famous brown Monogram Canvas.

Once again, nearly everyone has one. Small ones, large ones, casual ones, dressy ones. Women with a Papillon over their arm.
 

Men with a Pochette Gange over their shoulder.

Children with a Ellipse Sac a Dos on their back.
 

3. Apple iPods

By far, the most popular item I have seen since arriving on Oahu this holiday season is the iPod. The question on Apple’s website is “Which iPod are you?” Here in Honolulu, that question is answered. You walk down the beach and see people of every shape, size, gender, nationality carrying an iPod. What I want to know is what songs each of these different folks have loaded into their iPods…what is each individual’s life-soundtrack?
 
Of course what is truly fabulous is to see one combine all three of these trends — and it is not hard to find here. Nothing exudes more class, sophistication and hip-ness than walking down Waikiki in your Chanel sunglasses, while listening to the latest holiday tunes on your iPod, which of course is carried in a Louis Vuitton monogram case of your choice!

 
Needless to say, luxury brands are stronger than ever here in paradise.
 
What trends have you seen while celebrating this holiday season with your loved ones?
 
 

 

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Happy Holidays From Waikiki!

Below is a simple list of the technology I am using while away for the Holiday’s in Honolulu:

1.  My new favorite car navigation system, the Garmin Nuvi 350.

2.  My old but tried and true Palm TREO 600 Phone, I am waiting to see the TREO 700 at CES

3.  My trusty Toshiba M2 Notebook running Windows XP Pro .

4.  2 EVDO PC Cards, one from Sprint and one from Verizon.  Only the Sprint card is connecting to EVDO as Verizon does not have EVDO Coverage in paradise yet.  Further the software that comes with the Sprint card is much easier to use, so I prefer it.

5.  An aging Plantronics HeadSet with Boom mic so as to use Skype Beta 2.0, if I could ever get a bluetooth headset to work reliably (maybe in 2006)

6.  A new Creative Labs Webcam Live Ultra for use with Skype

7.  A new Samsung L55W camera, if I could figure out the flash I think I would like it.

8.  A D-Link DWL-G730AP Wireless Pocket Router

9.  An old but useful Canon Elura DV camcorder to collect some quality video content

10. A simple yet effective 1GB SD card, which is compatible with TREO, Notebook and Digital Camera. Very handy to be in the same memory format.

What technology are you using this Christmas Day?

Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah from the Technology Evangelist Family!

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Way back on November 22nd, I wrote a post called Google Analytics Goes Free - But There is a Cost, pointing out some of the growing pains that came from the switch to a free service. At that time, their web reports had more than a day’s lag. Google stopped accepting new registrations while they addressed the performance issues.

On December 5th, Google published an update on the progress they had made. Things were on the upswing.

But now it’s December 24th. More than a month after my original post, Google still hasn’t turned new registrations back on. They also haven’t updated their status page in more than 19 days.

The most surprising thing about this is how inconsistent the service has been compared to other Google services. There are many more reliable Google services labeled as Beta, including News, Gmail, Froogle, and Groups. Traffick’s Andrew Goodman wrote a blog post (still in beta) addressing Google’s definition of beta: “Could it be that “beta” is code for “full product release,” and vice-versa?“

If that’s the case, Google, please put Google Analytics back into beta.

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What would your response be if I asked you for the following:

1. Name
2. Username
3. Password
4. Email Address
5. Phone Number
6. Your Friend’s Email Addresses
7. Who you have a crush on
   
8. Regular updates on where you go to eat & drink

Am I the least discrete stalker on Earth? I think that depends on what I plan on doing with your data. One company you may have heard of ?¢Ç«®Çƒ˙ Google ?¢Ç«®Çƒ˙ is asking users for this information under the brand Dodgeball.com. What are they doing with that information?

Dodgeball.com - as they describe it ?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á∆íÀô is “mobile social software.” The site is designed to build social networks based on popular bar and restaurant locations. The site allows you and your network of Dodgeball friends to update each other on what bars and restaurants you’re at using short text messages from your cell phone. Started in New York City, the service it is currently rolled out in twenty two cities in the United States. The company was acquired by Google in May 2005.

Here is how it works:

A person registers with Dodgeball.com, then sends a text message from their cell phone to verify their phone number. Once that’s done, Dodgeball users simply send a quick text message to Dodgeball from restaurants and bars they visit. Here is a photo of my most recent SMS message to twincites@dodgeball.com from my Treo 600 phone:

Notice the most recent SMS message is for the Chatterbox Pub. That message was a “Check-In” and earned me a spot on the Twincities.Dodgeball.com homepage:

But Dodgeball did more than simply display my mug on their homepage. They also broadcast a text message to all of my friends in my Dodgeball network, telling them where I was.

Had any of my friends been within 10 blocks of my location, I would have received a text back from Dodgeball with their locations. It also has a dating feature that tells your “crushes” when you’re nearby.

What makes this useful?

It’s a fun way to give techie shout outs to friends.

It’s faster and easier than calling your friends to organize a night out.

It’s a great way to discover new restaurants and bars. For example, I’ve never met Aaron L., pictured to my left on the check-in image. While using dodgeball.com, I’ve figured out that we have similar tastes in restaurants and bars, which enticed me to try the Chatterbox Pub last night. I’ll definitely be going back, and I may even meet Aaron there some day.

What does Dodgeball gain?

While the business model is not clear today, but they?¢Ç«®Ç—¢re clearly building a network that?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s attractive to advertisers. The opportunities for local and personalized advertising are tremendous given the detail of data provides by participants in the Dodgeball network.

While text messages are limited to 160 characters, they should have space to add, ?¢Ç«®?ÏTry Bombay Sapphire?¢Ç«®¨˘ to texts sent to people on their way to restaurants or bars. In fact, they could customize the ads based on the type of establishments people are visiting. A gin & tonic may not be the most appealing ad may be a better ad for chicken wing lovers.

Or target the ads to specific locations: How about a Leinenkeugel?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äs Honeyweiss ad targeting Maxwell?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äs customers with an offer for a free appetizer if they tell their waitress a code word? (example: Join your friend Ed at Maxwell’s [12th & Washington] and receive a FREE APPETIZER for saying ?¬¢√᬴¬Æ?√èDominick the Donkey” to the server.)

Online to Offline Conversions: What will Google do with this data? What happens when people use the same email address for Dodgeball and personalized search on Google. Could Google track online ad performance based on offline restaurant and bar visits by Dodgeball members?

If the idea of publishing your dining patterns on a public web site freaks you out, this probably isn’t the site for you. But, if you are a social buterfly who likes hooking up with friends all over town at fun spots, Dodgeball may be worth trying.

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Salesforce.com has recently experienced some downtime, causing serious frustration for their users during a busy time of year (when isn’t, really?). What can businesses learn from this issue?

Salesforce.com is a web based customer relationship management (CRM) program used by more than 18,700 customers and 351,000 paying subscribers from mostly small to mid-sized businesses to help managed their contacts, sales cycles, and post-sales relationships with their customers. This is a fairly revolutionary business because they’ve managed to convince businesses that they’re better off storing some of their most valuable and mission critical data on Salesforce.com’s servers rather than keeping that data in-house.

While their growth has been impressive, there have been some occasional bumps in the road, including rough updates and occasional outages. Due to the mission critical nature of the application, loyal customers can quickly become royally pissed off when the site doesn’t work. Other web based businesses experiencing recent extended outages include Typepad, del.icio.us, and Bloglines.

What is an acceptable amount of downtime for a mission critical application like this? Salesforce.com states that they have greater than 99% uptime, but with 365 days in a year, mean they could be down for more than three days while still meeting that metric. An even worse case scenario that meets the “greater than 99% uptime” bar would be nine days of downtime per year during normal business hours.

Salesforce.com’s performance as of late is nowhere near the worse case scenario, and will probably improve significantly in reaction to the complaints and press they’ve received about their current glitches. People wouldn’t be complaining or writing about them if they didn’t find their service valuable.

Looking beyond Salesforce.com, here are some things to consider when reviewing outsourcing business applications to web based services.

Advantages of Using Web Based Applications

1. Very low start-up costs vs. building a custom systems in-house.
2. Fixed costs based on a subscription model.
3. Software stays current since vendor can continuously add enhancements to the web based service.
4. System is accessible from any internet connection.
5. Gives small businesses access to people highly skilled in managing mission critical data.
6. May integrate with other online or offline applications, such as WebEx, Treo Phones, etc.

Disadvantages of Using Web Based Applications

1. May not communicate with other in-house systems.
2. Could be a HUGE problem if the company was to go out of business.
3. May not be customizable as an in-house solution.
4. May be slower than a client application accessing data on your own network.

The technology trend here is toward web based applications purchased on a subscription basis. Businesses are figuring out that they are better off spending their time focusing on their core business objectives rather than building - or purchasing and maintaining - administrative applications other companies have mastered and provide through the web on a subscription basis.

Note: SalesForceWatch.com has published a set of tips covering Outage Prevention and Mitigation for Salesforce.com. This may help keep your staff productive rather than relying on tip #5 during outages: Solitaire.

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