The GIS Biz

CES 2012 - The CES We Know & Love Is Back

2012-01-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

As CES closes today, the major impression we carry away is that CES Is Back. The show was much more fun, much more dynamic, and much bigger than it has been since the economic collapse.

The numbers back it up, nearly 2 million feet of exhibit space, 5,000 press and analysts, 140,000 attendees. Taken as 1 building, the South Hall 1,2 3 and 4 is one of the worlds largest buildings. And with so many product intros, more than in many years, some are bound to stick.

Photo: Joe Lackow

The highlights for us, and for many attendees, will be the intro of the Lumia 900 and the hybrid phone/tablet Samsung Note, each very heavily promoted and for once, certainly worthy of the hype, especially the Lumia 900.

Now that the visceral appeal of the Lumia 900 intro at Monday's Nokia conference has worn off, the reality has set in. And it is even better. As a GPS unit as capable as any GPS out there, with serious Navteq navigation quality data instead of consumer-level Google or Bing maps underneath, combined with a 4G smartphone on AT&T's network, this promises to be the low cost logistics solution many of us have been waiting for. Smart phone navigation was not up to snuff. And now, it is. And this Nokia re-entry rocket will also put a lot of digital cameras and software to bed, with its powerful ability to do wide angle high res images without cropping.

We should also mention a couple of technologies we saw at CES that we are trying to pull into our little world of GIS, mapping, and location based services and advertising. One of them is Shodogg, "Videos Best Friend", which is designed to allow users to "toss" fat entertainment content i.e. TV and movies from device to device wirelessly and trnsparently. We see business applications for Shodogg, allowing users to plug into and share and collaborate on streaming presentations regardless of the device they have; and we see a LOT of potential in tossing Call To Duty (and other games) from device to device.

We also like Boogie Board, which is designed to do away with paper notes and save trees. The basic model (left) does just that, especially useful in a family household where it will revolutionize the fridge note.

But the upscale model (right) lets you use USB to get what you drew or wrote on the Boogie Board into your computer. And that is a whole other deal, useful for students and artists and physicians and a host of other users and applications. And we think, with a little tweaking, we can turn it into a really, really inexpensive and nifty little digitizing tablet that we can use to get small paper maps and other GIS (and CAD) content into our PCs where we can work with them with robust tools. Stay tuned on Boogie Board.

Among the other cool and interesting stuff we saw - solar panels storing energy and powering portable devices; the iM Watch mobile phone controller; the continued evolution of Square as a payment system; the giant LG 3D panel and a number of first generation 3D games.

And as we leave the amazing venue that is Las Vegas - after gambling only on the blind grab-bag gifts from White Basin at the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian for the ladies - we breathe a sigh of relief that America, and the world, seems slowly to be turning the economic corner.

And we can't wait to see the Lumia 900 this spring.

Back In The USA - Nokia Returns with Windows Phone on AT&T

2012-01-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

Photo: Joe Lackow

The 3rd ecosystem of the mobile revolution - Windows Phone - is poised to join Android and iOS in the "mobile ecosystem wars" with the introduction of the Lumia 900, Nokia's new 4G smartphone.

And I want one.

It's got a super long life battery.

It's on AT&T's great 4G net.

It has a super-black gorilla glass screen, a pure clear black that empowers startling color.

A sophisticated set of wide angle cameras, with the back capable of super wide angle, uncropped, unchopped, very high resolution images.

It's "bold, beautiful and balanced" - in other words, Apple-like.

It includes Nokia Drive at no cost, GPS based navigation empowered by Nokia's Navteq street map data.

Photo: Joe Lackow

It's on the rapid development fast track, developed brought to market in under one year - with Steve Ballmer (photo, left) present in person to tell us so.

And in doing all this, it "brings out the best in Windows Phone", "the 1st real windows phone". It "stands apart from the crowd, with a rich and differentiated ecosystem."

Is it just hype, or enough for Nokia to successfully re-enter the U.S. market? We think it just might be. It will be available this Spring.

And for now, we are out at Red Rocks Canyon contemplating it all.

CES 2012 Trends to Watch

2012-01-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

After 20 minutes of establishing a PC to projector connection in an SRO roomful of tech types, the 2012 CES kicked off with a press briefing presentation of major trends from the past two years, like 3D and tablets - and what to expect from this year's show.

The CEA research team specifically highlighted 3 major trends to watch for this year.

Photo: Joe Lackow

Morphing of computers. Convergence continues, but suddenly the computer is morphing into a number of different devices, interconnecting and synched - but pulling computing out of computers into other devices, while pushing device function into computers, can be expected to cause quite a bit of friction.

Photo: Joe Lackow

The Year of the Interface. The Internet Enabled Experience now refers to easy to use and increasingly transparent interfaces to allow users to corral content from multiple sources in multiple locations. In other words, simplicity with richness.

Prevalence of personalized devices. Boy, is it no longer one size fits all in the electronics world. Personalization and customization make your product your own, leveraging a hardware core and development frameworks that are just "open enough" to allow 3rd parties to develop and add value for platforms.

Photo: Joe Lackow

Stay tuned for much, much more from beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada as we elaborate from CES 2012 all week.

Mapping The Vast Indoors - Google Maps 6

2011-11-29T17:40:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, my old friend Brad McCallum (who is now at APOS integrating BI and GIS) and I were doing a trade show for ESRI when Brad had a thought. All of this trade show should be in a GIS, not just in a paper map. And you should be able to use it to find what you want and navigate the show.

To which I said, all space can be mapped, including indoor spaces - and not just malls and airports and bus and train terminals, but casinos and libraries and you name it. Including the space between your ears. This is where GIS and CAD show their common parentage.

Another good friend and colleague and GIS developer extraordinaire Kurt Gunther did just this - with hospital beds, in his great eBeds software that manages hospital beds, and the folks in them and serving them, just like they were GIS features.

Today, Google made it real for the average person. "Google Maps 6.0 for Android brings the freestanding map directory to the palm of your hands," announced today on the Google blogs. These detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing a map and zoom in on a building where indoor map data is available.

For now, the data is limited - Ikea, a few Macy's, the Mall of America, a few major airports. But we all know where we're going. Where Brad said we would, more than ten years ago. And the possibilities, for those of us in GIS land in general, and in ESRI and APOS land in particular, are infinite.

Flash Mobile Dies Quietly - Or Does It? - As Adobe Kisses Apple's Ass

2011-11-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

An Adobe blog post today by Danny Winokur, VP & GM of Interactive development, included this little tidbit.

"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook."

Why? And for what, do they break the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill your technology without having a full replacement on tap?"

Universally supported HTML5, that's why. But most developers will find that the current functionality of HTML5 is not on par with what you can do with Actionscript. And it could hurt Flash, and its developers and their refined skillsets in general.

For future generations of premium video and gaming, that's for what. Read: kissing Apple and iOS ass. In the short term.

HOWEVER. This represents real movement towards a standard based web. Towards that end, how will this affect Microsoft plans for Silverlight?

GeoLoco Conference Convenes Tomorrow In SF

2011-11-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

GeoLoco convenes tomorrow at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF in San Francisco!

Geo-Loco is a location based services and advertising (LBS and LBA) conference where executives from Starbucks, Google, Waze, Facebook and many others will address the convergence of social media and LBS in what promises to be a highly interactive setting, with lots of potential investors lurking.

http://www.julieblaustein.com/

The keynotes will be from Bernardo Hernandez, Head of Global Emerging Platforms for Google; Adam Brotman, VP & GM for Digital Ventures at Starbucks; and Paul Adams, the Global Brand Experience Manager of Facebook

Here's the full agenda - this promises to be a power-packed day of learning and networking opportunities, and we'll report the highlights. And if you can make it tonight, you can catch The Locals Awards, celebrating the best offerings in LBS and LBA.

Conference sessions will include:

- The Future(s) of Location Based Services
- The Brands are Coming, the Brands are Coming!
- Tap, Tap: Is the NFC Tipping Point Finally Here?
- The Future of Geo-Loco Investment
- Daily Deals Suck! Why and What to Do about It
- The Future of Mobile-Loco Commerce
- The Great Indoors: the Future of Indoor LBS & LBA
- API overload: Making $$$$ and Sense with Data, Context, and Infrastructure

New Cellphone Study Finds No Cancer Threat - Or Does It?

2011-10-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

In our continuing coverage of this topic, the results of another large Danish study on cellphone use as a carcinogen were published yesterday in the British Medical Journal. The study finds that "there were no increased risks of tumours of the central nervous system".

However, the study focuses on the duration of cellphone subscription, rather than the duration of daily cellphone use, or how many cellphones subjects use (e.g. personal vs. business use).

And as such, the question remains - does regular, heavy use of cellphones cause cancer?

We still don't know. Which is enough reason to remain concerned until we have a better picture of morbidity and mortality. And that means, further research is indicated and this is not the be all and end all despite the breadth of this longitudinal, ongoing study.

Vaya Con Buddha, Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

Every product development person alive feels sick and sad right now at the passing of Steve Jobs, the greatest new product guy since Da Vinci. Because, most of the whole world is saddened by this news, and no one in that world was not touched by this man and what he did. But most, most of all, what a terrible loss for Laurene and the kids, my very best thoughts are with you tonight.

Apple Magic - Poof?

2011-10-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

I thought the new iPhone 4s looked pretty cool at the unveiling today. It's got the iPad 2 dual core processor under the hood now, better battery, much better wi-fi connectivity, worldwide compatibility, up to 64GB storage, and a MUCH better camera.

Courtesy of InfoWorld

And, it's the first version with Siri, the voice-driven intelligent assistant that Apple acquired the technology for last year.

But it's not the awaited iPhone 5, which a lot of people were expecting today. No 4G. No bigger screen, no improved case. Etc. So, while I see a much better phone, available everywhere now except on T-Mobile and MetroPCS, with the prior iPhone 4 just 99 bucks, it seems that disappointment abounds.

And it begs the question, is the Apple magic waning, in this, the start of the post-Jobs era?

Not really.

Despite the fact that early investments in Apple (like Xerox in a prior day) have made a lot of us wealthy, the fact is that Apple has never been able to sustain steady, long term equity growth. Growth has been spectacular when it comes, but there have always been huge proportional declines. Take a look at the chart and ask yourself, how is Apple to sustain the current growth trend? Is there another iPad and iPhone to be pulled out of the hat?

Hint: it would be nice if a phone you buy today has 4G, which will be important over the total life of the phone. Unless you like having to keep upgrading. It would also be nice if someone really addressed - and emphasized - real cell phone security. An unencrypted password for the phone and a 4 digit PIN number for my e-Wallet does not make me feel very secure. Especially on an OS shot through of potential breaches. And that is why every IT person you are likely to talk to will tell you that, given their preferences, there wouldn't be ANY mobile devices to manage securely in the enterprise, but the iPhone and iPad are clearly their preference if it has to be.

Back in the day, the lack of security nearly killed Windows in the enterprise. Google would do well to take that lesson to heart with Android, and do it yesterday. It is going to be an absolute given for Wallet, their mobile payment system, and everywhere security is a concern.

Which, unfortunately, and unhappily, is one long term trend that still appears to have plenty of upside in an overwhelming, international, climate of fear.

Much Ado About Windows 8

2011-09-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

Photo: Joseph Lackow

We're back from a cool Southern California summer break, just in time to cap it off with the Microsoft Windows 8 BUILD conference, convening in Anaheim today and running all week.

This is Microsoft's answer to tablet computing, supports low power ARM CPUs as well as Intel Atom et al, and borrows heavily from the Metro approach used for the Windows Phone - which you will not be seeing in Anaheim this week.

The big news this morning is that the Windows 8 Developer Preview will be available for download tonight at 7PM PST.

The question is, will this finally get Microsoft anywhere and everywhere? Well, if you have ever used a Windows computer, when you see this OS boot up in 8 seconds, I guarantee you will be intrigued.

We'll learn more in the Big Picture sessions this afternoon. If you are interested in detail on the Session tracks, here it is.

Photo: Joseph Lackow

If you'd like to see the Keynote Stream via Silverlight, well here this is (let us know if you have trouble getting in).

But the entire tenor of the conference is geared at reassuring the Microsoft developer community that their well-honed skills will be heavily leveraged and meshed with, not replaced by, an HTML5 centric development model, i.e. web-centric development - hence, the "Use What You Know" theme.

So, while BUILD (which replaces the Microsft Professional Developer's Conference or PDC) might look a lot on the surface like an Apple conference - and there's a Windows Store - the similarities end there.

This is Microsoft write once plays anywhere - and not, rewrite for iPad and iPhone, because it's worth it.

And because there is more on heaven and earth than is thought of in your philosophy, Mr. Jobs.

Photo: Joseph Lackow

BTW the Samsung Tablet designed for Windows 8 is pretty cool, too. And hardware may be what Windows 8 is really all about.

But, not tablet hardware. It is touchscreens coming to notebooks -and desktops. We've been using our 42 inch Samsung touchscreen on the desktop for some time now. Stand-up computing on a touchscreen may end up being the most important thing Donald Rumsfeld ever did.

Android Share Hits 40%

2011-08-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

June data from Comscore reveals that 78.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the second quarter of 2011, and 40.1% were Android.

Apple strengthened its #2 position with 26.6 percent of the smartphone market, up 1.1 percentage points from the prior reporting period. RIM ranked third with 23.4 percent share, followed by Microsoft (5.8 percent) and Symbian (2.0 percent). The 78.5 million smartphones is an 8% increase over the first quarter of the year, and 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices.

Among device manufacturers, Samsung is the top OEM with 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 0.8 percentage points), followed by LG with 21.3 percent share (up 0.4 percentage points) and Motorola with 14.5 percent share. Apple strengthened its position at #4 with 8.9 percent share of mobile subscribers (up 1.0 percentage points), while RIM - which invented the category with the Blackberry - now commands just 7.9 percent share.

Mobile Access To Internet Doubles as XP Usage Falls Below 50%

2011-08-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

NetMarketShare is best known for measuring browser usage, collecting data on user visits to more than 40,000 websites.

But they also detect what operating system is running - and access to the Internet from a mobile operating system nearly doubled in total share from a year ago, to 5.5%.

And, in July 2011, users running XP fell to just below 50% for the first time in a very long time. Windows 7 was responsible for 28% of the visits, and Vista only 9%. This reflects a drop in Windows usage to below 90% from a year ago, down to about 87% from 91% one year ago, as Mac usage edged up towards 6%.

Meanwhile, in the browser wars, Google Chrome now represents 13.5% of user visits, with Internet Explorer at just under 53% and Firefox, about 21.5%. Safari was used by 8%, and with Opera at under 2%, one must consider that even Safari is ahead of Opera among Windows users. Most folks must still have not tried Opera, or even heard of it, because we continue to find it the fastest browser, though the least compatible from an add-on perspective.

GIS Enthusiasm at ESRI Business Summit

2011-07-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

Photos & Video: Joseph Lackow

Last week's ESRI Business Summit was, for the very first time, visualized and presented as a business conference rather than a GIS conference. This reminds me of how Economy.com conferences are about business not econometrics. What is critical to my business here?

Clearly, the answer to that question, at the Business Summit, and the broader ESRI User Conference, is the power of place.

Jack Dangermond was particularly compelling and inspirational this year, opening the conference with an explosion of applications from all over the globe and all over the chart, one positive "game changer" after another after another.

Jacqueline McGlade of the European Environmental Agency talked about the private citizen's role in climate change, and was very moving and inspirational as well. Just One Degree = catastrophic climate change (and one great big melting polar bear ice sculpture), but just one person can act. Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots, same deal.

Timothy and Michele Schilling astounded everyone on Monday afternoon with their tale of improving the income of Rwandan families tenfold in a decade by using GIS to process and market Rwandan coffee (broadly available under the Community Coffee brand in the U.S.) All of these presentations underscored doing good and doing well, the role of private for-profit companies in creating social as well as economic wealth.

At the Business Summit, Warner De Gooijer of Cisco (video) gave a great, clear explanation of how Cisco uses GIS as the backbone of their supply chain through which customer parts can be delivered anywhere in the world, from the closest warehouse to the needy customer, in within as little as two hours. In the same set of discussions, Nigel Davis of Willis Re (the insurance companies insurance company) talked about using crowd sourcing information from social networks like Twitter to help evaluate and manage risk and losses in a disaster. And Michelle Ellington of the University of Kentucky showed the history of facilities management at the university from paper maps to digital GIS, all the while using the process as a tool to bring stakeholders together. When I asked the panel for a model of how GIS developed in their organizations, they all agreed that find a senior manager champion, build strong GIS staff with interpersonal skills, and architect solutions as close to the heart of IT as possible were the keystones.

Earlier, Matt Mikula of Edward Jones provided a glimpse of the history of GIS usage at Edward Jones that was somewhat like Michelle's, but with the usual reticence towards fundamental systems changes at many financial institutions - where it's usually best to be second and allow someone else to be bleeding on the edge, and where IT is often tasked with wiring together different generations of technology that ends up looking like something out of the movie "Brazil". Another Matt, Matt Felton of MacKenzie Commercial RE, was as enthusiastic as anyone in recounting how he makes GIS relevant to a large number of very different people and functions in his organization. Genial Pat O'Hagan of Starbucks, who has become a fixture at this conference, was as helpful as always in explaining how Starbucks puts GIS - and business intelligence - to work.

RPM Map Gallery Entry, "Geography at Work"

RPM did its part by participating in the Map Gallery - which everybody should do, and also bring guests and family to the Reception on Monday night. And, Elio stood fondly by as our longtime friend and RPM client Scott McClymonds of ARVEST Bank won a SAG Award for Special Achievement in GIS. We began extending and enhancing the customer database using GIS with Scott in 1993.

In short, this was the best conference since the economic downturn and pone of the best ever. With 15,000 attendees, it was also the largest..

ESRI 2011 User Conference Features Arvest Bank, Edward Jones

2011-07-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

The ESRI 2011 User Conference in San Diego is nearly upon us, so get out those travelin' shoes. Scott McClymonds of Arvest Bank will be receiving a Special Achievement in GIS Award, recognizing nearly two decades of GIS excellence at the Bank, on Wednesday. Way to go, Scott!

The ESRI Business Summit will kick things off on Sunday morning July 10, where upwards of 200 business geography pros will gather to hear the latest and greatest from industry leaders - and each other.


Matt Mikula, IS Services at Edward Jones.

Added to the ESRI Business Summit speaker lineup is Matt Mikula, who is a key IS adminstrator for Edward Jones. Matt is responsible for IS Financial Advisor and Branch Services, and supports many of the systems used by the firm's financial advisors and branch office administrators. Edward Jones has been a pioneer shop for GIS, with a long track record (like Arvest) dating back two decades to Atlas GIS, the pioneering business geography platform which was purchased by ESRI in 1996.

Joining Matt will be a group of exceptional speakers from Cisco, Starbucks and others. So, come on down, and hear about best practices, tips and tricks, new software features - and enjoy the usual raucous good time had by all. Here's where to go for more information about the Summit, and about the User Conference, which runs all next week through July 15.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Buy 'Em

2011-06-17T16:04:00.001-07:00

CapOne bought ING yesterday, for $9 billion in cash and stock. This moves CapOne up to #5 in deposits in the U.S. from #8. The ING brand will persist for a year or more.

The deal makes a lot of sense from many perspectives, especially if CapOne adds assets (like the HSBC card portfolio, which includes many affinity cards). There is access to a broad base of low cost funds. There is a big gain in online know-how. Most of all, as system conversions go, this one looks relatively painless as the two share quite a bit of technology.

Just one problem. The kind of customer that ING has is typically a value-hungry, simplicity-minded, big bank rejector. And among the big banks that ING customers reject, CapOne is high on the list. In fact, in many ways, CapOne is the anti-ING - perceived by many to be a high fee, hard to do business with, even deceptive traditional bank. One look at the ING customer response to the news, as suggested by online comments in response to news announcements, suggests that the difficulty here in conversion will be cultural rather than systemic.

This is going to create huge opportunities FOR YOU, super-regional, regional, and community banks and credit unions. The latter have already made a lot of hay in the wake of the "death of free checking".

It's June 2011, do you know which of your customer households is doing business with ING, or fits the ING customer profile (online-savvy savers and fee-averse transactors)? Yes indeed, another reason to lean heavily on a customer-relationship, lifestyle-oriented GIS system.

Merchants Rejoice as Senate Upholds New Debit Card Rules

2011-06-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of National Public Radio, 2011

Banks will really need to find other ways of earning fee income now. The Senate voted Wednesday to let the rule stand by which the Fed will slice away $12 billion in annual income represented by debit interchange, the fees that merchants pay banks each time a customer swipes a debit card. Senators supporting the financial institutions' efforts to head off the Fed proposal fell six voters short of the 60 needed to prevail, 54-45.

Those charges now average 44 cents per transaction. Let's get real. That is well, well above the cost of a debit transaction carrying none of the risk of a credit based one. BUT - the Fed ruling will hold those fees to a maximum of just 12 cents per swipe, and the law takes effect in about a month on July 21. While this might change, it probably won't now.

Smart banks will realize, and already have, that they need to enter retail financial businesses that earn fees. But most will simply look to place fees on what has been given away for years, and play right into the hands of online, non-traditional players, and non-banks.

What a good time to dig into your GIS, and determine which of your trade areas have the kind of customers and overall community composition that spells success for financial, college, tax and retirement planning.

When one needs fee income, one emphasizes products and services for which consumers have always paid fees, and gladly. And studies continue to show that consumers still trust their banker more than, say, their stockbroker. Simply ratcheting up NSF and late and other fees and creating new triggers for them simply won't get 'er done. Making new kinds of relationships and stepping up to compete in the new environment, will.

U.N. Classifies Internet Access a Fundamental Human Right

2011-06-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the U.N. Human Rights Council released a special report that underscores more than ever how important the Internet has become. In doing so, they make a clear statement that limiting internet access in the 21st century is a serious restriction of human rights.

Specifically, that

(a) Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference; and

(b) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

The report further outlines the seminal role and nature of the Internet.

"The right to freedom of opinion and expression is as much a fundamental right on its own accord as it is an “enabler” of other rights, including economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to education and the right to take part in cultural life and to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, as well as civil and political rights, such as the rights to freedom of association and assembly. Thus, by acting as a catalyst for individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, the Internet also facilitates the realization of a range of other human rights."

The problem? We have a long long way to go to insure the kind of universal access to the internet that will foster human freedom and communications between people(s). The report notes that "in contrast to 71.6 Internet users per 100 inhabitants in developed States, there are only 21.1 Internet users per 100 inhabitants in developing States (and) is starker in the African region, with only 9.6 users per 100 inhabitants."

Further, the report notes that "without Internet access, which facilitates economic development and the enjoyment of a range of human rights, marginalized groups and developing States remain trapped in a disadvantaged situation, thereby perpetuating inequality both within and between States."

Clearly, many of us agree. A BBC study last year found that for 79% of those interviewed in 26 countries, Internet access is a fundamental human right.

This has never more important than it is right now, in the "Arab Spring". As the report also notes, "the recent wave of demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and North African region has shown the key role that the Internet can play in mobilizing the population to call for justice, equality, accountability and better respect for human rights."

Cellphone Safety: Another Perspective

2011-06-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

The Announcement

On May 31, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (an agency within the World Health Organization) announced results as a year-long analysis reviewing studies assessing the risks of cell phone use. I'm a bit skeptical and critical of the World Health Organization press-briefing regarding cancer risks associated with cell phone use for a couple of reasons.

First of all (and possibly, most importantly) WHO has not released the manuscript yet, so there is really no way to assess the methodology of their meta-analysis.

Secondly, the announcement was released as a press-briefing rather than a journal article, so it is not subject to the scrutiny of the peer-review process, as would any other study. To-date, the most valid in vivo studies done have failed to find conclusive evidence of a physiologic mechanism. A meta analysis of such studies by Verschaeve, et al, (2010) concluded that "Many of the positive studies may well be due to thermal exposures, but a few studies suggest that biological effects can be seen at low levels of exposure. Overall, however, the evidence for low-level genotoxic effects is very weak."

Epidemiological Approaches

In the absence of conclusive in vivo studies it becomes a question of who can produce a valid epidemiological study. One of the most often-cited studies, to-date attempted to correlate the incidence rates of gliomas and meningioma (brain cancers) with rates of cell phone use in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden from 1974–2003 (Deltour, 2009) based on over 58,000 cases of brain cancer. The authors concluded that "The lack of a detectable trend change in incidence rates up to 2003 in this study suggests that the induction period for brain tumors associated with mobile phone use exceeds 5–10 years, that the increased risk of brain tumors associated with mobile phone use in this population is too small to be observed, that the risk is restricted to subgroups of brain tumors or mobile phone users, or there is no increased risk associated with mobile phone use. "

Responsible Health Communications

My concern is that by the very nature of their being made, comments by WHO regarding the need for more research intentionally or unintentionally communicates to the public that not enough research is being done. In reality, much research *is* currently underway, such as the 'Cosmos' study, which is a large-scale prospective cohort study of mobile telephone users (250,000 men and women aged 18+ years in five European countries - Denmark, Finland, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK), followed over 25 years (Schüz J, et al, 2010).

Media coverage

Although I am reserving judgment until WHO releases their monograph, organizations such as the World Health Organization have a particular obligation to follow evidence-based guidelines and to recognize the effects that their communications have on public perceptions and health behaviors . Although one might argue that the WHO working group is simply calling for more research, a strong argument can be made that such research is and has already been underway, making their call seem more like an unnecessary and alarmist call to action. Given that media outlets are in the business as maximizing readership with compelling stories, it was no surprise to see the numerous dramatic headlines in today's (June 1) news, such as:

WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk CNN. com
Cellphones, cancer: Study links cellphones to possible cancer risk
Cellphones may cause cancer, international agency says - NYPOST.com
Cellphones Possibly Cause Cancer, WHO Warns

Pronouncements such as this one remind me as a quote I often share with public health students by Harvard epidemiologist, Dr. Walter Willet during an interview with Science Watch:

Interviewer: The science of risk-factor epidemiology is controversial these days because of what people call the "carcinogen" or "anxiety-of-the-week syndrome." It seems that every week the newspapers carry a new and usually contradictory study telling us what we should or should not eat. Is this our imagination, or is there really a problem?

Willett: It's true; there is a problem. Part of it is this very direct link between ongoing work and what comes out in The New York Times. The natural course of science is that people do studies and report finding something, but nobody believes it too much-and, hopefully, neither do the investigators-until it's reproduced by other researchers. But in the meantime, it's on the front page of the newspaper. So there is this tendency for the least substantiated findings to be the ones coming out in the popular press, when in fact this is simply part of the scientific process, and a lot of suspected associations are not ready for the public to take action or even worry about.

Sources

L. Verschaeve a,*,1, J. Juutilainen b,1, I. Lagroye c,1, J. Miyakoshi d,1, R. Saunders e,1, R. de Seze f,1,T. Tenforde g,1, E. van Rongen h,1, B. Veyret c,1, Z. Xui,1. (2010). In vitro and in vivo genotoxicity of radiofrequency fields. Mutation Research 705 (2010) 252–268

Schüz J, Elliott P, Auvinen A, Kromhout H, Poulsen AH, Johansen C, Olsen JH, Hillert L, Feychting M, Fremling K, Toledano M, Heinävaara S, Slottje P, Vermeulen R, Ahlbom A. (2010). Cancer Epidemiol. 2011 Feb;35(1):37-43. An international prospective cohort study of mobile phone users and health (Cosmos): design considerations and enrolment. Cancer Epidemiol. 2011 Feb;35(1):37-43.

Deltour, (2009). Isabelle Deltour, Christoffer Johansen, Anssi Auvinen, Maria Feychting, Lars Klaeboe and Joachim Schüz . Time Trends in Brain Tumor Incidence Rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, 1974–2003. JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst (2009) 101 (24): 1721-1724. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djp415

Twitter Adoption Strongest Among African-Americans

2011-06-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

Who uses Twitter? Research released today by Pew Internet shows that usage skews towards the young and better-educated. No news there. What may be news to many people, however, is that usage skews towards non-White users.

Fully 25% of Blacks online have used Twitter. This compares to 19% of Latinos online, and only 9% of Whites.

Heavy usage skews even more Black - while 11% of use Twitter daily, only 5% of Latinos and 3% of Whites do.

Pew also reports growth in usage among 30-49 year olds, where usage has doubled in less than 6 months, now 14%. Usage still falls off considerably after age 49, to just 8% of 50-64s and 6% of 65+.
Household income is not much of a predictor, but at least some college education is, and so is urban and suburban residence.

That is quite, quite a different profile than that of the predominantly White, male, and dorky Twitter Twit.

Are Cellphones Safe, Part 2

2011-05-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

Today, the World Health Organization via the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans, based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer associated with wireless phone use.

Dr Jonathan Samet of USC, the overall Chairman of the Working Group, indicated that "the evidence, while still accumulating, is strong enough to support... the conclusion that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk."

"Given the potential consequences for public health of this classification and findings," added IARC Director Christopher Wild, "it is important that additional research be conducted into the long‐term, heavy use of mobile phones. Pending the availability of such information, it is important to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure such as hands‐free devices or texting. "

Considering that the number of cellphone users is approaching 5 billion people, any such empirical finding is plenty scary. Many of us have been reporting this for a long time now. Are you all getting concerned yet?

Banks Have PayPal In Their Sites, As Google Goes NFC

2011-05-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

Looks like the big three banks, where one-in-three Americans have their checking account, want in to PayPal's gold mine. No kidding.

Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase announced clearXchange on Wednesday, their new joint venture to let customers move money around with just a mobile number or email address.

We won't see it until next year. Too bad, because this will put fee pressure on PayPal - they'll probably be giving away clearXchange to obtain trial, then charge after it proves its value. Like debit, consumer protections remain far better with a credit card. Tests will be in Arizona, which has always been where they test electronic banking.

Thursday, Google announced their NFC play with partner CitiCorp that will let consumers "tap, pay and save". NFC or Near Field Communications is the short-range wireless technology that lets you wave your NFC enabled phone near a payment terminal in a store or gas station and pay for something. "Google Wallet" will also feature LBS a la Foursquare, so you'll get coupons from partner merchants pushed at you based on location.

BUT. It will start out being available only on Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint, and will work only with MasterCard PayPass terminals, a fraction of the NFCs deployed. Google will begin initial testing of Google Wallet in New York and San Francisco.

All of this is a good thing. It will reduce friction in payment systems by reducing costs and fees - especially for person to person payments, where the high cost of wire transfers today is what has made PayPal such a success. And it is interesting that Citi seems more interested in owning traditional bank turf - merchant payment terminals - while the clearXchange banks stake their place in the new firmament, online and mobile payments.

Characteristics of Closed Bank Branches - Trade Area Lifestyles

2011-05-23T17:06:00.001-07:00

Last week, we began our analysis of closed bank branches, suggesting that the next steps are profiling the trade areas involved, in terms of demography and lifestyle, business mix, primary site characteristics and several other key metrics.

Demography and lifestyle turns out to be quite telling. Using ESRI Tapestry, we find that the top 5 of the 65 Tapestry segments account for over 42% of these trade areas.

Laptops & Lattes are nearly 16 times as likely to be in one of these trade areas than in the U.S. as a whole; Metro Renters, nearly 12 times as likely. Further, 4 of the 5 segments are in the Solo Acts lifemode or uber-category. We also note that of 11 Urbanization areas, 45% are in just one, Principal Urban Centers I.

And, the plot thickens.

Average household size is quite small, at just 2.19 - reflecting all those Solo Acts. And income is upscale, at a median AHI of nearly $60,000. Though 58% of occupied units are renters, those who do own homes have home values well above the U.S. average. The trade areas are also about 2/3 White.

Not exactly what one might have expected. That is, until you consider that the people we are talking about - young upscale singles and couples and some very young families - don't rely on branches to do their banking. So, while they are dynamite prospects for financial services - just the kind of people that American Express targets and courts early and often - branches may not necessarily be the way to make them customers.

That is, branches as we now know them.

Netflix & BitTorrent Eat Half The Internet

2011-05-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

Sandvine reported today that Netflix traffic has increased nearly 50% over the past year, and now accounts for what is approaching one-third of peak-time North American traffic (30%) and one-quarter of daily traffic (22%).

Add the 22% of daily traffic that is BitTorrent, and the trend towards broad proliferation of smart mobile devices, and you realize that video and streaming content will very soon dominate.

Sandvine reports that "Real-Time Entertainment traffic is continuing its journey to network dominance, particularly in North America, where it represents 49.2% of peak period fixed access traffic. If this rate of growth is sustained, Real-Time Entertainment will make up 55-60% of traffic by the end of the year."

In Europe, about 33% of peak access is Real-Time Entertainment, while in laptop-dominated Latin America, P2P uploads are now nearly half the traffic.

And everywhere, people watched William and Kate Get Married. In another Sandvine report, we find that Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) traffic doubled, and global video traffic in general surged to 26% above normal levels, peaking during the wedding ceremony itself. Traffic on the social media sites Twitter and Facebook peaked 30% and 10%, respectively, above normal levels and local peaks corresponded with highlights of the wedding coverage.

Cable/fiber television operators, be afraid. Be very afraid. Ditto, corporate nets.

Analyzing Characteristics of Closed Branches

2011-05-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

Along with the decision of when and where to open a new branch office, one of the key decisions made by banking administrators is when and where to *close* a branch office. We decided to take a look at recently closed branches in order to identify what common characteristics we might be able to identify.

BranchInfo by RPM Consulting

To conduct our analysis, we used the most current version of BranchInfo. RPM's BranchInfo competitive bank branch database tracks not only branches that are currently open, but also branches that have been closed since the last data update. The current version of BranchInfo, released in February 2011, contains bank branch locations and ownership as of February 15, 2011, as well as branches which were closed between July 1, 2010 and February 15, 2011. Also, new to BranchInfo beginning with the last update, are a series of key market potential and competitive metrics calculated for a one-mile radius surrounding each branch. In order to better understand the characteristics associated with branches that institutions have chosen to close and/or consolidated into other locations, we decided to conduct an analysis of the closed locations, comparing them to locations which have remained open.

Methodology

To conduct our analysis, we began with the 422 branches reported as having been closed between July 1, 2001 and February 15, 2011. We then identified the complete branch networks for all institutions that had reported a closed branch during that time period so that we could compare closed branches to open branches for the same institutions that had closed one or more branches. This approach allowed us to compare the 422 closed branches to 43,439 open branches for the same institutions.

Once our database was assembled, we compared the following characteristics for the open and closed branches:

Age of the branch

MarketBank deposit potential
MarketBank loan potential
MarketBank investment potential
Number of competing branches
Average MarketBank deposit potential per branch (within a one-mile radius)

Branch deposit market share

Size of branch in deposits dollars

Type of institution regulator

Branch office versus main office

Service type (full service brick & mortar, etc.)

Each branch's share of total bank deposits
Bank Asset Size

Each variable was tested for statistical significance using either chi square analysis or one-way analysis of variance, with .05 being set as the alpha value (for you quantitative types).

Findings

For our study, we broke down the variables we analyzed into several categories, focusing on the physical/administrative characteristics, competitive environment, and market potential.

Physical/Administrative

First looking at the physical and administrative characteristics of closed branches, we found that the age of a branch was a statistically significant when comparing open and closed branches. Closed branches are, on average, much younger than branches that remain open. While the average age (calculated using the "Date Established" field) of an open branch is about 36 years, the average of a closed branch is just 26 years.

Another significant difference concerns the service type of the facility. Overall, we found that "Limited Service" facilities (such as drive-through branches, and seasonal/mobile offices) were much more likely to have been closed compared to full-service offices.

In terms of the type of institution most likely to close a branch, state savings assocations and state savings banks closed 7.9% and 5.2% of their branches, respectively, compared to state and federal commercial banks, which closed less than 1% of their branches.

Closed branches also have a tendency to represent somewhat larger contributions to banks' overall deposit levels. Our analysis found that although the average open branch represented approximately .5% of its institution's deposits, the average closed branch represented a considerably larger 3.2% of its institution's deposits (consistent with a smaller institution). In terms of deposits, closed branches were somewhat smaller than open branches, holding an average of $34.6 million in deposits, compared to $60 million for open branches (excluding outliers).

Finally, the size of the institutions also seems to be significantly different when comparing open and closed branches. Although the average institution held approximately $125 million in assets, those with closed branches were considerably smaller, holding an average of just under $40 million in assets.

Geographic Distribution

Based on the percentage of total branches closed during the second half of 2010, states with the highest percentage of closures (2% or more of the institutions' branches being closed) included Idaho, North Dakota, and Montana to the north, stretching south to Arkansas and Mississippi.

Competitive Environment

In our analysis, we studied the nature of each branch's competition by assessing the number and size (based on deposit balances) of competitor branches located within a one-mile radius. Interestingly, the number of competitors does not prove to be significantly different between open and closed branches, however an analysis of market share does surface an interesting difference. Although the average share of deposits for open branches was approximately 27.1%, the market share of closed branches was somewhat higher, at 30.7%, suggesting that a closed branch does not necessarily equate to an under-performing branch.

Market Potential

One measure that we often use to determine whether an market is potentially over-banked, is the average estimated MarketBank potential deposit balances divided by the number of bank branches present. In areas in which tend to be saturated with bank branches, we generally find that the average deposit potential per branch is typically lower than areas with unmet potential. An assessment of the average deposit potential per branch found that closed branches tend to be in somewhat lower potential markets than open branches. The average potential per bank branch in open-branch market areas was about $18 million, which was higher than the $15 million for closed branch market areas.

We also used our MarketBank retail market potential database to quantify the consumer deposit, retail loan, and retail investment potential indices for a one-mile radius surrounding each branch (an index value of 100 equates to the national average for balance potential per resident household). Not surprisingly, retail deposit, loan and retail investment potential was substantially higher among still-open branches compared to closed branches. Open branches had average deposit, loan and investment potential indices of 104.5, 101.1, and 105.9, respectively. All are significantly higher than the deposit index of 100.5, loan index of 92.8, and investment index of 99.3 for closed branches.

Conclusions

Based on these observations, we can conclude that institutions that close branches tend to be somewhat smaller thrifts, rather than commercial banks, and the closed branches tend to be rather younger, and more likely limited service facilities, with almost half the deposits of branches that remain open. The average market share of closed branches tends to be close to or above the average for other branches in their local markets, and the average deposit potential per competing branch tends to be somewhat below average, suggesting that the areas in which branches are closed tend to be rather smaller, as well as competitive and/or saturated markets. Additionally, the closed-branch markets tend to be hold lower than average potential for lending and investment products, although relatively average potential for deposits.

Although closed branches tend to be smaller branches in lower potential markets, the decision to close a branch is not one that is made consistently from branch to branch or from institution to institution, suggesting that very often, the decision may not be based on market conditions as much as it may be based on logistical or contractual issues. For example, given that limited service facilities are more often closed, it is possible that branches that have been opened as temporary facilities to serve a particular need are often closed when the need no longer exists and the branche's usefulness comes to an end.

Although this analysis gives us a start in understanding some of the underlying characteristics, a better understanding of the nature of closed bank branches should also include additional local market and locational information, such as daytime population, business mix, employment, and demographics of those residing within the markets.

Great Debate - Interop Weathermen Tell Which Way The Cloud Blows

2011-05-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

The session on "The Great Debate - Are Clouds More Secure?" revealed two things. This is a rather simplistic question, and the answers were completely self-serving. Cloud providers advocated cloud security as at least as good as traditional net security; security providers, consultants and traditional IT had key reservations. And in this Oxford style debate, the latter successfully scared the crap out of an unsure audience - 8 audience members who went in trusting the cloud were swayed to serious doubt.

A bit more quantitative was a survey of 94 IT execs at Interop, conducted by Network Instruments. This survey revealed that:

61% have cloud services running on their nets, a big jump from a year ago.
50% have deployed a private cloud.
21% of apps run in the cloud, and this is forecast to be 38% next year.
61% say availability improved over last year; 50% said scalability has.

But perhaps the key finding is that 60% said their ability to troubleshoot worsened. It became much more difficult in the past year to show that the leak is on the cloud provider’s boat. The ability to audit cloud performance and hold the provider accountable is critical.

The real answer to the overall question is, it depends. The more voluminous, static and relatively insensitive the data involved is, the more the cloud makes sense. And the more dynamic the application is, and the more important it is to deploy it quickly, the more the cloud makes sense.

IDC Reveals Cloud Adoption Keys At Interop 2011

2011-05-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

If you made it to the 7:30am IDC breakfast today, you learned the two most important things in life.

Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.

Actually, it's the fact that among 500 survey respondents, Pay As You Grow (48%) and Easy, Fast Deployment (40%) are the key drivers behind cloud adoption.

Vint Cerf Blasts Off Into Space

2011-05-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

Vint Cerf stressed extending the Internet into space, and into us, in today's discussions at Interop.

Among other things, Cerf noted that "Cars, buildings, clothing will all be instrumented... "We will be instrumented."

As for the cloud, Cerf suggested that interoperability across cloud providers was not only key, but essential, and that "We won't get true interoperability until customers say... I won't buy it if it isn't open.'"

He also drew attention to a big Google future in analytics.

Cisco Embraces Video at Interop 2011

2011-05-10T12:41:00.001-07:00

Want to know how to manage video on a corporate net?

Cisco's keynote presentation on Borderless Networking at Interop this morning was really all about media and fat content management, and not so much about connectivity and community. But you can learn about it all - with video. Today's keynote will be available on demand beginning Thursday May 12, and you can register here to access all of the Cisco Virtual content from Interop.

Can your network handle it?

Interop Forecast - Cloudy With A Strong Chance of Reign

2011-05-09T14:25:00.000-07:00

Interop Vegas 2011 gets going for real tomorrow, with several keynotes that just might prove memorable and a conference session on just how secure the cloud really is at 2:15.

Dave Donatelli in the Enterprise Servers group at HP will kick things off at 8am with a talk about implications of cloud access for corporate nets.

Mark Templeton of Cisco follows, discussing how user expectations are driving the new paradigm, as apps transform from enterprise driven bloats to easy, cheap micro-apps.

Then, it's Old Home Week with Vint Cerf and Dan Lynch talking about how we got here and what the future Internet will look like as a network.

Later, Cisco will talk more about network convergence and the cloud.

And that's just the morning stuff. At 1, Azure Guy Zane Adam will talk about the possibilities of a cheap, accessible public cloud. Alex Gray of Juniper will talk about virtualization and what is bound to be the next buzzword, Fabric. And Scott Hopkins of IBM will discuss business transformational aspects of the cloud.

But the hottest session tomorrow, in the wake of the Amazon outage - a Don't Miss - is bound to be the conference pres on whether the cloud is secure or not, following the afternoon keynotes at 2:15.

Apple iOS Update Offers Location Cache Fix

2011-05-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Apple released a 4.3.3 update to iOS today to deal with privacy concerns about the location database cache.

Now, you can actually stop it from backing up to iTunes. And those who could not care less about Location Services can turn off the feature and dump the while thing.

The web page announcement was about as cryptic as they come, making no reference at all to the underlying issues and concerns.

Osama bin Laden Compound Mapped

2011-05-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

After a mad scramble of geo & web developers, editors and average citizens, Google has the Osama bin Laden compound mapped and geo-referenced.

DOD adds this schema,

and some aerials, too.

If we had coordinated and scrambled this intensely before the fact, we'd have had the maps sooner.

Amazon Elastic Cloud Compote

2011-04-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

If you use Foursquare, HootSuite, Reddit and Quora- or read blogs like this - you know that Amazon had a great big fail whale last week.

Their Elastic Cloud Compute turned into Elastic Cloud Compote when they accidentally flooded the secondary server during a common network change procedure.

Trouble is, those social networks don't have a cool fail whale like Twitter.

Foursquare, for example, has this little weepy princess. This is not exactly how either the users or the providers felt about the outage. At least I know I didn't.

Closer to the mark for me is probably something like this.

How NOT To Enable Your Web Apps for Mobile Viewing

2011-04-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

Neil McAllister at Infoworld put up a dynamite little checklist of pitfalls to avoid when designing web apps that have a mobile life, too.

So here's what you do if you want mobile users to mock you, and your website.

Use tooltips. Mouse-over or roll-over controls require, duh, a mouse. Use lots of them.
Use lots of interface widgets. You can't grab 'em on a little smartphone, and tablet users don't need 'em.
Create multiple panes with their own scrollbars. Drives users nuts as they try to scroll around your big page on their little phone, only to find multiple scrollbars you need a stylus to grab.
Dictate how text will appear. Inflexible text won't line up right on a smartphone.
Dictate the page format. Especially a butt-pain and invites a hide-and-seek game to find content, navigate and interact when pivoting orientation.
Preload lots of images and fat content, useful or not. Slow, slow, slow on smarphone OS.
Use lots of Flash, especially for interface. Won't work at all on iOS... and unpredictably elsewhere.

iPhone Location Tracking on Congressional Radar

2011-04-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, The Guardian in the UK started something of a firestorm with an article about a "secret file" on the iPhone that records and stores the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp. This has been going on since last June, and as much as a year's worth of coordinates could be stored.

Yesterday, Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file, presented their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco, (where BTW, Jack Dangermond gave a keynote on community collaborative mapping).

Well, today the U.S.Congress got involved. Referencing the Guardian article, Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts sent a formal letter of inquiry to Steve Jobs asking what's up with this. Obviously, such a cache of locations on a phone could prove a huge privacy invasion and wreak damage and havoc in any number of ways should the phone be lost or subject to unauthorized access. Jobes now has 15 days to respond about why the data is being collected and to explain how this file does not violate Section 222 of the Communications Act which requires expressed customer authorization for such a file.

Bony Fingers

2011-04-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

ComScore research shows that Americans spent over a billion dollars shopping on their smartphones in the first three months this year. Sounds like a lot, but it's less than 3% of all e-commerce sales for 2011:1. Why? Smartphones have certainly become ubiquitous enough, expected to reach 50% penetration of Americans sometime this year.

Bony fingers. That's why. You need skinny, little, bony fingers to establish accounts and buy confidently online. And that is only after you have mastered squinting and gesturing at slow loading pages filled with minuscule pictures, to even get to the part where you have to enter data - like your 16 digit card number, etc.

Who does this really well? Amazon.

They've been doing it a long time - they realized in 2006 that mobile was not going to simply be an extension of the web.
It's primarily value-added for existing customers whose data is already captured, so you can

one-click shop;
shop with a bar code;
shop by voice;
and search with auto-fills.

Otherwise, Mr. and Ms. Retailer, work your fingers to the bone, and you know what you get.

Tablet Adoption in the Enterprise

2011-04-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

As Android phones become ubiquitous and come to dominate the market, tablets are a completely different issue. Until Android becomes a secure platform, the iPad and the soon to be released BlackBerry PlayBook (pictured left) will dominate whatever enterprise adoption occurs, possibly over the next couple of years. Android tablets will find their place in business, but won't be enterprise ready for A-while.

Never before has user adoption of a mobile device challenged corporate IT as fast and as broadly as the iPad has. As you probably know, Apple is as surprised as anybody and can't manufacture nearly enough to meet the demand. And they are definitely finding their way to work - new Forrester research shows one out of four companies using or planning to use tablets. Are they secure enough to be on a corporate network? Forrester says Yes. And so do some pretty big banks. The early applications are a little weak in terms of justifying hard ROI on iPads, but it's clear that they are a boon to meetings, electronic documents, and field applications in sales and service.

Perhaps the greatest concern? All those tablets sucking a mobile bandwidth that is not designed for, and can't accommodate, tons of fat content; and extending reach via Wi-Fi is not cheap. What to do? Well, enterprise users, enjoy all your YouTube and streaming video over wireless networks now, because we will be locking it all down before you know it.

Small Merchants Embrace Mobile Payments - and Vice Versa

2011-03-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

When it comes to mobile payments, the U.S. is still well behind the curve, and this extends to all areas of mobile payments. But what is happening here, and now, are small merchants.

This week, Intuit unveiled GoPayment for Android 3.0 in NYC - more than a month after its preview in Barcelona last month at Mobile World Congress.

Intuit is venturing into the space for low cost, small merchant payments that Square has established on the iPhone and iPad platform and extended to Android. Square will send you the little square card reader for free, and swipes will cost you just 2.75%. Quite a bit less expensive and far more efficient than other methods of accepting cards, and far, far better than (shudder) PayPal.

As we can and will reach the unbanked through mobile phones on the retail side, on the merchant side Intuit would like to compete for small businesses without merchant accounts, using banks that can't, or won't, help them. Intuit has targeted tablets, rather than phones, and loaded GoPayment for Honeycomb (Android 3.0) with features, so you can:

Swipe cards within seconds – Save time and money by swiping a card instead of entering numbers manually. GoPayment features support for a variety of credit card readers. All compatible card readers also encrypt the credit card data for added protection.
Authorize transactions with touch screen signature – For added security and professionalism, customers can quickly sign a tablet’s touch screen to authorize their transactions.
Drag and drop frequently sold items from a product list – Quickly complete a sale by dragging and dropping items into the shopping cart and easily add or delete items as needed.
Take photos of frequently sold items – Using a device’s camera, save time by photographing products and storing details to create a visual product list to quickly take customer orders.
Find data quickly – Find items in a product list or locate past transactions using new search capabilities.
Work within an easy-to-view, large-screen environment – Easily view transactions and work faster when processing payments on a tablet. GoPayment is optimized for tablet form factors building on Honeycomb’s “fragment” technology.

Given the tablet orientation of GoPayment for Honeycomb, Intuit is likely reaching for larger, more sophisticated businesses than Square - businesses that already use QuickBooks, for example. Whether they can come up with a value proposition as strong as Square's 2.75% merchant discount remains to be seen.

Opportunities are Available in All Walks of Life in Australia

2011-03-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

Australia is the California of the UK. I first heard this from Ray Davies of the Kinks, talking about the song. Everything happens first here, and this has never been more true than today, and never more true than for payment systems (and GIS adoption in finance).

Yesterday, MasterCard revealed the "5 Year Roadmap" for Australia and New Zealand. At the heart of this is PayPass, MasterCard’s contactless payment service, with 88 million cards used at more than 276,000 merchant locations. By October 2012, all new MasterCards Down Under will be PayPass enabled.

MasterCard is requiring that all new merchants in relevant merchant categories have at least one PayPass enabled terminal. These include: taxis, news stands, bookstores, supermarkets, convenience stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, service stations, parking lots, fast food restaurants, cafes, bars and movie theaters.

(MasterCard is also requiring that all POS terminals and all new/reissued MasterCard cards in Australia and New Zealand be EMV compliant by July 1, 2011. EMV is the Europay-MasterCard-VISA tech standard for inter-operation of integrated circuit cards (IC cards or "chip cards") and IC card capable point of sale (POS) terminals and automated teller machines (ATMs), for authenticating transactions - securely, 21st century-style.)

In the U.S. there has not been a lot of activity with near field communications like PayPass, Longtime RPM client and innovator Kinecta FCU is out front, branded as “Tap N Go". Kinecta members simply tap their PayPass enabled credit card on a specially equipped merchant terminal and payment is completed quickly, securely and easily (say, at a gas pump) without the hassle of swiping a card or fumbling for cash and coins. Gary Harman, First Vice President of Consumer Lending Operations at Kinecta, notes that “MasterCard PayPass is simpler and faster than cash, allowing our cardholders a more streamlined payment option."

It's coming. And in financial services, it always comes first in Australia.

Mobile Banking for the Unbanked

2011-03-28T14:46:00.001-07:00

A few posts back, we suggested that mobile phones might be able to reach older consumers who never tried banking online with a PC, and don't care to, either. But international data suggests that it is the unbanked - the poor, lowest income consumers - who might be the real beneficiaries of mobile payments.

CGAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor) reports that the mobile phone is the first communications device in history to have more users in poor countries than rich. In 2010, mobile phone owners in poor countries accounted for two-thirds of the world’s 4.77 billion phones.

But as people in poor countries become increasingly well-connected via mobile, they remain far less well-connected financially. An emerging market consumer is more than twice as likely to own a mobile phone as to have a bank account in their name.

So, doesn't it seem like mobile phones hold a lot of promise for reaching the unbanked?

Let's also consider that banks can reap substantial cost savings from channels that replace branches with “branchless banking” (technology paired with agents, typically merchants who handle deposits and withdrawals and are connected via mobile or card-swipe POS terminals). The figure at left shows the cost reduction for 4 Mexican and Colombian banks from moving deposit transactions from teller to agent. CGAP estimates most banks will see 50% cost savings or greater. This enables them to reach low-income clients who were previously uneconomical to serve.

Now hear this - other providers — mobile operators, tech firms — which want to enter financial services for the first time can also employ agents to cost-effectively roll out. That means that those who create the software for phones (Google), those who make the software and the phone (Apple), those who have the networks (AT&T and Verizon) and those who have competing payment networks already in place (Discover) all stand to benefit from the inability of banks and merchants to get on the same page - which they have not been able to do. This was the case when I first developed the business case for EFTPOS at First Interstate in the early 1980's with KMPG, and since then, merchant-bank relations have decidely not improved.

No wonder this is developing outside the U.S. so much faster, where there are far fewer, far less powerful entities battling for control.

AT&T Mobile

2011-03-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

The raucous applause you hear is from a half dozen Wall Street firms who will be cleaning up in one of the biggest deals since the financial meltdown. AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile at a hearty premium will make AT&T (129.2 million subscribers) the largest US carrier, bigger than Verizon (101.1).

While T-Mobile subscribers (like yours truly) see price hikes coming, and many are already AT&T rejectors who may flee for Verizon tout de suite, the broader concern for lack of competition is the deal-breaker. That is, regulatory concern from Justice, primarily that this deal would bring the number of national wireless carriers to three from four.

AT&T is already spinning this as a huge net gain for consumers. In the end, the cost savings AT&T wiill realize will probably justify the deal. Since T-Mobile is privately held by Deutsche Telecom, much of the attendant financial circus will be absent, and our guess is that regulatators will be more willing to let this one go than consumers will. They will see the reduction of national carriers down to 3 from 4, and the elimination of the value leader T-Mobile, and cry foul.

ESRI Tsunami Map Portrays Social Media

2011-03-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Here's some really cool technology I just saw at the ESRI Developer's Summit. Unfortunately, its first major application came rather quickly - an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster has struck Japan. And we all feel it.

There don't appear to be any Twitter feeds yet, but there are YouTube and a few Flickr feeds integrated in the map, which also features the quake events and magnitude, a shake map (which shows this was a strong, strong shake throughout most of Japan) and other interactive features.

Here's how the social media feeds are integrated - yes folks, let your imaginations run wild here, it gets a little technical, but this technology is for You, for you to make social media maps about your business or local government or organization, your customers or citizens or members, your word of mouth, and emergencies of a lesser though doubtlessly significant nature.

News Feeds: ESRI gathers the headline news from various online news agencies and pass each link through the RSStoGeoRSS web service that geocodes RSS content from any RSS Web link and returns the content as GeoRSS and serves it through ArcGIS Server as a map service.
Ushahidi: This public content from Ushahidi is added to the site by directly accessing the Earthquake Tohoku service through the Ushahidi API . The Ushahidi platform allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, e-mail or the web and visualize it on a map or timeline. The feed aggregates information from the public for use in crisis response. ESRI requests the incidents from Ushahidi in JSON format and adds to the map based on the ArcGIS API for JavaScript.
YouTube Videos: The videos are added to the application using the YouTube API which allows you to request videos given a latitude and longitude position along with a search radius and keywords.
Tweets: The Twitter API is used to identify tweets that match a specified query and area. In this case, only the tweets that return a coordinate value within the current visible map extent are added to the map. The Twitter API also sends the results of the query back to the application as JSON.
Flickr: The Flickr API is used to identify Flickr photos that match search terms and a collection of other parameters identified in the Flickr API help pages, and the API sends the results of the query back to the application as JSON.

So sad that we need to find and catalog these victims. So glad we have the technology which will help, be furthered, and extended. The technology, and us.

Coolest Stuff at 2011 ESRI Developer Summit

2011-03-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Just about to head off to the Developer's party, where I will attempt to continue the tradition of Dodgeball Tourney Tweets. But there is going to be some mighty good microbrew, and the usual crossroads of the world good time shared by all.

Coolest Stuff So Far At Dev Summit

1 - Tim O'Reilly telling us that most of our web apps suck. They do. They are too biased towards GIS pros and not easy enough for business and regular folks to use.

2- ArcGIS Runtime. Here's a thumb drive with just what you need from ArcGIS on it to run your site or marketing or community analytics. No complexity, no licensing, no installation at all. Just stick it in a USB slot and run it. Me likey.

3. Dynamic Drive Time Polygons. The software has gotten SO fast, you can create and drag a drive time polygon around, shrink it, enlarge it, and watch it morph instantly. There was not a dry eye in the house.

4. Pervasive GIS from APOS. APOS was a gold sponsor this year and that's great because more people should know about these guys and what they are doing to make easier-to-deploy-and-use GIS and make it useful, or pervasive, throughout an enterprise or organization. We work with them and highly recommend them to all U.S. users who have not discovered this yet, particularly if you're interested in tapping into business intelligence networks, and especially those based on SAP Business Objects ("Crystal Reports").

5. Microsoft. What makes more sense than to try to reach a broad business and academic and government audience but to partner with Microsoft and tap into Office and Share Point? And now, Azure and Azure Data Market. Duh!

6. Dr. Jane Mashup. The ESRI Proto Lab team showed a ton of stuff they are working on that is absolutely real stuff for real folks. My favorite is the Dr. Jane Goodall mashup assisting the tracking and location of chimps. Jane will tell you she learned it all from her dog. She made me cry at the UC a couple of years back and was nice enough to come out and speak at Redlands recently for her Roots and Shoots program for kids.

More later. For one thing, ArcGIS runtime is so compelling, there will be after conference sessions on it tomorrow afternoon. For now, dodgeball calls.

Making Great Stuff for Real People - 2011 ESRI Developer Summit Convenes

2011-03-08T18:19:00.001-08:00

Over 1,400 attendees from all over the world have converged in Palm Springs this week for this year's ESRI Developer Summit.

And from every corner comes one idea - building great stuff that comes to life for real people, not just for GIS pros. Finally, there is the recognition on the part of all concerned that we must do much better to make our technology more transparent and useful to solve real problems for real, everyday people and present them with a much more engaging experience.

Perhaps Tim O'Reilly said it best - "Most of the web design we do sucks."

We must do much more to reach non-GIS audiences, particularly in business and local government.

More than half of the developers here (54%) are here for the first time, and 32% come from countries other than the U.S. So far, the greatest Wow factor is probably the experimental Kinect interface that allows the user to make gestures (like with a Nintendo Wii or the amazing Microsoft Kinect) to pan and zoom the map, and do pop-ups. That, and all of the technologies intended to make GIS more transparent, are the stars of this show.

The Mobile App Internet Arrives

2011-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Today's Forrester Research release pegs the mobile app market for smartphones at about $1.9 billion for 2010.

Does that sound like a lot? Well. By 2015, Forrester forecasts a total mobile app market for both smartphones and tablets 20 TIMES as large, with smartphones alone driving nearly $30 billion.

Corporations will spend up to $17 billion creating apps for their products and working with services and solutions providers. Combined revenues from mobile applications, services and business management? $54.6 billion a year by 2015.

Today, fully 1-in-3 smartphone users say they downloaded an app in the past month. As the base grows, and as penetration grows, so will our economy - we have found the driver for the next age of computing.

Are Cellphones Safe?

2011-02-22T14:11:00.000-08:00

Well, it would probably be a good idea to keep studying.

After last week's JAMA article, no one will be doubting that cellphones have the potential to alter brain chemistry. Does the artificial increase in blood glucose usage near the cellphone antenna constitute a health problem? It might, if you do it frequently enough, say, for hours every single day.

Thanks NIH folks (and NY Times).

Look Past Online for Mobile Banking Potential

2011-02-16T14:23:00.000-08:00

Perhaps what is most interesting about Forrester Research's US Mobile Banking Forecast, 2010 To 2015 is the idea that there is vast potential in getting those who do not bank online with a PC to do so with their smartphone. While most mobile banking programs seek out active online adults, far more adults currently own a cell phone and use it daily than access the Internet on a PC, and it is here where there is more potential to both add value for customers and reduce delivery costs for the bank.

Forrester reports, however, that Gen X and Y will be the drivers behind mobile adoption. “Gen X adults (ages 31 to 44) today make up 39 percent of U.S. mobile bankers —the most of any generation... when combined with Gen Y users, the two account for more than three-quarters of all current mobile banking users. By 2015, Gen Y will surpass Gen X and will make up 44 percent of U.S. mobile bankers. These two groups represent the present and the future of mobile banking.”

To get to that one in five US adults, banks will need to do a lot more.
   1. Introduce innovative new features, like mobile remote deposit capture, not commonly available through other channels.
   2. Optimize existing functionality to offer superior user experiences through the mobile channel.
   3. Leverage the unique capabilities of mobile devices and the mobile channel, particularly location based services.

The real ROI from mobile banking will come from engaging the 40% of US consumers who today do not bank online. As Forrester notes, today's online banking functionality won't get it done.

Wait for iPhone 5 On Verizon

2011-02-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

You waited 4 years for Verizon to offer their version.

Apple plans to launch iPhone 5 in June, maybe July.

Why not wait another couple of months before locking in for two years?

And they'll have the bugs out of the Verizon version by then, too.

Fox Plugs iPad Daily As Egypt Explodes

2011-02-02T16:40:00.000-08:00

"14 cents a day" is all Rupert says it takes to enjoy his glossy daily on the iPad, in the first major test of content on that platform.

As Fox covered this, every other major news org was showing IEDs exploding in Cairo.

Would you pay $40 a year for this? For now, America for one has already voted - name one magazine currently succeeding with such an online model. Will the glossy multimedia content of the Daily turn the tide? Verizon is offering it free for two weeks, than it's 99 cents a week, $40 a year.

Do you wanna buy an "I (Heart) Hosni" t-shirt real cheap?

Google Android Smartphones Overtake Nokia

2011-01-31T15:02:00.000-08:00

British research firm Canalys released its Q4 2010 global country-level smart phone market data, and Google Android has become the leading platform.

Shipments of Android-based smart phones reached 32.9 million, while devices running Nokia’s Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide.

The fourth quarter also saw the worldwide smart phone market continue to soar, nearly doubling year-to-year with shipments of 101.2 million units representing growth of 89%. Driving the Android wave are devices from HTC and Samsung, among others.

Canalys VP and Principal Analyst Chris Jones notes that ‘2011 is set to be a highly competitive year, with vendors looking to use new technology, such as dual-core processors, NFC and 3D displays, to differentiate their products and maintain value.’

The US continues its reign as the largest country market in terms of shipments, at more than double the size of the Chinese smart phone market. RIM recaptured first place from Apple, as the latter experienced its usual US seasonal dip, and RIM benefited from the first full quarter of shipments for the BlackBerry Torch. HTC successfully maintained its third-place ranking in the US for the third consecutive quarter, driven by its speed to market with the latest Android updates and new Windows Phone 7 devices.

Canalys analyst Tim Shepherd added, "The US landscape will shift dramatically this coming year, as a result of the Verizon-Apple agreement. Verizon will move its focus away from the Droid range, but the overall market impact will mean less carrier-exclusive deals, while increasing the AT&T opportunity for Android vendors, such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung.’

Android was by far the largest smart phone platform in the US market in Q4 2010, with shipments of 12.1 million units – nearly three times those of RIM’s BlackBerry devices. Windows Phone 7 devices appeared too late in the quarter to take full advantage of holiday season purchasing. As a result, Microsoft lost share in the United States, from 8% in Q4 2009 to 5% in Q4 2010.

Mobile Banking Trends from Synergstics Research

2011-01-20T13:58:00.001-08:00

Synergistics - a top tier supplier of syndicated research to financial institutions that I have been turning to for over 25 years - pegged mobile banking subscriptions at about 16% or one in 7 households in mid-summer 2010.

This is based on 42% aware of such services, and 40% of those signing up. Those who say mobile is their primary means of banking is only about 4%, which fits very well with other consumer research on this.

How many actually used the service last month is unknown, but probably remains in single digits.

What is amazing here is that 40% of respondents did not know whether their bank offered mobile banking services, an astoundingly large number that speaks to

A) Continuing consumer unfamiliarity and

B) Ineffective or absent bank communications.

The prior year, Synergistics pointed out that small business was moving faster on mobile devices in general, and that this was an obvious place for a bank to focus its early efforts.

At that time, 24% were already using smartphones, and among these, 2/3 were doing mobile banking (16% of all businesses).

More interestingly, they were engaged in a wide variety of activities. While balance inquiry led the way (52%) - as it did with ATM and ARU adoption earlier - 42% made a balance transfer or a card payment. Also a hopeful sign is that nearly half received an e-mail from their bank on a mobile device, and about 1/3 sent one.

Genie Driscoll of Synergistics spells it all out. “One of the foremost trends in banking right now is mobile banking and payments, and, with a few notable exceptions, the consumer seems to be the focus of most marketing activity, as well as trade press coverage. However, our survey shows some very impressive activity taking place in the small business market. There has been significant adoption of mobile banking and payment activities by small businesses. Providers, in focusing on consumer marketing of mobile services, would do well not to neglect these significant small business adopters.”

Woz Says Robust Voice Is The Next Interface

2011-01-13T16:13:00.000-08:00

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak perhaps stated the obvious on Tuesday when he hailed Robust Voice as the next interface for personal computing.

Woz said he expects PCs to interpret a wider variety of voice commands. Makes sense that it will happen here (mobile) first. Also makes sense that Microsoft, the king of WIMP that continues to draw the Woz' contempt, will have nothing to do with it.

I feel even better now that I called out Microsoft last month for being a day late and a buck short on most everything, and their lack of effort and worse, vision, in creating a next gen interface.

Wozniak was at the reopening of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, which is a pretty cool place if you get a chance to visit, especially if you're into math and antiques.

Mobile Banking Wave Finally Reaches Shore

2011-01-12T16:34:00.000-08:00

My good friend Ron Stratman is the marketing director of the California Credit Union. Being a Mizzou boy born and bred and all the way through, we frequently enjoy a Missouri style BBQ lunch at the Bear Pit, which is in Mission Hills near RPM's offices.

For the past 5 years, Ron has always asked over lunch, always - where are we with mobile banking? The answer always has been, not there yet, usage is minimal, under 5% penetration, though it's an influential, desirable 5%.

Well buddy, looks like this is The Year.

Nielsen reported at CES 2011 that 31% of all U.S. mobile subscribers now have smartphones, and that may hit as high as 50% by year end. And this smarphone market is Huge - already, according to Nielsen Mobile Media View study, there are over 83 million people accessing the web from a phone - more households than have HDTV, or digital cable. IDC reports in their IDC Financial Insights’ United States Consumer Channel Preference Survey that mobile banking usage doubled in 2009 and skews - young, male and upscale.

Young, male, and upscale is exactly where smartphone growth is going. Today, women talk more (28% more according to Nielsen) and text more - but as sports content begins to take its place alongside movie, TV and videos (and social networking), more and more men are going to pick up smartphones as soon as they discover they are sports information machines, capable of delivering everything from live broadcasts to Albert Pujol's lifetime stats by voice query.

And when sports content hits mobile and intelligent TVs and set top boxes, that 4% of Cord Cutters that have dumped cable TV for broadband only will explode in ways, it was clear at CES, that many traditional players are not ready for.

Today, Nielsen reports that E-Mail (39%) and Social Networking (11%) represent about half of all mobile internet time spent. News and Current Events, only 7% - add sports, and They Will Come.

And Mobile Banking - which is still a very small niche - will, too.

So Ron, and all you bank marketers out there, it is time to leverage online banking efforts into mobile banking efforts and brace for The Smartphone Explosion as we head for broad, mainstream adoption of the smartphones that will empower mobile banking in 2011.

DriveSafe.ly Best Mobile App

2011-01-09T16:01:00.000-08:00

DriveSafe.ly, the mobile app that saves us from ourselves and our inattention blindnesses by rendering our electronics useless as we roll, won the Mobile Apps Showdown at CES 2011. At version 2.0 you can hear text (SMS) and email messages read aloud and respond to them, hands-free, using your voice. You chat by sending text responses by voice and use voice commands like: “repeat message” or “call back sender.”

It's available free on all platforms.

Many apps drew applause... here's more.

Mobile Apps Showdown Tomorrow at CES 2011

2011-01-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

Audience applause will greet - and determine - the best mobile apps of the year tomorrow at CES. I'm going to miss being there, but will definitely tell you about them next week.

12:30 p.m. Saturday, January 8
LVCC, North Hall,
Mobile Apps Stage, Room 258

(up escalator to the left 2nd door in).

Spiderpodium Brightens Tablet Scene

2011-01-07T17:07:00.000-08:00

I Came for Tablets - and was sorely disappointed. I expected an ultramobile PC or toughbook in an iPad form factor.

Yes, Intel and partner OEMs are working on it.

But the real story on tablets here is not communications or computing, but content aggregation for Youtube Netflix etc. and interface with intelligent TVs and set top boxes.

And then there is Breffo's Spiderpodium Tablet. An extension of Spiderpodium for mobile devices, Spiderpodium tablet deals with one of the confounding things about tablets, how to ergonomically position them, and we are not talking kickstands here.

Now, if we can only find a way to make them easier to carry and transport - like their smartphone cousins.

CNET did a great video on Spiderpodium so we did not have to. Here it is.

Panasonic Viera Tablet Turns Out To Be A Fancy Remote

2011-01-05T23:36:00.000-08:00

You cannot win 'em all. I love Panasonic. Always have. And while Samsung may make the greatest screen hardware (and most screens as well), Panasonic has the most brilliant picture (and a brand new LCD factory of its own).

So, I held out great hope for a Panasonic tablet. And the thing is not a PC at all. It is a companion for the Viera internet connected TVs.

A fancy remote.

My disappointment was tempered considerably when I met Hakan Kostepen of Panasonic on the taxi line after the press conference. Hakan is the Director of Planning & Innovation for Panasonic Automotive America, and we had a great discussion about the future of in-car systems, what they will do, how they will be mounted so as to allow drivers better access without taking ones eyes off the road. I'd love to work with this guy. This is a big part of where my career and interests converge - automotive product development, GIS and location tech, focus groups.

Oracle Unveils Glimpse of the Future of CRM at CES 2011

2011-01-05T23:24:00.000-08:00

Check out our ESRI blog for a first look at the 2011 Oracle High Tech CES Summit! More to come.

Collaborative 3M Tablet Unveiled at CES

2011-01-04T19:12:00.000-08:00

The 3M collaborative tablet for CAD and geospatial (and, 3M hopes, many other business and consumer apps) made its debut tonight at CES Unveiled, the press pre-show for the 2011 Consumer Electronics show at...

the amazing Venetian in Las Vegas.

Stay tuned for more... a lot more... as this show is all about tablet computing.

Here's a little preview...

Oh... and the 5 to a pound shrimp were great! What a shmoozefest.

Tablets Invade Las Vegas

2011-01-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone, and that means... we'll soon be off to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and it's all about tablets (and a whole lotta TVs and set-top boxes delivering content to the "connected living room".)

Expect to see a number of iPad killers from Toshiba, Motorola, Lenovo that will be a whole lot more useful for business.

We've already seen some new gen tablet mounts from several vendors that will definitely extend the use and applications of tablet PCs.

Stay tuned for posts directly from the CES.

Bing Goes to Dinner

2010-12-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Bing & Local announced some enhancements yesterday based on user research -

· Interior Views: Provides users with immersive 360-degree panoramas of local businesses
· OpenTable Integration: Lets users interact with OpenTable directly from restaurant pages
· Real Time Transit on Mobile: Gives users real time info if a bus is on-time or delayed
· Streetside for Mobile: Brings users street-level imagery + some mobile-exclusive enhancements

So, if you like dinner dates using public transportation, you're all set. Seriously, the integration of maps and views and Open Table is cool, I'm an Open Table user and this streamlines things and adds some view candy. And the mobile transit feature is Killer in cities where public transportation rules (NY, Boston, SF, Chicago, etc.).

The Bing map themes are improved, too.

But the reality is, everything Microsoft does in this space seems derivative, a day late and a buck short. The value added, mild. And the last time I looked, everything we do in computing is still based on WIMP. Where's the user research on a better mobile interface?

Checking Accounts, GIS & Location Based Marketing

2010-12-09T15:29:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard, free checking died.

Checking account fees are about to change all over the place. The way that banks look at you is changing, and certainly the way you look at them is.

Check out the ESRI Financial Services SIG for an interesting discussion of how banks use GIS to ferret out opportunities as all the prices change, and location based marketing to address them. And figure out what this means to you and how to save some time and money.

Waze Finds Means

2010-12-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

Waze, the social networking traffic and navigation app that adds user updates in real time on traffic and road conditions to the typical turn-by-turn directions of a navigation system, got another $25 million venture capital boost yesterday.

Ultimately, this is another location-based marketing play, in which advertising based on proximity will be pushed to users as they roll by the location. CEO Noam Bardin noted that "location is all about relevancy, and what’s more relevant than showing you coupons around the routes you drive and what’s available at your destination when you arrive?"

What is fascinating here is indeed the routes perspective, marketing to commuters not on the basis of where they live, not on the basis of where they work, and not on the basis of how these relate to the work and home locations of friends - but based on their dynamic location on routes they travel each day, and how these interconnect with those of friends, family, clients and colleagues.

Whether Waze can improve upon and differentiate from established players in this regard remains to be seen. But if they can somehow entice users with games, geocaches and other content and build upon their 2.2 million user base, they might build this into something that will be useful for traffic counts as well as social networking and location based marketing.

Caliper Releases Maptitude 6.0

2010-12-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Caliper is nothing if not great at providing solid, professional GIS features at a value price point. Back in the day, its original design was so informed by Atlas GIS - then the market leader in business GIS - that it seemed like a virtual clone in look and feel as well as functionality.

Today, Maptitude is taking lessons from ArcGIS, and learning them well.

The 6.0 release includes Thematic mapping and other Wizards, 2010 Navteq geocoding, a territory manager, label expressions, transparency on layers and a robust bundled dataset among the compelling additions.

For developers, there is support for .NET and now SQL Server Spatial.

Lots of value here at just $695 and $395 for upgrades.

Facebook Messages - Ripple Time

2010-11-22T14:39:00.000-08:00

Facebook announced another new service last week, Messages - endowing Facebook users with a brand new facebook.com e-mail address that Facebook hopes you will use for... well, everything. Kind of a messaging integrator and aggregator.

But there is a bigger, far more significant Ripple here, and I'm not talking about my relaxation beverage of choice while using Facebook.

And that Ripple is AUTHENTICATION. E-mail attached to a Facebook account is authenticated. It's YOU. No (theoretically) spoofing.

And that, not aggregation, is what is truly missing from today's messaging. And authentication is what will symbolize its next major evolution.

Samsung Ultra Mobile PCs

2010-11-08T14:50:00.000-08:00

We've been featuring the Samsung Ultra Q1 in a series on primary site analysis in GIS on our banking and financial services site. Here is #3 in the series. This is our idea of touchscreen computing, running XP SP3, 2GB of RAM, and yes of course it does Flash - and has a very bright 7 inch screen.

*************************************

Back in the day... Site work used to be so much... work.

Trudging around, filling out a site questionnaire longhand that would only need to be transferred to a computer later. Then, brought step by step into a spreadsheet, a database.

Then finally into desktop GIS, ultimately to be integrated with the existing network.

Fumbling for a camera to take photos. Mumbling voice notes into a hand-held voice recorder. Scrambling on the cellphone to relay results. Worst of all, dropping the notebook PC you brought out with you, ostensibly to save a little time.

No more. Now we do it all on the Samsung Ultra Mobile PC. On one tablet device, I can do it all - photos, voice, full Excel spreadsheet, even ArcGIS.

Suddenly, what used to take forever and was no fun at all is now made quick, easy, fast. Work has become a pleasure again. I can collect all the rich data I need in every way I need literally in the palm of my hand.

And integrate my field work with the network in real time.

Not to mention that tablet computing is a blast, and definitely the next Big Thing (witness the IPad).
However - unlike the IPad, this Samsung has an integrated QWERTY keyboard - and more importantly, a full blown OS (Windows XP SP3), a powerful mobile CPU, and fully 2GB of RAM. And if you are not quite as literate texting as your kids are, you can write longhand right onto the PC using a stylus and an input area, and the handwriting recognition kicks in.

What a joy it is to gather the info digitally, once,

into an Excel spreadsheet...

then pull that into ArcGIS...

integrate it with the existing network...

analyze the impact on that network...

compare it with other site options... and

distribute the information throughout the organization and to partners before I even get back into the car to drive to the next site.

We've been using these Samsung UMPCs for over three years now, and we love them. More so, we're in love with tablet computing.

So much so, we just bought one of Samsung's new 40 inch touchscreens.

Now, I just have to find a way to mount it into my vehicle.

Facebook Deals Pat Hand

2010-11-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

Facebook announced Deals yesterday, their late-to-the-game piggyback upon Facebook Places. A pat hand, because the entry by this giant player throws the gauntlet down at Foursquare.

But mostly, pat because while Foursquare is focused on pushing location-based offers to consumers who actually care about and use the service expressly for that purpose, the vast majority of Facebook users will not even know Deals (or other Apps) is there, let alone use it or find it valuable.

It will be interesting to see how Gap, Starbucks and the 20 other retailers now offering Deals do.

Most likely, they will need to reshuffle - a very recent Pew Internet study shows that only 1 in 100 Internet users used a service like Deals on any given day, and usage skews away from women, who do most of America's shopping.

That is still an awful lot of people, but given the late entry, all of the security concerns, and the lack of focus - well, typically, winners cash the chips, and losers say "Deal." Or will that huge underlying Facebook user base make the difference?

Photo courtesy of PC World

QR Codes & Mobile Tagging Apps Emerge In U.S.

2010-10-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

It's a link. It's a bar code. It's Pop Art. It's a QR code!

And it's another mobile technology that caught fire in Japan years ago and is still finding its way to the States.

On the one hand, this is a very promising mobile technology, on the other, just another way to pass a link.

Content is king, as always. If the website or other content you are whisked off to is useful, valuable, and/or entertaining, then you have something.

If your site is lame, and/or you are lame in referring customers to it and then dropping the ball, you will remain lame (just a more geeky lame).

1stBank in Colorado is one of the first movers on QR codes, providing reading material and puzzles for a virtual waiting room in the Denver International Airport. QR code posters inside the airport (photos courtesy of The Financial Brand) are headlined “Free Books,” “Free Crosswords,” and “Free Sudoku” and link to a selection of classic novels, crosswords and Sudoku.

Microsoft has its own, color version of QR codes, aimed particularly at mobile tagging applications, called Microsoft Tag.

You can create QR codes to your own content at sites like this- the technology is free of any license, easy to use, and offers some very interesting opportunities.

Here's a QR code to the ESRI Financial Services SIG, which is open to all, and deals with GIS, mapping and location services for banking and financial applications.

Mapinfo Users Still Love the Software - Just Hate Pitney Bowes

2010-10-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

We have many friends, clients and academic colleagues who moved it on over to MapInfo from Atlas GIS after ESRI acquired Atlas in 1996. Indeed, we still have many Atlas GIS users, and RPM still supports them, too.

At that time, ArcView was not considered by many to be on par with MapInfo in functionality or interface or value. Most of all, it was thought to be business-unfriendly. My friend Tony Burns changed all of that, leading the effort in creating the Business Analyst for ESRI, and made the business world safe from ArcView. It's hard to believe it is already nearly a year since we lost Tony. I still have his original Product Launch document for Business Analyst. To this day, it is the most thorough comparative analysis of business GIS software from the end user experience perspective that I’ve ever seen – though Hal Reid continues the tradition, for those of you who know Hal, for those who don’t, you should.

Last week, a thread popped up on the MapInfo discussion list soliciting user dis-satisfactions with MapInfo. There have been very few responses, mostly concerning inflexibility in working with legends and tables compared to ArcMap. And even when complaining, it’s clear that MapInfo users continue to find their platform to be better integrated and to offer more function and value in one place for one price than ArcView does. It’s not just that it’s the software they know.

But boy, are they ticked off at Pitney Bowes, which bought MapInfo a few years ago now, and have now buried it under the “Pitney Bowes Business Insight” umbrella. And I feel their pain.

About a year or 18 months ago now, I was invited by the MapInfo folks to attend a swell seminar on the Queen Mary along with about 50 other folks using business GIS in our area. It was Old Home Week; well more than a dozen former Atlas GIS folks were there. The seminar was well led by Moshe Benyamin, long the product manager, and many good ideas for improving the software were mentioned as we broke out into small groups and then reported and presented back. Expectations ran high – they had repeated the exercise in many other cities, worldwide, and reported the results back to us. It seemed that a major new release would result. Bugs would be fixed, and extension embraced.

And then, Pitney Bowes used all this user input for sales and marketing, not to improve the product, and came out with a 10.5 release with a “bunch of buttons” and “eye candy” and cloud references. One prominent MapInfo user remarked that he could care less than a rodent's behind about the sheet metal changes.

Maybe the MapInfo 10.5 release is especially noxious because Esri’s ArcGIS 10 is so much improved. Some may say, finally. But honestly, ArcView caught up a long time ago. And it has great people extending and supporting it. And people like me to give it and Business Analyst a swift kick.

As needed.

ADD PBBI responded to the MapInfo user list, offering a link to a website where users can make and comment on ideas for improvement. Clicking on the link produces a blank page.
ADD ADD The page is now up.

Savings and Investment Potential by Political Party Preference

2010-10-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, as we dig through the various databases we use in our practice, we discover datasets that have the potential to help answer interesting questions that we sometimes wonder about. This past summer, we happened across the database of political contributions by zip code through July 28, 2010, made available at CampaignMoney.com, which provides access to all political contributions recorded by the Federal Elections Commission. We thought it would be interesting to see whether zip codes differ with respect to socioeconomic status as measured by savings and investment potential, based upon which party received the majority of contributions.

Our methodology was rather straight-forward. We began by categorizing each zip code in California, based on whether the largest percentage of contributions was made to Democrats, Republicans, or “Other. We then calculated the average MarketBank^TM deposit potential and investment potential per resident household and then tested the means for statistical significance using an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedure. As a second method of evaluating differences, we also categorized zip codes in which all of the contributions went entirely to a single party (or other), versus those in which contributions were spread between two or more parties.

Findings

Overall, CampaignMoney.com provided data for 26,791 zip codes in which political contributions were made, of which 21,683 were able to be matched to the MarketBank^TM database. Within the zip codes matched to MarketBank^TM, a total of $916,895,087 was contributed, broken out as follows:

Party	Total Contributions	Zip Codes Contributing Predominantly to One Party	Zip Codes Who Contributed Entirely to One Party
Republicans	$139,787,007	2,307	809
Democrats	$369,233,991	3,674	1,227
Other	$407,874,089	7,791	3,405
No contributions		7,911	16,242

MarketBank^TM deposit potential estimates were calculated for each zip code on a “per household” basis, providing the average bank checking and savings deposits likely to be held in U.S. financial institutions. Based on the classifications of zip codes by contributions by political party, the average deposit potential and investment potential per household for zip codes were averaged for zip codes who predominantly contributed to Republicans, Democrats, and others (as well as those from which no contributions were recorded to any party.

The key question we wanted to answer was whether there is a significant difference between contributors to Democrats and contributors to Republicans on the basis of the socioeconomic status of the contributor’s zip code. Using the MarketBank^TM bank deposit potential per household and investment potential per household as two proxies for socioeconomic status, we discovered that there is a statistically significant difference (p<.001) between zip codes in which residents primarily contribute to Republicans versus those who primarily contribute to Democrats. The average deposit potential per households of predominantly Republican-contributing zip codes was $19,021, compared to $20,465 for Democrat-contributing zip codes, and $19,763 for zip codes that contributed predominantly to other parties.

Investment potential per household followed a similar pattern, with Republican zip codes being lowest and Democrat zip codes highest in terms of potential.

Party	Zip Codes Contributing Predominantly to One Party	Bank Savings Deposit Potential per Household	Investment Potential per Household
Republicans	2,307	$19,021	$227,451
Democrats	3,674	$20,465	$257,226
Other	7,791	$19,762	$242,168
No contributions	7,911	$17,552	$199,998

With respect to zip codes in which all contributions were made entirely to a single party, a similar statistically significant pattern (p<.001) can be observed , with the average deposit potential of $18,003 for Republican zip codes falling somewhat lower than the $18,542 for Democrat zip codes, and $18,621 for zip codes where all of the contributions were intended for a party other than Democrat or Republican.

Party	Zip Codes Contributing Entirely to One Party	Bank Deposit Potential per Household	Investment Potential per Household
Republicans	809	$18,003	$208,191
Democrats	1,227	$18,542	$220,746
Other	3,405	$18,621	$218,923
No contributions	16,242	$19,958	$261,128

Although, the difference is not overwhelming, one can conclude from these data that communities (as defined by zip codes) in which political contributors lean Republican may tend toward less wealth in comparison to communities in which contributors lean Democrat, or toward other political parties. Although this does not represent an exhaustive study of socioeconomic status associated with party preference, it provides an interesting starting point for further analysis. In particular, a further breakdown of the “other” contributors may provide some insight as to where those funds are ultimately directed, and how those contributors may differ demographically.

ESRI Announces ArcGIS for SharePoint

2010-10-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Esri announced ArcGIS Mapping for SharePoint, a set of easy-to-configure Web parts delivered as an out-of-the box solution for displaying information on a map in Microsoft SharePoint. In combination with a MapIt license, the latest release really offers an easy way to get started with distributing spatial intelligence throughout the enterprise, and a great way to leverage and extend ArcGIS and Business Analyst apps, and with less - or no - real programming required. In other words, it is DBA, admin, power user and web developer friendly.

Says our old friend Bob Hazelton, who has managed several key server technologies at ESRI of particular interest to business GIS, "This opens the audience pool to include designers with no programming background. Developers will find the ability to extend ArcGIS Mapping for SharePoint with the ArcGIS API for Silverlight to be very helpful."

Absolutely. Can't wait to get our hands on it. Which you can do right here.

Mobile Maps Come Indoors

2010-10-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

Think of the layout and contents of your local supermarket as if it were a geographic feature, as if it were a large polygon populated with other polygons, lines and points - where these represent aisles, shelves and items. Now, imagine that available on your iPhone or Android or Blackberry.

Or, more simply, the next time you're in a giant mall or shopping center, how'd you like to have the mall map on your smartphone with the ability to find stores, merchandise, movie times, etc.?

A new generation of apps has appeared for iPhone. FastMall and Micello present mall and/or store basemaps on mobile devices, with a search engine. Mall Maps does, too.

PointInside is the only Android offering to date.

Given the nature of connectivity indoors, most services cache their maps onto the user's moible device.

Next month, Aisle411 will allow users to find individual products inside stores, and offer them rewards for using those stores.

Where is this going? Where are you going where you could get lost trying to find what you're looking for? Convention centers, stadiums, casinos, universities, medical centers...

APOS Ready for ArcGIS 10

2010-10-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

Our old buddy Brad McCallum at APOS tells us that the Location Intelligence Solution and Integration Kit is now ArcGIS 10 ready, and this will be announced shortly in the APOS newsletter.

Mobile Developers Need Android Wake-Up Call

2010-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

The iPhone, with its closed source and network, is ultimately bound to go the way of the Mac - a niche technology. With all the apps and Apple buzz, it is Android that is kicking ass up and down the block in 2010.

Yes folks, according to Nielsen, among folks acquiring their smartphone in 2010, Android began the year with 14% share of operating systems, clearly last, and by August was the leader at 32%.

In raw share terms, they still have some catching up to do. But it will happen, and happen fast. All that iPad and iPhone buzz is going to be background noise, outside the niche. Which is where the real action is going to be.

The GIS Bibliography

2010-10-06T15:56:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest ESRI resources - for all GIS users regardless of software - is probably one of the least known. The ESRI Bibliography indexes journals, conference proceedings, books, and reports from the origins of GIS to the present and covers the entire literature of geographic information systems, science, and technology.

GeoLocation Marketing & Social Networking Sites

2010-10-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

A number of location based social networking sites are springing up, and offer endless possibilities not only for fun and socializing but for geolocation marketing and loyalty programs - so put on your thinking hats and start dreaming about what GIS can add to this. Here are some of the prominent offerings.

Foursquare, most popular, and the most commercial.
Gowalla: Allows users to find friends, places, inspiration. iPhone only.
Brightkite: Coupons a key feature here. iPhone or Android smartphones.
Where: A Baedeker of places to go, merchant oriented.
Scvngr: Commercial site allows businesses to run promotions in a game metaphor.
Booyah: The "Second Life" of geolocation, extended to a real-virtual commercial world.
Facebook Places: Facebook joins the party.
Yelp: Mobile online reviews of goods and services, with a loyalty bent.
Loopt: Social site, allows friends to dynamically keep track of each other on a map and share updates. iPhone only.

Bringing Windows XP to the ArcGIS 10 Party

2010-09-28T16:06:00.001-07:00

For those who have Windows XP and want to install ArcGIS 10 and extensions, the first thing you are going to need is Service Pack 3. Go to Control Panel – System and see what version of Windows XP you have.

Problem is, most shops we know never updated to SP3, because SP2 was more stable, SP3 introduced new issues, yada yada yada. Many don't have Windows Update auto configured, either.

If you don’t have SP3, and you are on a business or university or other managed network, it’s easy – you call up your network admin or IT and say “I want my XP SP3.” Then, during the subsequent ArcGIS 10 install process they will manage, the addition of any 2008 SQL Server Client, Windows installer and .NET framework updates you need will be relatively transparent.

If you don’t have SP3 and manage your own PC, Microsoft encourages you to use Windows Update to get it. We encourage you to download the admin version from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bb794714.aspx. Chances are you will have the Stand Alone Version, but developers will need the Checked Build. If you get the wrong one and try to install, you’ll be prompted so don’t worry. You can also request a disk for a few dollars more.

If you try to install 10 on XP SP2 or earlier, you will encounter a couple of cycles of reboots and installation of installer and .NET updates that will result in the error message that you need SP3 to proceed, anyway -, but you can update then as well.

However. Chances are, if you don’t have a minimum of 2GB and really, 4GB of RAM and/or a fast processor and/or video card and RAM, you are going to ignore all this and get a Windows 7 machine to run 10. More on that next time.

Esri Business Analyst 10 Install & Update Notes

2010-09-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

Business Analyst 10 is here! Here’s some help on installing, and then some tips on updating 9.3 projects, with an eye especially towards avoiding some pitfalls apparently related to Windows Vista.

What You Need To Get Started

· Your BA10 USB Drive.

· Your software license codes from ESRI Customer Service.

· Your SDLIC data license file for Business Analyst and LF file for Address Coder from ESRI Customer Service.

Please contact us if you did not receive the USB drive, your codes, or your SDLIC or LF file. Also, be aware that you can now manage licenses and more on line with your ESRI Global Account at http://customers.esri.com. If you don’t have a Global Account, get one – you’ll need your customer number (we can help retrieve that, too). At ArcGIS 10, we really begin to see the blurring of desktop and server based computing, and administration like this is a good place to start getting used to it.

Install Procedure

First, and always when you upgrade, make your own secondary backup of any files you created with 9.3, even though the BA install will move whatever is in My Output Data to My Output Data.backup. If you are storing these in the My Output Data folder, simply make your own additional backup of it. But if you are like most users, these files may be located all over your hard drive and network. So, it is wise to take inventory of where your files are, project by project, layer by layer, by opening each project, reviewing the Source tab for each layer in the Table of Contents (TOC) – and then backing it up.

Then, simply insert the BA 10 USB drive into a USB slot on your PC, and let it autorun. If it does not autorun, run the setup application manually from the root of the USB drive. This will automate the process of removal of all 9.3 components and the install of first ArcGIS and then BA 10 and supporting files. The entire process will take about 2 to 4 hours, depending upon your PC and resources. If you choose to do a Full install of ArcGIS 10, this will install other extensions and the VBA support, but it will take longer. Most prudent is a Custom install of the core 10, including the Network Analyst and the VBA Developer Support.

Install Errors on Vista

We have done multiple installs on Windows 7 versions with no problems, but you may find them on Vista PCs. When installing on a Vista PC, if you encounter a “Write Protect Error” message, copy the entire Esri BA 10 USB drive to another location and run the setup from there – another USB flash drive, a USB hard drive, or an accessible fixed hard drive on your PC or network. You’ll need more than 28GB of space and copying the file will take 20 to 45 minutes depending on your resources.

Licensing

Not much change here, just have your codes ready and run the ArcGIS (Desktop) Administrator, manually entering "Business Analyst" or "Business Analyst Premium" depending on your version under Other Extensions. For the SDLIC, save to disk and just double click. For the LF, save to disc and reference in Address Coder File-Options-License-Browse.

Updating 9.3 Projects

As discussed on the BA Blog, there is a new tool called Update MXDs that you can use to batch-update your old 9.3 project files, which were automatically placed in My Output Data.backup during install. However, and this is very important, as you review the Source of layers in your old projects before backing them up, you will also want to review each project first to ensure that you have not combined your own files and layers with the “Business Analyst Data” layer. The tool is designed to remove everything in “Business Analyst Data” and replace it with the updated version 10 layer, and it will do so along with anything else you had in that Business Analyst Data layer. If you find you have saved layers to Business Analyst Data, just move them out, creating a New Group Layer for them if you need to, and saving the project.

If you don’t want to use one of the Update MXD tool methods, you can still do this manually – but the location of the new Layer files has moved. To manually update an MXD, open it, review the project as above, and when you are sure that Business Analyst Data contains only BA 9.3 files and none of your own layers or analysis, right click on it in the TOC and remove it. Then, Add File and navigate to the ArcGIS-Desktop 10.0-Business Analyst-Data folder, to add the Business Analyst - Map Layers and Business Analyst - Business Reference Layers layers to your 9.3 project, and save in 10.

VBA Error When Opening Old Projects

When opening a 9.3 project in 10, you may encounter a Warning: VBA Code Detected error. If you do, you should be able to click through this error in the interim, but you’ll need a VBA install and license. The install comes from the ArcGIS 10 install routine of ArcGIS Desktop VBA Resources, so go back to your ArcGIS 10 folder on the BA USB drive and install and Modify to add this if you did not install during core 10 install; the VBA license should have come with your other licenses from ESRI Customer Service. If you don’t have one, let us know.

Now The Fun Part

The usability and performance of BA 10 appear every bit as advertised – fast, powerful, and with more function better exposed. For a prospect in a recent demo, a huge retail chain, we retrieved over 1,000 of their store locations nationally, set them up as Stores, ran a simple ring buffer on them, and reported an initial national Tapestry profile of their estimated primary trade areas… in just 5 minutes. And that is just scratching the surface.

Use ArcGIS 10 On Your Current PC With ReadyBoost

2010-09-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

What is ReadyBoost? ReadyBoost is a Windows Vista and Windows 7 technology that allows you to plug in a USB flash drive or a flash memory card and use its contents to cache frequently used files. If you have Vista or Windows 7, you can use a Ready Boost compatible USB 2 flash drive to add flash memory and speed up your system significantly - without spending a lot of money or time, and especially, without having to get a new PC just to run ArcGIS 10.

We've been using Ready Boost since 2007, and it especially helps with rendering and screen draws. Here's how to use Ready Boost - just be sure to "Safely Remove Hardware" from the system tray to turn off the USB drive before pulling it out. Also, a rule of thumb is to add a ReadyBoost drive that is about half as large as your installed RAM; also, Windows 7 can make use of more flash RAM than Vista can.

Is there enough of an improvement to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 on your current PC rather than getting a new one to run 10? Probably, especially if you have a decent processor and 2GB of RAM or more.

Here's how to use ReadyBoost, it's quite simple. Insert the drive in your PC, and then -

Click Start, then navigate to Computer.
Right click the flash drive or memory card icon and choose Properties.
Click the ReadyBoost tab.
Select "Use this device" option.
Use the "Space to reserve for system speed" slide bar to adjust amount of memory you want to allocate.
- The number that originally appears is the maximum amount available to use.
Click OK.

Saving DBF in Excel 2007 & Later Using ArcCatalog

2010-08-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

What a pain in the ass. Microsoft decides that DBF is a dead format, so you can't output DBF in Excel 2007. I guess they don't get out much.

When you need to output DBF from Excel 2007, you can use ArcCatalog. Save the data in a permissible format, say a compatible XLS or a delimited file, and then open it in ArcCatalog and save it as a DBF.

Check back with us at least once a week or so for more fun stuff from Esri-land and beyond.

Welcome to The GIS Biz

2010-07-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

Community is what it is all about. How well do we understand and serve our communities? What is their composition, who lives here, who works here? What are their needs, retail, financial, healthcare? How many customers do i have here? How many customers could I have here?

In the coming weeks, we will explore these questions as they relate to banking, health care, retail, hospitality, entertainment, and more - and show how the spatial components of site and location underlie business performance, both good and bad.

First up - Low Hanging Fruit for retail success - the easiest and first things a business can do to find, make and keep customers.