Concern & Advice for Our Telcos

The Telco’s would love to work a deal with us to be the exclusive provider of mobile broadband service for my students. Of course that desire is based on all of our undergraduate students having a university provided laptop and recognition that we are committed to exploring mobile technology to improve learning. They know that I am considering transitioning our nearly 20-year laptop program to a new generation of mobile computing devices such as the NetBooks or the anticipated Apple Tablet.

So what will the Telcos have to do to break into this market?

I think they understand that campus WiFi negates the need for mobile broadband, but they still hope that off campus activity might justify it. However, I think students only see mobile broadband as a secondary solution. They just need enough of a connection to get them from WiFi to WiFi. Of course the voice/text phone still carries the value of maintaining contact but that feature is losing value. It used to be that the college student was a highly valued new customer opportunity, but family plans eliminated that. If the new mobile computing device offers an option to turn on mobile broadband service, what will the threshold be that justifies paying for that service?

What if the Telcos could capture a new customer with long-term loyalty? Just sell a data plan that adapted to usage thresholds and offered personal digital identity space. Sounds a little like MobileME except with many more strings. The service could offer a VOIP alternative for Voice and Text. What if this service got involved with secure login and true digital identity that helped to manage the customer’s social networking? What If the Telcos could break away from a mentality based on exploiting American consumerism and actually focus on real innovation?

Did an Angel influence Blackboard?

In Blackboard's press release on December 15th, 2009: Blackboard, Desire2Learn Announce Patent Cross License Agreement and Settlement of Litigation.

"We are pleased to have resolved our differences with Desire2Learn," said Michael Chasen, President and CEO of Blackboard. "Bringing this matter to resolution is in the best interests of both of our organizations, our respective clients and the broader education community."

Congratulations, it appears that level heads have prevailed and maybe we can assume Blackboard's Chief B & L, Matthew H. Small, is no longer calling all the shots. I do hope that all players are able to return to a focus on serving their customers. An Angel must have intervened.

Streaming Your Athletic Events is a Win

I happen to be a CIO who is also a sports fan and supporting my university’s athletic programs is a benefit of the job. IT’s involvement with Athletics in recent years has been based on the technology needed for broadcasting our sporting events. A good partnership as IT needed to perfect video streaming techniques and Athletics was looking for any exposure they could get. Early on we had excess bandwidth to offer up for video streaming of events. Last year we learned a lot about streaming and video production, etc. Some success and failures, but it was a lot of fun and with parents of the athletes the primary benefactors.

Well we got some exposure mostly with having a NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship, so there was increased demand for improved digital presence for Athletics. We solved a big need by outsourcing our Athletics website, but improving the video streaming was the big problem. The issue for streaming had to due with my lack of excess bandwidth (read my last blog post). We outsourced our athletics website to Presto so I inquired about their involvement with video streaming. They pointed me to Stretch Internet, which has provided us with a very acceptable and improved solution. Now we are having more fun improving our video production quality. We’re granting internships to students in our Cinema and Media Communications program, selling sponsorships to pay for the broadcasts and seeing early viewer numbers that are telling us this is good for exposure. Something tells me we have again set the bar up a notch and I think this will provide positive support for our university.

Entertainent On Demand is in Command

A year ago we had excess Internet bandwidth for our traditional campus of 1700 undergraduates. But since the beginning of fall semester we have seen this bandwidth rapidly be consumed. For a few years now we have been predicting that increased access to video would become a problem. And it has contributed, in the form of real-time “experience now” applications. This real–time entertainment traffic (streaming audio & video, peercasting, place-shifting, flash video) has jumped from 12.6 to 26.6 % of Internet traffic since last year (Sandvine). But it is not necessarily just the YouTube effect, which does account for 5% of all Internet traffic. And for our university it is not influenced by the predominate percentage of Internet pornography thanks to filtering. No, the problem for us is the improved access to Internet TV and the growth of online entertainment through gaming consoles.

We don't have cable TV for our students, there was never a huge demand for it. But with this age of TV & movies on demand, our students are definitely investing more of their time for Internet entertainment. The Sandvine report identifies that mature broadband markets have embraced on-demand entertainment while emerging markets still rely on P2P. College students are mature broadband users who are taking advantage of the much improved on demand entertainment delivery systems being deployed by the TV networks, Netflix, Hulu and Boxee. Of course I'm sure they are also devouring the PBS and National Geographic videos.

What is surprising is how quickly the demand has been increasing and I think that is due to a new commitment from the entertainment providers. They have finally embraced the Internet model with more sophisticated buffered players that provide acceptable quality even on a congested Internet. The battle is definitely on with the TV networks. Check them out, I would give ABC and Fox the lead and I would guess that the Hulu concept will be happy with a secondary role. The advertisers are shifting to Internet entertainment as well. So good luck Cable, maybe it is finally time for a new model of cable channel on demand.

Sandvine Report: On-Demand Is In Demand
Internet traffic report identifies real-time applications as key driver in consumer data consumption

Google Wave Luxury Suite for Email

While reading the Google Wave Blog specifically some articles about XMPP a comment caused me to reflect on Google Wave as a preferred email environment because there may actually be a strategy for managing SPAM. Google Wave could be a lot of things depending on how you want to use it, but it definitely is a better email client. It is better because at a minimum it is email, but that is where it starts. The problem with email is that it is generally the de-facto front door of personal communication, and anyone can come to the front door. Now Google Wave could use email as the receptionist and then allow Waves to be used as incredibly flexible email collaborations without the SPAM annoyance. We have had other tools that fit this email as the receptionist model, but none that match so closely with our preferred email contact list. Take the SAP Gravity demo as an example. An email starts out as a question and ends up as a full business process collaborative analysis. I can definitely see a day when email from our important contacts typically kicks over into a Google Wave environment.

Why would you pay for a Course Management System?

I had a good conversation with Jeff Young who was writing an article for the Chronicle about the use of Web Conferencing tools in Higher Ed. Specific to that topic it was interesting to find out from our students that they are actually using web conferencing tools such as Skype, iChat, and various Google tools for academics, however, not on their own accord. They use these tools when prompted to do so by a professor, but they are not using them on their own for assistance with academic assignments. However, they are using the tools on their own for personal interaction.

The conversation with Jeff quickly shifted to feedback I was able to give him on Google's Wave. As soon as I started talking about how Wave could redefine course management along with redefining email as we know it, he steered his article toward one based on Google Wave. His article "Could Google Wave Replace Course-Management Systems?" touched on some of my comments, but I'm not sure replacing Course-Management is the question. I think course management is already watered down by the availability of "free" flexible web conferencing and collaboration applications. Many options are available that can replace a Course Management System; Google Sites, Apps and now Wave definitely could. So is the question "Replace Course Management" even valid any longer, it has replacements. Now we move back to letting pedagogy define how we want to manage a course. The real question is: Why would you pay for a Course Management System?

Microsoft's Groove could have been a Wave

I suppose anyone who has spent time playing with Google’s Wave application will be inspired to blog about it. My comment is just that it is amazing and it will change the world of digital collaborative communication. What I want to mention is why Microsoft didn’t turn their Groove into Wave. About 5 years ago the Wave of the day was a product called Groove. It was far ahead of its time with respect to group collaboration. Microsoft purchased it and eventually bundled it with Office.

Office Groove 2007 is a collaboration software program that helps teams work together dynamically and effectively, even if team members work for different organizations, work remotely, or work offline.

Well, I can’t say that I have heard much about Groove for a while, but I’m sure it is still the best option for a client server based group collaboration tool. Of course the world is moving to the Cloud and I don’t think Groove will be there competing with Google’s Wave. These two applications are representative of the strategic positioning of the 2 companies. From all that I’ve seen with Wave so far, I am convinced that it will redefine how we collaborate, it will eventually replace email as we know it, and it will make $billions for Google by enhancing the value of their data mining product. So do you place your bet on Google’s open Cloud model or Microsoft’s Office tethered Cloud model? I can't imagine not embracing Wave so obviously leveraging other Google Apps will be influenced by that direction.