Mark Evans

Welcome to Bell Canada Lite

One of the most puzzling aspects of Bell Canada’s announcement earlier this week it was slashing 2,500 management jobs was that some analysts seemed surprised.

In the wake of a leveraged buy-out that has left with more than $30-billion of debt, the company needs to be aggressive to boost cash flow. A key part will be lower operating costs, much of it through streamlining operations (aka wide-scale staff reductions).

It’s the only way that Bell Canada can support its new financial structure as well as give it enough money to make investments to remain competitive viable. For example, Bell Mobility may have to invest $500-million to do an GSM overlay to put it on a level playing field with Rogers.

At the same time, the competitive landscape is challenging. Bell Canada’s local telephone service, high-speed, wireless and satellite-TV are experiencing, at best, modest growth. This means revenue growth will have to come from small but steady price increases - not an easy trick to pull off when you’ve got pesky competitors looking to capitalize on any misstep.

George Cope may have his dream job as Bell Canada’s CEO but sometimes you should be careful what you wish for.

Technorati Tags: Bell Canada, George Cope

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First Impressions; Tough Critics

For anyone involved in an online startup, the launch of Cuil earlier this week offered some good insight about the ins and outs of officially unveiling a new service.

While lots of media and blog coverage is the ultimate goal to gain attention and users, a far more important issue is making a good first impression with a service that fills a need and performs well.

Cuil got plenty of attention but it was hanmmered for not working and/or offering less than satisfactory search results. So, the question is whether Cuil launched too soon or whether expectations were far too high/unrealistic.

In terms of timing a launch, pulling the trigger can be as much a gut call as a pragmatic assessment that a service is good to go. The reality is no service will be perfect so at some point you just have to jump out from behind the curtain.

Sometimes, the reception is great (e.g. Jango) but it can also be savage (e.g. Flock). In fact, most startups get a rough ride because there’s no lack of critics - most of whom have little idea about what’s involved in building and launching an online startup.

The bias to kick rather than praise can be disheartening given the work and money that goes into a new service. But it can also be a positive in that many services are built in semi-vacuums. Sure, you can get feedback from friends, family and beta users, but it’s not until you launch that the real feedback pours in.

When that happens, the key is to listen, learn, assess, and then determine what it means and how to respond. In some cases, it may mean going back to the drawing board; in others it may be just a matter of tweaking some features and the UI. Whatever the response, smart startups should take criticism as an opportunity to take advantage of free advice from many people who know their stuff.

In terms of Cuil, there are many lessons to be learned, as well as lots of criticism to be assessed. What Cuil needs to do now is carefully weigh everything, and then make any strategic and/or technology changes to get better.

Sure, Cuil was beaten up and bloodied but it wasn’t knocked down and counted out. Like a tough boxer, Cuil needs to go back to its corner, get some good advice, and then come out swinging to fight another day.

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Tags: cuil, search, startup

Tangible vs. Digital

Even though Cottage Country is going digital with the sad but staedy penetration of high-speed Internet access and satellite TV, it is still pretty much an analog world.

If you look around many cottages, you’ll see tangible, non-digital things such as books, magazines, newspapers, a TV that, if you’re lucky pulls in the CBC, and a radio. And if you’re wondering where VCRs and all those VCR tapes go to die, many of them will be found in Cottage Country.

Without the Web and a 500-channel TV universe, it’s a different world. Books that would be ignored get pulled off shelves, old movies are watched, boardgames played, walks taken and talks had.

It makes me wonder what the digerati would do if the Web was suddenly knocked out of commission for an extended period of time. With no Web, e-mail, Twitter and Facebook would we look longingly at our now less-interesting computers, and start to call each other on the phone, write letters, read more books and go for walks?

As life gets more digital, the analog world is brushed aside as antiquated and less useful or valuable. Not that progress is a bad thing but some parts of the analog world are worth keeping.

Then again, we’re still reading books and newspapers, and listening to AM radio so perhaps there is still hope for analog.

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Tags: analog, digital

Everyone Loves a Google-Killer

Cuil may not be cool - or that stable - but it has certainly caught the attention of the blogosphere.

Who knows if Cuil will become a viable and popular alternative to Google but there’s no doubt people are fascinated with a well-financed search player looking to take on Google. If it’s not Cuil getting people hot and bothered, it’s Powerset or Mahalo or Wikia.

When you’re King Kong - especially one making oodles of dough - it’s not surprise that people are fascinating with potential rivals that look interesting. Cuil is no exception but maybe the main difference is Cuil appears to have come up with a different, if not better, search mousetrap by claiming it has indexed 120 billion Web pages.

If anything, that’s attention-grabbing. But there are still a few key questions:

1. Are the results relevant/useful?

2. Will Cuil be better enough than Google to lure people away?

3. Will Cuil be able to turn a seemingly powerful search engine into a business?

The biggest hurdle is #2. To establish a solid foothold, Cuil needs to be better and/or different than Google - otherwise it will just be another search wannabe. While the initial reaction appears to be mixed, perhaps the pragmatic approach is giving Cuil time to prove itself.

That said, the search engine market is ripe for change. People like new and different so there’s an appetite for a new search engine so people have an alternative to Google. It doesn’t mean Google’s dominance is going to evaporate, it just means Google may not be default for the vast majority of search efforts.

If Cuil can achieve enough of a foothold to encourage other search engine start-ups, that will be a huge accomplishment.

For what it’s worth, here’s what Cuil produced for a search for “Mark Evans” (Yes, it’s a vanity search!). Mark Evans, the artist who has consistently been #2 behind me on Google, is the top-ranked results while my old blog (evans.blogware.com) is second and third. No sign of Mark Evans Tech, however.

Technorati Tags: Google

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Let’s Share a Little

While I’ve been able to find Wi-Fi in Bayfield, Ont. (mystery solved!), a comment that resonated was whether there’s a way to share a little bit of your Internet access with people who want to check e-mail and check out a few sites.

Everyone is seemingly terrified about leaving their Wi-Fi networks wide open amid concerns that nefarious people will download copious amounts of music and porn. That’s fair enough but what if you could allocate 100MB to 500MB of your 60GB data package a month to share with anybody and everybody?

A measly 100MB won’t let anyone go too wild but it does provide enough bandwidth do check e-mail and surf the Web. Sounds like a reasonable proposition to me.

Technorati Tags: wi-fi

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A Personalized/Customized Browser

For whatever reason, I’m fascinated with Flock.

Perhaps it has to do with the tremendous amount of hype Flock received before launching a couple of years ago. Its unveiling was a disaster with an alpha that should probably never have seen the light of day. For all intents and purposes, Flock should have been dead in the water.

Rather than fade away, Flock kept on moving forward by introducing an array of new features and raising another $15-million of venture capital. In a sense, it has evolved from being the “social browser” to the “Swiss Army” browser given you can do pretty much everything and anything.

Yet, Flock has never really resonated with the digerati. It’s a browser many people have downloaded but rarely use. In fact, I’ve never come across anyone who has proclaimed themselves to a loyal Flock user.

So, Flock keeps on the searching for the magic bullet to jump-start its fortunes. It’s still early days but Flock may have stumbled upon something interesting - customized versions for different market segments. Earlier this week, Flock unveiled a new version called Gloss for the fashion and entertainment sectors. It also has Eco-Green and German versions.

Given people are so attached to their browsers, maybe the concept of a personalized browser will capture peoples’ attention. After all, you can customize Firefox by using add-ons and bookmarks so why shouldn’t people gravitate to browsers feature pre-configured content and a stylized look and feel.

You have to give Flock credit for trying to find its niche in an extremely competitive market. Whether or not this strategy is going to work is left to be seen but it looks like an interesting step in the right direction.

Technorati Tags: Flock

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Life on the Other Side of the Digital Coin

So, my hunt for Wi-Fi in Bayfield, Ont. was finally successful as the public library offers free access.

What’s interesting is the library seems to be the place in town where most people go to get online. With a large retirement community that only needs occasional access to the Web, the library’s computer and its Linksys router meets the needs for many people who may not have a computer at home.

When I told the librarian how it was difficult to find Wi-Fi in town, she said so many people depend on the library’s Internet connection that there is much unhappiness when technical issues knock out its service.

So, what are people doing online? Mostly, e-mail and paying bills. No mention about Twitter, Techmeme, Facebook or Friendster.

What I found funny and interesting is the librarian told me that when people want to get online when the library is closed, they park their cars outside, and then jump on the wireless network.

You figure with this kind of demand, an enterprising cafe owner would offer free Wi-Fi to paying customers, or even a little CyberCafe.

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Tags: bayfield, wi-fi

Let’s Focus, People

There was a story in the Toronto Star earlier this week about how 100 drivers a day fail to stop behind the open doors of a streetcar, putting them at risk of hitting a disembarking passenger.

So what’s one the big reasons for the failure to stop?

Cell phones. Yup, drivers are so busy yacking away that they often fail to see a large, red public transportation vehicle come to a stop ahead of them.

Why people in many places are still allowed to drive and talk is a mystery. There’s no way you can truly focus on driving if part of your brain is paying attention somewhere else. People who check their Blackberrys are even worse.

The lack of focus is becoming a pandemic. Rather than paying attention to the task at hand, we’re distracting ourselves on purpose.

Along with cell phones, Blackberrys, iPhones et al, one of the biggest distraction culprits is the iPod. People plug in and tune out as they walk, bike and take the bus, subway and streetcar - oblivious to their surroundings.

As I ride back and forth to work on my bike, I’m shocked that so many people ride while listening to their iPods. They can’t even hear me coming alongside them, let along a car. Given how little respect Toronto drivers give bicyclists, the last thing I’d do as a bicyclists is not be completely focused on the task at hand.

Perhaps multi-tasking is to blame. We live in a world where doing more than one thing at a time is totally acceptable. How can anyone be super productive if they’re only doing one thing at a time?

Truth be told, we all need to focus on being focused - be it driving, biking or working.

Technorati Tags: bicycling, ipod touch, wireless

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The Death of Free Wi-Fi

It used to be that jumping on a free Wi-Fi network to check e-mail or do some casual Web browsing was easy. Most people didn’t lock down their networks because they were happy to share and/or they didn’t know how to do lock down their networks. Few people abused the privilege, and it was a win-win all around.

Today, it’s a different world. It’s increasingly diificult to find a free and open Wi-Fi connection. Most networks have the evil “lock” icon. This is all the fault of Linksys, Cisco and D-Link, which have made security on new routers far too simple to set up. What ever happened to the complex process of configuring a WEP password!?

Meanwhile, the media has done a great job convincing everyone that open Wi-Fi networks are just an invitation for strangers to download gigabytes of music, movies and porn.Unlike the credit card business that forgives its customers if someone else uses their cards without authorization, the ISPs - and, for that matter, the music industry - put the onus on the subscriber for whatever happens on their -Internet connection.

Then, you’ve got the bandwidth caps being quietly applied by the ISPs to “manage” their networks. Of course, it’s also a way to monetize their networks given the emergence of bandwidth-sucking video services such as Hulu and YouTube. When you have a bandwidth cap, there’s far less incentive to share.

What it means is the free ride is over. It was fun while it lasted but the party is being shut down. In it’s place, you have hot-spots run by the ISPs; services such as Boingo, (which offers access to more than 13K hotspots in Canada but, sadly, none in Bayfield, Ont.); the occaisonal independent cafe that offers customers quasi-free Wi-Fi to lure people away from Starbucks; and altruistic, but under-funded community groups that try to offer free Wi-Fi.

RIP, free and open Wi-Fi; it was nice knowing you.

Technorati Tags: wi-fi

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New Facebook: Does it Matter?

Hey look, Facebook has a new look - sort of like adding a new coat of paint after seeing what the neighbours (aka Friendster) are doing.

There’s nothing wrong with spiffing up the place but is it going to make much of a difference? I mean, Facebook is now what it is - an interesting service but no longer the compelling entity it was a year ago. This is due to a combination of strategic mistakes, new players and the novelty factor wearing off.

Then again, I tried to leave Facebook recently only to realize it’s still a relevant tool if you’re a digital creature of habit. Like many people, Facebook has its uses but it’s not something I need or use every day.

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Tags: Facebook, friendster