Automata

Automata - It all sounds very dark and dramatic doesn't it?

This is Latin for: Self operating machines. I am personally dubious as to whether the Latin language so long ago really had a word for 'Self operating machines' or whether some guy just decided to tell people that.

Ever heard of a Cybertwin? No, I hadn't either until this week. Let me tell you Ian's Cybertwin needs some work. He was not helpful in the slightest. Cyber Ian let me know that he was not interested in hearing all about me and when I asked him a question, he responded by asking me where Iran was located. There was definitely something lost in translation and it is fair to say we are a long way off having a Cybertwin attending to all of our more tedious jobs.


Alan Turing was certainly ahead of his time when he came up with the concept of a machine that can exhibit intelligent behaviour, that of which would be indistinguishable from humans.
Based on Turings concept there was a test known appropriately as the Turing test. Basically, a human judge conducts a conversation using natural language, with humans and computers in a separate room. If the judge cannot distinguish between the machine and the human, congratulations, the machine has passed the test.

There have been mixed reactions to Turings test. The test fails to check on the ability to give correct answers and bases it completely on how the answers resemble typical human answers.

On the flip side Searle (1980) disagrees with the effectiveness of the Turing test, his argument being that the test does not prove that a computer can think. I tend to agree with him, however going forward I do believe the technology will get to a point where we can teach computers to think. World domination is only a click of a button away. Mwahahahahahahaha (cue evil laugh)

A good example of this in todays world is the introduction of Siri to Apple products. she is a virtual customer service agent that is trained to interact with you in a human style to the best of her ability. I do utilise her quite a bit. In particular for weather and directions. When she works well, I love her, when she doesn't understand me and she comes back with somewhat patronising answers, I want to throw my new friend right out the window!

It is a great instant option and it is exciting to think how that technology will develop in the next ten years. I think it will become a very viable option for businesses to utilise on a regular basis.

I imagine Alan Turing would have a great laugh at the movie that has just come out called "Her" where a young guy falls in love with his operating system. Will this be the new E Harmony?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4

Watch this space.

P.S can I just say I found the quote from Tim Berners-Lee so self indulged. That last line where he says, "The day to day mechanisms will be handled by agents, leaving humans to provide the inspiration and intuition" We humans are just that good. hehe we as a race have a fairly high opinion of ourselves don't we?

Markets & Market Places

I have always wanted to go to the Markets or Souks as they are known in Marrakesh, Morocco. The thought that trade has been going on for such a long time here and the vivid colours and the sounds and smells would be exhilarating. I wonder how many of the stall holders have adopted an online presence?


My discussion on Question 1.

I go through phases when online shopping is something I do regularly and then I will revert back to the physical process. There is something so satisfying about touching, feeling and walking away with a product. This is one down side to online shopping.

I am a big fan of organic fruit and veg, however honestly when I am at Coles or the local green grocer, the price point often plays a part in my decision making process. More often than not, when doing a big shop for a family of four, I revert back to regular fruit or veg... Insert www.foodgarden.com.au an online organic fruit and veg store that not only sells organic fruit and veg, but also stocks bread, eggs and staple food products (including delicious sourdough donuts filled with lemon curd), meaning that I can pick up all the important stuff from one place and they deliver to my door every Thursday for about 3 bucks. The produce is of such high quality and they provide a newsletter outlining exactly where each product has come to me from.

The great thing about this website is ease of use, I can order from my phone if need be, they are informative, giving you the exact location of where the fruit and veg is coming from, they are completely season driven and offer great vego recipes and a newsletter in your veg box aswell.

If I'm honest I have not used this service in about three months, however writing this blog reinforces how great the site and the business is, I'm off to place an order today.

I know I have had a couple of bad online experiences, but one that springs to mind is online clothes shopping. I fluctuate between a size ten and twelve most of the time and I am completely intimidated by the idea of measuring myself, not for any other reason than because numbers are not my thing. I am sure I will get it wrong, so when ordering a dress on Etsy.com I winged it with the measurements only to find said dress was too big, I sent it back and re ordered a paper bag skirt ( A skirt type that I now know only suits tall, thin girls) from Etsy.com. The site itself was fine, I had to communicate back and forth with the maker and although this took a little time, on the whole it was good. Having said that my husband has banned online clothes shopping from our house.

What can I say, it is the chance you take when buying online. My sister once spent 60 pound on a beautiful interior design book for me (or so she tells me) and it never turned up and because she wanted to give it sufficient time to arrive from the USA, by the time she realised it wasn't coming it had passed the time frame in which you can lodge an investigation.

For me the biggest selling points to a good online store is, it must be visually appealing, not too cluttered and easy to navigate. Honestly that is the same criteria I would use for physical shopping aswell.  For me if I can't find things quickly and easily, I'm giving up and going elsewhere. Price point is important, however if something is presented in a way I love and feel I have to have it, I will save my pennies until I can afford it. For boring items like white goods, price point will win out every time. So it is interesting that essentially it is dependent on what I'm looking for as to what I will tolerate within a website.      

I know the jury is out in regards to whether the prices of goods or services will rise or fall due to the migration of services online, however for the most part, I believe that prices will fall, whilst competition increases.

The only area in which I think we may see an increase is as less people engage in real life shopping,there may be an opportunity to create a niche market that sees physical shopping turned into an attraction people will pay for. i.e individualised shopping experiences with a stylist and access to exclusive, not available online products.

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My discussion on question 2.

The dispersion of prices. I think we will see more research undertaken in relation to what buyers want and essentially we may see the divide increase. In my opinion, there are two types of buyers. One that buys for quality and one that buys based on price.

Brand names will always be important. For some reason it is human nature to want to belong and for many to "belong" you need to be buying what others buy, eating what others eat and being seen where other people of note are being seen. With the introduction of social media, brand recognition and being able to associate with other like minded people, we see brand is as important as it has ever been.

I certainly don't believe that all products will be made cheaper due to competition. Sure, as I listed above, for me when it comes to white goods, price point is important, as too is quality, but after research, If I find the best product for cheaper on another site, I am switching in the blink of an eye. I think businesses will be looking for that competitive advantage, offering that ever decreasing product that isn't available anywhere else and being able to charge a premium. I think that businesses will be forced to offer amazing service and website usability to offer a product at a premium price. 

Do I think digital markets will be dominated by a handful of mega-sites like Amazon? Yes I do, Like Michael Rappa said in his pod cast, if an organisation want to enter the retail market against Amazon, then competing with them will not be trivial and the cost of competing will be at a premium.Dominating the digital market is big business and an area where it is increasingly difficult for small fry to permeate.

Having said that I think the introduction of sites such as Etsy.com and madeit.com.au is a direct reaction to the generic nature of dealing with these retail giants. People are wanting a genuine interaction in a less than threatening environment, where they can buy a handmade product with a story and a face. These sites offer this experience. That is their point of difference.

How do I think the balance of power between buyer and seller will change? I'm not sure really. I think it is fair to say it is a buyers market. I think that as the realisation occurs that people are not actually getting good value for money and that prices of goods in areas such as aviation aren't transparent, we will see an increase in switching and an increase in brand loyalty.

There are lots of sites that offer clustering, be it airlines, white goods, travel, medications, high street fashion. The likes of Wotif.com, lastminute.com all offer several of the same product and their listed prices, for you to make the choice.

It is my opinion that the web has an advantage over physical shopping for demonstrating elasticity in relation to pricing. Businesses can monitor the market place electronically and react quickly to any differing of prices by competitors. Market research within a physical environment is much slower to react.

Transparency of pricing is an interesting one. With the introduction of clustering, absolutely we are seeing an element of transparency and fair price comparison, however in industries such as aviation, it is more perceived transparency.

Many people opt for cheap flights these days and that has certainly seen a price decrease in some areas of the industry, however because of that we have seen the introduction of the "Add on" it is a perceived saving.

I recently booked tickets to Thailand. The sale price was $800 for two people return, after going through all the add ons ( which included meals and seat allocation, credit card charge and taxes) this sale price ended up at around $1200.

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                                     Source:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/

My discussions on question 3

a) What types of m-commerce services does your cell phone provider offer?

I am one of the lucky sheep that has an IPhone Five. I say sheep because isn't it what we all want, even when we say we don't (I was in denial for a long time, before I owned one). We are all sheep in so many facets of our life.

My Iphone offers more M-Commerce options than I would even know. I use it in a fairly basic way compared to others. Having said that, I know it offers the following:

SMS, MMS, Internet access, update notifications, Bill payment options, games (much to my childrens joy) and GPS (Siri can be both my best friend when I am lost, or my arch enemy when she does not understand my request).

Of the services, I have listed above, I use all of them. I also access Apps such as the CFA to find out fire conditions and the BOM to check the weather.

When using my phone, sometimes I call people. I know crazy! I use it to text people as I mentioned above, check weather, get directions, bid on Ebay and pay my bills. My husband even has an app to turn on the television. He can be standing next to the remote control fiddling with his phone to change the channel. Yep! he is all man.

I would love to be able to turn my coffee machine on when I am in transit. My machine takes half an hour to warm up. There is a wasted opportunity.

e) What is your opinion of wireless advertising/mobile marketing? I have not had much experience in relation to wireless advertising or mobile marketing. I use very few apps and have not ever experienced direct marketing through text as yet, however I imagine that is only a matter of time. From a limited amount of research on the highly reliable Wikipedia, I see that mobile marketing is huge in areas such as Japan and France. Without doubt one would think this is an enormous area of opportunity for advertisers going forward. Quite possibly the greatest opportunity in media today.

Business Models

                                                                           Source:http://2.bp.blogspot.com/

Business models, lets just say there are alot of business models out there and although a business model, is a business model, is a business model, it is fair to say that with some creativity some of the more boring business models have come into their own with the introduction of the web.

There are many effective business models. Below will outline 9 of them. 

1. Brokerage: Put simply a broker brings buyers and sellers together, with little interaction during the actual transaction. A good example of this is Ebay. Ebay provide the forum with which to start the conversation between the buyer and the seller.

2. Merchant model: A merchant  is a wholesaler or retailer that invests in an inventory of goods and takes a gamble that he or she can on sell them down stream at a profit. A good example of this is WWW. Amazon.com. with the largest inventory of goods worldwide ( I believe this to be true, I think Michael Rappa told me) I heard a funny stat that said when Amazon.com went public, their inventory was large enough to fill six football fields. I wonder what it is now?

3. Advertising: Advertising on the web was met with a level of trepidation in the early days, now however we see it saturates every sight we visit. Being able to gain valuable information from click through figures ( The amount of people that click on a link, how long they stay on a site for, where they go after) a virtual paper trail can be created by following one click of a mouse.

4. Subscription model: Subscriptions, a situation where the user pays a one of monthly fee for goods or services has become a popular method, in particular with software. Most commonly we pay a monthly or quarterly fee for our computer to be protected from viruses. An email is dispatched just before the subscription end date to prompt you to top up or renew your subscription. One quite unique example of this is Barham Avocados.( www.barhamavocados.com.au). While Avocados are in season, you can subscribe to have a box delivered to your door monthly. The avo's are at differing stages of ripeness to ensure they are ready throughout the month. I think this is an incredibly innovative way for a farmer to do business and a clear example of where time poor consumers are headed.

5. Informediary: Is a  site that stores and manages information and controls how much of that information can be accessed. Yahoo is a good example of an Informediary website.

6. Manufacturer:  This is a situation where the manufacturer deals directly with the consumer, flattening the chain of command and in turn simplifying the process. This interaction in the long term helps the manufacturer to know exactly what their customer wants and gives them the opportunity to change depending on the demands of their customer.

7. Affiliate Model: Affliates. We referred to the click through earlier and with an affliate program, this is where the click through comes into it's own. Basically the affliate model sees advertisments on other companies websites,with relevent or complimentary information enticing the consumer to click  and be taken to a product or service that they may require. I feel this is the way of the future and as frustrating as it is as a consumer to be targeted in this way, there have certainly been times where I have been the sucker and clicked on a relevent "Affiliate" link.

8. Community Model: This is an intersting one. The idea that you create content, be it code for websites, advertising for tv or radio or textual information for people to share and tac onto this some advertising and in turn create revenue from alternative streams.

9. Utility Model: The utility model has been used in the power and telephony industries for many years, however it has found a slight resurgence online with the introduction of paid time for information used or intenet usage.

Collaberative Consumption

I'll be honest by this stage of the blog I am feeling a little bogged down with all the details. I have made some in roads into our next topic The Global information technology Report. and it is arduos reading. so when I took a break, grabbed a cuppa and put on my head phones, the break through to collaberative consumption was a welcome break.

I love this concept and have utilised it in a number of ways. I live in Daylesford, for some people living in Victoria, I have heard the words " Oh you live in Daylesford, you must be a hippy".  Sure there are a number of alternative thinking individuals but not all and it is actually those individuals that bring a really interesting and welcoming energy to the town. The reason I give this background is that we  have a site on Facebook called Junked up and the premise is to decrease landfill. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/507353539346279/ . This has been a great forum for not only moving things on you don't need but also to interact as a community.

I have friends that regularly engage in house swapping and have never encountered any negative experiences.

For me I think the next big thing is going to be ethical consumption. There is already "Thankyou water" where a % of money from the purchase goes to creating safe drinking water in developing nations (www.thankyou.co). There is toilet paper that sales go to creating toilets. I think going forward we all will expect a product for our charity dollar and make that "Feel good" factor remain for longer than just the time it takes to donate. Every drink of water, every trip to the loo, we will be filled with positive affirmation, that we are changing the world, one wee at a time(http://au.whogivesacrap.org).

Now to the mind bogglingly hard core information from The Global information Technology Report. I hand wrote the figures from each graph on a notepad before I realised there were some very user friendly individual country break downs, giving me all the info I required for the following questions. lets get this over and done with shall we.

Professor Soumitra Dutta from the World Economic Forum, so eloquently described The Global Information Technology Report as " A wholistic measure of how we as an economy are ready to deal with all this connectiveness"

Lets see how we stack up.

1. What is the mobile phone usage /100 population. Compare Australia, USA, China & India

2. What is internet use /100 population. Compare Australia, USA, China & India

3. Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia in the survey.

Our core strengths ranking us in the top ten nations out of 142 include infrastructure & digital content, government usage and social impacts. We are just out of the top 10 at 12 for the environmental sub index and have an overall ranking of 17 out of 142. Our primary weakness in the Global Information Technology Report is that of affordability. In the area of affordability we come in at 100th with countries including India (1), china (42) and the United states (10) far surpassing us. 

4. What does the survey suggest to you about the information technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers.

It is really interesting to see how we compare to other countries. Who would have though India would come in at number 1!

I think consumers in Australia are champing at the bit to use information technology to its maximum ability. I will watch with interest to see if the affordability factor comes down in the coming years with the introduction of the NBN in which ever guise it takes.

References

http://www.newyorker.com/

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/

 www.barhamavocados.com.a

http://au.whogivesacrap.org/

www.thankyou.co

Digital Design

Right! lets start this week with a little bit of digital design for dummies. Today I need to talk to you about the importance of a customer centric website. To do that I first need to understand what a customer centric website is.

A customer centric website is one that has been created with the consumer in mind. When we look at a website online, we are attracted to the visuals, what is being sold and what imagery we are looking at. A website might be visually stunning but if the back end is not created efficiently and it is difficult to navigate, the customer will not return.

Jodie Dalgleish (2000) talks about five basic things that a customer needs from a website. They are;

1. The ability to evaluate competing businesses and products
2. To choose a product and make a transaction if the product is appropriate
3. To get help when needed
4. To provide feedback
5. To stay informed and receive regular updates

The top five are a good start for creating a customer centric website. There is huge competition online and if a site is too difficult to navigate people will simply move on.

A great example of a website that ticks the boxes is www.wotif.com . Wotif gives you a variety of choices of flights or accommodation and allows you to compare prices and choose what is best for you. Although the booking process is rather laborious, they do prompt you along the way.
The website provides a Help page that offers a range of help options from most commonly asked questions, through to email with the final option being to phone them.
In relation to feedback, they offer a guest review page. it is an opportunity to comment on the experience you have had after travel.
Finally at the point of your transaction you are encouraged to provide an email address and given the opportunity to receive regular updates and promotion via email.

2.  Define the term ‘presence’. Write an additional paragraph that describes why firms that do business on the Web should be more concerned about presence than firms that operate in the physical world.

My initial feel was that if I was going to define web presence it was about how your brand and website was represented online and how easy it was to find. It turns out that Web presence is much more than that. For lack of finding a better definition, Wikipedia defines Web presence as:
The appearance of a person or organization on the World Wide Web." And "the amount of web presence can be measured in the amount of sites an organisation or individual has, which can include their own website, social network profiles, and their site's search engine ranking, traffic, popularity, and backlinks."

Web presence is enhanced by utilising things such as key words throughout your content, that will be picked up during peoples searches

The internet is a fickle place with which to do business, people can move to a new organisation at the click of a button. For that reason it is imperative that organisations spend both time and money to ensure the search trail is as user friendly as possible.

3. *Usable Doesn’t Have To Mean Ugly ‘for a web design to be truly beautiful, it has to be functional, have purpose and contribute in some way to the website’s intuitiveness, usefulness and branding. All of these things contribute to the overall effect of a design’. This is a quote from one of the articles on web design linked on Web pages that suck. Find a web page that ‘does not suck’ and discuss the features that make it work

One website that I think fits the bill for usability is http://www.bookdepository.co.uk . It is quite busy but categorised in such a way that it gives you a breakdown of categories, then within a specific category it breaks down again to more specific search options.

  

www.bookdepository.co.uk is an online book store it offers a large range of books from asll over the world at competitive prices. To navigate and make a purchase is easy, and they sweeten the deal by offering free postage all over the world, with no minimum purchase. If you are not too conscious of product miles you can buy an aussie book for cheaper than you would get it in a book shop here. If you are ethically challenged by the distance a product travels to get to your doorstop, this is not the site for you.
They have a great Help page with several different headings and subheadings within. They have a contact us page and a review page where you can review the products you have purchased. Finally you can subscribe and receive emails and offers.

My particular favourite website that sucked was this one. Check it out! I dare you.

http://heaven.internetarchaeology.org/heaven.html#bottom



References

www.wikipedia.com

www.wotif.com

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/

Security and Privacy

                                                                     Source: www.onlinelearningtips.com


Monty Python. I'm not as old as Ian, however I have vivid memories of friends who were obsessed by the program. It certainly has grown in popularity to cult status amongst the Gen X demographic. I just messaged a friend to say I was watching Monty Python as homework for Uni. All I had to do was write Spam and he quickly started singing the song, hehe

Spam aside, Security and privacy is a fairly serious issue, at the forefront of most peoples minds. Whether it is concern of your passwords or pin numbers being stolen or your pesky friend who infiltrates your Facebook status when your not looking, the opportunities are on the increase.

There are privacy breaches recorded both internationally and locally on a daily basis through the media. As recently as last month, Telstra was fined a mere $10'200 when over 15000 of their customers details were made available online (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2014) To access the information was as easy as a Google search. The question I have is, Is $10'200 a large enough punishment for an organisation who recorded a profit in 2013 of $3.81 billion?

A slightly more controversial breach was that by Immigration department of details in relation to 10'000 asylum seekers. The details were made available on their website. Details including; full names, nationalities, locations, arrival dates, and boat arrival information, including children, detained in a mainland or Christmas Island detention facility (Ducket, 2014). The ramifications are many and varied. In particular the risk of safety of not only the asylum seekers but any family members left in the home country. It is not uncommon for some countries to track and pursue people linked to individuals that attempt to flee persecution.

All details online have since been removed and KPMG have been engaged to conduct a full and thorough investigation. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

A Dark Scenario

I need to start by being honest and saying I struggled with a lot of the terms in this article, so there will be some dummies guide references to terms in this part of my blog post today.

Ambient intelligence - Pretty much defined as electronic environments that are impacted by people and responsive to people

Data Mining is an important role that brings with it huge responsibility

From my understanding some examples of such intelligence listed in the reading includes The following:

1. Surveillance systems
2. Mobile phones
3.Location implants (I'm hoping these aren't invented yet, they sound both scary and controlling, although the same location device in mobile phones does the same job)
4. Sensor networks

The National Security Agency stores all data from the US and most recently there has been debate as to whether it is legal to collect every phone call made in the USA for the purposes of tracking possible terrorists. It was suggested that collecting such data violates the legal restrictions of the statute cited to authorise it, section 215 of the Patriot Act (Ackerman, Roberts, 2014)

Without financial support from developed nations, I think prohibiting immigrants from states with no AMI could not be a realistic option. I don't doubt for a second that many governments including our own current government would entertain the proposition if it were real.

By dividing the planet based on AMI technology, we would be straining international relations and in turn be playing with the stability and safety of our nation.

The consequences of such leaked information include an opportunity for Spamming and spoofing, identity theft, purchases on credit cards that had not been purchased by the individual.

A dark scenario is a scary prospect and one that is not terribly far from reality. What the future holds, who knows!










References

 www.onlinelearningtips.com

http://www.abc.net.au

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3820908.htm

www.znet.com.au

www.sbs.com.au

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/nsa-barack-obama-phone-data-collection-illegal-privacy-board