brent phillips

I’m at Hartsfield this morning waiting to head to NY for the week. I was feeling a bit parched so I stopped next door at the Burger King to grab a beverage.  My expectation of these fast food places is not very high - so I was pleasantly surprised by the new order process - computer based and largely automated. To get my drink, I simply walked through the ‘cattle’ ropes and used an ATM like machine that not only took my order, but also suggested I grab a dessert!?!?! (cannot forget the upsell). I payed with one swipe of a card and my reciept printed in almost real-time. And by the time I walked about four feet, my cup was waiting for me. Completely automated and completely self-serve.  I also noticed that the labor had been realigned. There was one attendant to help people order, only one traditional cashier / food runner, and more people on the supply side in the back. I’m guessing this is probably about the same number (or slightly fewer) that the typical storefront but optimized for significantly better service. Granted, there was less traffic this morning, but I imagine that they have a lot more room and flexibility to deal with volume now that the the production line has been stream-lined.

As technology evolves, I see greater efficiency on the horizon. I’ve often imagined being able to ‘quick key’ my favorite coffee beverage into my phone and dial it in while I’m driving to the café.  My phone could be tied to a digital account that I could manage online - whether I order through my device or at the store, I could debit the account via PIN or via an RF mechanism in the device. 

It is certainly interesting what we are beginning to automate and how that automation impacts our lives. Best experience I’ve had at a fast food establishment in a long time.

FastCompany.com posted fascinating article yesterday on the emerging science of neuromarketing.  The gist? Brain scanning gives us much greater insight into the decision making process around why we choose the products we choose. Bottom line? A subconscious,  self-serving motivation based on a weighing of risk-reward and self-importance (there are also drivers for why we think products are not cool).  In short – nothing shocking - we make product decisions in an intuitive and emotional way.  But much more so that we originally thought. 

 Granted,  marketing has made this assumption (think retail-tainment and experience design), but now , or over the next few years, the idea is to have a much more precise way to measure its effectiveness. Makes me wonder what the focus groups will look like J.

I recently signed up at stumbleupon.com and one of my first ’stumbles’ was physorg.com - a collection of science articles ranging from nanotechnology to health and medicine. In the mix was a great story on human computer interaction (HCI), based on a recent announcement by Massey University in New Zealand. The university has developed a computer-based instructor, Virtual Eve, who not only teaches course material (in math specifically, to eight year olds) but can also change its tone and manner based on the reaction of the viewer. Massey researchers suggest that, “With rising demand for long-distance learning and online tutoring, a computer programe capable of detecting human emotions may become a critical teaching tool.”

On how it works and how they do it:

“Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately.

The animated Eve (with a human-sounding voice) can ask questions, give feedback, discuss questions and solutions and show emotion. To develop the software for this system the Massey team observed children and their interactions with teachers and captured them on thousands of images.

From these images of facial expression, gestures and body movements they developed programs that would capture and recognise facial expression, body movement, and (via a mouse) heart rate and skin resistance. “

To see Eve in action, Massey offers a quicktime video here. To read Massey’s article, click here.

This reminds me a bit of the old netzero play. Free internet as long as you were willing to take on a few pop-up ads from sponsors. Hopefully they’ve worked out the kinks. Blyk in their own words  “is the new mobile network for 16 – 24s that’s funded by advertising. Blyk links young people with brands they like and gives them free texts and minutes every month.” Not a bad value proposition for young people who have limited resources (but otherwise what seems like an endless supply of disposable income, right parents?). Free minutes and free texting for opting-in to a social network with sponsors. The Blyk team goes on to explain that they “have developed [their] offer by finding out what [their] members consider most valuable – this will evolve over time as their needs do. ” In other words, Blyk controls the channel and the sponsorship will evolve based on market trends and consumer demand.  The constant becomes the social forum in which consumers and sponsors meet. Not unlike a shopping mall perhaps?

This should be very interesting to watch. Blyk expects to launch a pan-european program in 2008 targeting an estimated 40MM subscribers (they launched UK today). So, there are certainly a number of mobile operators in Europe who will be keeping an eye on this (and I need to find out whose network they’re riding on). I  actually posted this morning on challenges that mobile operators face today with ‘walled garden’ services. Perhaps this model is a game changer for communication service providers across the board?  Time will tell.

Consumers in this age range are very particular. The novelty might grab their attention, but the service will need to be exceptional and the sponsors will need to be cautious. If users think they are talking through an ‘ad phone’ of sorts, I think it will crash and burn - even if it is free.  Avoiding hassle is one reason why we pay a premium for things sometimes, right?  Blyk is headed by Pekka Ala-Pietilä, former president of Nokia and 28 other industry veterans.  I’m guessing that they’ve thought through these issues but I’ve been surprised before. UK launched today, so we’ll start seeing take rates, and more importantly retention rates, in the next few weeks and months.  

I came across a post today on Sam Larbi’s blog entitled Save your job: understand the basics of business. Its a short post that gets to the heart of something that I have been thinking about for quite some time: how should engineers think about their role relative to the strategic direction of their organization? In Sam’s post he shares some insight from a fellow who had been replaced by an outsource firm. In part he writes “Looking back on it, I realize how foolish we were. We worked for a business and our job was to contribute to either making or saving money for that business. Yet we didn’t understand the basics of how the business came to profitability…” This is an interesting point that I took, not long ago, to a couple of acquaintances who teach computer science. My questions to them were along the following lines:

Do students think about the business side of the work they are training to do? Do they think about the strategic value they bring to an organization? Do they think about entrepreneurship? Do they think about intellectual property and how they might innovate to build a business? I also asked if students had an opportunity to take classes on such subjects.

The answer to the latter was yes. Students could certainly take business courses as electives in their curriculum. Most did not however.  In terms of the other questions, the answers were basically ‘no’ across the board. According to my conversation,  students learn a trade (coding) and most expect to land an hourly position somewhere, then expect to apprentice with a more senior developer to learn the complexities of a particular sofware product. This is certainly not a bad approach and many do quite well following this model. I cannot help but think, however, that a few minor changes to the core curriculum of a computer science program would add significant value to the skillset of a newly minted engineer. Specifically, I think a course on business strategy would be a great start and possibly a course on innovation and intellectual property. Perhaps a survey course could be created to address the gamut. The material doesn’t have to go too deep, but just deep enough to give students insight into the environment they will most likely be working.  The easiest way to address this in fact, might be some cross-pollination programs among various schools at a university. GSU offers an intellectual property survey course to its business students for example, so it would be easy enough to make something similar available for the CS students. 

Taking it one step further - consider an entrepreneurial capstone program for MBA’s, JD’s, and MSCS students that included the identification of a market oppportunity, building prototype software, and developing a business plan to take it to market. Maybe along the way you secure a trademark or file a patent or two. Not a bad way to round out a college degree. Maybe they even launch a business.

I’m sure there are schools doing this today, but my guess is that they are a minority. If you read this and know of an interesting program, let me know.

Since October 7, 2007 approximately 1,519,627,180 grains of rice have been donated to the United Nations World Food Program through freerice.com.  What is it? Advertisers on the site provide 10 grains of rice for every word you match correctly with its definition. Its addictive!

From the site:

Learning new vocabulary has tremendous benefits. It can help you:

• Formulate your ideas better
• Write better papers, emails and business letters
• Speak more precisely and persuasively
• Comprehend more of what you read
• Read faster because you comprehend better
• Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school
• Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT
• Perform better at job interviews and conferences
• Sell yourself, your services, and your products better
• Be more effective and successful at your job

After you have done FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words.

Check it out. Test your vocabulary. Help make a difference.   My current vocabulary score is 36. I need help.

I tuned in to BBC from Nice tonight and picked up an interesting story about processor technology. Part of the discussion focused on gaming supercomputing that would “offer the cinematic quality of modern films”  (like 300 perhaps?) rendered in real-time for game play on the PC. While the technologist in me is fascinated by the notion of such an immersive user experience, as a dad I get very nervous about how this might affect those who play them - especially younger children who are still developing emotionally and cognitively.   I decided to dig around on this and found some great links, the most interesting was a page written by Craig Anderson of the American Psychological Association. This is a good resource if you need more insight on entertainment violence. 

I will offer one outtake that confirmed my assumptions…

Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior.

As with many technologies, I look forward to this with cautious optimism. I also firmly believe that the good will significantly outweight the bad. It definitely puts me on guard however, especially having seen the realism of violence in today’s video games. I did not see details of this in Anderson’s paper specifically, but I would imagine that the more realistic the experience, the greater the impact. 

Fixing this, i.e. making sure our kids are not overly exposed to violence, is not the responsibility of the chip and software makers, however. There is a reason why we’re called parents after all. 

I’m in Cannes this week for Gartner’s IT Expo. I’m posting updates on my trip here. Great show after day one and definitely enjoying the weather!

Per my last post, I pulled down a panel discussion from the Stanford Technology Ventures program. Its worth a listen if you follow this space although you won’t get into much granularity. One comment that stood out was a forecast that social network sites will be obsolete in ten years. The thinking is that technology will evolve to such a degree that the notion of specific sites to manage our personas, profiles, and friend lists will seem archaic to users at that time. Instead, the nature of pervasive , or ubiquitous, computing will allow us to make the connections with others more seamlessly and with less effort.  An example given is that we might wear technology that carries our profile and when we come in contact with someone of similar interests, the technologies make the appropriate connection for us - perhaps noting the other user’s profile to be reviewed at a later time (Location based services are evolving rapidly for mobile technology so the idea is not that far fetched).  But I digress. In the end -  good talking points to think about. For now, there is a significant amount of research on the topic as social networks exist today.   One resource that recently came to my attention is the work being done by Dana Boyd (Berkeley) and Nicole Ellison at Michigan State. See Dana’s post here or link directly to their research here. From the site, they cover a usable definition of “social network sites”, a history of some of the major shifts in the development of SNSs, a literature review of work done in this space, and a description of the articles included in the special issue.  This is a great read and a great starting point for those interested in this topic.

I checked out the new iTunes U catalog yesterday and was pleasantly surprised (shocked!) at the breadth and depth of offerings.  For those who are unfamiliar with the service, iTunes now offers video/audio downloads of course lectures from a number of leading universities.  The topics vary as do the number of lectures you might get for each - A Human Computer Interaction course at Stanford, for example, offers  8 lectures, while the IS 103 “History of Information” Series at Berkley offers a staggering 40 lectures. Other offer considerably more. As I reviewed the catalog, I was also impressed by the fact that the lectures all seem to be current (within a year or so) and also - best of all - free of charge.

Now for someone like me, this is a dangerous proposition - although much appreciated. I’m already an avid reader and have a very broad range of interests.  At the very least I see the service as a complement to other professional development activities, but also as a way of brushing up on various hobbies (guitar lessons, anyone?).  My challenge of course is scarcity of time so picking and choosing wisely will be the challenge. 

Shifting gears a bit, I also checked out apple’s website and found the following comment which got me thinking a bit:  ”iTunes U is transforming the way people learn on campus, off campus, and where there’s no campus at all. ” Its a pitch, but also an interesting point that begs the question - Do we need lecture halls anymore? I’ve got some thoughts on that which I will revisit in another post. For now, I’ve started my downloads…

1. Human Computer Interaction: Innovation on User Research Methods during the development of Windows Vista, Gayna Williams, Microsoft.
2. Intellectual Property Scholars Conference 2007, DePaul University. Accommodating the Evolution of Intellectual Infrastructure: Applying Lessons from Trademark and Copyright to Improve Patent Law. Peter Lee.  
3. UC Berkley. Information: An Introduction. Paul Duguid.