Oct 13 2012

NZ6 Goes Pop Pop Pop

I was just sitting down to dinner this evening and I heard this loud noise, POP, POP, POP, POP. It reminded me of back when I was a young fella riding a Triumph Saint which used to backfire when the timing was slightly out. At first I thought it was lightning, we seem to get a lot more storms these days, semi tropical. One minute the weather isn’t that bad, nek minit its persisting down. Perhaps Auckland weather has always been like that, but it does seem to be more dramatic these days.

NZ6

But no, I looked up into the sky and there was the new NZ6, Air New Zealand‘s supersonic passenger aircraft, breaking the sound barrier with its new green low impact mini sonic booms. Not only is the noise reduced, which is just as well given that  I live under the flight path from Auckland to LAX, but it meant that these super fast planes were approved for the long haul flight.

I remember back in the day when that was a 12 hour flight and was an absolute major. You would lose pretty much a full day each way and arrive jetlagged heading for business trips to the USA. Now its a meal and a quick movie, it just about takes longer to get to and from the airport, through immigration and security than it does to get to Los Angeles.

I’d love to have another ride on that old Triumph again though, backfires and all. 

Sep 23 2012

Landline Caller ID With Names

Isn’t it funny how things that you take for granted services that you use on a regular basis. Remember when your land-line phone used to tell you the number that was calling you, unless they blocked it. The problem with me was that, having had mobiles for years with Caller ID, derived from my contacts list in my Smartphone, I was (and still am) useless when it came to recognising numbers. Just clicked that I called it a land-line, but of course it isn’t a POTS phone any more, its VOIP now, but it doesn’t make any difference to the store.

My mobile contact list came from the exchange server and was combined with my mobile contact list, and as I preached in my book Unleashing the Road Warrior, way back when, if I met you, your details ended up on my mobile one way or another. That way, as soon as I answered the phone I would be prepared for the conversation, whether it was friends, family or business, my mind was on track, rather than asking, Chris who? Sorry Chris, but like many Anglo Saxon names, I have 9 people called Chris in my contact list.

Recycling the old unused Phone Book

I digress. The service I wanted to mention was the way they finally linked the phone directory to all phones, which was so obvious that I wonder why they didn’t already offer that back in the early 2010’s when the White and Yellow Pages were on such a down-slide.

I would hate to go back to not knowing who was calling me any more. If it’s the accountant, a client or a friend, I know straight away who it is, whether it is for me or someone else, and from a business perspective, I can open up my CRM notes on that client as I answer the call, before they announce themselves.

I hope the new legislation comes through that requires call centres to identify their client when they are calling for fund raising too, so that I can decide whether to answer the call or not. Besides the fact that they always call when I am having dinner, I have selected my annual charities and find it hard to say no to some of them. There are certain ones I will still take and support, but I can’t support everyone.

Now the directory companies get a few dollars a month from most subscribers who opt into this service, they don’t have to print the directory books that we used to use as doorstops any more and provide a great current service. It definitely is one of those how did we ever cope without services, that could have been done years earlier if they had simply taken their mind of BAU (Business As Usual) and taken their minds of the problems of print and distribution. As a footnote, it looks like video calling is now starting to become more popular again as people know who is calling them (if they are not using Skype). The telco’s will probably increase their data revenues as a result of this move.

Sep 10 2012

My Grocer is Getting Social With Me

Back in the day, when I was a toddler, the grocer was like a family friend. When we went into the supermarket, the butcher would see us coming and set his slicer to thinnest mode and get ready to cut some veal for Wiener schnitzel, just as my mother liked it, he would chew the fat with her and give me a saveloy.

Grocer’s over time became more impersonal and started focusing more on customer acquisition with ads and inserts in newspapers and local rags. Then of course subscriptions to the NZ Herald died down to a trickle and they went to a wireless subscription model, which started with a free Kindle for a 2 year subscription and the local papers are down to 1 per week if you’re in a well populated area.

Impersonal probably isn’t fair because of course I now have a tablet magnet mounted on my fridge which the F&P fridge scanner talks to and that send the order direct to my local Countdown  supermarket for pick up (if I want to touch and feel the fruit or extra little things) or home delivery. The tablet is connected to the home network and lets us watch cooking lessons, checking if we need any of the ingredients to be added to the shopping list, as well as the usual things like streaming music, TV, Skype, internet etc.  just as the other tablets around the house do.

Anyway, I was talking about the switch from acquisition to retention, or back to basics, but using modern technology. I was getting frustrated with the construction at our local supermarket, but am now so impressed with the way they have embraced social media in and out of the store with their new studio. Well it looks like a recording studio, but basically it has no window, so that you can talk to the guys while they are running Facebook, Foursquare Check-In Deals and Twitter campaigns with big video projector displays on the wall showing discussions they are having within and outside of the store.

These people are getting to know real customers and having relationships with them, generating loyalty that reminds me of the way grocers used to do it back in the day.

I remember the story that a friend told me many years ago, of how she went to Lincoln North Pak N Save with twin girls who were really hard to manage. The owner John Street went to her, gave her his business card and said to call him personally and he would arrange for someone to entertain the twins while she was shopping.

I spoke to him subsequently, although he didn’t know that I knew them personally and he explained. A loyal customer like her who spends around $150 a week (I know it was a long time ago) is worth more then $23,000 over 3 years. Now if you think about what it costs to get a new customer, an investment in social media, taken from what they used to spend on daily newspaper advertising isn’t much is it?

Aug 21 2012

My Toilet Says I Don’t Drink Enough Water

I remember back in the days when I used to visit Tokyo regularly and the ToTo toilets at the Tokyo Hilton in Shinjuku had seat warmers and ‘showers’. It was cool novelty value although I never thought I’d have anything like that myself.

Today many of us live in Smart Homes where M2M communication between appliances is pretty normal. Hard to think back to the day when I thought I was really cool having Cat 1 cable with double jack points throughout my house.

Now we have the smart fridge sending a grocery list to our mobiles, the heat pump notifies us that the temperature in the lounge is only 13 and given that my car GPS telematics system has told the that I am heading in the direction of home, it prompts me to turn the home climate control on to a comfortable 21 degrees.

As to the new toilet, I have a wife who can tell me that I don’t drink enough water and I’m not sure I need the toilet analyzing my urine every time I take a pee. Of course if I had Crohn’s Disease, Diabetes or some other ailment, it might be handy, but otherwise a toilet that does poo analysis is really a bit of a stretch in the motion sensor department.

It started with the smart scales which monitored our weight as we were dieting and gave each of us a weekly graph of our weight and BMI on the iPad diet app, but I thought it was a bit OTT when the toilet started notifying us of our weight as well. Of course it did validate my theory that I weighed more prior to my morning constitutional than after.

I’m just not sure that I really need to be sitting in a business meeting, checking a notification coming through on my iPad telling me that my pregnancy test was negative. I don’t know where my daughters get their sense of humor from, but it seems they have hacked my toilet password.

Jul 28 2012

Surrounded by Screens From Bed to the Stage

I woke up Sunday morning (only just morning it was 11:30AM, the night after an awesome gig I played in town last night) to the melodic song of the Tui and chirrup of the Fantail I had sampled in my front yard on my iPhone last weekend, played through the bedroom surround speakers, all but invisibly mounted in the ceiling corners of my bedroom walls.

I tapped on the bedside touchscreen, programming a flat white coffee to be ready in 20 minutes after I had my shower and selected the Billboard Country Top 100 to start playing in the bathroom, hoping there might be some new songs heading into the Top 10, like ‘If You’re Listening’, which I finally sold to Kelly Clarkson for her latest album. I swiped 23 degrees for the bathroom climate control and headed in for a shave. Hey, its winter and I like to be warm alright?

I could smell the aroma of the fair trade beans from my coffee as I walked into the dining room and flipped on my HoloDesk to check for news and see what my friends were up to this morning, thinking back to what an amazing night I’d had. I loved the HoloDesk, designed by my friend Kevin Andreassand of ICE AV in Auckland, which basically gave me all the benefits of an HD touch screen, but was projected in front of me as a hologram so that it wasn’t in the way of the dining table furniture. It was controlled by voice and hand gestures and one of Dropbox my favourite new tools ( think big boys toys).

As the first sips of coffee soothed my vocal chords which I had hammered last night with some raucous blues, I went to the fridge touchscreen and got it to sync with the pantry, placing an automatic grocery order with Countdown to be delivered that afternoon between 3 and 5. I was staying in today.

I’d planned last night’s gig for over a month and on the way in to the club last night I had quickly car Skyped my friends (the heads up display switched off the video when I put the car in gear) Andres Roots (in London recording a new album) and Charly Nice ( at his home studio in virtual Düsseldorf) who were going to be playing with me remotely, one of the benefits of the UFB project that finally brought high-speed internet into NZ. They were going to be joining me for the finally at about 12:30AM NZ time, gentlemanly hours for musos who played late and got up late.

I’d sent them links to the songs I had on the proposed set list and we had agreed on enough tracks so that we could build on the mood of the audience on the night and indulge ourselves as well, after all we’re musos. They came back with suggestions and some arrangement ideas and I synced them with my band tablets and put them up on Dropbox for the rest of the band to check out.

When I got to the club, I got out the music stand tablets, checked that the WiFi network was working and synced a copy to the sound engineer so that he could see the set lists and watch the music and lyrics we selected as we went through the night, including when the international guests would be joining us. I got my guitars out, caught up with the rest of the band, we ran sound checks and then did a sound check with Andres and Charly who were going to appear life-size on plasma screens with us.

I connected my guitars to the tablet on the stand in front of me with WiFi and using more of Andreassand’s IceAV technology, selected the virtual amps and effects I wanted, dragging them together with finger motions and syncing them to the pedal box at my feet.

Relaxing before the gig, we sent music videos to each other to check out, reminiscent of back in the day when people used to text each other in the same room, used our iPhones to order some light food and drinks from the bar and shot the breeze as you do.

I guess this has become a bit of a blog about the gig, rather than the screens, but I guess we take these things for granted today. Anyway this is my blog and I’ll tell it how it is:) So the highlight of the night for me was the last track.

I got out my Gibson Firebird XV (Looks very similar to the one to the left which I captured at the Memphis factory back in 2012) tapped on the touch screen at the top of the body telling it I wanted Open A tuning and selected a phat Marshall tube amp model, got out my original Tex Morton slide that came with my Tex Morton original guitar and had an amazing slide jam with Andres in London, with Charly playing some mean honking sax from his home in Düsseldorf. That Little Red Rooster crowed like all of its Christmas’ had come at once. 

The UFB meant that there was no lag in the music even though we were playing with guys who were on the other side of the world, it was amazing. As far as the audience were concerned they wouldn’t have known that we weren’t all in the same room and of course Andres and Charly were able to see and hear everything as of they were right there on the stage with us as it was all mic’d and video cameras were beaming it all back to them.

I was buzzing as I drove home, tapped the car entertainment system to play back the last set of the gig, through the in-car 7 speaker surround system, which had been recorded and instantly uploaded to my Spotify station, then tapped into my home controller to put the electric blanket and climate control on for when I got home at around 3AM, tired and satisfied. It had been a great night.

May 22 2012

Westfield Kills Two Birds with One Stone with EV Charging at Malls

Westfield has stemmed the tide of decreasing shoppers in malls this winter by providing dozens of Electric Vehicle charging stations at shopping malls around New Zealand and Australia. Over the last couple of years many people have been buying electric vehicles, but have found that the range of up to 160km, which wasn’t too bad during summer, reduced dramatically with the use of air conditioning and window heating to warm the car in winter.

This reduced range combined with a continuing decrease in the frequency of people going to shopping malls provided the impetus for Westfield to come up with a new loyalty program for shoppers combined with a mobile application.

Effectively by using their mobile loyalty app, shoppers are rewarded with credits they can use of various purchases, one of which can be redeemed by parking at one of the EV charging stations at the mall. This not only encourages people to visit the mall, but also to stay longer, whilst electric car owners make sure that their car is fully charged before they leave the mall. The application lets loyalty shoppers know when there is a car park available and guides them to it. It also alerts them when the car is fully charged.

A spokesperson for Westfield New Zealand said that already in the last 2 months they had seen significant use of the charging stations and many retailers, particularly fashion and the food halls and cafes have seen a regrowth in trade.

Event Cinemas have also announced that they are going to trial a number of EV chargers in selected movie theatres in Australia in conjunction with their CINE BUZZ loyalty program. Each time a CINE BUZZ member has purchased 5 movie tickets they will be entitled to a full car charge for free.

May 19 2012

New Zealand Rooftops to power the country

Based on research developed by scientists at USC, electricity is being produced on home and business roofs all over the country, feeding the now popular electric cars with sustainable electricity and selling surplus energy back into the grid for all to share.

Liquid Energy

It took a couple of elections and a lot of pressure from the Green Party, but finally the feed in tariffs that we have been asking for over recent years have been implemented.

The tipping point was the ability to create liquid solar cells as nanocrystals that can be ‘printed’ onto other materials. Roof material manufacturers were able to design roofing sheets and tiles which look normal, but are in fact covered with solar cells.

Farmers have welcomed this technology and have covered farm buildings with solar cells reducing the problems caused by power outages in rural areas and reducing their overheads.

In addition to now having a sustainable power infrastructure for New Zealand, this initiative has generated a whole wave of new jobs in roofing materials design and manufacturing, installation, smart metering design and much more.

New Zealand has become a world leader in this technology and has once again been able to proudly call itself a clean green country.

Electric vehicles have become not only more viable with ease of access to electricity, but they are now truly green because the power generated to run them is no longer produced by sources requiring the use of fossil fuels.

Apr 27 2012

Facetiming home on the new Air New Zealand 787

Its a wonder that I flew with Air New Zealand again, I said several times in the past that I wouldn’t, given that their service just didn’t meet my expectations on many flights. I stopped flying with them other than for domestic flights a few years ago after the flight I blogged about to Rarotonga. Then was a gap of a couple of years before that after they left me sitting at San Francisco Airport for about 10 hours stuck with all my luggage when I flew in from Munich because Air NZ didn’t interconnect luggage with Lufthansa, which is a whole different story about a trip back in time. I had loads of plans to do sightseeing there, but all I saw was the inside of the airport for a day. I felt a bit like Tom Hanks in that old movie The Terminal. So other airlines got my business for a few years.

I remember when I first flew on an Air New Zealand flight that had the ability to use mobile data during domestic flights. I was quite excited to be on one of the first flights, but horrified when I saw the cost. From memory it was something  like $10 for 10MB.

Anyway, enough whinging I wanted to tell you about something cool on their new 787. When I got on the plane the other day, instead of having them tell me that I needed to turn my mobile off in case my phone told their fly-by-wire system to do a sudden bank, I was invited to connect my iPhone to create a local WiFi network with my in flight entertainment system. Nek minute I’m talking to my daughter using Facetime and then Skyping the hotel to tell them that my flight had been delayed and not to give my room to anyone else.

There was also an iPhone dock on the fold out table so that I could charge my mobile at the same time. Sorry Android lovers but the fact that Apple still has a uniform plug means that it continues to take pride of place in planes, cars and consumer electronics. Apple did release some new products with the new micro dock connector, but there was a huge resounding protest from people who couldn’t plug their new iPhones and iPods into their cars and home theatres, that it was dropped again.

There are rumours on Mashable, TechCrunch etc saying that next season’s iOS devices won’t have docks at all and will be totally wireless, including coming with Powermat chargers. This does make a lot of sense given that some car manufacturers have already supported this technology.Watch this space.

Apr 23 2012

The first private enterprise moon landers have arrived on the moon!

These have been some of the most exciting times in space exploration. Since the US Government mothballed the shuttle program and the Discovery was sent to its final home at the Smithsonian, the space program has accelerated at an amazing pace.

Just when you thought it was over, Nek Minute it goes crazy, with over 30 entries into the Google Lunar X Prize, the first 3 landing craft have actually landed safely on the moon’s surface. The $30 million prize reminds me of something out of Jules Verne’s 80 Days around the World. Even more so the great race to find new exciting lands and conquer the world in the days of Christopher Colombus.

Santa Maria

The $30 million itself won’t go far and its more about credibility and the potential mineral and metal mining of asteroids and whatever else they find is much more exciting.

It was little surprise to see the team from Moon Express amongst the first to arrive, as they were able to hire the entire Mars Rover team when their NASA funding was cut.

So what comes next? I guess there will be some interesting debates over mining rights and we will start to see little settlements develop over the next decade as entrepid explorers and wealthy entrepreneurs look for metals, minerals and potentially water that could help them sustain prolonged or indefinate stays on the moon.

Meanwhile Virgin Galactic hasn’t wasted any time and have contracts with a numberr of the entrants to help them get building materials to the moon for the first commercial hotel on the planet. Virgin Spaceship Four has now made dozens of tourist flights out of the atmosphere and is showing wealthy and healthy citizens the first views of their investments into the space hospitality and tourism industry. When it comes to tickets, money seems to be no object for the wealthy who are all desperate to be able to say they were amongst the first. What a shame my grandfather isn’t still around. He won a raffle many years ago giving him a ticket on KLM‘s first commercial flight (which he achieved) and the first commercial passenger carrying space flight, but no one knows what happened to the ticket.

Santa Maria
Apr 22 2012

Remember Borders Book Stores?

Who’s next?

I was so excited when Borders arrived in New Zealand. I used to love going to the Borders stores on trips to the USA. There were frequently book signings, bands and recording artists, like the BB King autobiography launch in Chicago. You could read books in the cafe and no one would look at you as if to say don’t smudge that page, cause you’re buying it. People in the different departments knew about their topics and loved books and sharing their knowledge.

I walked past the site of the old Westfield Albany Borders store site yesterday, it had changed to Whitcoulls brand in 2012. A year later they were back in a much smaller site, obviously the sales volume didn’t cover the cost of such a big site. They had tried to embrace eBooks for a while, but selling expensive readers and not making it simple for your average reader to get books for them just further demolished their traditional business.

Meanwhile some of the smaller owner operator stores followed the example of retailers such as Pages & Pages in Australia, by installing eBook Kiosks in store back at the end of 2011.

In recent years eBook kiosks have arrived all over the place. They are in convenience stores, magazine stores, libraries, airports and train stations. They all come with their own WiFi network and are very user friendly.

Many combine loyalty and the profiling that we continue to enjoy from Amazon, giving us recommendations on what we may enjoy reading and the instructions are simple enough for most people to step through.

If you’re heading for a flight or will have time to read the book within 21 days you don’t even have to buy them any more. International libraries mean that pretty much any book you could want to read can be available to you on demand.

Personally a favorite feature for me is the international eBook gift registry system. I remember a couple of years ago when I was having a browse at the kiosk at Schiphol Airport on the way back from a location based marketing conference in Amsterdam and saw that my wife had prepaid for copy of the second in the new Stephen King Joyland series for me to read on the flight home. Just as well she doesn’t read King books though or I might never get her into an amusement park again!

The other thing I love about these kiosks is we now get books released all over the world at the same time, which was one of the reasons I used to buy my books from Amazon, I didn’t want to wait 2-3 months after the official US launch of King books before the publishers launched the new best seller here in New Zealand to coincide with Fathers’ Day.

Anyway, RIP Borders, you left too soon. It’s a shame you stopped innovating. You didn’t need to go under, you just needed to be smarter than the rest which you used to be. It’s funny how industries work so hard to create a self fulfilling prophesy that they can blame when things go wrong.

The cool thing is that people haven’t stopped reading. If anything they are reading more than ever and smart writers and publishers are doing very well:)