April 2007 Archives

Here’s an update on the VirginiaTech shootings: an AP report published just after 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time said that it took the university two hours to compose and send out an e-mail to students warning them about the first shooting.

 

According to the article, that’s also the span of time between the first shooting and the second one; by the time students got the e-mail (at 9:26 a.m.), the gunman had moved to a second building and begun his rampage again. The article also quoted a student saying that there were no public address system warnings as he walked to class at 9:00 a.m. two buildings away from the location of the first shootings.

 

From my perspective, it certainly does seem as if the university was ill-prepared to respond quickly to the emergency by getting information where it needed to be, regardless of the channel used.

 

This both does and does not surprise me. On the one hand, you’d think that with all the modern technology that’s available today, it would be easy to get the word out. On the other hand, we’re talking about a campus that rarely experiences any events even remotely out of the ordinary, so it’s probably reasonable for it to have only minimal systems in place for responding to emergencies.

 

For those watching from afar (I refer here to video clips I watched earlier on CNN.com), the dearth of warnings seemed to create a rather chaotic environment on campus, where in some areas there were people running around panicked and in others students strolled from one place to another without any apparent concern about armed police officers running about. At least one student even managed to capture part of the action related to the second shooting on his cell phone camera (I blogged about this earlier).

 

It will be interesting to watch as more eye-witness photos and video footage surfaces. Since most people, and especially young people, carry cell phones equipped with various types of cameras, I’m willing to bet that a fair number of students recorded what they saw.

A student at VirginiaTech this morning showed the kind of go-getter courage that would make him a good journalist, and demonstrated how modern technology is changing the way our society observes and responds to extraordinary events.

 

The student, Jamal Albarghouti (a civil engineering major, according to VirginiaTech’s directory), turned his cell phone on and started recording with its video camera, after realizing that something unusual was happening on campus. In an interview available on CNN.com, Albarghouti said that at first he thought there was another bomb threat, but when he saw the officer pull out their guns and heard shots, he knew there was a bigger story developing.

 

In Albarghouti’s video clip, several armed police officers are seen approaching Norris Hall on the Blacksburg campus, and shots are heard in the background.

 

Think about this for a moment. A few years ago there was no way this type of video footage would ever have been shot because people didn’t just casually carry around video cameras. Nowadays, many people do—as a built-in component of their cell phones.

 

The fact that Albarghouti was able to capture part of the story as it unfolded is pretty incredible. The functions of today’s cell phones add a new and transformative element to our society by letting us see events both ordinary and extraordinary--as viewed not by news reporters, but by people just like us.

ABI Research recently published its latest report on the contactless technology industry, including vendor matrixes showing which companies lead the pack. For those not familiar, contactless technology (also sometimes referred to as “near field communications”) refers to systems that use short-range wireless signal to transmit information from a small tag or transmitter to a receiver. Two examples are E-Z Pass for paying highway tolls, and key-fobs that provide access to corporate buildings.

 

Two companies that I have to admit I’d never heard of before topped ABI’s matrix of leading contactless reader and contactless inlay vendors: ViVOtech and Gemalto, respectively.

 

ViVOtech is a company that specializes in technology for next-generation, electronic payment systems. This includes things like radio frequency-enabled credit cards and infrared cell phones. On its Web site, the company indicates that a major barrier to the adoption of contactless payment systems is the cost of replacing or upgrading magnetic stripe terminals. With this in mind, ViVOtech has developed solutions that make such upgrades fast, safe, and affordable.

 

“Customers simply wave their contactless cards or point their cell phones or PDAs to make a payment transaction,” the company explains on its Web site. “Using ViVOtech's enabling plug and play technology, financial institutions, wireless operators and retailers, can increase revenues significantly.”

 

ViVOtech’s solutions fall into four main product lines:

 

Gemalto is a company that manufactures end-to-end digital security solutions. This includes everything from the development of software apps through design and production of devices like smart cards and tokens. The company’s products are used in a variety of industries including telecom, financial services, e-government, identity management, multimedia content, digital rights management, IT security and mass transit.

 

On the Smart Readers & Tokens section of its Web site, Gemalto explains that it makes secure card interfaces, including readers, chipsets, contactless interfaces, USB tokens, and dongles. During 2006, its installed base of readers and card interfaces reached 30 million units.

 

So there you have it—two relatively unknown companies that top the list of vendors providing a type of wireless technology that we may someday take for granted.

Many companies looking to make a buck (or a few million bucks) on the Web in recent years have gone into the mobile content business—selling things like ringtones and wallpaper for cell phones. This is a potentially very lucrative market, and one that also has potential for musicians and other artists looking for a way to distribute their creations while making some money. However, setting up a functional online store that’s compelling enough for visitors to return again and again can be a challenge.

 

This week I received a phone call from a representative at Phone Sherpa, a Seattle-based company (founded in 2005) that describes itself as “the world's leading ringtone maker and ringtone store service.” The rep wanted me to know about a new Phone Sherpa’s new Mobile Store solution, which provides tools to market and promote music and art as ringtones or wallpaper for mobile phones.

 

Here’s how Phone Sherpa described the new solution in an April 3 press release: “The artist creates a store, uploads their content and embeds the Flash store component on their Web site. These easy steps take as little as fifteen minutes to complete. The Mobile Store can be customized to match the artist’s site layout and colors.”

 

Mobile Store is offered as a partner package. Artists have a choice of three packages, depending on how much the want to sell. The basic package, which is free, provides hosting for up to four files, with the artist earning 20 percent net sale payout on each item sold (content priced at four levels: $0.99, $1.99, $4.99, $9.99). The Plus package, $9.99 per month, hosts up to 25 files; artists earn 50 percent net sale payout on each item sold. Custom packages are also available.

 

Partners who sign up for Mobile Store accounts get monthly “payouts” based on how much content they sell; this money is deposited into a PayPal account. To calculate payout, Phone Sherpa considers a variety of factors, including cost to deliver goods (e.g. fees for credit card transactions) and refunds for purchases returned. The appropriate percentage, based on account type, is then used to calculate net payout.

 

In the Phone Sherpa Mobile Store FAQ, the company provides an example of how much a partner with an account giving 30 percent payout rate on net sales might make in a month, as follows: nine ringtones are sold at $1.99 each, with five credit cards sales and four PSMS sales; after fees are deducted, the partner nets $3.34. This amount is based on a 20 percent fee for each credit card transaction, and a 60 percent fee for processing/delivery of each item billed via cell phone using PSMS.

 

In its announcement about Mobile Store, Phone Sherpa cited stats from music industry trade group IFPI that mobile music now accounts for about 40 percent of record company digital revenues. Jupiter Research figures, Phone Sherpa said, indicate that ringtone sales alone generate nearly $4 billion each year, and that number is expected to reach $14 billion by 2011. Obviously, this is a huge industry, but not all artists have access to revenues from mobile sales, Phone Sherpa CEO Grady Leno pointed out in the press release.

 

“Artists not signed by a major label typically have no access to the mobile marketplace,” Leno said. “Phone Sherpa opens the mobile industry to everyone by providing artists with complete control over promotion, pricing, and distribution of their content into the mobile channel.”

 

David Meinert, manager of the rock band The President of the United State of America, emphasized the importance of the mobile content industry for today’s artists.

 

“Ringtones and wallpapers are a critical component of any music marketing plan,” Meinert said in a statement. “There is no more effective way to reach the highly influential 16 to 29-year-old demographic.”

 

The Phone Sherpa rep who contacted me sent some sample links showing how different artists have used the company’s solution to create their own online mobile content stores. These examples include:

The three examples above are mostly focused on ringtones, but of course Phone Sherpa Mobile Store also lets artists sell their visual works as cell phone wallpaper.

 

Mobile Store seems like a timely offering; if you are an artist using the service, let me know how it's working out for you.