First Coffee

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the May 1960 recording of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo at the Manhattan Center in New York City, Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic:

Forrester Research is saying that almost half of marketers plan to decrease spending in traditional advertising channels like magazines, direct mail, and newspapers to fund an increase in online ad spending in 2005.

First Coffee© finds predictions about 2005 made halfway through 2005 not quite as bracing as those made in, oh, 2002.

Total US online advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 billion in 2005, a 23 percent increase over 2004, according to the crystal balls at Forrester, which also think online marketing and advertising will represent 8 percent of total advertising spending in 2010, rivaling ad spending on cable/satellite TV and radio.

Forrester also thinks that search engine marketing will reach $11.6 billion by 2010 and that display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11 percent over the next five years to $8 billion by 2010. Now that’s more like it, sheer wild guesses are so much fun. Not $11.5, or $11.7, but $11.6 billion, mind you.

Siixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS, and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.

No mention of when admen will be knocking First Coffee©’s virtual door down.
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Avaya CEO Don Peterson says worries over viruses and network downtime are keeping CIOs from embracing IP networks.

According to Peterson, call centers in particular have fielded security as a reason to avoid switching to an IP network: “They don’t want two devices with virus exposure on their desk."

Peterson says security’s a big concern with IP telephony. “Many of our customers say it’s why they don’t deploy IP influence,” he said, adding that security “is why we have chosen to deliver our IP telephony solution on Linux rather than on Windows."

Still analyst house The Radcati Group predicts that 44 per cent of corporate telephone lines will be using VoIP by 2008. Ever notice that these companies in the business of predictions rarely publish their accuracy rates?
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The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, whose backers include Nokia, Motorola and Intel has started working with wireless developers to make Bluetooth and ultrawideband compatible.

Wireless developers are planning how to work together to meld Bluetooth with UWB to do cool things like beam video and other large content short distances between TVs, home entertainment systems and computers.

The discussions with the WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum are described as “preliminary,” which means nothing’s actually happening yet.

Of course Bluetooth might be passé already – the best transmission speed it can offer is up to 3 megabits per second, while UWB allows speeds of 100 mbps and higher. Protecting the install base is obviously a factor, as is enabling short-range wireless compatibility between today’s Bluetooth-enabled devices and machines with UWB, which are not expected to hit the market until at least next year.

Still, First Coffee© doesn’t see Bluetooth lasting too long. It won’t happen tomorrow, it’s still too inexpensive and useful to wither away, but some smart cookie’ll figure out how to combine its low power consumption with UWB’s speed at a reasonable price, and bye-bye Bluetooth.
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Another report from another company making another prediction about VoIP adoption rates. This time the company’s In-Stat, the report is Carrier NGN Migration Strategies Set VoIP Timing which suggests that “the international telecommunications industry is in the early stages of a migration to Voice over Internet Protocol,” Shucks, yew doan say.

It also tells us that “The big question is when will a mass migration to VoIP occur?” Their “answer” is that 2005-2009 is the consumer and small business VoIP ramp-up period, and “migration to VoIP will peak in the 2010-2014 time frame.”

Evidently you have to pay three thousand bucks First Coffee© doesn’t have to learn what “peak” means and to see how they arrive at such a roomy, vague, comfortable “time frame” with enough wiggle room for six drunk elephants.

“This time frame is largely dependent on carriers’ strategies for migration to the Next-Generation Network,” the summary warns, noting that “each carrier will develop it’s [sic] own unique NGN migration strategy.”

In other words everyone’s “peak” might be sooner or later, as they’re all developing their own migration strategy, so what we mean by the migration to VoIP peaking in 2010 to 2014, well, that’s really more of a loose general idea, you understand. Best guess. Batteries not included. Don’t hold us to it or anything.

Honestly, First Coffee© would love to get in on this predictions rack- business. Compile publicly-available information on a topic, get info from vendors grateful for the free publicity, spend a few minutes with a pocket calculator extrapolating “current rates” out to whatever year is close enough to be relevant but far enough away so everyone will have forgotten it by then, lard it with all kinds of techie stats, slap a $2,995.95 price tag on and track sales from a beach on Maui.
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So Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will sue Internet telephone provider Vonage, accusing it of misrepresenting its ability to connect callers to local 911 emergency dispatchers.

Earlier in the week Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox notified Vonage that it will take legal action against them for allegedly misleading consumers about Vonage’s emergency 911 services.

Basically both cases boil down to Vonage being accused of implying to customers that the 911 service they offer rings the same phone regular 911 does, and that users can expect the same emergency response, but that actually Vonage cannot provide that connection.

Michigan’s claiming that emergency calls made through Vonage’s service are often routed through call centers that may not be answered outside of regular business hours. Connecticut’s saying Vonage misrepresents its 911 dialing feature by failing to properly disclose that such emergency calls may take longer, may not be routed to a live operator and are at greater risk of encountering a busy signal – Blumenthal says Vonage actually advises customers, in small print, to maintain other means of calling 911.

First Coffee© hasn’t seen Vonage’s marketing materials, but if you have attorney generals – other than Texans or Elliot Spitzer, who sues the weatherman for rainy days – on your case there’s probably fire underneath all that smoke. As Blumenthal says, and First Coffee© agrees, “inadequate disclosure about 911 capabilities is not only bad business, it’s life-threatening.” Clean up your act, Vonage, before you give the whole industry a bad name and incur a whole lot of regulatory legislation nobody needs.
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Scott Matthew’s pizza delivery service, Super Fast Pizza in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin is the first in the nation to hit upon the idea of baking the pizza in the van on the way to the delivery. According to reports, the cheese is still bubbling when they reach people’s doors in about 15 minutes.

Super Fast Pizza uses Mercedes-Benz Sprinters, high-roofed vehicles used as ambulances in Europe that cost about $32,000. For another $65,000 they’re outfitted with coolers, five small pizza ovens and touch-screen monitors connected to an Internet-based ordering system staffed by a call center in Nebraska.

The pizza is a cross between a supermarket-bought frozen pizza, a delivery from a chain like Domino’s and eating at a pizzeria where the pie comes straight from the oven.