Internet

It’s Already There!

This entry was posted in Business US Capitalism Economics Information Internet Technology on by

I suspect that SK Bubba doesn’t really mean this post title: To Much Technology. Here’s the post:

I was just wondering where the heck a package was that was supposed to be delivered today. I called the company and got a tracking number and looked it up on the Internet. The carrier said it had been delivered to my door. I looked on the porch and sure enough, there it was. How pathetic is that?
I had a similar experience this morning. Vendor sends email that says the package they sent yesterday has been delivered. A couple minutes later the shipping clerk is carrying the package through my door.
What a wonderful example of a productivity improvement brought on by enough technology.
Not that many years ago when I purchased (business or personal) or shipped something (business) there was no such thing as a tracking number. Some of you will remember the numerous phone calls that would go back and forth between folks that went something like:
Buyer: My #$%$ package isn’t here yet!
Seller: But we shipped it yesterday….
Repeated many times.
Today tracking numbers are common. Business use is nearly universal and most online retailers include a tracking number in an email as part of their service process. And today’s conversation is most often with a computer database that tells one exactly where the package is…right now. It’s easier, less confrontational and I even have a sense that deliveries are on time more often as well.
There is a lot of people time that had been involved with tracking packages that has now been outsourced to technology and not to India or China.
Seems a good thing to me. And likely to get even better as the related technology becomes more pervasive.

Infrastructure Mapping

This entry was posted in Economics Energy Internet Science on by

The gallery at Geoge Mason University’s Infrastructure Mapping Project has some great visualizations of various parts of North American critical infrastructures, e.g., long haul fiber, the electic power grid, and gaspipelines:

The Infrastructure Mapping Project’s goal is to provide meaningful analysis of critical infrastructure and its interdependencies with vital sectors of the US and global economy. In this pursuit we map a wide variety of networks and phenomena ranging from the Internet the power grid and spam.

Their related research papers are listed here.

Baseball Blogging

This entry was posted in Economics Internet Marketing Technology on by

Every baseball team owner in the country should jump on the idea of adding WiFi access to their stadiums like the Giants:

SBC asked what technology initiatives we were looking at, and a natural confluence was the Wi-Fi. It was a no-brainer, because the ROI issue went out the window — our major sponsor wanted to install this for us.

Yea, their sponsor paid for it but it seems like this would provide great marketing opportunities and reinvigorate the weekday afternoon game.
If you are a wired worker who spends most of your time writing, researching and exchanging email just maybe a connected afternoon at the ballpark will bring you back to the game. I’d certainly be more likely to go to more games though I’d have to give up the 2-3 magazines I usually read in the course of a baseball game (the 1/year I currently go to).
This probably won’t catch on at football games as there are so few of them at a particular venue though there are plenty of breaks in the action. The idea probably wouldn’t work that well for soccer or basketball where the action is fairly constant. Well, except for the televised basketball games (especially the NCAAs) that are ruined by the repeated long commercial time outs.
Via Ernie the Attorney.

Misleading Headlines Trolling for Readers

This entry was posted in Economics Internet Journalism Marketing Spam on by

I am often annoyed by the stretched attemps of journalists and their editors (and your current host) to tempt readers with stupid puns, alliterations and the like. For some reason, yet to be explored, this does not bother me so much when bloggers are the perps.
I am doubly annoyed when they lie at the same time. Today C/net published an article with this headline:

‘Phishing’ scams luring more users

I have a few samples of Phishing scam emails locked away in a folder and, yes, the headline lured me to the article to see if there was new info. Especially the bit about the apparent growing success of these scams.
But it turns out they have no clue. Here is the meat:

…said Monday that in September 2003 the company encountered just 279 phishing e-mails. In January 2004, this figure reached 337,050 and then dropped back to 215,643 by March. The company said it is impossible to estimate exactly how many people have been fooled by the phishers.

You read it right. The rate is down and there is nothing to substantiate the headline’s allegation that these scams “‘are luring more users.” Argggghhhh….
All this aside you might want to make antiphishing.org a regular stop for the latest scam updates.