Tag: Motorola

Marconi and Marcom

In the late 80’s, PacTel Cellular boasted seamless connection from San Francisco to San Diego. That is, if you had a battery pack to power the wireless devices (MicroTac? Motorola).

Remember this was pre-Twitter days.

Now it’s 12/12/12 and the Mayan’s calendar is soon running out.

Back when Marconi was experimenting with sending signals across the Atlantic, skeptics had a field day (light and signals traverse in a straight line, and thanks to Columbus, we know the Earth is round. Good luck Marconi!).

Those guys obviously did not play pool (angling and bouncing).

Putting all these elements together. We got Marcom.

The art of positioning your company, your brand and image for the longer term.

Many-step flow. Diffusion of innovation. Crowd-source and users’ Likes.

It takes time for people to adopt.  When MCI tried to attach a piece of equipment to the ATT network, it got stalled and deterred.  Jack Goeken did not give up.

He was trying to help truck-to-truck short-way communicate from St Louis to Chicago.  And in Marconi’s case,   ships-to-shores communication. Both faced hard resistance (today’s equivalence of “Who killed the EV?”).

That was before peering, inter-operability and other engineering agreements.

Currently, we still have to “unlock” an I-phone.  People were put in “voicemail jail” etc… Technology and man’s freedom.

IP issues and the trajectory of human achievement and advancement.

Think back to the age of gramaphones. And fast forward to the i-pod Shuffle.

Then you can see the full sweep of tech (just in sound recording and reproduction).

Marconi sent signals across the pond. Bell asked “Mr Watson, come here“.

Now we got Youtube and “Concert for Sandy Relief“.

Put together a Marcom plan for yourself, your family and your company.

It’s our modern-day equivalend of yesterday’s black/white photo albums. Our heritage in the making.

Enjoy your Christmas wireless experience. Don’t forget those trailblazers. It’s heart-throbbing to finance those expeditions, today’s equivalence of Tesla and Virgin’s space tourism.

But then, without the likes, we would still be listening to each other from those gramaphones.

Outside the bubble

When you are inside, you are hard-presed and unable to think.

But when you are out of the bubble, it’s illuminating.

You are able to look back, to gain perspectives.

Bubble by definition is that which encompasses those who subscribe to its rules (deposit here, withdraw there).

We got the Tulip mania in Holland, Ponzi scheme in Florida, dot.con and most recently, housing.

In fact, more are in the making (student loan, green tech etc…).

High stakes and high rewards.

But then, who would want to jump in to that which has already been proven 100%.

There is always “acceptable loss” “sot and hard trend”.

But what is acceptable to one is not acceptable to the other.

So we could never really be outside of a bubble.

We are inter-linked with others: friends, families, and co-workers.

They will be the ones who whisper “it’s just between you and me”.

Few  were able to foresee this past housing crisis.

Now we all are on this side of it, with some residues and long tail effects.

What lessons learned? Take-aways?

Are we wiser while poorer?

A friend’s Dad has just passed away.

At my last visit, his words were “let me sleep a little bit”.

The drug had taken its effect.

When we are in a bubble, perhaps we “sleep a little bit”.

Why think?

Social proof ( the majority are always right).

So we let down our guards, exercise not our survival instincts.

We forgot to fight, the way gladiators used to each day.

Our sense of “flight or fight” has been put to sleep.

After all, it’s the bank, the rating agencies, the press.

All well-regarded institutions, with huge marble lobbies and high ceilings.

I heard of more lay-offs (Motorola under Google, Newsweek gone under for the second time etc..).

Not a  good sign!

To shake all off, takes some time.

Just like healing and grief process, maybe all we need is time.

The bubble crushed dreams. Just like Fukushima and earthquake.

We just don’t see it in that “disastrous” light, but its tolls are the same, if not deeper.

When we recover from a bubble, we lost that which made us successful in the first place: self-confidence.

To restore that takes baby steps.

One small win at a time.

But those baby steps are outside the bubble, not huge strides we made inside.

What an irony. Should have been the other way around. In hindsight!

But with each baby step, the strength will come back, for the long journey ahead.

Watch out for another bubble on the horizon. No risks no rewards.

two-step back

A laid-off Coca Cola delivery man gave a bank teller a note, demanding one dollar so he could go to jail and get healthcare.

A Florida retiree robbed a bank to pay his mortgage.

New York sex workers told investigative reporters they went on-call to pay back college tuition.

Something is not right with our time: those who are entitled don’t get entitlement, and those who aren’t do. Government grew in size, while big businesses shrunk or off-shorred. One could wait for ever in voice-mail jail hearing occasional “someone will be right with you” (yesterday’s prospect is today’s customer, hence, a lower priority).

What happened to Moore’s law (speed of processing double every 18 months)?

We can’t see the forest for the tree because we did not step back far enough.

Years of instant noodle, fast food drive-in, personalized search and pizza on delivery have lulled our sense and slow down our reaction.

Wind came from the Southwest, but we keep looking into our GPS (which might fail us).

First, the elephant (IBM) can’t walk. Then, it’s voted most innovative company, on the same Dean list with Apple, which had been rejected by investors just a decade ago.

Nokia and Motorola fell behind while RIM couldn’t keept its field advantage.  Google, who got tired of Search and Social, also got into phone, glasses and unmanned vehicles

We now need the Audacity of Austerity, not of Hope.

And please, don’t blame technology for London burning .

(It’s like blaming the Rodney King riot in LA on black and white video footage ).

This blog is my first from a children’s library. I am surrounded by school children playing games. Will they grow up learning how to connect the dots in this vast data-driven world?

Will they be able to step back to see the bubbles coming their ways?

Or many will fall through the cracks, with  few options such as bank robbery and escort service.

These are rhetorical questions which seek solutions to inflationary measures not inspirational messages. We all can see for ourselves, which is the tree, and which is a forest. We have stepped back at least two-steps in the last four years. Now it’s decision makers’ turn to see the forest for themselves.

Buddha was purported to do just that, with his first walk among the commoners. It’s called reality check. It’s called enlightenment.

Technology doesn’t sleep, but we do.

I had my share of empty TV studio, that is, between broadcasts (6PM and 10PM). Now, there is no recoup time. We have evolved to Office 365, with servers resided in the “cloud” instead of the (telco) closets. Mobile working has evolved from CB radio, to Motorola brick phones, from Skypage to Skype chat.

Cryptography moved from a code book to complex self-improved algorithm (Amazon shopping experience : buy this + this = this.)

Pop-up ads even have a “K” for keep (time-shifting ads), while some companies are now offering a service to measure your Twitter‘s scores (influencer’s graph).

McLuhan was on the mark about “the medium is the message.”

Dot.com domain was just a start.

ICANN is opening up more domains.

And within a few years, we will be inundated with dot.this, dot.that, same way we now have with mobile phone area codes (which used to have a zero and a one in the middle of the three-digits).

As with cable TV channels where pundits feel the need to fill the emptiness with noise, new technologies such as Twitter and Facebook (and Google Plus)  will challenge us to come up with “sound bites”. Our attention span has evolved from attending for hours on end under preacher’s tents to today’s tweets.

Our brain has learned to process messages and images much quicker.

Bum, here is a Bieber’s (Be Bop a lula), Bang, there’s a GaGa (innocent like a Chic out of her egg-shell).

Good thing that we can upload and talk back. But not for long, just 140 characters.

You can tweet again, but it won’t be a part II of an earlier tweet. No guarantee.

So we learn to tame new technologies, and cope with their sheer availability.

User-generated content. BTW, from Page One, a documentary on “a year at the New York Times”, journalists on Charlie Rose, commented that the paper was now in better shape than it had ever been.

So the proliferation of citizen-journalists doesn’t threaten or dethrone existing media. Not when it’s the NYT.

Meanwhile, I keep reading volumes of “likes” from one Facebook friend.

All of a sudden, I miss my solitude in a broadcast studio when show’s over.

Lights off. Let’s go home. We need some sleep. The audience already turned off their sets.

In Vietnam, they would put back the Indian poster for white balance.

I guess it’s called the “sleep mode” because studio cameras need longer warm-up time. In today’s parlance, it means our influencer’s scores got dropped a bit when we are offline. The real self needs rest, so the virtual self must give.

See me, text me, group me, call me…

When I saw a near accident today (a beat-up car driver, on the cell phone, backing up and brushing my neighbor’s mail box – which pulled my neighbor out of the door, in the middle of a mobile call himself), I realized we were indeed in a different era (from one which people sat on the front porch, chatting face to face).

So ATT needs to go big infrastructure-wise (when bankers get in the mobile banking game, we know we are no longer content with just online banking from home). It essentially undoes the 1984 break-up back in the copper era. The strategy at the time was, whoever owned the “last mile” to the house wins. Mid-80’s happened to see the rise of Motorola brick phones which got more mobility and apps e.g. meet-up and mash-up.

Can you see me? Can you hear me?

If any group that needs to adopt latest tools for business development, it would be the porn and charity groups. The former has always been early adopters of technology (VHS, cable, and now .xxx domain), while the later, relies on donation to survive, hence, relying on the best tools out there.  I still am not getting used to seeing Red Cross signs which say, “Help Japan“. In my mental positioning, Japan was up there with best of the best. No offense, I wouldn’t think twice when the sign flashes “Help Haiti” or the like.

We indeed are ushered into the real 21st century, when our old mental maps don’t jibe with what’s out there (from Big Mac to Big Moon).

To top all this, Victoria Secret came up with a coupon which acts as a lottery.

The tag line stated that “even us, we don’t know what the amount is. It remains a Secret”. Oh well, chances are, it’s $10 coupon, enough to pay for shipping charges.

I am excited about apps like GroupMe etc… because we often are separated from the group, let’s say in Vegas, by chance or by choice.

GroupMe and the likes enhance our field trip experience.

Corporate outings can exploit this app or extended families, like mine, who are scattered across the country and world.

Blogs and posts are too passive. GroupMe satisfies the demand for immediacy and mobility.

Still, I like the Who’s line, when edited in slow motion (despite the constraint of audio connectivity, they did what they could to increase mobility, in this case, vertical jump to defy gravity itself)”..Feel Me, Heal me..through you, I can see the  Billions….” It’s Billions, with a B.

the Who