Alec Saunders SquawkBox

My friend Shel Israel dropped me a note about the overview of his upcoming book, Global Neighborhoods–How Social Media are moving power from institutions to  people.  It’s a theme near and dear to me.  In fact, I had a very interesting discussion about this with my 83 year old mother-in-law over the holidays.  The theme of our conversation was the democratization of religion. 

My thesis?  Organized religion is a retail business.  The hierarchy receives the truth wholesale from God or one of His representatives, and dishes it up retail to the masses in their places of worship.  Wrapped in the dogma and doctrine of a particular denomination or faith, the power structures of religion have managed to hold sway over the masses for thousands of years.  Minor differences in doctrine have been the excuse for wars, intolerance, and hatred for most of that time too.  So, what happens when adherents are easily able to freely discuss differing viewpoints?  How do faithful Christians react to the idea that Mary is also venerated by Muslims, for instance?  We’re soon to be in one of the biggest periods of idealogical cross-pollination between the major religions that the world has ever seen.  Moreover, it’s likely the only way some denominations can remain relevant, given the continued decline in attendance.

The influence of social media on politics is also fascinating.  Canada’s own Garth Turner, the blogging politico dooced by the Conservative Party, is a trail blazer.  Garth is building a populist movement around himself using social media to communicate with his fans.  It’s clear that the rest of the political establishment doesn’t know how to deal with this dynamo, and equally clear (at least to me) that they will have to learn. How long until the party structure disappears, replaced by populist representatives unafraid representing their constituents views without the strictures of party discipline?

Swing by Shel’s blog, and check out the overview and commentary.  Lend him your ears, your minds, and your voices. 

Phil Windley says that we’re going to need better identity structures before the New Presence can emerge.  He asks whether there is a business need which is strong enough to drive presence all by itself.  Ken Camp’s lengthy post The Present Known as Presence can be distilled down to the same question: is presence enough?   Paul Jardine also concludes that identity is the issue.

Sure.  I agree.  Identity is the reason this is a problem.

Identity is a platform, not an application.  Platforms don’t sell themselves.  The applications which depend on those platforms are the drivers which cause adoption of the same.  In “marketing speak”, applications pull platforms through.

New Presence is the answer to the identity problem.   Facile management of communications, based upon transparent and intuitive manipulation of presence, will drive the unification of identity.  In turn, this will pull a common identity platform through to customers.

It should be possible, for instance, to travel to and from Europe, swap SIMs on landing, and have a user-centric presence system — or perhaps identity-centric would be a better term — determine the best place to route calls, and which calls are important, based on location, relationship, network cost and a myriad of other factors.

And — to Ken, Phil and Paul’s points — it should all happen transparently.

Get New Presence right, and identity, by association, must also be fixed.

Christmas Day at the Saunders home was busy.  Five children, three dogs, and Gramma Hill!  Not only did we have the traditional champagne breakfast, open presents, eat a delicious lunch, and dig into Hughie, Dewie and Louie (three… ducks!) for Christmas dinner, I also found the time to call all my brothers, my brother-in-law, and my parents.  The whole family talked for hours on the telephone.  Courtesy of Jajah, it cost nothing. 

Thanks guys!

Others didn’t have such a good experience, unfortunately.  Fellow Canadian Kempton, and Pat Phelan over in Ireland were among the unfortunates who couldn’t use Jajah’s services. 

I just finished chatting with Andy about his Mylo.  Andy loves his Mylo.  He was calling me from the Starbucks near his house, using their T-Mobile WiFi and Skype on Mylo for… nothing.  Quality was pretty good, although Starbucks was a pretty noisy place.

The way Andy sees it, Skype has done something totally subversive with Sony and T-Mobile.  For the price of the Mylo, and $15 to Skype, you can make unlimited calls from any T-Mobile hotspot to anybody in North America for the next 12 months.  In fact, you can do the same from any hotspot, T-Mobile or not.  It’s just that Mylo includes 12 months of T-Mobile usage. 

It’s a helluva deal, but I disagree that it’s Skype doing the subverting.

You see, in France, Orange has a very similar deal running.  For a flat monthly fee, you get the Orange Livebox (broadband / Wifi), and phone service.  For a small additional fee, you can have a a dual-mode WiFi / Cellular telephone.  While at home, or at a friends home, or in any of the many Orange (and Orange partner) hotspots throughout France, the calls are no additional charge.  Wander out of WiFi range, and it’s just a standard cellular call.

Orange has parlayed their cellular strength into DSL and an assault on the residential fixed line.  It is, frankly, an unbelievable bargain for the customer. 

So, is Skype subverting T-Mobile, or… perhaps it’s T-Mobile getting the better end of the bargain.  Perhaps T-Mobile wants to duplicate Orange’s successes in Europe, but with Skype.  However you look at it, though, customers are getting the best deal. 

As hard as it is to believe, it seems possible that the Skype Journal may be gone.  This morning Jan Geirnaert, in Malaysia, noted that the Skype Journal domain registration has expired.  Network Solutions has taken it offline, and on January 24th will place it up for public bid. Jean Mercier expresses the hope that they will resurface, as does Andy Abramson when he writes:

Blogs that are more than one person shows have to be businesses. They have to function that way, not as a collection of individuals who share common ideas for when some cracks develop it all evaporates unless there is some form of structure. Jim Courtney is enough of a pro to help Phil through this and even with Stuart off doing his own thing enough of the minds behind, and supporters are all there to help.

Amen. 

If the current owner of the SkypeJournal domain doesn’t renew by January 24th, it will go up for public auction.  I’d like to see SkypeJournal continue, so I’ve put in a $100 bid on the Network Solutions auction for the Skype Journal name.  I’ll donate that name to whomever wishes to continue the Journal, first and foremost any of the current Journal team.  If you’d like to contribute also, let me know.  The biggest tragedy of all would be to see this well loved publication become the property of domain squatters.