Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I've been playing with software from a new startup called Jaanix that Jonathan Christensen showed me.   It's a social tagging, microblogging and rating system, something like a hybrid between Digg or de.licio.us.  The big difference is that Jaanix learns what you find interesting and over time surfaces more interesting stuff for you to read.   So, for example, it observes what you post and finds more like it based on the content and tags.  It also lets you rate other posts using Jaa to say you like it, or Nix to say you don't.  As you rate posts that you read, it also takes that information into account.

You can share what you're posting with others as well, since each user gets a custom jaanix page.  My postings are at http://asaunders.jaanix.com/, or if you prefer you can read them from an RSS feed. You can also see what the community as a whole things is interesting by visiting the all page.  And, if you would like to tweak filter manually, Jaanix can show you a list of tags that you find of interest, and then allow you to modify their importance using the clever slider widget shown on the right.

Months ago I abandoned the use of an ordinary RSS reader and became a heavy user of illumio. Illumio sifts through RSS feeds and finds the good stuff.  Like Jaanix, illumio observes my behaviour, and then uses that behaviour to predict which content will interest me.   It's the only way to keep up on the hundreds of feeds I read in a day. 

illumio, unfortunately, suffers from a flaw - that being that it's a desktop application only.  The combination of Jaanix and illumio - a hosted service that found relevant material in RSS feeds - would be brilliant.   For now, I'll use both; illumio to sort feeds, and Jaanix to repost and comment on interesting articles. 

It appears that major corporations, like AT&T and AMEX, are using the same techniques as phone phishing scammers to contact customers.  On Monday, this will be the topic of the SquawkBox call. With telephony security experts, we’ll be discussing phone phishing, and how the latest actions by major corporations – AT&T and AMEX to name two – are exposing consumers to phone fraud.

So what is phone phishing? 

In a phone phishing scam crooks typically pose as a trusted consumer entity, such as a phone company or  a bank.  Using an autodialer, they leave messages on potential victims phones asking the victim to call an 800 number for “an important message regarding your AT&T account”.  When the victim calls the number, the crook, posing as a legitimate representative of the corporation, entices personal information such as credit card and social security information from the unsuspecting caller in order to “update your account”, or “cover a past due bill”.

Recently the FBI has been warning consumers about these schemes.  For instance, on January 18^th, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (a joint venture between the FBI and the National While Collar Crime Center) published this advisory http://www.ic3.gov/media/2008/080117.htm warning that these types of attacks are on the rise. In particular, this advisory warns consumers as follows:

“Recipients are directed to contact their bank via telephone number provided in the e-mail or by an automated recording. Upon calling the telephone number, the recipient is greeted with "Welcome to the bank of …" and then requested to enter their card number in order to resolve a pending security issue.”

“If you have a question concerning your account or credit/debit card, you should contact your bank using a telephone number obtained independently such as; from your statement, a telephone book, or another independent means.”

Despite the increase in voice phishing fraud and FBI warnings, both AT&T and AMEX have recently rolled out auto-dialer systems that are indistinguishable from fraudsters systems. I've personally been contacted by them, and other folks I know have been as well. In taking these steps, these trusted institutions are desensitizing consumers to the risks of fraud and needlessly conditioning consumers to become easy victims of these kinds of attacks.

On Monday, we will discuss:

1. The types of attacks that consumers may be subject to.
2. The steps consumers should take in order to protect themselves from these attacks.
3. The steps consumers should take if they believe that they have been defrauded.
4. Steps consumers can take to raise the awareness of this issue with the businesses that they patronize.
5. Steps businesses can take to protect their customers from this kind of fraud.

When contacted by me to participate in this podcast, representatives from AT&T declined, stating “it hasn't been an issue for AT&T, so we won't have anything to offer for your podcast.”  To me, that was a remarkable dismissal of a very very serious issue.

Other links of interest on this topic:

• http://www.crime-research.org/news/03.05.2006/1981/
• http://www.voip-news.com/news/voip-phishing-scam-tips-071106/
• http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/001921.html
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/21/fbi_vishing_warning/
• http://voipsa.org/blog/2007/03/08/new-voip-phishing-scheme/

Bloggers commenting about this call: Oliver Starr, Dameon Welch-Abernathy 

This morning's interview with Sightspeed CEO Peter Csathy was well attended, worth a listen.  Peter and I discussed the market for video conferencing, and how it's exploding today.  In addition, we also discussed the ways that Sightspeed's service gets used, plus the future of video.  Audience participants included David Dines and Andrew Fisher from Wainhouse Research, who had some very good questions for Peter. 

Enjoy!

 

 Squawk Box Feb 22 [36:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Perhaps it's due to the influence of Amazon, but there are a huge number of cloud computing projects coming out of Seattle these days.  Just today, for instance, I learned about EMC's acquisition of Pi.  Last summer, Nokia acquired Twango, and rebranded and relaunched it as Share on Ovi.  Microsoft veterans are involved in all of these projects — Brian Valentine recently joined Amazon, Paul Maritz founded Pi, and Serena Glover and Jim Laurel founded Twango.

Contrast these with Microsoft's yawner announcement today that Windows Live SkyDrive will expand it's offering to 5G of free storage.  Others are offering innovative new services and platforms for the cloud.  Microsoft would like you to know that they've got a hard disk for you in the sky.  Go nuts!  Put anything you'd like on that hard drive.  You can even share it with others.  

With this track record of innovation, you can understand why Yahoo! is nervous about throwing their lot in with Microsoft.

Microsoft's fast-follow strategy may finally be failing. Fast followers observe the market leader, and imitate with superior engineering, marketing and or pricing. Fundamentally it's the strategy of an incremental disruptor. This strategy has worked well for the company for decades in operating systems and office suites.  However, in a world where new web services can be created in months, launched and then propagated to millions of users over night, the two and three year product cycles implied by a fast follow strategy are an anachronism and a serious competitive disadvantage.  In retrospect, the impact has been dramatic. In an effort to catch AOL the company has tried Frankenstein models several times, first embedding MSN into Windows, then the Active Desktop on Windows and finally MSN Explorer, a standalone Windows application.  Eventually, the Windows team - some of the best followers in the company - moved over to MSN where they tried to catch Google in search, and Yahoo in Photos. These failures have consumed resources that could have been used to create successful new businesses rather than imitate others.  In fact, the most successful online business the company created was the very original Expedia, which was spun-out publicly and then sold in the market later.  

The Microsoft I knew had mojo, energy and creativity. They've become living proof of Christiansen's Innovators Dilemma.  Having created so many incremental improvements to the original disruption, the innovator has become vulnerable to another disruptive innovation. Microsoft has known that they were vulnerable to this for over a decade. They haven't done anything about it, though. Perhaps it's the influence of antitrust regulators, or just bloat, but now it may be too late. 

During the antitrust trials of the late 1990's I favored voluntarily dismantling the company. It seemed the only logical way to ensure continued momentum, without having to submit to government oversight. Today it seems as if that break-up is happening, inevitably and involuntarily, as innovators move out of the company.  Moreover, having preserved the company intact, management has put themselves in the unenviable position of simultaneously having to respond to regulation and having to deal with the loss of their innovative edge.

So when yesterday Microsoft announced their new openness initiatives, and Sergey Brin said that he finds Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo! unnerving, it was hard to get excited.  The relevance of Microsoft in this new world is increasingly waning. The statements by Microsoft and Google execs should be dismissed by thinking people as little more than pandering to regulators and politicians. 

One can only hope that when these latest episodes are complete, the company will return its focus to customers and innovation.  

The call was a little noisy, but the debate was pretty furious!

We started off with the case of WikiLeaks.  This is how WikiLeaks describes themselves:

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.

Yesterday, WikiLeaks was shut down by a US Judge, at the request of Switzerland's Bank Julius Baer.  Apparently some sensitive documents from Julius Baer's offshore banking operation made their way onto the site.  Anyway, as soon as the site was shut down, mirrors sprung up in many parts of the world, including Christmas Island and Belgium. We had a spirited discussion about the legality of WikiLeaks, and whether it was, in fact, controllable.

It also looks as if there might be a full on price war about to erupt in the US mobile market.  Yesterday we heard reports that Sprint might weigh in with an unlimited calling plan as low as $60/month.  And then word leaked out this morning that T-Mobile is test marketing a new home phoneline service in Seattle and Dallas, which costs $10/month and provides unlimited US calling from home. I don't want to spend too much time on the pricing implications, but I am interested in the T-Mobile offer.   T-Mobile managers explained that the service is designed to wean customers off the land line and onto mobile altogether.   It requires a new router, which is equipped with two SIM slots, and a broadband connection. We chatted about how the service might work, and the implications. 

And finally, yesterday Skype claimed 100 billion minutes of usage since the service launched, with 276 million registered users.  It's a mind numbingly large number, but we discussed the significance of it (aside from the cute references to mammoths in their postings). 

 

 Squawk Box Feb 21 [36:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download