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Tragedy
Wow, that Virginia Tech shooting was REALLY bad. Does a campus shooting seem anomalous to you?
It certainly happens, but the majority of campus shootings are suicides. Here is a list of major campus shootings over the past 10 years.

According to a 1999 U.S. Department of Education report, the homicide rate at postsecondary institutions was .07 per 100,000 students. By comparison, the national criminal homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people. So at least your chances of getting shot on campus isn’t worse than just walking down the street. Good. I would hope not. But that’s part of the problem: We expect college campuses to be safer than the rest of the world. In fact, we expect them to be perfectly safe. That is why campus shootings are so shocking.

But, of course, school campuses, like the world in general, are not perfectly safe and never will be. Every college in the country is now examining their safety and security protocols. Arguments will initially be made that campuses are not safe enough, but conclusions will be drawn that the impracticality of mandatory psych evaluations, retinal eye scans and metal detectors at every entrance render prevention impossible and then the focus will turn to what to do when tragedy hits.

The goal is to minimize casualties, so the first thing you do when tragedy hits is this: As quickly as possible, tell everyone to get the hell away from the asshole with the gun. Much of the controversy around the Virginia Tech shooting is about how students were notified and when. Some people said public address systems should be brought back. Some said a mass-notification system is needed. Some people pointed to social networking sites, which others suggested SMS messaging.

Alerts
And so how students and faculty get alerted about campus emergencies has become an important issue to our industry. The reason, many argue, is that everybody carries a mobile phone, and therefore the best way to contact students in an emergency is to reach them on their mobile phones. Fine, but how? Some companies says SMS alerting makes sense. Rave Wireless got some press coverage on their campus text alerting system.

“Rave lets universities send text messages to students and staffers who sign up.” I personally think Rave Wireless is great, but my concern is that emergency communications require more coverage than an opt-in SMS service would enable. It’s not a limitation of Rave’s service, btw. The carriers have strict anti-spam rules that require opt-in for such broadcast messages.

In 2001, Verizon Wireless set a precedent extending email spam laws to SMS. Nobody wants spam on their mobile phone. Would an alert in an emergency situation constitute spam? Not really, but allowing unsolicited messages of any kind could start us down a slippery slope.

Hence the opt-in requirement for such messages, which is insufficient if you assume the opt-in rates are well below 30%.

Another technology that got zero coverage is cell broadcast.
Here is a quick blurb on the history and importance of cell broadcast.

Unlike SMS, which is intended as a one-to-one protocol and is subject to network bandwidth limitations, (ever try sending an SMS on New Year’s Eve?) cell broadcast targets a geographic area by cell tower and is not affected by traffic load. This would seem to make sense in a campus-based emergency alerting scenario. It has its limitations, of course.

Great, but would an SMS of any sort convey the weight of a situation like at Virginia Tech? Can you convey in a few 160-character text messages what is happening and what to do? Many agree that the most effective emergency alert is the delivery of a priority voice message from an authority figure clearly stating the situation and what to do.

There are several companies that provide such a service, but the largest by far is The NTI Group.

They have a mass notification engine that can send two million 60-second voice messages in an hour. It is for mission-critical applications like emergency notifications, and they have a product specifically targeted at the education market. There is no opt-in required because they use a university’s phone database based on information provided by students. This means a considerably higher send rate in the 90% range as opposed to less than a third of that for other types of alerting mechanisms.

Scoundrels
Apparently, a lot of companies are vying for our universities’ emergency alerting business, and some companies have gone over the line of decency to promote their sevices. US Netcom is the worst offender in this regard. Read their press release using the Virginia Tech tragedy to promote their alerting service. The response to US Netcom has been entirely negative, and so should it be. They just couldn’t help themselves. Hardly two days after the event, and they are strategizing on how to capitalize on it. Capitalists are opportunists, but most have limits.

So what do you do when you are in a situation where your service is immediately and profoundly relevant because of a sudden and horrible tragedy? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING if you have any sort of integrity.

Social Networking
And so bravo to Facebook. News spread quickly on Facebook, leading to the first publication of some of the victims’ names. Hundreds of thousands of people set up and joined groups on Facebook dedicated to the victims of the shooting. It was the only social networking site that got any press around the VT event. It was referenced often, notably regarding alerting because administrators want to reach students where they are, like on social networking sites.

And what did Facebook do to capitalize on this? Nothing. And good for them. They had an opportunity to draw attention to themselves and maybe even hold a press conference complete with a contrived “moment of silence” before they extolled the various benefits of their service and how they are working with campus officials to create an emergency alerting system of some sort. But they didn’t, and in light of the many charlatans who could not help themselves this past week, I applaud them for their silence.

The importance of social networking as a communication construct increases every time we see an example of people using these types of tools to seek and convey the truth of a situation.

Is a social networking site the best channel to alert students in an emergency situation? Maybe not, but it certainly has the ability to spread a message like wildfire. Will it spread the “official” message? I have my doubts. I think the true value of social networking, with its distributed edge-of-network nature, is its ability to convey the raw and emotional zeitgeist around an official message and not the message itself.

A few Saturday nights ago we all went to The Field, my favorite pub in San Diego, for Mo’s birthday.
We go often. I recommend it.

Down the street is one of very few Helio stores, which I have been wanting to go to since it opened, and so I visited at around 10pm.

Let me first say that I have previously noted that I simply do not “get” Helio. I have said I don’t get who their target market is, that I don’t get the “don’t call it a phone, we’re not a phone company” messaging, (when all they offer is phones) and I don’t get why Helio is any different from, say, Sprint, whose network they use. After all, I needn’t even single out Helio, as there is significant feature parity among all carriers because they all buy their handsets from the same companies and they all provision their data services from the same providers.

I am now starting to “get” Helio for two reasons:
- Their salespeople
- The new Ocean device

So about the store. The space is impressively large and decorated sort of “SOHO loft concrete floor hip” which makes you want to live in a place like that except that you don’t have the style or the money to live in a place like that.

I guess all mobile phone stores are pretty large compared to the amount of product in them, (usually a few to a dozen handsets plus some accessories) and I personally think the most efficient way to sell mobile phone service is from a kiosk in a mall. I’ll bet there is some clear evidence to indicate what works best, but I do not have a clue what it might be. I do know that if Helio had 10,000 stores like the one in San Diego, they would add millions of subscribers. BTW, do you get Baird’s Wireless Weekly? I absolutely love this weekly report. They actually do primary research “Channel Checks” by going into stores and asking the salespeople which carrier is doing well, what is selling, what is not, etc. Here is a sample report. You should subscribe.

So anyway, back to Helio. Impressively huge store. There is a Plasma TV with a living room setup in case you want to “just kick it, yo.” There are a bunch of stations with their few handsets sitting there for consumers to interact with, just like in every other store. That, btw, got me wondering about something. I wonder if there is a way to demo handsets for consumers that would work better. In all stores, the handset displays are diminutive compared to the size of the store itself. In addition, they always have that gigantic metal claw attached to them with the tether on it that makes actually feeling the handset in your hand and using it impossible. Then, because all handset UIs are different, consumers cannot really get a true feel for the device and, more importantly, the service related to it. Lastly, despite the massive space of most stores, the sales and provisioning process takes FOREVER, and so consumers are forced to wait until the two or three salespeople are free to begin a transaction. The whole process is very unsatisfying except the thrill of shiny new technology in your pocket when you eventually get to walk out.

Ok really back to Helio this time. I saw their new Samsung Heat. What a slick device. I love Samsung products already, and this was an impressive device. The soft keys around the 5-directional button aren’t really buttons that depress – they are flat and touch sensitive. I didn’t like the lack of tactile feedback at first, but I liked the coolness factor. I said to the guy that this is the best Helio phone (or non-phone, since they don’t want me to call it a phone) so far. It was Helio “Demo Day,” and I have the flyer that urged “Check out the cool devices at Helio and get a FREE $5 Starbucks gift card.” That seemed a bit unnecessary for the following reasons:

The guy working behind the counter was by far the smartest person I have ever encountered working at a mobile phone store. This guy knew the industry, he knew his product and he knew his competitors. He also seemed to LOVE Helio. He convinced me that their network is better, that their phones are a cut above and that their services are awesome and exclusive. So then I asked him about the new Ocean device. They didn’t have one yet, but he said he thought it would be worth waiting for to upgrade from my current slider if I was in the market for such a device. Bottom line on the Helio Store visit: It was the best mobile phone/service experience I have ever had, edging out the Verizon Wireless kiosk in the mall across the street. (I don’t know - they are just very good.)

Now about the Ocean
I am in love with this device in the same way legions of appleheads are in love with the iPhone.

I think people love the iPhone because it is so obviously not a “handset.” It wasn’t conceived by engineers, it wasn’t purchased by bellheads, and based on the demos, it doesn’t seem to suffer from the usability problems that most handsets suffer from. I think there is a sense that it is a totally different option in a category that contains a lot of similar products.

To me, it looks like a really good iPod with a touchscreen that happens to also be a phone. I readily admit that the demos are compelling and it is truly beautiful, and hey – I trust that anything coming from Apple is going to be spectacular. And so I like it very much and plan to own one. But when I think about how I use my mobile device, I lean toward communication more than I do to media, even though I fully understand that they are increasingly related. I think it would be easier to play music on an Ocean than it would be to send an SMS on an iPhone. (Of course, I have not touched either device yet, so I could be completely wrong.)

I have a Sony Mylo sitting on my desk beside me right now. It is a brilliant piece of equipment that looks exactly like the Ocean except that the Ocean looks like it will do exactly what I want it to do and will be exactly what I want it to be. (The Mylo falls short for other reasons, namely that it is a wifi device and so it wants to be a voip tool, which is not what I want.) If the ocean is the same size as the Mylo, then it is the perfect size. If the communication functionality is tightly integrated to the PIM, Gallery and Camera so that IM, SMS and MMS are as easy as, say, email is on a Blackberry, then this is the perfect device and could represent the termination of my quest for the Holy Grail of devices. (Yes, I am that enthusiatic about this device, and I am telling all of my friends about it.) And it looks like it lives up to the “don’t call it a phone” Helio rhetoric, which in my opinion is the separation from other carriers that Helio needs.

Bottom line: This device could do for Helio what the Sidekick has done for T-Mobile. Also, just like T-Mobile added considerable value to the Sidekick, creating a total value package for consumers that is hard to beat, so could Helio, with its demonstrated focus on media and device integration, turn the Ocean into a killer device by wrapping the right content and services around it. I think this is going to be really great, and I will post about it as soon as I can get my hands on one.

Imagine a sultry nightclub filled with thousands of hip hop pimps with platinum grills wearing dark glasses, rappers iced to the teeth and bedecked in knockoff Burberry plaid suits and insanely hot women with navel piercings scantily clad in animal print miniskirts. Now picture them all standing around with glasses of Chardonnay in their hands respectfully and interestedly watching a guy up on stage dressed in a blue shirt and khakis talking about wireless technologies. “And this is the new FCU u501T3i,” he says with emphasis, the audience nodding, impressed. “What it adds over the FCU u501T3 is full switchable HSDPA/WiFi/WiMAX/Bluetooth/EVDO/VHF capability. That, plus the 10965k color TFT and 30 megapixel camera with 40x optical zoom – a first in the industry – makes this one slick device, if you’ll pardon the colloquialism.” From the rapt crowd comes an enthusiastic but polite applause. One guy with a bandana wrapped around his head and a tattoo on his neck that says, “Playa” turns to one of his posse and says, “That is a very impressive handset. I believe consumers want that sort of spec. I believe it will drive data adoption.” His friend gives a measured nod, then responds, “I concur, but I think the iPhone, even though I haven’t seen it, will be a category leader. Also, I must now utter some platitude about IMS.”

Impossible scenario? Maybe, but now juxtapose the audience and the guy on stage: It’s the same sultry nightclub, but it is filled with wireless geeks like me in blue shirts and khakis and the guy on stage is Grandmaster Flash. Says one blue shirt and khaki guy over the very loud music to his blue shirt and khaki’d co-worker “Yo, check homeboy doing his THANG on the 1’s and 2’s, yo!” “Word,” he replies, then, “You want another gin and juice?”

I actually heard this. (And I said yes.)

It was just this side of surreal. For a few hours I was transformed into the kind of person that drinks from little individual bottles of champagne, dances with (hired) insanely hot women and really enjoys rap and hip hop. The MTV/Motricity party at the Hard Rock was the best party I have been to in a long time. While not the “down wit o.p.p.” type myself, I am definitely the “down wit o.p.m.” type, and I estimate that I personally consumed about $700 worth of entertainment that night, all for free, courtesy of two hosts who really know how to throw a party. Thank you Greg and thank you whoever works at Motricity who signed that check. Let’s have CTIA here again next year. And let’s have another party like that.

This post was going to be called “CTIA 2007 roundup” but while I was writing it, I got Chetan’s “CTIA 2007 roundup” and it was simply better than mine, so I wrote about my favorite party instead. Irrelevant, perhaps, but I think it is an indication that the mobile space is officially sexy. Go read Chetan’s very good synopsis here.

I think Fierce Wireless said it pretty well in their headline on the last day of CTIA: “Extra! Extra! No big news at CTIA.” Maybe it’s just a plateau. The big deal for the past few years has been the near-magical evolution of mobile data. And so here we are, at the state of the art, and there really isn’t much more that can be done. I mean, we’ve got broadcast TV, music, ringback, videotones, LBS, video, pictures, social networking, 3-D games, broadband and touchscreens. What could possibly be next? MobiSmell is not a technology I expect to see anytime soon.

So the industry has ramped technology, which is great. In a lot of ways, mobile consumers have more power in their hands than internet consumers. (Except there is no cut and paste for mobile consumers. Can you believe that shit? The simplest of viral enablers is still a mystery to our industry. Can it possibly be that difficult to allow users to cut, paste and send? If we could go back to Wordpefect 4.2-era circa 1986 technology and put it on a phone, that would be the next big thing.)

Anyway. Now all the pieces are in place, and I believe it is up to the ecosystem of innovators to use those pieces in new and interesting ways. I had breakfast with a smart VC friend of mine Thursday morning. He said that you don’t win because of your technology – you win because of your innovative business model. He’s right. There is nothing magical about, say, YouTube. Video, flash, HTML. There are no patents on their technology, but they used existing technologies to capture the imagination of consumers in a way that was really compelling. I think the same should be true in the mobile space. Trying to sell new technology to a carrier is a sure-fire way to get nowhere and burn a lot of cash. Rather, the mobile content industry should work within the four walls currently presented: SMS, PSMS, MMS, IM, WAP, J2ME, BREW, Flash and many others are all very powerful but underexploited technologies. For example, one of the things that smart VC and I discussed was this: Do you need to try to “do” SecondLife on the phone just like it is on the web? It is not currently possible or practical. More importantly, it may not even be required to make a bunch of money. What you can do is create a dashboard for the mobile phone that enables a certain amount of interactivity with that community that is useful to the mobile consumer in a mobile environment. It is perfectly reasonable that a user might want to interact in a non-avatar mode, but in an at-the-moment fashion on their mobile device.

I’ll just keep saying this: The mobile environment is not the web on a smaller screen. I really like the companies that are focusing on UI, content optimization and communication unification, as these are all about increasing mobile-relevance and usability.