Insights into how technology and the outsourcing of R&D are changing the software industry

Let’s see what came up:

1. Forrester analyst John Rymer’s take on Oracle’s Cloud strategy. And for a bonus, a slightly different interpretation by fellow Forrester analyst Stefan Reid.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDnet: The Facebook imperative for enterprise software.  Hinchliffe is great. Longish articles at times, but good insight. Riffing off Benioff’s recent proclamation that enterprise software should look like Facebook (not sure I want my enterprise software UI changing every 3 months), he asks important questions like “Should Enterprises be Social” and has a Top 5 list of why IT should be social (I certainly won’t limit to IT).  But I think that social is critical for organizations, particularly global organizations, who want to innovate.  R&D has gone global and the best way to harness that is to make sure those teams are social with each other, collaborating and sharing.
3. David Linthicum: Cloud Provider Roulette.  Bottom line: If you are evaluating cloud computing technology today, you have to consider that your choice could be bought up this year or next. That means you need to make sure your legal agreements are rock-solid and spell out what happens if your provider is acquired
4. Wyndham Hacked for Third Time. Not good. Wyndham please talk to me about security testing.  Related article noting that recent research shows that the hospitality industry is hit hardest by hackers, with the natural focus on payment card information.
5. Tnooz: Will Priceline come back to the field?  The concentration of revenue in the OTA (online travel agency) business is pretty staggering.  It’s the Pareto Principle on steroids.
6. Tnooz: TripIt maps employee travel with TripIt groups.  Pretty cool way to keep tabs on the organization. Would be very helpful in case of a crisis and there was a need to know/get in contact with employees at a moments notice.
7. Daring Fireball: Thoughts on Windows Phone 7 by John Gruber (not related, but I’d be somewhat glad if people confused him with me. Would certainly help me get gigs on the speaking circuit)
8. Keeping in the iPad theme this TechCrunch article on Apple’s HTC patent Lawsuit indicates that the real focus of Apple’s ire is (spoiler alert) Google’s Android OS (ok, not really a spoiler).
9. Three theories why Google pushed Buzz out the door.  What’s more interesting to me is that it seems that the Buzz experience is vastly different on an Android device, with all it’s location-based goodness, than on a web client. Is this really targeted more at Foursquare than Twitter?
10. And last but not least: Ballmer’s really committing Microsoft to the Cloud. Yet somehow I still don’t quite believe it.

This was the only commercial that my wife and I actually watched as we sped thru the Oscars on DVR.  But I was very disappointed.  Apple advertising usually hits it out of the park, but in my opinion this had no impact. It didn’t spend time really communicating any of the capabilities of the device. It all went too fast.  Apple hopefully will create a number of different spots promoting specific capabilities that they believe will drive consumer adoption. Personally, I still plan on buying one, but if I was on the fence, I don’t think that this ad would have pushed me over.

The only thing Apple has going for it is that their advertising is still miles better than Microsoft’s advertising and Google hasn’t bothered at this point. I must say that I’m appalled at the Microsoft Windows 7 ads. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, so as it kind of fits here, let’s go. The Windows 7 ads fails along several dimensions:

• It tries to be a little hip and isn’t.  It’s actually that uncomfortable in-between, just a shade better than Bill Gates wiggling his butt, which may be the all time worst moment in advertising history — or at least Bill Gates’ career.  The whole “I’m a PC”-thing doesn’t have the warm and fuzzies of a Mac campaign if for no other reason (beyond the abject awkwardness of the spots themselves) that “PC” is not a cuddly term the way that “Mac” is.  The “PC” as a brand of sorts represents nearly every over-structured, unfeeling, bland attribute that one ascribes to the factory-like businesses (to borrow a concept from Seth Godin’s Linchpin) that most people work for, and the very same attributes which most people dislike about their jobs.  They may have well featured the uber-boring “Knit Knots” from Disney’s kid-show the Imagination Movers (see pic) in the ads.
• It portrays mighty Microsoft as clueless about how software should behave, giving consumers credit for every good idea that made it to the gold code.  I understand that they’re trying to create a connection to consumers, show that they were listening to what didn’t work in Vista and other prior iterations of the Windows OS.  I just wonder whether a ‘mea culpa‘ ad that said “We listened, and here is your new operating system that we think you’re gonna love” would have worked better and felt more authentic.  But perhaps Microsoft’s general inability to admit mistakes is what truly makes this campaign authentic.
• Lastly, so many of the features that are highlighted are so basic (paraphrasing: ‘I wish it would start up fast and just work’) and seem to echo the benefits of Mac OSX that it could have had a slightly different, yet crushing ending with each of the people featured saying “It’s a Mac”, rather than “I’m a PC”.  Anytime an ad sets up that way, it portrays a fatal flaw, at least in my opinion.

Travel industry analyst firm, PhoCusWright, recently posted that “Kayak Takes on the Big Guys“, noting the apparent changes in their business model, and poses the question whether Kayak can still be considered a meta-search player.  Kayak’s introduction of ‘booking facilitation’ and ‘Private Sales’ are pushing them closer to becoming an OTA in some aspects.  However, Kayak CEO, Steve Hafner, maintains that is not the goal, explaining that they intend to evolve into a full service travel planning site, but will retain it’s advertising based revenue stream and ‘media company’ status.

Lorraine Sileo, PhoCusWright vice president, research has said “Kayak has become another intermediary or layer that never replaced any of the other steps in the search, shop, buy process. This move is important to their long-term success.”

Sileo’s comments about Kayak never replacing the other steps in the booking process  are even more important given a few items in the news this week that I saw:

• Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference 2010 in San Francisco this week, Priceline President and CEO Jeffery Boyd noted that OTAs’ (Online Travel Agencies) decision to remove booking fees on airlines has really started to level out the playing field across direct and indirect booking channels.  So the primary consumer benefit behind meta-search, to find the best prices across channels and sites, seems to have been mitigated.  So is the NEED for meta-search reducing? Is that the reasoning behind the changes in strategy that Kayak is taking?
• The second item in the news was a report from Kevin May, editor for tnooz, that Google may have travel in it’s sights by extending it’s Comparison Ads pilot.  May even says that “Comparison Ads is effectively a metasearch…of products already in the AdWords system.  It looks and feels like a scaled-down Kayak in terms of functionality.”  I always believe that anytime Google sets its sights on a market, those in it should start to step up or change their game.  And if you’re a search company — that also relies on advertising as a primary source of revenue — is Google the one that you want to compete with? Direct, undifferentiated competition with Google doesn’t sound like a game most companies would want to play.

To me what’s most interesting about all of this is that it’s happening in advance of a much-rumored IPO for the company. Some thought that the IPO was a driving force behind the $60M TV ad campaign that Kayak recently undertook.   Of course it’s always better to make these changes prior to the IPO so that there’s some consistency in the earnings and therefore stock price…especially while restrictions are in place.  But how these changes may impact the company’s valuation are beyond my comprehension.  I’ll leave that to other folks smarter than me AND the investment bankers — just over a year ago, I might have clubbed the two together

So what do you think is in Kayak’s future?

Today I saw a video from TED 2010 of Blaise Aguera y Arcas (an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, the architect of Seadragon and the co-creator of Photosynth) presenting how Bing Maps has begun to integrate augmented reality into the experience.  Really very cool stuff. Watch the video (below) and then meet me for the rest of the post.

So it’s cool, but what can we do with this in the travel industry? I see a TON of uses, but let me start with just one.

Think of how this could impact the packaged travel sector. Last week at Travel Technology Europe 2010, Viator’s Patrik Oqvist, Managing Director, Europe spoke about how the travel booking process is actually upside down – the booking process is centered around getting there while people’s desire to travel is based on what they’ll do once they arrived. So if you’re trying to convert lookers to bookers, isn’t the best thing to increase the excitement they have for taking the trip in the first place?

This is where I think augmented reality comes in. Instead of just showing some canned pictures of a venue or activity, let prospective travelers literally see those activities through the eyes of people who have already been there or view live video. It could not only help travelers build excitement during the planning process, but also help them build/select daily itineraries, see what other activities are nearby, etc.

Of course these kinds of uses don’t need to be limited to tour operators or DMO’s but could also be used by hoteliers to promote their property and proximity to other activities and perhaps help put them at the center of the travelers’ plans.

Well that’s my initial reaction. What ideas do you have for integrating augmented reality into your travel marketing plan or travel technology platform?

OK, maybe I’m overreacting…I mean it’s been a whole 10 minutes since I’ve been using Google Buzz…but the early results do not portend well in my opinion.  But even though I’m only following a handful of people the information is coming in torrents.  It’s funny, with the Google Wave beta, I never saw that much activity as I wasn’t using it for any collaborative projects, but Buzz, which seems to incorporate some Wave-style features, has created a tsunami of information in short order.

At least with Twitter, I can segment the inflow with searches, hashtags and lists.   I don’t see those kinds of controls/filters straight off the bat with Buzz.  And with Twitter, you can let the tweets wash over you, jump out for a while and no big deal.  But now all this stuff is piling up in my Inbox and I can’t find the off switch. Oy.

Perhaps I will get used to it or perhaps I just need less prolific friends.  But I’m afraid to add more folks to mix for now.

Has Buzz been activated for you? What are your reactions?