Mircea Baldean

Michael Dell: Today there are about 1bn people attached to the Internet. Everyday, about 500,000 new ones come on the Internet for the very first time in their lives. So that means, the Internet population in 3-4 years is roughly gonna double. About 85% of the growth comes from emerging countries.

I’m close to finalizing reading the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. Awesome book by the way! A good part of it touches upon outsourcing jobs to India, especially call centre jobs.

So, here’s my story: Bell Sympatico DSL users have been experiencing major service disruptions in the Toronto area over the past few days. This affects me as well, living in Richmond Hill, always hitting a Toronto server and an IP address that had a reverse name as “basXX-torontoXX.dsl.bell.ca”.

I pick up the phone to call Bell and ask them “How much longer?” An extremely polite Dominique answers my call. “Sir, before we go any further, just in case we get disconnected, is there a number I can call you back?”

Uh, ah, I thought I was talking to Bell - the phone company. Why should I get disconnected?? Because the ‘net is not working for me?

So my question to the Rep was “Do you mind if I ask where are you located?”

“No sir, in Southern part of India”. Ahaa, just as Friedman’s stories from the book I’ve mentioned above.

After convincing the person at the other end (of the world) that my modem was actually powered on - I get a new challenge.
“Sir, how can you possibly experience connectivity problems related to the Toronto area when you are living in Richmond?”

Hmm - I get it. Now I have to convince him that I live in Richmond Hill, ON and not Richmond, BC.

Two days later Bell has not fixed the problem yet. I’m posting this through my BlackBerry. Lovely!

To Bell: in addition to all screen captures of modem types in use posted on that intra/extranet, you should make available a at least a Google Maps lookup tool, as well. :)

I have just finished reading the free eBook manifesto - Trust Economies: Investigating the New ROI of the Web by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Excellent piece!

I’m starting to think that B2C has now changed its meaning to “Business to Community”. What’s your opinion?

Great event this week-end - PodCamp  Toronto 2. Here are couple of snippets from day one:

* Same things don’t work over time - Chris Brogan
* Social media is a cultural revolution, not a commercial revolution - Collin Douma
* The “trust economy” emulates the human relationships on the web - Julien Smith

See some of the pictures I’ve taken and the whole podcamp flickr stream.

“Talking” Blackberry with PodCamp co-founder, Chris Brogan:

PodCamp Toronto 2008 is just two days away - I’m so excited to attend for the second year in a row.

In the mean time, this one - PodCampToronto.com, just slipped through the fingers of a domain name broker, so I’m more than happy to put it back to work for this vibrant community. See y’all there on February 23.

Yet another reason to vote with your wallet and give up Rogers and their throttled Internet service.

Interesting article by Karen Wickre, Mother of the Google Blog.

I have too keep this numbers handy… Awesome! Via Chris Penn.

A new Forrester report divides the U.S. online population into six groups according to their social participation on the Web:

• Creators - those who blog, publish web sites, upload videos, or participate in other content creation activities - 21 percent own Macs, while only 12 percent own Dell computers;
• Spectators - they read blogs, watch videos, and listen to podcasts - 55 percent own Macs;
• The majority of Inactives - they don’t participate online - 55 percent own Dells.

Social Participation on the Web:

Source: Forrester. Via: Macworld.

Having graduated Computer Science a while ago, I totally concur to Eric Lundquist’s awesome article in eWeek. There are three Lessons you should know:

• Lesson 1: “Pay attention to the economics and politics of your profession and figure out a way to gain leverage not just for yourself but also for your peers.”
• Lesson 2: “Your leisure is your future. Your parents and your professors thought you were wasting time with YouTube, Facebook, texting, mashups and GPS social networks. They were wrong. Thanks to all that time you spent thumbing messages and sending photos and videos around the Web, you know much more about what companies need to understand technologywise than the companies themselves do. You’ll walk into the office of your new employer with a better comprehension of what the company needs than all those suits running around on the top floor. In fact, most of those suits are spending their time and the company’s money trying to buy their way into businesses about which they don’t have a clue. Don’t be afraid to clue in the clueless and, failing that, don’t be afraid to start up your own business based on what you know and they don’t.”

• Lesson 3: “Innovation versus the cubicle. There’s probably no word that large bureaucratic companies like to bandy about more than “innovation.” You’ll hear innovation championed by the company president, highlighted in companywide memos and held up as the gold standard of corporate aspiration. Alas, you soon learn that, in the cubicle culture, innovation’s high goals can be recast by micro managers as tiny improvements in current product lines, as the creation of obstacles designed to trip up competing products or as patentable concepts meant only to cast a legal chill over the economic landscape. But innovation doesn’t have to live only within the confines of corporate edicts. […] Understand the difference between innovation in a straitjacket and intelligent invention.”

You should read the whole “Go to the Head of Your Class” article!

This week I had the privilege of attending the Google Financial Services Conference here in Toronto and meet cool people like Chantal Rossi, Sabrina Geremia, Paul Botto or Chris O’Neill of Google.

There are five themes re-shaping Marketing today:

• Integration: consumers are hard to find and harder to influence!
• Innovation: today’s buzz word is “video” - online video; “click to play” geo targeted video ads can be delivered depending on your location
• Inclusive: advertise all your assets, not only what you think is popular
• Interactivity: consumers like to get involved; how does it feel to have an extra 10,000 brand managers out there?
• Informed: make the most by measuring your data intelligence!

There you go, the five “I”s of today’s Marketing.

Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) published a study on why projects fail. Guess what? Silence is golden except when it comes to Project Management. Here is the top 5 causes of failure in a project:

• 27.8% Poor Communications
• 17.9% Insufficient Resource Planning
• 13.2% Unrealistic Schedule
• 9.8% Poor Project Requirements
• 6.7% Lack of Stackeholder Buy-in/Support

Interesting! Via Baseline.

While Apple is getting ready to launch  iTunes Plus – DRM-free music - the landmark Sam the Record Man store on Toronto’s Yonge Street is shutting its doors on June 30. There is no doubt “digital” is the way to go… It is somehow interesting to observe the steps.

“We are making a responsible decision in recognizing the status of the record industry and the increasing impact of technology,” said Bobby Sniderman, the son of Sam Sniderman and present owner, in a news release. Via Toronto Star.

Ella and I just launched iSPINIT.com, our podcast! We love music! Indie and Podsafe music, for that matter. Music has and always will be part of our life, so, we created iSPINIT, for our indulgence and yours!

iSPINIT is a channeled music podcast that comes in several different flavours: (iSPINIT) Pop, (iSPINIT) Rock, (iSPINIT) Electronic and (iSPINIT) Jazz. You can subscribe to any one channel, depending on your taste, or get them all. Ella is hosting the rock and jazz shows, I get the pop and electronic/dance editions.
Since most of the music featured on the podcast comes from the Podsafe Music Network made sense for us to join the PodShow family.

Enjoy our hand picked “Naturally Famous Tunes”!

Hey - my blog is one year old! I really enjoy this social media experience.

What’s next though? I have moved my blog under a new domain - mircea.net, trying to add a more personal note to it. More exciting though, I’m ready to move to the next stage - music podcasting. More details about iSPINIT.com soon!

This is supposed to be a positive “wireless” post and I don’t think the message has been advertised well enough yet: Cogeco, yes - the cable Internet provider - has started to offer free wireless access to its existing customers! To my knowledge, it is the first “wired” provider to offer free Wi-Fi access to its customers base, in Canada. It is a great start, being available in the Oakville-Burlingon-Hamilton area for now. I use Cogeco as my secondary Internet provider, in Niagara Falls, so I can’t wait to take my MacBook to Starbucks, once they expand to the Niagara Region as well. This is the original email I was sent:

Enjoy High Speed Internet with new Cogeco Wi-Fi Hotspots.

Spring is a busy time of year. And when you’re always on the go, you’ll want to be able to easily access the Internet and your email account. Now you can with the new Cogeco wireless network. It offers a variety of Wi-Fi hotspots to Cogeco High Speed Internet customers throughout Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton. So you can still be online when you’re out and about.

Cogeco - c’mon, this it not a two-line story! You can do better to get the message out. Wireless freedom is back! :)

Kudos to marketing folks over at Telus Mobility! They totally get the search engine marketing. Have a look at the screen captures below:

They were taken right on March 14, the day wireless number portability (WNP) became effective in Canada. In other words, you could take you phone number and move over from Rogers to Telus, Rogers to Bell, Bell to Telus, yadda-yadda…

While Telus was coming out with their text ads, Richard Branson was escaping from a cage in Dundas Square, on the same day. He owns 50% of Virgin Mobile Canada, but the remaining 50% is owned by good, ol’Bell. Where was he rushing out of the cage?! As for Rogers or Bell, quiet… no celebration at all.

You can port your phone number, but most likely not your mobile device. Rogers is using the world-wide accepted GSM wireless standard, where as Bell and Telus operate on CDMA standard. Well, I use an unlocked quad-band BlackBerry. I wanted to make sure it works over in Europe, when traveling. Still love it!

I won’t make it a secret - I hate Rogers too. I’d switch to Telus in a NY minute, but I won’t be able to bring my own handset, I’d have to purchase a new CDMA device. More on Rogers: Nokia came out in early 2006 with a beautiful Wi-Fi phone - the E61. Guess what? It’s not available through Rogers, because they don’t want me sitting on the porch using my Wi-Fi connection, but use their GPRS service. Hands in my pocket, hands in my pocket… So they brought over a stripped-down version - the Nokia E62, with no Wi-Fi.

Let’s move over to the possibility of using Apple’s iPhone in Canada. Here’s what Rogers wrote in a communication email, on a very arrogant tone: “Other Canadian wireless carriers will not launch the iPhone”. I don’t see this being a good news for the consumer, as they will have to pay quite a bit for a data plan in order to see their email blinking on the iPhone.

Apple - I’d rather pay you the full price, for an unlocked iPhone, available in store or online, rather than have it subsidized by Rogers! I’m already used to pay a premium for your products - Mac or iPod - I can live with that, but not with the fact that Rogers is imposing limitations on your cool phone. Unless you make a cent out of each email I would send through the iPhone.

Long live the wireless portability! Not wait, it’s already dead!

Today I´ve experienced one of the most beautiful places I have visited in my whole life: Saona Island, Dominican Republic - a place with the whitest sand! Life has a different dimenssion here…

Just came back from PodCamp Toronto 2007, a two-day “camp” held in Toronto. Wanted to say a big thanks to the organizers for putting together such a big event: Leesa Barnes, Jay Moonah, Brent Morris, Julien Smith and of course Mitch Joel!

I’ll probably need couple of days to go over my notes and summarize all my thoughts, in the mean time recordings, transcripts or simply photos are available online:

• PodCamp Wiki
• PodCamp Blog
• PodCamp on Flickr
• PodCamp on Technorati

I have finally met Chris Penn, Bryper from ‘historic Boston’, Mitch from ‘beautiful Montreal’ and Michael Seanton.
Always interesting to listen and talk to Bill Sweetman to learn his from Internet marketing secrets! ;-)

Looking forward for more events like this!

Looking forward to this event! Register for PodCamp Toronto. See y’all there!