Over 70 Million People is Definitely a Market Opportunity

The hopeful image of active, fit and healthy seniors is, at best, a myth.

My sisters and I are helping our 86 year old father “age in place” as best he can by staying in his home. With even cursory analysis, it’s pretty clear there won’t be anywhere near enough capital to build assistive living or nursing home facilities to accomodate the huge pending influx of aging baby boomers, over 70 million of whom started retiring in January of 2011 and will do so through 2029.

When you add to that the real possibility that these oldster’s life expectancy is expected to rise as well, and it certainly appears we have an impending crisis on our hands. As you’ll see below, I argue that the enormity of this population of aging boomers represents quite a market opportunity for technological, community, societal and financial support solutions to alleviate that crisis and make money to boot!  [Read more...]

Grandma Even Chuckles at Toddler Farts

Comedians around the world have formed a group called, “Seriously geeks? Your April Fools jokes are unbelievably lame!” Though the acronym “SGYAFJAUL” is a bit long and difficult to pronounce, the comedians intended to make their point in the most ludicrous way possible with the formation of this worldwide organization.

Though sometimes elaborate and painstakingly crafted, 99% of the April Fools jokes on tech/geek sites and blogs are simply not funny. Even my grandma wouldn’t crack a smile, and she’ll even let out a chuckle when my toddler farts,” explained internationally renowned comedian and SGYAFJAUL spokesman, Dward Farquard.

Dward Farquard

From Google’s “Gmail Tap” spoof (one that clearly cost some dough to produce the associated video) to Techcrunch’s “Google’s Sergey Brin To Retire: “I’m Really Into Blues Guitar” (one of several unfunny posts at Techcrunch on this April Fools day) the geeks are making Farquard’s point.

Year after year I hope for some post that would cause the corners of my mouth—anyone’s mouth—to turn upwards just a tiny bit with amusement,” said Farquard with some disgust, “But not ONE comedian I know has even cracked a smile with April Fools jokes online in years.”

Farquard continued, “My comedian bretheren and I, when we connected on a global Google Hangout last week for SGYAFJAUL, were all shuddering at the thought of yet another April Fools day and lame attempts at humor. Our only consolation? That we certainly will NEVER be out of a job and thank God every one of us in SGYAFJAUL is far funnier while sleeping than geeks are awake.”

Asked what he’d be doing on a Sunday April Fools day instead of catching up with all the latest tech news, Farquard looked at this reporter with a “Doh!” look and said, “Grandma’s coming over and we’ll listen to my toddler farting.

YOU Might Already be a Victim of a Cramming Scam

The New York Times had this article in the “Money” section yesterday about mobile text messaging scams. It’s likely you won’t pay attention to this scam until YOU are a victim, but you might already be one so read on.

Sick with the flu one weekend this past January I’d gone to bed early on a Sunday night only to be awakened by two back-to-back text messages arriving on my iPhone at about 2am. Having been in the internet/web industry since its beginning in the mid-1990s, I instantly recognized the potential for charges from this scammer so I sat up, grabbed my iPad, and started poking around to see if either the message identifier (the “318-50″ in the screengrab below) or the toll-free 866-861-1606 number was an active scam.

I was stunned to learn it is a scam and even ignoring the message meant my account would be charged $9.99 PER MONTH

Based upon the sheer volume of complaints I found during my searching online shows that this scam is rampant, apparently is seeing little-to-no preemptive action on the part of the wireless carriers, and many, many mobile users are being charged monthly fees. This fraud is commonly known as cramming.

I am writing this post for the express purpose of bringing this issue to your attention. If *I* can get scammed (and I am VERY cautious, careful and savvy about online scams and still don’t know how my number was discovered) I can only guess how pervasive this is and that it appears the carriers are likely complicit in perpetuating these cramming scams since they apparently receive 30% of all subscription fees collected..

What is this scam and what can you do?  [Read more...]

StarTribune Doesn’t Get the Internet

Two weeks ago our print edition of the StarTribune wasn’t delivered to our house and I looked online to figure out the login info so I could use the StarTribune app on my iPad. We weren’t registered and couldn’t on their website, so was told to contact customer service.

It was 6:30am and customer service won’t open until 8am (really?) so I sent them an email. This was December 12th and I’ve had no response. That same morning I tweeted to @StarTribune and, after finally acknowledging the tweet that afternoon, asked if the situation had been resolved. I tweeted a reply that no, I’d heard nothing and their subsequent Twitter follow up was zero too.

I’m at a family member’s house Christmas eve morning and didn’t have time to read the paper so thought I’d use the app. I forgot that the StarTribune folks dropped the ball and I’m not going to chase them down on the telephone…

…and newspapers wonder why the digital generation could give a shit if they go out of business? I am in my 50′s and see them as their own worst enemy and increasingly don’t care if most of them fold either.


UPDATE 12/30/11: Just received an email from a StarTribune web developer — 18 days after connecting with them initially – and it’s resolved and I’m able to use the iPad app. While I am very appreciative of his assistance, I’m still stunned it took this long. 

GOP goes “Back to the Past” with Light Bulbs

The lowest-of-the-low-hanging-fruit in energy savings is replacing the horrifically wasteful incandescent light bulbs in this nation. Unfortunately our Republican congressional participants see the incandescent light bulb as somehow “taking away choice” from consumers. 

Really? I know that joking about Republicans anti-science stance is fodder for comedians, but this is the simplest means we have to radically reduce energy consumption in our nation so why are they pushing-back on this initiative? It is a lot harder to fund nuclear plants, changeover our electrical grid to a “smart” one, and shift away from liquid fuels to U.S. abundant natural gas, so I just don’t get why the GOP insists on fighting the phasing out of incandescent bulbs the Republican president (GWBush) signed in to law.

What is the GOP’s agenda here? It can’t just be anti-energy. Nor does it make sense that this is all about being anti-global warming. Or it couldn’t just be about continuing to burn fossil fuels at all costs, including war and Imperialism, can it? Lord knows it’s not about helping out the 99% with their household budgets.

Perhaps this is pre-election, political theater and the GOP knows it. According to many reports, like this one from ABCNews, “Congress Defunds Ban on Incandescent Light Bulbs but Doesn’t Quite Save Them“:

“But what many Republicans are celebrating as a win for individuals’ light-bulb-choosing freedom will probably not save the energy-guzzling bulbs from disappearing off store shelves.

“The industry has moved on,” said Larry Lauck, a spokesman for the American Lighting Association.

Lauck said U.S. light bulb manufacturers have already “retooled” their production lines to build more efficient bulbs, he said.”

Ms. Political Theater herself, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, has famously harped on it by saying, ““The American people want less government intrusion into their lives, not more, and that includes staying out of their personal light bulb choices.”  Bachmann, who, as a member of the House, introduced a bill to roll back the incandescent ban. Of course, she did so without acknowledgement of her anti-stance on a woman’s right to choose something a lot more important than an energy wasting light bulb.

The U.S. Dept of Energy clearly spells out the energy savings if we get off incandescent bulbs. It’s such a no-brainer that even the political theater aspect can’t be all there is to an “official” Republican effort to stop it.

Or maybe they’re just old and want to go back to the past.

Is Walgreens anti-health?

17 years ago my Mom died of lung cancer at 62 years of age after a lifetime of smoking. My Dad, 85 years old, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which has slowly robbed him of his breath. So to say that I’m biased against smoking, I’d have to agree but also point out that I side with virtually every health professional and medical organization in the world who looks at the science of smoking-related illness and sees it as the #1 most detrimental-to-health addiction known.

To say smoking is anti-health is an understatement. To consider a retailer with health at its core making that #1 anti-health product widely available in their stores, is unconscionable. 

A few weeks after my Mom died I happened to be in a Walgreens where I was acquainted with the manager. “Why do you sell health as an organization and yet sell cigarettes?” He had no answer other than to lean forward and whisper, “Because we make A LOT of money off of them.

A cool smartphone user smoking. She'll look like 10-miles-of-bad-road in just a few years (like most smokers do)

Stopping off this past week at a Walgreens near my Dad’s house to pick up a few things for him, I saw a young man in front of me buy two packs of Kool menthol cigarettes. When it was my turn I asked the older woman cashier, “Why does Walgreens promote health and yet sell cigarettes?” Sheepishly she averted her gaze and in a low voice said, “I know its wrong…but I just work here and we sell alot of them.

To Walgreens leadership I say: Be a leader in health and get rid of the cigarettes or don’t bullshit us with stuff like this on your website in your ”health encyclopedia” about the hazards of smoking and how to quit which, ironically, contains solid information about smoking’s detrimental impact on health which you published.

It’s been 17 years since my Mom died and I haven’t become an anti-smoking crusader by any means, but I like and shop at Walgreens so want to see you take a position for health!

I’m sure you make money on supplying tobacco, a clearly addictive, health destructive product. Walgreens also has a Respiratory Services group for which, I’m fairly certain, helps people who’ve damaged their lungs through smoking. But if all you want to do is make money, why not sell porn? Malt liquor? Some constantly morphing designer drug brand just one-step ahead of the Drug Enforcement Agency?

There is absolutely zero argument that a leader of a 7,500 store “health” chain could make to justify carrying a highly addictive, irrefutable cancer-causing product like tobacco. Unless Walgreens thinks that selling cigarettes might ensure long term growth in Respiratory Services and other products? Even a sometimes cynical guy like me would have a hard time believing that so to Gregory Wasson, CEO of Walgreens, I say, “Show some leadership and get cigarettes and other tobacco products OUT of your stores…now.

Germany Internet Access is a Joke

My family and I spent the last 10 days primarily in Germany. We’d each brought our iPhones, my wife and I our iPads, and my daughter her Macbook Air. Besides the fact that our service Boingo Bombed, what was most bothersome was how German hotels, coffee shops, rail stations and the airport are laughingly behind other countries with wireless internet access and everyone charges for access.

Services like Boingo, that aggregate hotspots, are often forced to charge an $0.18/minute “roaming” fee for services. In the same way the European Union was supposed to make doing business in Europe easier and more like the seamless commerce within the United States, we’ve seen how that has failed in today’s economy and wireless internet access is too.

If you live in Germany and have a wireless provider like Orange or Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, you can pay them a fee and have both mobile wireless and Wifi (or what Europeans call “WLAN”) access. If you’re a traveler, you’re out of luck. It was unbelievably difficult to find wireless access anywhere we went unless we were prepared to be nickel-n-dimed to death paying their stupid little fees.

It’s no wonder that we saw an amazingly small number of either iPhone or Android smartphone users while on the road. People in train stations, the airport, within hotels, and on the street, people there used mobile internet devices far less than what I’ve seen anywhere within North America (or Japan, for that matter).

When I was in Germany with my Dad in 1997 I built this website on the fly with a Powerbook, acoustic coupler and modem, an Apple Quicktake camera and a copy of Adobe Pagemill (web software). Deutsche Telekom placed a “pulse” signal on the phone lines of hotels and in phone booths in order to manage the toll charges on the call. While bothersome with voice calls, it was horrendous with a data connection since, each time the pulse occurred (about every 20 seconds), the modem would have to re-handshake and it would interrupt the data stream. God it was frustrating!

It’s just about as frustrating today trying to find access while traveling in Germany. Yes, it’s better than it was in 1997 but even within hotels it’s not much better. The only hotel where we could log on regardless of our device (an iPhone, iPad or laptop) was at the Marriott Berlin. The Marriott property in Munich was a joke (cable in room only so no wireless devices could be used).

My wife is in Germany 3-4 times per year and only uses the internet at her hotel. I’ve researched, called people in Germany, talked to various providers, and all tell me the same story: She either needs to buy a SIM card and switch out her iPhone card (fat chance) or get an account on a German mobile network (Huh? Who the hell would signup for a mobile subscription when in the country a few times per year?). 

Of course, roaming on mobile networks outside the U.S. is not an option and horror stories abound of people who have had $1,000s to pay upon their return from an international trip. Our U.S. carrier, AT&T, has international plans but they offer download amounts one would go over in an hour of solid use. They’re a joke too but it’s because of the inflexibility of mobile providers in Europe.

As the world continues to accelerate toward one where the masses have wireless devices and expect to gain access wherever they go, Germany better get their act together and quit protecting their telecom companies and open it up. 

How to Save Newspapers (But do we even care?)

The soon-to-debut StarTribune iPad app

Newspapers are struggling to figure out a new business model that gets all of us to pay for news, but that’s pretty tough in a day when we all have so many free choices. My own newspaper, the Minneapolis StarTribune, is one I still receive in paper form which, unfortunately, didn’t arrive this morning. As a consequence, for the first time I actually looked at their ad online about their new iPad app which will run me “only $3/week” if I opt to get my newspaper in this way.  

Here’s the thing: If I am going to get my news from our local paper, there is no more efficient means of consuming local news than one printed on paper. I can flip through the paper quickly, read what’s interesting to me, stop and look at ads that I find potentially useful, and when done toss it in my recycle bin. 

Yes, there are huge downsides to a paper beyond the obvious tree wasting, truck delivering, printing-press inefficient creating, news being stale, sorts of problems. But the biggest problem in a day of social media, and an acceleration in news delivery, is that I can’t tweet articles I find interesting or relevant from a non-digital news source, save important articles for later reading or reference to my Instapaper account, or email an article I think a colleague or client might find of interest.

Early every morning, after taking the dog out and grabbing breakfast, I read the print StarTribune. I then sit down with my coffee and iPad and skim the few hundred articles which have appeared in my blog feed reader. Next I go through several of the news apps I have (see the screenshot below) as time allows.

When we talk about news, the importance of having strong news organizations and whether or not they even care if newspapers survive, many of my younger tech colleagues argue that paying for news on paper means those who do get “old news” and “only Grandpas still get the news on paper.” The biggest argument is that “if the news is important enough…it will find ME.

That last statement is all about two things:

1) Being in an interconnected world where the important stuff bubbles up in to social networks, and is spread by friends and those whom we follow, means breaking news and stories we should read are foisted upon us by those whom we pay attention to and thus the news they spread.

2) News is now aggregated and we all have an ENORMOUS WEALTH OF NEWS available to us at our fingertips. Take a look at screenshot below from an iPad app called News360, one that aggregates news from just about every newspaper and source out there (including newswires). It’s an app I’ve come to rely upon to get multiple source perspectives on important stories.

News360 aggregates news feeds from an array of sources & categorizes them for easy discovery

I would argue that the explosion of news sources—and the instant availability of so many of them that are free—means that it is not only very difficult for a StarTribune (or any newspaper) to get people to pay for an online subscription…but do any of us even care anymore?  [Read more...]

GOP Railroads Through Amendment on Light Bulbs

Either Republicans are stupid and incapable of strategic thinking (unlikely), doing anything to ensure consumers continue to waste energy to fill the coffers of energy companies (more likely), or are trying anything they can think of to get something passed they can hang their hat on in the next election (most likely). Amazingly, they just snuck in an amendment to the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act (HR 2354) to extend the ban on 100W incandescent light bulbs…and it passed!

The amendment was delivered by legislator (and climate denier) Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) who has said previously, “The federal government has no right to tell me or any other citizen what type of light bulb to use at homeIt is our right to choose.” Could this mean he’s pro-choice? 

Then we have presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann and her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act trying to ”keep the government out of our houses.” Again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that these two and their party would waste their time saving energy wasting light bulbs (especially since our country is so close to defaulting on our debt). 

For the last five years (see this post from 2006 and this one about Bachmann) I’ve been closely watching what’s going on in energy and, especially, the ONE, MOST WASTEFUL energy use WORLDWIDE: incandescent light bulbs. The US Department of Energy, the European Union energy ministers, and anyone with half-a-brain can do the 2nd grade arithmetic necessary to easily see the energy wasting nature of this lighting source.

Take a look at this chart:  [Read more...]

Why We Need a Google Condom for Chrome Extensions

Faux Google logo with condoms for the "o" in "Google"What the hell are you doing Google? Why are you opening up holes filled with God-knows-what-access-to-us in a browser (the rapidly growing Chrome) which more and more of us are embracing?

While delighted with GooglePlus in a way I’ve never been with Facebook, I’m stunned that Google’s Chrome Web Store is populated with extensions that give an extension developer unbelievable and unprecedented access to our stuff.

Since we don’t yet have a “condom for the internet” other than our own savvy choices on what we do online, most of us inherently trust vendors like Google, Apple, Facebook and others to be smarter than us about security and privacy holes. With the rapid acceleration in new services like GooglePlus—services that are new paradigms and require highly tech-savvy people to dig in and work hard to learn about them—even friends of mine who use Chrome are installing browser extensions like crazy in order to manage all of these services easily.

The kicker? The “verified authors” of these extensions (Extended Sharing; Fixed Top Bar; GPlus Notifications) are written by people/organizations that on the surface seem OK and legitimate…but I sure as hell wouldn’t just hand over the keys to my house, access to my webcam, my browsing history, access to cookie sessions of my active Facebook, LinkedIn and other signed-in-sites (like Schwab or my bank?) to them. Especially since I’m logged in to all of them simultaneously with my Chrome browser and they (or their “partners”) would have access to everything! I highly suggest you think twice about loading extensions if you’re a Chrome user.

But there’s more… [Read more...]