June 2011

The University of Wisconsin's Internet technology division and a crucial provider of Internet access for Wisconsin's educational system are under attack from that state's legislature and from a local telecommunications association. At issue is the WiscNet educational cooperative.

The non-profit provides affordable network access to the state's schools and libraries, although its useful days may be numbered unless the picture changes soon. Under a proposed new law, the University of Wisconsin system could be forced to return millions of dollars in federal broadband grants that it has already won, spend far more money on network services, and perhaps even withdraw from the Internet2 project. WiscNet is negotiating with the leadership of Wisconsin's state legislature. Here's how the situation stands now: at the urging of Wisconsin's state telecommunications association, Republican legislators have introduced an omnibus bill that would sever WiscNet from the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Division of Informational Technology, and bar it from taking any money from UW. The proposed law even goes so far as to prohibit UW from taking National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA) broadband stimulus grants, or joining any entity that offers broadband to the general public. These measures would force UW to return an estimated $39 million in such funds to Washington, DC, warned Tony Evers, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, last week. And they would force schools to turn to Badgernet, Wisconsin's state wide-area-network, which depends heavily on AT&T as its primary vendor.

Two executives from media agency Initiative said TV ads will increasingly become performance-based, moving the industry beyond just trying to amass huge audiences. That could throw a huge monkey wrench into the way brands and agencies think about media buying, and could be disruptive to Nielsen’s ratings system.

Kris Magel, EVP of Initiative’s National Broadcast practice, and Michael Hayes, president of Initiative Digital, discussed the current state of video advertising and how the agency thinks the mix of TV and online video advertising will change in the future. One key takeaway from the discussion was that the way TV ads are bought today needs to be rethought. Hayes said that on the digital side, the agency thinks of audiences a little differently. For instance, “auto demographics are dead,” he said. Media buyers shouldn't really care about whether someone is in the 18-49 demographic, or male or single. What really matters is behavior and intent, and whether the viewer — regardless of age, sex or marital status — is interested in buying a car. Furthermore, digital ads provide advanced tracking and measurement.

Wireless carriers are the punching bags of the mobile industry, notorious for holding back innovative services they don't control to preserve existing profits. Oftentimes they've earned that enmity, but making the leap from a voice-oriented world organized around a ten-digit number to a data-oriented world organized around bits and identity is not something that would happen overnight if they suddenly changed their tune.

Several compelling developments emerged this past week about the future of mobile communications. Apple previewed its iMessage product, designed (like Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Messenger) to give iPhone users a way of communicating with each other without texting or e-mailing. Evidence emerged that good-old-fashioned SMS text messages may have peaked, putting a huge source of wireless industry profits into question. And Nilay Patel uncorked a solid rant at This Is My Next pointing out that a mobile-identity system based around a numerical convention from the late 1940s designed to make it easier to use rotary phones doesn't make a bit of sense in the 21st century of Internet services accessible across multiple devices. There’s no doubt that it’s silly: even with number portability, phone numbers are meaningless for modern mobile devices that have no fixed location except for one key detail. Phone numbers are an international standard recognized by nearly everyone (even North Korea), allowing calls and text messages to be placed between San Francisco and China or Argentina and Norway through simple codes. The various Internet-based communications services that are emerging lack that universal touch. It’s obviously not because of the Internet itself, perhaps the most universal communications technology we've yet invented. It’s because of the same profit motive that drives people crazy when they think about their backward wireless carrier gouging them for another ten bucks.

Saving money is hard for most people. But when you’re making a pittance to begin with, it’s easy to believe that there’s nothing to put away in the first place.
It's the situation a group of first-generation immigrants working as janitors at Stanford University found themselves in. So they joined forces with graduate students as part of a class at the d.school and came up with a budget-by-text system that is helping people in their same financial bracket tuck away thousands of dollars a year.

Juntos Finanzas, a new service geared specifically toward first-generation Latino immigrants, works a little like Mint, a little like Weight Watchers. Users log all their expenses by text message (since they tend not to have computers), and at the end of the month, Juntos sends them a paper chart, by mail, showing where all their money went. That simple act, Juntos cofounder Ben Knelman tells Fast Company, has had a profound effect. In a six-month test, participants, who earn less than $40,000 a year, managed to save an average of $1,400.