BOOT eyefortravel interview: search, mobile, social networking, innovation, Asia and more part 2

Part 2 of pre-conference interview with with Ritesh Guptaof eyefortravel in the lead up to the TDS conference in Singapore April 28 & 29. Part 1 here.

Question - Can you provide an insight into how does search differ for mobile phones vis-a-vis PC? What according to you are the striking differences?

BOOT - The easy answer is location. A phone knows so much more about your current location than a PC. This gives mobile a huge advantage over PC search in servicing an immediate requirement. But there are challenges here too. A mobile can assume too much about a location. Just because I am travelling in Tokyo does not mean that I want the answer to the question to be in Japanese. The other challenge for mobile is that the platforms are still not uniform in display. Thankfully we are down to a much smaller list of mobile browsers/operating systems that previously but still there are differences between iphone, windows mobile, blackberry, palm and symbian which call challenges in display. This is where apps come in as content providers are trying to get around the browser and device compatibility by using apps to control display and information management to consumers.

Question - The progression of technology and innovation in the travel industry continues at a quickening pace and Asian countries are closing the gap on their western counterparts. What according to have been the major developments in this context in Asia?

BOOT - Innovation is always driven by local requirements and demand patterns. Therefore there are examples across Asia of markets driving product development well ahead of the US or Europe. India leads the world in online bus ticket sales and low cost carrier and traditional carrier display integration. Japan leads the world in online hotel bookings via mobile phones. China leads the world in call centre same day hotel bookings. The mistake many make in planning for innovation is to look to the technology first rather than the business need. As I discussed in this post the secret to innovation is as much about timing, social readiness and execution as it is about a great technology idea. Therefore the major development in Asia that is driving innovation is not a technology one it is a attitudinal shift and market maturity. A display of confidence within the Asian travel industry that dedicated market specific solutions can be put together to target customer needs rather than simply copying what the global OTAs are doing in Europe and America.

Question - What are you most looking forward to at TDS Asia? Who are you most looking forward to meeting at the event?

BOOT - Conferences are always about people watching and meeting. That is what I am looking forward to. The best person you meet at a good conference is the person you weren't expecting to meet. Someone you did not know that you needed to know - if you know what I mean :).

BOOT eyefortravel interview: search, mobile, social networking, innovation, Asia and more part 1

I have just completed an email interview with Ritesh Guptaof eyefortravel in the lead up to the TDS conference in Singapore April 28 & 29. Here is part 1 of our exchange (part 2 here).

Question - Do you think predicting user preferences is the biggest unsolved problem in online travel? How do you assess the integration of social search into online travel?

BOOT - I am a strong believer that all companies in online travel should be focusing on understanding users and working on predictive and recommendation engines. But it is a mistake to come at this from just a user preference angle. The trap that companies are falling into is thinking that consumers are still asking "closed" questions. Questions that can be answered with an easy or direct response. Questions like "how much for a flight to new york?, "which hotel should I stay in in Rome?". These are the questions consumers asked for the first 15 years of online travel. Now consumers are also asking open ended questions like "where should I go next?, "what is a good place to go this weekend?". Questions that require a more detailed answer and therefore a very detailed understanding of not only the preferences of the user but also the relationship between those preferences and the destinations available and the different versions of the individual that is searching (my concept of EveryYou). Social networking's role in this is the role that word of mouth has always played in marketing and travel purchases. A force that can be instrumental in a consumer's purchase decision which can be influenced, prodded, supported but never controlled. The difference between Social Networking marketing and word of mouth marketing is just speed. Social network is word of mouth at the speed of light.

Question - Today Google's algorithms are still quite a bit of a black box for professional search marketers. The semantic web should make it more efficient to create and manage online campaigns, because there will be less left to algorithmic interpretation. How do you assess this viewpoint?

BOOT - Google has won search - game over. There are countries were they are weaker (Japan, Korea, China for example) and products where they are weaker (local search and business listings for example) but let's not kid ourselves about who has won search. That said, "old search" is about providing a single destination as an answer to a question. Regardless of the search term, Google only presents a list of single answer destinations. If an answer to the search request is found through information from a combination of different websites then Google (or any search site for that matter) do not have the answer. The other constraint on Google and old search is the limited scope for incorporating and merging the latest up to date with results with older more trusted results. Google has been experimenting with incorporating real time search in their results (example here) but they have not yet figured out how to establish authority in real time search or change the display to be more than an never ending stream of updated information. The Semantic web should be part of the solution here but I still feel we are a while away from implementation because we have not figured out new rules for authority and new methods for display. Maybe Google have but there are just not saying yet!

Question - Google, which last year had introduced a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search, has added a social element to Google Images. With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. What is going to be the next big thing or trend in social search engine marketing?

BOOT - If you agree with my comments about that marketing of social networking is just like marketing through word of mouth but at the speed of light then the next big things in social network marketing are finding ways to adjust word of mouth marketing to a faster/instantaneous medium. The basics of word of mouth market are trust, interest and relevance. For a consumer to be prepared to share a product, idea, story, service etc with a friend they have to trust the source, be interested in the item/thing and think that it is relevant to others in their circle. Social network marketers need to have these three human elements at the centre of each campaign. The mistake that I see so often is jumping to a technological solution to marketing on social networking rather than the human elements. We can see this in the constant screw ups at Facebook with privacy as they launch new privacy crushing rules and products to give marketers access to customer data. My advice is to turn to the technology second and the human elements first. Establish trust then make something relevant and interesting. If you do, consumers will follow. The final thing to remember as a marketer in social networks - and the 21st century for that matter - is to accept that you have limited control over what your customers will say about your brand. The response to that lack of control is communication and discussion (ie engagement) not defamation, litigation and IP laws (ie stupidity).

Question - This year, we have already seen a couple of significant moves from Apple and Google towards mobile advertising. How do you foresee the impact on search and social media via mobile phones on the travel industry?

BOOT- Up until recently I have been a mobile denier. Mainly because every year since 2000 has been THE year that mobile would take over PC as the place for online action. Google's purchase of AdMob is the turning point. Not because when Google does something it means we have to take a trend seriously but because it means we know have non-transactional revenue streams for mobile activity. The problem for mobile has been that people stop at the credit card entry point. For a variety of reasons people that are completely comfortable putting their cc number into a PC or giving it to a bartender covered in tats and piercing in the off-line world have hesitated when asked to give it to a mobile phone. With Google betting on mobile advertising we have a biz model outline. A means for content and transactional companies to make money in mobile. That is the step that has been needed - more that the continued roll out of smart phone technology and more than the expansion of social networks.

more in part 2

Google Apps adds enterprise admin policies for iPhone, Nokia, and Windows Mobile devices

In a world focused on improving business productivity, companies look to solutions like Google Apps to provide employees with seamless access to information regardless of location or device. With the rising adoption of Internet-enabled devices, employees increasingly seek access to their email, documents, and other corporate data from their mobile phone.

Last year, we addressed this need with a number of enhancements focused on mobile productivity. For BlackBerry users, we launched the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. For Android phones, we announced new web versions of Gmail and Google Calendar, as well as updates to Google Docs. We also launched Google Sync for iPhone, Nokia E series, and Windows Mobile devices, enabling Google Apps users to access and sync mail, calendar, and contacts from their mobile device to the Google cloud.

Tomorrow, we're expanding these capabilities further by launching new controls that enable administrators to help ensure corporate policy enforcement across a range of mobile devices.

With this change, Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators will be able to manage their users' iPhone, Nokia E series and Windows Mobile devices right from the Google Apps administrative control panel, without deploying any additional software or having to manage dedicated enterprise mobile servers.

These new mobile device management capabilities will allow administrators to:

Remotely wipe all data from lost or stolen mobile devices

Lock idle devices after a period of inactivity

Require a device password on each phone

Set minimum lengths for more secure passwords

Require passwords to include letters, numbers and punctuation

These features will be accessible from the 'Mobile' tab under 'Service Settings' in the Google Apps control panel. Once a user starts syncing their devices with Google Apps, the domain administrator will be able to remotely wipe device data, right from the user settings page.



These policies will let employees access their data from their phone while helping IT administrators easily control access to corporate data on mobile devices.

Stay tuned for similar features for Android devices like the Nexus One and Droid, and if you have any questions, please check out our help page.

Posted by Bryan Mawhinney, Google Mobile Software Engineer

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

2010 Predictions: The BOOT on what to expect for 2010 in the online travel industry

You think 2009 was full of surprises. Well fasten your safety belts, lock in the tray table and get ready for the turbulence, change and excitement that I expect 2010 to bring.

Here we go - I have five predictions for 2010 (two of them drawn from my contribution to the Tnooz post "Tnooz predictions for 2010"):

1. The non-refundable not enough: 2009 was the year of the deal. Lastminute specials returned and ADR/Ave ticket price fell through the floor, past the basement and almost reached magma. But the main (maybe the only) weapon in the 2009 deal war was the non-refundable. I predict that to win round two of the deal smackdown will require suppliers and intermediaries to come up with something more creative that just non-refundables The non-refundable is successful in driving demand while protecting "normal" pricing (ie BAR). But it is a crude weapon - targeting only those with no scope for a change in plans. Driving demand in 2010 will mean finding additional market segments. Which in turn will require more creativity and subtlety in pricing and deal structures than afforded by the non-refundable. Jeremy Philips in a review on WSJ.com of the book "Priceless" by William Poundstone ran an interesting quote that summarises the prediction here. As Robert Crandall, a former CEO of American Airlines, has said: "If I have 2,000 customers on a given route and 400 different prices, I'm obviously short 1,600.";
2. Year of the app: mobile may finally be here as a force in online travel but in 2010 the action will be in "apps" not phones. By app, I mean a piece of software designed to perform a function where the function is stand alone but can only exist as part of an operational eco-system. I am not thinking just iPhone here. Though the numbers are extraordinary. On March 27 2008 Apple launched its SDK to the public. Just eighteen months later (Nov 4) they announced more than 100,000 apps available for the iPhone and more than 2 billion downloads. But this is only part of the app story. On May 24 2007 Facebook opened up its platform for third party application development. On their stats page (checked 3 Jan 2010) they are claiming 500,000 apps. It does not stop at smart phones and social networks- HP have launched a printer with an interface and app store. The easy part of this prediction is to say that app numbers will grow again both in number (they will more than double in 2010) and in platform (more sites and more phones launching more of them). The real prediction is that I think the app trend equals a change in how web services are accessed. While not the death of the browser, the rise of the app is a sign that the browser is no longer an essential part of the Internet experience. Further proof that we have left the Web 1 era that defined web success through website stickiness and are well into the Web 2 world of syndication being the success measure. That confining your internet viewership plans to the computer and browser is a doomed strategy;
3. New marketing measurement metrics will emerge: The very mature online media and advertising world has settled into a comfortable metric duopoly of clicks and page views. Measuring audience reach and advertiser value by either the number of clicks generated or pages views. I predict for 2010 that we will see a new metric emerge. Not sure what it will be but it is clear to me that the market is looking for a measure of engagement rather than traffic. A way of showing marketers that consumers have taken in a brand message not just clicked on a link or maybe glanced at a flashing 468x60. The portals have had behavioural targeting technology for more than two years (Yahoo! has Blue Lithium, AOL has Tacoda) and Google is looking for the Next Big Thing to be video advertising (read more in interview with Rob Torres of Google reported on Tnooz). These are clear indicators of the need for a new metric;
   
4. Consolidation in the sector (surely!). This is a left over prediction from 2009. The conditions in the year of the GFC seemed perfect for consolidation. Stock prices were depressed, cost cutting acceptable and appetite for organically funded expansion low. But we saw virtually nothing that could be called a “big deal”. There was deal activity but at the lower end such as through regional tuck-ins (ie Travelocity buying Travelguru, and Ctrip buying EZtravel), small local deals (ie Wotif buying GoDo) and constant content site acquisition by TripAdvisor. With bankers chasing bonuses and companies chasing growth in 2010, I expect to see some consolidation in the big end of online travel town (from Tnooz post); and
   
5. Recommendations as the future of online travel: Search – as a means for customers finding what they want in online travel – is no longer as effective in 2009 as it was in 2005. Two causes – the explosion of content through the UGC revolution and consumers desire to seek answers to open ended questions (ie where should I go next) that are not easily answered by a search model based on taking you to one site. 2010 will see even more investment by start ups and established companies on different ways of searching and on methodologies for recommending. The long term future is the ability to generate a recommendation of one based on the individuals unique combination of desires, needs and interests of an individual at a particular point in time (EveryYou). The 2010 future is increased profiling, increased data collection and even more start up activity around search and discovery (from Tnooz post).

Close the door, buckle up, it is time to push back and take off. It is 2010 and the BOOT is back.

If you are interested - check out my 2009 predictions

thanks to pfala for the photo via flickr

BusinessWeek on Augmented Reality - "GPS technology is not yet good enough for AR to be useful"

My first post for Tnooz was on Augmented reality and mobile. In it I have a couple of videos of some great looking AR travel apps. However since I am trapped in the Blackberry world (my company uses blackberry) I have not had a chance to try out any of these for myself. That has left open the question as to whether or not the hype of Augmented Reality matches...well.. the reality of Augmented reality.

Steve Wildstorm (personal tech columnist at BusinessWeek) believes that AR is "Not that Real Yet". There is an interesting podcast interview with him here (part of his regularly weekly series) where he says that the GPS technology that is critical for AR to work is simply not accurate enough. At its best GPS provides accuracy to 20 meters. Wildstorm argues that a 20 meter radius error margin is not good enough to give the accuracy you need for AR to work. It is worth noting that "at its best" means all the satellites are in the right place and there are no buildings in the way. In other words it is likely that accuracy will be worse than 20 meters. Also thinks that the apps that are out there are "just modified browsers" and need to be better thought through - sometimes the apps are giving too much information or a level of GPS accuracy that is not available.

If you are interested in AR for online travel then I recommend listening to the podcast (here). BOOT recommended read/listen of the week.

Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server now connects businesses of all sizes

When we launched the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry® Enterprise server in August, we focused on addressing the needs of companies operating their own BlackBerry Enterprise servers, typically supporting a couple hundred BlackBerry smartphone users per server.

Of course, companies of all sizes are adopting Google Apps, and their needs for supporting BlackBerry smartphones are as diverse as their businesses. So today we're making it easier for companies large and small to manage their BlackBerry smartphones and save money.

With Google Apps Connector for BES version 1.5, large businesses can now support 500 BlackBerry devices per server, double the previous capacity. This lets them serve more users with fewer servers.

Small businesses get more flexibility too. The Apps Connector now supports BlackBerry Professional Software, which is designed for up to 30 BlackBerry smartphones. We've also made it possible for a single BlackBerry Enterprise Server to serve users across multiple companies, enabling low-cost hosting services to be offered by hosting partners.

Stay tuned for more announcements from partners offering hosting services for Google Apps customers with BlackBerry smartphones. In the meantime, we're going to continue to make it easier for you to manage mobile devices of all types with Google Apps.

Posted by Zhengping Zuo, Software Engineer and Darrell Kuhn, Site Reliability Engineer

Generating revenues from mobile applications

Some interesting examples from companies such as Copilot Live, Shazam, Financial Times, and 63336.



Related videos:

• The Future of Content & Telecoms: Flat Rate Content Bundles and Social Media (Gerd Leonhard @ eComm 2009)
• Rory Sutherland on revenues from mobile advertising and accidental business model innovation
• Zong, Super Rewards, PayPal and GMG Entertainment in an interesting panel on Monetization Infrastructure for Social Games

Google bought AdMob, Norm was right, the BOOT was wrong - time to eat humble pie

In my predictions for 2009 (back in January) I said the following

"2009 will not be the year of mobile for the travel industry: Every year since 2000 we have been talking about the mobile revolution in online travel. This year I rejoined that chorus of mobile revolution fan boys while at PhoCusWright in LA. With the Global Financial Crisis (I am told there is even an acronym for this - GFC) in full swing I think the larger players will pull back from their mobile plans and focus on core products, costs control and customer loyalty. Mobile will have to wait until 2010; and"

Many disagreed including Norm Rose, arguing that the proliferation of smart phones and mobile apps would prove me wrong. But I would not be talked out of it. In September I reaffirmed by prediction saying

" The argument in favour of my prediction is that bookings of travel via mobile phones apps (outside of Korea and Japan) are still very small and arguably inconsequential to the $150+ billion online travel industry. "

Here we are in November and I was looking forward to debating my position with Norm at PhoCusWright next week. But with barely a week to go before seeing Norm in Orlando, Google won the debate for him by buying AdMob for $750 million. AdMob is/was a Sequoia backed mobile display advertising platform.

This means that Google's third largest acquisition ever (after YouTube and DoubleClick) is of a company with maybe $40mm in revenue focused on putting adverts on iPhones, Android phones, smartphones etc. We now have a revenue model and distribution for advertising on the phone. Add that to the travel app bonanza on iTunes and elsewhere, the levels of smartphone penetration, augmented reality and more.

You got me Norm. I concede. Google has closed out the year with a big M&A deal proving that 2009 is indeed a year for Mobile. See you in Orlando for a piece of humble pie.

More on the deal read these two TechCrunch posts

• Google Acquires AdMob For $750 Million; and
• AdMob Is “Approaching $100 Million” In Revenues. Google Thinks It Can Be Billions

thanks to smiteme for the pie photo

4 STRATEGIC PRINCIPLES FOR EVERY DIGITAL PUBLISHER

As publishers move more and more content to the Internet, mobile services, and e-readers, these digital activities change the structures and processes of underlying business operations. Many publishers, however, pay insufficient attention to the implications of these changes and thus miss out on many benefits possible with digital operations.

This occurs because publishers become focused on issues of content delivery and uncritically accept the fundamental elements of the processes involving platforms and intermediaries. In order to gain the fullest future benefits from the digital environment, however, publishers needs to strategically consider and direct activities involving the users, advertisers, prices, and purposes of their new platforms.

In creating business arrangements with platform and service providers and intermediaries, 4 fundamental strategic principles should guide your actions:

1. Control your customer lists. The most important thing you do as a publisher is to create relationships with and experiences for your customers. It is crucial to ensure that your content distribution and retail systems do not separate you from those who read, view, or listen to your content. If you do not operate your distribution or pay systems, or don’t have strong influence over their operations, this important part of the customer experience falls outside your control and— worse—you never establish direct relationships with customers that allow you to get to know them better, to create stronger bonds, to use them to improve your products, or to up-sell services. If you must use intermediaries, ensure that you have full access and rights to use e-mail, mobile, and other addresses for all your content customers and that you have some influence over the look, feel, and content of the contacts that your service providers have with your customers.

2. Control advertising in your digital space. Users see advertising placed on your website, your mobile messages, and your e-reader content as part of your product and it affects the experience you deliver to them. It is not enough to control the size and placement of ads; you also need to control the dynamic functionality, types, and content of ads. The experience your product delivers is of little interest to outside providers of digitally delivered advertising, but it must be to you. You should control your own advertising inventory and maintain approval rights and—as with audiences—you should have the ability to make direct contact with advertising customers so you can add value by working with them to achieve greater effectiveness and provide better benefits across your content platforms.

3. Control your own pricing. Do not put yourself in the position of merely accepting the ad suppliers’ price and payment for advertising appearing in your digital product. The digital space and audience contact that you provide is the product and service being purchased and some contact is more valuable than others. Know how your value compares to that of competitors and set your prices according. Don’t be a price taker, be a price maker. Digital advertising will not grow to become an important part of your business if you let the most important decision of the revenue model reside in someone who does not care about your business.

4. Drive customers to platforms most beneficial to you. Digital media give you the opportunities to serve customers where and when they want to be served, but you need to use those opportunities to drive them to your financially most important product. Internet sites, e-readers, mobile applications, and social media are highly useful for contact and interaction, but not yet very effective for revenue generation. The best effects typically result from increasing use of your offline product or driving traffic to your most finally effective digital location. Make sure that all the distribution platforms you use are configured for easy movement to other digital platforms that benefit you most, even if they don’t directly benefit your service provider.

Digital publishing can only become successful if you get the business fundamentals correct by controlling the most important commercial aspects of the operation. The value configuration created by customer interfaces and partner networks must be arranged to work in your favor and strategic thinking needs to guide how you organize and direct those activities.

Videos from the Web 2.0 Summit 09 (Day2)

At the center of both the destruction and creation of new business models is the World Wide Web. At the Web 2.0 Summit, held in San Francisco October 20-22, some of the leading companies share their views on business models and what is next on the horizon. The Summit is arranged by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb, and moderated by John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly.

Videos from Day 1

Videos from Day 3

A Conversation with Qi Lu Qi Lu (Microsoft Online Services Division), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)


A Conversation with Aneesh Chopra Aneesh Chopra (Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media, Inc.)


HOB: Changing the Energy Equation Shane Robison (HP)


HOB: The Infrastructure of Facebook Mike Schroepfer (Facebook)

HOB: Scaling Humans and Social Nets to Answer Questions Max Ventilla (Aardvark)

A Conversation with Sheryl Sandberg Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing)


Discussion: Whither Journalism? John Battelle (Federated Media Publishing), Marissa Mayer (Google), Eric Hippeau (The Huffington Post), Robert Thomson (The Wall Street Journal), Martin Nisenholtz (The New York Times Company)

Discussion: The Future of Content Richard Rosenblatt (Demand Media Inc. ), Dan Rosensweig (Guitar Hero), Peter Guber (Mandalay Entertainment)

A Conversation with Owen Van Natta Owen Van Natta (MySpace)


HOB: A Vision for Digital Art in San Francisco: The Launch of GAFFTA Aaron Koblin (Gray Area Foundation for the Arts)


HOB: When Can We Scale in The Mobile Web? Mary McDowell (Nokia)


Discussion: Humans As Sensors Brady Forrest (O'Reilly Media, Inc.), Markus Tripp (Mobilizy), Deborah Estrin (Computer Science Department, UCLA), Sharon Biggar (Path Intelligence), Di-Ann Eisnor (Waze)


A Conversation with Brooke Burke and Mark Cuban, Introduced by Richard Rosenblatt Richard Rosenblatt (Demand Media Inc. ), Brooke Burke (Modern Mom), Mark Cuban (HDNet, Landmark Theaters, Magnolia Pictures, Dallas Mavericks, FilesAnywhere, Radical Buy)


Relating videos:

• Videos from the Web 2.0 Summit 09 (Day1)
• Videos from the Web 2.0 Summit 09 (Day3)
• Videos from New Business Models For News Summit 2008
• The Future of Content & Telecoms: Flat Rate Content Bundles and Social Media (Gerd Leonhard @ eComm 2009)
• Did you know 4.0 - The changing media landscape
• Interview with Marissa Mayer on The future of Google, on Charlie Rose

Tnooz: first BOOT story on Tnooz live on Augmented Reality, EveryYou and more

My first story for the new Tnooz site is live called "Augmented Reality, mobile, search and (maybe) getting it wrong". As well as touching on Augmented reality and mobile apps I give even more background and analysis on my emerging EveryYou concept. Read the full story here.

M-Pesa and the Special Report on Telecoms in Emerging Markets

An interesting special report from The Economist Sep 26th 2009, on Telecoms in the emerging markets on how information makes markets more efficient and how mobild phone penetration in developing countries affect GDP. Examples of mobile money from Kenya where half of the population have phones, and 20% of the population uses phones for mobile money with M-Pesa which is different from buying air time.

M-Pesa replaces bank accounts with mobile bank accounts that are free of charge. Transactions (not free of charge) are performed with SMS which are sent by a little application on the SIM card developed by Sagentia (later transferring to IBM) for Vodafone. The concept was created to allow microfinance borrowers to receive and repay loans and has evolved into banking services enabling users to deposit and withdraw money, transfer money to other users and non-users, pay bills, and purchase airtime.

"If I want to send $20 to my mother back at home in a village, I go to the guy on the corner where I buy my scratch cards and I give him the money and he types a few things into his handset and i get a message saying that my money has gone into my mobile account and I can then by sending another little text message send a message to my mum that says here is the $20 and then she takes that message to the phone operator in her village who gives her the cash. Much cheaper, faster and more reliable than the alternatives."

More reading:

A summary of the report and the full report.

Related post:

Microfinance - Providing capital and services in new ways

Columbus State University goes mobile with Google Apps

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations at Columbus State University's Office of Information and Technology Services, as our guest blogger today. Robert's post describes how his school has provided real-time access to student information using Google Mobile Apps.

Columbus State University, located in Columbus, Georgia, started using Google Apps Education Edition in early 2009 and has since successfully implemented Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and Google Video on campus. One challenge for our university, as with many others in today’s economy, is that student enrollment continues to rise while budgets remain flat. Accordingly, it's been pretty tough for us to keep pace with the IT demand.

We recently surveyed our students and learned that, no surprisingly, they strongly preferred to communicate with our school via cell phone andPDA . So we thought that we could get ahead of the curve by offering information live on these devices, allowing our students access to the latest information available and being able to avoid lines and other communications slow-downs, especially at the beginning of new terms.

To solve our problem we looked to Google for guidance on how to interface Google Mobile Apps with our Student Information System. We began our development process using the tools provided through Google’s online developer kit and even enlisted some Columbus State University students to take part in the project by taking advantage of the Android for Beginners group.

Thanks to this integration, the information we are now able to provide in real-time from our Student Information System onto cell phones and PDAs includes:

• Student Account Information – amount owed, refund available, holds on account
• Student Scholastic Information – GPA, adviser contact and grades
• Student’s Individual Schedule of Classes
• Required Documents – Financial Aid, Immunization
• University Activity Schedule
• University Sports Schedule
• Shuttle Bus Schedule
• Campus Map
  
  
  

We've included two screen shots displaying what students can see on their mobile devices below:

We foresee that the use of Mobile Apps will add to our customer service capabilities and allow students to more easily find information that might otherwise require phone calls or lines. Our ultimate goal is to duplicate all of the services that we now provide to students through our university portal. By doing so students will literally have all of our services on hand at all times.

As you can see, delivering this information on a mobile device makes everything easier for our students and proactively addresses frequently asked questions, helping students successfully take charge ofthier own issues and needs.

Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations
Office of Information & Technology Services, Columbus State University

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Push mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile: the choice is yours

We believe that our customers should be able to access their information on the mobile device of their choice, using the applications of their choice. That's why we're excited today to announce support for push mail on iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. Google Apps now offers a complete mobile sync solution for businesses.

Apps customers who love native mobile applications can now get push mail, contacts and calendar across the major corporate devices: Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and of course, Android. With the over-the-air, always-on push connections, emails and changes to calendar events and contacts are reflected very quickly on their phones. And for those who prefer the mobile web, we also offer web applications for a rich experience, like threaded conversations and search across the entire inbox.

Google Sync is free to all Google Apps customers, and can be enabled by domain administrators in the US English version of the administrative control panel. If you're already using Google Sync for contacts and calendar, push mail is automatically enabled. iPhone and Windows Mobile users can set up Google Sync in a few easy steps directly from their phones, and those already syncing Calendar and Contacts can simply enable Mail sync on their phones. Google Sync is also available for people with personal Gmail and Google Calendar accounts.

You can read more about Google Sync here, and learn about our solutions for all devices, like Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, on Google Apps mobile access page.

Posted by Raju Gulabani, Product Management Director

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Preparing for WebInTravel: Reviewing the BOOT’s predictions for 2009

With TRAVELtech over it now time to prepare for WebInTravel in Singapore October 20-23. organiser Siew Hoon ask to to prepare an article prior to the conference on my thoughts on 2009 so far and beyond. Here is an edited version of submission

Back in January I made six predictions for 2009:

1. There are more airlines to go bust
2. Growth in domestic travel growth will surprise us all.
3. Consolidation is not yet finished:
4. 2009 will not be the year of mobile for the travel industry:
5. The dinosaurs (traditional offline travel companies) will screw up and come out of the GFC even weaker: and
6. The last minute model will come back.

With Q3 about to end, I will use this article as a chance to review each prediction and see how they are tracking:

1. Airlines – the list of grounded airline companies is growing each day. So far in 2009 we have lost Myair, Skyeurope, JetAmerica, East Star Airlines, Air Senegal and many others (thank you Airline Closure blog). Might still lose Frontier but on the bright side (I think) Alitalia was saved. The year is not yet over and there is vulture talk around Air Canada, US Airways, United and BMI;

2. Domestic travel – The Google results for “boom in domestic travel” produce a list of some 186,000 results touting the growth in domestic markets around the world including supplier sites, news site and DMO sites. The mashup word Staycation has entered our vernacular (despite its cringeworthiness);

3. Consolidation – We have not seen the consolidation I expected at the start of the year. There as some tuck-in deals but no multi-hundred million dollar deals to talk about. Instead we have seen no slow down in travel start ups raising funds. The WSJ carries a list of ten of the most notable (including Tripwolf, Dealbase, TVTrip and Yapta);

4. 2009 and mobile: This was my most controversial prediction and many did not agree with me. The argument in favour of my prediction is that bookings of travel via mobile phones apps (outside of Korea and Japan) are still very small and arguably inconsequential to the $150+ billion online travel industry. Arguing against my prediction is the near unstoppable growth of smart phone sales (Blackberry, iPhone, Palm etc) (see Norm Rose’s recent post on this) and the amazing display of augmented reality mobile applications recently captured on Mashable including Nearest Tube and Wikitude;

5. Death of the dinosaurs: In my part of the world Stella Travel is half the company it was a year ago and Flight Centre’s profits have fallen dramatically. But it is not their financial results or size that interest me; it is the continued denial by the leadership of those companies that they need to take the online world seriously. Peter Lacaze of Stella is a known online travel sceptic. He is recently quoted on TravelTrends as saying “not in my lifetime” in response to a question about the internet taking over half the market in Australia (despite the fact that this is already the case in the US). Flight Centre’s Graham Turner spoke at length after his FY09 annual results (see TravelToday pdf here) on how little he was worried about online travel companies and that they were not a threat to his business. Instead of taking the chances offered by a downturn to invest in new areas Lacaze and Turner continue to tell themselves that they don’t need to worry about online; and

6. Lastminute is back: This was the easiest prediction to make and have come true. There is data out there on reductions in lead times but the best form of proof is for you to do a search on any major online hotel player for check in tomorrow night and look at the deals that are available. The piece that surprised me was the parallel strength of the advance purchase side of the market.

There is one other thing I have my eye on for the rest of the year and beyond. It is the work that retail sites (like OTAs), search sites (like meta-search), content sites (like review sites) and discovery and inspiration sites are doing to personalise deals, search results and content streams down to the level of the individual. Much like how my twitter stream is different to every other stream because my follow list is a unique combination. Based on a concept known as individuation, I call this “EveryYou” . Stay turned for more on this topic during my WIT 2009 presentation and in later posts on the Business Of Online Travel.

Google Apps connects with BlackBerry Enterprise Server

More than 3,000 businesses adopt Google Apps every day. They range from ten-person companies who switch in a few hours to large companies and universities that plan their move from on-premises servers over weeks and months. Ensuring a smooth change is a big priority for us, and we're making the transition a little easier for mobile users.

We're pleased to announce the upcoming release of the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server. This new software component will make it even easier for mobile users to use Google Apps on BlackBerry® smartphones. It allows users to access Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts using the built-in BlackBerry smartphone applications they already know and love.

For instance, users can instantly receive Gmail messages within the built-in email client on their Blackberry smartphones. And they can continue to use the same shortcuts to manage their BlackBerry messages.

New meeting invites and event changes in Google Calendar are immediately updated on the BlackBerry Calendar, keeping both calendars in sync. Users can also access the email addresses and phone numbers of their co-workers using a company wide Global Address List. Both personal and business contacts saved on Google Apps are automatically synchronized over the air to users' BlackBerry smartphones and integrated into the native Blackberry smartphone applications.

The transition for IT administrators is also seamless. Admins are given full control of the solution and can continue to manage BlackBerry smartphones using BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Google Apps Connector installs on BlackBerry Enterprise server, connecting it to the Google Apps cloud and synchronizing email, calendar and contacts for all BlackBerry smartphone users.

Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server is currently in beta testing with select companies and universities, and will be available free of charge to all Premier and Education Edition customers this July. Those of you who enjoy the Gmail experience with conversations, labels and full search capabilities can continue to use Gmail for mobile.

Learn more: The Google Apps Connector team is at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES) in Orlando, Florida this week. If you're also attending this conference, come visit us at Booth #105. We'll also be giving a live demo at our breakout session on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 11am EST. Hope to see you there.

Posted by Raju Gulabani, Product Management Director

Improvements to Gmail and Calendar on iPhone and Android-powered devices

It's important for business users to have fast, easy access to their email and calendars when they're on the go – even when cell phone reception is limited. That's why we're happy to tell you about new speed and functionality improvements for Gmail and for Google Calendar for the iPhone and for Android-powered devices. Click through the links to read descriptions on the Google Mobile Blog, and to watch a video overviewing the new features.

To access these mobile apps, browse to http://www.google.com/m/a/example.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device (you'll need to replace "example.com" with your organization's domain name.) Continue by clicking the link for either Gmail or Calendar.

Posted by by Debbie Leight, Google Apps team

EVERYONE'S NOT ATWITTER

Journalists and technology writers are enamored with communications technology and tend to portray successful technologies as representing large scale trends. We are regularly presented with news stories and promotional materials about the rise of new technologies and about how their uses create social trend that are significantly altering society.

The release of the new iPhone was recently featured on network evening news, Blackberry has been heavily discussed because its use by Pres. Obama, and Twitter has been featured in numerous television and newspaper stories. The impression given by coverage is that anyone who doesn’t have an iPhone or Blackberry and anyone who doesn’t Twitter is out of touch with the mainstream and being left out of modern society.

These new means of communications offer interesting possibilities, but their consumption needs to be seen realistically. Blackberry, for example, has 14 million subscribers-- about 5 percent of all mobile phone users in the US. iPhones represents about 1 percent of mobile phone users. The number of Twitter users is currently around 1 million, representing only about 3 tenths of 1 percent of the US population.

Certainly those kinds of numbers can create businesses successes for their firms, but we have to be realistic in interpreting their overall impact on technology markets, social interaction, and diffusion of technologies. Not everyone wants to or will be equally wired, communicating, or sharing mundane details of their lives with their friends and the world. Some persons will find communications enabling technologies more rewarding in business and personal terms than other persons.

It is easy to forget the size of market when discussing the impact of diffusion of technologies. Without doing so, however, one gets a warped sense of their role in contemporary life.

Marriott, Hilon and Omni reporting growth in sales via mobile - but I still believe that 2009 is not the year for mobile

Advertising Age's Rita Chang has a story in Advertising Age on increased mobile distribution for hotel chains called "Mobile Hotel Bookings Show ROT in Recession". Highlights from the story are:

• Marriott reporting US$2million in sales via mobile from Aug 2008 to 31 Dec 2008;
• Omni Hotels claiming 85% growth in traffic to the mobile in just six months - with conversion rates of 25% (compares to 3.5%-7% on the web version of their site); and
• Hilton Hotels talking about a 22% "return on investment" (whatever that means) including $1.4 million in bookings "in an average 100-day period" (again not sure what that means)
  

In my predictions post for 2009 I said that 2009 will not be the year for mobile in the travel industry because most distribution players will focus on their core products rather than new distribution ideas. This is not a popular prediction. PhoCuWright (respectfully) don't agree with me both through their Trends for 2009 report where they predict that "Mobile Arrives (finally) - and Gets Contextual" and in Norm Rose's reply to my prediction is here. My former Cendant colleagues at Hudson Crossing also don't agree in their Trends in Travel Investment 2009 report (pdf) where Mike McCormick predicts that Mobile will begin to "emerge, converge and finally arrive in travel". More than half of the commentators in Travolution's Predictions for 2009 also disagree with me.

The beauty of this Advertising Age report is that each of us can use the numbers to support our case. I can say that the results are so small and off such a low base that they show that mobile is still a year or more away from having the impact we have been waiting for since 2000. The pro-mobile camp can use the growth rates, the penetration of smart phones and the return of the last minute model - all before the end of Feb 2009- as proof that mobile is picking up speed and headed for victory in 2009.

So where do you stand? Am I mad to swim upstream against the other commentators on mobile in 2009?

Update - Jakob Neilsen has an interesting post on the usability on Internet via mobile called Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998 that (I think) supports my view (found it at Hotelmarketing.com).

Hat tip to nakedbearmedia for sending me the Advertising Age link

thanks to Matthieu :: giik.net/blog over at flickr for the photo

Sync Google Apps with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices

For workers on the go, having up-to-date calendar and contacts information is crucial. Knowing about last-minute changes to schedules can mean the difference between winning and losing a big deal. Today, we're happy to announce two-way push sync of calendar and contact information for Google Apps users with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices. We're also releasing contact sync for mobile devices that support SyncML.

With Google Sync, whether users make changes to calendar events and contacts from their browsers or mobile devices, changes will be reflected in both places automatically, within minutes. And because Google Sync ties directly into devices' pre-installed calendar and contacts applications, employees don't need to learn a new interface.

To get started, Google Sync must be enabled for your domain from the Google Apps control panel. Then, employees will be able to configure Google Sync from their devices. The instructions for each type of phone are different, so check out our help center for device specific information.

Before getting started with this beta release, please take a minute to review some syncing limitations we're aware of with the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. Also, keep in mind that Google Sync will replace all existing contacts and calendar information on your phone, so make sure to back up any important data before you get started.

For more information, visit m.google.com/sync.

Posted by Debbie Leight, Google Apps Team