[Sigia-l] IA/interaction of Location (was dream career advice)

[Sean Lawrence]

Well there was always the bizarre fascination the entrepreneuring MBA's of
the dotcom era had with creating a 'service glut' where they seem to think
folks have an infinite reserve of money to continually expand and support
their monthly service fees.  Generally, it seems, from a consumer
perspective devices can support one, possibly two, services.  TV-cable(and
in some instances TiVO), PC-Internet, Phone-phone service, Cell-phone
service.  Certainly, there is long distance and some dial up impacts phone
costs but these are leveraging existent, controllable services, but
essentially, it strikes me that it's a one to one ratio generally.

Intuitively, it doesn't seem that folks are going to pay for a tremndous
amount of fees past a certain level.  That's why I've always thought that
Nielsen's notion of the Web content becoming a click and pay model will
never happen.  I don't thinig people aren't going to click all over the web
to receive a bill for content at the eom when they are already paying for
access to the Internet.  The subscription or donation models might work for
web content.

But I digress, with a GPS phone with integrated web and phone service, you
could meet such a criterion if you use existing services.  I think it's a
matter of being focused, delivering real perceived value AND quality, and
leveraging existing methods that provide integrated services without a big
hit to the pocket book.  Right now, the technology is there, it's delivering
the services at a cost conscious rate for consumers that allows companies to
make a profit that is the bottlekneck.  But I think that time and innovation
will allow the two main criteria to converge and it will deliver.  So what I
am trying to say with the rambling post is that when companies devise an
affordable, integrated fee structure, mobile, predictive devices will be a
reality.

Okay way OT but what else is this list for :^)

----- Original Message ----- 
> Towards the end of the dotcom crash we had many startups with iterations
of
> this notion. One of the most ambitious was MicroStrategy, which had
notions
> of enabling local governments with such capabilities for various services
> you can imagine. Virtually all these schemes flopped. There's a lesson
> there, but going more deeply into it would get us more into the off-topic
> terrain that we are in. :-)
>