What would Google look like if you took it offline and forced it to set up in physical space?
Google's tens of thousands of commodity Linux servers would need to be scattered around the globe so as to collect and then aggregate consumer interest. A lot like Path Intelligence, in other words.
Tim O'Reilly invested in Path Intelligence back in 2007. After lunching with Path Intelligence CEO Toby Oliver Friday in London, I can see why. The idea is to set up receivers in shopping malls and other retail areas to collect mobile data and analyze consumer behavior to help optimize lease rates, retail setups, etc. It's a big idea. Huge, even.
But it's what comes after this initial phase that has my brain hopping.
Path Intelligence Mobile Receiver
(Credit: Path Intelligence)Path Intelligence's initial phase could prove somewhat costly, as it seems to require a sales force and hardware development/assembly to gain a critical mass of property owners to adopt its service. (The software, based on the open-source GNU Radio project, is free, which helps to keep costs down.)
But once Path Intelligence has a reasonable amount of distribution, the network effect of its business is absolute manna from heaven.
Just like Google.
Importantly, Path Intelligence is highly useful to retailers and others that want to optimize physical space (for retail, conferences/exhibitions, or whatever), even if the company never acquires another customer. If I'm an asset manager and want to know the most highly trafficked location in my shopping malls (e.g., so that I know where to charge the highest rent), I can easily get that data from Path Intelligence's service.
It dawned on me, however, that once a critical mass is attained, Path Intelligence can start selling subscriptions for the data to marketers everywhere, and could even start offering targeted advertisements to consumers while they're shopping. If I'm Ralph Lauren, I want to know that customers at Nordstrom who stop at the Faconnable display never make it to my displays, and then negotiate with Nordstrom to change my position.
And if I'm shopping at The Gap, I'd love to get an SMS ad that suggests I head to H&M for $10 off (perhaps sparked by data in the Path Intelligence system suggesting that a significant percentage of shoppers who go to The Gap later move on to H&M). It's good for me, and good for the retailer.
If this sounds like a privacy nightmare, Path Intelligence isn't blase about the issue. All information collected is anonymous and Oliver told me the company refuses business with organizations that may want to take a Big Brother approach to the data.
Google's advertising machine works because users constantly tell Google what they want. Path Intelligence, in physical space, is much the same.
It's a Very Big Idea, and very similar to Google. At scale, Google is unbelievably powerful because of the data that powers it. At scale, Path Intelligence could be the same.
Importantly, however, Google is useful to companies that simply want to search their internal documents or Web sites, just as Google Desktop is useful to individuals who want to unlock the clutter on their machines. Path Intelligence is immediately useful to retailers and property managers, but it becomes even more powerful once it has a sufficient body of data coursing through its servers.
Path Intelligence has just started raising its next round of funding. It's still in its early stages, but that's what makes it so exciting.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Somehow, CIO.com's Shane O'Neill divines that Apple's customers are dumping it in droves now that the global recession has kicked in. His evidence? A 6-percent retail sales drop in January compared to January 2008, according to NPD Group:
Apple, welcome to Earth in 2009, where premium pricing doesn't cut it anymore...We live in a time where cheap is trumping cool, and probably will until this economy turns around. That's bad news for Apple, which has no Netbook (that we know of).
This is a bold statement to make on one month's worth of data, especially when he also cites data from Hewlett-Packard, which endured a 13 percent drop in laptop revenue in its most recent quarter. Cheap(er) laptops are selling even less than Apple's.
This is the evidence that Apple is in retreat and that customers refuse to pay a premium for its quality? That its rivals are hurting even worse, as they try to sell their cheaper machines? I'm not seeing it.
The reality is that Apple already does have a "low end" Internet device to offer the market. It's called the iPhone. No, it doesn't offer a full computing experience, but then, neither do Netbooks.
The difference in the iPhone's favor, however, is that it comes with a host of applications unavailable on Windows- or Linux-based Netbooks: the App Store. True, most of these applications rarely get used after customers kick the tires on them, as CNET reports, but that's the magic: the applications are so cheap, they're disposable.
The real question for me will be whether Apple ever condescends to market the iPhone as a Netbook-type device: a comparable price tag with a nearly limitless (and cheap) application potential. I don't think that it will, and I don't think that it should.
I use a Mac for the same reason that I used to swear by IBM ThinkPads: quality. The quality was and is worth the price.
Now that I have an operating system that matches the quality of the hardware, I'll gladly pay for it. However, I'm not rushing out to buy anything right now, and I'm not alone, which is why both PC and Mac sales will continue to slide--but not in equal proportions.
I suspect that the recession will continue to hurt PC vendors more than Apple, because the PC vendors have little with which to differentiate themselves. Customers looking to buy a machine are going to increasingly look to the Mac, even in these hard times, because the Mac delivers value that exceeds its price tag.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
The news is out that Best Buy is selling Ubuntu Linux retail for $19.95. It's a nice step forward for Ubuntu, but not for Linux. It used to be possible to buy Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux retail. That's actually where I bought my first copy of SUSE Linux while working at Novell.
So, the real news isn't that it's being sold retail. The real news will be if it stays. Red Hat didn't see the value in keeping a retail distribution of Linux. Will Ubuntu?
IBM says that it isn't dropping SUSE Linux as a key part of its retail point-of-sale strategy. It's just adding Windows (WEPOS, or Windows Embedded Point-of-Sale). But for a company that has everything to gain from Linux and everything to lose from Windows (except some near-term cash), this reeks of capitulation.
IBM saw Linux POS systems spike in popularity, but that has subsided. Now it's voting with its feet:
As a rival to Microsoft in many other parts of the IT market, IBM had held out for Linux over WEPOS as long as it could. But the deal to support the Microsoft operating system should cement Linux's fate as a niche offering that is attractive mostly to grocery store chains and similarly sized hard goods retailers, such as Pep Boys or Circuit City, [market research firm IHL president Greg] Buzek said.
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