SMS in Australia vs the US

OK, for those that aren't really sure, I just want to give some background here just so you can appreciate where I'm going from on this one.

Our business model is focused generally around business SMS as a core product, and premium rate SMS as a secondary product - we do it, and have a number of customers, etc... however it's fair to say that business SMS is really our bread and butter.

Over the last year and a half, the one thing I have seen which is fairly common is that customers looking to take SMS on within their business generally don't really have a good understanding of things such as MSISDN's or what we refer to as virtual numbers - a virtual number is really the same as a mobile number except it's not attached to a SIM card - it allows for two-way communication as the networks route the messages back through that path.

This is the same for many countries - probably the most similar would be the likes of New Zealand and the UK.

Also, we as a country are subject to abiding by anti-spam laws which effective say you can't send a marketing SMS to someone you don't know (i.e. buy a marketing list), and you need an easy opt out on the service - certain parts are a little less clear with regards to implied consent, etc... but you can definitely send informational messages, such as "don't forget your appointment" and that kind of thing.

Typically the most common uses for SMS are internal communications like server alerts or an easy way to contact external staff members and so on. The other use are reminders, whether that be from your accountant about your BAS statements, restaurant bookings, job alerts and so on - and all of these are perfectly legitimate - and generally are very helpful as well as acting as a cost saving to the business which is always good news.

The US however are somewhat different.

Probably one of the most challenging things to communicate through to people is the difference between Australia and the US.

The US is a lot more conservative when it comes to SMS in an attempt to protect the greater community from unwanted SPAM - putting this into perspective it's not uncommon for a US business to receive 10-12 telemarketing calls a day and with changes in technologies businesses are constantly attempting to find new ways to sell their product that would otherwise be unguarded.

Because of this certain things aren't available in the same way (there are work arounds, but they are something generally really open to US consumers, but I'll talk about that later). MSISDN's for example aren't available as we know them here, instead messages need to be sent with a vanity number or shortcode which have been applied for through Neustar and it takes 3 months instead of around 4 weeks for a premium shortcode in Australia (depending on your timing).

People with US SIM cards can send SMS messages via the web and their phone account, however as far as I'm aware it's not really a robust enough service for a business sending any real volume out to go with.

However, that said, which is the reason for the vanity numbers in the first place, by law you are not allowed to send an SMS from application to consumer without the vanity number - and for those who have tried, the delivery rate is really poor. It's because about 20% of SMS messages into the US are blocked by US networks due to SPAM filtering - especially if someone tries to send something like 100 - 500k worth of messages it raises all kinds of bells.

The other thing is that US handsets have to subscribe to receiving the messages as well, which is another hindrance, although they do allow soft opt-in's there are penalties for being a little naughty sending messages to people who don't want them.

Generally speaking I don't think it's a bad thing, in that there are rules that you can work to, and it doesn't take a creative genius to work out ways in which you can still achieve want you want to do - like stick a clause into your T&C's that they may receive these messages, they can always unsubscribe if they don't want to receive them.

Because we're all people and concerned with ourselves and the ways we would like things to work first before thinking about the rest of the community I know that people wishing to setup server alerts, and contact staff members like roaming engineers about breakdowns and certain plants probably think it's ridiculous - and in their circumstance they might be right, but it's about having one set of rules that encompass everything and working to the minority in order to please the majority.

Instead I think the biggest burden is two fold - it's the setup time it takes in order to get a dedicated vanity number, and the costs involved. truth be told, the actual costs of sending messages are pretty much on a par with sending messages within local countries through local networks.

The only thing in their defence I would say is look at your market size - 300 million people isn't quite the size of China or India, but if you were serious about it, I think it's probably a fair statement to make that actually US citizens have more disposable income on average to spend on the products/services you are selling.

They are 15 times the population of Australia, 5 times the population of the UK and 75 times the population of New Zealand, so it's reasonable to expect operating costs will be higher - higher setups/monthlies on the SMS service, higher advertising costs online, and in various publications - but also a bigger opportunity to make even more money than in other countries so before you shy away, I would say really think about the possibilities rather than the bare costs alone - as they say you need to spend money to make it.

Cheers,
C

How to get a free upgrade on your long haul flights

I know what you're thinking - upgrades are urban myths!

Believe me, I used to have the same belief as you - especially when I flew enough to attain silver level on my frequent flyer program that I signed up to within a matter of a handful of months and nothing.

It didn't matter if I was flying by myself, or with someone or if I asked for it or asked for nothing and got zippo!

Any each time I would think to myself, how the hell do you get it - I'd spoken to people previously who got it for random things, like there was a baby next to them or something like that - one time flying out of Hong Kong I was showered down upon during take off from all the condensation built up in the fuselage, and I'm talking I was soaked properly.

It was too the point that I was put into a crew seat which had no entrainment or leg room only to be returned to a seat that had plastic down on it - now imagine planes aren't generally the best air conditioned vehicles in the world at the best of times, and wearing a pair of jeans whilst you're sitting in the same seat and virtually the same positions for hours can cause you to get a little sweaty, even for the less sweaty amongst us!

Don't get me wrong, I was given a nice bottle of wine down from first class - but I would have preferred a business class seat for my troubles.

It wasn't until I was leaving Heathrow one day back to Melbourne and it happened - well not straight away (that I knew).

Heathrow is a bloody busy place at the best of times, let alone on a Saturday afternoon - the queues were massive in all directions, and I knew I had my silver class which gives me priority check in so I went to the business check in only to be sent down the other end. Wheeling my luggage down, I then got told to go back to where I'd just been?

Half way down, I saw the priority bag drop, so I went onto the screen checked in and over to the desk to throw the bags on - now to give you a better idea, I was wearing a very lovely V-neck jumper I bought from H&M which was very preppy (which is funny, because I'm not the preppy kind of guy) and had my Polo by Ralf Lauren scarf that I just picked up from Harrods after lunch there (very nice) - so I was pretty well dressed, plus the fact I'm incredibly good looking (not as good looking as the class referred to in an earlier bog "hot guys vs hot girls" but right up there.

I checked, didn't say too much, and went through.

I sat at the gate waiting to board - now I typically am very happy to be the last one walking down the aisle of the plane, because lets face it what's the first guy on there thinking? "Oh, I'll get on early and get comfortable wedge my legs in under the seat between the bar and the box for the entertainment" - what? No thanks...

Just as the last few were walking through the gate I lined up in the queue - now what makes me laugh now is that there was this really obnoxious bloke in the queue over talking about upgrades and how he always mentions he's a silver level, blah blah blah - I'm thinking yeah good on you mate. I walk through hand over my boarding pass only to be told "Mr Bartlett, you've been upgraded"

That was ace - so ace that when we pulled into Bangkok I didn't get off in case they changed their mind half way through!

Then just recently going back to the UK, this time with my girlfriend (sorry ladies - the sounds of hearts breaking everywhere), just as we were walking to the car, I changed my mind and went back inside to change - I was wearing a pair of cargo shorts, a hoody and thongs (for your feet) and put some nice jeans and V-neck on - still with the thongs though.

At the airport back through the business check in I must admit I did have to argue a little to let the woman check us in there (which I'm fairly confident was never going to do me any favours), but then we settled into conversation about why we were going, blah blah, when it happened - "I have some great news you've been upgraded to business!"

You wouldn't believe twice in a row - and all the way through as well!

The best thing apart from better food, wine and bed about upgrades is you get to take a shower and reset during the stop overs - it's so much more comfortable, plus you get free pyjamas as well!

So now I know V-necks definitely work.

Coming back, however was a different story - again this time with my Gant V-neck (very nice) and Polo scarf (in case you missed before, very nice) - however, the night before I'd been out in Islington with some mates finishing at the Walk About, an Australian themed pub somewhat lacking in Australian, but anyway... My eyes were puffy and a little bit closed, and I'd been a little bit sick that morning, combined with a definite air of bourbon and snake bites (I think I'll do something on snake bites at some stage too) - fully expecting to get an upgrade through sheer pity, but no, nothing damn it!

So there we have it, I believe the combination to those magical upgrades - a nice V-neck jumper, and/or scarf, and devoid of smells from the night before!

SMS being used in irrigation investigations for more efficent water usage

It's probably a fair comment to say that when it comes to business' using SMS they most likely to be used for sending appointment reminders, or marketing updates or service alerts - and it's all great and more the diverse our customer become helps improve ourselves as to the level of advice we can give new customers coming on board.

However, one of our customer, the CSIRO, are looking at the effectiveness of SMS for Decision Support Services - basically software solutions that can help advise irrigators on the soil, plants and weather.

Now some people's peepers maybe drawing shut slowly and they think this might be a bit technical and what not - however, according to the initial research paper by Nicholas Carr irrigators in Australia use 60-70% of all water consumed in Australia. Further to that according to previous studies by the CSIRO, these Decision Support Systems, or DSS, showed a reduction in water use by sugar cane farmers from 35-40 mega litres per hectare down to an average of 21 mega litres! That's almost a reduction of 50% on their water usage which benefits everyone in a number of ways.

First off it benefits us from the farmers having lower operating costs that don't need to be passed on so farmed products are cheaper - it also means that as precious as water is as a resource, we are then able to allocate elsewhere helping to relieve some of the pressure points building from a lack of rain and water resources.

But how does SMS come into the picture. A major flaw in using DSS is the fact that farmers just aren't taking up the services the way you would have thought they would - this could be because they're old school and don't really use computers, to only using computers for accounting. Other reasons could be the fact that to get the information from their home to the farm where the work is carried out maybe too difficult, or inconsistent - really there are a whole host of reasons obstructing the farmer from effectively making use of the information available.

So the solution as part of the research was to use SMS for the delivery of the information. it means that the farmers are able to retrieve information quickly and easily on site and able to go back and retrieve the information on a timely basis.

Now at this stage the study only includes water balance, but leans towards a larger scope for use with SMS in both an interactive or non-interactive applications that would vastly improve the use of DSS and the water consumption in Australia.

Time travel

Alright, I'm on a blogging roll - and really none of these have anything to do with SMS, yet I some how manage to work them into every blog I do - see I've already done it!

I've listened to Steve Hawking's book "The Universe In a Nutshell" heaps of times - I really like it, every time I listen to it I have more and more idea's about what he's saying. I guess that makes me a philosophiser, because I could never do any of the calculations of the hypothesis I was coming up with.

In the book he talks about time travel and whether it's possible to move forwards or backwards in time - to tell you the ending, he says that you could move forward in time, but the chances of moving back in time is too large for me to bother telling you the odds, but to say it's something like a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion to the power of 10 to 1 - imagine putting down a $1.00 bet at the TAB on that one? I'm pretty sure that if it ever came off they'd struggle to pay the bet out!

You see time it relative - an experiment was carried out with two highly precise clocks, one each on it's own plane. One plane went west and the other went east until the came to the same spot. The clock on the plane that went east showed a slightly different time, by a fraction of a second, to the plane that went west and in his words if you wanted to live longer fly east.

So there for moving forward in time is possible, however because time is relative, it would take so much energy to move forward in time that no government could bare the cost of project.

This is where I stop understanding why moving backward in time isn't possible. Now we know, or more accurately believe that dark stars, or black holes exist - they are dead planets that are falling into themselves and dragging everything around it in, including light. They are many times bigger than our sun and made of dark matter. So here's my idea, if we ever located a black hole, why could we not slingshot ourselves around these dark bodies to shift our position in time? Because time is relative as we moved around the orbit of the black hole, to observers our speeds would change however perceptually to ourselves orbiting the body time would continue as we have always known it. Therefore we would be using the negative energy of the dark matter to move forwards, or backwards in time?

The other thing that I think of, and I don't know how possible it is, is the ability to use dark matter in a negative way to move ourselves back in time?

What I mean is if I wanted to create warms I take a log burn it and the energy used creates heat. If I want to create a blast to push something at speed, again I burn a fuel and send the object off to where I want it to get to - but what's the opposite of that? And what would the effect of doing the opposite to dark matter be? How would it change?

So imagine for a moment that I need to use a lot of energy to move forwards in time, so therefore if I did the opposite to dark matter could I move backwards in time?


Just a thought?

Hot guys vs hot girls

Nino were talking today about hot girls - I think I can talk about this because it's just an observation and not directly about anyone, so we'll see how we get on - P.S. this has nothing really to do with SMS.

When I was down stairs collecting some faxes from our receptionist, a very attractive female walked through the door and of course I played it super cool and barely acknowledged her enter. And as I stood there I thought "I wonder why she is here?" knowing the types of businesses in the building there's nothing here that would get customers or anything like that - however she made a call and out came a psychologist and they walked off down the hall together.

Now I have no idea what they were doing, she could have been a friend, niece, daughter of a friend, anything - so I'm not supposing that she was coco banana's in any way.

I came up and as blokes do shared the information that there was a rather attractive female in the building and she walked off with the psychologist - this puts me in a really bad situation, but you have to understand that our work place is a rather uneventful place where not much happens we chad about mundane things, and I would have probably said the same thing had there been a very good looking bloke (probably not, but maybe).

Nino mentioned that a lot of hot girls/women tend to be insecure which to us is crazy because in actual fact I think the average guy puts these people on pedestals and would probably go to greater lengths to please them then their own partners! So what is it? Is it that because they are so attractive, their goal in life then is to become even more attractive - a bit like a fast 100m sprinter strives to become even faster?

In my opinion what I think it is, is the fact that these girls are attracted to really hot guys - now Nino and i are reasonably attractive guys, so we're not exactly inexperienced in the ways of hot girls, but stunning oddness's? Well, I'm probably not. So it's like this, us average to reasonable looking guys have to work really hard at being charming, interesting and make them laugh, whilst showing them that we have more than enough money in our wallets to afford them champagne all night. However, really hot guys don't have the problem, because girls are actually more interested in the way you move through a crowd, how tall you are and how good looking you are - it's when their primeval instincts come in. Then after a period, they begin to become emotionally attracted, but these guys don't.

All their life, the guys have been able to walk from one female to the next, so subconsciously never developed ability to feel and become emotionally attached - the side effect of this is they can behave in any way they want and get away with it, because by this stage the female has been so emotionally attached she now doesn't want to leave him because she's "in love" and he continues to treat her anyway he likes because he knows no different and over time has been programmed as such.

So the only thing I can think which would resolve these issues is to evolve into beings with no eyes - or from teenagers we SMS date each other - no WAP Push or MMS allowed - and after a period of time where feelings and attachments have been allowed to grow and develop then can we see each other allowing us to be able to fall in love with the person and not the picture.

Just my two cents worth in the way of love, and doing what I can to unwind the mystery of the universe!


Cheers,
C

My latest Blogs

If you are reading my latest blog - please scroll down and read part 1 first, it might make a little more sense, maybe?

Also, feel free to leave any comments!

If SMS is the now, then what's in the future? Part 2

I know I said that I would do this tomorrow, but I couldn't help it - plus I thought I might forget about what I was thinking about so I'm doing it now - in fact I only managed to last a couple of hours in between part 1 and part 2 - not really worth having a part 2 to be fair, but anyway.

So getting back to it - SMS is now apparently considered to be the most popular for of messaging in the world today, and thinking about it there is some way to go, however certain services like Premium Rate SMS may not be as we know it now, may develop into something more useful and meaningful rather than tits and bums on your mobile - which you could do yourself with a USB cable the knowledge of the sites that you would like to have on your mobile!

No we have a long way to go - I think I may have mentioned this before, but I really think that we will know when SMS has hit it's peak and plateaued is when mobiles start coming out with SPAM filters for SMS, that's when people will look for a workable alternative.

So what is the alternative? Well, for those not in the know (obviously I am not one of those, otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you about it) there is a new technology that is being developed known as brain actuated technology - what? Yes it's actuated by the brain - no hands in other words, think it and it shall be done. I have seen something where a guy had an accident and was rendered a quadriplegic and so he became a subject in a raft of experiments where they hooked his brain up to a PC and tried to get him to think about moving the cursor.

Now, before you go cutting holes in your head and sticking your HDMI cable into yourself, wait for a moment, it took him forever and playing chess would be absolutely painful - as I know it, the technology works on the basis that for every function/message/reply, etc... the brain does it works on a particular electrical frequency so functions to do with the eyes are a different function than functions to do with your right arm.

Knowing this, we can develop technology that picks up on these frequencies and set a command to them that can be carried out by a computer - in fact I would dare to say that as we are conscious of what we are doing, we would probably develop new frequencies for these functions?

So here's the really far out part - in the future I think that it's absolutely possible to in fact be wired up via the brain and communicate across networks without having to use our fingers or hands - or even voice for that matter. This may be our way of developing telepathic communication, we think a sentence which produces a series of electrical frequencies and thought to voice software can then translate what I say into an audible sentence - or even better, the other person picks up on those frequencies and understands them as they trigger their own mind as if it's there own thought coming from you - a bit like being schizophrenic but not really.

The only thing that would hold us back would be our ability to clearly interpret what was being said, as well as what we thought as I think we're all guilty at one point of thinking things that we don't say, otherwise it would be limitless the possibilities.

It could get to the part where as long as we can keep the brain alive, we could turn into robots and live forever!! I know, it's becoming a bit like Futurama, but it could be true one day!