Category: Commercial Intelligence

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Journal: Unlicensed Spectrum Open for Super Wi-Fi

Autonomous Internet, Commercial Intelligence

Here it comes: ‘Super WiFi'

Todd Bishop on Thursday, September 23, 2010, 11:17am PD

Microsoft, Google and other tech companies won a key victory in Washington, D.C., today as the Federal Communications Commission moved to open up vacant spectrum between television channels for unlicensed use by wireless devices — a development expected to lead to a powerful new form of wireless Internet access.

Tip of the Hat to  Dawn Yankeelov at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This is the beginning of the end of any telecommunications business that does not realize that it is in the business of software, services, and sense-making.  Burning Man this year demonstrated that OpenBTS and related open technologies are ready for prime time.   Below is our newest graphic (click to see full size).

Telecommunications Sweet Spot
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Journal: Automated Payments/Transaction Tax

Commercial Intelligence

Home Page

The APT Tax

Instead of personal income tax, corporate income tax, state tax, fuel tax, capital gains tax, gift tax. estate tax, excise tax, sales tax

One very low universal tax Automatically and Immediately Collected

No Tax Returns, No Lobbying for Special Interests, No Special Deductions

Is it possible to have a system of taxation which is simple, efficient, progressive, and revenue neutral replacing all those taxes listed above? As it turns out, Yes.

Read  Below or Go Directly to the Site Home Page with Other Links Not Visible Here

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Journal: When High-Cost is GOOD

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

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Cost reduction for high-end markets

If you sell at the top of the market (luxury travel, services to Fortune 500 companies, financial services for the wealthy…) you might be tempted to figure out ways to cut costs and become more efficient.

After all, if you save a dollar, you make a dollar, without even getting a new customer.

Resist.

The goal shouldn't be to reduce costs. It should be to increase them.

That voice mail service that saves you $30,000 a year in receptionist costs–it also makes you much more similar to a competitor that is more efficiently serving the middle of the market.

Go through all the ways you serve your customers and make them more expensive to execute, not less. Your loyalty and your market share will both grow. People who can afford to pay for service often choose to pay for service.

Phi Beta Iota: What Master Seth is not making explicit is that HUMANS costs more than devices, and the REASON humans cost most is because at the high end, HUMANS offer creative adaptability, instant understanding of nuances, emotional calibration, and a deeply HUMAN connection to the client.  Call centers are the high end of the low end.  Capitalism took a wrong turn in commoditizing humans and treating labor costs as something to be reduced.  It is the human web of knowledge that undergirds the advance of civilization, NOT the “things” that we buy and trash.

See Also:

Review: Philosophy and the Social Problem–The Annotated Edition

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: Kyrgyzstan Hybrid Governance

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Kyrgyzstan- Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states will help Kyrgyzstan stabilize the situation in the country's southern region, a source in the Russian Federal Security Service said 23 September after a regional SCO anti-terrorism council meeting, Interfax reported.

The council decided that law-enforcement agencies of member states will assist Kyrgyzstan maintain security by organizing information exchanges regarding regional militant activities, the source said. The source also said the council elected Chinese Deputy Minister for Public Security Meng Hongwei to chair the anti-terrorism council for one year. The council is set to meet next in Usbekistan in March 2011. Representatives from Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan attended the meeting.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Moscow-centered Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) declined to undertake a more intrusive intervention mission. The Beijing-led SCO mission is primarily an intelligence exchange, but potentially affords China unprecedented access to information about central Asian security issues. The SCO will accrue positive publicity for its limited mission, upstaging the CSTO.

The Chinese-led organization looks cooperative. The Russian-led organization looks timid. This in fact confuses different missions and burdens, but the public perception is likely to favor the Chinese-led initiative in the Russian sphere of influence.

Kyrgyzstan-Russia: Issues between Russia and Kyrgyzstan over Russia's military bases in Kyrgyzstan have been addressed and an agreement will be signed, probably on the 24

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Russians have four military facilities or bases in Kyrgyzstan, including Kant air base. Under the new agreement they will be consolidated in a single command structure and all will be governed by the new agreement, instead of four separate agreements. Russia's lease will probably be good for the next four or five decades.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: Reference: Global Governance 2025 completely missed both the Hybrid and the Open models of governance that are displacing institutionalized ineptitude now characteristic of most governments, all unable to micro-manage complexity or achieve resilience.  The above report suggests that Kyryzstan could be an early node where multinational information-sharing and sense-making is more influential, more effective, and more profitable, than standing military bases, but the two can co-exist.  See also Worth a Look: Future of Business is Information Sharing.  To appreciate such nuances one needs a strategic analytic modeland the inclination to actually understand the eight tribes of intelligence, “true costs,” and all other aspect of holistic reality.

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Journal: Oracle Up, Google Down, Band Plays On…

Commercial Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Mobile

Oracle Growth Plans Worry Rivals and Customers

Full Story Online

ASHLEE VANCE September 21, 2010

EXTRACT 1:  But Oracle’s annual takeover of San Francisco pales against its larger ambitions — to supply just about all the technology, software and hardware, that businesses might need. This sweeping agenda has rattled the nerves of customers, who fear that Oracle has its own best interests, not theirs, at heart. The worry is that instead of saving money, customers will end up paying more over the long term, and that Oracle, already known for its aggressive tactics, will use its strong position in software to gain even more leverage over a larger array of products.

EXTRACT 2:  Like it or not, many of the largest technology companies — H.P., I.B.M., Cisco Systems and Oracle — have made their data center conquest plans clear. Oracle now competes directly with its partners H.P. and Dell, as does Cisco, the networking specialist, through its move into computer servers. Meanwhile, H.P., once one of Cisco’s closest allies, has begun a major assault in the networking arena.

Phi Beta Iota: In our view, secure reliable continuous interoperability with constantly-changing customers and constantly-changing networks of temporary partners–and real-time decision-support from across unstructured constantly changing multi-media multi-lingual information, is going to define the communications, computing, and public intelligence challenge of the 21st Century.

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Journal: Consumers Want Commerce with Causes

Commercial Intelligence

SURVEY SAYS…
Consumers for a Cause

September 16, 2010 – 41% of Americans claim that they have purchased a product within the last 12 months due to the brand’s affiliation with a social or environmental cause and 83% of consumers say that they want more products that they use to benefit causes that they personally care about, says a new study issued this week by Cone.

The “2010 Cone Cause Evolution Study,” which is surveyed yearly and started in 1993, shows that over its 17 year history , consumer appetite for brands associated with causes had more than doubled, from 20% to 41%.

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Tip of the Hat to Seena Sharp at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: “Causes” are the beginning of public intelligence.  As Paul Hawkin has documented so well, the “causes” of human rights and environmental responsibility have tended to merge, and we now have websites that help individuals establish their social values and then identify compliant products and services.  Missing still is a holistic approach to causes, to commerce, and to public intelligence that focuses on educating the consumer who then moves markets.

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Journal: Google Expands Open Source Platform

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Mobile, Technologies

Source Seeker

Google Code wants to become a bigger source forge by Julie BortGoogle Code hosts more than 250,000 open source projects but until last week, only allowed projects that used a limited number of licenses. But on Friday, Google announced it would leave the license discrimination to the folks that do it best, the Open Source Initiative. It will now accept into its forge projects covered by any OSI license. Open source licenses are abundant because a developer that creates something has the right to choose the conditions on a project when sharing it. Phil… 2