A murky crystal ball: My tech predictions for 2002

I’m not big on looking back. What’s done is done, and we play the hand we’re dealt. So I’m not going to write the traditional Top Ten Stories of 2001 column. Instead, I’m going to look ahead to 2002 and try to predict what we’ll see in the coming year.

1. The year of wireless–for the home. In 2002, wireless networking will take off. Corporate use, however, will take a back seat to home use. Families with broadband connections will use wireless networking to share a single high-speed Internet connection. That’s good news for companies like NetGear, Linksys, and D-Link, which offer complete suites of gateways and adapters.
2. .Net wait. Microsoft’s .Net Server, the sequel to Windows 2000 Server based on the Windows XP code base, will debut later than scheduled, in the second half of 2002. Before the end of the year, someone will discover a major security flaw. Most organizations, remembering the disruption of upgrading Windows NT Server to 2000, will have deferred .Net implementation, and when they do consider upgrading, the Microsoft path won’t be automatic. Any organization that considers upgrading its server platforms must consider Linux as an alternative.
3. Web services shootout. We’ll see more fully fleshed-out products that take advantage of Microsoft’s .Net framework and the Sun- and AOL-led Liberty Alliance’s framework for networked e-commerce services, but neither camp will gain a decisive advantage this year.
4. Economic aftermath. The recession will end, but the landscape is permanently changed. Good companies with innovative products disappeared when venture funding dried up and customers delayed capital purchases. Some talented programmers and network administrators will have to change careers to keep bread on their tables.

   So far, my predictions aren’t exactly daring, so now let me indulge in some more fanciful prognostication.

5. Instant mess. AOL Instant Messenger has critical mass–no one is going to displace IM from the top of the instant-messaging heap as long as the company keeps its features competitive with those of other products. However, by putting Microsoft Messenger on each Windows XP system, Microsoft makes a challenge conceivable. In 2002, some enterprising entrepreneur, a la Napster’s Shawn Fanning, will come up with a service that bridges the gap between instant-messaging systems in a way that AOL can’t block. That will force the company to license compatibility with IM in the face of realistic competition–a positive move that will lead to realistic competition among instant-messaging clients.
6. Security plus. One of the major computer retailers will offer a smart-card reader as an option on every PC it sells. That will make smart cards–credit card-sized cards with an embedded CPU and encrypted storage–the preferred candidate for strong authentication in the enterprise. Once they become common for security applications, smart cards will take off for countless applications everywhere, from storing medical records to e-cash to enabling 3G mobile phones.

7. Wireless empire. Motorola, Ericsson, or Nokia will buy mobile software pioneer OpenWave (formed by the merger of Phone.com and Software.com), owner of the WEP protocol. OpenWave will complement its new parent company’s hardware business and make it an instant powerhouse in the wireless software and services marketplace.

There you go–the report on my glimpses into a murky crystal ball. Let’s do this again next year at the same time, shall we?

Playboy.com’s seven keys to a sexy e-commerce site

In a keynote for Streaming Media East at the Internet World trade show in New York last Thursday, Christie Hefner, chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises, talked about how her organization has expanded its powerful brand from print to cable TV to the Internet, and shared some lessons that can benefit many businesses.

Here they are–her 7 keys to success.

Know your audience
Playboy appeals to young men with discretionary income willing to spend money on lifestyle products and services. That’s an attractive demographic for advertisers, and Playboy takes advantage of it by packaging Web ads with advertisements in print or on its cable TV channel.

Use the unique characteristics of the medium
Playboy’s first venture into streaming media came in the 1980s, when the company branched out into television. A key difference between TV and print, Hefner said, is that TV is a social medium. Playboy therefore designed its TV content to be watched by couples, rather than the young single male readership of the magazine.

Similarly, the company realized that the content for television, which has to grab its audience in a couple of seconds, could not be as broad as that of its magazine, and therefore concentrated solely on what Hefner daintily referred to as “sexy” material.

When Playboy moved online in 1994, long before most media outlets had a Web site, it realized that the Web was the antithesis of TV–you could put up a broad variety of content and let people choose what interested them most.

One of the unique characteristics of the Web is its interactivity. Playboy does a lot of polling on its Web site, Hefner said, along with coverage of events and real-time chats.

Use the Web to complement your other businesses
Print content is passive, while the online experience is more compelling, Hefner said. Going online let Playboy give customers a 24/7 experience, while leveraging its monthly magazine and weekly television shows.

Existing readers and viewers who visit Playboy.com find that most of the online content is not repurposed from the magazine or TV, but original. In fact, says Hefner, “Sometimes we even move content from online to TV or print.”

However, most of Playboy.com’s readers, Hefner said, are not readers of the magazine, hence they’re a new market for the organization.

Monetize your Web efforts in multiple ways
Playboy online has never had an ad-driven revenue model, though advertising is one of its revenue streams. Instead, it relies on subscriptions, shopping, and gambling.

Subscriptions to online content–which is mostly new and unique to the Web–net Playboy more than $60 a year from more than 100,000 people, Hefner said.

Last year, shopping was Playboy’s largest revenue stream online, Hefner said. The Playboy store has 2,500 items, most of which are proprietary high-margin items.

Online gaming is an evolving global business with no global brand name yet. Playboy plans to use its brand and reputation to rake in some of that money from individuals wagering on sports, casino games, and pari-mutuel racing.

Playboy.com is not in the black yet, but Hefner says it plans to achieve profitability by next year.

Develop an international presence
Having a presence in several different nations can help insulate your business against downturns in any one region. Playboy’s first full-fledged international Web site was Playboy Germany, which includes a full range of content produced by and for Germans. Earlier this month, Hefner said, it soft-launched Playboy Korea.

Cover your assets
Because so much of what Playboy can sell is photos, which are easily pirated, it is particularly vulnerable to intellectual property theft. Hefner says Playboy is willing to sue even the casual thief to aggressively deter piracy, and likened the effort to that of the neighbor who buys an alarm system to make his house less appealing to thieves. She said Playboy’s centralized digital asset management strategy is still evolving.

She also addressed the issue of site security, in light of a recent well-publicized break-in, during which customers’ credit card numbers were stolen. To its credit, Playboy disclosed the break-in and notified its customers, and is now working with security firm @stake and the FBI to pursue the hackers responsible. “We didn’t see much [negative] fallout [from the break-in],” she said.

Embrace change
In 18 months, Hefner said, online commerce and the Web will be different from what they are today. Be prepared to change with the times. For instance, Hefner says Playboy itself is now “playing around with” a dating service and exploring shared photography online.

When Playboy moved online, it had a huge advantage in its extremely well-known brand. It’s questionable whether it could have accomplished as much as it has without that running start. Hefner didn’t share any advice on building a brand. Nevertheless, she came across as credible, competent, and even classy–in short, a model CEO.

Internet World 2001: A network odyssey

I was never a Boy Scout, but I try to be prepared, anyway. When traveling, I try to anticipate possible problems and plan for contingencies. This week, I failed. But luckily, the story has a happy ending.

I brought my favorite ultralight notebook, a Sony VAIO PictureBook, with me to Internet World this week. I love this notebook because it doesn’t weigh my shoulder down, and it includes my favorite pointing device, a TrackPoint nubbin. It includes a Transmeta 600MHz processor, but I haven’t found that to be a big battery saver; I get about two hours of life, just slightly more than a much larger and heavier ThinkPad provides.

Along with the PC, I brought four–count ‘em, four–PC Card connectivity devices: a Xircom CreditCard Wireless Ethernet Adapter and Orinoco Silver, both 802.11b wireless devices that depend on having a wireless access point nearby; a Linksys PCMPC100 that requires a wired network connection; and a Sierra AirCard 300, which needs only radio access.

You’d think I was covered. You’d be wrong.

The Orinoco card has been a little flaky ever since I got it. My computer doesn’t recognize it unless I flash-update its BIOS, after which it works just fine. Anybody know what’s up with that? But it didn’t matter–the wireless adapters proved to be useless. There was no wireless connectivity anywhere at the show, not in the press room, not near the show offices, not on the show floor. What does this say about the real state of wireless adoption?

The Linksys adapter might have worked fine, had I brought along the proper driver for it. In fact, I should have picked up another PC Card adapter for which I already had a driver installed when I left my office. My mistake.

The AirCard worked fine, at first, and I used it to download the right driver for the Linksys. Unfortunately, even with the driver installed, the Linksys adapter wouldn’t work.

I turned back to the AirCard. Though it’s glacially slow, it worked–until I needed it, that is. At that point, it quit. The little LED on the side of the card turned red and refused to change to a happier color.

At that point, I would have been happy to turn to a dial-up connection. The PictureBook includes a built-in modem. But once again, I had failed to anticipate the need for dialing in to the corporate network. While I had installed the VPN client we require to access corporate resources, I had neglected to install the dialer application for our service provider.

I was at an impasse. I brainstormed. How could I get back on the network?

I postponed lunch and walked from the Javits Center up 34th Street to the nearest Staples, where I picked up a D-Link DSB-650TX USB network adapter. USB equals plug-and-play, right? I brought it back, set it up, and discovered I still needed a tiny driver. I should have known.

I was back to square one.

As a workaround, I used an Internet e-mail account to communicate my situation to my editor. But the fundamental problem remained: the stories I needed to file were on a machine with no Internet connectivity.

I resorted to begging, depending upon the kindness of strangers. I borrowed an adapter from the president of Kryptosima, an Internet payment service provider, and from a representative of BusinessWire. I lacked a driver for the first adapter. The second seemed to install fine, but I still couldn’t establish a connection. Was it because of a bad cable to the hub? A problem with my PC Card slot?

Just when things looked bleakest, my Fairy Godmother appeared, in the form of John Taschek, the director of eWEEK Labs. He heard my plight and took pity on me. He put a wireless adapter in his computer and configured his computer and mine so I could use his computer as a proxy server.

At last I had e-mail access! I quickly sent in my stories. But my problems weren’t over yet.

For reasons neither John nor I could figure out, I still had no Web access, which I needed in order to download the driver for my USB adapter. We talked about trying different things, until I asked if John happened to have a USB storage device. Just as good, he had a PC Card storage device. He downloaded the driver, popped out the card, I plugged it in to my notebook, and voilà, I was in business! John, I owe you a huge debt of thanks.

So what have I learned? Next time, pack my USB DiskOnKey device, and download the modem dialer application, just in case. In short, Be More Prepared.

Hmm–sounds like a good motto for any IT professional.