Brian Roy’s Blog

AZ Should be Trumpeting this from every rooftop - Phoenix Lander Has Touched Martian Water For the First Time

Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | The Future | Comments

Everyone (and there are A LOT of them) who say Arizona is a engineering, math and science wasteland should read this and understand just how big of a deal for Arizona this is. The UofA is leading this entire mission from Tucson - for the first time in the history of NASA. The mission has been wildly successful and many, many Arizona educated engineers and scientists were at the fore.

Congrats to everyone down at UofA - and thanks for reminding us (Arizona), the US and the world that the future in AZ is bright (not just sunny).

NASA just announced that the Phoenix Lander has successfully scooped up a Martian water ice sample and placed it in its oven for scientific analysis. “Mars Odyssey discovered this ice six years ago, but we’ve now touched it and tasted it, which is something that hasn’t been done before,” said a scientist at today’s press conference. The sample has been dubbed the “Wicked Witch” (because it’s meeeelting, meeeelting—get it?) and it will continue to be analyzed over the course of the coming weeks as data trickles in. Exciting, exciting stuff from this very successful mission. More details are rolling out right now.

The team has also decided to extend the mission to the end of the fiscal year, to a full 126 martian Sols (was scheduled for 90 sols initially). A new full-color, 360° panorama should hit the web soon as well. [NASA]

[From Phoenix Lander Has Touched Martian Water For the First Time [Water On Mars]]

Tags: AZ, AZ Tech, Tech

Just because someone miss-uses something doesn’t make it bad…

Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | Innovation, Regulation, VoIP | Comments

Articles like this make me nervous:

VoIP scam bilking Islanders - from CBC News

Caller ID unreliable

Caller ID on your phone will not help you identify the origin of the caller, said MacLean.

“In some cases, these fraudsters will actually use spoof legitimate-looking numbers,” he said.

“On your caller ID it may appear that there is a legitimate number on there, but it could actually be a totally different number from a totally different place.”

Once the information is stolen, charges can start appearing on your credit card overnight, and you may not find out until you get your next statement. MacLean said several Islanders have already been cheated out of thousands of dollars.

Let’s get realistic here. It isn’t that caller id is unreliable, or even that “spoofing” caller id is inherently bad… it is simply that criminals used caller id and “spoofing” to scam people into doing something they should NEVER DO:

In this latest scheme, when you answer the phone, an automated voice claims to be calling from your bank or credit card company. An offer is made to reduce bank fees or consolidate debts, or the recording might claim to be an alert over a problem with your card.

Then it asks you to punch in your bank or credit card number on the phone.

Needless to say I do not approve of scam artists using caller id as a tool to create confidence in their targets - any more than I approve when they use sweepstakes schemes or any other such misleading tactic. The solution is NOT to outlaw caller id spoofing, sweepstakes or speaking (in the case of slick talking telemarketers that swindle your grandmother out of her life savings). The solution is to outlaw the swindle, scam and fraud.

To be completely transparent, both page2call and callRecord (our communications applications from cosinity) spoof caller id. We do if for a perfectly respectable reason - individuals and small businesses purchase our services to make (and receive) phone calls on their behalf. Who would want page2call if we couldn’t set the caller id to be the phone number for their business?

We are not misleading people, we are providing valuable services - as will many other companies - which use caller id “spoofing”.

Tags: caller id

Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 | Innovation, The Future | Comments

Registration is open for the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference to be held on November 19th.

You know I’ll be there…

Details after the jump…

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Tags: AZ Tech

Goober - every feature you never wanted…

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 | Business Model Innovation, Emerging Technology Practice, cosinity | Comments

From the folks at TechCrunch comes news of the most featurerific IM client EVER. It has everything… except an real idea about how to use all these neat features to derive real value for customers.

This is exactly why I founded cosinity - the primary use of advanced communications technologies seems to be “make something cool” - given that lots of people will use it because it is cool. At cosinity we are focused on making something that is valuable - given that people will use it (psssst and by the way - keep using it and pay for it) because it adds real value to their life or business.

Goober is an instant messenger developed by a team of Germans now officially based in Delaware that’s going up against the big guys (Skype, MSN, ICQ, etc.) with a desktop client that overflows with features - some useful, some more superfluous.

The cross-protocol Goober client (available for Windows and soon Mac and Linux as well) can be used to instant message with both peers on the Goober network and those using ICQ, MSN, or Jabber.

[From Goober Takes Shotgun Approach With IM Client]

Business misconception #1 - You want EVERY customer…

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 | Emerging Technology Practice, Innovation | Comments

You see, the thing is some of them you don’t want. You want the ones who want what your product (that is the obvious part). But as importantly - I would actually argue more importantly in a world where services and Software as a Service are becoming dominant - they have to want the end to end EXPERIENCE you are offering.

The problem with the customer in this TechDirt article is that they wanted a completely different experience than what what Murky Coffee offered. That explains the irate customer and the hullabaloo…

We’re tempted to ask ourselves - Who was right/wrong? But that is the wrong question. The question is:

Is Murky Coffee happy with the business of offering the experience they offer? If the answer is yes they not only have the right but the obligation to tell customers (politely of course) who want a different experience that their patronage is not required.

If they don’t they risk the experience of their core customers.

more after the jump…

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