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Today, New York 1, NYC’s 24 hour cable news channel, is running a piece on Microsoft Tag featuring an interview with mobility specialist Kevin Kerr.

Advertisers Only A Snapshot Away With ‘Tag’ Technology

April 14, 2009

New York 1 Story

It's a use for the mobile phone that's taken off in Japan, and now Microsoft is hoping to bring the same excitement to the United States. In Japan, they're black and white and called "quick response" or QR Codes. Here they're color and called Tags. Tags are kind of like high-tech barcodes that you take a picture of with your cell phone's camera. The image then immediately takes you to wherever the creator of that tag wants to take you online.

"Using the camera on your phone, you can read a Tag and be taken to a website for information, you can get contact information, you can be provided text information," said Kevin Kerr, Microsoft. "So imagine reading a Tag at a movie theater and being able to play the trailer for that particular movie, or reading a Tag for a particular product at a store or a sign at a bus stop to understand when the next bus in coming for that particular bus stop. So these Tags can exist in magazines, you can put them in posters, on websites, digital signage."

While these types of technologies have been tried in the past with little success, those who own a G1 Google phone have recently warmed to the idea thanks to an application that lets you snap shots of barcodes on products and instantly comparison shop online.

In fact, those QR Codes started a test run a year ago in San Francisco. So why do Tag developers think their concept is the one that will finally take hold? And the other obvious question -- why not just link to barcodes that are already all over the place?

"The QR Code and those other things are black and white. They were designed for industrial usage. These are colors, so we have the ability to do logos and other things that are much more interesting," said Kerr. "If you want to target demographics with this new type of mobile technology you have to do something interesting as well as functional."

Tags work on just about any phone with a camera, including iPhones. Go to www.gettag.mobi for the free download to make it work.

Right now, Tags are in beta, or development, which means anyone can go to tag.microsoft.com and create a Tag for free. What that Tag points to can be updated every day, or even every hour if you want. Microsoft says if, down the line, it does start charging to create tags, any created during the beta period will be grandfathered in and remain free forever.

A new case study was just released on ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), about how they chose to revamp their web presence using Sharepoint in a externally-facing way supported by our partner Avanade.  This is a trend we are seeing among larger companies as they recognize that their external web presence needs to be less about static content publishing and more about the ability to manage dynamic content, provide advanced customized user experiences, and particpiate in inbound/outbound content syndication as a social network.

Another case study showcasing Sharepoint as an external web solution is Cadence Design Systems:  http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003532

Interesting article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal about cyber security issues in the nation's electric grid and some of the emergin threats in this area.  Part of the issue seems to be slow adoption of NERC compliance around the asset protection, including virtual assets. 

Jon Arnold penned an article on his power and utilities blog about how to use Sharepoint to make compliance easier and less costly.

Microsoft's utilities home page contains information on NERC compliance, solution providers that can help, and other solutions.

Now here's some forward thinking worthy of some investment - today GM and Segway are demonstrating their new P.U.M.A vehicle in New York.  Kind of like a pedicab "rickshaw" without the driver.  Even in NJ I could use one of these for days when I have a simple commute.  We need something from GM to feel good about given the last few weeks of news - way to go Detroit!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=15888

Great Huffington Post article on the DigiGirlz events held recently in NYC that aim to introduce high school girls to the possibilities of high-tech careers and a love of technology in general.  I am proud to work for a company that does this type of outreach.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/betsy-perry/a-digi-dud-does-digigirlz_b_182236.html

I'm watching the Obama Town Meeting at http://www.whitehouse.gov - he is talking to a teacher, and said he just talked to Bill Gates yesterday about how to use video technology to assist with teacher coaching and development.  Glad Bill has a seat at the table.

A couple of thoughts on "leaning" people-based processes.  This is an interesting problem whether you are coming at it from a lean or a six sigma perspective.  I believe that the key issues are:  1) identifying the major areas of waste and addressing the low-hanging fruit ("quick hits"), 2) ensuring basic repeatability and predictability, while giving people with expertise the ability to make on-the-spot decisions to deal with uncertainty, and 3) using the methodology not to enforce 100% improvement, but rather to change the cultural mindset to one of continuous improvement and focus on the customer.  The last point ensures that even when the project ends, it will be a sustained effort that empowers and engages people.

I recently took on a six sigma project in a champion role that focused on how we could improve the ROI of certain marketing and sales processes within our team.  In reality it was closer to DFSS than DMAIC.  I found that it was an interesting balancing act between asking the team to be rigorous in finding the root causes vs. delivering quick hits.  The team was able to deliver about a 1.3 sigma improvement in the first pilot project, which took about 6 months including belt training, etc.  While I believe we can approach the people-based process threshold of about 3 sigma in another 6 months, the net improvement even from this initial phase was sufficient to validate the approach and shine a light on some very easy, cheap improvements that can be made that are behavioral, not dependent on systems or tools.  One of the biggest insights gained was that while the easiest scapegoat was the CRM system (since it can't defend itself), the real root causes were in our own behavior and accountabilities, and they were pretty easy to address.

Another example of Starbucks trying to use lean to improve store-based processes was recently detailed by Mark Graban in his Lean Blog.  This is an interesting study because it highlights both the pros and cons of this approach, which again generates some delicate balancing acts between getting the most out of the process while still helping people feel empowered as opposed to robotic.

Appreciate any feedback from readers on their own experiences with trying to apply lean or six sigma to processes that are 80-90% people-based.

On Monday, Microsoft and Federated Media launched the ExecTweets site, a Twitter aggregator that allows you to easily follow the tweets of leading executives in many industries.  Check it out at http://www.exectweets.com

There's a good article on the launch on Mary Jo Foley's blog at http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2344

Earlier this week Cisco announced its Unified Computing System datacenter architecture, and Microsoft was part of that announcement.  This is great news on the server virtualization front.  Robert Scoble has an interesting post of some inside access to Cisco that he was able to land.  The official announcement can be found here.

Interesting summary of an interview this morning by the editor of BusinessWeek with Steve Ballmer.  Bullish on cloud computing, Smartphones, XBOX, even Zune.  Great perspective that although the markets will be in turmoil for an unknown period, when the recovery happens it will drive great growth on the business front.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090319/live-from-new-york-microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer/

New InformationWeek article offers interesting insight and analysis on Microsoft's strategy in the Oil and Gas industry, following on the heels of the recent Global Energy Forum.

It mention's Ali Ferling's perspective on our strategy to enable more workers with the information tools to make better decisions, react more quickly to events, and more easily comply with regulations on a global basis.  This message should resonate in the current environment where everyone has to get more value out of their existing investments.

InfomationWeek article:  http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/02/microsoft_offer_1.html

Ali Ferling video interview

Global Energy Forum presentation

Interesting perspective from Stephen Elop on how Microsoft can get stronger during the downturn, as reduced resources can breed focus, creativity, and lean operations.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/27/tech/cnettechnews/main4834091.shtml

Kevin O'Marah from AMR Research has penned a new article that estimates that information / content has overtaken agriculture as a component of global production, and is on track to outpace manufacturing in the future.  He posits that this brings the issue of intellectual property protection to the forefront more than ever.

Read Kevin's blog at:  http://blogs.amrresearch.com/supplychain/ 

Read a couple of previous posts on IP Protection on the Microsoft Chemical Industry Blog

Infosys and Microsoft just launched a new online community site that will grow into an online center of excellence for supply chain practitioners.  The announcement hit the press during the Global High Tech summit, and the website is http://www.nextgenerationsupplychains.com

Microsoft just released the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Dynamics AX.  This tool allows business users to capture data needed to measure key indicators related to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as part of everyday business processes from within their enterprise resource planning solution.

See the short video at:  Microsoft Environmental Sustainability Dashboard Video