Smart Meters Go Wireless

Summary:  T-Mobile USA has hooked up with Echelon, a provider of smart meters, to make those meters wireless.  Smart meters are a key to upgrading the power grid and the wireless feature will simplify connection to the utility companies.

Echelon and T-Mobile recently announced that Echelon will embed a wireless SIM into its smart meters.  T-Mobile’s value-add is also that the chips will be more durable than current deployments.

The wireless connection will improve the link into the utilities, providing them with real-time information on power usage, as well as problems with their networks.

So What?

This is a “shovel-ready” project to upgrade the grid that also seems to have a knock-on, or multiplier effect, not to mention improving efficiency of the power network.  Apparently, the embedding has already begun.  Echelon has already delivered some 100,000 of its smart meters in the US (to Duke Energy) and more than 1.6m around the world—though without the wireless connection.

The Knock-on Effect

The knock-on effect suggests that companies can provide data management applications for the utilities.  The obvious starting point is the incoming data on power usage and network reliability.  However, data miners could work with the utilities to monetize those data—with obvious and very careful attention to privacy matters.

Finally, imagine an app on your smartphone and/or your laptop, telling you your immediate usage.  One the data are available on a wireless basis, then they can be delivered to any number of platforms (taking into account that the data are initially broadcast in cellular radio format).

Google Adds Powerful Data Analytic Tools

Summary:  It is true that we will continue to pound on one of our more popular themes–the ever-increasing value of the ever-increasing piles of data from Internet usage.  Now comes research on the value of Google Trends, in this case to track changes in consumer preferences as they happen.

File this not under “We told you so” but “We will continue to tell you so.”  This is about data–how Internet usage data can be mined, sliced, diced and mashed up for valuable insights.  Next, of course, someone will address the (trickier) question of making money from it.  (Oh, details, details, details.)

First, a goldmine of a resource.  Go to Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) to see what search terms people are using (your own name will probably not register, unless you are, oh, Steve Jobs).  You can also use more advanced analytic techniques at Google Insights for Research (http://www.google.com/insights/search/#).  This is real-time stuff.  And, get ready for this:  You can download it as a CSV file.

Berkeley professor Hal Varian (also wearing a second hat of Chief Economist at Google) and Google colleague Hyunyoung Choi wrote a paper on predicting the present (clever twist, that) and on their blog, happily quoting Yoga Berra as to predicting the future.  (The article can be found at the Google Research blog at http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/04/predicting-present-with-google-trends.html.)

They correlated search term volume with statistics gathered on economic activity by other sources unrelated to search engines.  For example, they matched the search for certain real estate terms against home sale volumes (reported from another source).  Another example is the search for travel destinations against reported arrivals.  True, their model requires a certain amount of “re-jiggering” but not so much as to make the results suspect.  Their “modifications” look to be within the norm of statistical analysis.  Nonetheless, the results are stunning.

The point is not so much getting data that are exceptionally precise but rather to give relatively accurate directional results and to improve the reliability and precision of subsequent models.  For the corporate user, then, the directional results can be compelling because they are certainly accurate enough for strategic purposes.  In other words, the predictive power is sufficient to understand probable upturns or downturns within a few percentage points but not so great that you can get an accuracy of, say, three per cent.  Hence the use of the word “strategic” above.  In addition, it should be emphasized that it looks like the predictive power is very short term.

European Newspapers Embrace the Digital Future

Summary:  The digital ventures of European newspapers look like they are paying off with new hopes for robust newspapers.  Plus, you get to lose weight, too.

We have posted quite a few blogs on newspapers (see others at globalstrategic.wordpress.com), an industry caught in a Chicken Little kind of depression.  So we turned to Europe to see what’s happening and it is digital and good.

Want to join a weight-loss club?  Pay $90.  Through the newspaper site.  Want to revise your profile?  Pay more.  In Norway, a tabloid newspaper, Verdens Gang, is affiliated with VG Nett, which provides news for free but charges for other premium services (like the weight-loss club).

Now, paying to upgrade your profile may be a bit much (unless the weigh-loss membership has not been successful) because of the nearly ubiquitous networking sites, but the point is to offer other services for a fee.

The Old Horse of Repurposing Content

Axel Springer, a large player in the publihsing space, revived an old concept, which makes perfect sense:  Write once, distribute many times.  Write the article and post it on multiple sites.  This is the old concept of “repurposing” content for different platforms and different audiences.

Data as a New Source of Revenue

And lest we not forget the lifeblood of newspapers is delivering audiences to advertisers.  If they think about it, the newspapers can mine vast amounts of data and deliver even better information to the advertisers.  This is a good thing.

So, new thinking–including some old thinking–gives these newspapers new revenue and new audiences.  They are not only building their brand, they are building it across platforms to reach both the same audiences and different ones.

And some of them get to lose weight, too.

Data, The New York Times, Basketball & Agreements

We are trying an experiment here.  Rather than rewrite a post we have made on another of our blogs we have set forth the link below.  That blog is for general counsel but the point is applicable to digital matters.

Here is a summary:

An article in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday March 14th on basketball provides an object lesson that you should own whatever data may emerge from any digital initiatives memorialized in a legal agreement.

http://globalgeneralcounsel.wordpress.com