Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T invest $100 Million in Isis; prepare mobile payment battle with Google

Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T invest $100 Million in Isis; prepare mobile payment battle with Google

So this headline would have you thinking that Google is the Behemoth and these guys are just trying to keep up, but that couldn't be further from the fact. In reality Isis is nothing more than a cow on the tracks that has been put there by these wireless and credit card companies as a form of collusion.

Wireless payments are not a priority for the wireless and credit card companies. The last line of the article says it all "ISIS has not yet announced a national rollout plan" and if if weren't for Google why would they ever. The wireless companies are not merchants accounts. They have no history making money off point of sale transactions so this is extremely new territory for them. The credit card companies are scared about disintermediation of the all of the merchant account companies (hanger-ons) that have gotten rich off of playing middle man every time a card gets swiped. Square has shaken things up and merchant fees have gone up because these companies are hearing the death bell and are scared. The best thing for all of these companies to do is to stop mobile payments dead it it's tracks until they find a way to make sure all of the intermediate companies get paid; Enter ISIS.

Google has already demonstrated that mobile payments in action with the Google Wallet, hell Japan has been doing it for years. So why is ISIS trailing so far behind with out any goals or ambitions? Because they have the weight of most credit card companies and wireless companies saying "we aren't sure this is good for us right now" so they all make a deal to sit on their hands and call this anti-competitive deal ISIS. The ISIS website is ironically deceptive because it displays exactly what it's supporters don't want right now, a mobile payment system.

So why do they need ISIS? If they didn't have this deal, then any one of the players could be lured to join the Google bandwagon which would drive up competition. Mobile payments would hit the street sooner than later and threaten the established payment system. By keeping all of the biggest players in credit cards and wireless in a deal to do nothing, they all can feel safe doing business as usual.

I should have been born like 2 years ago.

A Perfect Example of the Law of Accelerating Returns

For the longest time i have walked past these adds at the grocery stores that are on back list scrolls behind glass. If you don't pay them much attention they look like LCD screens but up close it's just paper behind glass. Ever 30 seconds or so the scrolls rotate and a new add replaces takes the frame. I always thought "How restrictive? if they want to change the adds they have to take the damn thing apart and put a new scroll in there. The possibilities of such adds are so limiting. It saddened me to know that the the grocery store had invested in this old medium instead of just waiting. Well today i was extremely relieved...

The slight of this was fantastic. This is a sign that LCDs have gotten so cheap that the obvious benefits of having a dynamic remote controllable screen are enough to justify the costs. Now if they want they could simply flash a store specific add for a sale item like fish or blueberries in between the paid adds for branded products. The grocery store is like a garden of eden for tech innovation. I'll go ahead and say in 5 years this LCD TV will be replaced with a static symbol. At first this would appear to be a step backwards but in actuality this symbol will be an anchor for an AR (Augmented reality) add that will only show up in people's glasses and contact lens. In fact the add will be different for each viewer. Personal buying habits based on customer loyalty program data. Today's display is just another glaring reminder that i was born way to early.

MS Office is a problem

Microsoft word and excel are becoming serious problems. They are like drugs almost in that people in professions all over the world couldn't function without them. The same could be said about electricity so what is my point? My point is both of the programs put handicaps on productivity potential. Writing and data analysis aside the programs have been integrated into businesses to act as information carriers in the form of forms them selves.

Everyone has probably filled out a form that exists as a Microsoft word or excel file. Applications, interdepartmental requisitions, background check forms... the list of forms that are filled out in MS word or excel on a daily basis is staggering. Now i'll admit this is better than having to hunt down a paper form like 20 years ago but this is still a dead end. These forms are essentially a way to move information (data) from one entity to another, it's great that the conveyance is paperless but they require a person on both ends. Addresses, social security numbers, dates, names, all of this data on these office file forms are essentially trapped in the form unless a person looks at it. Now this information likely started in a data base, was looked up by the person filling out the form, emailed in the form, read by a person on the other end and then entered into another database. There have been standards out for years now that take both of the people out of this process. It is called extensible markup language (xml), it is a scripting language that requires that the form be defined once as a schema or DTD and then any simple web software (such as java script) can be programmed to pulled data from a data base and create an xml file automatically. If both the sending and receiving entities have access to the schema then they can ensure that there software can write or parse the xml file flawlessly with no human intervention. Even if the source of the data has to originate from human entry by design a very few lines of HTML can be written to make text entry spaces appear on a web page for data gathering and then some java script can take the entry and generate the xml file. All of this can happen with orders of magnitude less memory and processor time than opening and running Microsoft word or excel.

Office programs are overkill for this kind of information traffic. It's like constructing an imax theater just to communicate the names and phone numbers of training session participates for a particular training session. Just consider how quick you can blaze through links on twitter. Then compare that to how long it takes to open a large form in MS with macros. Oh and word can freeze completely deleting hours of work. Websites can be built to constantly save your work instantly (google docs and blogger) with some java script so even if your computer explodes the most you have lost is 15-30 seconds of work.

The problem is HTML, XML and JavaScript are foreign to people outside of computer science type fields like software engineering and web development. Yet people of all disciplines are making and updating these forms in MS office programs all the time. They gravitate toward office because it's easy to learn but as i highlighted it's a dead end to productivity. The solution lies in secondary education. These scripting languages are not hard to learn. They don't require a mastery of discrete math or data structures. A high school Junior could pick up XML in a week or two. Arming tomorrow workforce with these skills is crucial. These scripting languages should be a mandatory part of every high school curriculum.

Why does everyone need to know how this stuff works? It's because forms and information transfer are never static. Now when a company decides to do some web based data gathering from user input they rely on web developers to do the code. When slight tweaks need to be made, they are helpless without the web developers. For smaller companies that means either maintaining a costly ongoing contract or letting the required tweaks accumulate until they can be contracted as a large project justifying the cost of paying for the web developer services. If the majority of the graduating workforce was familiar with this web standards, then tweaks to web sites would be done as needed since everyone could easily update them.

Passwords are seriously becoming a problem

Passwords are quickly becoming a plague to interoperability. To often are people forgetting their passwords to various internet services due to auto-login. Just last year my wife and I set up an account on The Knot to organize our wedding. We both quickly became auto-logged into the site on our laptops. The one time I tried to get in on my phone was never successful because neither of us could guess at the password or the username for that matter. There is more than a couple internet services that I just automatically click "forgot password" on because it will take less time to reset my password via email then try and actually remember it. The problem is that every internet service has different rules to what is allowed as a password. Facebook connect is great if you are on your normal device. I read an article recently that predicted that passwords will soon be replaced my NFC style communication with a smartphone that will authorize the user via fingerprint. This can not come fast enough.....