Moving again

Fickle minded man that I am, I've decided to move my blog to my own domain. You can find it here . My intention is for this to be the more or less permanent location for this blog. However, something strange has happened, and probably not for the better - Blogger gave away my morituri.blogspot.com URL which means I can't redirect new visitors to my blog. Hmm, bummer.

The potential of mobile minipayments with Digi

Sometimes some ideas just hit you in the head and won't let go. I quickly wrote this down while waiting for my daughter to get ready to go to school today. The potential of mobile minipayments with DiGi DiGi has introduced 2 new services today - flexible payments, which allows you to top up any amount to your prepaid mobile account and the ability to transfer small airtime amounts to any other DiGi user. On the surface, these two services are nothing special. But coupled with DiGi's existing services, the implications can be very interesting. First, some background. 50% of Malaysia's population of 22 million today have mobile phones. This is expected to grow to 70% within the next 3 years. By the end of 2004, one billion SMS messages per month will be exchanged. The top two mobile players are Maxis with 42% market share and Celcom with 38% . DiGi is a distant third with 20% . Maxis is currently facing serious congestion issues. Celcom is still grappling with its acquisition of TMTouch and the restructuring of its parent Telekom Malaysia. Both Maxis and Telekom Malaysia hold 3G licenses, but neither telco is keen to roll out the expensive and unproven service any time soon. So DiGi has a chance to leapfrog the competition. Where DiGi is now DiGi has shown to be consistently innovative with new features, especially considering that 90% of it's own customers are prepaid users. DiGi has always been proud of their "firsts" - automatic international roaming - GPRS and EDGE for all users at affordable rates - online itemised statements - automatic adjusting rates - lowest reload coupon (RM10) - consistently the lowest starter pack price (now down to RM18). For comparison, at the peak Maxis once sold theirs for RM200. You can top up your DiGi prepaid account through your bank account, credit card (by phone, online or standing order) or cash at hundreds of locations nationwide. And now you can top up ANY amount (RM6, RM8, RM23, RM88 etc). Airtime as currency Malaysians are already used to using airtime as a form of currency. Today you can buy any number of things using airtime - from the ubiquitous phone-related items such as ringtones, logos, screen savers and games - to buying CDs (MCAT) and premium website access. This is a lucrative market for telcos, who take up to a 30% cut of all transactions which typically range from RM0.50 to RM3. Let's move this concept forward a little bit further. Say you can now transfer any amount to any DiGi customer - now 2 million strong. So you can now - theoretically - pay your local council RM200 for your half-yearly housing assessment, transferred from your DiGi account to their DiGi account. Or pay RM75 to the car park operator for your monthly parking fee. Or pay your friend RM47 for your share of the dinner buffet. Or pay RM14.50 for a VCD at the movie store. Or pay RM8 for the LAN cable you won in an online auction. Or pay your neighborhood mamak RM6.50 for a pack of cigarettes. What this means is that two million people with a DiGi account can become a buyer or seller of any goods and services. It's not quite micropayments - usually measured in sen or fractions of a sen - minipayments are quite possible. Today. Imagine the possibility - you are standing in the queue to buy movie tickets. You find out that you RM6 short. You turn around to the person behind you, find out her DiGi number, and exchange RM6 in airtime for cash. Or you could just decide to pay the cinema in airtime. What's even more interesting is, if you SMS your friend to send you some airtime so you can pay the cinema. The missing link So what does your mom-and-pop grocery store do with the RM568.23 in airtime credit that they get from their customers? At the lowest DiGi rate, that's equivalent to 18,941 SMS messages or over 31 hours of calls. What's missing is a cash-out facility. The simplest method would be DiGi acting as a clearinghouse where you can transfer your unused credit to your bank account. To compensate for their lost revenue potential (the beauty of the prepaid business is of course you get your money and your profit up front), DiGi can impose a service charge, either per transaction or a percentage of the total transaction or cash-out value. Security issues Obviously, a payment infrastructure of this nature is open to many forms of fraud. There is a need for verifiable audit logs of all transactions. DiGi can require identification checks and confirmation before any amount is transferred out from the system. DiGi will need to employ experts to monitor the transaction and identify unusual behaviour. What if someone steals your phone? Just report it in. DiGi already has a SIM guard program where they will replace your SIM for free AND maintain your last balance. The payoff So what's in it for DiGi? Why sacrifice a cash-cow for something unproven? This is the Paypal for mobile phones. DiGi will be the facilitator for millions of transactions every day, taking a small cut each time. Everyone will want to have a DiGi account, even if they never intend to make calls or send SMS. Most of the infrastructure requirement is already there. This could be the first workable near-universal cashless, location-agnostic minipayment system. Note - for non-Malaysians. RM1 = 100 sen. USD$1 = RM3.80 Tags: Micropayments Mobile Phones PayPal

Treo 650 Smartphone

The palmOne Treo 650 Smartphone is now official. It's positively droolworthy, with : - HiRes (320x320 colour screen) - Bluetooth - Removable 1900 mAh lithium battery - Improved (backlit!) keyboard - EDGE Support The only drawbacks that I see right now : - tiny (23MB) RAM for this day and age - VGA (640x480) camera - no built-in wifi, and no drivers yet for the palmOne WiFi card. This one's definitely on my "To Buy" list.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is almost here! This year I've decided to join in. I haven't written anything substantial in over 10 years, so I'm long overdue. My effort is called Project Ethergy. This should be fun.

Moving Day

The domain that I have, ethergy.com was previously for my business and technology consulting work. Since I haven't updated that in a while, as of today www.ethergy.com points to this blog. I have been using Doteasy for my web hosting for the past 2 years. It's cheap and cheerful service for a simple, low traffic website.

Tungsten T5 Handheld - too little, too late

So palmOne's much vaunted, much-speculated new PDA is pretty much a failure with the handheld community. The criticisms are many, including - no wifi - plastic casing - no voice recorder - about $100 too expensive - a new connector replacing the increasingly misnamed "Palm Universal Connector" - no cradle - no Cobalt a.k.a. Palm OS 6.0 (now 6.1) Other than the selling point of an unprecendented (for PDAs) 256MB RAM (made up of 157MB of non-volatile flash that works just like a USB Flash drive and 55MB of "normal" RAM), there's really nothing new about the T5. Even the higher capacity battery, while a plus, is non-removable. It's quite disheartening to see a product such as this coming from palmOne at this point of time. For long-time palmOne customers, it's not a compelling enough upgrade. For new users, there are all-singing, all dancing PDAs that offer much better value, such as Dell's X50v. I will probably give this one a miss, since I'm quite happy with my Zire72. Can't wait for the new Treo to come out, though.