Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Response to NY Times article on Mobile Discovery

Following reaction is in response to article posted on New York Times.

As a student member of team working with Mobile Discovery for past eight months, it baffles me as how easily a journalist from elite media publishing firm can ridicule our collective efforts and results. The one sided attack on this trial connotes a narrow understanding of the vision for this trial in campus. Objective of trials is not to sell any technology or increase the cellular bills of students, but to develop the standards of this technology so that its potential could be extended to larger audience. Author of this article mention that bar code technology isn’t widely used in North America, but dint realized that the sole purpose of this trial is to find out more about the technology and do a gap audit on what’s needed for it to be useful.

A new technology had always been ridiculed by general public. But, with no real hand data available on trial, it makes me wonder how a technical columnist can be so critical of the trial that’s generating so much of nationwide interest. Trial has already been termed as success as it gives a first hand analysis as to how this technology needs to be incorporated in wider wireless and cellular infrastructure to be successful. Potential of bar code technology could still be debated, but it would add definitive value to dying print media. I would go on and term it as Marketing 2.0 - new age marketing solutions not because I am part of this team but I realize the true benefits that could be accrued by successful integration of this technology in cellular space.

It upsets me that author choose to neglect the positive outcomes out of this trial and solely focused on classroom dialogue throughout the article. We as Mobile Discovery team are proud of being associated with this trial and would continue to work hard to realize the potential of this technology.

Watch out for updates on museum showcasing the evolution of new age marketing capabilities with bar code technology.

1 comment:

streetstylz said...

It is clear that Scanbuy’s CEO Jonathan Bulkeley doesn’t care about patents, as he continues to infringe on NeoMedia Technologies intellectual property.

Scanbuy’s indirect resolution process, which they use for their proprietary EZcode, is infringing on NeoMedia Technologies’ core patents.

Scanbuy uses the indirect encoding method for their barcode resolution process.

Indirect encoding (patented by NeoMedia) is the process of linking the target information to an index (364528 for example) and putting that unique identifier into a 1D UPC/EAN or 2D barcode. The code reader on the mobile phone reads the barcode and sends the code data over the Internet to a central resolution server that will tell the mobile phone what action is associated with the index, i.e. access a URL, download media, initiate a phone call, ect.

http://neom.com/13.html

If Jonathan Bulkeley believes infringing on another companies patents is an ethical business practice, then by all means, infringe away.

However, I have a feeling that the US Judicial System will see Scanbuy’s unethical business practices differently.