business

The Future of NFC Payments

Albert Zenkoff

Someone asked me to provide feedback on an article regarding The Future of NFC Payments (yes, capitalized, like in “Big Future”). I do not cherish the idea of giving up my contact details for a brochure download, so I did not read the actual paper. I cannot imagine why people would not want their ideas to be widespread. I think it is silly to force people to register when you want them to read your articles, for they will simply read it elsewhere.

Anyhow, back to the subject of mobile payments with NFC – that’s what the paper claims to be about. I do not really know what they said inside but seeing “NFC was hailed as one of the biggest trends for mobile operators for 2011” in the blurb is enough to get an idea of what might be on the inside.

Now, let’s be clear that mobile payments are a fighting ground for two large forces: the banking industry and the mobile service industry. Both of them deal with a lot of customers and a lot of cash. And none of them would willingly give up the payment transactions stream to another. One, the banking industry, owns the …
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Near Field Communication (NFC)

Albert Zenkoff

I stumbled upon an article in PopSci (Popular Science?) on-line publication titled Everything You Need to Know About Near Field Communication. My opinion is that many of the things described there reflect a lot of wishful thinking on the part of the smart card industry players. Especially where they go on about “everything has just started to come together”, which is exactly the same thing they were saying for the last five years or so. I was on the inside, I should know.

I think that for the more inclined to actually understand the technology in easy words, I would suggest simply reading the original NFC White Paper written by myself years ago and published by Ecma International. Trust me, nothing much has changed in the meantime, all concepts still apply today as they applied then.

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Corporate responsibility

Albert Zenkoff

One of the buzzwords I dislike is “Corporate Responsibility”. It is overused, abused and never means what it is supposed to when you hear it from the top managers. However, it is important. Rather, the concept that it used to mean is important.

I spent a few months in Russia now and I am shocked and disgusted at how business is done there. That is the place where you go if you want to learn what the consequences of irresponsibility on a grand scale are.

Nobody feels responsible for anything there. The only king of this newly capitalistic country is money. Everybody dreams of making money quick. Some people make the money quick. Some don’t. But for everyone the main theme remains – just make money, no matter how, no matter what the consequences are, never mind the “after”.

What is the result? Well, most, or, perhaps, all of the business is based on making or buying something dirt cheap and selling it high. Most products are made in China or are counterfeit. Everything is made of the cheapest materials and with the cheapest technologies.

Can you imagine the life in a disposable world? Disposable furniture, disposable cars, disposable roads, …
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Of “digital piracy”…

Albert Zenkoff

Wasn’t I saying it all along? The net result of abandoning DRM (Digital Rights Management) would be positive for most companies. Various studies show this again and again from different perspectives. This time it is a behavioral study of an Oxford economist Karen Croxson discussing the potential customer behavior and result of the piracy on the net sales. And the conclusion is still same: piracy does not hurt sales, even helps sometimes.

Really, if one abandons DRM and lets go of the piracy hype, the result must be positive. Here is the list of things to consider:

  1. The customers that buy your product would buy it anyway.
  2. The customers that would not be buying your product will not buy it anyway
  3. The customers that are influenced by the “ease to copy” and decide to copy instead of buying are extremely marginal in number.
  4. The experience with your product, the rumors, the hype, the word-of-mouth advertisement would generate many more customers than you might lose in the previous category.
  5. Customers loyal to you are not annoyed by your silly DRM schemes.
  6. You do not need to waste money and time on the DRM.
  7. People who spent time breaking your DRM schemes
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EU economic growth

Albert Zenkoff

The data for the economic growth in EU is here: Eurostat Report. It is in German but you understand the numbers. It seems that Northern Europe and Eastern Europe are pretty much all right and at least until the second wave of the “financial crisis” comes should be well on their way to the new boom. It is interesting to see the comparisons between various countries and how the growth is distributed in Europe. Begs the question of “who supplies who with what?”…
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Toys

Albert Zenkoff

I spent a lot of time recently thinking about toys. Well, it all started not so recently, in fact, but recently this idea that I am toying with is not letting me rest. So I spend more and more time thinking about toys.

If you never noticed, the toys in the shops are somewhat different from what we used to have a good twenty years ago. Drop by some time at the toy shop and have a very good look around just by yourself. Check out the toys. See anything strange? No? Check the material and where they are all made. Maybe that’ll give a clue.

Once, toys were not so abundant. When I grew up, the toys were something very special. You did not even get a toy every birthday, although the parents tried. They were expensive and they were good. And you cherished and wanted them. And they were a pleasure to hold and, oh, so carefully, to play with.

Then the industrial revolution in the toy world happened. First, there became to be many, many more toys and they became cheap. And that was wonderful. Kids could now have all the toys in the world. Well, most …
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Technology vs. People

Albert Zenkoff

A well-known expression used an abused millions of times over the history of the mankind says that the weapons do not kill people, other people do. The meaning is, of course, that the knife is just a tool and it is up to the hand wielding the knife to put it to use – good or bad.

In fact, all of the technology is like that. The technology can be put to serve people or it can be used to deceive people. I think that recently most technologies are used to deceive people and more and more technologies and techniques arrive every day that serve this same purpose. They could be put to good use, serving people and helping us on our evolutionary path but, no, they are not. Instead, they are all abused.

I used to argue and fight against such uses of technology (that I consider to be rather abuses) but to no avail. And now I realize that it is no use fighting against it. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, you never fight “against”, you always fight “for”. So it is necessary to fight for the proper uses of technology, put all those resources to the service …
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South America bloc

Albert Zenkoff 2 Comments

There was an interesting event in South America – a meeting of the Rio Group happened in the middle of February as DW-World reports. What is interesting? The Latin American and South American countries have announced their intention to create a union similar to the EU in nature. This is a great answer to many problems connected with their northern neighbors.

See, the real integration like in EU is unlikely coming any time soon, the South American countries are far too independent and nationalistic for that. Not that it is a bad thing either. But, but, what is quite possible is that they can create a no-Visa-required travel space in the South and Latin America and organize a monetary union. Especially now that the US Dollar is in trouble and everyone and their neighbor is looking for an alternative to the USD trading, the South American monetary union could be very successful, especially if they manage to avoid the blunders with the local monetary policies like it happened so many times in the past.

If they succeed, South and Latin America may well become the newest place-to-be, the region could really develop into a more balanced and highly attractive …
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A new era!

Albert Zenkoff

Well, this is it, folks! The new era is starting. Although my friend Pete tends to talk about the “end of era”, I prefer to talk about the “new era”. I guess that is the way I live, I am always looking ahead to something more and better. And it is, indeed, a new era with a lot of new and interesting things ahead of me.

So I left the big corporation and my own company has just recently celebrated one year in the background. I guess now is as good a time as any to start off on my own and begin using my company for what it was created – business. I will be placing tidbits of news and thoughts to this site as I go along. Hopefully someone finds it interesting or entertaining.

So, the company is open for business, it is called “Aruberusan” and its website is at http://www.aruberusan.com/.

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