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Tele-Services
Tele-Services finds its inspiration in words like Tele-Information, Tele-Shopping and Tele-Working. We take here a functional approach. The idea is that for different functions different services (and providers) are required. So we do not care whether a service is about cars, the weather, people or whatever. It is the function that counts. Notice that Tele- is followed by an active verb. I follow this custom. Tele-Services can be seen a single service. A Tele-Service has a single service where it is very good at. I use verbs from the perspective of the user, he is doing the shopping, the learning, etc. So Tele-publishing is a wrong term, it is from the wrong perspective. Some services combine multiple Tele-Services into a single provider. Shopping is here a good example. Normally a shopping process consists of getting information on a product, make a selecting and the actual buying. However one sees more and more that these processes are chopped up and provided by multiple Service Providers. The Tele-Service category can be roughly chopped up by the processes in a buying process. These processes are gathering information, selecting, buying and consuming the product or service. And one can define multiple consuming processes depending on what is consumed and how that is done. There is no way to enumerate all the consuming processes.
15 Jui 2003
PluggedInns.com
PluggedInns.com, a service that offers a directory for Hotels, etc. that offer broadband Internet access. The directory is limited to the US.
Categories:
Tele-Services
PermaLink
12 Jui 2003
Categories:
Tele-Services
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08 Jui 2003
Blogshares.com
I came across the site Blogshares.com. This site operates a fantasy stock-market based on web-logs. Thus it is a gaming service. The interesting thing however is how they do the valuation of web-logs. It is based on incoming and outgoing links.
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Tele-Services
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08 Jui 2003
iChattin.com
The introduction of iChat AV, the chat software for video-conferencing from Apple, has created a series of new websites. This website (iChattin.com) is a forum for iChat users and a directory. A similar service is MyiSight.com. do not know whether this will be very useful, but a specific fan club for iChat AV users might be useful.
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Tele-Services
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03 Jui 2003
SMS is Instant Messaging?
I just read on MacSlash that it is possible to use Apple’s iChat to send SMS’s to Mobile phones, only the other direction does not work yet. Seems like a good implementation. If only each computer (IP-address) could get an equivalent phone number (or vice-versa).
This service implies that there is a gateway-server working behind the scenes. Still SMS is not instant messaging, as it a message is not instantly communicated. SMS is a limited form of eMail. Instant Messaging is in a service category of its own.
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Tele-Services
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28 Juin 2003
Spam Filter Service Hiccup
A funny story appeared on Wired News:
While hundreds of thousands of Americans rush to sign up for the Federal Trade Commission’s new do-not-call service, many Yahoo users are left wondering why they haven’t received their registration confirmation. The reason? Yahoo’s spam filter doesn’t like the FTC’s onslaught of e-mail.
It seems that legal spam does exist, but the spam-filers trigger on it. But then maybe I should not call it spam. It shows that you can noyt always define a spam filtering rule which applies to all users.
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Tele-Services
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20 Juin 2003
Mobile Asses
Adam Curry reported a funny website (Mobile Asses), which started me to wonder about the services behind the mobile camera. What is the service behind taking a picture and sending it to someone or submitiing it to a site?
Basically the service is very simple, i.e. it is email with an embedded or attached image file. However the mobile phone, the embedded camera and the client software around camera and phone, make the service more intriguing. To the user of this package (phone, camera and client0 the service is the combination of these three item. To him taking and sending and image is the service offered by the service provider of the mobile phone.
It however depends very much how the software works on the phone. Are taking picture and sending it, two steps for the user of is it integrated? In the first case it a “take and picture email service” and in the latter case just a “picture email service”. And maybe the word mobile or wireless should be added to the service name.
My guess is that it is just an email service for most picture phones, as the user might be offered more options apart from emailing a picture.
The most intriguing part remains the influence of the capabilities of the client on the service
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Tele-Services
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20 Juin 2003
Vakantielinks
I have been busy with entering my site ([url=http://www.sivas.com]http://www.sivas.com[/url]) on one of the holiday directories ([url=http://www.vakantielinks.nl]http://www.vakantielinks.nl[/url]). This kind of service is pretty new to me, so worthwhile to discuss in this log.
The Service Provider offers services to two kind of users: the holiday information seeker and the holiday site provider.
The information seeker sees a list of sites (with a link, information and sometimes a banner), all related to holidays. The sites are ranked on some kind of popularity measure, i.e. the number of times the service was reached from a link on the site of the holiday site provider. Also the outgoing hits are counted, but not used in the ranking. The ranking is thus a measure of the most popular advert of [url=http://www.vakantielinks.nl]http://www.vakantielinks.nl[/url] on the holiday information site provider. Is this good measure of the holiday site’s popularity? The counters are by the way reset every two weeks. Sites which do not get enough traffic will not appear on the list of the SP. Note that the end-user can only search by scrolling through the entire list.
The service to the holiday site provider (HSP) is of offering an entry in the list. And the HSP can edit his information if needed.
First of all we have to discuss what kind of service is provided by [url=http://www.vakantielinks.nl]http://www.vakantielinks.nl[/url] The service is primarily targeted to end-users, i.e. the holiday information seeker. The service provides to this user a single functionality: searching. Thus [url=http://www.vakantielinks.nl]http://www.vakantielinks.nl[/url] is part of the Tele-Service category (end-user, single functionality) and specificaly the part of the Tele-Searching sub-category. But more details of the service are available, as the search realm is limited to sites with a single purpose; holiday information. Maybe this should be called Limited Tele-Searching or better Tele-Directory with only a single category. Also important is the ranking provided by the Service Provider based on some popularity measure, i.e. a Ranked Tele-Directory.
The service provided to the HSP is very simple, i.e. a marketing tool for his business. It is an Enabling Service for his CRM Marketing process and offers a Advertising tool. Thus it is a Enabling CRM Marketing Advertising service. Probably this can be specified even further.