A Partnership Is Worth Zilch When....

... your partner fails to provide an obvious path to download and install your software.

In early July last year I wrote about the launch of Dell Video Chat, based on a newly announced agreement between Dell and SightSpeed to use SightSpeed's video services. The bottom line was that Dell Video Chat would become available on an expanding range of Dell PC's.What follows is a story about what turns users away from Windows PC's and why Apple is doing so well with its iMac's and MacBooks these days. But it also has to be an embarrassment to Dell.

As background I should say that recently I have watched as two non-tech persons have started up their MacBooks for the first time. Turn it on, asks for your name and contact information, upgrades the software, takes your photograph with the built-in webcam, finds the WiFi, connects to the Internet (and finds other PC's on your LAN). In about 20 to 30 minutes you're up and running. No hassles, no new software to install; it just happens!. And subsequently these people do not come back to me for technical support, especially on security, operating system upgrade and new software installation issues.

This weekend I am helping an acquaintance getting transitioned to a new Dell Vostro 220 desktop PC. Due to one critical business application that only supports a Windows installation this person could not change to a Mac. In the course of starting it up I found there was a webcam embedded onto the monitor and installed the appropriate webcam software. (No, Dell did not pre-install it even though a monitor with embedded webcam was included in the initial order.) Ran a client called Dell Webcam Central. You could take photos or record video while seated in front of the monitor.

Then I noticed in the upper right hand corner an option to "Switch to video chat". Recalling that I had written about Dell Video Chat last summer I clicked on the link. And got a dialogue box stating: "You have not installed the video chat application 'Dell Video Chat'. Do you want to download now?" Clicked on the "Yes" button.

This took me to a Dell web page that asked for my Dell Service Tag. Entered it and ended up on the standard page of driver downloads for the Vostro PC. Looked through the various categories (after identifying my OS as Windows XP) and could not find Dell Video Chat software anywhere. No application downloads. Nothing about it listed in a sidebar on the same page. Nada, Did a search. No luck.

So, at this point, not being sure if I had installed Dell's webcam software properly I installed Skype on this PC and found it recognized my webcam, including its associated microphone, with no problem. Dell had failed to provide any means (let alone a user-friendly means) to download and install the Dell Video Chat software.

Sort of defeats the purpose of having this SightSpeed-Dell agreement and the associated easy access to the relevant software somehow. It actually turned out to be easier for me to download and install Skype (and have ready access to voice and/or chat conversations with the huge Skype user base).

A couple of points made in posts since my initial one about the arrangement between Dell and SightSpeed have happened since last summer:

• Skype hired Scott Durschlag as COO. In a post about CxO's and their persoanl business networks I pointed out that both Scott and Ron Garriques, now Dell's President of Global Consumer Group, had worked together at Motorola.
• Logitech announced it would acquire SightSpeed in late October.

Aside from Dell's obvious quality assurance problem described above, the sceptic in me might ask:

• Did Logitech's acquisition of SightSpeed somehow sour the Dell relationship with SightSpeed
• If it's all but impossible for a somewhat technically savvy person to find and install Dell Video Chat, is there any Dell Video Chat user registered out there with whom a user could have a conversation?
• Has SightSpeed been tracking any metrics on Dell Video Chat adoption?
• Is there an opportunity here for Skype to leverage a Skype executive's previous relationship with a current Dell executive to initiate discussions about having Dell provide Skype with all its PC's?
• Will "Skype Everywhere" include Dell PC users when they want to hold voice, chat and video conversations simply by default? "No biz dev required."

Just wondering .....Where's the value in a Dell partnership? It's all about execution!

In spite of being a 14-year purchaser of Dell PC's, it's one more nail in the Dell/Microsoft coffin as I contemplate a transition to a MacBook for my next laptop purchase.

And, in case anyone was wondering about what Steve Jobs brought to the table at Apple: a discipline within Apple's corporate culture that focuses on a friction-free and overwhelmingly successful user experience. In spite of Steve's current absence that corporate culture is not going away anytime soon.

Phil's Observations:

• Two More Reasons why SightSpeed is good for Logitech
• Why Did Skype lose the Dell account to Logitech

SightSpeed's CEO Peter Csathy:

• Speculation About SightSpeed's Partnership Success -- "How Did They Do It?"

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Collective Presence Helps Nomads Do The Right Things

Dell wanted to know about "Keeping Productivity High For On The Go Workers" for their Digital Nomads site. Here's my small contribution to the theme.

Presence is a stream of signals you give off. You've seen simple availability presence signals in instant messaging: I'm online, I'm offline, Do Not Disturb. Some of us lifestream what we're doing during the day: I'm in this meeting, I'm catching up on email, I'm making soup. We also give off contextual presence signals: I'm available for lunch on Tuesday if you're a recruiter, my dream date, or someone I know.

Disclosure like this feels strange. At first. And then something unusual happens. We get used to it. It starts to feel familiar. Like being in an open plan office where you overhear small talk, see people come and go. Or having a break room where you catch up with people a little bit here and there.

And then presence becomes useful.

People use our signals. Strangers decide if they should introduce themselves. Colleagues decide when they should interrupt, and for what. And that makes your life better, because the people around you are making better choices about when and how to engage with you.

We use many tools to broadcast our presence. Twitter, blogs, public calendars, job sites, project status systems, IM mood messages. Even simple things like IM and email. So long as the people in your world can easily see your presence and update their own, tool choices don't matter too much.

Presence is a social interaction. You share yours. You consume others'. And through this, you get to know each other in ways that may be more intimate and current than if you were in the same physical office.

Collective presence is what it sounds like. A stream or a place where you can see what a group of people are doing. Where you aggregate your group's presence signals.

Collective presence is a mix of informal, unstructured, casual talk and structured messages. The Europeans in our team are coming online now. The programmers are working through a pre-release checklist. Someone's dealing with a problem today.

Members of a team experience this collective presence through group chats, like IRC's or Skype's persistent chat rooms, or a listserv. At Skype Journal, we augment group chats with RSS aggregators and other software that pull in team member blogs, twitter updates, public calendars, public bookmarks, new photos and illustrations. So all through the day we keep in touch.

Three payoffs:

First, social media and presence tools sustain bonds that help a team know and trust each other.

Second, collective presence cultivates situational awareness. So people make better choices about what is important, what is urgent and what needs resources.

Third, collective presence means you are not alone. When those feelings of isolation kick in, it's easy to drop into the group chat and see what everyone's been up to.

The essence of productivity is choosing the right things to do and doing them. Collective presence makes remote team productivity easier and more immediate.

My toolkit:

• Skype public chats, Skype contact groups
• iGoogle and Google Reader (aggregating news and blog feeds)
• twitter, TwitterBar (so I can post from Firefox), TweetDeck (aggregating tweets), Twype (putting my latest twitter into my Skype mood),
• Yahoo!'s flickr (images), delicious (bookmarks), upcoming (events)
• Google Groups for email lists

See also: Presence evolving, Skype Journal, September 2007. Describes Collective presence, Faceted presence, Presence attributes and dimensions, Presence federation, Presence prediction.

tags: Collective presence, Faceted presence, Presence attributes and dimensions, Presence federation, Presence prediction, presence, skypeweb, social software, social media, collaboration, productivity, work, telework, distance, twype, twitter, twitterbar, tweetdeck

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

Two more reasons why SightSpeed is good for Logitech

Video cameras are being built into everything. Phones, monitors and nearly every new laptop. Logitech buying SightSpeed marks the end of the generic webcam add-on market, as Jim Courtney wrote up yesterday. Or the beginning of the end, at least.

Logitech can sell its high-end webcam technology to laptop and mobile OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericson, Motorola, Qualcomm.

Logitech Video Inside. With Carl Zeiss Optics. With SightSpeed MultiParty Video. And Skype High Quality Video.

SightSpeed's white-label distribution has been effective, accounting for many more users than its own brand. Logitech could very well become a Dolby Labs for personal video, licensing the best quality video features, and de facto standards for video, to the world's devices.

Logitech wants freemium marketing power. Free video calling entices newbies who pay later for multiparty, higher quality experiences. This is a branding and customer relationship program that could spill over to Logitech's hardware products. It may also be Logitech's strongest relationship with end consumers since most of Logitech's sales go through resellers. SightSpeed's own revenue stream is a nice bonus to the strategic value of direct customer relationships.

A larger theme is synergy between realtime social networks and devices. Skype and Skypephones. Twitter and mobiles. Gtalk and Android. And now SightSpeed and Logitech.

tags: skype, logitech, sitespeed, dell, video, hp, lenovo, acer, asus, nokia, samsung, sony, ericson, motorola, qualcomm, optics, dolby, freemium

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
Follow Skype Journal on twitter

Logitech to Acquire SightSpeed. Questions Arise.

According to Tech Crunch and GigaOm posts late last night Logitech is about to spend $30 million to acquire SightSpeed, the video messaging and video conferencing service that recently was selected ot provide the infrastructure for Dell's Video Chat. Congratulations to Peter Csathy and his team. And to Andy Abramson and his team; another Comunicano client achieves success.

Seems like the video calling and video conferencing market is about to heat up. There will be another post later this morning involving an announcement that can bring video conferencing to a much broader user audience than Skype's (though it's not exactly insignificant) and SightSpeed's.
Questions that arise from this acquisition:

• How is Logitech able to continue to partner with services such as Skype when they are now entering the desktop video services market? Logitech's co-operation was vital to Skype's ability to provide High Quality Video.
  
• Or is it a produce marketing acquisition? Is Logitech acquiring SightSpeed simply to have additional collateral software to provide with their webcam offerings? Will we start to see Logitech's Carl-Zeiss optics in embedded webcams on Dell PC's?

The economy may be in recession; it's driving less travel and more audio and video conferencing. They're seeing a rise in customers and use of audio conferencing at both HiDef Conferencing and Calliflower. It will be an interesting winter for expanding user experiences involving desktop video.

Logitech Press Release

Update: Alec Saunders comments on the same theme here.
Tags: Logitech, SightSpeed, Skype, Peter Csathy, Tech Crunc, GigaOm, HiDef Conferencing, Calliflower

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