Technology

Last year, I took a shot at 2009 media predictions.  Here is a summary of how they turned out – boths hits and misses.  Look here for 2010 predictions next week.

Prediction - The continued growth of web casting, virtual trade shows and online video will take a significant chunk of revenue from trade shows and live events during 2009.

Result – As reported by B2B, digital is flat while trade show and print revenue is way down. Print revenue fell 25.7% in the first three quarters of this year compared with the same period last year. Trade show revenue declined 19.2%, and digital revenue dipped 3.0%. Virtual trade shows remain hot – the combination of measureable ROI and lack of travel costs make them very attractive.

Prediction - The decline of the US auto industry will result in huge cut backs in print advertising from the big three, and several magazines will close as a result.  Local TV stations and newspapers will see big decreases in ad revenue as car dealerships close after GM kills Buick, Pontiac and Saturn and Ford also pares brands as part of a government bailout.

Result - The US Government actually bailed out GM and Chrysler, not Ford.  GM is killing Saturn, Pontiac, Saab and sold Hummer while keeping Buick.   Ad spending is way down and according to one count 383 magazines did close including Gourmet, Portfolio, Domino and Country Home.

Prediction - Several IT publications will follow the lead of PC Magazine and abandon their print issue to reposition themselves as online and events brands.  They will thrive once all the print overhead is removed.

Result - Not as many as I would have thought, but the print versions of these publications don’t carry very much weight any more.  The IT media companies are totally focused on online media and lead generation.  One brand I used to work on, VARBusiness did go to the great BPA Audit in the sky.

Prediction - Face book will explode and become a “must have” for professionals in 34-54 age group who will continue to blur the lines between personal and business life.

Result - This was a layup.  Face book started 2009 with 150 million users and could be at 350 million by the end of this year.  Just about everyone I know is currently on the site.  Except my wife, thank goodness.

Prediction - The big television networks will continue to become less relevant in the lives of Americans as they spend more time on niche cable networks and social media sites.  The 2009 fall season will produce zero new hits.  The continued penetration of DVR’s will further erode their advertising base and they will have to make major cutbacks.

Result - I was somewhat off base.  According to Variety, the new season was not bad and contained one buzz worthy/water cooler hit in ABC’s Modern Family – a laugh riot.  On the other hand the great Jay Leno at 10pm experiment doesn’t seem to be working out.  Shocker.  Not only is viewership down at 10pm on NBC, but research shows that DVR usage is up as people catch up on other recorded shows during that time slot.
 
Prediction - A major US daily newspaper will fold its print edition and go digital only.

Result – A few bit the dust including the Rocky Mountain Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer went online only.  The big story was the New York Times Company playing chicken with the Boston Globe’s unions.  The Times essentially told the union to take their demanded cuts or they would close the paper which was on track to lose $50 million this year.  The union blinked and it is still publishing.  The NYT Company took the Globe off the market after bids came in around $35 million for the media property they purchased for a cool billion in 1993.

Prediction - Sarah Palin will write a book about her experiences during the 2008 campaign.  She will get a giant advance and it will go to #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list much to the dismay of New York Times.

Result – Home Run!!!  Her book hit the #1 in November and sold a million copies.  Huge crowds turned out for book signing and she did the usual media blitz round robin.  As expected, there was a cottage industry of Palin haters and endless opinion columns and blogs about “what her popularity means” and if she is running in 2012.  Interesting contrast to how President Obama is ending the year – the lowest approval rating for any President 10 months into his term and under 50% in both Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls.
 
Prediction - American Idol will see a strong decline in ratings - over commercialization and bland contestants killed the golden goose.

Result – The ratings did continue to decline for the season and the finale, but it is still the number one show on TV and a cash machine.  Once again AI had somewhat bland contestants with one very notable exception – Adam Lambert.  The jury is out on the long term success of the last two winners – David Cook and Kris Allen – two nondescript, moderately talented young men.  I don’t see either becoming a big star the way Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson did before them.  The more interesting question is about Adam Lambert.  Is America ready to embrace an openly gay male rock star?  I say yes, but as the cliché says – time will tell.

Check in next week for 2010 predictions.  If you have any of your own, send them my way and I’ll post them with a link back to your site.

Do you have a mobile content strategy?  If not, it’s time to start thinking about it.  While social media has grabbed many of the recent headlines, the iPhone/smart phone phenomenon is picking up steam.   Apple is selling roughly five to six million handsets per quarter and it is estimated there are 20 million iPhones now in use, and it’s not hard to see that doubling in a year.  The App Store has delivered over 1 billions apps (paid and free) among the 25K-35K apps that have been released.  How many professionals do you know who don’t have an iPhone, Trio/Pre or Blackberry?  I am guessing not many.

I am an avid iPhone user and believe it is a transformational technology for media and content.  The speed, versatility and readability are amazing compared to where smart phones were in the pre-Apple era.  It has become a critical delivery platform for your “third place”.  This is anywhere that is not your office or home where you are likely to be sitting in front of a computer or TV screen.  Your third place could be a hotel, train, airport, coffee shop, waiting room etc.  No need to lug around a laptop or even a netbook because the iPhone can do it all, including hold all your games, music, pictures, videos and act as a GPS system.

If you are creating content you have to think about a mobile strategy.  For some that can mean optimizing your site for mobile browsing, but you need to take it a step further.  Leading brands such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have created popular apps to push content.  A recent survey by the Audit Bureau of Circulation shows that media companies across the board are experimenting and planning apps of their own.  It is a great way to build a closer relationship with readers and gives you more interactive advertising opportunities to sell.

However, it is not just for traditional media.  You should also consider an app reader for your custom publications and original content you are creating for your web site, white paper/ebooks and blog.  It’s time to consider smart phones part of your private media channel along with social networking sites and traditional platforms of print, interactive and email marketing. 

In fact, any companies who rely on affinity/trust relationships with customers (i.e. online retailers for consumers and order tracking /supply chain for B2B) need to have a customer facing app.  Amazon has one that I have used and it extends my relationship with the retailer away from my desk. 

The strength of a private custom media channel is the ability to serve relevant content to customers on a platform they prefer so they are receptive to your message.  It is becoming clear that the smart phone platform is gaining favor at a rapid pace.  For many companies, a mobile content strategy can be a powerful customer retention tool.

We at the beginning of a radical change in the way television is perceived and used by both consumers and marketers. The end result will be the eventual merger of television and the internet.  It has already started with technological advances driving new consumer behavior.  A new study from the Pew Internet Project sheds light on some developments:

62% of adult Internet users have watched video on an online video sharing site.  This number jumps to 89% among 18-29 year old consumers.  Watching online video activity out ranks the use of social networking sites, podcasts and Twitter. 

35% of adult Internet users have watched TV shows and movies online on sites such as hulu.com.  For the 18-29 set the number jumps to 61%.  Among those adults who watch TV and movies online, 23% have connected their TV to their computer.

The lines between TV and online video are blurring, especially in the eyes of the younger generation.  Broadband is now in nearly two-thirds of all homes and 90% of all homes will have a flat panel TV by 2012.  With the infrastructure in place, the merging of platforms will happen quickly.  This opens the door for the proliferation of interactivity and user generated video content to flood the web.  The amount of content choices available to consumers will grow exponentially.

There is another less known but equally important technological development that will give consumers more choice, and more challenges for marketers.  The growth of remote video storage will have far reaching effects by increasing the ability to serve video on demand.  Companies like Netflix and On Demand are quickly adding content to their libraries to offer streaming on demand video to consumers.  Much like iTunes did in the music business it will take a chunk out of the DVD business.  I never really understood the desire to “own” a movie or TV series on a DVD, but the need may evaporate when you can get it on demand for a few dollars with a mouse click.

The other application enabled by remote video storage is network DVR service currently being offered by Cablevision.  This would enable any viewer to use the basic time shifting and commercial skipping power of the DVR without having the box in home.  The DVR services would be remote and handled in a central storage facility.  Currently DVR penetration is 28% in the US and it could grow dramatically with the roll out of network DVR service.

These trends are all crushing blows to the traditional revenue streams of the content providers.  DVD sales are very important to the movie studios and television lives on the traditional commercial.  Technology will enable to consumers to have limitless choices and the ability to skip by commercials.  On the flip side, video content providers now have the opportunity to put their material online and give marketers an actual measurable marketing venue.  The big question- will they fight the reality of the future like the music and newspaper business or will they embrace it? 

I used to be one of those people who would read articles in major news outlets and be shocked at certain statistics. “50% of people in Oklahoma City don’t have high school diplomas!” “Eating strawberries reduces your chance of developing eye cancer by 67%!” “80% of married men cheat!” I’d scurry off to my friends and repeat what I’d read, devising how I’d need to change my lifestyle to ensure I didn’t end up with a bad case of psoriasis from eating cole slaw.

Little did I know what a mistake I was making. It’s fascinating how easily statistics and research data can be manipulated to present a very biased picture of what’s actually going on. As marketers, we need to champion the use of good market research as the base upon which all marketing programs are built, and be certain we’re building our research methods as effectively as possible.

Here are some tips to help you avoid falling into these all-too-common research data traps:

1. Be a skeptic. 

People tend to use statistics carelessly, and the actual research study that was performed is rarely linked to the article. A writer might not disclose whether a corporate sponsor paid for the research and is skewing the results. Before you run off implementing some new social networking strategy after reading an article claiming 67% of American households use Facebook and/or Twitter, do YOUR research. Dig out the research study and read it. With the Internet, we have the power to find these things. I hate to say, “Don’t believe anything you read,” but it’s often true.

2. Understand what could constitute bad research. 

Experiments are set up differently for many reasons. For example, you can’t force someone to start smoking, or drive without a seatbelt. This means that inferences have to be drawn based on an observational study of smokers, and—yes, you got it—that pool of subjects is already biased. The results from that group would not yield results applicable to a non-biased population. A randomized study usually provides less biased data. Observational studies should always have a control group, and sometimes they don’t. Worse, some studies completely falsify their data. Be aware!

3. Pay attention to sample size.

This is a very common trap. Studies often exaggerate the feedback from a very small data set as being representative of an entire population. If 10 people are giving you positive feedback about your new HR policies, be sure to be thorough in finding out if the other 500 employees feel the same. You often find wild swings in variation in small sets of data. Leave your ego out of it—collect enough data to be sure you’re your sample represents the entire population within a reasonable margin of error.

4. Everything regresses toward the mean.

Disappointing, I know. If you changed nothing, those outstanding click-through rates you got two months in a row after months of steady results are probably just chance. In time, all swings even out.

As marketers, we know how easy it is to design campaigns to manipulate people’s minds and habits. However, we have a responsibility to the consumer and to ourselves to use data correctly. Back up your claims. Use credible research. Collect enough data to make sure your conclusions are correct. Data doesn’t lie, and neither should we.

Forrester just released their five year forecast for US Interactive Marketing and it is an interesting read.  Five year forecasts are always dicey in today’s new media world. How many people in 2004 predicted the most talked about politicians in 2009 would be Barack Obama and Sarah Palin?  Zero.  About the same amount of people in 2004 who predicted the country would come to a standstill to watch and follow Michael Jackson’s memorial on Face book and Twitter. 

However, the numbers confirm and quantify what most of us already know – the amount of dollars to be spent on interactive marketing are growing fast and taking share from traditional media.  Overall, search marketing will be the biggest component, and Mobile (27% CAGR) and Social Media (34% CAGR) will grow the fastest.  All of these media/technologies are game changers in terms of information/content consumption and marketing.  Anyone who has taken a spin around an iPhone can see just how radically our content consuming habits will change.  And, marketers must follow suit.

Here is a quote from Forrester’s Shar VanBoskrik’s blog:

But to me, the most interesting takeaway from the research is that overall advertising budgets will decline.  Yep.  With dollars moving out of traditional media toward less expensive and more efficient interactive tools, marketers will actually need less money to accomplish their current advertising goals.   But reasonable marketers won’t relinquish budget because their programs are running too efficiently. Instead, marketers will allocate unused advertising dollars into investments like innovation, research, customer service, customer experiences, and marketing-specific technology and IT staff, in order to further marketing’s strategic influence within their companies.

If I may add my two cents – this gives marketers and brands the opportunity to become the media.  By creating their own original content, brands can build trust and affinity with customers and prospects.  The budget and technology now exists for marketers to totally bypass traditional media and ad agencies and talk directly to customers.  Content is what will fuel search and social media, so the opportunity for companies to engage in content marketing has never been greater.  I may not be bold enough to predict what the marketing world will look like in 2014, but I do know one thing.  I would not invest in any traditional ad agencies any time soon.

Question: Has your sales and marketing tactics changed radically over the past five years?  Not to over hype it, but the second half of this decade has brought changes in media consumption that rivals the introduction of the printing press and television.  You need to keep your customer’s behavior in mind when deciding which marketing and sales tactics to use in light of the dramatic changes.

Five years ago no one had yet heard of YouTube, Hulu, Face book or Twitter.  Reality TV now dominates the ratings as Andy Warhol’s prediction of instant fame actually came true.  Public Wi Fi is everywhere and Google is now a verb.  The new generation of smart phones would amaze James Bond.  DVRs  and IPODs have completely changed the concept of consuming and buying entertainment.  When it comes to content, the influence of bloggers in politics, sports and entertainment often drive the media narrative with the mainstream media chasing. 

Major newspapers like the Boston Globe are a dying business model.  Network TV viewership is at an all time low and the level of creativity is even lower – how many crime shows do we need?  Magazine are shrinking and trying to reinvent themselves like Newsweek, Playboy and Reader’s Digest.  The B2B trade press is migrating from print to online content, web casts and virtual trade shows.

Thanks to advances in technology, the balance of power has shifted from media to consumer and that changes everything for marketers.  Have you adjusted your marketing plans to take advantage of these changes or are you maintaining the status quo?

Here are ten burning questions you need to ask yourself now:

1. Are you conducting or finding research to understand how your customers are consuming media? 

2. Does this research tell you the information needs of your customers and prospects?

3. Are you still renting expensive ad space in print and TV with the majority your budget? 

4. Are your producing original content and owning your own media channel to create an interactive dialog with your customers?

5. Is your company using original content to become a trusted media brand?

6. Are you creating passion and communities among your customers?

7. Do you make an effort to balance your retention and acquisition efforts, or are you over investing in lead generation?

8. Do you have a defined social media strategy to engage with customers and prospects where they are spending more and more time?

9. Are you personally engaged with Linked In, Face Book and Twitter to find prospects and talk to your customers?

10. Do you have measurement metrics in place for all of your marketing and sales tactics?

Think about your honest answers to these questions and take stock of where you are with both your company and career.  It is easy for mid career professionals to write these changes off as a passing fad or “for kids”.  That is probably what they there thinking at the Boston Globe and Newsweek just a few years ago.  We are in the midst of big time changes across the spectrum of politics, economics and media consumption.  The companies that adopt swiftly will thrive over the next decade. 

In 2000, Al Gore received a half million more votes than George W. Bush for President, but it was not to be.  Talk about Karma - fast forward to today and W. is in his living room with the lowest approval rating in modern times and is still a punching bag for the media and comedians.  Meanwhile, Al Gore has added a Nobel Peace Prize, Oscar, Grammy and Emmy to his environmentally correct trophy case.  In case you didn’t know, Gore is also one of the founders of Current TV.  Description below:

Since its inception in 2005, Current TV has been the world’s leading peer-to-peer news and information network. Current is the only 24/7 cable and satellite television network and Internet site produced and programmed in collaboration with its audience. Current connects young adults with what is going on in their world, from their perspective, in their own voices.

Current pioneered the television industry’s leading model of interactive viewer created content (VC2). Comprising roughly one-third of Current’s on-air broadcast, this content is submitted via short-form, non-fiction video “pods”. Viewer Created Ad Messages (VCAMs) are also open to viewer’s participation.
 

Current TV is a creature of the new media landscape and takes advantage of the fact many people want to create content, connect with peers and be famous. The technology to live this dream is now in the hands of the masses.  You can see this theme throughout media and popular culture.  Who received more “buzz” this year?  Was it Adam Lambert, Susan Boyle and the Housewives of NY/NJ or the scripted dramas on network television?  Clearly it was the reality stars because they feed into the concept of democratized content and aspirations of fame and fortune.

This trend has implications for marketers and advertisers trying to reach an ever more fragmented audience.  The 30 second spot and print ads are dying art forms.  One of the cool things about Current TV is they allow viewers to create ads for major brands such as HP and T-Mobile based on some creative assets and a brief.  Their research shows that viewers prefer user generated ads by a ratio of 9 to 1.  This trend does not bode well for traditional ad agencies, and doesn’t big Al know it.  Read a few quotes from a keynote he recently gave at marketing event as reported by Adweek:

He described the end of the industrial-revolution-like era of advertising, which produced ads that are “big, blunt expensive and very intrusive. . Audiences have begun to resist that old model.”   Going forward, advertising needs to become more nuanced, authentic and peer-to-peer, said Gore. “People want a different kind of feeling toward brands to which they give their money.”
 
That means being more upfront about ad messaging, rather than attempting to squeeze marketing messages into content through branded entertainment, he said. According to Gore, one of the reasons that Current viewers like VCAM ads is that they are straightforward in their intent. “People are interested in what someone like them is going to do and they’re not going to have something slipped by them,” Gore said. With ads that have been disguised as entertainment, “there is some resistance to those models. . . . We believe that intelligent empowerment of the audience is the key.”

Al Gore will likely never be President but he is now at the forefront of private custom media channels and content marketing.  In the parlance of marketing speak, Al Gore “gets it”.  Do you? 

The job of a marketer has probably never been more complicated with all the choices and options we have to communicate our messages for lead generation and customer retention.  The advent of new web tools and social media has made keeping up a full time job.  Our friend Joe Pulizzi at Junta42 has done a great job of compiling all the tools you need to know about in the areas of custom media, social networking, interactive conversations, Facebook and Twitter tools, content sharing, blogging, back end operation and of course, measurement.

Take a look at the list and let us know if you have any gems to add.   Personally, I have found the ability to share information with peers one of the best benefits of social media. Later this week I’ll let you know who I follow via Twitter to keep up with the daily changes in our world.  Happy reading.

This week I had the pleasure of contributing an article to the Chief Marketer web site.  The article is about using web casts to drive leads and ROI.  This is a topic quite familiar to King Fish as we manage over 250 web casts yearly for our clients.

To read the article please click here to go to the Chief Marketer site, and check out all of the great content they have on many other issues relevant to today’s marketer.

This year’s Digital Hollywood conference in Los Angeles has been shedding light on the significant challenges marketers face as they try to lasso prospects online. By and large, the panelists have been candid about the immaturity of this medium, but have been unified in their belief that traditional advertising is waning, and providing prospects with meaningful online experiences is the cost of entry.

The panelists, most of which carried senior executive titles, provided sound bites that had me in complete agreement. Here is a sample.

During a session entitled: The Web, Social Media and Advertising: Transforming and Disassembling the World of Traditional Media and Communications, Matt Rosenberg, Group Director, Organic said that to be successful, “Brands are immersing themselves in the content experience…you need to let your brand take a backseat.” I absolutely agree, and that is a core strategy at King Fish Media, where our job is to help clients engage with prospects and clients on a far more meaningful level than brand advertising offers.

Recommended contacts who spoke at this panel:

Raquel Krouse, VP Social Media, Interpublic Emerging Media Lab
Matt Rosenberg, Group Director, Organic
Mark Lewis, Strategic Planning Director, DDB San Francisco

The next session, Bridging TV and Broadband: Strategic Relationships – Advertising, Technology and Content, took the full customer immersion concept to a different level. A senior executive from the Home Shopping Network candidly evaluated her brand, and said that the universal knowledge of her brand allowed for movement into new media platforms (Interactive TV and .TV), saying, “People at the company worried about these platforms, but with the huge brand loyalty, they go wherever the brand goes and build communities there.” We, at King Fish, describe this phenomenon as owning, not renting your own media channel – Private Media.

Recommended contacts from this panel:

Jeff Miller, President and CEO, ICTV
Fred McIntyre, SVP, AOL Video

On a separate note, I hope to never again hear these words as much as I have during the last three days: “paradigm” (thought we were done with that), “frictionless”, “zero sum game”, “net loser” and “value proposition”.

During each of these sessions, I heard frequent confirmation that intent-based vs. interruption-based communications is the most effective means for clients to communicate with their prospects and customers; custom media provides the single strongest venue to effectively achieve success with this effort.

I’ve been talking with marketing managers at vendors and large integrators, and they share a common complaint: their efforts are unappreciated and often dismissed by their sales counterparts.

No shock. Research conducted by VARBusiness last year found that marketing and business development ranked among the least valued items for improving sales and growing a business. Conversely, greater management focus and expanding sales teams was ranked among the best actions to drive growth. In other words, brute force wins over strategic development.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, channel dogma holds that resellers (solution providers, integrators and system builders) generate leads on behalf of their vendors. The reality, however, is solution providers don’t generate leads, are horrible at marketing and don’t do enough to promote their own brands.

What’s to blame? Two of the great evils of the IT industry: compensation plans and vendor brand supremacy.

Innovation and growth require risk taking. Compensation plans, however, counter risk taking. As products become commoditized and markets become saturated, vendors and solution providers will bring new and complex products to create new revenue streams. Sales teams are often compensated on gross revenue of best selling products. When they’re given a goal for sales, sales teams will often devote the bulk of their attention to products that will get them to their goal fastest without consideration to overall growth of the business. This is also why companies create special sales teams when introducing new products and services; they’re unencumbered by legacy sales and products.

Solution providers don’t do enough to develop and promote their own brands. Instead, solution providers rely upon their vendors’ brand strength to drive sales and the vendors prefer it this way. To draw an analogy to the automobile industry, no one buys a car body, engine, tires, drive train, seats, windows and lights and then builds a car; they buy a car that is the final product of scores of suppliers. Nissan Motors, for instance, has more than 10,000 suppliers that feed parts to the manufacturer for the assembly of its various cars. Yet, the general public knows few of those suppliers even if they are the best parts makers in the industry. The contrary is true in the IT industry, where vendors want brand supremacy over the brands of their resellers, integrators and solution providers. No one buys an IT system; they buy the pieces and then pay someone to assemble them.

Vendor brand supremacy has the unfortunate effect of creating partner reliance upon the vendor for marketing and lead generation. So long as vendors continue to promote their brands over the brands of their channel partners, the solution providers will look to their vendors to either supply marketing or underwrite their marketing efforts.

To achieve real growth, businesses must be willing to take risk. Corporate leaders may understand the risk imperative; what they need to do is remove the obstacles to risk and structure their channels and compensation plans to encourage their field teams to embrace the challenge of risk rather than just maintaining their personal revenue streams.

Send Larry your thoughts and feedback: lmwalsh@twentyonetwelve.biz or at www.twentyonetwelve.biz

I know this blog entry will be read by a lot of people. Not because I’m an especially controversial columnist but because I am about to use the magic word: iPhone. 

 The King Fish folks asked me to opine about this topic because I am the classic mobile gadget nut. Someone who has owned basically every Palm device since the original Palm Pilot. Plus, full disclosure, I am also a die-hard fan of technology from Apple. My mother used to work there. I used a Lisa before I got my hands on the first Macs. I’ve used an Apple III. I did an internship with Apple marketing services during university. So, I’m hooked. Yes, I am one of the people who was fuming last week because I paid way too much for my iPhone in early July. No, I did not wait in line for it. Yes, I will absolutely use my Apple store credit to get something else from Apple.

Like every iPhone owner, I also have become a defacto demo rep. I’ve been approached in airports, in the supermarket, in Starbucks. Interestingly, the main thing people ask to see is the gravity-sensing feature: how the iPhone screen flips from vertical to horizontal and back again depending on how you hold it in relationship to the ground. Even right now, it is so logical and so way-cool that it takes my breath away.

My mother discovered a feature I didn’t know about when I was in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago: How you can shrink or explode what is displayed on the screen simply by pinching your fingers together on the glass. I know, pretty obvious, but I started using my iPhone so quickly when I bought it that I really didn’t study the owners’ manual.

The main question people ask me, and the one you probably care about most, is how the iPhone behaves as a business tool.

My answer: about as well as the Mac.

For one thing, if you’re surgically attached to your BlackBerry or Treo, then the iPhone is definitely not for you. Thumbing isn’t so easy, although the virtual keyboard does become easier to use pretty quickly and the self-correcting feature is used pretty much regularly. But this is not a device meant for instant e-mail junkies.

Another thing that perplexes me: Why on earth must I return to the main screen every time I want to switch to a different application? I was so spoiled by the Treo’s quick access key, that this annoys me pretty much every time I pick the iPhone up.

The iPhone does basic e-mail pretty well, but I’m a free agent, so I don’t have corporate networks to contend with or set up. It does support IMAP, POP and Exchange servers, though, so a small business would probably have pretty good luck with it. One thing I haven’t figured out how to enable: accepting calendar requests or meeting invitations, which has been the bane of my existence over the roughly two months I’ve been using my HeathPhone. Of course, that’s more a function of the basic Macintosh e-mail client that I use, I suppose, and not necessarily the iPhone. I need to migrate to something better, but I haven’t had the time to research it.

One feature that I do believe will become requisite for other mobile smart phones: WiFi support. The ability to hop on and off networks at will, defaulting to my AT&T Edge service when necessary, is pretty compelling. The fact that it happens seamlessly is wonderful. This has implications for cutting voice communications costs. Imagine using the WiFi network available in one of your branch offices. Moreover, WiFi support means you can get to Web applications easily, if you’re willing to squint at the screen. Heck, WiFi has already shown up in the newest iPods, so you can see where this is going.

Using my iPhone, I’ve managed to submit entries to my GreenTech Pastures blog at ZDNet pretty easily, and I’ve even checked my checking account balance from the road. (My bookmarks have carried over from the Safari browser I use via the iTunes sync feature.) NetSuite pretty quickly came out with iPhone support for its business automation applications right after the product released, and some of my friends have pointed me to widget applications that I could use. One of those applications, www.flickim.com, provides instant messaging functionality (one of the things I miss most from using a Treo 650). Another application called Files2Phone from 1stWorks will let you grab documents, audio and other media files from your desktop remotely. One thing I long for: A way to put my To-Do list on my iPhone. Haven’t figured that out yet.

So, there definitely are innovators trying business-ify the iPhone around me. I’m not complaining. But there is a major caveat: I’m using two Macs to run my freelance business. I’m not so sure my iPhone would play so well if I lived in a Windows world.