Dave Pollard offers the tips after a conversation with George Coutts.

1. Invest in face-time with customers
2. Solve the problem, don't excuse it
3. Return calls promptly
4. Make it easy for the customer to buy
5. Give the customer something 'extra'
6. Listen first, sell later
7. Show, don't tell
8. Understand that the customer is not buying your product
9. Don't sell yourself short
10. Know your customer, know your products

MocoNews.net points to an article in Wireless Asia: "As i-mode's revenues decline as it enters maturation, DoCoMo has found a way to evolve beyond i-mode by linking its services to traditional 'brick and mortar' businesses via transactions. In that sense, transactions are the new mobile content - at least in terms of new revenue growth. It will be interesting to see if FeliCa generates as much overseas buzz as i-mode did."

[via PaidContent] Yahoo! News has a story from NewsFactor:

Decreasing emphasis on the chassis of an operating system and focusing more on its widget-like features is indicative of the direction that OS vendors are going, say many analysts. The increasing homogenization among operating systems means that the future of the OS might just be about content.

"When operating systems began integrating features that were in other systems, they were well on the road to becoming undifferentiated from each other," said Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research. "With widgets, they see an opportunity to win users by being unique in how free content is pulled into the system."

Because operating systems are beginning to look interchangeable, the free information represented by widgets and other content-distribution methods becomes a way for vendors to differentiate their systems from the competition.

Richard MacManus writes about podcast conversation today between Steve Gillmor and Rafat Ali:

Steve has a concept called a "new newspaper" (if I heard it correctly), by which I think he means that a person can select a variety of super niche bloggers to cover all of the topics they're interested in reading on a daily basis. As Steve pointed out, what we as readers look for is authoritative voices that give us unique perspectives (or views) of general news and information that flows into the system.

Bloggers drive trends, MSM ratifies them - as Steve said. Rafat seconded that by saying that MSM journalists nowadays tend to get their leads from blogs.

The New York Times writes about the online game's dominance:

Since November, World of Warcraft has signed up more than four million subscribers worldwide, making for an annual revenue stream of more than $700 million. About a million of those subscribers are in the United States (with more than half a million copies sold this year) and another 1.5 million are in China, where the game was introduced just three months ago. By contrast, EverQuest II now has between 450,000 and 500,000 subscribers worldwide, with about 80 percent in the United States.

Just a year ago, numbers like that would have classed EverQuest II as a big hit. The original EverQuest topped out at around a half-million players, and many, if not most, game executives came to believe that the pool of people willing to pay $15 a month to play a video game had been exhausted. The conventional wisdom in the industry then was that there could not possibly be more than a million people who would pay to play a massively multiplayer online game.

Now, World of Warcraft has shattered earlier assumptions about the potential size of the market.

So, from an infrastructure point of view, what does the New and Next Internet portend? What are its characteristics?

Always-on: We are moving in India from a pay-per-use pricing model to a flat rate subscription model (in some cases, with download limits). But the instant availability of the Internet connection will fundamentally change the way we use the Internet – everything now becomes a few clicks and a few seconds away.

Ubiquitous: As data networks envelop us, the Internet will become pervasive. Already, the presence of cellular networks provides computer users the ability to connect from anywhere. In the coming years, technologies like WiMax and mesh wireless will blanket much of urban and semi-urban India.

High-speed: The narrowband speeds that we are used to will give away to higher speeds as real broadband makes its way to the mainstream. The world wide ‘wait’ will be a thing of the past. What this will do is encourage the use of more media-rich content.

On-demand: As connectivity improves, there will be little difference between online and offline. If it is out there, it is instantly available. This will lead to the rise of centralised services – especially for business applications. We will have control over when we want entertainment delivered.

Multi-format: The computer will no longer be the only device accessing the Internet. Smartphones with wireless data networks will provide equally viable alternatives. This means that there will be two screen footprints that content providers will need to cater to.

Two-way: The growth of weblogs is a harbinger of the publish-subscribe Internet. Readers and surfers will have the ability to participate in the content creation process. Cellphones with cameras can turn device owners into content producers.

Personalised: The Internet will also become more individualised as websites (especially search engines and portals) build up increasingly sophisticated profiles based on what we do. This will enable highly targeted advertising.

Not Free: This new Internet will not be built around the free access model that we have been used to. The eyeballs-centric business model is a thing of the past. As we find content and services of value, we are more likely to start to pay for them.

This New Internet will make possible path-breaking applications and services. From voice-over-IP which will allow phone calls anywhere in the country for a flat fee to video-on-demand which can provide education and entertainment to users when they want it, from software-as-a-service for businesses to automate all their processes to multi-player gaming platforms which will transform leisure time, the New Internet will create new opportunities – as well as threaten conventional business models. It will force players in computing, entertainment, consumer electronics and entertainment to tread into each other's territories.
What, then, is the endgame? What will the next decade of the Internet bring? This vision for the future is best captured in the concept of a “Mirror World” which was first espoused by David Gelernter in 1991.

Over the past decade, we have been spending an increasing amount of our time in so-called cyberspace. Companies and individuals have created virtual representations of their products and services. Our communications have also moved to conversing with identities (email IDs, IM monickers, SMSing to mobile numbers) rather than directly with people. Mirror Worlds takes this to its logical conclusion: we will have a parallel world that we will increasingly inhabit which is a copy of the real world. Today, maps can provide us the spatial copy. But they do not give us the real-time component. That is where a mix of next-generation mobiles, sensors and user-generated content will come in and embellish the other world. So, Mirror Worlds are microcosms of all that we see around us – as updated as the real world that they resemble. These Mirror Worlds are accessible to us through screens on the devices we have – our mobiles, computers, and networked TVs.

Ubiquitously available computers, mobile phones and next-generation networks are what will make all this possible. What has been missing are the applications to leverage this emerging new order. This is where lie the opportunities of Internet 2.0.

Tomorrow: Defining Themes