Big like a big-data and analytics problem, the kind that IBM is making a name for itself in tackling. That’s exactly what Big Blue has agreed to do for the Miami Dolphins, the company said today, in the latest announcement by its Smarter Cities unit.

The Dolphins have tapped IBM to help the team operate Sun Life Stadium. The Dolphin’s home field during the regular season, it also has been known, over the years, to host the Super Bowl and the Orange Bowl. It has 1.5 million square feet of space, 75,000 seats and 24,000 parking spaces. Just try keeping track of it all by yourself.

The team has taken software that IBM developed for running cities, known as its Intelligent Operations Center, and put it to work in managing the stadium, and to trying to make the experience of attending a game more interesting for fans.

The IOC software is in use by several cities around the world, not the least of which, I’m told, is New York City. It’s typically used to view interconnected operations around a city, and monitor in real time for problems, but also to analyze underlying data to indicate where problems are cropping up.

If you think about it, a football game is just a great big business transaction that, like any other, generates a lot of data that’s just begging to be analyzed in order to make it more efficient and less costly, and to help it run smoothly. The IOC software, IBM says, provides a window into ongoing stadium activity and helps manage traffic flow, even to tracking where visitors like to eat before or during a game.

Aside from the tickets themselves, the big business at any stadium is in concessions, and the team is always looking for a way to nudge fans to buy food and drink while they’re in their seats, enticing them with specials. But if you’re the kind of fan who wants to have a sit-down rather than grab a beer and a brat during game, it makes sense for the team to try and know that about you, and act accordingly when you get to the stadium. IBM had more to say about it in a short video, which I embedded below.

This is the second major engagement for IBM’s Smarter Cities group in as many weeks. Last week, Big Blue was tapped by the Chinese city of Zhenjiang to help it modernize its public transportation infrastructure. To get the job done, IBM created a software platform that is aimed at increasing how much traffic the city can handle every day while also anticipating and preventing traffic jams before they happen.

If that seems a little dull, consider the numbers: Cities struggling to get their traffic under control — and thus allow people to be more productive — are willing to spend billions to get the job done. One estimate by Pike Research suggests that cities in Asia will spend $36 billion on this problem between now and 2020, or about $5.5 billion a year. IBM doesn’t say how much Zhenjiang is spending with it, but these deals are rarely small.

I recently had a chance to visit with Karen Ann Parrish, the IBM VP who runs the Smarter Cities program, and while it doesn’t take much to get her talking at length about it, once you do, you can’t help but walk away from the conversation realizing that Smarter Cities is kind of a big deal. Oddly enough, the needs of New York to respond to a terrorist attack quickly are similar to the needs of Rio de Janiero in Brazil, which needed to respond to life-threatening floods. It’s all about finding patterns, Parrish says. “We sat with a number of clients and asked if we could find some ways to codify the best ways to respond to these emergencies and other problems that come up. If we learn from these patterns, we can solve these problems a lot more quickly,” she told me. Thus the Smarter Cities business was born.

There is at least a future to this business. Projections show that 70 percent of the world’s population is going to live in cities by the year 2050, which basically means that the cities themselves are going to have to tackle an ever-growing set of problems in the coming years. They’re going to need all the help they can get.

A recent article in the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde described the "cyber-warfare"being used by the United States to subvert Cuba.

A stylishly-dressed man in his late 20s hawked pirated DVDs and computer games from the doorway of his apartment in the alleyways of Old Havana.

He is licensed and fully sanctioned by the Cuban government to do so, he told me, adding that if I wanted a TV show or movie that he didn’t have, he could almost definitely find it for me.

Illegally copied media is not an officially recognized issue in this country.

Internet access is another story.

When I asked the DVD seller about his Internet-related behavior and practices, he quickly hushed me up and insisted we move to the other side of the road to speak.

“Internet? Things here are bad,” he said quietly. “They’re really bad.” When I inquired about his use of the Web, he shut up completely and walked back to his booth.

This is a typical story in Cuba, where only a tiny fraction of Cubans have legally-sanctioned Internet access and many more use a variety of clandestine methods to log on and connect with the rest of the world.

As of 2010, Internet penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean stands at 34.5 percent, based on data from Nielsen and the International Telecommunication Union.

But a recent survey done by Cuba’s National Statistics Office says that only 2.9 percent of Cubans have direct access to the Internet–a number that includes state and academic officials.

Even for them, it’s mostly at work where they can use the connection, because it can be monitored. The Big Brother treatment extends to the home as well, one university professor with a connection in his house told me.

The key word in that statistic, though, is “direct.”

In my conversations with average Cubans, even outside of urban centers like Havana, people showed an impressive knowledge of popular Web sites, online services and modern hardware.

More than once, as I used it to snap photos on the street, my camera was correctly identified by cries of “iPhone, iPhone!” by excited children.

So without direct access, how is this information coming through? Certainly, many Cubans are in regular contact with their family members in other countries, and some interact with tourists on a regular basis.

But others are finding different ways of getting online in their own country.

One teenager told me about her friend of a similar age, who set up his own pirated connection at great financial cost and legal risk.

“It is a big risk, but for him it is worth it,” she said. Sometimes she uses his connection as well, but made me promise not to say a word of that to her mother.

Individuals with sanctioned and illegal connections alike share them with other Cubans, a sort of Internet black market. As it was explained to me, people will offer up their bedrooms or workspaces, wherever a computer may be set up, as illegal cyber-cafes of sorts–one of many ways to supplement their universally meager income.

Another journalist who recently visited related her experience in one of these situations.

“I would go to a home to check my email, and I did it seated on a queen bed, beside another customer who was also surfing,” she said in an email.

Once connected, some of the more daring users will access sites like Revolico.com, a sort of Cuban black market craigslist, where people can post classifieds to sell anything from computer parts to cars or apartments.

Private buying and selling of the latter two have been very tightly restricted by the government, but new laws mentioned at the country’s Communist Party congress in April may change that.

Knowing all of this, I felt a bit guilty when I was easily able to check my email from the hotel’s computer. The price for 60 minutes of access is about $6.00, a sizable chunk of the average Cuban monthly salary of $20.

Considering the intolerably slow connection speed (by American standards), it comes out to the value of most of a week’s work for the typical state employee for me to find out that AT&T is buying T-Mobile, shoot off some one-sentence responses to friends and delete a few daily Groupon offers.

There was some hope for improvement in the country’s connectedness when a fiber optic cable from Venezuela arrived in Cuba in February, after four years, with nationwide installation estimated to be complete by July.

But state officials have made it clear that, while this cable will dramatically increase connection speeds and lower costs to go online, it will only benefit those who are already on the Internet, which includes foreign businesses, high-ranking government workers, some students and foreign visitors like me.

To make matters worse, Raul Castro’s government has a history of characterizing the Internet as a means for nefarious capitalists to corrupt Cuba’s socialist ideals, with an obvious focus on the United States.

Most scholars on this side of the Florida Strait agree that the new cable won’t do very much to let Cubans see the rest of the world in any truer light than what state-run media casts.

But those Cubans I spoke to who even knew about the project were optimistic. After all, what choice do they have?

I couldn’t help but be optimistic for them myself, even as I stood in the immigration line at Miami International Airport 100 miles away, lamenting the spotty 3G coverage inside the terminal building.

It’s skimming the cream off the top.

It will not blanket America with offers, but rather only enter markets where there’s enough luxury experiences and high-end restaurants for its target audience of highly educated, 25-to-40 year-olds (In other words–affluent, wealthy and plain ol’ rich people).

Gilt City is an extension of the New York-based Gilt Groupe, which provides invitation-only access to products and experiences at discounted prices. Gilt City competes more directly with Groupon and LivingSocial by offering discounts to spas, restaurants and cosmetic treatments, like Botox. So far, it’s launched in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo.

Gilt Groupe has raised upward of $50 million in venture capital, and will still have to contend with Amazon-based LivingSocial, and Groupon, which aims to raise up to $1 billion after spurning a buyout attempt by Google.

Gilt City’s President Nathan Richardson promises us it still has aggressive goals, but that its plans look different from the others. “We won’t be in a lot of secondary markets, but there’s 40 markets that have the depth we need.”

Meanwhile, Groupon and LivingSocial are in more than 100 markets each today.

“The high-end of the market is enormous,” Richardson says.

Unlike Groupon and LivingSocial, Gilt doesn’t send out a deal every day, but rather offers up to three deals in a weekly email, because “that makes it worthy of reading in your inbox.” In Chicago it’s up to sending two a week, and in Los Angeles and New York, it’s now sending two to three.

In addition to offering discounts on restaurants, spas and beauty, Richardson says Gilt is also selling experiences.

For example, on the Fourth of July in New York, it hosted a party on the retired aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, which was positioned right under the fireworks. ”Not only did the offer sell out, we had three times as many people on wait list,” he says. ”We have the opportunity to extend our curated lifestyle brand to events. People have come to expect us to be consistent. It’s not hit or miss. We want to make sure the email surprises our customers and is always on brand and something we feel proud of.”

To make his point, Richardson often talks about the deal’s “exclusivity,” not how deep the discount is. But why would an exclusive restaurant–which presumably has no trouble selling out–be interested in offering a discount to Gilt’s subscribers?

Richardson says it’s an opportunity for these brands to introduce new opportunities or extend its franchise to a new audience.

For instance, a new restaurant opening in New York’s Flatiron District offered a deal that introduced a new menu to the public. The chef signed the menu and visited the patron’s table for a chat. Another upscale eating establishment used Gilt to promote availability of a private dinning room.

Richardson says that in a survey Gilt conducted, customers said that 80 percent of the time they had the intention of going back to a restaurant, gym or skin-care provider at full price, and in 60 percent of the cases they did go back.

Despite new reports of the funding today, the line of credit from TriplePoint Capital is months-old, and we’ve learned it was used primarily for building out a new warehouse in Louisville, Ky.

According to our sources, who declined to be named, only $5 million of the $15 million has been drawn down from the facility, and it’s one of three lines of credit the company has. The company spokeswoman declined to comment.

The Gilt Groupe is a members-only online retailer focused on luxury brands. It has seen huge success in offering deep discounts on items for short periods of time. More recently, it has set its sights on the local deals business, similar to the businesses being built by Groupon and LivingSocial. It has also expanded into offering luxury travel deals.

Gilt’s local deals site, called “Gilt City,” offers bargains on items ranging from massages to frozen yogurt. So far, it’s launched in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco. It’s going up against two feisty and well-funded competitors: LivingSocial, which just raised $175 million in capital from Amazon, and Groupon, which turned down Google’s $6 billion acquisition bid.

A round of funding raised this summer supported those product rollouts. In total, the company has raised upward of $50 million from investors, including General Atlantic and Matrix Partners.

The line of credit shows that the emerging company still needs additional financing for one-off capital projects as resources are pulled in other directions. A big focus is likely on hiring a local salesforce, which is considered a specialty of Groupon. Still, Gilt Groupe is considered one of the more likely IPO candidates, and has said in the past that it expects to achieve gross revenues of $400 million to $500 million by the end of this calendar year.

The idea of being rewarded for being a consumer is getting a lot of heat of late, as retailers seek to take advantage of the fast-moving social phenom among consumers, especially young ones.

Thus, a wide range of efforts to combine location-based mobile apps with purchasing, both online and offline.

Earlier this week, BoomTown posted on a funding for one such start-up, Topguest, which links check-ins with airline and hotel loyalty programs.

Today, another company in the space, shopkick, announced it had added another store–Minneapolis-based Target–to its list of retailers deploying its platform and mobile app.

As with customers of Macy’s, Best Buy and others, users of the shopkick app will receive points and other rewards, as well as instant mobile coupons, just for walking in the store.

The point being: Retailers need to reward foot traffic and not just purchases.

The Target partnership is limited now to 242 stores in the Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City and the San Francisco area.

Target will also offer scannable mobile coupons to customers for redemption at checkout.

It will be interesting to see how effective apps such as shopkick are as they roll out, as consumers test them.

Unlike others that offer quick deals–from Foursquare to Facebook to, now, Yahoo–shopkick uses its “kickbucks” as an enticement simply for being present in a store or scanning certain barcodes.

It’s certainly easy enough–my son, Louie, did it with ease and definite enjoyment–although a user does need to remember to fire up the app when entering a participating store.

There is also a small device retailers need to install need to make the shopkick ecosystem work.

CEO Cyriac Roeding, a former EVP for CBS’ mobile unit, created the concept for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based start-up while an entrepreneur-in-residence at Kleiner Perkins.

The company has raised $20 million in venture funding from Kleiner’s iFund, longtime Silicon Valley investor Reid Hoffman, as well as Hoffman’s home at Greylock Partners.

Here is a video interview I did with Roeding about where shopkick is going next:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/shopkick-checks-in-with-target-ceo-cyriac-roeding-talks-about-social-shopping/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100712/viral-video-john-mayer-channels-lebron-james/ http://allthingsd.com/20100712/viral-video-john-mayer-channels-lebron-james/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 07:15:56 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30410

Oh, that scamp John Mayer is such a jokester.

Here’s a spoof video the singer did in the wake of all the controversy around the basketball star choosing Miami to play for and leaving behind a dejected and angry Cleveland.

Big surprise, given his promiscuous reputation: Mayer will play his music for everyone.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100712/viral-video-john-mayer-channels-lebron-james/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091202/liveblogging-bing-new-features-demo-no-donuts/ http://allthingsd.com/20091202/liveblogging-bing-new-features-demo-no-donuts/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:10:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21284

Earlier today, BoomTown posted about a visit this morning from a passel of top Microsoft search execs rolling into downtown San Francisco to show off even more new features for Bing.

I am here, but the donuts are not. Um, Google always has organic donuts!

In any case, the lineup included: Satya Nadella, SVP for research and development for the Online Services Division; Harry Shum, a corporate VP who is leading core search development; and Brian MacDonald, corporate VP for Core Search Program Management.

As I previously wrote:

“The rolling-stone-gathers-no-moss team at the software giant–which has been seeing some promising progress in its quest to raise its search market share with its snappy new service–has announced an ongoing series of features since Bing was launched earlier this year.”

It’s 10:07 am PT and I await new wisdom from Microsoft (MSFT).

10:10 am: Nadella, the point man on Bing technology, begins.

He kicks off the show with some stats and a main point: Microsoft’s search share has, as his first slide reads: “Still a long way to go.”

At 9.9 percent versus Google’s (GOOG) share of more than 70 percent, Nadella is correct. But that is up from eight percent in a short time, so not bad.

Unique monthly visitors are also up from 71.7 million to 83.3 million. And perception, which was low, is now 48 percent.

In other words, more consumers seem to know what Bing is.

Personally, if I were Microsoft, I would declare victory and quit now!

10:19 am: A demo dude arrives to show “task” pages, which cluster around intent of searchers.

These are cool, and he’s showing a John Mayer page, which includes concerts and more. I hate that whiny singing dude, demo dude. He was mean to Jennifer Aniston, so he is dead to me.

Phew, the demo dude moves on to Miami. I love Miami. Trying to gauge intent, there is a slideshow available, better weather (rainy but 82 degrees!) and flight info. Plus no John Mayer!

Next, demo dude does movies. He shows times for the freaky “Paranormal Activity” and then offers hi-def trailers. Demo dude’s wife wants him to see it. I advise against it, unless he wants to be looking under the bed for the rest of his life.

Now the cheeky Softies, showing off how good Bing’s info is about Apple, (AAPL); display financial info and even the customer service number. I contemplate ordering a Mac.

This is followed by moves through universities and diseases (with related drug cards).

10:30 am: The demo dude moves on to an early look-see of Bing’s its upcoming Facebook deployment, using its already-announced Visual Search.

It’s apparently going to be very easy to be a stalker on Bing!

On to Twitter, with access to tweets in a variety of ways, from the most tweeted to most popular. Ashton Kutcher pops up like an inevitable Twitter weed, of course.

Nadella comes back and explains that this is being done to “browse to your intent.”

And now it is time for a mobile search update.

Guess what? Intent and search completion in a mobile context is time-sensitive! Who knew?

Actually, I did know and so did the whole world. Here is my typical mobile search: “Where the *&%# is that restaurant/kid party/gas station?”

10:38 am: A new demo dude (let’s call him demo dude #2) is showing off the recent mobile app for Bing, which came out a few weeks ago.

Lots of maps, although he says, “it’s more than just finding something on a map.”

Demo dude #2 types a “T,” which stands for AT&T, and stock info pops up.

He talks into the phone now for weather in Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft has its HQ. Cold and rainy! Which is a shocker for the Seattle area this time of year.

Demo dude #2 does movies and sports, showing a lot of what is on the Web. This is not much different than many mobile apps, but it works nicely.

Nadella seems to be promising an iPhone app soon too, noting that Microsoft will have them for all platforms, but he does not say it outright.

10:47 am: Now, Nadella is onto spatial search, which I like to call “oooh-that’s-pretty search.”

Therefore, we need a third demo dude. Demo dude #3 has a beard!

But he has a real new feature! A new mapping technology, powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight video technology, in beta within minutes. You can see it in action here.

It includes a Google competitor that has been called “streetside” before, with several new twists, which demo dude #3 is calling a “mash-in” (compared to a mashup, which is done a lot with Google by third-party folks).

The demo appears very seamless in comparison, using 3-D modeling and photorealism by integrating its Photosynth research work.

He shows a cool look at a museum and then the French American International School in San Francisco.

In this demo, demo dude #3 was looking at restaurants, which shows reviews and also the whole scene around it, including info on the parking garage you can see.

There is now a Map App gallery, most of which made by Microsoft right now.

11:07 am: A Twitter dude is brought up to show how the microblogger is part of this new mapping stuff from Microsoft, which he calls an “ecosystem.”

Using new geolocating tools on the microblogging service, it shows all kinds of geospatial information of tweets.

Twitter recently signed a data-mining deal with Microsoft, as well as Google.

So, it looks like Microsoft and Google are really going to be duking it out in the online mapping of everyone’s lives. And I look forward to this fight and the eventuality that they will want to map my every move. Bing it on!

11:10 am: Nadella wraps up, essentially trying to keep differentiating Bing from Google.

“We do hundreds of experiments a day,” he says, releasing as many features as possible.

It’s a good stance for a lesser competitor to have: Bing, We Try Harder!

Big words for Microsoft: Intent versus query. Whole page versus blue links. Minimizing time versus task completing. Search hit-or-miss versus dialog.

11:16 am: Q&A!

A question about human versus technology in perfecting this intent goal.

MacDonald and Nadella note that humans are important, but Bing is built around the big computing systems that do this automatically.

Will the structured page be indexable? Meaning Google? No real answer! But I would love to see Microsoft go all Rupert Murdoch on the search giant!

Then comes a question about premium or “non-Google” content. Nadella avoids the question and instead focuses on the “scaffolding” the data.

“We’re not as focused on getting exclusive content,” he says flatly. Uh-oh, publishers! As I reported, Microsoft is not forking over the dough.

MacDonald also tries to stress that Google wants folks off its site and onto the query result and that Bing is focusing on delivering that result right.

Everything is not a command line, declares MacDonald.

On a question of openness and the need to use Microsoft Silverlight technology for some of the rich visual mapping, versus Ajax, Nadella points out the service is too small not to be. Good point!

But Microsoft execs, who often shove their tech right down consumers’ throats, are nearly apologetic about having to use Silverlight (except they add, of course, that it is better!).

Nadella gets another question about paying to de-index Google.

“There is no real intent here that is focused on getting a whole bunch of content that is de-indexed from Google,” he said.

Some more questions about Bing monetization (it had better make money!) and global share.

Since Google is cleaning the clocks of everyone even worse abroad, Bing is focusing on the U.S.

I ask about how the Yahoo (YHOO) deal is going. “Well!”

And while Yahoo seems to be losing some search share to Microsoft, Nadella said his company would provide any “core” technology Yahoo wants to use given that Microsoft will be providing the search platform.

It would have been nice if Yahoo search had done this itself, of course, but Nadella said Yahoo could use the mapping and even task pages.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091202/liveblogging-bing-new-features-demo-no-donuts/feed/ 19 http://allthingsd.com/20091118/sony-ericsson-to-sack-2000/ http://allthingsd.com/20091118/sony-ericsson-to-sack-2000/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:56:04 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=29309 Given its recent string of lousy financial reports, its weak platform strategy and declining share of the the global handset market, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Sony Ericsson began sacking employees again. And the company did just that this morning, announcing plans to shutter its Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina, as well as offices in Miami, India and Sweden.

The closures, which will see Sony Ericsson’s North American headquarters moved to Atlanta, will result in the loss of some 2,000 jobs. This a little more than a year after the joint venture’s last big round of layoffs, part of a companywide cost-cutting plan that also left about 2,000 people unemployed.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091118/sony-ericsson-to-sack-2000/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080820/surf-the-skies-at-dsl-speeds-assuming-your-laptop-hasnt-been-confiscated-by-tsa/ http://allthingsd.com/20080820/surf-the-skies-at-dsl-speeds-assuming-your-laptop-hasnt-been-confiscated-by-tsa/#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:28:42 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=3625 American Airlines (AMR) rolled out its take on cloud computing today, becoming the first airline in the U.S. to offer full in-flight broadband access. Dubbed “GoGo” and provided by AirCell, the service is available for a flat $12.95 fee on flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. Speeds are said to be roughly equivalent to those offered by a slow DSL connection. When Walt tested the service earlier this summer, he found the typical download speed to hover between 500 and 600Kbps. Upload speeds were between 250 and 300Kbps. Not bad. Certainly, good enough to make it compelling for some travelers. “It’s a game-changer,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research. “You’re no longer forced to be isolated from what’s going on in your office, with your clients or with friends or family. For business travelers, this will greatly aid productivity, and for leisure travelers, it means they will be in control of their entertainment.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080820/surf-the-skies-at-dsl-speeds-assuming-your-laptop-hasnt-been-confiscated-by-tsa/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080820/surf-the-skies-at-dsl-speeds-assuming-your-laptop-hasnt-been-confiscated-by-tsa-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20080820/surf-the-skies-at-dsl-speeds-assuming-your-laptop-hasnt-been-confiscated-by-tsa-2/#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:28:42 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=3625 American Airlines (AMR) rolled out its take on cloud computing today, becoming the first airline in the U.S. to offer full in-flight broadband access. Dubbed “GoGo” and provided by AirCell, the service is available for a flat $12.95 fee on flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. Speeds are said to be roughly equivalent to those offered by a slow DSL connection. When Walt tested the service earlier this summer, he found the typical download speed to hover between 500 and 600Kbps. Upload speeds were between 250 and 300Kbps. Not bad. Certainly, good enough to make it compelling for some travelers. “It’s a game-changer,” said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst with Forrester Research. “You’re no longer forced to be isolated from what’s going on in your office, with your clients or with friends or family. For business travelers, this will greatly aid productivity, and for leisure travelers, it means they will be in control of their entertainment.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080820/surf-the-skies-at-dsl-speeds-assuming-your-laptop-hasnt-been-confiscated-by-tsa-2/feed/ 0