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By Thomas Crampton

Add international money transfers to my list of activities that are now easier
online than in the "real" world.

I had always found bank transfers a pain because they generally required a
visit to the bank with stacks of forms to fill in. If lucky, my money disappeared
for up to eight working days before arriving in the destination bank at a horrible exchange rate.

Recently I wrote about my experiences using an online foreign currency exchange service that was easier, cheaper and faster than the bank.

Since it is easy to transfer small amounts, I now find the service a lifesaver.

What other new Web-based services could be useful for people who live abroad?

Note: I may cross-post comments on the IHT blog and they may be reproduced in the paper for publication.

Posted by Thomas Crampton

Got an early exclusive look at a fascinating survey by ACNielsen about online shopping worldwide.

The study of 21,000 web users in 38 countries, to be made public later today, found that online shopping habits vary radically by country.

The US is way behind Europe in the amount of online shopping (ranking 11 worldwide), perhaps because mall shopping is so much easier than shopping in a European city. This encourages Europeans to shop online.

What people purchase online is very different country-by-country. In South Korea one third of online shoppers purchase nutritional/cosmetic goods, while the global average is just 10 percent.

Payment for online shopping - not surprisingly - are dominated by credit card (visa) and bank transfer globally.

BUT cash on delivery is the second most popular way to pay for purchases in Europe!

I was surprised by Europe's cash on delivery preference, but affirmed it last night at a dinner in Paris. French people at the supper said they do not trust the web so prefer to see the goods before paying. They also said their lack of trust makes them very reluctant to use eBay!

Similar to cellphones, the technology of online shopping may be uniform, but the way in which people interact with it varies by country.

Anyone come across other differences of usage of an identical platforms?

Posted by Thomas Crampton

My experiences in changing cities five times and continents three times in the last 18 months have given me an insight into the shallowness of certain aspects of globalization from a consumer perspective.

(My experiences are used merely as example I know well, not because I think they are of world significance. )

I first had an American Express card in Hong Kong, then in the US and now in France. When I applied for the new Amex card in the US and in France, I was assured that my membership date would go back to when I first joined.

Each time I got the card, however, (my French card just arrived) they considered me a new member. A longer term of membership can confer benefits.

When I complained to the French Amex yesterday, the customer service person explained that American Express in Hong Kong is not the same as American Express in France. Funny, because that is not what their advertising seems to imply.

I had a similar experience with HSBC. Their Hong Kong service has been excellent (great website), so I checked out the bank in the US and then here in France. Each time I was informed that although they market the bank as HSBC in these different places, each bank is fairly independent country-by-country. They said this is partly due to banking legislation that varies in each jurisdiction.

What generalizations can be drawn? Products (McDonalds burgers, Coke, etc) globalize more quickly than services?

Posted by Thomas Crampton

Wrote a story in today’s paper about the new section of Charles de Gaulle airport being built for the A380, the world’s largest airliner.

Turns out that the aircraft is so big that it requires a reconfiguration of terminal and in some ways it could be good. The second floor of the aircraft, for example, means that you can have two almost entirely separate sections. For people flying business and first class – not me! - they would walk into a separate part of the airplane that could have separate style of reception.

The airport created a first-ever virtual visit of the new section for us to put on our website.

I wonder what other innovations could come of having such a large number of passengers in the sky? Massive online gaming within the aircraft?

My blog uses a "by/2.0" Creative Commons license. This means that anyone can use anything from my blog and copy or create derivative works without asking permission as long as they give me attribution. NEC has gotten into blogging and wanted to use the content from my blog. Unfortunately, I write mostly in English. I have tried translating posts myself as well as using a number of volunteer translators. The problem is, translation is not very fun and I would rather write another post in English than spend time translating. The combination of NEC's desire to use my content and my Creative Commons license allows NEC to pay a translator to translate my blog into Japanese and use the content on their blog. I don't get paid, but now my words are available in Japanese too.

NEC tells me that after a six month period, they will release the Japanese content under and Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.1/jp license which will allow me to copy the the translations back to my blog after this period.

Translations are essential for building bridges between cultures. One big problem is that translation sometimes cost MORE than the cost of writing the original work. It's also more boring. Using CC to allow people to create business models to pay translators seems like a great idea to me. Thanks NEC!

NEC's Japanese Joi Ito's Web

Rebecca blogs about the first BloggerCorps success story. BloggerCorps is project to try to hook up local bloggers with important local projects who need help from bloggers. It's a great idea which just needs a bit more momentum I think. It ties in well with the Global Voices stuff. (The first version of the manifesto is done.)

eBay Acquires Minority Interest in craigslist

SAN FRANCISCO & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 13, 2004--eBay, The World's Online Marketplace (Nasdaq:EBAY) (www.ebay.com), and craigslist, an online community featuring classifieds and forums (www.craigslist.org), announced today that eBay has acquired a preexisting minority ownership interest in craigslist of approximately 25%. The resulting relationship will allow eBay and craigslist to share expertise, resources, and creativity on behalf of online communities everywhere.

Craig shares his account of this about it on his blog. Craig mentions on his blog that it was a former employee who sold his shares to eBay and that the company was not sold or money invested into craigslist.

I can imagine some people complaining about this, but I think this is a good direction for craigslist to go. Congrats to all involved. I look forward to seeing how these communities will interact and how eBay helps craigslist and vice versa.

A Business 2.0 article did a very good job describing Creative Commons and the "sharing economy" which they believe is a multi-billion dollar industry. As I approach companies about trying to adopt creative commons, free software or investment in basic open research and innovation, I am struck by the lack of understanding of the value of sharing and contributing to the commons. It makes a lot of sense to me, but I wonder if it might be useful to try to collect material and generate some addition material that describes the benefits of sharing from a business and economics perspective.

Lawrence Lessig describes the argument very well in Free Culture, but I think that a rigorous business treatment would help the business guys a lot. The think the argument can be made that open protocols such as TCP/IP and http have enabled a great deal of business to happen and if either had been "owned" or patented, we would not have the Internet today. I'm sure IBM can make a strong case about the value of Linux which it has embraced so wholeheartedly. I recently met business researchers in St. Gallen who were displacing management consultants by allowing companies to participate in academics studies about their management that would be contributed to open research. I think there are many arguments about contributing to the commons and how the commons creates a foundation upon which we can build.

I'm going to try to collect papers and articles about this. If anyone has any good references or ideas, please add them to the wiki page I just set up.

Are there any good books about this? I think this is such an important topic that if I had time to write a book, this is what I would want to write it about...

I will be on a panel at a conference in Helsinki on June 10. It is the Annual Meeting of the International Network of Private Business Organizations - COMPETITIVENESS THROUGH CREATIVITY. I will be representing the Keizai Doyukai (The Japan Association of Corporate Executives) and will be speaking about "Creativity and Innovation - Rare Virtue or New Standard?". I'm not sure who they're inviting to participate, but if you're going, please let me know.

The Financial Times

Google considers online IPO auction

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Google is considering holding a massive online auction of shares early next year in an initial public offering that investment bankers predict could value the internet search-engine company at more than $15bn.

Holy cow. Does anyone have any more information on this?

I wonder if it's going to be a Dutch Auction IPO?

Philip Greenspun blogs about the idea that stocks are going up in the US because more and more public domain is moving into the hands of large corporations. He gives the example of Disney being the beneficiary of the the copyright extension and the restriction on flying thru the airspace over Disneyland.

Thanks to rvr and bluehaze on #joiito.

Brian Barry writes in The Economist about how little Japan has leveraged IT and how this is still the source of inefficiency. He also gives some examples of companies that are using IT to change Japan. I agree with him totally and think that in addition to unwiding some of the big companies that don't make sense anymore, improving the cost performance of the exisiting companies can greatly increase the profitability of Japanese companies which is key.

I feel self-conscious about quoting my one quotes after that parody of this site but:

The Economist

A tour of the
business-class lounges at Narita airport, says Joichi Ito, an internet entrepreneur, reveals how senior managers feel about information technology: "In United's lounge everyone has their laptop out; in the Japan Airlines lounge they are all drinking beer."

Actually, someone else pointed this out to me a long time ago and I have since observed it myself and have used it as one of my favorite examples.

PS Having a meal with TWO Brian B's in Tokyo this week was very confusing for my calendar...

PPS The Economist site link is "premium content". blah.

Tim Oren also seems to think that the buzz is back and that we've hit a bottom.

Gave a talk on March 19 at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Tokyo hosted at the Nikkei BP office. I tried to tie a bunch of things together. I started out by saying that at a macro level, I was very depressed, but that at a micro level, I was extremely excited. I talked first about the lack of entrepreneurs in Japan, the problem with the economy and democracy in Japan. Then I talked about the nature of risk and why risk/return is broken in Japan. Then I talked about weblogs and about how excited I was about the political, media, social, communications and tool building aspects of weblogs. I closed by talking about open standards and the impact that open standards could have on consumer electronics. I promised to upload the slides so here they are in a 16.2mb pdf file and a1.2mb QT file. I don't have any notes on the slides, so by themselves, they're pretty useless, but...I promised. I used keynote, which was a true pleasure. I also fixed up some of the slides so the images are newer than the presentation date.

Generally good response. Blogging seemed to be new to people so the blow-by-blow of how a blog works seemed to be useful. The democracy issue was very interesting to some, irrelevant to others. ;-)

Al Gore and Apple sure picked an interesting day to announce this. I wonder if they are going to declare war on Microsoft?

CNet

Al Gore joins Apple's board
By Ian Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 19, 2003, 1:38 PM PT

Apple Computer on Wednesday named former Vice President Al Gore to its board of directors.

I did an interview about IT and venture businesses in Japan for Glocom. Video streams just went online.

I was talking to a fairly well known CEO of a securities firm. He told me that the Nikkei would hit the 8000 range last year. Today he said that he thought foreign investors were going to dump Japanese stocks and that it might hit 6000 in the next 3 months and that it would probably most definitely hit 7000. He said that the branch manager of a fairly large branch of Nomura Securities told him that 10 of his top 20 accounts recently liquidated ALL of their equity holdings. He also said that many of the major banks would probably soon come under government protection/control through the Bank of Japan. Argentina, here we come!

The Japan Times

MINISTRY SECRECY DRAWS SPOTLIGHT Even victimized divided on death penalty

By KAHO SHIMIZU
Staff writer

Masaharu Harada was stunned when he found out that the man who murdered his younger brother had been executed on Dec. 27 in Nagoya.

He wondered why authorities felt they had to kill such a remorseful man.

Toshihiko Hasegawa was one of two convicts hanged in December. He was convicted of killing Harada's brother and two other people in a murder-for-insurance scheme between 1979 and 1983. His death sentence was finalized in 1993.

Harada had petitioned the Justice Ministry on Hasegawa's behalf to stay his execution. He believed letting Hasegawa live so he could express remorse was the only way for him to atone for his crime.

This issue about lack of transparency and the debate about capital punishment are important and something that should be part of a public debate, but one thing that I noticed was that the crime committed by this "remorseful man" was another "murder-for-insurance" crime. There have been a quite a few of these crimes and I'm beginning to wonder if it such crimes might be committed by people who are driven to this from debt. The Japanese prime interest rate are very low, but the consumer loan business booms with interest rates in the 15-20+ percent range. There has been a crackdown on loan sharking, but I think the interest rates for consumer loans is higher than the US for instance. Many of the taxi drivers I talk to are driving taxis because of loan/debt problems.

So what does this Worldcom thing mean? Many people saw it coming. I've been hearing about this possibility for a long time.