Jeff Richards' Demand Insights

On Monday, Clear Channel announced a free mobile text service that lets consumers interact with their favorite radio stations via text message. As anyone with kids knows, mobile texting is one of the fastest growing segments in the technology market - kids today use text messaging more frequently than email.

What many may not know is that VeriSign is the "brand behind the brand" for many of the most popular services, including Clear Channel's new service. We handle about 200 million text messages a day across multiple carrier platforms (the entire North American Market is about 500 million per day) and power many of the services you know and love - including interactive tv for American Idol, Yahoo Music and CBS Mobile.

We're excited about the new Clear Channel service - take it for a test drive!

Posted by Jeff Richards at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Talk about not living up to the hype. I grabbed John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man hoping to hear tales of global economic warfare backed by hard facts about the U.S. government's (not so) secret relationships with the Saudis and others. With apologies for being overly critical, what I got was one man's relatively pathetic apology for a) attending a private high school, b) cheating on his wife and getting divorced, and c) feeling guilty about his job.

I have no doubt that the Bushes and other senior players in our government have done things we wouldn't be proud of in other countries. And I'd like to learn more about what they are. Unfortunately this book doesn't provide any hard facts or insights that any reader of global newspapers and magazines (see: New York Times, The Economist, etc.) wouldn't already be aware of.

Feeling like I had missed something, I went on Amazon to see what other reviewers were saying, and got pretty much the same. As one reviewer put it "if you are looking for supporting facts, there are none." Sorry, can't recommend this one.

Here are a couple of my favorite (weak) excerpts:

Page 174. "And then I understood. It was not about my parents, Tilton or Mac Hall. It was my life I hated. Mine. The person responsible, the one I loathed, was me."

Page 202. "An old feeling returned, similar to ones I had experienced around Howard Parker in Indonesia, while driving through Panama City beside Fidel, and while sitting in a Colombian coffee shop with Paula. I was selling out - again."

Save yourself the $15.00.

Posted by Jeff Richards at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just returned from a week playing golf in Ireland. If you're a golfer, there's no better experience (assuming playing golf in rain and 40 mile an hour winds sounds enjoyable...).

One of the more interesting business-related tidbits I picked up while in Ireland is that the growth of Ireland's economy is driving caddies into technology services (and related) roles. - and away from the time-honored profession of caddying.

We played 5 courses, and at every course there was a shortage of caddies. If you're a serious golfer, one of the key components of the Ireland golf experience is having an experienced (and often humorous) caddie to give you the lay of the land as you play the course. The caddies we did have explained to us the reason - Ireland's economy has been hot, and many of their friends have taken jobs working for companies like Dell and Intel in call center and development roles. This not only is taking out the current inventory of caddies, it's also driving many of the younger residents who would have become caddies into technology roles.

And no, this post isn't an attempt to tie work into spending 5 days playing golf. Just thought it was an interesting element of the "world is flat" discussion...

Posted by Jeff Richards at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As mentioned on a previous post, we sponsored the AlwaysOnHollywood event this week at the Roosevelt Hotel. Click here to see the video from the panel I participated on with executives from MySpace, Akamai, Limelight and Level3.

It was a great event with more than 700 attendees. 50 Cent reportedly tried to get into our pool party, and late night sightings of celebs passing through the hotel lobby were not uncommon.

Interestingly, everyone on the panel seemed to agree the "hot" items for this year in video are P2P and Mobile - two areas we are leading the charge on.

Posted by Jeff Richards at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)