Dan Walmsley

If a search engine doesn’t think its own name is relevant to itself, that’s just plain sad.

Cuil is billed as a “potential competitor to Google”. Unfortunately it sucks.

I’m pretty sure when you type Google into Google it returns Google.

We live in troubling times. With Kevin Rudd’s proposed Carbon Tax slated for introduction in 2010, a chorus of dissent is growing.

Airlines, LNG importers, cement manufacturers and aluminium smelters are all, rightly, proclaiming that billions of dollars in investment is moving overseas. This will almost certainly impact our cherished lifestyle for the worse.

Who doesn’t remember fondly those winter evenings spent gathered around the high-gain investments singing old folk songs with our family and friends? Or the excitement we felt as children when we received our first ceremonial bag of cement from the town vicar? Will we never again gather at the Community Aluminium Smelter to stage whimsical theater productions about the benefits of subsidised LPG?

Indeed, so many things that bring us happiness and love are going to die at the stony bureaucratic fingertips of Kevin Rudd.

Meanwhile, as we languish in an environment stripped of our beloved heavy industry, the Chinese and Indians will be breathing the cancerous smog of Victory!

While we shall be reduced to mere beasts, forced to care for one another in a highly localised “community”, the Chinese and Indians will reap the enormous benefits of “Westernisation”, a process that gives everyone the enviable power to be utterly isolated even from their neighbours.

Power generation, food production, and other distribution-dependent industries will fragment into smaller, localised businesses, wiping out the precious top 10% of our wealthiest individuals in a single stroke and distributing that money to undeserving middle-class Australians.

Meanwhile, the Chinese and Indians will enjoy the many benefits of a wide gap between rich and poor, including increased crime, gated communities, and backdoor political interference from commercial interests.

How will we survive?

Nothing’s more painful that a million tiny hacks.

I love punctuation; I love history; I love The History of the SemiColon.

Seen on Hulu: Maybe I’m missing a devastating piece of wordplay, or maybe someone at the US Air Force can’t spell.

Look out! Enema plane at 3 o’clock!

In the comments of my previous post, Ravi Nayar writes:

To clarify on above, ACN’s IRIS 2000 Videophone supports calling any phone number in the world. What makes it special is that there is no long Distance charges to call USA, Canada & Puerto Rico. Furthermore later in 2008 when ACN launches the Videophone in Europe there will be no Long Distance Charges to call Videophones in Europe from North America.

The IRIS 2000 Videophone supports analog phone equipment. You can plug your current home phone into the IRIS 2000. This allows you to have extensions throughout your home to work.

The IRIS 2000 Videophone are made in South Korea.

So effectively the IRIS 2000 video phone is a standard VoIP phone with standard H.263 (i.e. previous generation) video, and not the revolutionary piece of equipment touted by ACN.

What’s not clear from Ravi’s comment is whether the IRIS 2000 supports calling other video phones that use the same protocols. Such capabilities would expose ACN to direct competition, but at least then the ACN would be slightly useful.

Finally, Ravi says that the lack of long distance charges are what makes the ACN video phone “special”. But it also happens to be what makes Skype-Out “special”, PennyTel “special”, Vonage “special”, etc etc.

You can find a reasonably complete list of VoIP providers reviewed at voipreview.org.

Note that ACN is not exactly near the top, and only ranks 3 stars despite obvious attempts by ACN marketers to skew the results.

I finally found the specifications for the Iris 2000 video phone that ACN is trumpeting as the Next Big Thing ™.

It turns out - it does use SIP! Halleluyah. And H.263, and all the other IETF-recommended standards.

The same standards supported by:
- Leadtek
- Grandstream ($299, which has far better protocol support including H.264)
- D-Link
- Many, many more

And so on.

The difference?

ACN’s video phone is barely mentioned anywhere on the web, despite it essentially offering the same features as those other phones. Google “SIP video phone” and you’ll be taken to voip-info.org, whose video phone directly lists all the major players.

ACN isn’t there.

If I was considering hitching my commercial wagon to a video conferencing company, which would I pick? One made by Cisco? Or Linksys? Or a company that doesn’t even appear in the search results?

For a company that intends to become the “biggest company in the world”, this is a poor start.

What’s more, there’s no evidence that their video phone supports calling outside their own network.

In addition, this means that ACN’s claim that their phone is based on “proprietary technology” is a lie. It’s based on off-the-shelf, rebranded parts, probably sourced from the same factory in Taiwan that makes all the other video phones.

Nothing special here. Move on.

This is the super fun part. I love it.

An earlier commenter said he liked my analysis of ACN’s MLM program (selling useless videophones and marginless/commoditised mobile plans) and would post it on his site. I was chuffed, of course.

But then his post appeared. And, while he did take the time to quote me, he rounded it out like this:

Does Dan know what he talking about? Who is Dan?

“Dan (or Daniel) Walmsley is a comedian, musician and programmer currrently living in Melbourne, Australia.”

So can a comic really know that much about lame technology? Or is Dan lame himself?

Well, the obvious answer is “Yes, I am lame. But not as lame as a multinational company trying to pull the wool over the eyes of naive aspirational people by using deceptive MLM marketing techniques”.

Now, let it be known that I’m not some kind of super-expert on business or MLM. I’m a technologist. But I’m not just some random guy that likes to mouth off - I do have significant domain knowledge.

So, of course, I responded on his site. I’m not sure yet whether he’ll approve my comment, so I reposted it here:

Way to raise doubts without engaging with any of my criticisms in a constructive way

Fascinating that you would post such a negative (or at least dubious) review of my post given your comment on my site:

“I will shoot you a link from my site because this is a nice and clear business analysis with what is wrong with ACN product.”

And now you raise doubts about me personally? Well, I didn’t want this to be about me, but since you insist…

It turns out that Dan does know what he’s talking about. Despite the modest resume on my site I have over a decade’s experience in the telecommunications and programming industry, a degree in Computer Science and Engineering with Honours, am a domain-knowledge expert in podcasting and video-conferencing and co-founder of several tech companies working in telecoms and media.

I co-produced one of the most successful cross-media shows in Australia last year, was Solutions Architect at Sputnik Agency (a digital marketing agency considered one of the best in South East Asia), and in a previous career I was a senior programmer doing global systems integration for the National Group, handling risk management across 5 continents and dozens of major banks.

I’ve been presented twice this year to mobile phone and social networking industry groups and am participating in the MEGA program for enterprise mobile development.

You could say I know a thing or two about the telecoms industry. I’m not just a comic, and I don’t find what ACN is doing particularly funny either. I think it’s deceptive - borderline exploitative - and nothing I’ve heard from them or anyone else so far has convinced me otherwise.

Like I said, I didn’t want this to be about me. I think my analysis speaks for itself, and that my arguments can be engaged with on their own terms.

I have taken it upon myself to simply say what I think about ACN online. Because ACN’s marketing techniques only work if people aren’t exposed to counter-arguments or more detailed technical analysis of the market and the product. They rely on hyperbole and fluff to sell the-idea-that-other-people-want-this-product without presenting a rigorous analysis of the marketplace.

Such an analysis would inevitably show that the pie for resellers is much smaller than it seems at first blush.

And no, I’m not performing the bulk of that analysis. I have a day job, and better things to do. I’m just giving people enough information that they might seek to ask the right questions.

Ok, so I think I’ve found my new hobby.

I was checking my PageRank today (somehow I suspect ACN will become the new Meegos - no bad thing) and stumbled on a site listing the marketing techniques used to create a successful MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) organisation. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

ACN’s internal marketing advice includes the following insightful snippet:

2. Don’t Sell to Everyone

Don’t launch your presentation at EVERYONE like a dog licking strangers!

Describe your ideal prospect carefully and specifically. What kind of problem are they trying to solve? What job/business background do they have?

Once you know the problem that really frustrates your prospect, position yourself as the person who has those solutions. For example, my ideal prospect is someone who has owned a business in the past or owns one right now. My prospect is frustrated because he/she can’t find customers easily and really wants to find out how to create more customers.

Great. Now where are they looking for solutions?

They’re buying books and cds on marketing and attending marketing seminars. Now I know where my prospect hides and what I can offer as a solution to bring him/her out of hiding.

Now, where did I meet Francis? At a marketing/small business seminar. He heard me asking a question about exports (it was: “Given that most stuff is manufactured in China, and they still don’t seem too fussed about protecting your ideas, is it worth the cost of legally protecting intellectual property?”) and asked if I ran an export business.

I suspect he wasn’t at that meeting to learn anything. He was there to expand his reseller network by latching on to people who have yet to learn about how to run a business. At the very moment that it all seems pretty hard (”Wow, that’s a lot of stuff I have to learn in order to launch my business”) he’s offering them the cardboard-cutout alternative in the hope that they bite.

That, and he completely misrepresented himself (”I’m in video conferencing” != “I’m creating a reseller network for Optus Mobile”).

I’m sure glad I wasted his time, but I’m still pretty annoyed that he wasted mine.

This catharsis seems to be working though.

To bring you up to speed: A lovely young man called Francis tried to recruit me into shameless pyramid scheme ACN, and I just sent him an email asking him to consider whether they’re an organisation worth being part of.

Now, he’s written back. Get ready, folks, for the selective memory of the truly cornered.

Hi Dan,

I appreciate the research and information. I’ll be sure to forward this onto ACN’s Senior Vice President Brian Sax and the four owners because these are vital facts to be aware of if we want to save the company from complete annihilation within 5 years.

All things considered, do you want to join the team?

Now, note that nowhere did I say “you can’t make money out of pyramid schemes”. If you couldn’t, they wouldn’t still exist because at some point the owners need to get paid.

What I did say is that they’re in the business of selling a dream of working from home to shmucks on the lower rungs who will pay $500 to sign up and then never make a dime. It’s mathematical sleight-of-hand for the unwary, and it’s morally bankrupt.

So I wrote back:

Francis, to re-iterate in case you missed the subtext (and I said this at the time too): I’m sure they’re making a lot of money from signups of reps, quite possibly more than they are from the telecommunications services they sell.

I’m sure your company is solvent. It’s just that the business model makes me squeamish. I mean, the very fact that a company with your overheads is solvent in such a commoditised marketplace practically requires you make the lions’ share of revenue from signups.

If it was profitable for the resellers in terms of direct sales, then they wouldn’t have an incentive to expand the tree, would they?

My friends are too smart for me to join, I’m afraid. The recommended sales practise of “asking for a huge favour” wouldn’t wash with them.

Kind Regards,
Dan

I bet my pagerank against ACN is going ballistic right now. I can almost feel the semantic G-Force pressing me back into my chair…