OTOinsights

IBM Helping to Keep Your Digital Wallet and Identity Safe

Cool stuff looming on the Digital Security horizon.  IBM is about to open source a piece of Information Security software that could play a big role in reducing financial and identity theft scams online.  For the short attention span crew, this means that transmission of your Financial, Health, and other related records online may become much safer in the very near future.

The software, called Identity Mixer, has the potential to allow users to anonymously complete secure transactions without the need to reveal any personal information.  Without getting into the nitty-gritty details, one potential scenario could work like this:

1. User downloads a browser plug-in from their bank which creates a secure token (called an ICard) on the user's machine.  This ICard contains limited encrypted information pertaining to a user's identification.

2. User goes to online merchant to buy clothes.  At check-out, user sees that the merchant supports their bank's secure transaction system.  User opts to complete the transaction with this method.

3. Merchant's system checks user's ICard to see if there are sufficient funds to complete the transaction. No identifiable information is transmitted, simply a "Yes" or "No" to the amount of funds required. 

4. Merchant completes transaction directly with the bank, where the user has securely stored their preferred billing/shipping information.  Funds are withdrawn, and the sale is completed. 

Note that during this process the user has never entered any personal information.  Not too shabby.

I could also see this technology working nicely on a Desktop Application.  Thinking ahead, a user could install a checkout system on their desktop and merchants could supply inventory and pricing information directly to the users so that all transactions happen directly between the customer and their bank.  All that changes hands between the bank and merchant is money and whatever personal contact info the users has allowed the merchant to receive. 

Like most new technology standards, there is the uphill battle of getting companies to willingly adopt them.  By itself, Identify Mixer is not all that useful as it is simply the code that provides the link between users and their personal information, be it bank/credit card balances, medical records, social security number, etc...  What it needs in order to become successful is for some engineers to leverage Identity Mixer's code into their own software and promote the software to financial institutions and online merchants as a new online commerce standard (take note, this is how small software start-ups can become very wealthy). 

As an aside, Microsoft also moving ahead to push their own security solutions, but there are speculations that MS may just adopt IBM's standards as part of their framework.  Otherwise users may find themselves in another Betamax vs. VHS war for security standards.

Judges ruling in ADA suit is a wake up call

A recent article on law.com is something of a warning shot across the bow of web developers regarding federal ADA discrimination laws:

A federal judge's decision not to dismiss a discrimination case against retailer Target Corp. for operating a Web site inaccessible to the blind opens the door to Internet-related Americans with Disabilities Act claims.

The recent order is believed to the first ruling from a judge that the ADA can apply to the Internet, and lawyers from both sides of the bar anticipate more cases.

This is not the first attempt at a lawsuit against an online presence in the name of accessibility. While it is worth noting that the only ruling here is that the case not be dismissed and no injunction was set against Target, it should put all web developers on high alert going forward. Proper accessibility for the visually imparied is something that is generally treated as an afterthought, a "nice to have" or not considered at all, and as cases multiply, it is clear that the matter is being given more and more weight. This is the first suit that has been allowed to go forward, and will not likely be the last.

While retailer web sites certainly get the mass of traffic, and will therefore likely bear the brunt of the lawsuits, those of us dealing with the financial and life sciences verticals should keep this in mind going forward. It should keep us a bit more sober when our designs are faced with Flash detractors, and keep us mindful of properly formed tags when coding. Not that Flash or other non-crawlable technologies should be written off, but accessibility is going to become an issue more and more closely examined by the dreaded legal departments of our clients.

Take note... it looks like going forward, ADA = CYA.

Eons.com Begins To Gain Traction

Eons.com, Jeff Taylor's new venture, has launched its Life Calculator section and is on track for a full portal launch on July 31.  Several news services have begun to pick up on the buzz surrounding the ambitious 50+ community site including an article from the WSJ "Start-up magazines, Web sites beckon to Baby Boomers" .  The article mentions the traditional advertiser notion that brands and products must be seen as young and vibrant to make an impact, and how Eons and a few others will attempt to tackle this dated view head on. 

The site seeks to not just be a "MySpace for seniors" but will offer a wealth of knowledge as well as applications like the currently live Life Calculator.  Business Wire has an in depth view of how detailed the application is, and how long it has been in development.

"Dr. Perls created his first Web-based Life Expectancy Calculator in 1999 and recently collaborated with Eons to create proprietary offerings that specifically target adults 50+ and help them to add, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "not just years to life but life to their years.""

"Mr taylor says advertisers won't worry about the image fallout if they are seen on Eons.com, because the Web site's self-selecting audience will be made up of people 50-plus."

The market certainly holds a lot of potential for companies that can harness it.  The 50+ market is growing at a tremdous pace and this year alone accounts for "78 million americans... with $2 trillion in spending power".

WebMD Adds Broadband Video

Advertiser demand for richer, more engaging formats will drive many content-rich sites like WebMD to offer ad-sponsored streaming video in 2006. I've screengrabbed on the left an image of WebMD's streaming video, capturing part of AstraZeneca's pre-roll promotional message for its breast cancer educational website.

While the idea of streaming audiovisual content  is easy for sites with ready access to appropriate footage (e.g. iFilm, CNN, MTV, etc.), WebMD's decision to create original content with an inhouse team shows what can be done. They've also been smart about anticipating their advertisers' special needs, offering pharmaceutical marketers the ability to surround their video with promotional messaging and to display a full copy of the FDA-required Patient Insert document. From today's MediaPost:

"WEBMD RECENTLY LAUNCHED A NEW broadband video section that offers visitors new streaming content daily, the company said Wednesday. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is sponsoring some of the clips with a 60-second pre-roll ad directing visitors to a site that provides information about breast cancer. WebMD is producing the content itself, with its existing editorial staff--some of whom have backgrounds in broadcast journalism--said Wayne Gattinella, WebMD president and CEO.

The move to include streaming video is, in part, a response to marketers' increasing clamor for video inventory. "We have been asked by virtually every one of our clients and most of the major agencies for broadband inventory for promotional purposes," Gattinella said. "The fact is that the demand for broadband promotional inventory far exceeds the supply on the Internet right now."

AstraZeneca's sponsorship of WebMD's streaming video content is also noteworthy, although not entirely surprising. In the world of pharmaceutical marketing, many would be hard-pressed to name an organization more committed to the interactive channel or more sophisticated in leveraging it than AstraZeneca. They outspend their peers by a healthy margin and often seem a step or two ahead of the pack. With this program, AstraZeneca leads again.

Best,

- James Gardner
Group Director/Life Sciences Practice Leader

Most Patients Seek Health Info Online First, Trust Physicians More

Having participated in the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) recent hearings on direct-to-consumer (DTC) promotion of pharmaceuticals and devices, I heard firsthand some of the misconceptions that exist about how the public consumes online health information.

The public, we're often told, isn't savvy enough to sift through all the health content available online and needs to be protected by the medical establishment. There's some truth in that observation, of course, but I give the public more credit than most -- and new research in the Archives of Internal Medicine seems to back me up.

"... (the researchers) analyzed data obtained from the first Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), administered by telephone to 6,369 adults between October 2002 and April 2003.

The results showed that 63.0 percent of respondents had ever used the Internet. Of these, 63.7 percent had looked there for some type of health or medical information. Other health-related Internet activities, such as purchasing medication, communicating with physicians, or participating in an online support group, were taken advantage of by less than 10 percent of users.

The authors report that 62.4 percent of respondents said that they trusted physicians "a lot" for cancer information, compared with 23.9 percent for the Internet.

When asked where they would prefer to go first for information about cancer, 49.5 percent reported wanting to go to their physicians. In actuality, only 10.9 percent of those who sought information about cancer reported having gone to the physician as the first source of information, whereas 48.6 percent went to the Internet first."

So, what's the takeaway idea? It seems the public does a lot of "first and fast" online health research: finding information online, validating it with their physician ... and then often turning around and validating that doctor's advice -- with still more online information.

The public's new credo, one could assume: learn as much as you can, trust no single source of information, and verify everything for accuracy. Doctors are naturally more trusted than online sources, but even they don't escape being fact-checked!

Makes a lot of sense to me.

Best,

- James Gardner
Group Director/Life Sciences Practice Leader