The pros and cons of in-store WiFi

This week, my CBC tech column is all about in-store WiFi, as predicted by Deloitte Canada. The column is now up at cbc.ca/technology, and reposted below for posterity. You can listen to the audio below, or download the MP3. [audio:http://blip.tv/file/get/Dmisener-20110118_misener_instorewifi_1596697361.mp3]

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Canadian stores are starting to offer free WiFi to make it easier for customers to comparison shop, but people need to be aware that open wireless connections come with security and privacy issues.

This happens to me all the time: I’m browsing through a store, I see something I like, and I start to think about buying it. But then, from somewhere in the back of my head, a tiny little voice shouts, “Don’t buy it, Dan! That book/DVD/shirt/sports car is probably cheaper at another store. It’s definitely cheaper online. Plus, free shipping! Don’t do it, Dan!”

Then I leave the store, empty-handed. Sound familiar?

This morning, Deloitte Canada released a new report that talks about one tactic retailers are taking to combat that little voice in my head. In its annual Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Predictions report, Deloitte says there’s going to be a real trend towards free in-store WiFi to help customers comparison-shop. Rather than wonder about prices elsewhere, people will be able to use a smartphone or other mobile device to compare prices.

It seems a bit counter-intuitive. If I run a store, why on Earth would I want to help my customers compare my prices to the competition?

Retailers have realized that customers are going to comparison-shop, whether the stores like it or not.

To find out, I talked to Duncan Stewart, who co-wrote the Deloitte predictions report. He told me that until fairly recently, retailers didn’t want their customers to comparison-shop using mobile devices. But now, retailers have realized that customers are going to comparison-shop, whether the stores like it or not. And retailers would much rather have you do that research in their store, where you’re actually in a position to purchase.

When it comes to the bottom line, Duncan’s research suggests that “when shoppers do in-store comparison shopping, the likelihood of purchasing appears to go up, not down.” In other words, even if I find out I can get the shirt I want for $5 less across town, I might be willing to pay that extra $5 if it means I don’t have to spend 25 minutes driving there. Or, if the store has a price-matching policy, I might ask for it.

Right now this trend is more prevalent in the U.S. than Canada. Stewart gave me a few examples from south of the border, at both ends of the retail spectrum. Sam’s Club (think Walmart’s version of Costco) has announced plans to roll out in-store WiFi, as has Nordstrom’s, an upscale department store chain.

For retailers, I believe this has the potential to be a great source of consumer research and insight. If I ran a large chain of stores offering free WiFi, I could monitor and track what people do with that WiFi. What sites are they going to? How long do they spend on a competitor’s website? What types of products are they looking for? As a store owner, I could respond to browsing behaviour, offering coupons to customers who found better prices at a competitor’s site. From the store’s point of view, I can definitely see how that would be attractive.

But as a consumer, I find the potential for tracking and surveillance just a little bit creepy.

We’ve certainly heard a lot of stories recently about the dangers of unsecure, open WiFi. Activity can be monitored, and email and social networking accounts can be hijacked. All of the risks associated with open WiFi in coffee shops and airports and hotel lobbies apply to open WiFi in retail stores, too. Personally, I wouldn’t do anything on a store’s WiFi connection that I wouldn’t want that store – or the whole world – to know about.

There are risks on the retailer’s side, too. Stores probably don’t want customers using their WiFi to download illegal content, deface Wikipedia pages, or send threatening messages to the Prime Minister. Of course, stores can block access to certain sites and services, but this is the kind of thing that really needs to be closely monitored.

So, the next time you’re in a store, check and see if there’s WiFi available. I would love to hear about places across Canada where this is happening. But if you find open WiFi, be careful. Connecting to DANS_BARGAIN_BASEMENT might be handy to do some in-store comparison shopping, but I’d be very, very cautious about logging into your email account or your Facebook profile while you’re at it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the mall.

Just plain Sackville?

I grew up in Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fielding questions like: “Why Lower Sackville? Is there an Upper Sackville?”

Of course, there are no fewer than three Sackvilles in Nova Scotia: Lower, Middle, and Upper.

But now,

Residents in the Lower Sackville area of Halifax Regional Municipality have been receiving notices from city hall asking them for feedback on a proposed district name change. According to veteran councillor Bob Harvey, the renaming process is part of a municipal program that has been going on for seven years in various areas.

“It is mainly driven by public safety issues related to 911 emergency response,” Harvey, who represents Lower Sackville, said in a recent email interview.

“We need clear community boundaries understood and proper civic addresses.”

He said “one option was to have (the) name of Sackville for the entire community” of Lower, Middle and Upper Sackville. But the councillor said “it doesn’t seem that popular, particularly in Middle and Upper Sackville.”

Should I post my goals online?

I’m a nail biter. I bite my fingernails. And 2011 will be the year I stop for good.

Wait a minute. Maybe I shouldn’t have posted that here.

This week, my CBC Radio technology column is all about goal-setting websites, and whether on not it’s a good idea to share you goals with others online. On one hand, sites like stickK.com, streak.ly, and 43things.com encourage us to share our goals and progress through Facebook and Twitter. But on the other hand, some research suggests that you’re more likely to achieve a private goal than a public one.

You can listen to my column below, or download the MP3. [audio:http://blip.tv/file/get/Dmisener-ShouldIPostMyGoalsOnline734.mp3]

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I’m not usually a New Year’s resolution kind of guy. Like a lot of people, I have trouble committing to large, life-altering decisions drunkenly made a few minutes before midnight on December 31. That said, I do have a disgustingly bad habit of biting my fingernails, and I would really love for 2011 to be the year that I stop. Lucky for me, there’s no shortage of online tools that promise to help.

For example, stickK. It’s been around for a few years now, and it’s a goal-setting site with a twist. You sign up, and you create a goal, “Lose weight” or “Quit smoking.” Once you’ve created your goal, you can put in your credit card number and a dollar amount. That way, if you don’t meet your goal, your credit card gets charged. There’s a direct financial consequence if you don’t succeed. You can choose where the money goes: to a charity, or to a friend. If you really want to create a disincentive, you can tell the site to send the money to what they call an anti-charity (a charity you don’t like). Or an enemy.

Stickk.com was created by economists from Yale, and they claim that by putting money on the line, by having some skin in the game, you triple your chances at success.

Another goal-setting site is newcomer streak.ly, which is geared towards regular, ongoing, daily goals. The site lets you a list of things that you want to do every single day, like posting a photo to your blog, eating a proper breakfast every morning. The idea is that you go to the site every single day to report back on your progress. Every day you check in, your streak gets longer. So if I don’t bite my fingernails for a five days in a row, I have a five day streak. I like it because it’s very basic, very simple.

There are many other goal-setting sites: 43things.com, My50.com… the list goes on. And many of these sites feature integration with the social web. Stickk.com allows you invite your friends from Twitter and Facebook to follow along with your progress. Streak.ly lets you share your progress on Twitter. So every day I don’t bite my fingernails, I can send out a tweet that lets everyone know (though that may very well fall into the category of “too much information”).

A big part of what’s behind this socialization of goal-setting websites is the idea that making your goals public helps you achieve them. We’re often told that if you want to reach your goals, you should tell people what you want to achieve. But here’s the thing: some people argue that you’re more likely to achieve your goals if you keep your goals private.

Entrepreneur Derek Sivers argued this point in a recent TED talk called Keep your goals to yourself. In his notes to the presentation, Derek writes, “Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.”

Sivers’s primary source is a recent study [PDF] out of New York University by Peter Gollwitzer, which found that “when other people take notice of an individual’s identity-related behavioral intention, this gives the individual a premature sense of possessing the aspired-to identity.”

To paraphrase Sivers, people confuse talking about a goal with actually working towards a goal. Psychologists call this “substitution,” where we substitute our real goal with talking about our goal, or tweeting about our goal, or posting a Facebook status update about our goal. And in Gollwitzer’s research, the premature sense of completely comes in when these substitute goals are recognized by others.

Over at the Freakonomics blog, Ian Ayres has an in-depth critique of Siver’s thesis and interpretation of Gollwitzer’s research, saying it’s “dangerous for Sivers to say that it is better to keep goals secret.” He cites stickK success stories like Andy Mayer’s:

Andy put $1,500 at risk and committed to lose a pound each week for 20 weeks. He also composed an email to send to his friends and family telling them about his weight loss commitment. “I had no trouble signing up for the contract. That was the easy part. The hardest part for me was telling people. . . . That e-mail sat open for several hours. It is one thing to enter into a contract where you and your spouse know what you are going to do, but I knew in my head that the social norming part – the social comparison part – the voyeuristic part was what was gonna make a difference.” Just before dinner, he sent the email and, true to form, Andy came through with flying colors. I caught up with him five months later when he was still riding the high that comes with successfully completing a difficult commitment – in Andy’s case losing just about exactly 10 percent of his body weight.

So there’s a real tension here. On one hand, there’s this research that suggests it might be a good idea to keep your goals to yourself. On the other hand, we have a bunch of goal-setting websites that encourage us to share our goals with our friends and family on social networking sites. And there are regular everyday people saying that they work.

Now, I’m not saying, “Don’t use goal-setting websites.” I’m saying, “Be thoughtful about what you share using these sites.” The good news is that many of these goal-setting websites work perfectly fine for setting and tracking goals, even without turning on the social features. If you’d prefer to be private, simply don’t click “Connect to Facebook” or “Tweet this.”

Whether you’re more likely to achieve your goals privately or publicly… that’s debatable. But I’m pretty sure that my friends on Twitter and Facebook would rather I keep them out of the loop when it comes to my ragged fingernails.

Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids 10

Four years ago, as a New Year’s resolution, I decided to host “an evening of drinks, laughs, and adults reading funny, sad, and/or embarrassing things they wrote as children.” That evening turned into a series called Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids.

And in about one month’s time, we’ll gather for the tenth installment, GRTTWaK10.

If you’re in Toronto, I hope you can make it.

PureText

If, like me, you’ve been driven to the brink of insanity by janky text formatting during a copy/paste manouver, you’ll appreciate PureText. It’s a tiny little Windows app that I’ve been using for the past few weeks on my CBC PC. Copy anything to your Windows clipboard, and PureText will strip all formatting:

This includes the font face, font style (bold, italics, etc.), font color, paragraph styles (left/right/center aligned), margins, character spacing, bullets, subscript, superscript, tables, charts, pictures, embedded objects, etc. However, it does not modify the actual text.

Just the text, ma’am. I love it.

(via onethingwell)