Two tricks and a treat

Happy Halloween! This year the children of the trick-or-treating cultures of the world are going to have a hard time outdoing the real scaaaaary stuff, but there's no harm in trying. As I prepare to don my own Elvis wig, here are a few tidbits of note, classified in keeping with the day.

Trick - for companies with aging workforces and retired employees living longer.

Trick - for companies thinking that driving customers towards online transactions was a foolproof way to cut contact center costs. A 60-minute response time for webforms is pretty challenging, at least based on some of the experiences I've had. 

Treat - for proponents of OpenID. The OpenID Foundation Japan yesterday revealed for the first time its member companies, a very diverse group comprising the following: Asahi Net, Automation Research Associates, Cerego Japan, CyberTrust, Excite, Infoteria Co., Japan Airlines International, Japan IBM, Japan Verisign, JCB, K Opticom, KDDI, Lin Network, Livedoor, Mitsui Sumitomo Marine, mixi Inc., NEC, NEC Biglobe, Nifty, Nomura Research Insititute, Oki, Rakuten, SBI Holdings, Senshukai, Seven Bank, SixApart, Softbank BB, Sonpo Japan Systems Solutions, Taihei Computer, Technorati Japan, Yahoo! Japan, and Zakura. 

That's several ISPs, portals/web 2.0/social networking/e-commerce companies, a bank, the leading credit card issuer, a number of IT consultancies, a telco, a couple of electronics manufacturers, a couple of insurance companies, and an airline. Not bad for a start. The group also announced a number of initiatives to promote standards/harmonization, awareness and use cases for OpenID. More coverage is here (apologies, it's again in Japanese).