KO and Some Interesting News

[Dividend Watcher]

This was in one of my trade rags. Despite the tech slant on the article, there's some intriguing possibilities mentioned. Guess I want to make sure we're full up on Coke stock because nary a rumor about any others in food & beverage industry doing anything similar ... yet.

"Paul Venezia
January 06, 2014
Supersize me: Coca-Cola's network binge

Coca-Cola's 16 million MAC addresses raise interesting possibilities, along with questions about the conservation of network addresses.

I have to admit: I was comically perplexed when I read about Coca-Cola's recent assignment of 16 million MAC addresses. As I looked further into it, I saw all kinds of speculation that the company would build out a huge network of Internet-connected vending machines or go after an Internet-of-things play. All that might be true, but none of it requires Coca-Cola to be assigned its own MAC addresses.

Briefly, if you don't already know, MAC addresses are unique identifiers assigned to every network card or networked device that will connect via Ethernet. Wired, wireless, physical, virtual, router, switch, laptop, or phone, all connected devices need a unique MAC address."

Full story here.

[Kerim]

I read about that as well, and also found it intriguing. Could easily just be a placeholder for something they're thinking about doing, but it certainly would be cool to see them "high-tech" some of the vending machine fleet somehow. Or maybe it is something to streamline the distribution system. Hard to imagine any move like those could be a serious catalyst to earnings, but it is fun to speculate.

[Dividend Watcher]

Kerim, I wondered about that also. How about some incremental improvements such as:

* Monitor stock and replenish when needed. Instead of a truck going around on a route, you could send a high schooler in a Yugo to fill up one machine. Could save on fuel, wear & tear of the big truck and be more timely.
* Track product freshness. Heat, freezing & humidity can have a deleterious effect on product quality.
* Accept payments using cell phone for those that don't carry cash.
* Debit/credit card transactions. You can do that now but all the implementations I've seen are phone line which means you're tied in with the telco. How many landlines have been eliminated already?
* Remote repairs or timely problem reporting.
* Put machines in more places. A little patch antenna could pick up WiFi signals at a much greater distance.
* Could tie in fountain machines with a restaurant/retailers system to warn of low syrup, problems, etc. or even monitor for billing purposes. Save a restaurant some pennies and you're locked in even further. Might even entice some to switch from Pepsi products (oh crap!).
* More granular sales data in real-time for their already impressive data gathering capability.

Using their own MAC addresses can help with security and authentication also. Can't for the life of me figure why they want their own MACs unless it's some kind of security feature.

They could even put Coke machines on the popular ascent routes up Mt. Everest and still track them as needed. (OK, that one was a joke.)

Or they could have something even more fantastical that no one has thought of before.