Tablet Wars : Part 2

I had coffees with my friend Marc this week. As usual, I arrived about 5 minutes late. Marc was passing the time, playing with his shiny new Playbook. Having never really gone "hands-on" with one, I asked permission to take a look. It was all the zippy, functional-UI goodness that I expect from a Blackberry device.

We then spent a few minutes comparing my first-generation iPad to his first-generation Playbook. Fortunately, Marc & I are both adults so there was none of the usual "My tablet is better/bigger/stronger/faster/sexier" than your tablet nonsense. Both of us being IT Professionals, we centered more on the device's utility.

Of course, the two most common things that people centre on in a discussion of tablets are the Apps and Flash. While Adobe maintains that if you don't have Flash, you're missing out on an awful lot of web-content, I don't really feel like I have been missing anything.

Apple's viewpoint is that Flash is a resource-hog, and I tend to agree. Watch any Flash-based video sites, and you will hear your fan speed up as the processor & RAM generate more heat ! And given the precious few resources you can cram into the tiny form-factor, Flash is a non-starter.

Further, conventional wisdom tells us that just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD. I have seen demonstrations of Flash on Xoom devices and Galaxy Tab devices. Flash functions, but barely. Hardly what I would characterize as a serious differentiator !

So the conversation turned to the Apps. An article I read this week indicated the Apple App Store had surpassed 500,000 Apps, while the Android Marketplace had 78,000.



Worse, I've started reading articles which indicate Android developers are struggling to monetize their creations. Marc's counter-point asked a simple question: "How many of those Apps are BUSINESS Apps ?". He runs a small-ish IT shop at an energy company, and manages a tight budget.

This led me straight to the one app, released the same day as the iPad, which made the iPad a serious business machine from Day 1. I asked Marc to fire up Microsoft Visio on his tablet. He looked at me in disbelief & said it wasn't possible. Microsoft would never publish an App for an Apple device ! No, he's right, of course. But Citrix will enable it !

Enter the Citrix Receiver for iPad. Most major corporations and companies take advantage of Citrix's XenApp and XenDesktop technologies. They all for applications and desktops to be maintained and published from a central location, while presenting a small stream to the client. The stream represents the video display, as well as keyboard and mouse inputs.

Many would push back, stating that since Visio isn't really running natively on the tablet device, it doesn't really count. I would counter that with a single free utility, I can enable the iPad to run virtually ANY business application I need. And still be able to play Angry Birds on the commute home !

The opinions expressed in this post are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses; everyone has one and they are entitled to it !

Social Media and Your Personal Brand

Lately, many of my friends and colleagues have been very curious about the rising use of Social Media. We all thought that FaceBook was a passing fad, right ? Originally, I was very skeptical about the use of Social Media, seeing it as a remarkable way to waste time ! I really only got onto FaceBook as a means of sharing pictures from my trip to Australia and New Zealand with my wife & kids. But we've seen how Twitter was used to organize riots and flash-mobs in Iran, and how Social Media is increasingly being exploited by politicians to reach younger, "hipper" voters.

A while back, I read an interesting article that talked about the concept of the personal brand. Not really understanding how a person (OK, me !) could apply the concept of "Brand" to themselves, I turned to my part-time mentor and friend, David Burney. Dave and his team at New Kind are the brains that BUILT the successful brand that is Red Hat, amongst others. Dave was kind enough to take me once more under his wing and enlighten me...

The object of the personal brand is to become thought of as being well-respected in a field. That is to say to be synonymous with that field. Dr Stephen Hawking is extremely well-respected as a physicist and cosmologist, and is considered to be THE thought-leader in those fields. When people THINK of physics and cosmology, he is the face that they come up with. As we go down the journey of personal-branding, the first question you should ask yourself is: "What do _I_ want to be synonymous with ?".

It is important to consider that you not be TOO specific, lest you create a goal instead. Being thought of as the "#1 Sales Rep at Century 21" is a goal. Your brand would be something like "the Real Estate Agent with integrity". What would happen to your brand if you no longer worked for Century 21 ? It's value would fade quickly.

Also, it is important to limit the components of your brand. You need to be passionate about your brand. You probably shouldn't portray yourself as a Subject-Matter Expert (SME), if you have no idea what you are talking about ! Further, if you are trying to be the SME in too many areas, blogging and tweeting and whatever else you're going to do will consume a LOT of your time. I have personally chosen three areas, that have the ability to overlap: Open-Source Software, IT Infrastructure Architecture, and Renewable Energy.

So how does one use Social Media to promote your brand ? You start with something that demonstrates your expertise. In my case, I blog. I write short articles on various topics, around the three fields I have chosen. I take personal delight in finding ways in which they can overlap. But I have also started exploring ways in which I can use video to demonstrate my expertise. Psychologically, people will identify more readily with the FACE of the Brand. Think about Bill Gates or Mickey Mouse. I could show you the image alone, and you would be able to come up with the associated products.

Marketing experts will tell you that the value of Social Media is almost immeasurable, as the landscape changes very rapidly. New Social Media venues pop up and fade away, seemingly overnight ! Does anyone still use MySpace ? I never did...

So lets start mapping in the tools _I_ have selected. I write my blogs and post them to Blogger. I like Blogger because it is connected to Google, and it allows me to "tag" my posts with key-words. These keywords can be entered into the main Google search engine and voila ! My blog comes up in the results list. I call this the "poor man's" version of search engine optimization. The same is true of YouTube - you can associate key-words which are searchable.

So I blog, or produce short videos, demonstrating my expertise. Originally, I was quite concerned that I was giving away my Intellectual Property ( IP ) for free. "Why would anybody want to pay me for my IP, if they can get it for free ?" - I asked Dave. He told me that people will assess my expertise in the subject, but when they need help, they'll come to me. This became poignant when a colleague was awarded a $70,000 project based on a YouTube video he posted on the steps required to upgrade to a company's mail system to Exchange 2010 !

So once I have "the Product" - my Blog, video, etc - I need to let people know about it. Social Media to the rescue ! I have set up accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. The next step is to shorten the URL to my Blog or Video entry. Since Twitter has a hard limit of 140 characters per tweet, every character counts ! So I use the website bit.ly to shorten the URL. It will turn http://some.really.long.URL.goes.here.blogspot.com into something_short.bit.ly ! Which leaves room in an individual tweet to describe the blog.

I then post amongst my friends on FaceBook, and my professional connections via LinkedIn. And anyone else via Twitter ! Sometimes, my friends or colleagues will sometimes elect to re-tweet or re-post my links for THEIR friends and/or colleagues, which vastly increases the "reach" of my Brand - this is a huge side benefit that comes from Social Media !

Marketing types will tell you that the reach of Social Media is significant. Consider that FaceBook is a Marketer's wet dream ! It is offered as a free "service" to some 500 Million people to connect with friends and share details of their lives. They share all kinds of information about themselves, including where they live, and their age, and their gender. But other things are interesting to Marketers too. I had a friend change her "Marital Status" from single to engaged. Almost immediately, the advertisements on her wall changed to wedding-themed ads, such as Bridal Shops and Wedding Photographers !

If you consider that in some way, we are ALL trying to sell something - ourselves ! If we apply the techniques of Sales 101, you have to recognize the roles that these components play in our success. The standard Sales model sees Marketing delivering the message of the brand. This in turn causes prospective customers to become curious about the brand, and want to investigate - this is called lead-generation. It is then the job of Sales to convert those leads into revenue.

If I apply that same methodology to my own personal brand, I use Social Media to perform my marketing for me. This drives prospective customers to seek me out, investigate my IP and start asking questions. It then becomes my job to turn those questions into a contract, which provides me income. I have successfully used my Social Media tools to find contracts for employment, and have finally become a full-time consultant.

The final thing to consider is this: Social Media costs you nothing to use. Its FREE ! The only cost is the time taken to create your personal brand, and then to keep up with your Social Media avenues.

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

Tablet Wars

There's been a lot of press about Tablets lately. Until recently, Apple's iPad was the only game in town. But Samsung released the Galaxy Tab, Motorola released their Xoom, and Research in Motion recently released their Playbook. Apple just released the second generation of the iPad, which dealt directly with some of the initial criticisms of the platform, as well as making it smaller and faster.

Early on, the industry analysts were wondering how large the potential market was. Apple sold almost 1 Million iPads in the first month it was on the market. In all, Apple has sold more that 15 Million iPads, and are on track to sell 8 Million iPad2's.

Early sales of the Motorola Xoom are disappointing, by comparison. In their first quarter, analysts estimate that there have been 250,000 units shipped. This leads us to the question - is this a "Tablet Market" or an "iPad Market"? Recent reports show that the Apple products (first & second generation devices combined) control 82% of the market.

Interestingly, Microsoft is being left behind, and is none too happy about it.



Two years ago, Steve Ballmer showed off an HP Slate, running the Windows 7 operating system. Criticism was harsh ! The concern was that a Windows platform takes far too long to boot up & shut down, and is not "finger friendly". Further, HP has acquired the Palm Web-OS. And the Slate will continue it's development on that platform. Sorry Steve...

RIM's Playbook showed great promise, and the hope was that it would provide a MORE business-friendly tablet interface. But the critics panned it as well, calling it "rushed and incomplete". Worse, the reliance on "bridge" software to allow the device access to the email, contacts & calendar information is not allowed for use on AT&T's network ! And you can't use them without it !

The Xoom is exciting in that it is the first iteration of the Android v.3 (AKA Honeycomb) operating system. But the fact that it is (sort of, OK not really) based on Open Source Software is simply not enough.

The big buzz in the tablet world is the fact that the iPad doesn't support Flash - a technology for building games & applications to be delivered in a web-browser. But even on the tablets which DO support Flash, it's performance is lackluster and prone to crashing.

The message IS clear - it's an iPad market, not a tablet market. Apple has successfully created a market, one which it continues to dominate.


The opinions expressed in this post are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses; everyone has one and they are entitled to it !