Motorola/Apple/Amazon/Intel/Mobile Devices

I still love my Motorola Droid X even though it does occasionally get into a state where I need to pull out the battery to recover. The OS and the applications just keep getting better and better.  There apparently will be a second generation of the Droid X, though details on the specifications are still sketchy. A more capable processor and better graphics seem likely though the current generation platform is no slouch on either count. We'll have to wait and see. I don't ever see myself wanting an iPhone. I've used both and for me the X is the superior solution.

This isn't to imply that iOS related devices don't have a place in my life. My wife and I own an iMac and various iPod's and iPod touch's. We're also currently awaiting the arrival of a base model iPad 2. I still can't justify the cost (both up front and ongoing) of the 3G based iPad's but with the WiFi hot spot capability of my Droid X it's easy to make the decision to forgo that capability in the iPad. We love our Kindle's but they just don't fill the same niche as the iPad.

There isn't a lot of news in the wild about what the next generation Kindle is going to look like. A color screen and touch capability would be great. Color seems doable given the availability of color EInk displays but the touch screen may be unlikely as Apple is apparently using a substantial part of the manufacturing capacity in this area and has used their big pile of cash to assure their supply by paying in advance. This has left other companies struggling to find supply to fill their own needs. Amazon would likely be wise to avoid going down that path right now.

On the Android front there has been a lot of talk recently about fragmentation and Google's attempts to discourage their partners from layering too much "value added" software on top of the base Android OS. As I've noted before, while fragmentation is certainly more of an issue for Android it is also present and growing in the iOS space. With each new device and generation that Apple introduces this problem grows. Developers no longer have the luxury of only keeping in mind the capabilities of one or two mobile devices. As I've noted before, developers for Windows PC's have had to deal with this for decades now so it isn't like new ground is being broken. Slightly complicating things is the fact that it's becoming increasingly clear that any company that wants to maximize their revenues in the mobile space is going to have to support both iOS and Android. I'm not trying to imply that the problems in this space are trivial, but the potential profits are substantial and expertise and tools are already being developed. I don't think we'll be hearing nearly as many complaints a couple of years from now.

There have been rumors that Motorola is amassing a dream team to create their own mobile OS as they aren't happy with the limited ability to differentiate themselves based on Android. While this isn't a surprising development it seems like a very risky one to me. The cost of creating a new platform is not insubstantial and with multiple well established players I don't like their chances unless they are going to try for some sort of middle ground where they leverage existing low cost technologies. Android at its heart is Linux and much of its code is freely available. There is nothing stopping Motorola from creating their own Linux based mobile platform. If they don't deviate too far from Android and stick with ARM based processors porting would be relatively simple which would improve their chances of ending up with a viable application pool.

At this point it seems fairly clear that ARM based processors are going to be at the core of a majority of mobile computing devices for the foreseeable future. This will somewhat ease porting across platforms that choose not to buck this trend. It does mean however that Intel is largely being left out in the cold. PC's and servers are not going away but they certainly seem likely to shrink in terms of relative importance. Intel is a large and diverse company of course but if I were a shareholder I couldn't help but be a little worried about how things are going. It may be unthinkable today but I can see a time when Intel licenses the ARM architecture and puts their own spin on it. Intel could certainly bring out a highly competitive product quickly from a specification perspective and with their ownership of and expertise in the fabrication of processors they could also do it at a highly competitive price. Their vertical integration could be a big win for them. They'll need a competitive mobile GPU to make this approach viable. A partnership with NVidia while unthinkable might be smart for both companies.

Image via Wikipedia

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Making A Difference (Apple, Wal-Mart)

One of the things they teach you in business school is the importance of differentiation. How is your business going to distinguish itself from the competition? There are many different approaches that can be taken. You can differentiate based on cost like Wal-Mart. You can differentiate based on experience like Apple. You can differentiate based on quality like Rolls Royce, etc. It's important to know what your key differentiator is early and stay focused on it because this choice has significant implications on all aspects of your business. 

For instance, on the operational side of things if you are competing on cost you'll need to be obsessive about efficiency. This is the path Wal-Mart took. They are always looking to get a few extra pennies out of their vendors and find ways to save money. They developed their hub and spoke distribution model and invested heavily in technology early on because these innovations and others allowed them to deliver the appropriate products to their stores more quickly and at a lower cost. These operational efficiencies lowered their costs which in turn allowed them to maintain their desired margins while lowering the prices their customers paid.

It's important to keep in mind that you can't be everything to everybody. You can't be cheap and luxurious. You might appeal to the bargain hunter but people looking for luxury will almost universally ignore you even if your product does somehow manage to pull off being both inexpensive and of high quality.

Apple has been doing a great job of selling products based on creating a lifestyle for a long time now. They are very good and deemphasizing the technology that underlies their products and keeping the experience/functionality front and center. When the iPad 2 came out it was pretty much impossible to find the technical specs until members of the blogosphere got their hands on one and pulled it apart. Apple doesn't want you to know what is inside and they aren't going to tell you. This drives hard core geeks a little crazy but at the end of the day what matters in the case of Apple is the quality of the experience and for the vast majority of people the technical specifications do little or nothing to enhance that. In fact they can do the opposite. The iPad 2 is going to have a twelve month life span if past product release cycles by Apple are any indication. Right now the technical specifications of the iPad 2 are fairly impressive but in the fast moving world of consumer electronics the odds are they won't be six or nine months from now. By not touting the technical specifications of the iPad 2 Apple has framed the debate on what a tablet is supposed to be in a way that is very favorable to them while making it more difficult for their competition to gain traction. This is what good marketing is supposed to do.

Knowing what you want to sell is only part of the equation. Arguably it is less important than knowing who you want to sell to and what kind of approach is most likely to appeal to your target audience while distancing you from your competitors.

Image by bump via Flickr

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• Apple Airs "We Believe" iPad 2 Commercial (iphonehacks.com)

What's In A Name? (Short Take)

In the internet age having a common name is an advantage. It's apparently normal anymore for prospective employers, acquaintances and friends to Google first and not even bother to ask questions later depending on what they find. In my case that doesn't work very well. According to US census data in 2000 Miller was the 6th most common surname in the United States. (link). Michael is the 4th most popular first name in the US according to this site. What happens when both names are combined?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

It's not that I'm an especially private person, I've posted to BBS's, forums and BLOG's regularly since I was in my late teens. What I do like however is having choices about what can and can't be easily found and linked to me. I'm part of the first generation to come of age "on the web" and while I can't think of anything I've done over the years that I'd be particularly ashamed of, I am not the same person today I was when I was eighteen years old. It seems very unfair to me that there is the potential now for people to be judged and found wanting because of something they did years or even decades ago. It used to be the case that youthful indiscretions were stored only in the slowly fading memories of a small circle of our friends. Today they are potentially available and preserved in numerous places.

Privacy is increasingly rare so there is something to be said for the anonymity of a common name. Or at least there is until a bill collector shows up on your doorstep looking for somebody with the same name but a very different collection of DNA. 

Related Articles

• Interactive Map of the Most Common Surnames in the United States (National Geographic)

Technology, Copper & Fiber Optics

It's been a busy couple of weeks for me which explains in part why I haven't posted here recently. Watching events unfold in Japan has also played a part.

It would be impossible to imagine what happened and is happening there. The scale, scope and tragedy that has unfolded are beyond my comprehension and based on some of the footage I've seen well beyond anything that Hollywood could imagine either. Cracks opening and closing in the earth, walls of water rolling over everything in their path. Houses and businesses carried away. Total destruction. Likely tens of thousands of people dead. By way of contrast, Hurricane Katrina had a final death toll of under 2000.

Disasters of this magnitude have happened elsewhere and images of the aftermath have been available at least in limited quantities. I don't recall ever seeing so much footage of the actual event itself. A decade into the 21st century citizens of wealthy countries such as Japan have the ability to document and record events at a scale and level of detail that is amazing and more than a little disturbing when viewed in this case.

Japan's NHK world English language broadcast via the web is also providing more information and insight into the aftermath than I've ever seen before. I'm used to seeing world events through the filter of the US press, or occasionally the BBC. Being able to view something a lot closer to the source has a different impact. When we're viewing local media covering remote events I think it's harder to maintain emotional distance.

What's going on in Libya right now is a different sort of tragedy but again, we're getting much more raw on the ground perspective that we did even a few years ago.

We used to get news in a very structured and polished form. There were up sides to that approach, but it was also kind of sterile and limited. Vietnam was the first televised war, and the images that appeared on Americas TV's had a profound impact on peoples perceptions and the final outcome of that conflict.

We've moved a level or two beyond that now with Facebook, YouTube and other forms of online media providing forums and channels for people and groups all over the world to deliver raw footage and opinions on what is happening. We've already seen people using these new tools for positive change.

New technologies provide new tools that can be used for good or ill. As always the actual impact of a particular tool is going to be determined by individuals and societies. So far I've seen more positive than negative to the creation of the Internet and I very much hope that continues.

Image by Ryuugakusei via Flickr

Repeatable Success

One of the things I like to do is look at organizational structures and figure out what is working and what isn't. Once I've identified things I think could be better I mentally pull everything apart and put it back together until I find a model I like better. This process tends to be iterative, but intuitive which makes it difficult for me to express exactly why I think a particular way of structuring an organization makes sense.

Recently I've come up with a simple approach that brings some structure to the analysis portion of this exercise. I don't have a lot of mileage on this method but it seems worthwhile to talk about it.

This approach is currently aimed at functional areas. I believe it could be applied in a larger context but I haven't given that much thought yet.

The first step is to identify the required outputs for a particular function. Since Information Technology is my field I'll use it in my example. Lets imagine a high tech company that has two different types of internal customers. Administrative/Sales/Marketing/Operations/Etc. (ASMOE) & Engineering/Development. (ED) Both groups need IT services but their needs are going to be different. I'll discuss this more below.

There is a saying in project management that you can choose any two of "Cheap/Fast/Good". What if we apply this rule to satisfying our required outputs?

The ASMOE group needs reliable industry standard solutions that are cost effective. That need for reliability means that rolling out the latest and greatest update to a particular piece of software right after it comes out is  a bad idea. It also means that they likely have a lot of automated processes in place that are going to have to be tested and verified any time a change needs to be made. They usually don't want to know anything about the "man behind the curtain". Computers are just tools they use to get their jobs done. Throw in training and it is safe to say that for IT to effectively support this group Cheap & Good are the two best choices.

The ED group is in the business of solving cutting edge problems as quickly as possible. Time to market is often critical and having to wait six to nine months for a new piece of software or some other IT related task to be completed has the potential to cost the company a lot of money due to missed opportunities. IT Customers in this area are going to be highly sophisticated when it comes to technology and capable of solving many of their own problems. In regards to IT they will generally be looking for somebody who they can partner with to help solve complex problems. For this group Fast & Good are the two most important things. Cost should always be a factor of course but it is less important than getting good quality solutions in a short period of time.

Based on this brief analysis it's clear that the two groups listed have different needs. Trying to support both with one monolithic IT organization will inevitably lead to both being unhappy as the approach that needs to be taken to satisfy the needs of each is different. In the case of the ED group you need staff who keep up with the latest technologies and are able to move quickly. Rapid prototyping is a necessity in this space and too much process and planning is going to cause things to grind to a halt.

The ASMOE group on the other hand needs industry standard solutions that are applied in a consistent way so that the exchange of information within the company and with external partners and vendors can take place in a timely and efficient manner. To best serve the ASMOE customers you need employees who are disciplined and  skilled in gathering requirements and turning those requirements into services that are cost effective and sustainable. Time to deployment is a factor, but it is almost always less important than reliability, sustainability and cost. ITIL provides a framework for this kind of IT

We human beings love cookie cutter approaches. By that I mean we'll find some success doing things one way and then try to apply that approach elsewhere without fully understanding why the approach worked in the first place and how the initial situation differs from the current one. Bad things tend to happen when this is done. Taking a step back and doing some analysis isn't optional if you want to have any chance at success in business, or life for that matter. Making the Good/Fast/Cheap evaluation is just one possible approach. You could pick any two, three, four, etc factors that seem most applicable to a particular situation and do the same analysis.

Image via Wikipedia

Watson

I've been trying to figure out what I think of the technology that IBM demonstrated on Jeopardy recently for the past few days. One thing is for sure, Watson is no Eliza.

As is generally the case when I encounter something new I've primarily trying to figure out what sort of uses this technology might have and how those uses would impact how I and others live our lives. IBM has already announced that they'll be working a company called Nuance that specializes in voice recognition and clinical language understanding to develop a "Physician Assistant" over the next five years. If the two companies are successful they could help save a lot of lives. As is the case with any highly complicated job Doctors have a daunting amount of information both new and old to look at. Being able to quickly wade through that body of knowledge and find only the most relevant facts while performing a patient diagnosis would be of great value both in increasing their productivity and improving accuracy. Doctors are known for being conservative in regards to technologies that change the way they do their jobs though so it is by no means certain that this effort will be adopted even if the technology is developed and proven.

I'd really be interested in knowing what the senior people at Google think of this technology. Let's be honest,, as good as Google is it can still take a lot of effort to find what you are looking for. This is especially true if you're interest is particularly esoteric. Even common searches require a certain amount of effort as it is almost always a good idea to check two or three sources to be sure you're getting an accurate answer. Imagine being able to simply type or speak a question and get an answer along with an idea of how probable the answer was to be correct.  Wouldn't that be nice? Several years back there was a short lived search engine called "Ask Jeeves" that promised to do more or less that. Sadly the reality failed to live up to the hype and they essentially disappeared fairly quickly. You can still go to ask.com, but its primary purpose appears to be as a vehicle for delivering ads.

I’d be very surprised if there aren’t already one or more efforts within Google to try to replicate and improve on what Watson is capable of. That will likely be a tough nut to crack though as the real “magic” in Watson is the natural language parsing and I don’t get the impression that Google has a lot of expertise in that area.  I base this assumption primarily on the search results I get back when I type in full sentences. The sentences are generally not as complicated as the ones Watson had to deal with and yet it is obvious that Google makes no use of the context they provide.

Another challenge would be the fact that Watson was using a set of data that was almost certainly of very high quality. While the Internet is a wonderful source of information, there is a lot of noise out there and it is not unheard of for a particular piece of incorrect information to get replicated many times. This could make determining the correct answer to a question more challenging because garbage in almost always equals garbage out in the world of computers. I’d speculate that Watson does some amount of cross checking but again, the more noise the harder it would be to find the right answer.

While Watson is not perfect it does pave the way for other very important evolutionary steps towards a machine that might stand a chance of passing the Turing test. The code that IBM has developed would need additional functionality built on top of it to start doing things like building a body of inferences. It would also need an analog for personal memory and likely other things as well. 

I’m not sure that a true conception of “self” will ever emerge from such efforts but it will be interesting to watch and speculate. I’m much more optimistic that this will happen during my lifetime today than I was a week ago.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles

• John Dvorak's Second Opinion: IBM's Watson is just a super search engine (marketwatch.com)
• Dissecting IBM Watson's Jeopardy! Game - PC Magazine (news.google.com)
• IBM Watson Could Revolutionize Healthcare (medgadget.com)

iPhone Nano (Short Take)

There has been a fair amount of press recently about the possibility of an iPhone nano.  The rumors claim that Apple is working on a smaller version of the iPhone that would be cheaper in order to compete with the less expensive Android based phones.  While Apple could produce a smaller form factor device with the same screen resolution as the 3GS I can see a couple of problems.

First, how well would the on screen keyboard work? Typing on the current iPhone/iPod Touch screen is a little marginal for me, so I can't see how an even smaller display would work with a virtual keyboard.  Of course Apple could include a slide out keyboard instead.  That would address the issue nicely but how much cheaper would a mini iPhone with a slide out keyboard be? Apple hasn't been hot on slide out keyboards in the past, but a different form factor might cause them to change their minds.

The second thing that makes me question these stories is that Apple is all about high margins.  Right now they are making something like 50% of the profits on cell phone sales on 4% of unit sales and there are no signs that this very favorable phenomena is going to change any time soon.  Even the early antenna woes of the iPhone 4 didn't seem to have any impact. Why would Apple want to create a product that would likely have substantially lower margins? I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it seems a bit of a long shot that they would make such a move. It might make sense in emerging markets though. If that is the intended audience then I'm  betting on a slide out keyboard.

Image via CrunchBase

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