Do you need to keep your people happy?

In today's yesterday's FT Jonathan Moules explores ways that small companies, startups in particular, can keep people happy.

Mr Moules discusses various ways startups attempt to retain employees, and makes it clear that money, being an extrinsic motivator, doesn't work. To know why, watch this humorous exposé based on the work of Dan Pink.

We get free coffee!

Having come to Silicon Valley and survived two booms and two busts, I've witnessed (and enjoyed) many attempts to make employees feel a sense of community, camaraderie and belonging, as tools for higher retention. These attempts have included:

Unlimited Frappucinos
Company ski trips to Tahoe
Friday beer bashes
All-hands meetings, where the CEO has been in a dunk-tank
Free lunches (who said there was no such thing)
Free massages
Free concierge service
"Free" car (haha the taxman smiled all the way to the treasury with that!)

All of these incentives have more or less been extrinsic ones, and like Mr Pink predicts, have become old. Perks like these get taken for granted, and treated like rights, then abused, ignored and even criticized.

Mr Moules describes the experience of meeting the Queen (a customer of one of his case companies) as an experience that is not likely to be forgotten, hence making the case for unique experiences being likely to encourage intrinsic motivation.

What I've learned

In the last six months, I've learned four things, which might seem rather obvious but are in fact often overlooked during the hiring process.

1. The motivation to perform, excel and stay needs to come from within, and this needs to be demonstrated by the potential candidate. Does the candidate believe that the cause you, as a founder, are working for, is bigger than herself and yourself? Don't let your love for a candidate cloud your vision and assume that she has this motivation. Put her to the test during her probationary period (yes, pay well for this probationary period!)

2. Hire slowly, fire quickly. Enough said.

3. Empower your team by giving them ownership over the entire company. Only then will they understand and be able to feel their importance. Give them a little bit of trust, then, if they pass the test, a little more. See how they react when they are given unexpected responsibility (eg, when you're on a flight or you're sick). Is it "not their problem" and do they do nothing? Or do they try hard to avoid potential problems, and represent the company with pride just like you would?

4. Learn what your candidates passions and dreams in life are. And, if this candidate is passionate about your company, make sure that being with your company will allow this candidate's passions to flourish. Only then will the employee be truly happy. While it might not be your responsibility as a founder to provide a venue for candidates to develop their passions, if your company happens to be a vehicle, you'll see much of the passion transformed into love for your own company.

Although I made many friends at Liberate Technologies, I often wondered what I was doing working for a company that made software for TV when I didn't even have a TV of my own :)

Love

What's paradoxical about love and religion is that there is more published work about these two topics than about anything else: novels, self-help books, literary analyses, plays, comedies, sacred texts, manuals, poems, translations, blog posts, magazines, tweets. And yet, these are the two topics where no matter how much you read, you won't be further enlightened.

So, you may read all the books and blogposts you want trying to understand what love is. But when you experience love, you'll know that it's love, even if you hadn't read those books.

The same goes for hiring.

When you have the right candidate who is right for your company, you'll just know. And, like in a marriage, if you have to try hard to retain her, you're with the wrong employee.

Drink this for me! Or, I'll create that for us

I think there are two types of cult:

The ones led by people (exemplified by someone who came from Indiana) who make their followers drink spiked Kool Aid in the name of faith.

Those (exemplified by a leader who comes from Finland) whose members brew their own version of Kool Aid, also in the name of faith.

When I read this excellent essay on how to hire like you're hiring for a cult, I'd love to think the author was talking about the latter type of cult :)

Survival Skills that Should Be Taught At Elementary School

1. How to cook 10 meals.
2. How to swim
3. How to manage money
4. How to be an entrepreneur
5. How to understand the news

Why:
1. Thank you Jamie Oliver.


"We, the adults of the last four generations have blessed our children with a lifespan shorter than those of their own parents."
It's time to do something about that.

2. In 2004, nine people in the US alone drowned every day.
Needlessly.

3. Parents are more comfortable talking to their kids about sex than money. Money is taboo. And putting a credit card in the hands of today's University Graduate is like putting a Ferrari in the hands of a 10 year old.

4. Being an entrepreneur is a mindset. That nothing is out of your control. This is a survival skill in itself.

5. The news has a direct impact on all children, yet kids are protecting themselves from it. Rightly so, for they are becoming immune to the marketing messages behind the sponsors

Watch "Bowling for Columbine" and look for Marilyn Manson's interview. And then you'll know why.

It's time for change. And the time is now.

Why make billions when we can make... millions?

Here are the largest numbers I have been able to imagine at various ages:

Age 5: "OK class, I want you to count down from 100" (Mrs Millner)
Age 6: "There are tens of thousands of people in America. It is one of the biggest countries in the World" (Mrs Lardner)
Age 7: "I've got millions of stickers at home" (Norman Benezra)
Age 8: "A Rolls Royce is what millionaires drive" (my mother)
Age 9: "China has one thousand million people, it will soon be a superpower. The World has four thousand million people" (my grandfather)
Age 10: "A billion is a million million, but in America they call a thousand million a "billion" (my grandfather)
1990: "The Savings and Loans crisis is likely to cost the American taxpayer over $100 billion" (Time Magazine)
1998: It's called "Google". I think it means 10 to the power of 24 or something (Alberto)
1999: Yahoo! is bigger than British Airways! (Poster at LHR December 1999 - YHOO market cap at $120bn)
1999: Dot Com billionaires
2008: The Zimbabwe government is now circulating a Z$ 100 trillion bank note
2009: "What if I had a Googol pennies?" (Ria - age 5)
"Well, you know your school, you could buy that with all that money"
"Really!?"
"And I'll ask you for a job!"
"Why?"

2009: The healthcare plan is estimated as costing $800 billion, bringing the total US debt to over $10 trillion... (Reuters)

Will we have Clean Energy Trillionaires?
or
Nanotech Googlites?

I believe

That people are good
That heart disease can be reversed
That we have much to learn from children
That sunrise is an auspicious gift
That laughter is the best medicine
That the financially poor have as much to give
That a smile is a priceless gift
That cynics live in the present
That there’s nothing that you can do that can’t be done
That love never dies: it is kept alive by a pilot flame

What is mankind's greatest achievement?

Flight

Something's not right...

While protecting the residents of Afghanistan against terrorists whose only aim was to conduct suicide missions to the United States and terrorize innocent Afghanis along the way, we happened to stumble upon $1 trillion worth of Lithium. What hope for the people of Afghanistan! This could put an end to all their suffering!

Chick Magnet

Tino: That's one Chick Magnet of a car your brother has!
Anje: Yeah, I was just about to say that!
Mateo (4): Hey, what's a chick magnet? [ Mateo's favorite movie is Pixar's "Cars", and his favorite character in it happens to be "Chick Hicks"]
Me: Ask your father!
Anje (to the rescue): It's a car that both girls and boys can share


Life doesn't get much better than this...

Not Hip Enough

Wanting to understand the current wave of affection (or rather affliction) for the new Hipster culture, I decided to do some reading and also talk to some friends who're self-pronounced hipsters (or otherwise in denial).

What I noticed is that "hipsters" reject the pressures of modern consumerism, sometimes resorting to inconvencience (unconsciously or otherwise) to make a statement on their sophistication.

Furthermore, they are disillusioned by the advertising culture (why so many work for Google and Ad Networks up in the City, I don't know :), can explain the difference between Mitt Romney and Pete Wilson, have an understanding of fine art, are good at mental arithmetic, are good at improv, can tell the difference between a '94 and '96 wine, can move large planets out of orbit and can whoop my a** at sports. Except for, of course, my favorite sport: sleeping.

I've also been introduced to the Hipster toolkit:

- Karman Ghia
- 1984 IBM PC Keyboard
- Hemp shirts and
- Gaulois cigarettes in shirt pocket
- Vans sneakers
- A degree from Oberlin College
- Distinctive glasses that don't really have any optical power
- Loyalty card at an organic sushi restaurant (where they don't use Carbon Monoxide to keep the Toro bright red)
- MUNI pass
and finally:
- Esoteric iTunes playlist


I am no biking expert, but I wouldn't want to bike in San Carlos on a fixed-gear bike. Though a fixed gear bike is cool in its simplicity and design, it's just not made for hills.

I almost jumped out of my skin when one of my best friend accused me of having hipster aspirations:

- Old car
- iPhone 2G
- Bike rather than drive
- Vegetarian
- Grungy clothes

I can safely protest that my current image is all out of necessity, and let's face it, I'll never be cool enough!

(Written on Caltrain Northbound in a Mac OS X terminal using "vi". There. I'm no hipster)

surprise call

Had a very interesting conversation with the CEO of a French company considering the US market to launch his products. Chatted in depth about Twitter, Foursquare and Social Networking in the US. One of those mornings where you learn a lot even before your morning coffee... I love being able to listen to and share ideas with people across the World!

Happiness? There's no app for that

One of my favourite parts of the week is my drive to SFO with Tino. During this drive, we've discussed topics as diverse as Tiger Woods, literature, family, public policy, art, and of course technology.

On our last drive, we decided to talk about the iPad, and what a killer app might be. Tino believes that as well as a content consumption, and light content creation device, it might be a killer communication device in the future.

Tino discussed his and Lucy's experiences with Skype. I was intrigued to know that Lucy was put off with Skype very early in her experience. The very unusual symptom of her husband seeming to have "hiccups" while saying something crucially important from Washington DC was enough for her to want to forego a free connection and resort to the trusty telephone. A trusted, expensive-to-use technology with limitations (hiss, faintness, echo) that are well known and accepted to her.

As an early user of VOIP (I'm talking Speak Freely, a command-line VOIP utility that was first run on Unix, then ported to the PC in 1995), I can testify to her frustration. I remember shipping my brother in Mauritius 3.5" floppy discs with the speak freely program on it (downloading 1.2M over modem would have taken him all day and cost hundreds of dollars, at that time), then going through countless "can you hear me" test calls. At which point, my father said "Let's just call him" (for $2/minute). I noticed, too, that my father would still call me for $2 a minute rather than use skype, when there was something important to say. He was, no doubt, trying to save himself from the indignity of hiccups as well.

Skype has made massive improvements, but is still hiccuppy, an artifact more of compression, transmission, lag and the whole mechanism of shipping your packetised voice across country, then re-assembling those packets.

Having tried Dragon Dictate products on the iPad and iPhone, I can empathise with the frustration that causes a new user to abandon a product, no matter how technologically advanced.

Premise: Dragon dictate will free your hands and allow you to input your text faster than with your keyboard!
Facts: At the very best, if you babysit the dictation device, you'll get decent throughput, and if you don't, you might SMS your best friend that you're drinking with his wife, rather than an invitation for drinks at the Y.
To me: Dragon Dictate is a toy. I would prefer to suffer the inconveniences of stopping my car to type an SMS than the mental anguish of dealing with handsfree dictation on the go.

Which led us to talk about what might make Skype easier. Tino, I think found the holy grail, when he said that the conscious act of starting Skype, waiting for a connection to the server, then locating the contact, calling them if they were available, was enough to put many people off.

Here, I'm inclined to think: do people want apps? Or do they want to do things? Apple took a big bet that people don't want programs behind a start menu, super high configurability. They just want to DO things - hence apps.

Do users want a simple command and control experience? Could "Call Tino", issued as a voice command, which would ring either his Blackberry or skype account, WITHOUT even launching Skype, be what might compensate a new Skype user for the uncertainty of a jittery connection? Are apps a thing of the past?

I think that no-apps are a thing of the future.

Much like, when you pick up the phone and dial a number, you are oblivious to the exchanges in between you and the other subscriber, or even that the other subscriber might be on a mobile or satellite phone, or even in another country! At the dawn of the telephone age, placing a phone call required knowledge of the other person's exchange, and manual intervention by an operator. Now, the distances, technology and complexity in between are taken for granted. Because placing a call is so easy. (And almost too easy. I've been woken up by "pocket calls" from friends in other countries in the middle of the night way too many times. That's what you get for having a name that starts with "A".)

My vision of the future is:

"Call Dad for his birthday at 1100 his time and remind me half an hour before"
"Send this document to Rosemary, emphasising the executive summary"
"I'm unreachable until Asia is online again"
"When my boss approves my vacation, let my parents and wife know, and confirm the booking for the hotel and the cruise"

Computers have come a long way. But they are still forcing us to think and act the way they do. They need not.

The Strangest Meeting

All I can say about the meeting is:

I thought that only in movies did female secret service agents:

- Resemble Sandra Bullock
- Wear thick-framed spectacles
- Carry two Blackberries
- Wear black
- Put others under oath

That's all I can say.

Strangest phone call

On Monday evening, while I writhed in bed with dehydration, I got a call from a 619 number. San Diego, I remembered. Might be Arlene, might be Bruce, might be James. Anyway, they can wait.

When I returned the call, I found out that the call was for a reference. For someone that had worked for me in the past. But the most interesting things were:

The interviewer wanted to interview me in PERSON
The interviewer had flown to the Bay Area from San Diego just to interview me
The interviewer could not tell me what job this was for
The interviewer could not tell me the name of the candidate
The interviewer did not know where Redwood Shores was
The interviewer told me she would stay in the SF Bay Area until I was ready to meet her.

I'm meeting her in 1 hour in Palo Alto. I'm nervous...

do Antz have lungs?

I recently had the privilege of watching about 20 minutes of Dreamworks' "Antz" with Yasin on my way back from Palo Alto.

Two things:

The "chewing gum" scene was amazing - I always wondered what an ant went through stuck to the bottom of a piece of chewing gum which in turn was stuck to the bottom of a Reebok sneaker.

I almost dropped my iPhone when I saw the female ant lead (voiced by Sharon Stone) attempt Mouth to Mouth resuscitation on "Z", the renegade soldier mouthed, I mean voiced, by Woody Allen.

Huh?

I always thought that ants breathed using passive diffusion through tracheoles in their abdomens (which were clearly not visible in the animation). So forcing air down an ant's gullet isn't likely to result in any resuscitation as the ant has no lungs!

But maybe four year olds are not supposed to know that?
Or that Antz have lungs and ants don't?
Or maybe snogging Woody Allen was in Sharon Stone's contract?

I forgot to ask Yasin whether these ants carried cellphones, like Scooby Doo's digitally remastered friends do, way before cellphones were invented (in the 1970s).

What will they think of next?

There for the rhyme

From Owl City's "Fireflies":

'Cos I get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand lightning bugs
As they try to teach me how to dance
A foxtrot above my head
A sock hop [squish!] beneath my bed
Disco ball is just hanging by a thread...

Huh?

Oh well, it's fun for playing Tap Tap Revenge to :)

send cash, not ash!

Funny sight, driving to SFO this morning, saw two Boeing 747s, a Virgin Atlantic and an Air France at the International terminal, parked at almost 90 degrees, with their noses together. They had obviously been grounded since last Thursday,

According to Tino, it looked like the two planes were having a meeting.

Air France: "Euuuh, any news, brother?"

Virgin: "No, mate. But I heard they're letting some planes in at low altitude"

Air France: "Malheur! But that's not us, we're flying across the World"

Virgin: "Hey cheer up mate, want to head down over to Ausiellos for a...err.. gallon?"

Air France: "And you say that we have a drink problem en France?"

Virgin: "My tires are killing me. Hey Frog, how are those Dunlops doing for you?"

Air France: "Hey-lo, look who's here! Iceland Air and he's looking a litoll embarrassé!"

Virgin: "Ash-hole!"

The sight was almost exquisite enough to warrant a drive back to the airport with my brother's camera.

Barnes and Noble's Nook: first impressions

After a rainy evening in Palo Alto, I decided to catch the latest headlines at Hillsdale's B&N. But I was drawn to the info desk and a prominent display showcasing B&N's new Nook device. The lady at the desk scurried away, and wheeled in her resident 20-year old Whizz Kid - armed with low cut jeans, sneakers and a bad attitude T-Shirt. He let me take a look.

Having had the opportunity to play with the iPad hours before (what else can you do on a rainy Saturday, eh), I was expecting something similar in experience. But it's like comparing a bicycle with a helicopter.

Do I want a helicopter? Hell yeah! Do I need one? Am I airlifting o-type blood to a disaster zone? No. And - on pain of death, nobody near by bike!

In case you were wondering, my iPad is the bike and the Nook is Barnes and Noble's heavily engineered (in-house, I am told, B&N have a secret hoard of hardware developers) helicopter.

You see, this isn't a war of readers. This is a war of purposes.

While the Book^H^H^H^HNook is busy trying to prove it's a better mousetrap than the Kindle, the iPad is taking a bet that being an Apple Computer its superior [looks|interface|versatility|everything] will make e-ink a non-issue. The way that the iPod Touch made playing MP3s (the way that Rio did, and did very well in 2001 while being incumbent during the iPod's gestation period) pretty much a non-issue.

OK here is my two bit summary:

- Interesting
- $250
- A little on the klunky side (takes very deliberate keypresses to select and open your book)
- You get a miniature color lcd "bookshelf" at the bottom of the device. On the iPad you get a full-screen bookcase! :) Just an observation, I don't really care.
- The e-ink emulates real ink very well, and looks like a 24-pin dot matrix printout of a book (letters are the right shape, but a bit faded, and not quite black enough to fool you into thinking you're reading a book)
- Slow - the e-ink seems to "stutter" in re-drawing the page. Not a biggie, but caused a double-take the first couple of times
- Crashed when I was trying to change font
- I kept being tempted to touch the screen - that's what an iPad does to you
- I didn't start crying within 5 minutes, like I did with the iPad
- No web browser (though it features an all-you-can-eat (I mean, all-you-can-pay-B&N-for-new-content) 3G wireless connection to AT&T)

Which would I take to bed with me if I had to read War and Peace? Neither.
Which would I prefer to read the NYT on? The iPad of course, as I'd read the free edition in Safari. The Nook requires you to buy the current edition.

About e-books in general:
I won't say I'm a dot-commie by any stretch of the imagination, and I think money should flow to the creative authors and the middlemen should keep a gold coin from the pile. But come on. $10 for a title I could pay $2 used for on Amazon marketplace can and WILL get old after a while. Because two weeks after I've read the book, my utility is close to zero.

I think the Nook has its uses and will find a market. But it's B&N's marketing equivalent of the Apple Newton. Sorry, but not quite there...

The iPad and me

It's very rare that I buy new things. If you know me well, you'll know that I have never bought a new car, never bought a new phone (my 2G iPhone was donated by Sherry to replace the other 2G iPhone that I lost, donated by my brother), even this Macbook Pro came out of a friendly Nicaraguan guy's raincoat in Hillsdale mall's Starbucks. [I later discovered that it had Apple Care - something that he didn't know. I know it wasn't raining on Feb 11, 2008, the day I picked it up].

I have therefore taken a very uncharacteristic move in buying not just one, but two iPads on launch day, and reserving them on the day they were offered for pre-ordering.

But first, I'd like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the frenzy surrounding the product launch yesterday. I exchanged knowing smiles with the brave souls camped outside Palo Alto's Apple Store, and tried to fit into the frame of the KTVU Channel 9's camera as the channel interviewed them for the evening news. But failed, I think.

This morning, I realized that I had to be at TedX in Berkeley all day. My brother and his entourage waited almost an hour at Hillsdale's Apple Store and picked up my order for me. They even got served coffee and donuts while waiting in line.

OK I'll get to the meat soon. But first I'll say that I am grateful to my brother for buying me a neoprene iPad case which I didn't expect :)

Now, let's get down to business.

The name: it never even crossed my mind that i"Pad" was inappropriate for women, until I talked to my friend Anna-Marie.

Aesthetics: the device is reminiscent of the unibody Macbook pro. The buttons on the side look the same - squared, notchy (not wedgy) and click just right.

Screen: crisp and bright. Fonts seems incredibly smooth - more book-like and less computer-like

Sound: Mono speaker ports at bottom (3 grilles).

Controls: Volume up/down on right, similar to iPhone. New "Lock orientation" switch just above it. Very useful when you're in bed.

On/Off switch: behaves similar to iPhone's.

Headphone jack: in same place as iPhone.


On screen keyboard: huge keys. You seem to want to "peck" with two fingers, not touch type. Even so, you spend a disproportionate amount of time backspacing. Or I do.

Notes: Interesting overlay, like an HTML layer, with an index of all your notes, so you can keep the current note in view while browsing for another.




YouTube: super smooth. I love the new tracking functionality: you can scroll through the movie by whole minutes by dragging on the time bar, or seconds by scrolling far away from the time bar.

iBooks:just look




I don't know what it is about this device. But it just feels "right". reading the WSJ feels like I'm reading the actual newspaper, not just a web-page rendition. It's so comfortable. I don't have to FIGHT this computer. This is 1984. Bad hairstyles and all. I am very eager to download my favourite apps (NoteApp, MuniApp, Tap-Tap (yes, I do play occasionally), Google Earth, Google Voice (for the fun of it), and soon, iWork.) I do think that this is a content creation device as much as the iPhone is an email device (people have started sending more, shorter mobile emails, imperfect as it is, it's a blessing after T9)



This will be everywhere. Entire communities will skip the laptop and jump straight into the iPad. Medicine will be different. Research will be different. And of course, reading will be different.

Good night from CA.

Mr Toyoda suffers unintended acceleration to DC

Darrell Issa, the most senior Republican on the House Oversight Committee, is putting significant pressure on the Toyota CEO (Akio Toyoda - seems like a long dynasty) to appear before a Senate hearing committee on Toyota's accelerator and brake problems. Sending his North American head does not seem to be enough for this hard-nosed Republican. Surely the head of North American operations is equally accountable, with the trust invested in him by his Japanese boss for sales of cars to American consumers? Or is Mr Issa after his moment of glory, in shaming an "alien" CEO? Please.

On a technical level, what's interesting is Toyota Motor's proposed fix to the accelerator problem. As described by the FT, this would kill the engine when the accelerator and brake were pressed simultaneously. Meaning that if I had to take off from my driveway in ice, I'd be out of luck....

OK, it has never snowed in San Carlos :)

The Pigs and the Stupid

Niall Ferguson is a Glaswegian economic historian, who is the author of the book "The Ascent of Money". I bought the DVD (published in the US by PBS) for a friend, and recommended the book to another friend last night in Borders. She promptly bought it. If you were to choose between the two, choose the DVD, as the footage of Venice is breathtaking, and gives a visual sense of the sheer power of the Italian Mendici family, and its lasting legacy.

In his piece in the FT today, Mr Ferguson suggests that the crisis currently affecting Greece will soon reach America. A Libertarian friend of mine, whom I took for a walk to the Stanford dish, suggested, like Mr Ferguson does, that the multiplier effect of government spending is low, and therefore the effects of an economic stimulus are likely to be a waste of public money.

While it's very clear that the current US administration has inherited much of the current deficit (paid for by bonds bought by the Chinese), it's also clear that now the cash cow's run dry (China now expects to buy a token 5% of new issue, and threatens to liquidate existing holdings every time the Dalai Lama shows up in DC), America is planning some austerity measures of its own. By austerity I mean a freeze on "non-essential" spending for the next three years.

To answer Mr Ferguson's question: "But the key question is when that crisis will reach the last bastion of western power, on the other side of the Atlantic."

The answer is "NO", because an exogenous shock will see America through, like it did in the early 90s (with the Internet boom) and like it did in 2003 (with the housing boom). In this case, it will be out of the government's control. But it will happen.
Put your wallet away, Mr Obama.

Trust me.

PS As I've received a few emails about the title, I am not calling anybody a "pig" or "Stupid". These are, in fact, derogatory acronyms for countries asking for bailouts or about to require bailouts, and have been banned by the FT. To give you a clue, the G in Pig stands for Greece. Figure out the rest, or see the FT

Less proprietary trading please!

What I love about the proposed new legislation (that the media informs us, is aimed at "reigning in" banks, giving us the impression that they've become wild horses) is that it will limit proprietary trading. PT is what disgusted me enough to abandon dreams of a career in London's financial district and instead work on something "real" ("real" in this case being the Network Computer).

Simply put, proprietary trading allows bank employees to take bets with the bank's own money - in things like commodities, Forex, equities, fixed income instruments and corporate and government bonds. Makes markets more efficient, say the bankers through their Porsche windows at traffic lights. Makes my petrol and food more expensive, I say, remembering volatility in petrol prices caused by huge speculative effort (banks giving the most weight to this). And airlines having an excuse adding a "fuel surcharge" to their fares (to offset their non-fuel operational costs).

"Capping the overall size of banks" sounds knee jerk to me. But if it can clip the wings of the bank-that-one-dare-not-name, I'm all in favour.

In short, I'd say that the government's plan needs some time to be thought out. With non-lobbyist bankers representing the banks' interests. "How big should a bank be", "what reserve limits should be enforced", "what would the underwriting limits be for commercial lending", "how risky can their bets be" are all questions that need to be answered.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the ranch to reign in some Mustangs (the kind that don't have an investment banker sitting inside).

The iPad

Now that the excitement's died down, I'd like to say a couple of things about the new iPad:

1. The most amazing thing was the price, and I think that by pitching the entry-level product at $499, Apple has irreversibly disrupted the executive-gadget market

2. The AT&T deal for "only" $30 unlimited data is an appeasement to AT&T, the dying beast that Apple are sworn to protect. I forecast that most professionals will find a way to tether iphones or regular phones to their iPads (through some jailbreak solution) and will forego the $130. The only entities that will spend $130 for the privilege of paying AT&T more money will be corporations. And fleet purchases will add up (will be a new executive privilege (akin to Blackberries in the early 2000s)).

3. 16MB is enough for everyone. Storage is cheap, and tethering by USB to your desktop will be what most people will get by on. Face it, will being able to store 20 two-hour videos at a time be much different from being able to store 5 two-hour videos? Unless you're leaving your home for a year?

4. No camera. Whatever. This ain't no netbook. It's firmly aimed at Amazon, not at Asus.

5. Compatibility with iphone/ipod touch apps. Smart move! There's a critical mass of developers out there just waiting to create database, spreadsheet utilities! :-) Actually, expect a new cottage industry of such companies. By charging $10 for its full iWork suite, Apple is setting the bar very low...

6. The netbook won't die. I know hundreds of professional photographers who'd lug one around. But the HP Slate will be stillborn. Why have the privilege of running Windows 7, when you can do 95% of what you want in real style?

7. Cutting through all the noise about the use of the "iPad" name, have a look at the AAPL Jan 2011 call option prices. They are a superb buy. With even 5m sales of the iPad, they are golden.

Great job, Apple, except for the AT&T ball-and-chain.

TechCrunch hacked... :(

The Nexus and the Olive Tree

Synopsis:
1. Why the Nexus One is bad for Google
2. Why I'm abandoning my iPhone
Reading time: 6 minutes
Comments very welcome

Much like the Toyota of the 80s, HTC have mastered the art of mass production, and have customers lining up to buy their product based on low cost, reasonable performance, and, "Believe it or not, Reversi!"

In the pre-Lexus, pre-Acura era, Japanese carmakers struggled hard to capture the imaginations of value-conscious consumers who would notice that the Camry was offered in only one trim level, yet featured luxuries (for the era) like electric windows, a sunroof, alloy wheels and a digital radio cassette player. On a $32,000 BMW 325i, you'd pay almost $1000 extra for electric windows, and you'd take delivery of your car with wires sticking out where the radio should be.

Features, schmeatures, I'd say. People still bought the 325i and, at traffic lights, would crank down their windows and smirk at the Accord driver next to them. If features were truly important, how do we explain monstrosities like the Motorola ROKR (Apple's attempt to create a product in partnership with the leading handset maker) that failed to capture the media or the tune-hungry generation Y? Simple - the ingredients were there but the cake went flat.

Google, too, should know better than commission a high-volume producer, shackled by its own management, marketing and product constraints, to build a phone. In my opinion, Google should start a completely new hardware business from the ground up, and hire Apple engineers, product managers (everyone has a price), HTC business development people, and really invest heavily in redefining WHAT a phone is, much like Apple have done.

Having used an HTC product in 2006 for a year, I can say that my first impression was that it was the equivalent of a second-rate athlete on powerful steroids. Playing with my brother's 2009 HTC Hero, I can say that nothing has changed. It still has the HTC DNA, and feels like a smartphone with knobs on. Much like a 2009 Honda CRV "feels" like a 1979 Honda Civic. And a 2009 Ford 500 "Feels" like a 1997 Ford Escort. The Google Nexus One is a win for HTC, but severe brand dilution for Google. It's equivalent of Pierre Cardin agreeing to branding deals with lesser clothing manufacturers, that sent his brand down-market, or Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein products that can now be bought in the sub-$20 price range at discount retailers.

I think that Apple have enough people to blow their trumpet, so I'm going to add fuel to my gripe below, before I bring out the match. In my opinion, the iPhone should be spelt "Iphone". Because it's NOT an outstanding PHONE but an outstanding "I"-product. Apart from visual voicemail (which was available before, but never widely used), the iPhone brought little innovation to the way that a phone was used to make calls. And there's so much that could be done to innovate in that regard, especially as the iPhone community is huge and iPhone users make most of their calls to other iPhone users:

- Extend caller ID (which has been around since the 80s) into caller info.
eg: Alam Kasenally calling RE broken down on 101! HELP!
(that might change your opinion on whether you want to answer my call)

- Call priority: Emergency ringtones signifying something is an emergency, or muted ringtones if I'm calling you late at night about something that can wait

- Voice authentication. The length of your vocal cords is fixed, and your voice has a unique signature and fundamental frequencies. A quick phone automated call to you from your bank, whenever you make a credit-card transaction, where you say a standard phrase (like "Open Sesame") could confirm your identity. Yes, even if you're putting on a 1930s Southern Gentleman accent
- Have a record button that will allow you to record parts of a phone conversation easily. "What's you professor's email?" " charles@boffin.com". "Thanks, got it". Index all recordings by phone number and time automatically. Saves hunting for a pencil. While you're driving. Oops. If you work for the CHP and you drive a motorbike, pretend you haven't read this.

Come on, Apple, you don't need AT&T anymore so stop shackling yourself to their marketing requirements, and redefine your product in ways that AT&T would be happy to be part of.

The sad part:

However, I am planning to abandon my iPhone and buy a used Verizon Blackberry Worldphone.
Why? Because I need to make and receive calls reliably, a privilege not afforded to me with my iPhone in the Bay Area. A missed call that I don't see for 2 hours could be a lost star employee for our team, an angry customer who's a blogpost away from destroying our business, or a reporter who's got a choice of 2 companies to cover, and, well, chooses the other because they answered the phone and we didn't.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoy using my iPhone. From its form factor, to the few applications that I rely on (the Alarm clock, MuniApp, pdaNet, GVMobile, Tap Tap (I've only played it twice, and it's dangerously addictive), etc), to the quality of the device in your hand, it is, hands down, a winning product on par with:

+ The 1980s S Class Mercedes Benz
+ The Porsche 911
+ The 12" Apple Powerbook (Aluminium line)
+ The original iPod
+ The Sony Walkman
+ The original Mini Cooper
+ Google Search ("Grandpa, is it true that Google started out helping people to find things online?". "Well yes, grandson, when I was a boy, greedy people thought that they could sell you stuff on the internet, and it quickly became like a chaotic fish market. Google was the only way you could reliably find what you were looking for. Well, most of the time". "Whoaaaah! I wish young people now were as creative as they were then! Grandpa, if I come to your house, will you show me your PC again?")

My iPhone has a soul, and will live on, just not with the AT&T leech on its back (or maybe with someone else's). But for a businessperson, a phone that you enjoy using but can't guarantee calls on is sadly but an expensive toy.