Always remember and never forget:

                   ”The only limit we need is that which limits anyone from setting limits.”

If you are like me, you buy any tech gadget that comes out. I always manage to find a way to support the economy, the company that comes up with an inferior first version etc. But I do enjoy getting exposed to the technology before most people, so that’s worth something isn’t it (I know what you’re saying, this is like someone that lost everything in Vegas, and comes out saying, “Well, I still got my health!!”

Be that as it may, I resisted buying an iPad. I actually got the email early to pre-order, and I even went through the process, then later cancelled it, I just thought to myself, “What the heck am I going to do with it?” it was going to be $800 thrown away (I have to get the 3G with the large capacity

Anyway, I am more of a believer of open technologies, so I am an Android kind of guy. Ever since I bought the G1 for my son (BTW, he loooooves it still), and then when I finally gave up on my TREO 755P (Still think it was a great phone), I have been in love with the Android platform. I think it is the future, or some semblance of the future. Apple, Microsoft, HP and others are spinning their wheels, while the new generation is going for everything that’s open.

I don’t think these companies learn from past mistakes. Apple lost a great big market share when the PC Market went open, because IBM messed up (Thanks IBM for letting Compaq creep into the market with superior clones and create a great demand for PCs). They lost again, when they let Dell slide into the corporate market with its “Order the way you want it, and we will make it like you want” strategy. Netscape fell into the “They love our product so much that they will pay what we want” strategy. Microsoft has too many things to talk about and everyone knows it.  This taught me that when you put a lot of hurdles (Hurdles can also be a high price for example $329 for Microsoft Office, ouch! Openoffice.org anyone?), and make things proprietary, you end up losing in the end. Who remembers the Betamax, the Lisa, 8-track tapes etc.

Sure Apple has a lot of following, and they are doing a great job with their interfaces, but most of the people buying are the Apple fans to start with. An article from PCWorld said that  nearly 3/4 that’s 75% of the buyers of the iPad during the pre-order and the weeks following were MAC users, and almost 67% had iPhones (The iTouch is getting cannibalized by the iPad, unless they release a 5″ version soon).

It’s so hard to get an iPhone app into the store that the sheer determination was the only thing that made it grow so quickly. But the priced apps are fading, mostly only the free apps are being downloaded. Considering that currently to get an application on the itunes App Store you need to get it approved by Apple, and there are several criteria, including competitors products, makes it less attractive to newer developers. While this is good for the quality of the available apps, it does limit creativity and push people away. Eventually people like “NO LIMITS!!”

I have a MAC along with the umpteen PCs that I have (I think it’s something like 7:1 now, not counting the 12-15 older desktops sitting in my garage). I have setup an Ubuntu on one of my older desktops, and I have to say, “I am impressed, Linux, you’ve come a long way baby!” I have just finished setting up a Chromium OS machine, I will start testing tomorrow, can’t wait.

So back to the iPad, there are some Chinese companies that have already released 7″ Android tablets, that are going for $100-$140 shipped, yes shipped!!! It has WiFi built in, it is not as robust as the iPad, but it is only $100, and it is still new, imagine what it will be in a few months. Of course, I ordered one, will be testing that as well.

Please don’t take me wrong, I am not one that can say Apple will fail, but I can say that it will not be operating at the full potential that it would if it were more open. Take a look at what Facebook did for the open cause, or rather what the open platform did for Facebook. How about Linux and Apache for the server industry? I wouldn’t ignore it, if I were in the position these companies are in.

I’ll say this again, “The only limit we need is that which limits anyone from setting limits.” Keep in mind, the U.S.A. grew this fast because it was based on this open souce model, of course with a dash of capitalism added as a catalyst for extra motivation.

Diran Afarian
Founder
NextEmployee.com

I  have been to the Lenovo website a few times (Deal site clicks mainly) to buy a computer. I have often just clicked back out. Whoever designed the ecommerce side of their site ought to be fired. Can anyone spell F-A-I-L !!!

Too bad I didn’t have this insight when I did my MBA project about IBM, I had to concentrate on the 1993 issues you were having for my report.

Be that as it may, when I get to your site from a link, there is no way (maybe no easy way) to see a picture of the (D&!*?#) notebook computer I want to buy. The first thing you see is the warranty crap.

Hey Lenovo, or IBM–BTW, I don’t know which genius (I’m being nice here) thought Lenovo would be a better brand to push than IBM, is beyond me. But that’s a whole different story in itself. I guess someone thought IBM is just too short to be a good brand? Maybe,  just maybe.

Anyway, send some people to Design 101, or better yet, Marketing 101. Tey’ll teach them that you’re supposed to put the ugly stuff (Like warranty, protection etc) at the end. One principle you need to learn about marketing and human behavior is this:
      – When is a person most likely to buy another product from you?
                   WHEN THEY HAVE JUST BOUGHT SOMETHING!!    
Does, “Would you like fries with that sir…” ring a bell? How about, “For $5 more we’ll send you another thiggamajiggy with free shipping if you decide now…” as all infomercials do. It’s called UPSELL!  Warranty is an up-sell, computer bag is an up-sell, junk that you don’t really need, but we make a lot of fluffy money on is an up-sell.

Mr Watson (yeah I know), if you were alive, you would send some of these genius online employees of yours to a couple of courses (or maybe fire them). Let them learn that showing pictures of the notebook computers from all angles might get someone’s mouth watering and get them to start the buying process, at least it won’t do something that the Warranty page will do, put them to sleep (Or aggravate them to the point that they go to your competitor and buy the notebook computer from there!!).

Just to let you know, FYI, because you need to know, to whom it may concern etc etc. I just had enough, and I went to the Dell site and bought myself a notebook computer, I even paid more, because the pictures showed such beautiful angles and detail that I just had to have it.

Now I will never know if your computer is better than the Dell. Unless our company decided to give me one, or I saw one in a store or?? I definitely will not come to your stale site and go through the process any more.

Oh yeah, this is my 5th notebook/netbook, I am a serial tech product junkie, not just a one product buyer. I also support the economy by being an early adopter of technology products, etc.

Mr Palmisano, you probably won’t ever read this, but it felt good for me to get this frustration out. If this was about my site, I would be extremely alarmed. I wonder how many more deals you have lost because of this backwards system of yours.  Maybe you know?

-Diran

3 reasons, Ubuntu, Ubuntu and Ubuntu. Because they see a lot of students in colleges using Ubuntu and liking it more. Hey, I installed it on one of my older computers (Pentium4 2GhZ w/512MB of RAM) it’s flying!

Open Office comes bundled free with the Ubuntu download and installs automatically. Open Office can even read and write MS office files. It also includes other programs in the suite like draw, and photoshop equivalent etc.

No wonder all the hoopla about Ubuntu. I love it, I am even open to learning another system and have put this system in my office next to my Vista which I will be retiring soon. I even installed Ubuntu on one of my netbooks, these things are so cheap that I keep buying them (SOMEBODY STOP ME!!!).

I have 2 notebooks, 3 netbooks, 3 desktop computers and I am running, XP, Vista, Win 7, Ubuntu flavor of Linux, and Mac’s Snow Leopard as operating systems. Oh forgot, the Ubuntu is installed on the Pentium 4 comp that had Windows 2000, now it’s a dual boot in case I want to boot to Windows 2000

So now I understand what Microsoft’s thinking is. If a hardy Microsoft guy like me that started with DOS 3.0 in 1985 and then moved to Windows 2.0 in 1987 (Hated it till Win 3.0)then Win 3.11, OS2 (omg get me out of there), then Win NT, then Win 95, Win 98 (0ne of my faves), then ME (1 week flat, remove or throw away the computer), then Win 2000 (another gem), XP, then Vista, then XP again (Yes upgraded to XP, but I have one computer with Vista still), now Win 7. Whheewwhh, that was a mouthful. (BTW, I still have a shrink wrapped MS-DOS 6.22 & a Wordstar Manual, you never know).

Microsoft’s site is at:
            http://www.win741.com/
and other deals for tech students is at:
            http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/dd795303.aspx 
They can get Microsoft software for free.

Also on the other side, Apple is selling their Snow Leopard for $29 to students. Here is the link:
             http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A

Lebanon has less than 1/10th of one percent of the population of the earth, but has 1% of the world’s gold reserves. What does this mean?

I thought this was an interesting fact. I didn’t know that Lebanon holds 1% of the world’s reserves. Ranked #15 in the world. I read that just as an example, the UK owns more than $11.8 billion in reserves, Lebanon owns more than $11 billion.

This means they did very will in the last 3 years with the reserves gaining a lot of value. From the beginning of 2009 to the beginning of 2010, the value of the gold they hold went from $4.1 Bill to $11.1 Bill. Not bad I would say.

Here is the chart in 2008 with the rankings by country:

(Click for the rank chart) showing rank of each country in amount of gold reserves.

#17 at that time. Now that some countries have sold some of theirs, it has moved to rank #15.

My theory is that if Lebanon can back it’s monetary system with the gold, then it can offer lower interest to investors (Banks currently pay around 20% interst). It has to stabilize the monetary system, so the Lira stays stable against the dollar, and with the reserves backing it up, it can offer 7% and money will flock to the country.

Some interesting facts:

1- Portugal owns 382.5 Tonnes but it is almost 84% of it’s National Forex Reserves (Reserves it has to take care of it’s liability when currency demand is low)

2- The United States owns more than 27% of the worlds reported gold reserves

3- Countries like Kuwait and Malta that have the highest exchange rates for their currency (Kuwaiti Dinar & Maltese Lira) have a very low gold to forex percentage (11.4% & 2.2% respectively)? They don’t need to worry about devaluation and demand for their currency.

4- Why are Armenia, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and a lot of other countries not listed? Because not every country reports their Gold reserves.

5- Very interesting to see the value of the gold go up for each country (See here)

6- Most of this gold that other countries own is held in the United States !!!

7- India holds almost $560 tonnes of gold, almost as much as Russia (607 tonnes). But Switzerland holds almost as much as India & Russia combined (1,040 tonnes vs. 1165.4 tonnes respectively).

8- Switzerland holds almost as much as China (1,040 & 1,054 respectively)

9- Italy holds as much as france (about 2,450 tonnes) but each of them hold more than China and Switzeland combined or almost as much gold as China, Switzerland, Russia combined !!!

10- USA holds almost as much gold (For itself) than Germany, France & Italy (the rank 2,4 & 5) combined (USA 8,133 tonnes, Germany France & Italy 8,295).

Caveat: Listen, before I start, I would like to let you know that I am an Engineer, I like detail, I like to be exact, I know decimal points and most of all, I know how to put people to sleep better than your priest, pastor or rabbi. So don’t comment that it is not accurate, because I will be using new rounding techniques that I call Nuero-Axo rounding, which is also green BTW and it goes on in my head. See, this is what marketing people do, to make it easy for people to take with them and remember (Yes, I am marketing people too, I have a piece of paper on that one also). Oh, another thing, all the numbers I’m using I got from Market Share by Net Applications (http://marketshare.hitslink.com)
Thanks guys.

It seems like every day the newcomers to the browser frontier are gaining ground on the behemoth. Google Chrome came on the scene in 2008, and it is already at 4.63% of the browser market share. 1st year it grew to 1.4% market share and now 4.63%, that’s an increase of almost 231% in 2009 alone, and 463% in the last 18 months! Watch out Microsoft.What seems to be fueling this growth? I know I’ve been using it more because of the speed. I don’t like the interface, it seems like it is still in Beta (I think Google needs to pay royalties for the word “Beta” Anyway, I like the element inspector also. If you do any kind of web design or programming, it is very helpful. And of course I looooove the way I can search and get suggestions right at the address bar (I know other browsers can do the searching, but it is not as robust, so leave me alone).

But a couple of other honorable mentions are Opera Mini and Playstation. Although their market shares are very insignificant (.53% & .04% respectively), Opera Mini grew from .12% market share to .53%, that’s a respectable 341.67% almost as much as Chrome which has grown (463% of course, 0-4.63% in less than 18 months). Playstation doubled it’s size for market share, it went from .02% to .04% in the same time, (hey don’t knock it, that’s 100% growth), bravo Sony!

One thing I’m concerned about though is the privacy and the security of these browsers. So I use a combination of IE, Chrome and of course Firefox. Oh, I forgot Firefox, this is like the tortoise in the T&H story, a Timex (Takes a lickin’ keeps on tickin’, or the Energizer bunny. It is steadily growing, and now has a very respectable 25% (24.61% to be exact) of the browser market share. I also looove Firefox, because of all the addons (Specially Ubiquity)

So here are some interesting facts:

Browser (Market Share %)

	Dec 2007	Dec 2009
Microsoft	78.81%	62.69%
Firefox	16.25	24.61%
Chrome	0.00%	4.63%
Safari	2.46%	4.46%
Netscape	0.51%	0.32%

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Browser Rank, by year

		12/2007	12/2008	12/2009
Microsoft		1	1	1
Firefox		2	2	2
Chrome		N/A	5	3
Safari		3	3	4
Netscape		5	6	7
Opera		4	4	5
Opera Mini		6	7	6
Playstation		7	8	8

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 Blog sponsored and hosted by: http://www.BuildWebsite.com

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All the market share numbers I’m using I got from Market Share by Net Applications (http://marketshare.hitslink.com)

Have iPhone, will travel? I think pretty soon the chop-o-matic guy or Ron Popiel is going to be selling an iPhone that can chop onions or cook a chicken.

Take a look at this Quad copter controlled with the iPhone, similar to the BMW being controlled by James Bond a few years back: Watch the Parrot Drone in action. I know someone whose name starts with H and ends with agop that would buy this if they make it for the Palm Pre

-D

Google  is doing to phone service what they did with Gmail to email service. Now (Invite only of course at this stage) you can add Google Voice to your phone to be able to do the following:

Voicemail: voicemail like email (Keep track of them like you do email in Gmail)

Voicemail transcription: Have the system read what your voicemail says

Custom greetings: Set it up so when you get a call from Bob, it says, “Hi Bob, I am not in just leave me a message and I’ll get back to you. So you can vary voicemail greetings by caller

International calling: low cost calls to the world

Notifications: So once voice is converted to text you can read voicemail messages via email or SMS, without having to dial into the voicemail

Share voicemails: Manipulate voicemail just like you do an email; forward, embed, or download voicemails

Is this cool or what? DO you want to make it even more cool? Add a Google number. You get a Google number that stays with you no matter where you go, you just go online and link other numbers to it, so if you home number changes, you can change it, if your cell changes, you can change that, and no one will know you have changed numbers, because our google number stays the same-Forever!! There are other added features that I will discuss later with Google number.

These are still invite only services so it might take some time for you to be able to use it on your phone. But in the meantime I have Vonage, and I’m able to do most of these now (I’ve been doing them for 3 years actually) but it’s on the land line.

So you’re writing some content for a website, sprucing up your resume or just an article? You want to think of some powerful words to put in. Here are ones I use, I keep adding when I think of new ones, but it might help.

Adverbs:

quickly, proactively, efficiently, assertively, interactively, professionally, authoritatively, conveniently, completely, continually, dramatically, enthusiastically, collaboratively, synergistically, seamlessly, competently, globally

Verbs:

maintain, supply, provide access to, disseminate, network, create, engineer, integrate, leverage other’s, leverage existing, coordinate, administrate, initiate, facilitate, promote, restore, fashion, revolutionize, build, enhance, simplify, pursue, utilize, foster, customize, negotiate

Adjectives:

professional, timely, effective, unique, cost effective, virtual, scalable, economically sound, inexpensive, value-added, business, quality, diverse, high-quality,competitive, excellent, innovative, corporate, high standards in, world-class, error-free, performance based, multimedia based, market-driven, cutting edge, high-payoff, low-risk high-yield, long-term high-impact, prospective, progressive, ethical, enterprise-wide, principle-centered, mission-critical, parallel, interdependent, emerging, seven-habits-conforming, resource-leveling

20 nouns:

content, paradigm, data, opportunities, information, services, materials, technology, benefits, solutions, infrastructures, products, deliverables, catalysts for change, resources, methods of empowerment, sources, leadership skills, meta-services, intellectual capital

“Cash is a bad investment. You should keep enough so others don’t determine your future, The rest you should find good companies and invest in them…”

World’s best known or perhaps “best” investor. If you guessed Warren Buffett you would be right. Also another interesting thing was that he was very impressed by his professor at Columbia Univ, Ben Graham. He was so impressed, he named one of his children after him.

I am really impressed by that quote. Besides being in the Technology field, I invest and advise in Commercial Real Estate Investments, so it hits home. I say that to clients so many times, a lot of people like sitting on cash and think “Cash is King”.

I do believe cash is like a King if it just sits and doesn’t do anything. After all, kings don’t work, others do.

So, a word to the wise, don’t make cash the King, make it a hard working employee.

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Sponsored by:BuildWebsite.com

Well, Since the beginning of Twitter, I have been a skeptic about the service (See an old post of mine: Some things our fathers will never understand. I am not one of the “Old” not to understand it, I am also not one of the “Young” to leave it because it is boring. I am involved heavily in Internet Marketing and feel I have to be up on all marketing trends.

So after all the hype and hoopla, and after my amazement of the way it took off, I still feel it will not last at this stage too much longer. I feel that the SRB’s have depleted their rocket fuel. And the “Rick Sanchez Effect” is gone.

My feeling is that any service that stays and survives on the web has to do so without a need major for a major behavior change. If it does require a major behavior change then it has to be something like the cell phone, web, the fax or the telephone. When it is something that you see you have to use or you will go the way of the Amish.

When the answering machines came out I was a young guy, I remember people hated to leave messages, they would just call back. When IVR or voice mail systems came out (Press ’1′ for sales, ’2′ for Sally, ’0′ for the operator, etc.) people would hate it, and although some people still do hate it, they know that if you want Harry to call you back or John to know why you will not answer him in the next 10 minutes you will have to navigate the IVR jungle and leave him a message.

Well, think about it, what has Twitter got to offer that you, the normal person, must have to continue life? NOTHING!! I am on the web 15 hours a day, and I find I am just doing it so in case it becomes something that people cannot do without, I will not be left out in the cold.

I think Twitter does have it’s place though, it is not useless, it is actually quite useful when it comes to certain niches. My point is that it is not going to stay a rocketship going up forever, it’s not a Google, or a Facebook (Although I have my opinion about Facebook also

The best use for Twitter is:
- If you are in Iran, and the mullahs are blocking a lot of sites, then you should use Twitter to get the word out, quick!!! (One of the most used services to get info out of that trouble spot)
- When you have people that need updates from you all the time and these updates are not ones that warrant a full blog entry.
- If you are a software company and want to give people the heads up about what’s happening on a day-to-day basis, then here you go.
- If you are a news agency like CNN or ?? then you can get the word out and in quickly.
- You are broadcasting a game, or a race etc. and only local people can hear your audio broadcast, then you can use Twitter to broadcast short mesages to anyone in the world immediately.
- If you are Apple, then you can pretty much use anything
- If you have friends that are following your trek across America, and you want to give them updates, it’s another use.
- If you are a writer and want to give people an update as to what you are noticing and want to tell more than one person…
- If you are on a vacation and you want to give quick updates to friends, or links to certain locations, well Twitter is the way.
- If you are a teacher and want to show parents (or students for that matter) what you are discussing in class.
- If you are the preacher in a church and want to remind people about certain things during the day, then here you go, your “Micro-Pulpit”, have at it.
- Of course there are much more…

So basically if the user is involved in a rapidly changing subject or field, then that is the niche that Twitter will eventually take care of. So why is it still growing? Think about it. IT’S FREE, and people don’t want to be left out.

As a good friend put it clearly, “The moment Twitter decides to charge for the service, that’s when we’ll see how useful it really is to people…” So there you go folks, that’s where we’ll see the “Twitter Fizzle”.

Over & Out.
Diran Afarian