analyzing the business and technology of the web
I’ve always thought the “Go-Back” (system restore) feature was handy in windows…but Mac’s new answer to that called “Time Machine” is just flat out awesome. Besides its graphical elements, the ease of use is what caught my attention. Check out this preview video.
There are some other really cool new features of Leopard viewable over at apple.com right now so go check them out.
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I just finished reading an excellent article by Darryl Ohrt on Newsvine called ‘The Punk Rock Brand‘. This article definitely hit home being a punk rock kid turned business man. If you are not familiar with punk rock you would think it is all about the music, or the fashion, or the philosophy. But it’s not. It’s about the attitude and way of life. It is about rejecting normalcy, questioning and standing up to authority, and being different – not just to be different but to institute change.
Until I read Darryl’s article I had not realized how much being a punk rocker has influenced my business career. In all jobs I have had I have had issues with authority and being forced to adhere to principles and processes I didn’t believe in. And I usually fought back and tried to institute change because I could see the landscape of business and technology changing. And this is a very tough task for a punk rock kid straight out of b-school. I haven’t won all the battles and I have had to compromise some of my punk rock values
But I have been able to incorporate these values into my entreprenuerial endeavors. I have been realigning Simplifive to embrace new media services rather than being a traditional web design firm. I want help lead technological change in Iowa, a state that is notoriously three years (or more) behind new trends. Web 2.0 idealology won’t be embraced here for awhile. Enterprise SaaS will not be embraced for years either. You can’t get much more punk rock than striving to institute change in a very traditional business and technology industry like that which exists here in Iowa. I want to be at the forefront of that change with the likes of Zane Sifrit and Mike Sansone.
So, how punk rock is your company? Ask this of yourself and your business. If you are not embracing punk rock ideals, than you are missing out. Being different is a great way to differentiate. Leading change creates new markets. Questioning authority and business norms gives you credibility once that change is accepted. Look at folks like Dave Winer and Chris Anderson (there are many, many more). These guys are visionaries whose ideas have lead waves of changes. They weren’t adopted immediately but once they were they were instant experts. They created new markets by being different.
“Punk rock brand philosophy exists in nearly every successful product or service. These brands break through the clutter, present themselves in unique ways and generate the kind of fans that create buzz. When a businesses inspires people to talk about it, get emotional about it and believe in it, that’s punk rock.”
Newsvine – The Punk Rock Brand
The landscape of business and technology is changing. You need to embrace these changes in order to succeed. Embracing some punk rock attitude here and there will help you along the way.
technorati tags:business, branding, brand, punk, punk rock, marketing, simplifive, iowa, technology
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I recently wrote a post entitled, ‘We told them, they listened‘ concerning Dell’s foray into the blogosphere and the fact that they may actually be listening to their customers (go figure). The post was commented a couple times by a user ‘Dell_Lied’ who has some interesting comments concerning real problems he has had with Dell.
He has been documenting them on a Google Page called, ‘I believe Dell Lied‘. This explains his bad experiences in purchasing a couple laptops through them.
He has posted comments on Dell’s blog (which has been renamed). I would like to see Dell address this and many others issues on their blog.
Blogging should include the good, the bad, and the ugly. Being open and honest with your customers when something is going bad is actually good. I’ve worked for companies who loved to hide bad information from customers using all kinds tactics from hiding behind marketing material to forcing customer service reps to blatantly lie. This is ineffective edge management that will always hurt your company. Be honest.
Although, I will compliment Dell 2 Direct on their openness with their battery problems.
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Yes, yes, another IE7 and CSS post. I’ll keep this one short and sweet.
Over at the IE Blog, they have recently posted a nice list of all the changes thus far concerning IE7 and CSS.
The list is good and there are many fixes that will be very nice to developers, but unfortunately it still will not be as compliant as Mozilla. I won’t regurgitate the list, so you can check it out there. But I will share with you excerpts from some of my favorite comments.
From Tino Zijdel
From this blog-post it looks to me like Trident has only be patched up to work around certain common problems (sure, it makes you look good), but in essence IE7 will still have a very broken CSS-implementation and that makes you look really really bad because it is the last thing developers want. Please don’t ship a browser that is vastly different from the previous version, but still as fundamentally broken.
From Adam
Well done IE Team!! Thanks for listening, and thank you for your hard work. I can’t wait until I have to drop support for IE6!
From Pia
That’s nice. Now restore customizability to the UI. It’s clunky, counterintuitive, and just plain ugly.
From Arrix
Thanks for your hard work! IE7 will definitely make our life easier. However, I’m a bit disspointed to have heard that you fix specific bugs instead of implementing correct support for CSS2. Thanks anyway!
From Erik
… As to the IE CSS fixes, good work. Though my grudge against IE is intensely psychological at this point, improvements like these do much to erase that.
From Michael
When will you completely acquire Firefox and then make it correctly display all web-pages as IE has done for a long time? I’m really tired of hearing, “But it doesn’t work in Firefox…”
technorati tags:IE7, internet explorer, css, design, web standards, comments
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Finally Google has released a Google Base API, which I have been harping about for some time.
What’s Google Base? “Google Base is a place where you can post all types of content and have it show up on Google”.
Imagine the possibilities: Google Base + Google Checkout + API = eCommerce platform for developers. I smell mashups.
I will be playing around with these very soon. And stay tuned for some new stuff.
I just wish Craigslist would open up – that would be great. Give us an API!
technorati tags:API, web development, google, google base, google checkout, craigslist
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