Lumia 900, a Beautiful Phone From Nokia and Microsoft - NYTimes.com
The smartest thing Microsoft & Nokia are doing is that they’re not aiming to be better than the iPhone, just different.
The Lumia 900’s form factor is different: the bulging glass; the casing. Microsoft’s Metro interface is different: the flipable tiles; the live social feeds.
You can’t beat Apple’s iPhone by trying to be better than them at their own game. You just can’t. So you change the game.
My bet is that the Lumia 900 will sell. Maybe they won’t steal market share from the iPhone, but they will steal from low-end Android and BlackBerry buyers. And that would be a heck of a start.
In the long run, they’ll need to be ‘better.’ But in the short run? Think different.
PS - You can’t be better by improving tech specs. Tech specs don’t matter, only user experience does.
Amazon clearly views products like the Kindle Fire as a loss-leader to keep customers happy and keep them shopping for more content. Apple’s model is the exact opposite. Content sales are a loss-leader to keep customers happy and keep them buying new hardware.
It’s Tough to Compete with Simple
Yesterday we met with a very talented entrepreneur who said this:
“It’s tough to compete with simple.”
He was talking about their product and how hard they’re working to make some basic human needs & expressions as simple as possible — and how if you can crack that nut, it’s very, very hard for anyone else to compete.
This idea, and how he expressed it, has been racing around my head since then — it is itself such a simple & profound statement, and like the idea it’s expressing, it hides a really deep and mercurial complexity beneath the surface.
The thing is, getting to simple is not simple. It’s hard. Knowing how to simplify — and, actually, crucially, what to simplify is a hard, hard problem. Simple actions that nobody does don’t matter. Hard actions that everyone wants to do are good, but vulnerable to simple solutions.
Apple cut through a bunch of the complex in rethinking phones and tablets. Tumblr cut straight to simple beautifully with posting, liking & reblogging. Instagram makes it simple & quick to share a moment with several networks. Dropbox cuts out all the complexity and just makes everything work, simply — you’ve got your stuff and you can share it, and it all just works like you think it should.
Simple is incredibly powerful, and super, super sticky because it can quickly get woven into the lives of many people.
It’s tough to figure out what those needs are, of course — superior need finding has always been the essence of building great products. And it’s devilishly tough to build complex systems like software that actually show as simple interactions.
But once you’ve got it, tough to beat. Deceptively hard to copy authentically. Simple rules, but it’s so, so hard to get there.
What a great idea and great framing: it’s tough to compete with simple. Profound, and important.
Source: lilly
We have a greater capacity to change the world today than the kings and presidents of just 50 years ago.
SOPA and PIPA are the effective equivalent of blowing up every road, bridge, and tunnel in New York to keep people from getting to one bootleg stand in Union Square — but leaving the stand itself alone.
What is SOPA and how does it work? The Stop Online Piracy Act explained | The Verge
The explanation that’s made most sense to me so far… “SOPA for Dummies”, if you will.
Source: theverge.com
Twitter Stole Ontario’s Tagline! #YoursToDiscover
Twitter just launched a great new interface today — everything looks faster and simpler. You can find a great video of it here and on http://fly.twitter.com/
If you’re watching the video, you’ll notice the tagline at the end: “Yours to discover.”
Feels like home to me :)
[ The key lesson: Choice sounds great until you have to choose. ]
Apple vs Samsung
Pictures from minimally minimal via Daring Fireball
Put another way:
Good (iPhone 3GS) — Better (iPhone 4) — Best (iPhone 4S).
Vs.
You should get this one, it has a nicer screen than this one. But wait, it’s slower. Maybe get this other one. But this one has a keyboard. But I hate keyboards. So get this one, it runs Windows Phone. But maybe I should go Android. Oh, so get this one. Well, but I sort of like the clamshell. Then this is the one you want. But I hate the color. Okay, then this one. Well, I also kind of like this one, but it’s running an older version of Android. So then this is the one you want. The screen is too damn big. Okay, just close your eyes and pick one goddamnit.
Choice sounds great until you have to choose.
Source: digithoughts
A great, great pitch deck from DressRush
Though meant for investors, you don’t have to be an investor (or even a startup) to appreciate this ‘deck’.
It hits the most important points, is clean, direct, and tells you why it’s a great business.
Great ROI: Internet responsible for 2% of global energy usage
How much energy does the internet use? It’s hard to know where to start.
That hasn’t stopped Justin Ma and Barath Raghavan from trying to answer the question.
…
Their final answer sounds big. A gigawatt is a billion watts, so running and maintaining the internet is like illuminating several billion 100W bulbs simultaneously. But it’s a small number compared with global energy use across all sectors. That figure is 16 terawatts, so the internet is responsible for less than 2 per cent of the energy used by humanity.
…
Replacing just one in four [in-person] meetings by a video call, they add, would save as much power as the entire internet consumes.
Source: New Scientist
World made infinitely better + Using only 2% of global energy = Great ROI
I'm Saif Ajani. Technology and startups are my passion, and that's what you'll find on this blog (along with a sprinkle of humor).