The dearth of quality apps for Android tablets is certainly a result of poor tablets sales. Why would companies put money into products that don’t have enough traction to warrant the effort? Poor tablet sales, however, is directly correlated to Android tablet companies attempting to be just like Apple rather than forging their own path. Poor tablet sales is the result of bad marketing strategies.

By almost any ranking, Apple is the number one brand in the world. Samsung, the Android tablet manufacturer ranked next highest on BrandZ’s list of the top 100 global brands is at number 67. What everyone fails to realize is that Apple, in its pole position, can do things that others marketers cannot or should not do. Namely, while Apple can target its device at seemingly everyone (or at least everyone solidly middle class and higher), doing so is generally considered a path to failure for almost any other product (except toilet paper). Yet, that is exactly what every Android tablet manufacturer has done.

Motorola, Samsung, ASUS et al have created devices with no clear target audience in mind because they were following Apple’s lead. Good marketing says the 4Ps (product, price, placement, promotion) are critical and key to getting the 4Ps right is understanding your audience. When you assume, as Android tablet companies have, that your target is the same as your lead competitor’s, you are bound to fail. When you convince yourself that your audience will ignore the marketplace leader because of your high profile promotions and good partnerships (a la cellular carriers) — all in spite of a clear lack of product distinction and poor pricing — you are bound to fail.

Amazon will launch its Android tablet within the next few months. I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ll sell more devices before the end of the year than all of the other Android tablets have – combined. Their device will have a clear audience — digital content consumers who want to read eBooks on an affordable tablet device. This idea isn’t all that much of a stretch – especially considering that Barnes & Noble was estimated to have sold more than 3,000,000 Nook Colors as of March, 2011 — making it the best selling Android tablet.

For other Android tablet companies to achieve anything close to those numbers, they’re going to have to stop copying the Apple playbook and get back to good, ole fashion, tried-and-true marketing.

The WSJ story focuses on how Google’s service compares to a similar service announced by Apple just yesterday. However, there are significant differences between the Apple and Google options and my thinking is a smaller percentage of revenue and access to consumer data will make publishers far more likely to want to partner with Google than Apple.

You can check out the stories for yourself:

Google Woos Publishers with Payment Service
Apple Opens a Door, Keeps Key (Apple Launches Subscription Service)

I know, I know. They’re running a business over there and given the political environment, there’s no way the government is going to subsidize that particular media institution. They have to charge. I get it. Just assuming $20/month means about $240/year in subscription fees. That’s more than the Wall Street Journal, which, as we all know, makes a hefty penny from their pay wall.

$20 here, $20 there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

My concern is the New York Times pay wall is just the beginning of the media pay walls we’re going to see. To my mind, it isn’t so much that the pay walls are awful as much as they are just plain non user-friendly. As the consumer, I’ll have to end up subscribing to ten different media sites, remember which sites I signed up for and track payments for each. Doesn’t that seem anti-web in the sense that the user experience is anti-user?

What I’d like to see instead is something akin to Hulu for for the news. It would be more reasonable for me to pay $20-30/month to have access to content from multiple sources like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, the AP and other high profile news organizations. You could even add premium content from TV news organizations like Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. This is a scenario where everyone wins. Customers have an improved users experience, media companies potentially get more eyeballs and a nice cut of a pretty big pie and the company that provides the service ends up with a decent amount of money for not a whole lot of work (though getting all these companies to agree would be a huge battle).

News companies, in particular, have been reluctant to stop looking over their shoulders at what used to be. It’s time to start looking forward at new models for survival. A common platform by which consumers got news and everyone gets paid could be just the thing the business needs to get them moving forward.

Whatever happened to innovation and ingenuity? It almost seems as if the mobile industry has entered what must officially be termed the Apple Clone Cycle.

Apple Clone Cycle

Notice nowhere in the cycle is their a state where consumers actually buy the clone product. Most people, given a similar product at the same price point will opt for the Apple product and all of the cool factor that comes along with purchasing an Apple product.

It’s sad really. I mean, Motorola created the StarTac — the phone which sort of changed the way people looked at the size and function of cell phones. And yet, here they are, ditching innovation in favor of adhering to the Apple Clone Cycle.

Well, the iPad 2 is forthcoming. Engadget says the new, thinner iPad is going to have “super high resolution.” Boy Genius Report summarizes a report from MacRumors which says the iPad 2 screen resolution will be 2048×1536 – double that of the 1st generation iPad. We can trust this won’t be the only innovation we’ll see from the iPad 2. And yet, given their track record, we can be pretty sure the other tablet makers won’t come anywhere close to any of the iPad 2′s innovations before 2011 is out.

Sad state of affairs.

Update (4 March 2011):  The iPad 2 has officially been announced and while it doesn’t include the “super high resolution” display it was rumored to have, it will be significantly thinner and faster.  These changes were enough to convince Samsung to revisit the design for their forthcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 update to the original Galaxy Tab.  Rather than just making their device thinner, they needed Apple to take the lead so they could follow.  The Apple Clone Cycle holds true again.

I’ve come to the realization that both of my cell phones are long in the tooth. I have a Nokia N95 8GB on AT&T and a Blackberry Storm on Verizon. The Nokia, though a great phone, has long outlived its usefulness. It does just about everything current phones do (quiet as it’s kept) but the user experience lags behind my many generations. The Storm, on the other hand, is just an awful phone. Yes, I have the 5.0 OS and it’s still a sad, sad tribute to RIM’s loss at how to respond to the iPhone. I’m pretty sure most iPhone users aren’t rebooting multiple times daily due to running out of memory but that’s another story.

I recently decided the time was right for me to upgrade my phones. My plan was to upgrade the Storm to a HTC Droid Incredible which is reported to be a fantastic phone. I would get rid of the Nokia and replace it with a Blackberry Bold 9700 on AT&T. I haven’t had a contract on AT&T in years. I’ve been a loyal Nokia fanboy and bought my phones retail. Even my Storm, I bought on eBay because I was stuck in a contract with a crappy HTC Touch (worst “smartphone” ever). This time, I figured if I got both phones on one-year contracts, I wouldn’t find the contracts too onerous and it would be worth the subsidized pricing.

Imagine my shock when I went to AT&T’s web site yesterday and found out they had eliminated one-year contracts. They will now only sell two-year contracts. I’m still in shock over it. Why? Carriers, more than ever, are promoting smartphones as the way users should go. Smartphone buyers (or a large percentage of them), to my mind, are more affluent than non-smartphone purchasers, more interested in frequent technology upgrades and, in general, just the type of customers AT&T could convince to buy a new phone every year. Heck, AT&T and Apple release a new iPhone every year for that very reason – current owners will upgrade… So, how is forcing people to buy into two-year contracts good for customers? How does that encourage people to upgrade to new phones – which they will likely want to do given the pace at which smartphones are changing?

Seems to me AT&T is making a big mistake. Yes, they’re protecting their own interests – especially in the face of the iPhone reportedly launching on Verizon this summer. On the flip side, however, Verizon, their largest competitor, is still happy to sell me a one-year contract – and I’ll take them up on the offer. I won’t be getting rid of AT&T, but I’ll gladly do them the favor of buying my Blackberry at retail (or on eBay). They can protect their own interests by sacrificing mine if they’d like, but I don’t have to be a party to it. Thank goodness Verizon seems to be maintaining their senses. I guess there’s something to this carrier polyamory thing.

Few people these days mention IPv6, the Internet Protocol standard that significantly expands the number of available IP addresses – up to about 3.4×1038 of them (that’s a lot). One of the reasons IPv6 came about was smart people realized we were going to get to a place where every electronic device was connected to the Internet. For that to happen, the infrastructure of the Internet had to support an extreme number of connections. That couldn’t happen with IPv4 but is more likely with IPv6. Why is this important? It gets exactly to HP’s point in buying Palm and WebOS.

HP, I think, and in spite of what they say now, wants their entire non-PC product line (and perhaps later, even that) to run WebOS. Every calculator, every printer, every smartphone, every scanner, every monitor, every tablet Slate style device, every video conference product – it will all run WebOS, their own connected-to-the-web, no-need-to-license-it operating system.

It’s clear that the benefits for HP are huge. I already pointed out that there’s no need to license it, so that frees them up to do with the OS as they please. Additionally, with one OS running all of its products, they achieve scale and presence. Sure, developers aren’t flocking to WebOS right now, but they might if they know it’s running on almost everything HP makes – from consumer products up to enterprise solutions. In addition to all of that, they get the peace of mind that comes with having a common platform on which to begin their world domination. It’s the very scenario for which IPv6 was built and HP is going to be there first thanks to this acquisition.

I’m open to being wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

Why am I telling this story? Because it killed Palm. Selling the OS killed Palm. Yes, they’re still walking around talking about going it alone after HTC, today, opted not to buy them. Yes, they have a critically ballyhooed operating system, WebOS, which is loved by many consumers. It doesn’t matter, though. They’re on life support. It’s undeniable. So, what to do… To my mind, there’s only one thing left . It’s all or nothing time.

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein needs to go out and pick up a copy of W. Chan Kim’s and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy and then go for broke. They need an idea on which they can bet every dime and either they win big or lose it all. At this point, they’re headed for losing it all so, in actuality, risk is low.

I’ve read Blue Ocean Strategy (at least I think I have – I remember talk of Yellow Tail wine but I may have been drinking Yellow Tail wine so who knows *kidding*) so I’m going to out on a limb and offer my own thoughts – advocating an idea whose time has come.

Palm FTW means:

• Foregoing exclusive carrier partnerships – Partnering with retailers like Walmart, Target and maybe even your local supermarket in an effort to become ubiquitous.
• Ceding margins – By my estimation most smartphones have greater than 100% margins based on retail price vs estimated manufacturing costs. Palm may want the profit provided by margins but they need the cash flow generated by revenue. In English, this means affordable unsubsidized prices.
• Source apps that matter – The iPhone not withstanding, most people don’t need tons of apps on their phones – which is among the reasons the iPhone doesn’t have pole position in sales. What people do want is a phone that does what others are able to do. So, find out what the most used apps and features are on other platforms and integrate those into Web OS. Don’t wait for developers to come to you. Go to them and have things built.
• Change audience – All of the above means Palm ends up going for a different audience. For one thing, they’re likely to be less wealthy. To me, that’s a good thing. That means Palm is better positioned to sell their devices to more people both here in the US and abroad – leading, potentially, to even more revenue.

There are few guarantees in life but for Palm, what they’re doing now is surely guaranteed to fail and lead to a slow, painful demise. It’s time for a change and I think the crazy ideas I offered above just may be what the doctor ordered.

What’s New – Not Your Father’s iPod Touch

The iPad is sometimes referred to as a large iPod Touch and while the user interface is similar to that of the iPod Touch and the iPhone, there are two major differences that make the device much more interesting as a vehicle for marketing communications – size and speed.

The iPhone and iPod Touch are essentially pocket-sized computers. Their small size makes them great for finding bite-sized information on the go. The devices, especially the iPhone, are great always-in-touch, information-at-your-fingertips devices. What is more difficult with the smaller ‘i’ devices is consuming large amounts of content. Reading books, watching movies, browsing full versions of web sites are all challenging on a device with a 3-inch screen. The iPad’s size makes it far more practical as a media consumption device.

The iPad’s position as a media consumption device is strengthened by its speed. Apple designed and built a CPU specifically for the iPad so that the user experience would be blazing fast. They wanted users to be able to turn the pages of books without delay and watch movies without the stuttering seen on many computers. The result is a device designed to provide its users with an experience that feels more like a desktop or powerful laptop than a mobile device.

Why the iPad Matters

People have their own thoughts on the technological importance of the iPad – whether it is revolutionary or evolutionary. I’ll leave my thoughts on that for another time. Regardless of which ‘-lutionary’ the iPad is, it undoubtedly presents users with a more accessible perspective on the tablet form factor. To that end, it will lead to greater prevalence of tablets by both individual consumers and business users.

In the short term, the iPad’s audience will be early adopters, particularly those with wealth or who otherwise have large amounts of discretionary income. Apple’s goal, however, is for the iPad to be ubiquitous. They would like the iPad to be within the reach of almost every media consumer in the country, if not the world. In the meantime, the early adopters represent a unique opportunity for marketers to reach the ultimate consumer – high-income, tech savvy, heavy consumers of media content.

Not to be overlooked is the new type of relationship users will have with their mobile devices thanks to the iPad and other tablets. The iPad brings to the fore the idea that people can access full-sized content on a device lighter (1.5 pounds) and more convenient than a laptop. This new relationship modality is what allows the iPad to be such a tremendous opportunity for marketers.

The iPad and Marketers

Before getting into some potential opportunities, it’s important that I explain the means by which marketers can reach users on the iPad. Just like with the iPhone and iPod Touch, there are three methods by which marketers can interact with iPad users:

• Web Sites – Marketers can create custom web sites which render content in a format specifically designed to meet the needs of iPad users. Such sites can take advantage of technologies like HTML 5 to play videos and display rudimentary Flash type animations. An iPad web site could live side-by-side with your existing company web site.
• Web Applications – Actually a type of web site, web applications are functional web sites designed specifically for iPad users. These sites look and behave similarly to native applications but can be limited in their scope because they are loaded like a web site rather than a native iPad application.
• Applications – You’ve likely seen applications running on an iPhone or an iPod Touch. At the very least, you’ve probably seen the “There’s an App for That” commercials. iPad users can log into the iTunes App Store and buy applications which extend the functionality of the iPad – just as you can buy applications for your personal computer. Where the web sites and web applications require access to the network for usage, the iPad application does not. Additionally, iPad applications allow access to the full iPad user experience while the previous options are limited to what is accomplishable on the web.

Your company could use any and/or all of these options to engage iPad users. Deciding on which to use should be done on a case-by-case basis. No matter which option(s) you select, however, one key to success is remembering that on the iPad the experience matters.

As mentioned earlier, the small size of the iPhone inclines itself to being used for data-driven type functionality – such as reading a weather forecast or finding a great restaurant. The iPad’s size makes it much more appealing for more experiential endeavors. Rather than just demonstrating the weather with icons and numbers, as is generally the case on the iPhone, the iPad can make the weather experiential with video, maps, animations and, perhaps, a gallery of pictures from the requested city – much as you might see on your desktop computer. By taking advantage of the greater screen real estate, marketers can offer users a more engaging experience on the iPad than on the iPhone.

Marketing on the iPad

The experiential approach afforded to marketers by the size of the iPad’s screen and its speed could potentially lead marketers to think about the iPad in the same way they would a regular computer. In the short-term such thinking would be misplaced. Instead, marketers should think of the iPad experience as living between the bite-sized, data-driven approach of the iPhone and the over-arching, productivity-driven approach of a notebook or desktop computer.

To that end, marketing on the iPad should offer users an experience that differs from those available on other devices. Below, we offer a few examples of ways marketers in different industries might build an iPad marketing program. Each of these examples is based on native applications downloaded from the iTunes app store rather than the web sites or web applications mentioned earlier. Doing so ensures users can access some amount of functionality even when they are away from a network.

Industry: Medical Devices
Company: MediDev
Example Type: B2B

Industry: Environment
Company: Murphy Rogers
Example Type: B2C

These are just two ideas. Keep in mind that with the iPad, the sky is the limit. For example, B2B marketers could work with their sales team to provide complimentary iPads with orders over a certain threshold. Such an iPad might contain an application that provides easy access to the material data safety sheets (MSDS) or manuals for the products sold. On the other hand, B2C marketers can create a unique experience for the iPad especially for the iPads tech-savvy, affluent audience.

Regardless of what you do be sure set well-defined objectives for your iPad marketing and to measure, measure, measure. That way, the iPad becomes an educational exercise you can use as the tablet market grows rather than only serving as money thrown at the next big thing.

DAMs are not new. They’ve been around for some years and were initially used by media companies who needed to manage an extraordinary number of digital assets being used in print, TV and/or the web. Having a DAM makes it easier to find a video clip or an image that can be inserted into a TV segment or print ad.

As analog has given way to digital and the number of digital assets within every organization has grown, DAMs have become much more relevant to the marketing / communications departments of non-media organizations. With different agencies managing different elements of your brand, DAMs can help ensure that each group has access to the right asset at the right time.

Want to know if your organization should be considering a DAM? There are a few questions you can ask yourself:

• Does my company have thousands of brand assets managed by numerous departments and/or vendors in various geographic locations?
• Is my company challenged to verify we have the rights to use some assets in our existing asset library?
• Is there potential for numerous organizational groups to reuse our digital assets across multiple communications channels?
• Is the process / workflow for attaining access to digital assets convoluted, confusing, frustrating or improvised?

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, your company might be a good candidate for a digital asset management system.

There are many vendors who provide digital asset management software. Options range from open-source products like EnterMedia and FocusOPEN to enterprise products like Open Text’s Artesia DAM, North Plains’ Telescope and Canto Cumulus. Which one is right for you? That depends on the scale and type of asset management challenge your company faces.

Some things to keep in mind as you explore DAMs:

• If using the DAM to deploy assets to your web site, the DAM should integrate with your company’s existing web or enterprise content management system.
• Even more important than having the DAM in place is having an asset management workflow that makes sense for your organization. Think about ideal use cases for managing assets within your organization. The DAM you choose should be able to come close to matching those use cases.
• The DAM must be able to support your environment. Be careful not to choose a DAM that does not support every file in your organization.
• Rome wasn’t conquered in a day. It’s not necessary to deploy the DAM throughout your entire organization as soon as it’s ready. Instead, develop a rollout schedule and use feedback from your early-adopters to tweak the system as you roll it out to other parts of the organization.

Good luck!

Potentially useful links:

What is the best digital asset management product?
Building the DAM
Enterprise Information Watch’s DAM channel
Insight Community case on DAMs
Making the Case for Digital Asset Management
DPS Magazine’s Assessing Digital Asset Management

It’s not that the iPad isn’t a cool looking device. It’s beautiful. It’s that I don’t see it as the savior of all things analog the media is making it out to be. Beyond that, it seems to me it has a very limited audience.

The iPad is targeted at people who care enough about technology to pony up a minimum of $499 for what is essentially a large iPod touch (others may disagree but that’s my opinion). Reports are out today from Engadget and others indicating the Wall Street Journal will be available on the iPad for $17.99/month and monthly issues of magazines will cost close to newsstand prices. That’s cute but the reality is few industries have found success by simply porting their existing business model to the digital arena. Changes are required. Companies must adapt and I don’t believe Apple is encouraging media companies to do so. They’re stuck in old school thinking.

Media companies aside, here are my issues with the iPad based on the specs I’ve seen:

• Pricing – Most people still don’t have an extra $499 to spend on an optional item. Pinning hopes on the device ignores the millions of people who still believe $1 / day for a newspaper they can leave on the bus is the ultimate in convenient. On top of that, this is a market where people still prefer buying on-contract phones because the price is subsidized. Even Apple has helped support that model with the iPhone.
• Multitasking – It’s been claimed as a weakness for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and now, the iPad. It hasn’t mattered for the first two because people don’t multitask that much on phone type devices. They can do without it. It will matter for the iPad because people are used to doing multiple things at once on their computers. They’re used to switching back and forth between multiple applications. Multitasking matters…
• Apple ecosystem – Don’t get me wrong. I think Apple’s ecosystem is brilliant. I immensely admire Apple’s ability to create new core competencies for the company around industries tangentially related to their true fundamental business model. It makes customers’ lives easier. But, the reality is, it only makes Apple’s customers’ lives easier. There are still millions of desktops, laptops, Kindles, Nooks, Android tablets, etc that have to be supported. By building their digital capabilities around the iPad, media companies will end up ignoring others. That seems like a good way to destroy a company rather than build it up.
• Size – I can’t believe no one else is saying this. This thing is too big. Yes, it’s light and thin. That’s great. Unfortunately, you’re going to be carrying this thing in your laptop bag along with your laptop, books, papers and that thing with hard edges you totally forgot about. That ill-forgotten thing will crack your iPad screen. A device this large in a bag will be broken within weeks (or so I think). Once you add a case, the device becomes a little bit heavier and a little bit thicker – taking up a little more space and adding a little more weight to your bag. Not so much fun…

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day” is an oft-heard refrain. The opposite of that must be something along the lines of even the perfect stumble sometimes. I think this is Apple’s time to stumble. Unfortunately, newspapers and magazines can’t afford the trip as well as Apple can. Let’s hope they’re hedging their bets.

For your kicks, Apple’s iPad video…

That ability to create devices that “just work” and to make them more user friendly, cooler and better looking than any other company in the world has earned Apple three years at the top of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies. Where other companies create products consumers tell them they want, Apple creates products consumers only know they want once Apple produces them. It’s an amazing business model and they do it excellently.

My problem with Apple is mobile. Without question, Apple redefined the way consumers saw phones. By offering a phenomenally usable operating system with a beautiful user experience, Apple made the cell phone as cool as an iPod. By further, creating an iPhone ecosystem via the iPhone App Store, Apple converted the device from a phone to a multi-function device that allows its users to lead a life where everything they need to do can be done from the palm of their hand.

What Apple did was not new. Palm phones had long supported color icons, touchscreen input and rather small form factors. Nokia phones pre-2006 (when the iPhone debuted) offered smartphone style functionality, Wi-Fi, downloadable applications (I know because I built an app), the ability to surf the web and view video (if you had the right software). Blackberrys from RIM have long offered an exceptional communications platform. All of this existed prior to the launch of the iPhone. Apple’s contribution was bringing it all together in a phenomenally tantalizing package that just worked.

Putting a beautiful wrapper, however, on old technology is not novel. It is exactly that lack of novelty that has me questioning Apple’s recent actions in suing HTC for patent infringement in a thinly veiled attack on Google’s Android. Engadget provides a detailed explanation of the patents involved here.

Apple has not attacked HTC because it is a cell phone manufacturer who might (or might not) infringe on their patents. In fact, Apple has attacked HTC because they are at this moment the only phone manufacturer who 1) is relatively small; 2) makes devices whose capabilities, on many levels, rival those of the iPhone; 3) creates great devices that use Google’s Android.

Android is the mobile operating system many see as the iPhone’s greatest competitor. Nokia’s Symbian and RIM’s Blackberry OSes both have greater market share than the either the iPhone OS or Android but Android has been developed much in the same way the iPhone OS was — with phenomenal speed, tremendous attention to detail and a focus on both ease of use and being easy on the eyes. Combining the Android operating system with HTC’s hardware was a shot across Apple’s bow. Their response, however, has the potential to stop the mobile business in its tracks – leaving Apple as the only company capable of creating modern smartphones.

Apple’s immediate goal is to neuter Android and HTC before they can truly challenge their leadership position. This is not about patent infringement. The broad nature of many of Apple’s patents and their questionable applicability (as well as the likelihood that prior art can be demonstrated for some) indicate that Apple is going for a shot gun approach to take out the weakest gazelle in the herd. You can be sure that if Apple is successful that they will soon go after Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony, Motorola and other OS and hardware manufacturers. Apple clearly wants to own the mobile business all to itself in spite of other companies having long history of mobile accomplishments long before Apple got on the field. Their goal is to decimate all competitors in a way that relies not on consumers’ demand for their products but on questionable intellectual property awards. To my mind, that borders anti-competitive and is not in the spirit of how the marketplace should operate.

Let’s be clear. Apple should absolutely have the ability to protect their intellectual property. For example, the slide to unlock a phone patent seems valid to me. I don’t know who owns the patent for the zoom in / zoom out gesture on the iPhone but if that’s Apple, then that is absolutely protectable. To want to enforce patents on multitasking or using parsed data, however, is a stretch. (Perhaps the stretch is the USPTO even awarding such a patent.)

What I’d like is for Apple to not try to hobble the mobile business buy pursuing enforcement of questionable patents. I’m sure Motorola, Nokia, RIM and other companies have similar patents that could just as simply be applied to Apple. Instead, I’d like to see the companies press each other to innovate. I like the pressure the success of the iPhone has had on the rest of the mobile business. If not for Apple, we’d still be on 20MB calling plans and Palm would have the most advanced phones. And if Apple was in the business by itself, what we’d find is that we’d be stuck using a phone that only allowed us to download applications Apple liked and doing only things Apple approved of. We’d find that even Apple would slow down innovation if no one was nipping at its tail and, most of all, we’d find that the mobile business was a whole lot more boring — except for Apple.

Let’s not let Apple ruin the mobile business…

As a tech guy, I’m a big fan of open source software. Like most people who work on the Internet, I make use of web server software like Apache and the relational database, MySQL. But, on the desktop, I also find myself using the office suite, Open Office, and the graphical application, GIMP. These packages are often regarded as some of the best open source packages but they are from the only good ones. Mozilla’s Firefox browser and Thunderbird email program are widely used among people in the know, but ignored by people who use their computer as it comes out of the box. Truth be told, given the relatively light needs of most computer users, there is a perfectly capable open source package that can go head-to-head with most commercial packages. So, the question has to be asked, why isn’t open source software more popular — especially on Windows machines. The answer, in mind, is two fold:

Awareness — People just don’t know the software is out there. If all anyone talks about is Microsoft Office, why would you think about Open Office unless you know? You wouldn’t.

Ease of Access — Even if you know about open source software, it’s not all that easy to get. You end up at some open source site and instead of “Download” button taking you to the most recent version of the software, it takes you to Sourceforge where you can choose to download the “source” or the “binaries” in .tar.gz, .bz or .zip format. Huh? Nevermind. I have a feeling it will just be easier to go buy Word or Photoshop Elements. How does the average computer user know whether they want the source or the binary and in what format?

When I first got into computers, there was an organization, PC-SIG, that kept a directory of shareware applications one could get. We would get the directory, peruse through the descriptions and ratings and then decide which software we would buy. A similar idea is needed today. Someone should create an installer, similar to the Ubuntu or Redhat ones, for open source applications that run on Windows. From one utility, you can download and install Open Office, GIMP, Pidgin, Mplayer, Miro, Camstudio or any other software that might suite your needs. This type of application already exists for developers in the form of tools like XAMPP which install the entire LAMP stack on Windows, but applications focused on the needs of consumers have been ignored.

To my mind, creating such an installer will lead to greater use of open source applications by general consumers and, in turn, greater contributions to the included packages as awareness is increased. I’m thinking it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to do and some smart developer out there needs to get on it…

In the meantime, for those interested, Open Source Windows maintains a cool list of open source applications that run on Windows. Additionally, Downloadpedia maintains a pretty detailed list of Windows-friendly applications.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Pricing isn’t the only issue. As we now see from the AT&T / iPhone debacle, when carriers hold exclusive agreements on phones they come to hold their customers in contempt. AT&T sat and watched Apple launch the iPhone, the iPhone 3G and then the iPhone 3GS – knowing full well the impact the phones would have on their network – and did little to increase the capacity of the network to match demand. Sure, you have a beautiful high-speed capable iPhone, but your network often only supports slower speeds because of AT&T’s commitment to mediocrity.

Carriers need to get out of the retail cell phone business. Carriers have been complicit with manufacturers in gouging consumers on the prices of cell phones. Doing so has led to a huge conflict of interest that has resulted in the carriers considering the devices more important than the services they offer. It’s almost as if the broadcast networks sold the TVs on which you watched their shows. Remember when Ma Bell leased you a cell phone along with your phone services. They stopped post breakup because they realized phones weren’t there core competency. The same goes for the carriers. They’re essentially network service providers who play cell phone sales people on TV. They need to stop.

The alternative, in my mind, is two-fold:

• Create phones that work on any network — I don’t mean create unlocked phones. Instead, I’d like to see phones, like the Blackberry Storm, that support the network technologies of Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. The expense of adding multiple technologies to mobiles doesn’t add substantially to the price of the phone and it gives consumers more options
• Manufacturers should partner with big box stores – Stores like Walmart, Target and Best Buy have the heft to pressure manufacturers to deliver phones at prices that are more consumer-friendly. It is true that manufacturers’ margins will decline, but I expect they’ll make up some of that on quantity given the lower prices, lack of burdensome contracts or carrier exclusives. What we’ll also see as a result of this, I believe, is more innovation. Lower margins give manufacturers less reason to stick with phones that don’t sell. Lower prices will lead to greater sales of popular phones. This, I believe, will lead to greater and quicker phone innovation as manufacturers work harder to deliver phones with innovative features that allow them to keep a leg up on their competition.

These two changes will change the industry but in doing so benefit all involved. Consumers will have more selection at better prices. Manufacturers will be able to better gauge consumer need and react more quickly as consumers become free to buy phones as frequently as they’d like. Carriers become more able to focus their energies on their core competencies – their networks. Seems like a win-win to me.

I’m at a fan of Nokia phones – or at least I was. Nokia, one of the largest mobile companies in the world, has failed to establish a real foothold in the U.S. market. Unfortunately for them, the U.S. is where so much of the mobile excitement is these days. Between the iPhone, Google’s Android and RIM’s quickly evolving Blackberrys (Canadian, I know), the smart-phones have changed the way people see and use phones. Nokia has sat on the sidelines releasing phones with inferior features and usability inhibited by a long-in-the-tooth operating system. They’re one of the few manufacturers who has actually tried the end-run around the carrier-retail model by going direct to retail. High unsubsidized prices and curious lack of marketing, along with lackluster phones, have impeded their success. this article from the New York Times analyzes some of their issues.

Based on recent news, there is another company considering trying to circumvent the carrier-retail model. It is rumored that in January Google will launch its own HTC manufactured Google Phone. The phone, if speculation is accurate, will be sold directly through retailers as opposed to carriers. I have not seen pricing details but my own guess is that the price of the phone will need to be competitive with that of subsidized phones sold by the carriers. I also expect that, contrary to Nokia’s approach, Google will market the Google Phone – perhaps heavily.

I’m hoping that this could be the start of some really great changes in the mobile phone business that lead to more innovation and better products for consumers.

This blog entry is off my usual Marketnology topics but it’s my blog and I thought this topic rant worthy.

I didn’t start off wanting to be an entrepreneur. Five years ago I was laid off from my job as the head of Engineering for the interactive marketing division of a large ad agency. The timing was right for me. My family was going through a trial with the illness of my grandmother and I figured I’d “retire” for a few months, help out with my grandmother and start looking for a job in the coming year…

Before I continue let me say that I am a black man who has not bought the race arguments. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I often, perhaps naively, ignore race as a factor in my professional interactions. I believe we make our own success. If one person won’t hire you because of your race, move on and find someone who will. I figure I’m better off not working for a jerk who believes I’m inferior. That’s just me.

With that being said… When I got back into the job market, three months after being laid off, I was amazed by the difficulty I had getting a job. I’d led technology teams at two of the best-regarded interactive agencies in the country. My client list read like a list of Fortune 50 companies. I’d worked on acclaimed and innovative projects. That’s not even to mention that I have a Bachelors degree in Physics and an MBA degree. I was very qualified. And yet, I could not find a job. Calls from ad agency recruiters were scarce. Headhunters wanted to place me in jobs that were clearly below the level of my experience. In the year after I was laid off, I may have gone on 3-5 interviews.

I can remember one interview with a media company quite clearly. The hiring manager, the Chief Information Officer (CIO), met with me and as I walked in the door he told me he was headed to lunch and only had a few minutes. He asked a couple of perfunctory questions and prepared to go. Before he could get up, I started showing him a PowerPoint presentation I’d created for his company. In it, I had detailed what was wrong with their web systems, what they needed to do strategically and tactically to address their issues, how they should structure a team and other relevant topics. He was blown away. The meeting went from “I’m going to lunch” to “Come back in an hour. I want you to meet four members of my team.” I did and I blew them away too. I went back for one additional interview, which went very well. And then, radio silence. I didn’t hear from them for what must have been two weeks. I called. I emailed. Nothing. In the third week, I finally reached the HR person who informed the position had been filled.

The natural conclusion for me was that someone better came along. Truthfully, I’ll never know what happened. It irks me to think race may have played a factor in that decision. I prefer to think a better candidate came along. Again, maybe it’s my naïveté, but I don’t find it productive to think of my race as a hindrance.

Then again…

The New York Times has published a few articles over the past year highlighting disparity of the impact of the recession on black people and others. This article from July puts a magnifying glass on the accelerated rate of job loss in the black community. In September, the Times published an op-ed piece where they likened the impact of the recession on the black community to a depression. These facts laid out in these articles are kind of hard to ignore… And yet, I tried.

I rationalized the recession’s impact on the black community by telling myself that because many in the black community don’t value education, we end up with jobs that are among the first to go during layoffs. I told myself that people like me with college degrees from good schools, graduate degrees and work experience would be protected from the same ills. It’s a bit of an elitist thought – my own budding John McWhorter-ness, but it’s what I told myself to minimize the race factor. Then the Times went and dropped me on my head.

They published an article a couple of days ago indicating that even “educated” black professionals with years of experience were running into trouble getting jobs. So as to make the story’s topic clear to me, they titled it “In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap”. There are stories of interviews that had gone warmly over the telephone turning cold once the candidate shows up and their race is clear. Naturally, there’s the old chestnut of people resorting to changing their name on their resumé so they’re not readily identified as being black. (I found an article highlighting name bias dating back to 2003.)

The Image Problem

Black people have an image problem. There I said it… I mean if experience and education don’t prevent people from wanting to as much as interview us because our name sounds black then we have an image problem. We can blame it on racism or anything else we’d like but that doesn’t change the situation on the ground. Debating the reasons for the ship sinking doesn’t stop the ship from sinking. Someone has to figure out how to seal the hull and get the water off the boat.

Having spent most of my career in advertising, it continues to crack me up when people attempt to rationalize negative media images by saying something along the lines of “Well, people are smart enough to realize this is just a fictional depiction and not accept it as real.” If that were the case, companies wouldn’t run commercials. Do we really believe the “nine out of ten doctors” claims are real. Ten out of ten of my friends think I’m pretty great (I chose which friends to ask carefully).

Television has a profound impact on how people see others – and especially black people. And again, being John McWhorter-like, what I see on television is enough to make me look sideways at people of color so why not others? Think about it. People of every race listen to rap and watch rap videos. Which of the images in rap videos reflects most black professionals? I can’t think of one popular rapper I’d like to have representing me in the media – not one. What about scripted television? Black characters are largely absent from prime-time TV and many of those who do appear, as in Meet the Browns, appear to be focused on tom-foolery. Then of course, there’s reality TV where the women of Real Housewives of Atlanta offer great examples of black women – if all black women were rude, catty, obnoxious and materialistic. In fact, I would wager it’s easy to watch Real Housewives of Atlanta and think to yourself that they’re plenty entertaining but you wouldn’t want to risk hiring one of “them” to work for you.

I miss the Huxtables. I miss George and Louise Jefferson. I miss Isaac from the Love Boat. I miss Tootie from The Facts of Life. Heck, I miss Dr. Benton from ER. What the hell has happened? How have black people gone from being portrayed as regular people with regular issues – just like everyone else – to being represented by the most ignorant, most base, most buffoonish people in the media? (Well, either that or really good singers and dancers.) And, how do we change that?

This is a serious problem. It’s not just about jobs for us now. It’s about how people perceive us going forward. It’s about a global society where people see African-Americans as thugs and skanks. It’s about the world believing what they see in the media is a microcosm of black America. It surely isn’t me. In fact, I don’t think it’s anyone I know, for that matter.

I’m going to spend some time thinking about how I can personally address some of these issues. In the meantime, I have a couple of questions for the general public.

• How do you see black people? What’s your honest opinion? Not asking you to be nasty but I want to know if media portrayals match your personal interactions.
• What impact does a name have on your perception of a (potential) co-worker?

I started off by saying I didn’t intend to become an entrepreneur. I didn’t. I did so because I couldn’t find a job I thought suited me so I made a job. In fact, before she died, my grandmother told me to start my own business. I ignored her advice for as long as I could. I have to say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. By the grace of God, I’m blessed to do what I enjoy with clients I like. There’s something to be said for that and if my race had anything to do with how I got here, then so be it.

The marketing DSS differs from a standard application in that the marketing DSS is designed to turn users into customers rather than simply making some process easier. The content within the DSS is critical to establishing interactions that engage the user, piquing and holding their interest. Each step in the navigation path, when done well, leads to a connection with the user where she feels educated and believes there is value for her in getting to the application’s payoff – the final answer.

The final answer is also the payoff for the marketer because it is likely that conversion actually takes place there. If the user has gone through the application and reached the final step then the application has to close the deal. The value of the payoff to the user is directly correlated to the likelihood of the user to convert into a lead or a customer.

Want to know how to make your own DSS? That’s for me to know and you to find out *wink*, but here are some tips for creating a winner:

• Focus on the User Experience
  
  

  Do what you can to make the tool visually appealing. Consider using technologies like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight, which allow the use of animation, video and other engaging visual elements. The investment may be a little higher but the returns can justify the cost.

  Navigational devices like ‘Next’ and ‘Back’ buttons should be well-placed and easy to find. The location of other navigational elements like ‘Back to Home’ should be based on generally accepted human factors principles and, perhaps most importantly, don’t underestimate the value of usability testing.

• Be Strategic About the Content
  
  

  Don’t just take content from your web site, add some perfunctory questions and call it a DSS. Know your audience, know what bothers them, what challenges they have in deciding to use your product. Then use that information to create the DSS content. Content should valuable, questions should be insightful.

• Clear Call-to-Actions
  
  

  Your final call-to-action can differ by your objective. Is your focus lead generation? Ask users to submit their contact information so they can be contacted by a sales rep or offer up a code and telephone number so the sales rep can see the user’s answers via the code. Sell direct? Include direct links to the product pages for those products recommended by the system, perhaps with a 10% discount for taking the time to use the tool. Heck, offer your first born child if you think it might close the deal.

• Make It Flexible
  
  

  The path through the tool should be pretty linear and easy to navigate. You should also give users the opportunity to try alternate scenarios by going back and changing their answers. Seeing varied recommendations indicates the responses really are personalized to each individual – making it more likely users will forward the tool to friends.

• Don’t Forget to Market It
  
  

  If you build it, people will come. Not. At the moment you start building the tool, you should also begin planning a media campaign that directs people to the application. Whether it’s SEM, display advertising, broadcast or all of the above, driving people to the DSS is the only way to meet your objectives.

Have a cool DSS or other type of marketing application you want to share? Tell us about it in the comments. In the meantime, check out this one from MetLife.