Archive for the ‘Required Reading’ Category

Ranting on technology is a popular and shared past-time. Once the dust settles, the echo-chamber dials-down, and the crowd points to the solution to whatever has befallen us, its worth reflecting on what actually might have happened.

In cancelling Google Reader – a product I love and use daily — Google might just have done us all a favor. Now, do many of us wish they’d kept the old steam-engine of RSS readers trundling along, for sure. But would it have benefited us in the long-run, no.

1. Killing an average product makes way for better products — and even opens a door through which those in existence can creep. No longer in Google’s shaddow, they shine. And so, I met Feedly.
2. Those better products, benefiting from a flock of new users hopefully thrive.
3. Google can pursue its true intent of being a platform and not a tools company. Google+ is a platform. Facebook is a platform. Reader, yeah, it was good but it was just another tool. In fact, the tool becomes a threat. As Nick says:

“Tools are threats to platforms because they give their owners ways to bypass platforms. If you have a good set of tools, you don’t need a stinking platform. If you’re happy with RSS, you’re a little less likely to sign up for Google+, or Twitter, or Facebook. At the very least, the tool gives you the choice. It grants you self-determination.”

In short, focus benefits the owner as much as the customer. Forget the ranting, embrace the platform and keep reading. The technology industry has an amazing ability to fill the gaps with more innovation – and the innovation is shifting the the platforms.

I thought Jon’s articulation of brand – and the benefits of a purpose or character-centered brand — were brilliant. Right on the money.

“IBM on Brand” by Jon Iwata from VSA Partners on Vimeo.

That Om wrote this. It precisely echoes my feelings on all things Google these days.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Google may think it can waltz into a market that Evernote and others have staked out, but I’m not going to dance.

… Google today launched Keep, an app that allows you to save things, clip stuff from the web, hoard notes and what not and put them all onto your Google Drive. Yup, you guessed it — it is an imitation to Evernote and many other such applications. It is a good thing that Google has decided to compete with the likes of Evernote — it validates their market.

It might actually be good, or even better than Evernote. But I still won’t use Keep. You know why? Google Reader.

“There is no work-life balance,” says Janice Marturano. “We have one life. What’s most important is that you be awake for it.“

You can read more here… and a good read it is…

In a brilliant piece disecting Apple commentary on compeitors, Jean-Louis Gasse gets at some of the reasons a PR firm exits.

… PR firms have long memories and sharp knives.

The approach may seem cynical, but it’s convenient and effective. The PR firm maintains a net (and that’s the right word) of relationships with the media and their pilot fish. If it has the talent of a Waggener Edstrom, it provides sound strategic advice, position papers, talking points, and freeze-dried one-liners.

Furthermore, a PR firm has the power of providing access. I once asked a journalist friend how his respected newspaper could have allowed one of its writers to publish a fellacious piece that described, in dulcet tones, a worldwide Microsoft R&D tour by the company’s missus dominicus. “Access, Jean-Louis, access. That’s the price you pay to get the next Ballmer interview…”

Today, look at the truly admirable job Frank Shaw does for Microsoft. Always on Twitter, frequently writing learned and assertive pieces for the company’s official blog. By the way, where’s Apple’s blog?

And he is right, Frank is doing a great job at Microsoft.