Photo: Reuters

OK, I have had some time to think about how the iPad might be more important than the iPhone as some people at Apple have mentioned.  I am in Mumbai India at a conference where educators from around the world have gathered to discuss best practices for utilizing laptops in the classroom.  Yesterday, we started talking about the fact that the iPad is the perfect replacement for a laptop in that setting.  It is lighter, smaller, and less expensive, so easier to purchase for kids, and easier for them to carry.  Because they have a fast start time, you don’t have to worry about slow booting issues and because the operating system is simpler, you won’t have to worry about the support issues that would come with lots of kids using Windows machines in various states of setup.

Then start thinking about how many problems we could fix with replacing textbooks!  No more 30lb book bag filled with five-year-old beaten up textbooks to carry.  Actually, no more five-year-old text books because no you can update the textbooks daily on a subscription service.  And the textbooks would not look like anything from my youth because they can have links to extended information built right in.  They can have video and pictures integrated so that one could just click on an icon and see a math problem worked out in front of your eyes with an animation, or an animal run across the Serengeti.   Test could be incorporated as webforms so the teacher does not have to print out documents to be handed in separately, because the test would be filled out on the iPad within the “textbook” and graded on the fly by a grading software program already connected to the electronic textbook so the teacher simply receives grades sent through email or posted online.  You think that will win favor with teachers?

I actually get kind of excited when I think about what the iPad could do for students and learning.  But, I am a businessman, and this is a business blog so let’s get down to why this is important from a business standpoint.  If I owned Apple, I would figure out a way to price the iPad on a monthly fee so it can be sold through school book stores for $15 a month or so.  I would get millions of kids to use this as their standardized tool in school – of course this is a longtime Apple strategy – and then you know what happens next…  All of these kids come out of school dependent on this piece of hardware to get their work done.  Bingo, you have millions of evangelists carrying it into the workplace and convincing the older people around them to give it a try.  Well, at least the people that did not jump on the bandwagon before that.

Although I like this strategy, it still does not answer why some people at Apple say the iPad is bigger than the iPhone.  I can only surmise that they see the iPad as replacing the laptop for a large chunk of the population and this is not as crazy as it might sound.  You really have to see how Apple has rebuilt some of the applications like mail and calendaring for the iPad, then you will understand why some people that are light users might just chuck their laptop or desktop for the ease of use of a simple iPad.  Add to that an easy ability to watch TV, or handle music in improved ways and you might have a device that really could become a must have for many people.  Long and short, I am starting to understand why it might make sense to bet heavy on the iPad winning…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

I am experiencing more and more people using Twitter (direct tweets), LinkedIn, and Facebook to send me direct messages.  While I appreciated anyone connecting with me to talk, I am getting really annoyed at having to open a new application from my email just to answer what used to be sent to me through POP3 mail.  I might get ten or twelve contacts a day now through these three services and that requires me to jump out of my email client to get to them.  Just imagine if this trend continues?  What if there are a few other social networking sites that get hot and I am forced to open six different clients just to respond to people?  What is really broken is that I can post to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook all from Tweetdeck in one click, but when people answer or comment, I have to open three different clients to respond back.  That is sick and twisted.

Why don’t these companies just allow someone to post a message from within their services, but deliver to the recipients email?  Is it really that they are trying to force people to stay in their environments?  Could they be that petty?  Clearly they have to know that it is a drag to have to open their sites just to respond to a communication that hits my email, but has a noreply address on the contact.  I really think that we, the user base, need to stand up and call for some sanity from these platform providers.  Email is a universal tool that really works pretty darn well.  Let’s keep that standard for text-based communication that does not have to be instant.  Let’s not try to create ten different standards for how we contact each other electronically.

While I am on the email subject, I have to say this… Why the heck is there not a Xobni like product for the Mac?  And why has it taken email providers so long to build in analytics into the email platform?  Wouldn’t it be nice to know who the top ten people are that you receive emails from?  And how long you spend typing emails a day?  What about analytics like the average time to return emails, or the average time it takes people to return mine?  What about alerts that if flagged, could tell me if an email I sent was ever returned?  I could go on with the basic functionality that would be nice from email providers.  You know, we think the software we run is pretty handy, but in truth, it has a long way to go to be really as functional as it should be.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

This is causing me to think about what the best practices might be for migrating an entire IT department to the cloud. Set aside fears about controlling data, security, bandwidth, and the IT people standing in the way of a transition for a second and let’s just assume that cloud based computing gets 100% dependable. Then take an even bigger leap and assume that your IT people would actually disintermediate their own jobs. If all that could come true, you are then free to dream about what the best practices for the transition might look like. How fast might it be done? What systems go first, and which go last? How do you measure the ROI? How might you modify contracts with cloud providers to protect yourself?

I have been working on a long process document that would be used to dictate an orderly step-by-step, and find that there are really pretty simple answers to these questions. The first hurdle to really get over is just getting your hands around the fact that cloud providers can actually do IT services better than you in most cases, and that you can dual home your bandwidth so that you do not have to worry about access to your data and applications being cut off by the random cable cut. Yes, your data will be secure, and in fact, the cloud providers IT people are better at security than yours and probably have more to lose. Yes, it is possible for the applications to run just as fast over the wire as over your internal network, and the added bonus is they will run great anywhere in the world instead of forcing people to VPN to the network. Let’s be honest, having to VPN into a network is a bit like trying to get an appointment to see your doctor – sometimes you get in, and sometimes you don’t.

Once you get past the mental blocks and years of hosting your own servers, you can think rationally about what to do first, what to do last, and how fast to move your whole software infrastructure. The steps could really be reduced to the following: Study your usage patterns and identify all software applications in the organization. Rank then in order of their unique importance to the organization. Then make a decision as to whether you can replace the application with an existing SaaS option, or whether you will just need to move the current application into the cloud. Find a general cloud vendor that might fit your profile for services, and calculate the costs of renting their services. Examine the costs of the SaaS systems you might be able to trade over to, and the general cloud services where you cannot go SaaS. You now have a projected budget number you can play with to see what kind of ROI you might get (if you also are able to lower your staff count.) If you like what you see, you can then form a plan as to which applications go first and I would suggest start with the smallest and easiest and work up to the hard ones. Then measure performance differences after the moves in order to gauge if you have taken a step forward or backward. Oh, of course it is a bit harder than this, but I only have a page or so to make the point. And that is that every organization needs to have a solid transition plan and some goals in place. Also, that it is not that hard to think through. The problem in most cases is that the business side of the house does not know enough about the cloud to demand a move, and the IT people have a vested interest in keeping things in house in most cases so the only time you see an aggressive plan to move is when the budget gets slashed and there is no other choice. It is just sad if it always takes a financial tsunami before organizations figure out a cloud plan.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

The logical choice would be the Kindle, and that actually seems pretty likely to me and I can only hope that Amazon is smart enough to cut a deal with Apple and others to provide their Kindle software and store as on online service just like iTunes.  Woe be to them if they let Apple iTune the book market and build their own store to do distribution.  If the tablet makers could get Kindle like functionality native on the tablet, then add smart periodicals, and television capabilities, we would have a thin simple device for all media delivery.  Well, only if you add iTunes and music, which I am sure they will do.

So what else could they add to make this device really interesting?  How about a camera so we could use the tablet to do videoconferencing through Skype?  How about building in a browser natively so we could use the tablet as an access device to the cloud?  If they build a nice medium sized touch keyboard that slides up and down on the surface ala an iPhone, we could then access any hosted piece of software, and with as much out there these days, I could almost carry the tablet instead of my laptop in many cases.  When I really stop and think about it, if I were to use Google Docs for my office productivity, I could do 80% of the work I normally do on the tablet.  Which leads me to my next thought…

I think the impact the tablet/slate might make that no one seems t be talking about is to be a killer of installed software.  I have long known that the concept of cloud computing would drive us to invest portable computers that were configured very differently because we would not need hard drives and local storage at the point we could run our applications Web-based, and store our files remotely.  I suspect that the tablet may be the device that kills off locally installed software because we will want to carry that tablet in many cases and it will be built from the ground up to be a cloud based device.

A few other things I would like to see…  Please put an SD card or the like in the device so we have an easy ability to add storage and have it be portable and standard with other devices.  Please add some new touch controls.  People have quickly adopted the use of two and three fingers on a glide pad, and the squeeze and shrink paradigms.  Give us about ten more ways we can interface with applications so we can speed up the interaction.  Give us an easy way to send files to other tablets by just setting them next to each other and doing some type of special signal to identify and send any file or piece of data.  Please give us a seamless way to sync the tablet with our phone and laptop.  Above all, please give it lots of battery time so we do not have to be charging it three times a day to keep it up and running.

Do all of this, and we will buy it.  Do less than this, and we will have to wait for the second or third version when you do…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

I am interested to see that Google created its own store to sell the Nexus One, and this surely indicates that they intend to sell more devices over time to the public.  I can only imagine what a group of people that clever will come up with when they spend 20% of their work time doing pet projects.

I am encouraged to see Google continuing to push using voice as an input device.  They have given the Nexus One the ability to fill any text field in by voice.  Although this is not practical in all situations, there are a few that come in really handy, like answering email in the car driving down the road.  Voice control has been on the verge of really becoming a well-used interface tool and maybe a mobile device that elegantly integrates a voice option could be the tipping point.

I am also glad to see that they are offering an unlocked version of the phone so that people are not locked into on specific telecom provider.  Apple may have benefitted financially from the exclusive deal with AT&T, but they have suffered from an image standpoint by going out of their way to block people from using the phone on other services.   By selling the phone direct, Google may also be separating costs in a way that will force cell providers to lower their costs.  I would wager this, if the rumor is true that AT&T wants to charge a high amount for the ability to tether the iPhone, you will see Google trump them by providing tethering for a very low cost.  Google specializes in keeping costs down and finding other ways to drive revenues, and as a consumer, I love that they will force others – including Apple – to lower prices.

Google has such a command of the advertising supported model of revenue that it is logical to think that we may see them splice that capability into the phone and the phone service.  How long before they offer a deal for a phone with free service as long as you listen to and ad before you make a call?  Or, have a scrolling set of ads that take up the screen space on your phone while idle?
Apple has a great command of design and user experience.  Google has a great command of search and advertising models.  They also have an awesome ability to quickly spin up new capabilities out of their labs.  Two very different companies, both competing in the mobile device market.  This bodes really well for us in that the competition will drive costs down, and raise the level of features quickly.  I am really looking forward to seeing what we get over then next few years.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

The emergence of microblogging (Twitter, Facebook, and others) – The  concept of connecting to streams of information provided by others came into its own.

The iPhone basically trumped the phone market with the concept of a mobile computing device that can download $1.00 applications at will.  Android will follow, and Apple will try to stay ahead.  In the end, everyone will carry smartphones.

Augmented Reality emerged.  From nothing, to a slate of applications, AR is now more than just a concept.  It will grow to be one of the common ways for delivering location-based information

Social Technologies go corporate.  Maybe the largest blossoming of a technology was the realization by organizations that social tech is more than just the tool of teenagers.

Online Reputation Management emerged as new field that must be learned by executives and organizations.  From now on, our online relevancy will be key to prospering in the marketplace

Crowdsourcing becomes a commonly used tool.  At least a hundred websites have come to the market that harness the internet herd in order to do everything from creative to R&D.

Applications continue to move into the cloud.  It looks like 2009 will be the year that cloud based computing began to be viewed as a logical step for IT departments to take.

On the business models changing front, over 100 newspapers went out of business, Blockbuster is suffering, the post office is losing billions, people are  dropping land lines quickly, pay phones are gone, and magazines are suffering.

On the human front, we are inundated with unfiltered information and people contacting us 18 hours a day.  Kids are addicted to text messaging and seem to think they need an iPhone at single digit ages now.

On the productivity front, we steadily gain the ability to do more work and at higher quality every year.

I guess I could go on and on with this list because I am barely scratching the surface of what happened in tech last year.  It also shows no sign of slowing down for 2010.  That leads me to make this one observation for the future.  As we are worrying about the shrinking middle class in the US, we better start thinking about the technology have and have-nots.   This does not even concern who can afford tech because even the poorest people seem to have iPhone’s these days.  This concerns who can leverage all the new technologies coming out.  Those that cannot are losing value in the marketplace quickly, and those that can use the tools are gaining in power and influence.  That goes from the lowest rungs of the ladders to the C-Suite.   It is time to wake up and smell the velocity…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

There are two interesting lessons to learn from this move by Facebook. The first is that no matter what you do as a servicer of over 300 million people, someone is going to complain. In comparison, there are about that many people in the U.S. and we cannot agree on anything in this country so it should be expected that Facebook will have critics from now on. The only difference is that they have a few people making decisions at the top, whereas the U.S. has hundreds that have to agree on even the smallest changes. I suspect that Mark Z is finding it an interesting experience/responsibility to be at the helm of Facebook at this point.

The second thing to learn from this privacy update is the concept in general of allowing users to have complete discretion by service or media type as to what goes public and what goes private. This caught my eye because I had an immediate picture in my head of what I would like to see the technology industry move toward, and frankly, what I think they will do over time. The simplest way I can explain it is that we should get an ability to right click on any file, program, or media type and select from a scale of privacy ratings. Think of it this way, I right click a picture on my computer and set it for private, friends and family only, specific users access, or open access. Once I have set that privacy rating, it carries through anywhere I send or upload this document, picture or video. I would have to have an ability to administrate my privacy groups and ratings on my operating system as well so I could specify friends and family and such.

Other options I would love to have are things like an automatic obfuscation capability on the private files so that once I tag them as such, they are scrambled on my computer so they cannot be accessed even at a low level. I would like to be able to change my privacy ratings by application so I could have files that might be private on Facebook, but available to friends and family on Flickr. I would like to be able to bulk change privacy ratings by folder, or drive so I can manage them all at once. Actually the list goes on and hopefully you have the idea.

I guess my point is that this move by Facebook is just a baby step towards what we need to have as users in order to be more sophisticated about the security of our content. I am sure we will look back ten years from now and realize we were in the dark ages with privacy in 2009…

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

The other powerful use for Social Tech tools is the ability to now assemble a broad, dense, and powerful flow of filtered information that is uniquely assembled for each of us. Never before in history could a person construct such a flow of real time information for free. Never before in history could this flow of information be so broad and deep. Sure, twenty years ago, you could have twelve subscriptions to magazines and read two books at a time – then spend the rest of the day watching the news on TV. But, you would only be scratching the surface of information that today can be pushed to you through RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. Even if you want to debate with me on the volume of information in this comparison, you cannot debate that we have an awesome ability to reach into very specialized data and to filter it down to the things that are critical in much better ways today.

The best example I can give you of this philosophy is myself – or maybe that is just the easiest for me! I have carefully crafted a stream of information, and have carefully chosen how I want it delivered. I have specific things sent to my iPhone, others sent to specific applications on my laptop. I download specific books and periodicals to my Kindle, and finally still read a few magazines and newspapers on paper. In each case, I have made the decision about what I read, and where I read it very consciously. I still read a few things on paper because it fills a void for me when I simply cannot use electronics. Those two times being when I am taking off and landing in the planes, or when I am home waiting on my family for something and do not want to access my laptop or phone for fear of being distracted by work. I have specific V-logs, and Twitter sent to my phone so I can access these things when not using my laptop. Then I have various feeds sent to my email, or other applications depending on the sources. I follow many thought leaders in my industry, some of my competitors, my clients, and a few inspirational innovation sources just to keep my thinking fresh. I follow a few associations newsletter for industries I care about, and constantly correspond with people that care about the same thing I do so we can share valuable thoughts. In sort, I have carefully crafted my river if information so that I maximize powerful content, and minimize the time needed to access it.

Why is this concept so important? For a few reasons… One is that it makes me smarter. Noticeably and dramatically smarter and that translates into making me enjoy my career more, and getting paid more for the knowledge I now own. Another is that we are all getting buried under information – as in information overload. So learning to filter and direct this flood is important because a flood can drown you, or you can learn to harness the waves and do something useful with it. Finally, this is the knowledge economy after all, and that should tell you that there is a lot of knowledge flying around, and that learning to harness your share is will ultimately make the difference between achieving your goals, or losing.

By the way, add up the ability to build these rivers of information for each employee in an organization, and you now have a huge differentiators in the market. So if you have an HR department that is looking for something meaningful to do, consider having them spend 2010 teaching people how to build these rivers of information.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

So one answer to the question of why Twitter matters is that it has a nearly real time ability to deliver information. In addition, if one uses some of the filtering tools that are available, a user can also filter what real time information is really important to them so they do not get swamped in real time news that might not be important. It should mean something to people that in just a few short years of existence, Twitter has become a staple for many people in how they get news and information from not only their friends (trivial news) or their business associates (more pertinent news) but also the world in general. Oh, by the way, the news you get is nearly real time – in other words, you get it in a flash directly to your phone if you choose to.

Real Time as a concept is getting more and more press these days. TechCrunch recently held a whole conference devoted to real time software applications that are being delivered to facilitate people getting information very quickly after it happens. This will lead people to the next question, which will be, “why do I need to get information in real time?” The answers to that can range from the excitement of being the first in the know, to the very real business advantage of having information sooner than your competitors. My observation is that we have concentrated more on the ability to just get information, versus getting it in real time. As we get more sophisticated with business intelligence tools, and social technologies, we will start to see that being able to receive critical information faster is a huge advantage. To get there, we will have to get better at using filtering tools in order to instruct the gigantic flow of information we can tap into as to what is specifically important to us.

Reason number three is now explained as to why Twitter matters, so that you can have access to important news faster than your competitors. If you missed reasons one and two, they are that you can use Twitter to create a river of information into your brain (through who you follow) and you can become an industry expert (based on getting people to follow you.)

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

p.s. If you are not following me on Twitter, then why not? Do so now here: @sklososky.

1. The Technology Trigger – The genesis of the technology, this where only extremely geeky people have any idea what it is.
2. The Peak of Inflated Expectations – This is where our “next big thing” is suggested as the cure to all ills and the next “disruptive technology.” I guess we could also call this the buzzword stage.
3. The Trough of Disillusionment – Our technology now almost disappears from the press. It will be written off by many non-tech people because they are not seeing it, or hearing about it as much at this point. It have now become not-cool. We will accuse it of just being a meme.
4. The Slope of Enlightenment – Far from dead, the technology is now being applied to real world situations and actually is starting to generate a return on investment. In other words, it is working.
5. The Plateau of Productivity – We have now completed the cycle and the technology is now a standard tool that we will soon take for granted. We will forget we ever lived without it and will ruminate on the old days before we had it.

It is easy to plot where we are with many of the technologies in front of us. For example, virtual worlds are clearly in the trough of disillusionment at the moment. However, I am seeing a number of companies developing virtual meeting rooms that look very practical for helping to support virtual teams across organizations. This is a typical variation of the something like Second Life that made a huge splash, and has not fallen down the slope to being viewed as not cool. Augmented reality is climbing quickly up the hype curve at the moment. Lots of people are predicting it will simply change the way we interact with data from now on (I am one of them by the way.) Location aware applications were something I talked about five years ago and painted lots of pictures as to what a device knowing where I was standing at a given moment could do for me. No we have hand-helds like the iPhone and Android and lots of location aware software and we are not really that impressed already.

I have been building technology companies long enough now to understand how important timing is to leveraging a specific technology. Whether building a company, or investing in applying some new idea, we all face the same dangers. Do it too early and you might waste all the investment, as the adoption rate you need from the herd will not be there. Do it too late and you will risk being just one of the herd and a “me too” player that must compete in a red ocean with all the other sharks. Having a good understanding of this technology cycle can really provide a strategic advantage to leaders.

So for some homework, go to a whiteboard and draw a typical bell curve that slopes back up slowly at the right hand side. Plot the stages I shared above and then see if you can identify three to five technologies in each stage and where they might fall graphically along the curves. The insight gained may vary well help you develop an eye for timing technology implementation in winning ways.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com