Sky diving laptop

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Mike

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Mobile Internet user to eclipse wireline users by 2015

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Mike

mobile webIt’s going to be a mobile Internet world and we’ll just live in it. That’s the conclusion of IDC, which is forecasting that mobile Internet users will grow by an annual compound rate of 16.6 percent through 2015, when they will pass PC and other wireline Internet users.

That’s not entirely surprising if you’ve been following along. Mary Meeker, the former Morgan Stanley Internet analyst and now Kleiner Perkins VC, forecast last year that the cross-over point would come around 2014. She said at the time that we were in the midst of a fifth computing cycle, following the mainframe computing eras of the 1950s and 60s, the mini-computers of the 1970s, the PCs of the 1980s, the desktop Internet era of the 1990s and now the mobile Internet age. Earlier this year, IDC noted that smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter last year topped 100 million units, pushing past PC sales.

IDC said the total number of Internet user will grow from 2 billion in 2010 to 2.7 billion in 2015, with 40 percent of the world’s population online. But as Internet penetration picks up, it will happen more on mobile devices than traditional PCs, something Apple founder Steve Jobs noted in dubbing this the post-PC era.  IDC said that as tablet use in particular picks up, it expects PC Internet usage to stagnate and then slowly decline.

As IDC notes, this shift will make the world a different place. For one thing, mobile network owners will need to get ready for this explosion in mobile data traffic, which is expected to increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015. Content owners need to think about what they’re doing to optimize for mobile. And retail and commerce companies need to take note of how users are accessing the Internet on the fly, which can provide both opportunities and challenges to online and physical retailers. Advertising and marketing is also being transformed by mobile as brands, and advertisers are starting to look at how to best reach consumers with messages that can be tailored to their preferences, context and location.

It’s a brave new world, and the companies that embrace it will take advantage of the coming opportunities that emerge as mobile devices becomes the dominant way we access the Internet.

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Will Apple Inspire the Solar ‘Tipping Point’?

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Mike

solar apple
Ever since the two Steves — Jobs and Wozniack — created Apple Computers, they’ve been in the ‘disruptive technology’ game, introducing personal computers that turned the world on its ear. Then came the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, all revolutionary mobile devices built around Apple’s legendary user-friendly interface. But the one thing that they also shared in common was their need to plug into the grid to recharge their batteries.
That may be about to change, it’s being rumored. Apple has won several patents recently on charging their i-devices using solar energy, something Samsung has already done with at least four of their products. The speculation is that the company will soon introduce solar-powered products that, at a minimum, extend the operating life of the battery, or better yet, will never need to be plugged in; just put your iPhone in a sunny place and let free photons do the recharging. It’s being suggested by Katie Fehrenbacher that this could “revolutionize solar” because Apple builds, through its Asian contractor, tens of millions of mobile devices every year and that kind of clout will drive down the price of PV. Maybe. But our inclination is that projects like Roadrunner (page 8) will do that too. The real Apple solar ‘revolution’ will be the introduction of solar electricity to those millions of Apple customers, putting PV technology in their hands, perhaps for the very first time. That could be solar power’s ‘tipping point.’

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Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. – Abraham Lincoln

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Mike

This quote reminds me of a very practical lesson I learned from Tony Robbins. He called it “The magic of Rapport”. In a nutshell: people will like/respond to you, if they think you are like them, or how they imagine themselves. Tony uses a method called mirroring. That means you pay attention to the person in front of you and copy their movements, habits, speech, breathing, etc. If the person sits with their right leg crossed over their knee – you sit with your right leg crossed over your knee. If they blink excessively – you blink excessively. If they talk using their hands – you answer using your hands. Copy their breathing, speech patterns, body language, etc.

You may think that the person you are mirroring will see you as mocking them, but that is almost never the case. Most people are talking to themselves – they’re unconscious, and it’s their sub-conscious that makes them like or dislike an individual. If they see themselves in you they will like you. Tony is a master at this. It’s only one of the tools that has made him a billionaire. If this sounds airy fairy, or hard to believe, try it yourself. The next time someone is angry with you, start mirroring them. Within minutes that person will have a smile on their face. It’s not as easy as it sounds though. Basically you have to completely relinquish your own ego and take on the personality of the person in front of you.

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