Apple iPhone – whats the verdict?

I am an Apple fan. I dont have the privilege of owning a Mac, but I do have an iPod, and I love it. Not suprisingly, Apple knows that millions of people love the iPod too and have recently launched the iPhone. I have taken a look at the iPhone and have to say, I am not sure what to think. The user interface seems pretty cool, but it is quite a big phone. Tapping out an SMS seems to be a bit labourious, but some of the other interfaces like voice mail seem relly unique. I will have to go and take a look at the phone LIVE, but from the website it seems interesting. Take a look at Apples website to find out more.

Richard Branson still gets it

I am reading Richard Bransons autobiography for the second time now and it amazes me how far ahead of the curve he was and somehow manages to be. He has to be one of the most inspirational entreprenuers in the history of modern business, certainly has a better hairstyle than Donald Trump (sorry Donald, why does he have that combover anyway??) and a lot more charisma and guts than Bill Gates. It is a fascinating story, well told by him persoanlly, lots of great insights to his business and his ideas. His story is truly amazing, if you need a “pep me up” at the beginning of this year, take a read, you can order it here.

Virgin Mobile launches

Virgin Mobile South Africa intends to have 300 000 subscribers within 18 months from its joint venture with Cell C according to a business report article. So Richard strikes again, this time in the soft underbelly of the cell phone market in South Africa, a highly lucrative business if you look at the profits of the current incumbents. However we all know how he does things, in his usual casual attitude he intends to shake up the market and offer people a service that is useful and show them all the hidden costs and also bring in some innovative ideas like monthly contracts as opposed to the current 2 year ones. They wont be offering free handsets however, but customers will be able to pay off the handset over time. Of course, the handsets and service will be sold and distibuted through the current Virgin Active outlets and this will add yet another quiver to the growing Virgin empire in South Africa.

Is print dead? – Long live Print!

In an interesting debate on the Fast Company Website, an email debate (not fax debate) took place between Jeff Jarvis (Former print editor, now blogger and consultant at BuzzMachine)  and John Griffin (President of National Geopgraphic Society’s magazine group) Both these men put forward interesting cases for whether print is dying or not. I wont go into the detail here, but take a look at the online debate here!
What do you think? is print here to stay or will it simply morph? What about newspapers in 20 years from now, will they be around? Interesting times and questions….enjoy!

Do pictures work?

In the business that I am part of (www.artstorm.biz) we believe that picutres make a huge difference. Why? Well becuase you can see at a glance what would take ten pages of text to explain. If someone asks for directions to your house, do you write an essay or draw them a map? In most cases you will draw a map from the nearest point that they recognise. To further illustrate this point, there is a trend growing in the US that more and more information is being generated in graphical format. Take a look at this link to see the US petrol price in graphical format, pity we dont have pricing competition here, but in the US, this kind of picture can literally save millions.Also, take a lokn at worldmapper and see how the world morphs based on things like population, births and so on. So, do pictures work, absolutely, we just need to use them more!

What is creativity

Accordg to experts, innovation requires no special though processes, innovative people just work harder at it. So, what is ceativity? and can we harness it? can it be produced on demand. Over the last 25 years, much research has been done on the creative mind by researchers, anthropologists, biologists and the like.

The lead of the pck is apparently a new book by R. Keith Sawyer, author of the new book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation (Oxford; 336 pages). He’s working on a version for the lay reader, due out in 2007 from Basic Books. In an interview with Francine Russo, Sawyer shares some of his findings and suggests ways in which we can enhance our creativity not just in art, science or business but in everyday life. Keep an eye out for this one!

Art_Storm launches

Its official….I have gone into launching and running Art_Storm on a fulltime basis from 1 January 2006. This exciting new concept certainly is being well recieved and I am sure that it will add tons of value. So what is an Art_Storm you may ask. Well, in a nutshell it is a brainstorm in pictures!

Arent you tired of going to those same old, same old strategy sessions, or breakout sessions or product sessions? Somebody ineveitably gets up front with a deck of 500 powerpoint slides (no grpahics or even video clips to break the monotony) and proceeds to “download” the strategy…been there?

Ok, So Art_Storm is very different. We dont like to many rules, but here are the major ones:

1. No PowerPoint…ever in an Art_Storm session
2. No other rules except rule number 1 and 3
3. Have fun

Thats it. Basically it is a strategy session or a brainstomring session where the people in the room get to have their ideas heard. We capture this in illustrations or pictures, drawn by a live cartoonist or illustrator, someone captures the ideas into a blog, and there you have it. Your strategy, alive and powerful. Only a few hundred details in between, but hey, let me know what you think!

The $100 laptop from MIT

Rediff – MIT has given an update on their progress on the $100 laptop that they are producing for emerging economy children. It seems that this is starting to gather momentum and it is a great idea. I mentioned this in one of my other blogs, but this could be the big break into the realm of bridging the digital divide. So the laptop basically is a functional device and has an AC adaptor for places where there is electricity and a hand crank for places without electricity (Hey, that would be nice on my laptop now!!) Below is an excerpt of the article:

The $100 laptop computers that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers want to get into the hands of the world’s children would be durable, flexible and self-reliant.
The machines’ AC adapter would double as a carrying strap, and a hand crank would power them when there’s no electricity. They’d be foldable into more positions than traditional notebook PCs, and carried like slim lunchboxes.
For outdoor reading, their display would be able to shift from full color to glare-resistant black and white.
And surrounding it all, the laptops would have a rubber casing that closes tightly, because “they have to be absolutely indestructible,” said Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Media Lab leader who offered an update on the project Wednesday.

Read more FAQ’s etc at these links:
http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2005/sep/30laptop.htm

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/

Innovation the healthcare sector please!!

My wife was feeling a little queasy over the past few days. After having been to India, we both decided that maybe it would be a good idea to get this checked out sooner rather than later (Malaria and Hepatitis being some of the nasties that one can pick up there) So we went off to the emergency rooms at Wilgeheuwel at 9pm at night. We arrived at the desk in the emergency are where the gent behind the desk asked us if we were on medical aid. The answer is yes and no. We are on a hospital plan with Discover for a few reasons.

1. We downgraded ourselves as we never used up the out of hospital benefits and were wasting money paying for it
2. We dont have children who “eat” through that benefit as many people who have children do
3. We have resorted to saving the difference on a monthly basis so that we can pay for any of our medical bills cash.

So, upon telling the gent that we would be paying cash, he informed us that we would have to put down a R 600.00 deposit to be able to see the doctor and then the doctors fees and other sundries would be deducted off this, but the bill could be up to R 900.00 – RIDICULOUS. We left and went to Flora Clinic where a far more reasonable R 270.00 was charged and the total bill was R 344.00 after seeing the doctor.

So, how about a solution. Why dont the hospitals put in a system whereby they can instantly check my credit rating and see if I am a good “risk” to them or not. This could be done on a card basis, and with one swipe it could check me to see what deposit I need to put down.

• If I am a good risk, then maybe R 200.00 is appropriate
• If I am a mediocre risk then R 300.00 down
• If I am a bad risk then R 1000.00 down

Just some suggestions, sadly for Wilgeheuwel, they lost my business and to be honest, I wont go back there again for any emergency. Surely thse guys need to understand how technology can benefit them today. Comments!

Blog readership on the up

Techweb news – Blogs are being read more than double from last year. According to Forrester research, 10% of consumers in the States read blogs once a week or more, that up from 5% who browsed blogs the previous year. RSS has tripled in the same period up to 6% this year. Watch this space, it seems more of you will be in future.

So what does this mean to businesses. Well in short, it seems blogs are starting to be positioned as a very real way to talk to customers and get insights into their thoughts and concerns. It also provides a great feedback mechanism for companies in real time, in short, a marketers dream or in some cases a nightmare, depending on the type of feedback you are getting. It seems blogs are picking up some momentum, so what are the views, should our big corporates in SA get started on blogs, and who will be the first to get them going, Herman Singh of Std bank has one, who will be next…I think we all need to remember that it is not a race, but a journey, blogging though is simply one of the routes..

Comments?