Palin: Who needs experience?

What this Presidential Election is about and who will win are two entirely different questions. As they say, in the McCain camp, don’t get it twisted!

One would think that Presidents are elected based on an acute understanding of polictical issues: economics, education, health care, defense, and foreign affairs, as examples. And that candidate has the capacity - meaning intellectual and people skills - required to execute the oath of office, and administer the powers granted in the Constitution.

If you think all of that makes sense (and even worst, matters at all) you may not be a redneck, but you certainly don’t have a clue on how things work around here ( two points for those following at home that are thinking hey, he’s right, just look at the mess we’ve gotten into in the last 8 years ).

Subterfuge: (definition): deceit used in order to achieve one’s goal.

The entire McCain platform and Vice-Presendential pick are based on Subterfuge. Isn’t it interesting that Sarah Palin spent the majority of her acceptance speech, focused on lies and insults, instead of the issues and concerns many Americans are worried about?

Obama spent most of his acceptance speech on facts and accurate distinctions that separate the two campaigns. One campaign is telling you like it is - the other is has pretty much given up on telling the truth.  Subterfuge.

Sarah Palin is not the person that will ensure this country gets back on it’s feet economically or because she has the health care experience of Hillary Clinton; she’s McCain’s pick because McCain thinks he can get more women to vote for him, if he has a women VP. Subterfuge.

Normally, you could give a person a glass of cloudy water, and if that was the only water available, he or she would take a sip. If you placed a clean glass of water next it, and the person had a choice, he or she would choose the clean glass every time; except, if subterfuge was used to convince the person that the cloudy water was beer, and that the person offering the beer was going to drink it with them.

That’s what is happening around us. The McCain camp isn’t concerned about what your concerns are? He is concerned about winning the election. He’s choice of VP has nothing to do with solving the mortgage crisis. It has everything to do with pandering to women voters. Subterfuge.

McCain’s POW experience doesn’t automatically qualify him to lead, any more than it qualifies hundreds of thousands of American solders that serve or have served this country to be president. You need more than a khaki uniform to run the United States of America properly, and any soldiers can tell you that.

General Wesley Clark had it right, McCain’s service doesn’t automatically qualify him, and McCain’s lack of executive leadership experience is virtually non-existent. Subterfuge.

Republicans will win by using proven, negative attack ads. This approach will work because most of America is too busy to obtain the truth, even if the truth is readily available on YouTube and other alternative sources.

Subterfuge always wins. Think Al Gore, Sen. Kerry, Bush. If you knew then, what you know now, would Bush have been anybodies choice for President?  Subterfuge!

This Election is over. McCain wins. The Country is sunk! Enough said.

1. Locate yourself using the built-in GPS. Got it. Bookmark. Cool.
2. Change your iPhone Mail Signature to “Sent from my New 3G iPhone. FTW!“
3. Crack that sucker open with iPwnage and Send out High-5s using Twinkle.
4. Go to Starbucks or Barnes and Noble Café during rush hour. While standing in line for your Latte, casual surf the Free AT&T iPhone WiFi.
5. Grab your MBP/MBA and Tether that baby at 3G speeds.
6. Download apps from iPhone App Store.
7. Just take the Day-Off.  You’ll be playing with your new 3G iPhone all day. No Work will get done!

iPhone Rocks!

By any objective measure Isiah is indeed the “Greatest” - named to the list of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history. Barely six feet, he was in his day the grittiest performer to play guard. A feisty competitor with ball skills. He led the Detroit Pistons to back-to-back NBA championships. Undoubtably, Isiah has a great basketball mind.

In December 2003 after a Knick 15-24 start, Thomas was made president of basketball operations. Almost immediately, Isiah replaced Don Cheney with Lenny Wilkens, who later resigned and was followed by Larry Brown and a 5 year $50 million contract. Larry who had a history of turning around under-performing teams (Nets, Clippers) had a specific task to do.

 Wikipedia continues the saga -  ”In 2005 the Knicks’ payroll was the highest in the league at over $130 million, but the team was among the worst in the NBA, having finished the 2005-06 season with a dismal 23-59 record and capped off with the firing and $18.5 million buy-out of coach Larry Brown. Thomas’ trades have been highly critiqued, bringing in expensive players, such as Stephon Marbury, Jamal Crawford, Jerome James (signed as free agent), Malik Rose, Jalen Rose, and Steve Francis. Moreover, Thomas has also accepted many bad contracts to make these trades, such as those of Penny Hardaway, Jerome Williams, or Maurice Taylor, and given up draft picks. To Thomas’s credit his draft picks of David Lee, Channing Frye (later traded by Thomas), Trevor Ariza (later traded by Thomas) and Nate Robinson are considered wise, as was his signing free agent center Jackie Butler who later signed with the Spurs, Conversly, many considered his 2006 first-round draft pick of Renaldo Balkman very foolish, although Balkman’s better-than-expected play in his rookie season led many to initially reverse this early sentiment before his play regressed in his second season.”

The major mistake Isiah made, and the one he shares with several managers in corporate america - he failed to objectively assess progress in a rolling 3-6 month window, instead preferring to flirt with Anucha Browne Sanders (cost: $11.6 million),  the Thomas tax (cost: $137 million), and his legacy. 

Turn-araounds in the NBA are visible over a matter of months, not years, they are observable in 3-6 month periodic, directional review cycles. This is perhaps most important in the age of free agency, than when Isiah wore short pants. In the 5 years of Thomas’ reckoning the Knicks have lost attendance, concession, merchandise and ticket sales.For all of you budding managers and project managers.

Make sure  your project’s trend data is positive-directionally, and you have a plan to manage risks( things that could potentially go wrong). If you already do this consistently, where were you when Isiah needed you? 

Sure, screen sharing isn’t new, and Windows XP has a program called Remote Desktop that allows you to take control over another computer on the Internet. However, the big “So What” here is, Leopard’s Screen Sharing is built on top of iChat. Which means, you can have a conversation with the user you are helping, while you are screen-sharing. No, not amazing, phenomenal!

Golly, the only thing that could make this even better is if, you could transfer documents from one screen to another.

Wait for it. wait for it… Guess what, you can. Just drag the document, file, or object from one window to the other. As easy as Apple Pie

Time Machine
How many times have you deleted a file accidentally and didn’t discover it was gone until weeks afterwards. Ever had your computer hard drive crash and burn? How many backup programs have you installed, used once, and never bothered to use again? Well say goodbye to backup headaches once and for all. Connect an external Hard Drive to your Mac OSX Leopard and never worry about backing up your computer, ever again! Hallelujah!

I never have to worry about backing up my important files, my computer’s hard drive, or all of those vacation pictures ever again.
Spaces
Virtual desktops solves the problem of creating and maintaining uncluttered workspaces. Virtual Desktops aren’t new for Mac OSX or Windows XP, however, this is the first implementation that is built right into Mac OSX. This is a major advantage. No more compatibility, maintenance or driver issues. Virtual Desktops are now part of the Mac OSX and that means no more headaches trying to find the latest working version of Virtua, Cooldesk, altdesk, MS Powertoy, etc.

QuickLook
Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, presentations, Mail attachments, and Microsoft Word and Excel files. Just tap the Space bar to see a file in Quick Look, or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window. You can’t do this on Windows. Saves time and increases my productivity. I can’t imagine living without this in any computer environment.

Parental Control
You can’t be a nerd all of your life. One day, you’ll have children (maybe). As a geek parent, you’ll want your kids to have a safe and happy experience on the computer. Leopard keeps an eye out even when you can’t. With a simple setup, you can manage, monitor, and control the time your kids spend on the Mac, the sites they visit, and the people they chat with. This is the killer app for Parents with children. Macs are easy to use for everybody, including children, so this program is a God send.

Now head over to the Apple store and buy a Mac.

Here’s what you do… Launch Keychain Access and Select Keychain First Aid from the Keychain Menu.

You may have to repair the Keychain twice to completely recover all of your password information.

For the most part, if they work for a medium or large sized firm, chances are they are already using MS Office at work. The typical enterprise deal deeply discounts MS Office products as long as you buy into the Microsoft platform.

For everyone else, it means you have to pay anywhere from 2 to 4 times more for a retail copy of MS Office. Ouch-!!

If Johnny and Jane were smart consumers. The could try other applications, many of them free, that will provide MS Office compatibility and portability. OpenOffice (PC Platform), NeoOffice (MacOSX) (both free), and Google Docs (also free) come to mind. They could also try Pages (part of the iWork Suite of tools from Apple).

If all else fails, I suppose they could register at the local university and take a few courses.

The native iPhone Dev Kit should surface after MacWorld 2008. But until then brush up on your Javascript.

Let’s see, so what did we gain with this new information:

- App Distribution ( check )
- Access to iPhone features ( check )
- Safari Engine/capabilities ( check )

Is this enough to overcome the perceived issues that have surfaced so far?

- no 3G
- two year contract w/AT&T required
- pricey
- no details on battery life/non-removable
- screen keyboard (not great for text messaging)
- no corporate/exchange push email
- no GPS

In black and white, it does look like the iPhone isn’t as groundbreaking as it was in January 2007. However, the key tipping-point factor is the User Experience. The User Experience (obviously) will sink or float the v1.0 iPhone until v2.0 comes out next year.

You might have expected more in terms of a iPhone Development SDK, but the combination of Easy-to-use, iPod, Phone, Safari-engine, Video-player plus user experience will overshadow the initial perceived issues. Applications and new functionality between now and next year will certainly make this a thing a huge winner; exceeding Apple’s 10 million units by 4Q08 expectation.

You have to ask yourself one question? Other phones may have more features, but which one has a better user experience?

Last time I checked (2 seconds ago), all enterprise email systems have tags for Importance or Priority (low, important, high, etc). Most will sort by priority/importance by default. And it doesn’t look like this solution is going to save you any additional time processing all of the email systems you have today. So to who does this idea make any sense to?

Let me tell you a quick story…

I have a friend who’s CIO of a large company. He was extremely busy, all of the time. Not surprising. I hadn’t jumped into the GTD thing as much as I have now, and I was curious at the time how Mike got so many things done. So I asked him one day.

Here’s what he said…

“My secret to getting things done is simple…”

“First, when people have a problem, they’ll email you.”

“When they send you email, don’t respond. If it’s important, they’ll mark it URGENT.”

“If you see an URGENT email, don’t respond. If it’s important, they’ll Phone you.”

“Second, if people call you, don’t answer. If it’s important, they’ll call back.”

“If they call you back, don’t answer. If it’s important, they’ll come to your office.”

“Third. Close your office door. Focus on what you need to do, they’ll figure it out and come back to you later with the solution, not the problem.”

Great story! The point is, we don’t need email to figure out what’s important. Any company that relies on Store and Forward technology to get things done is Doomed. Any company that invests strategically in add-on products to “fix” email is Doomed!

The kicker is, Seriosity got $6 million in VC funding. Wow! Pretty cool.

I’m looking for funding for a similar Email add-on. It’s tied into what I call a VOIP-VOG System. VOG = Voice of God. When you tag messages as critical, once your email is received, it will Proclaim LOUDLY in a Room-Shaking GOD-like Voice “I COMMAND YOU TO READ THIS EMAIL!”. If you’ve been slacking, this will get your attention in a big way.

I need about $12 million to get it off the ground. VC’s please contact me.

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Ok, it’s not the worst idea in the world, and probably has some merit. Is this solution worthy of Enterprise investment. Let me know, add your comment below.

There’s a lot of pretty cool things to like:

• Copy/Paste images, urls, text into the ThoughtPad and it will auto-format pretty cool note pages. Perfect for project planning, research, or travel.

• Offline/Online mode - All your information is synced, so if you’re in between hotspots, you still have access to all of your information.

• Typical apps create a new context (e.g. blank screen) when accessing a particular function, iScrybe focuses the view on the new function or activity without destroying the context. For example, you could view a full day of appointments while at the same time maintaining the full month calendar view on screen. Slick and very well done.

After checking out the Demo, I realized there were some “i”s missing. The “i” in “i”-words have several purposes. A reference to oneself or one’s context, yes, but also to “integration”. Apple has pretty much led the “i” integration revolution (iWeb, iLife, iTunes, iPod, etc). I don’t mind other “i”-words but lets keep the paradigm going shall we? Where’s the integration with PDAs, SmartPhones, and Communicators, and let’s be clear, by PDAs, SmartPhones, and Communicators - I mean the iPhone.

What good is having a near-perfect online/offline organizer if I cannot truly access it everywhere? Sure I can use iScrybe’s PaperSync to print foldable notes that I can carry around with me, but that’s like driving a Ferrari and parking it on the street.
Can I get it to Sync with my iPhone please? iScrybe is still in Beta (has been since October 2006), so perhaps there’s some additional development going on, iHope! If I were Steve Jobs, CEO Apple Inc. I’d buy iScrybe to replace .Mac iNow.
Then the $100.00 a year or so for .Mac would be well spent. Integrating iScrybe with .Mac would be hot. As in That’s HOT!”

You know they didn’t just add the “i” to Scrybe by happenstance? My guess is they are looking to get on Apple’s radar with a highly synergetic Web 2.0 App (Why do you thing iScrybe doesn’t have email or chat? Email and Chat/IM are a huge help to an organized your life.) This is something I’d love to see.
iNeed Leopard 10.5 OS X, an iScrybe powered .Mac, an iPhone and an upgraded Mac Mini by the end of June. So Steve, get right on that please, and give me an update in April.

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If you agree (or not) with iPhone synchronization and .Mac integration comment below.