7.1 million
Projected iPad sales for 2010. ^[source]

58 million
Projected netbook sales in 2010. ^[source]

355 million
Projected PC sales in 2010. ^[source]

Translation: Despite the iPad being an alleged “magical” device, it’s not going to supplant the other traditional PC form factors anytime soon. All of us living and breathing in the tech industry may belong in a class of people that can afford to pay $500 for a consumption device. However, we are different from the majority of the rest of the world.

8.8 million
Global iPhone sales in Q1 2010. ^[source]

21.5 million
Nokia smartphone sales in Q1 2010. ^[source]

55 million
Total smartphone sales globally in Q1 2010. ^[source]

439 million
Projected global smartphone sales in 2014. ^[source]

Translation: Is Windows Phone 7 too little, too late? One can debate whether it’s too little or not, but it’s certainly not too late. There is still an awful lot of pie to be made in the near future, and if Microsoft executes Windows Phone 7 well, it may very well be positioned to grab a huge portion of it.

$5.7 Billion
Apple Net income for fiscal year ending  Sep 2009. ^[source]

$6.5 Billion
Google Net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009. ^[source]

$14.5 Billion
Microsoft Net Income for fiscal year ending June 2009. ^[source]

Translation: Yes, the second largest technology company in the world still makes two-and-a-half times more profit than the largest technology company in the world. Despite all the doom and gloom scenarios painted by pundits this week, as long as people still love Windows and enterprises still continue to choose Windows servers 7 times out of 10, Microsoft’s future prospects continue to remain bright.

Louis writes:

Even with the increased competition, Google never flipped the switch that Microsoft once did, turning “evil”. Whether it’s assumed Apple and Google are best friends at this point is not as important as the two companies making the right choices for consumers.

Going back to the BusinessWeek article, the main focus is that Apple is looking to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone, which would reduce, only mildly, some exposure to Google Search, and would help Microsoft more as their improving search engine is in the hands of iPhone fans everywhere. But this could be a humungous case of sour grapes, poised to no doubt leave a bad taste in our mouths. And we’ve seen it play out before.

<snip>

In 2010, moving to Bing would be perceived in the same light. While Bing has its fans, and I know some great people who work on the engine, the assumption from users is that Google is the gold standard in search. If Apple sells its customers short in what is perceived as a second class product, it erodes the customers’ trust, and perception of quality from what’s supposed to be a premium mobile experience. Even if Bing is twice as good as Google, no handful of on-stage demos from Steve Jobs and his team is going to make people think there’s more to the story than Apple playing favorites.

From my view, Google is as concerned with Facebook and Microsoft as it is with Apple. If Apple is going after Google with Bing as a revenge play, then we customers are pawns being forced to accept embedding of products we didn’t request. That very thing is what was at the heart of the DOJ’s case against Microsoft in the late 1990s, and has me feeling less inclined to trust Apple, not more so.

Apple has gained a loyal customer base through focusing on best of breed, even if it costs a little bit more. From Apple, I should be able to assume a higher quality product, and something that reflects real worth. Bing is good, the very best Microsoft has ever offered in search, but backroom shenanigans dealt out due to hurt feelings or assumed alliances is wrong, no matter what. I don’t think Apple and Google are going after each other’s throats right now, and if so, Google is thinking about Apple less than Apple is thinking of them, so making a move because of enemies’ rank is just ridiculous. It’s not 1997 any more, and I have alternatives.

I’ve been following Louis’ blog for a while already, and I generally agree with his spot-on takes on the ebb and flow within the social media industry.

However, I think he’s flat out wrong in this one.

Louis makes three assumptions, which I believe are incorrect:

Assumption #1 – Google is assumed to be the gold standard of search by the users.

I would ask how one is able to draw this conclusion. The reality is that the gold standard for search is different for everyone. You will always be able to find users who believe Bing returns better results for them and suits their needs better, just like you would be able to do the same for Google.

So how else would one assume that Google is the gold standard in search? By market share? That may sound fair, but does that mean that Louis, as a self-proclaimed Mac fan, believes that Windows is the gold standard of operating systems by the users?

Is Bing’s market share really a reflection of its usefulness to users relative to Google, or is it because of market inertia and perhaps the fact that many people just haven’t felt the need to try Bing before? And if it’s the latter, why is “marketing” Bing to a wider audience such a bad thing? Especially since of that wider audience, a portion of them will decide that Bing is the better search engine for their own purposes.

Assumption #2 – Consumers are hurt because of Apple embedding products that they don’t want.

Louis forgot that the user always has the option to switch to another search provider (on both the iPhone and Mac versions of Safari) if they wanted. Choice is always good for the consumer, isn’t it?

Is Google hurting consumers by bundling Avast! Free Antivirus with Google Pack instead of Microsoft Security Essentials, whom AV Comparatives rates as the best-performing free antivirus program available?

Assumption #3 – “Backroom shenanigans” dealt out due to hurt feelings or assumed alliances is wrong.

Realistically, as pundits and outside observers, we don’t know at this point whether this deal is driven by revenge or sour grapes or is it really strictly a business move.

Frankly speaking, so what if this whole thing is about corporate gamesmanship? Didn’t Apple form an alliance with Google for many years and leverage on each other to compete against Microsoft and the rest of the world? Was that wrong?

And if working out partnerships and marketing agreements equates to “backroom shenanigans”, then basically every company in the world conducts shady business. Which of course it’s not, silly. Because all companies have the right to explore and pursue different partnerships to help grow their business. This is capitalism and the free market at work; there’s nothing to see here.

If Apple and Microsoft happen to strike a deal because it made business sense for them, I don’t think anyone can fault them for that – especially since the deal will bring more choice to consumers. (Can I use Bing from the iPhone web browser today?)

Lastly, it’s interesting that Louis made the observation that Google has not turned “evil” yet. Honestly, I don’t like labels like “evil” or “non-evil”, because no one can really define where one stops and the other starts. But perhaps Louis can find out more about HungryGoWhere’s Google encounter for an alternative viewpoint. (Hint: search for “survival and promotion”)

Note: This article was originally published on The Digital Movement. I have made some slight grammatical edits in this version.

Microsoft. Google. Apple.

Whenever someone starts a conversation about Silicon Valley, computers or even just technology in general, you won’t get very deep in the conversation until someone mentions one of these three companies.

That’s expected. Just like Exxon Mobil is the flag bearer for the energy industry (remember, I said energy, not clean energy) when one thinks about the poster child of the technology industry, most people will think no further than one of this triumvirate of companies.

(Perhaps a certain bookseller will join the three in the near future, but for now, it’s only these three.)

Collectively, Microsoft, Google and Apple made over USD 28.7 billion in revenues this past quarter (12.9, 5.9 and 9.9 billion respectively). More impressively though, all three companies managed to handily beat earnings expectations in a down economy, and managed to turn in a healthy 24% net profit margin on average between them (28%, 28% and 17%).

For the average consumer or business user, there is not a single day that goes by where one doesn’t use at least one product from any of these three companies. In fact, there are more and more people like me nowadays, who actually use and rely on multiple products from all three companies every single day without exception.

We’ve rarely seen this level of dependence on technology before. Even during the monopoly heydays of AT&T and Standard Oil, there would be days that go by where you didn’t need to make a phone call or use oil.

Fierce Competitors or Strange Bedfellows?

As a non-biased observer in the tech industry (okay, maybe a teeny bit biased), it is always amusing for me to see these three companies compete and clash with each other in virtually every segment of the tech industry. However – entertainment value aside – many observers will certainly question why these three companies try to do everything and compete with each other everywhere.

Does Microsoft really need to go into the portable music player or search business? Does Google really need to build mobile operating systems or be in the business of selling books? What the heck is Apple anyway? Is it a computer maker, a software company, a mobile platform or a music store?

To really understand the dynamics between these three companies and why they compete (or partner) with each other the way they do, one has to look a bit deeper and really try to understand their motivations and long-term strategies.

Here is just one person’s interpretation based on his own opinions and observations. Let’s start with Apple.

Just Apple Please; Drop the Computer

Apple doesn’t think of itself as a computer company anymore. Nothing illustrates this as well as the fact that Apple changed its name from “Apple Computer, Inc.” to “Apple Inc.” in 2007. Why should it be a computer company and compete with the other computer companies in the industry like Dell, HP and Lenovo? And does it make sense to compete as an OS company? Steve Jobs certainly didn’t think so, as he famously declared in 1996, “The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”

While most people know Apple as the bright and shining Silicon Valley star it is today, Apple actually had to weather some tough times. Things were so bleak in 1997, that Apple received a $150 million dollar investment… from Microsoft, of all companies. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned for a second go as Apple CEO, and led one of the most remarkable turnarounds that the tech industry has ever seen. I believe the reason why Apple is successful today is because they believed in a few important principles.

First of all, even though the PC wars may technically be over, Apple sensed that there are still new markets to be tapped. For the lack of a better term, I’m going to call it Luxury Computing. Just like in a commoditized automobile market there exists a highly profitable market for high-end luxury sports cars, Apple felt that it can create such a market out of the computing industry as well. Apple believed that if you can create something so cool and so out-of-this-world that it immediately differentiates you from your competitors while not sacrificing on any functionality, then people will buy it. That was how Apple started rolling out its tremendously successful line of aesthetically-pleasing Macs – starting with the first “iMac” in 1998. Even the new name had some flair in it.

Beautiful aesthetics, excellent industrial design and perfect execution certainly helps differentiate one computer from the rest, but to Apple, that is not sufficient. In order to completely ensure differentiation, Apple felt that they needed to control every aspect of the user experience and ecosystem. This is the biggest difference between the PC world and the Mac world – in Apple’s view, there is too much risk in letting the ecosystem have a say in how happy your users are with your product.

This is why Apple felt like it wasn’t sufficient for them to build their own hardware. They also needed to create their own operating system (OS X), web browser (Safari), media player (iTunes), portable music player (iPod), mobile phone (iPhone), video codecs (Quicktime), online store (iTunes Store), retail store (Apple Store), backup device (Time Capsule), TV set top box (Apple TV), lifestyle software (iLife) and productivity software (iWork). And that list goes on and on.

In fact, I believe Apple’s ultimate goal is for consumers to be perfectly content and productive using 100% Apple products for all their computing and entertainment needs. And if users are happy and feel that they are using a luxury product, they are willing to pay more and contribute to higher margins.

This is also why Apple is seemingly trying to reach out in so many different directions at once. It simply cannot afford to trust any aspect of the computing experience to other parties and must always look to build and innovate something from within. Even the ecosystems that Apple does allow to flourish – like the iTunes App Store – are frustratingly regulated and controlled.

This also explains why Apple competes with Google and Microsoft on so many different vectors – web browser, mobile phones, operating system, software, etc. In its never-ending quest to provide users with the best differentiation possible, it has no choice but to compete in all these areas with the “Apple experience”.

If you look at how Apple has successfully transformed itself from a computer company to an all-encompassing consumer experience company, it really shows how Apple has a knack of creating new and profitable markets where it didn’t exist before. In Steve Jobs own words in 1996, “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing.” With Jobs as the CEO, Apple is good at finding the next big thing. And finding the next big thing is important, because for every next big thing that you can find, you can further increase your profits and reduce your risk by diversifying your business.

Want to bet against the Apple Tablet? I certainly won’t.

To achieve the goal of consistently finding their next big thing, Apple is willing to be an early adopter in technology. The iPhone is the world’s first fully touch screen-enabled mobile phone. The new 27” iMacs are something that has never been seen before. Even if this results in Apple being more expensive, so be it. You execute it perfectly, people will buy it.

One last interesting observation about Apple: Sometime around the mid-2000s, Apple forged a deep, yet unofficial partnership with Google, in a bid to – in my opinion – compete with Microsoft. It made perfect sense at the time. Apple provides the hardware, and Google provides the cloud services that add value to the hardware – particularly for devices like the iPhone.

However, Apple subsequently realized that Google was more of a competitor than a friend, and that partnership rapidly dissolved earlier this year. We shall see why next.

Google Wants to Help You Use the Internet

Google – one of the most profitable and powerful tech companies in Silicon Valley today – has an extremely simple business model.

It boils down to this: The more you use the Internet, the more money Google makes.

How do they make that money? Well, the more you use the Internet, the more likely that you will use their market-dominant Google Search. And the more you use Google Search, the more likely that you will have AdWords-driven advertisements thrown your way, which makes money for Google. Also, the more you use the Internet (particularly Google’s free services like Gmail), the more comfortable you will be in trusting your data and transacting in the cloud. And the more comfortable you are with the cloud, the more likely you are willing to pay to put your data in the cloud (Google Apps) or buy stuff from Google on the cloud (Google Bookstore), which also makes money for Google.

In fact, someone told me before that if you look at Google’s revenue over the years and plot that against global Internet usage over the years, it is almost a linear relationship. Simple, right?

This principle alone explains virtually every single product or service that Google comes up with. They either promote Internet use, or they act as a hedge to prevent other companies from disrupting the use of the Google-controlled Internet. And this is also why Google gives away virtually everything for free. They never intend to make money from these products and services – they will make back their investments from the increased revenue from increased Internet usage.

• Gears? It makes web applications more powerful, which will entice users to use the Internet more.
• App Engine? It promotes the rapid development of new Web 2.0-ish services, which will entice users to use the Internet more.
• OpenSocial? It promotes the rapid development of social networking-enabled services, which will entice users to use the Internet more.
• Chrome? What if one day Internet Explorer comes with a built-in ad-blocker? Chrome is a hedge against that.
• Android? What is one day the iPhone or Opera Mobile comes with a built-in ad-blocker? What if Microsoft forces all the mobile device makers who use Windows Mobile to default their search provider to Bing? Android is a hedge against that. (Others think so too.)
• Chrome OS? What if one day Windows comes with a built-in ad-blocker? Chrome OS is a hedge against that.
• Vehement support for HTML 5? What if the de-facto standard for Internet video and rich Internet applications continues to be plug-in based technologies like Flash and Silverlight? Google can’t possibly have the keys of their kingdom under the control of a couple of gatekeepers like Adobe and Microsoft! HTML 5 is a hedge against that.

This explains why Google competes with Apple and Microsoft on so many different vectors – web browser, online services, mobile phones, operating system, etc. In its never-ending quest to ensure that global Internet usage grows unfettered at a steady rate, it has no choice but to compete in all these areas.

This gets pretty annoying and disruptive for Google’s competitors, since Google loves to give stuff away for free when their competitors are charging for it.

Google also tried to invade Apple’s turf earlier this year with the whole Google Voice incident, which explains why their partnership fizzled shortly after the incident came to light.

To Google’s credit, it does recognize that it’s risky to only look at consumer Internet use as your primary revenue source, and has been diligently trying to diversify into the enterprise space with Google Apps. However, although Google is not established in the enterprise space yet, this is a shot across the bow to Microsoft, which lives and dies by the enterprise.

Speaking of Microsoft…

You Mess with Microsoft, They Mess You Back

When most people think about Microsoft, they think of a two-trick pony that survives only on its dominant Windows and Office franchises. The reality though, is that the Microsoft of today is an incredibly diverse company; in fact, based on Microsoft’s latest financial results, Windows and Office only contribute about 54% of Microsoft’s total revenues. Segments like the Xbox business and enterprise server business surprisingly contribute to a large part of Microsoft’s revenues nowadays.

However, having said all of that, Windows is still Microsoft’s bread and butter. If Microsoft loses the operating system, it’s game over for the Redmond giant. And if competitors are making it difficult for you to do your business, make sure you make things difficult for them to do theirs also.

This alone explains why Microsoft feels the need to diversify and compete in certain areas that may not be perceived as traditional Microsoft competencies.

None of this is as evident as Microsoft’s investment in the online business – particularly in search – despite losing money quarter after quarter.

Microsoft sees Google as a disruptive competitor, with free or cheap offerings looking to displace Microsoft offerings in both the consumer and enterprise space. Chrome OS is free, Windows is not. Android is free, Windows Mobile is not. Google Apps are cheap, Office is… well, perceived as more expensive than Google Apps.

Google can afford to be disruptive, because it has a massive cash cow called AdWords that can fund virtually everything they do. So if you are Microsoft, you have to force them to play defense as well, and you attack Google’s Internet empire with an Internet empire of your own. Thus is why despite hemorrhaging billions of dollars every year, Microsoft needed to put in the investment to commit to the success of Bing, Windows Live, MSN and the rest of Microsoft’s online properties.

It’s still early days – especially for Bing – but Microsoft needs to strategically be in the online game for the long haul. And if past history is any indication, Microsoft prevails more often than not whenever it consciously picks a battle it wants to win and commits serious resources to it.

As for competing with Apple… Well, there isn’t as much to say here.

As far as PCs are concerned, both sides seem to have carved out their respective niches, and it looks to be status quo for a while. Despite Microsoft’s gift to Apple called “Windows Vista”, Apple made no attempt to enter the enterprise space. Microsoft followed Apple’s lead and realized that people not only liked functional PCs, but also aesthetically-pleasing PCs. Thus Microsoft worked very hard with its ecosystem of partners to make sure Windows 7 (as well as the plethora of new PC hardware hitting the market now) are both functional and aesthetically-pleasing.

Microsoft also realized that Apple’s practice of offering an end-to-end consumer experience for the user is what users wanted, which is why Microsoft diversified into consumer electronics like the Xbox and the Zune. The future Microsoft will likely be an all-encompassing consumer-oriented company that brings a consistent computing experience across all of the devices that consumer will use during a day. Steve Ballmer alluded to it many times before, in terms of Microsoft’s “three screens and the cloud” strategy.

Now if only Microsoft can fix Windows Mobile…

A Classroom Analogy

So 2500 words later, what can we conclude or predict about the future?

Frankly speaking, in this volatile tech industry where a content management system for 140-character messages can get a USD 1 billion valuation, we really can’t conclude or predict anything.

However, if I was a betting man, I would bet that all three tech giants will be around for a long while to come. I believe there may be a redistribution of market share for certain products and services, but all three companies will stake out their sweet spots and remain incredibly profitable while keeping each other in check. And ultimately, the big winners in that scenario are us, the consumers.

Try this analogy: If you were in a classroom and there were three girls you liked in your class, who would you rather date?

• Would you date the girl who is always gorgeous with her expensive designer clothing and perfectly-manicured nails who desires to bring you all over town to all of her favorite nightspots to make sure you always have a good time? (Apple)
• Or would you date the cute and confident girl who always volunteers to help you with all your home work and keeps you company whenever you need it because she thinks that it’s mutually beneficial for the both of you to be hanging out together all the time? (Google)
• Or perhaps you prefer the pretty and tough girl who despite her previous, colorful life experiences making her more mature and worldly than the rest, she doesn’t like to brag about herself and whenever you need anything, you know you can always depend on her? (Microsoft)

IMO, the only acceptable solution (for this make-believe world at least, but perhaps not for the real world) would be to accept polyamory and to date all three at the same time.

According to BusinessWeek, Apple is banking on the Windows 7 launch as its “best chance in years to win over longtime PC users.”

BusinessWeek describes the Apple strategy here:

In the coming weeks, Apple is expected to hit those computer buyers with advertising aimed at luring them to its Macs. It will likely make the case that Macs are less susceptible to viruses and are best suited to its popular iPods and iPhones. And look for it to poke fun at Microsoft for making XP owners go through an arduous process to upgrade to Windows 7—one that includes backing up all their files to an external drive, reformatting their PC, and then reinstalling all of their old programs, assuming they still have the CDs. “Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out. If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?” says Schiller.

Now, perhaps I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I really don’t follow Apple’s thinking here.

I’m not even talking about the fact that Apple is dusting off the decade-old “Macs are more secure than Windows” message which has already been debunked multiple times since the Vista days.

Nor am I talking about how as an iPod and iPhone user running Windows 7 on my home PC, I don’t think I’m missing anything that my esteemed Mac colleagues are enjoying.

What I really don’t get is this: Because it’s difficult to upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows XP, you should buy a Mac instead.

Let’s see:

1. To upgrade from XP to Windows 7, one needs to pay a few hundred dollars for the OS, back up all their documents (using Windows Easy Transfer I would presume), do a clean install of the operating system (which includes formatting their drive for them), install applications, and copy their data back.
2. To switch from a PC running XP to a Mac, one needs to pay a few thousand dollars for the Mac, back up all their documents, acquire applications for the Mac (since their Windows apps won’t work), install applications, copy their data back, and finally learn how to use a Mac.

Is switching to a Mac that much easier than upgrading from XP to Windows 7? It sure is a heck of a lot costly though!

But that may be a subjective argument. Fine. However, the more fundamental head-scratcher is this:

Why would these (presumably) mainstream XP users switch to a Mac now?

I mean, if billions of advertising dollars and three years worth of “Get a Mac” commercials didn’t convince them then, why would it now? Just because Microsoft releases it’s strongest operating system in years that Gartner proclaims is “all but inevitable“, this represents Apple’s best conversion chance in years? Really? Even better than the dog days of Windows Vista?

Am I missing something here or is there too much hyperbole flying around Cupertino lately?

I had the opportunity to attend the press conference for Anime Festival Asia 2009 a couple weeks ago (photos here).

Now, I’m not normally the type of blogger that attends (or gets invited to) media briefings for consumer events like AFA, but I was pretty stokked to attend this one since I am a huge anime fan. The press conference was more or less as I expected, and frankly, I’m pretty excited about AFA this year.

But I’m not here today to write about how AFA09 will have double the number of musical artistes compared to last year, with Yoshiki Fukuyama and Shoko Nakagawa joining AFA incumbents May’n and Ichirou Mizuki in concert.

Nor am I interested in writing about how the AFA09 venue will include a maid cafe featuring a group of seven “maids” that were handpicked through a closed-door audition process and which seems to be marketed more as an all-Japanese idol group but in reality the group consists of all Singaporean girls.

Lastly, I’m also not going to write about the pleasant yet not-so-surprising development that the powers that be are positioning Singapore as the next anime marketing and creativity hub – and as a first step in the right direction – are holding a one-day business conference (Animation Asia Conference 2009) together with AFA09.

Instead, and three run-on sentences later, I would like to highlight something I realized recently:

Nowadays you will hardly find any announcements or build-up for big events without some kind of social media component to it.

This is actually a good thing, particularly if the social media piece is executed well. And executing it well does not mean only coming up with an event #hashtag or liberally creating multiple Twitter accounts.

In AFA’s case, I believe that they integrated the social media aspect into their event build-up very nicely, and one way to understand it is to compare AFA09 with AFA08.

AFA08 was held on Nov 22/23 of 2008. According to DarkMirage’s blog post, the press conference was held on Sep 3, 2008, or two months before the event. Before then, not many people (if any at all) knew about the event – especially not casual anime fans like myself who were not tuned into the local online anime community. In fact, I didn’t even know about AFA08 until someone told me near the end of October, or only one month prior to the event. And many of my colleagues and friends didn’t know about AFA until I told them basically the week before.

Information flow for AFA08 was also pretty one-directional. Besides an email address listed on the AFA08 website for general inquiries and the option for users to befriend the AFA mascot (AFA-kun) on Facebook, I believe there really wasn’t much interaction between the fans and the event organizers.

AFA09 will also be held on Nov 22/23 of this year. This time around, the Facebook page and Twitter account for AFA09 was created as early as May 29, or a good six months before the event when the event build-up started (1st thing I like). Furthermore, if you scan through the Facebook and Twitter content streams, you will realize that it’s not a one-directional flow of information, but actual conversations are going on between the event organizers and the fans (2nd thing I like).

And what’s more – oftentimes the original content that is being posted has nothing to do with the event itself, but are anime-related news or tidbits that fans will enjoy (3rd thing I like). That helps position AFA’s social media channels to be not only a temporary thing just for this year, but actually an useful resource with a community that will come back and survive post-event. And of course, that could be very useful when you want to talk about AFA10, or market other products and services to the community.

(Interestingly, the AFA09 Facebook page has close to 10x more Fans than the AFA09 Twitter account has followers. Yet another validation that teens don’t really use Twitter?)

The thing is – as the handful of people reading this would probably know – nothing I described above is rocket science. However, as easy as it is to create a Facebook page, start a WordPress blog or register for a new Twitter account, sustaining and running these social media channels well is an entirely different ballgame.

I think some social media blogger once said (it could be Ben; I don’t remember) – that it’s his hope that one day there will be no need for social media specialists anymore, but instead social media becomes an invaluable tool that all PR, marketing, and event professionals will know how to leverage.

And companies agree with this view as well. Based on this IPR report (PDF), close to 80% of companies today think that social media skill sets are important for new PR and marketing hires.

Anyway, successful social media case studies like AFA and Resorts World make me hopeful that the day that we don’t need a separate social media specialist anymore may actually come a lot sooner than we think.

Sensational headline for sure, and although some don’t agree with him, I actually agree with a lot of what he says.

IMO, as much as Redmond doesn’t want to admit it, the Windows franchise is facing it’s biggest challenge in years.

No doubt the economy has something to do with it (although Gruber dismisses that argument), and no doubt the Mac is a pretty product. The prevalence and acceptance of cloud services today also de-emphasizes the operating system to some degree. And the theory that Apple controls 91% of the revenue share for computes costing $1000+ (according to NPD) spells doom for the Windows business is also plausible (or not).

I agree with Gruber that Windows 7, as much acclaim that it has garnered, will probably not convince a Mac user to go back to Windows (Technologizer doesn’t think it matters). WinExtra sees Windows 7 as a fresh start for Microsoft. I agree, and that is a good starting point for us to use to measure the success of Windows 7 in the upcoming years.

But considering everything, it’s not a surprise to me that the Windows business saw a 29% year-on-year decline this year. This is also why I think Microsoft did the wise thing years ago and diversified into enterprise, search, online services, productivity tools, mobile, gaming, cloud computing and so forth instead of putting all their eggs in the desktop PC basket. Regardless of what happens to Windows on the consumer desktop, I believe this diversification will help Microsoft remain strong.

And Microsoft, while chasing competitors Google and Apple in certain segments, does have a history of innovation and creating great products. I agree with MG Siegler. Innovate and make the best products, and everything else will fall into place.

Anyway, back to the Daring Fireball article. Gruber writes:

Today that is simply no longer the case. Microsoft has lost all but a sliver of this entire market. People who love computers overwhelmingly prefer to use a Mac today. Microsoft’s core problem is that they have lost the hearts of computer enthusiasts. Regular people don’t think about their choice of computer platform in detail and with passion like nerds do because, duh, they are not nerds. But nerds are leading indicators.

This is where I totally don’t agree with him.

I consider myself a computer enthusiast since my middle school days, and someone who consciously chose computers as his career. As a computer enthusiast, I want to have full end-to-end control over the entire computing experience, from hardware to operating system to software. And I believe many computer enthusiasts agree with me.

IMO, the PC and Windows ecosystems are unparalleled as far as the flexibility and versatility they provide computer enthusiasts like myself to control the end-to-end computing experience. This is something that I believe a Mac can never provide, at least not under Apple’s current philosophy of controlling the product as much as possible.

The PC ecosystem is a vibrant community of multiple vendors supplying every single imaginable hardware part available for you to build your own PC exactly as you wish. I believe Windows has the biggest ecosystem of software applications, hacks, and utilities of any operating system today. Need to perform a certain task? To borrow a marketing phrase from Apple, there is an app for that on the PC.

I don’t think computer enthusiasts are necessarily the ones attracted to Macs. Instead, I believe Macs appeal to the power users who want a stylish machine and don’t want to go through a lot of hassle to get a good user experience out-of-the-box. I have seen many of my friends use Macs before. While the user experience is stunning, I can’t help but feel that everyone’s experience seems very… similar.

As a computer enthusiast, I like my computing experience to be unique, customizable, and more importantly, fully under my control.

That’s why I am extremely bullish on the Firefox browser, because of it’s huge library of add-ons.

That’s why I applaud Microsoft introducing web slices and accelerators in Internet Explorer 8, as easy ways to customize and extend the browsing experience.

That’s why I support jailbreaking iPhones.

And that is why I don’t see myself giving up on the PC/Windows platform anytime soon. Even if I do get a Mac in the future, it will be an auxiliary machine, and likely won’t supplant my main workstation.

(This is the kind of post where you need to make sure you read my full disclosure on my About page.)

There are some plugins that practically all WordPress blog owners have installed: Akismet, WP Super Cache, some Google Analytics plugin (pick your favorite from a dozen different implementations), and so forth. Everyone knows about these plugins, so I’m not going to talk about them today.

What I would like to share with you instead are 5 WordPress plugins that may not be as well known, but I have personally found them to be quite useful for my own blog.

All of these plugins work on WordPress 2.8.2, the latest version of WordPress at this time.

In alphabetical order…

AZIndex

The AZIndex configuration UI gives you many options to customize your index page

All blogs with a lot of content need an easy way for readers to find the content they need. The two basic ways to do it is through search or some sort of article index. Even for a small blog like mine, I have found that having an index can be pretty useful, even if only for me to find the article that I need quickly.

Click on my Taxonomy link above to see the index page that I have created for my blog. It would be difficult for me to manage and update the index manually, but with the AZIndex plugin, you can create and manage a highly-configurable blog index with rich navigation options very easily.

The plugin is chock full of features, and the UI for creating and managing the index is straightforward and functional.

And once you have created your index, you can activate it by using the WordPress short code in your page text, such as:

[cc lang='text' line_numbers='false'][az-index id="1"][/cc]

It doesn’t get any simpler than that!

BTW, for those of you interested in the rotating tag cloud on top of my index page – that was not created by AZIndex, but a different plugin, WP-Cumulus, instead. WP-Cumulus is a pretty nice plugin in its own right, but it’s basically just eye candy.

Update: You may have noticed that my Taxonomy page does not exist anymore. I decided to remove it for a site redesign. However, I still wholeheartedly recommend the AZIndex plugin!

BackType Connect

Check out this post I wrote last week. If you scroll through the 235 comments there, notice that I was able to pull in comments from social media services like Reddit and Twitter into my comment stream?

Well, you can use the BackType Connect plugin to do that.

BackType is a relatively new social media service which aims to index and catalog millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media so people can find, follow and share comments.

By installing the plugin, you will be able to leverage the BackType service and display comments from other blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit and Hacker News which are talking about your blog post. These comments behave just like any other comments, and your users can reply to them and so forth.

Note that you will need a BackType API key (and thus need to register an account with BackType) in order to use the BackType Connect plugin. Update: The API key will automatically be generated for you when you install the plugin. You don’t need a BackType account!

Relevanssi

Better WordPress search results with Relevanssi

Like I mentioned above, besides creating indexes, search is the other way which can help your readers find the content that they are looking for on your blog.

Unfortunately, the default search functionality in WordPress sucks.

I tried other options before, like Google Custom Search. The search results were alright, but somehow it had problems indexing the correct pages and posts on my blog.

So after I read this excellent article by Joost de Valk, I decided to take matters into my own hands and use plugins and hacks to make WordPress search suck less.

Joost recommended using the Search Reloaded plugin. Unfortunately, it wasn’t free. Someone in the comments suggested wpSearch (a Lucene-based search engine), but unfortunately it had annoying problems with indexing after articles were updated. Finally, I came across the wonderful Relevanssi search plugin created by Mikko Saari. It basically does everything that wpSearch was supposed to do, minus the indexing problems.

Armed with Relevanssi, Joost’s instructions, some minor supplementary plugins (Search Excerpt and Search Suggest), and a few hours, I was able to create a WordPress search experience that I’m finally happy with.

Relevant. Neat. User-friendly. Useful.

If Mikko is reading this – my last request to you: Would you be able to make Relevanssi index blog comments as well as the blog contents? Update: Relevanssi indexes blog comments now. Awesome!

Shutter Reloaded

All modern blogs need some kind of lightbox plugin.

(If you are not sure what a lightbox script does, basically it allows you to view images on the blog page without leaving the page. For example, click on any of the images above and see what I mean.)

In the WordPress plugin directory, there are literally dozens of different lightbox plugins that you can choose from. I personally tried at least five or six different kinds.

Bottom line – Shutter Reloaded is the best of the bunch in my opinion. Fastest performance, rich functionality, clean JavaScript code, and minimum incompatibility problems.

I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Widget Logic

This widget will only be displayed if the current page is the 'about' page

If you look at my blog’s home page, About page, search results page and any of my blog posts, you will realize that depending on which page you are viewing, the widgets on the right sidebar will vary.

For example, on my search results page, the widget for tags and most recent posts don’t appear. On my home page, I have a huge widget (“Who is the Armchair Theorist?”) that does not appear anywhere else. And likewise, on my About page, it shows a whole bunch of other widgets that can only be found on my About page.

How can I do that? The answer is the uber-versatile Widget Logic plugin.

In a nutshell, Widget Logic allows you to set a conditional expression for each widget which will determine whether the widget will be rendered or not. This is very powerful stuff, since you can use any of the WordPress Conditional Tags or even generic PHP code as part of your conditional expression!

How cool is that?

Keep that in mind as you sit down, relax, and listen as I tell you a story…

Boycott Novell: “This is not a hate site”

I had a pretty interesting experience this past week.

Last week, while I was browsing around the Internet, I chanced upon this article on a website called Boycott Novell (BN) which talked about Bing.

To my surprise, with all of the good buzz that Bing has been getting since its launch, this article was a poorly-organized mess of incredible negativity and aggressiveness, even going as far as accusing Microsoft of bribery and vandalism (I’m not kidding – read the article). Naturally, it doesn’t mention anything positive about Bing whatsoever, despite the undeniable fact that literally thousands have expressed positive sentiments for Bing on both the blogosphere and on Twitter.

This was strange to me, since BN proclaims that:

This is not a hate site. This is neither a crusade nor any type of propaganda front. We have our mind set on a single goal: finding out the truth.

[...]

If you are new to this site or just happen to lurk, we encourage you to take part in the discussion. We perceive comments as discussions, not just placements for feedback and correction. We are very responsive to comments.

So naturally, in the spirit of open social media discussion, I left a comment, expressing my opinion that I felt the article was a collection of cherry-picked articles against Microsoft.

My debate with the author went on for a few rounds, and finally to my surprise, the author accuses me of being a paid astroturfer and a Microsoft shill for failing to disclose that I work for Microsoft in my comments.

Now, I have a few problems with this accusation:

1. First of all, it is simply not practical to disclose who you work for or represent in every single blog comment you leave. Hardly anyone does that. Scoble doesn’t do it. Matt Cutts doesn’t do it.
2. What most people do however (including myself), is to leave a URL link to their website or blog so interested people can find out more about who you are. I never comment anonymously, and I didn’t do so in this case.
3. I never tried to obfuscate the fact that I worked for Microsoft. In fact, on my About page, I prominently state in the first few lines that I am a a technology evangelist working for the biggest software company in the world. If that’s not enough, on the front page of my blog is a prominent link to my public LinkedIn profile, which clearly shows that I work for Microsoft.
4. The worse thing is, comments have been disabled on the post which accuses me of being an astroturfer. So much for a site which claims to “encourage you to take part in the discussion” and is “very responsive to comments”.

I can say with 100% certainty that every other blog I’ve visited and commented on before (even the slightly more fanatical blogs like TheAppleBlog), people will argue and debate with you about the points you bring up til no end, but they will never attack your character or who you work for.

That is social media. That is open discussion.

Alas, not on BN. If you read the entire comment thread, you will realize that the author (as well as some in the BN community) rather attack you for who you are, instead of debating you on your arguments. Boden Larsen, a neutral commentator, sums it up best:

Yes, [Roy Schestowitz, the site author] resorts to an ad hominem attack and then goes on to defend this strategy. In my opinion you can never win once things turn in this direction, so don’t sweat it. I’m sure that many readers here see what’s happening even if they remain silent.

Obsession and Paranoia?

The initial encounter with BN piqued my interest in the website, not so much because of the content or their accusations, but because I found it both amusing and surprising at how paranoid and obsessed the BN community really was with everything Microsoft.

Here’s a sampling of articles published after my “encounter” with them:

• I subscribed to the BN news feed. Out comes this article: Boycott Novell Has New Subscriber
• BN actually filed a complaint to the FTC! Looking forward to see what comes out of this: Microsoft Reported to the FTC for AstroTurf Marketing
• BN also published a list of all known evangelists working for Microsoft. What’s hilarious to me, is that Brian Gorbett (Microsoft Evangelist) actually commented to have his particulars updated!
• BN has no choice but to change their commenting policy, claiming themselves to be the victim from abuse and intimidation from trolls.
• David “Lefty” Schlesinger, who is a member of the Linux community and has been falsely accused by BN before, defended me on many of the comments I made on BN. Naturally, BN (remember, they are the victim) has no qualms about smearing him.

And as expected, all of the accusatory posts above have commenting disabled.

Penguin Pete is the typical type of individual that you will find hanging out at BN. Check out these two articles that he wrote (one of which was quoted as a “source” on BN). Check out these gems which I took as direct quotes from his articles (all emphasis is his):

You know who Linux’s enemy is? Oh, nobody much. Just the most powerful corporation in the known universe, founded by the richest human being in the universe.

[...]

Well, that’s what’s going on in Linux and the FOSS community. Pardon us, but we’re fighting for our freaking LIVES! And everybody else’s freedom too, even if they don’t care about it themselves much.

[...]

Who else is on their side? Because, as a highly proud member of the Technology Freedom Movement, I’ll tell you this today: You’re with us or against us.

I know, that sounds really Republican-going-to-Iraq, doesn’t it? It isn’t often that life provides us such a black-and-white situation. But that’s what makes this day so special. This thing is snowballing out of control, picking up more people from both sides every day. Watch the comments, watch the blogs, mine, yours, everybody’s. Through it all, we will have a very clear view of what color shirt everybody is wearing.

You’re with us or against us. You’re with us or against us. You’re with us or against us.

To further show his classiness, he takes an otherwise inspirational story about the principal developer for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and twists it around to show the superiority of FOSS developers:

Since one of the commenters below launched into the typical spiel about how professional coders at proprietary software companies produce superior output compared to the hobbyists of open source who are all wearing sandals, etc., blah, blah, blah…I found this amusing, assuming it isn’t a parody site (crossing fingers). Here is the principle developer for Microsoft Internet Explorer. He’s a dropout, self-educated, and has prior job experience at at McDonalds, coffee shops, and a hotdog stand – and that’s not even the most embarrassing thing he says about himself.

What was that superior difference between FOSS and proprietary software again?

Anyway, let’s go back to BN:

I asked the BN community recently what they thought about Microsoft releasing 20,000 lines of source code to Linux. Surely as advocates of Linux and open source software, they would be happy right? I mean, even Greg Kroah-Hartman, the current Linux kernel maintainer and the lead of the Linux Driver Project, thinks it’s a great move.

By now though, you can probably guess that BN folks are less than thrilled:

As we know from inerrant Microsoft, Linux is a cancer that infects everything it touches. Microsoft just touched Linux. Is Microsoft a cancer now?

[...]

Microsoft’s “contribution” was made for one reason only, and that’s to promote their virtualisation stack. Ultimately, this only benefits those who run Windows.

Are we supposed to jump up and down for joy because of this?

Hardly.

Finally, if you are still not convinced that BN is an anti-Microsoft hate site sans a single thread of objectivity, well… listen to what the site author, Roy Schestowitz has to say:

This site is as much “anti-Microsoft” as the United States is “anti-Madoff” and the British are “anti-Mugabe”.

Those who do the crimes deserve no favouritism.

Folks, you decide for yourself whether BN and its community are obsessed and paranoid.

Social Media FAIL?

The question I ask myself is this – If I were in Roy’s shoes and I have a personal vendetta against Microsoft, is running BN in this manner the best possible way I can execute a plan to change public perception and win sympathizers?

I think for those who have been around social media a lot, you know that social media is all about credibility. And by consistently misinterpreting facts, using untrue but sensational headlines, censoring comments, using an immature, aggressive and condescending tone, and generally being poorly-researched, I can guess that Boycott Novell doesn’t have much (if any) credibility with anyone important in technology.

But then again, it could be that the facts are not on BN’s side, which means Roy has no choice but to make a lot of noise and hope to appeal to others’ emotions instead of debating using sound arguments and facts.

In any case, as much as BN claims otherwise, it is certainly not an open community, much less one that encourages open discussion and alternate interpretations/opinions.

What does the Linux/Open Source community think?

The last thing I was really curious about was whether BN represented the views of the open source community in general, or are they just a self-contained bunch of anti-Microsoft fanatics.

To get that answer, I did a simple search on Google (I didn’t use Bing, lest others accuse Bing of censoring results ).

Here is a post from the Linux community Linsux.org:

Update: It has been brought to my attention that Linsux.org is not a Linux community (in fact, far from it). So please take the comments below for what it’s worth. My bad.

Wow. I can’t say anything else but the so over used: BoycottNovell is the cancer that’s destroying Linux community.

Damn I never thought they were so “cunning”. That’s so real planing and “FUD” from their end. This Shit-what’s-his-name-itz is one psychotic megalomaniac planner. He know exactly hot to pull the strings.
Thank god he never became a politician, or things could be totally different.

I prefer that Shit-what’s-his-name-itz remains in BN rather then try to get some other more influential place in society.

What about the Ubuntu community, what do they think? [1, 2]

I think that boycott novell is pure garbage.

Do anyone even relies on it’s information? since it only spreads FUD and Conspiracy theory’s IMHO. I wonder myself how some articles are sometimes the most digged (on Digg).

Also this site gives bad name to the Linux comunity, giving an image that our comunity are a bunch of radicals and software “terrorists” who want to plant a Bomb on Redmond.

It’s obvious if you read the comments on the boycottnovell article regarding the codec issue, that these guys think they are better than everyone else – anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their views is, in their mind, unwelcome in Linux.

These guys are whack-jobs.

When BN tries to cross post their articles on the comp.os.linux.advocacy newsgroup, this is what the community thinks:

Roy Schestowitz is a classic narcissist and *yes* he *does* believe that he is above everyone else and that people won’t bother to check his sources and “facts”. He really does.

He has comments turned off on that story BTW. I guess even Schestowitz knows when he has screwed up really bad.

[...]

‘Boycott Novell’ is a sham laughingstock joke of a website.  It’s not taken seriously by anyone except a handful of like-minded Linux dweebs. When’s the last time Novell contacted you to discuss anything?  That’s what I thought.

You actually accept money to run Microsoft ads on the site – what kind of pathetic fraud does that?

There really is a whole lot more out there to read, if you are interested.

I think we can conclude the story here with a personal email I received just today from a prominent member of the Linux development community who I shall not name.

Hello,

Just wanted to point out that the conspiracy theorists at BoycottNovell do not represent the “community”. Just like the Unabomber did not represent “America”.

[...]

As long as you do not believe we are all wackos like those idiots, I felt it was worth pointing that out.

Update: Wow. I never expected my article to get close to 2000 page views in the few days since it was published (I know it’s not a big deal to many blogs, but for my humble blog, it is).

Anyway, here are some other reactions to my article (and to BN) from elsewhere that I found. I won’t extract any quotes here, but please feel free to see what others in the community have to say.

There is a discussion page for this article on Linux news website Lxer. The OpenSUSE forum discussion thread is here. And how can we possibly have an article about Boycott Novell without including any reactions from the Novell community?

More so than ever before, progressive companies today are exploring the use of experimental digital marketing to help them gain an edge over their competitors. Explore how organizations are leveraging technologies from companies like Microsoft and Adobe to build next-generation online experiences for innovative and experimental marketing.

There are many different kinds of experimental marketing techniques in the arsenal of a digital marketer today. However, I would like to focus on one particular kind of digital marketing tactic today, which is to leverage rich interactive user experiences to market your brand. This tactic can potentially not only increase customer loyalty, but also improve customer interaction as well as increase lead generation.

The idea is simple, although it’s easier said than done:

1. Build an online website, which may be a long-term micro site or an extension of one’s main company website.
2. The website is commonly promoted as a online reference or even a game, instead of a glorified online brochure.
3. Most importantly, this website must offer users an experience that is so cool, that they will have a reason to come back again and again, even though they may already be familiar with your company or product.

A good example of a forward-looking company which successfully leveraged this tactic is Hard Rock International.

Hard Rock Memorabilia

Since its inception in 1971, Hard Rock Café has accumulated over 70,000 pieces of rock memorabilia, which is physically scattered all around the world in its 146 restaurants and venues. In late 2007, Duncan/Channon, Hard Rock International’s worldwide marketing agency, proposed that its client share that collection – beyond the confines of its Cafes, Hotels and Casinos – with the entire world. This would also help Hard Rock to emphasize the authenticity of the company’s brand and to differentiate it from mass-market theme restaurants and hotel chains.

Duncan/Channon, together with interactive agency Vertigo, built the Hard Rock Memorabilia website using Microsoft’s Silverlight and Deep Zoom technology to bring users a unique online museum experience showcasing close to 900 pieces of the company’s memorabilia.

What is unique about this Webby-honored virtual museum is that the technology literally allows the users to zoom in and interact with the displayed objects in a way that is both unique and natural. Beyond horizontal and vertical scrolling, viewers can seamlessly zoom in – extremely close – to an object or group of objects to inspect its every detail and to learn the history behind that object. Over 2 billion pixels worth of memorabilia images were available on the site for inspection by the users using a simple user interface.

Here are five reasons why the Hard Rock Memorabilia site was successful as a digital marketing tool:

1. By empowering the users to closely inspect and interact with the memorabilia, the technology helped build an online experience which was able to capture the tangible spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. As Sean Dee, Chief Marketing Officer at Hard Rock International said, “Hard Rock’s Memorabilia site reinforces that our brand stands for that personal, authentic connection fans have with rock ‘n’ roll music and its heroes.”
2. As an online museum that constantly keeps its contents up-to-date, the Hard Rock Memorabilia site gave users ample reason to return to the site, and to develop loyalty with the brand. The site launched in early 2008 with only 500 items and gradually grew to the 900 items on display today, which resulted in an increase in site stickiness.
3. It also helped attract new visitors to Hard Rock’s website solely based on the attraction of the memorabilia museum. After the memorabilia site launched in early 2008, the Alexa ranking for the entire hardrock.com domain improved by about 50%.
4. The fun and interactive way the content is displayed in the virtual museum also dramatically improved the average time spent per user on the Hard Rock website. The more time users spent on the memorabilia website, the more time users will likely spend on the rest of the Hard Rock website.
5. Finally, the memorabilia museum also acted as a useful lead generation and referral tool. Every single piece of memorabilia is marked with the physical Hard Rock location that the item is located at. Users who are interested can follow direct URL links to the various Hard rock venues to conveniently find out information about the venue for an offline visit. Some items even provide direct URL links to the Hard Rock online store, thus giving the user a convenient way to make a purchase.

Building a rich and sticky web presence may not be an easy or cheap undertaking, but if it is done right, it can be a potentially rewarding one. As Hard Rock has clearly demonstrated, a well-executed online digital initiative can yield a very real and tangible ROI. Finally, web technologies from companies like Microsoft and Adobe are readily available today for companies to jumpstart the development of their own rich interactive websites.

OK, I really have to stop using that silly “un-prefix” gimmick.

unConference 2009 came and went this past Saturday. Except for a few technical glitches early on, the event was very dynamic and well-run, which is expected for an e27 event.

Like I mentioned in my pre-coverage of the event, I was really stoked to go, and thankfully I wasn’t disappointed one bit.

After last year’s Unconference (notice the subtle difference in the capitalization? Ah… branding), I hunkered down and wrote a 1800 word essay on the event.

Well, this year I’m not going to do that, for a couple reasons:

• Firstly, I really don’t want to write 1800 words for any single essay again. Ever.
• Secondly, whatever verbiage I can come up with at 3am on a weekday night won’t be able to top the great coverage already provided by folks like Young Upstarts, Andy Croll and Techgoondu. So I’m not going to bother.
• And lastly, we already have a perfect play-by-play coverage of the entire unConference 2009 from beginning to end, along with every opinion, emotion, commentary, and reaction attached to it, organized in one neat information stream for your consumption pleasure. It’s called Twitter, and really folks – it’s the next big thing.

So… I’m gonna do something different this year instead.

You know how you study two years of macroeconomics during university and the only thing you really get out of it is supply and demand?

Or you went through three years of physics in high school and the only thing you remember is E=mc^2?

Well, unConference 2009 had a lot of speakers, and all of them spoke a lot during the event. I’m gonna try and distill every session into just a few key lessons for your easy consumption. Saves me time, and saves you time.

Without further ado, here it goes. All the topic titles are copied verbatim from the official unConference schedule. I will only comment on sessions I actually attended in person.

Keynote – Market Size, Not Magic! (Scott Rafer)

• Lesson 1: Copying is OK and in fact encouraged.
  In fact, here is Scott’s money quote (via Andy Croll): “If you see something working well: copy it. There is no such thing as new ideas only good execution. It’s the right thing to do, just change the 20% you need to to make it work for your users.” So don’t spend so much time coming up with original ideas to change the world! Instead your startup should focus on what will likely be my new favorite phrase for the next few months, “innovation arbitrage”.
• Lesson 2: Always look to exit.
  Don’t bother about building a long-lasting company. Aim for achieving a turnover of over $1m-3m USD a year within 36 months and get the heck out!
• Lesson  3: A startup is really just about the math.
  It’s all about market size. The recommendation for success? Be late to market, be boring, copy, compete on price in targeted markets with enough potential users.
• Lesson 4: Google is EVIL.
  I didn’t say that. Scott did.

Panel – Innovation in Asia and Where is it heading? (Benjamin Joffe, Lu Gang, Lai Kok Fung, Wong Hoong An and Scott Rafer)

• Lesson 1: In panel discussions with five seasoned entrepreneurs, don’t bother paying any attention to the panel title.
  The moderator and speakers had a very entertaining and lively discussion around everyone’s own experience in their own startups, but the session had absolutely nothing to do with “Innovation in Asia and Where is it heading”. Not that I minded though.
• Lesson 2: An entrepreneur has to be like a cockroach.
• Lesson 3: Businesses pay, consumers don’t.
• Lesson 4: Good ideas always emerge over beer.
  Last three lessons courtesy of Hoong An from HungryGoWhere.com.
• Lesson 5: Freebies (either legal or illegal) will bring in traffic.
  Words from Dr. Lai, spoken in front of no doubt many government representatives within the audience. He’s just warming up for what was coming up in the next session.
• Lesson 6: Cloud Computing is the biggest competitor to venture capitalists.
  As a cloud computing evangelist, I definitely agree with Scott Rafer on this point. Imagine being able to slash your upfront infrastructure expenditure by over 95%. Who still needs VC money?
• Lesson 7. Google is EVIL.
  Again, not my sentiment, but implied by the panelists.

Talk by MDA (Priscilla Joy from MDA)

• Lesson 1: When you have an audience consisting of 85% males, expect “male-like” behavior when a hot girl is presenting on stage.
  No need to rehash what happened here; Young Upstarts covered it well in his blog post (along with visuals, courtesy of Hisham). At least she seemed like a good sport about it.
• Lesson 2: Old successful entrepreneurs that are past a certain threshold of age or success won’t show you any mercy, no matter how hot you are.

Breakout Session 3: Trends on Online Social Networks in Asia: Where and when it is heading (Bernard Leong)

• Lesson 1: Twitterfall is an awesome tool for live tweeting events.
  This weekend was the first time I’ve ever used it, and I became an instant fan.
• Lesson 2: Yung-Hui Lim from GreyReview is an absolute Twitter monster.
  He can simultaneously pay attention to Bernard’s talk, speak with the guys from Malaysia Entrepreneurs, show me how Wolfram|Alpha works, and still be able to pump out about 10 tweets a minute! That’s just godly…
• Lesson 3: You can’t make money out of Friendster.
  Claims Tyler Projects, creators of the uber-popular Facebook game, Battle Stations.
• Lesson 4: There are a whole bucketload more social networks in the world today than just the US-centric Facebook and MySpace.
  From Chinese Facebook-ripoff Xiaonei to dating-free Japanese network mixi to private luxury social network SENATUS, there are literally dozens of other successful social network services around the world, particularly outside of the US. And there are no economic moats in social networks.

Conclusion

Just like last year, this year’s unConference was a blast – but perhaps doubly so. The quality of content, interactions, and attendees are simply a step up from last year. And the whole place constantly had an air of vibrancy and excitement surrounding it.

Here’s hoping that next year’s unConference will be a two-day event. Just make sure you fix the Wi-Fi, clear the toilets, and triple-check the auditorium projector next time.

Regardless, I will definitely attend unConference again next year. Great job, e27!

Startups

You didn’t think I would finish this post without mentioning the 32 startups, did you? Ha!

Well… I am actually tempted to skip this part, since I’m pushing 1000 words already, and there were simply too many startups this time around for me to give a detailed rundown of all of them like I did for Unconference 2008.

Instead, I’m going to pass the buck and point you to Aaron Koh’s 30 second interviews with some of the startups at unConference this year. Alex (a.k.a. Mr. Steel) also has written some capsule reviews of the nine startups who did their pitch in front of the audience.

However, I’ll leave you with this. Here are the three startups that I saw on Saturday that I feel have the most potential. And not just commercial potential, but game-changing potential.

Thus, apologies to Klout, iTwin and OrSiSo – all promising startups with cool products that I love – since I would not consider them as game-changing… yet.

Here are the three startups with game-changing potential, in my opinion:

1. eJAMMING AUDiiO – Social network + bands + live broadcasts + music collaboration. Despite it’s unwieldly name, there are seriously so many possibilities this startup can pursue. Online concerts, musical training, artiste management, entertainment, you name it. If executed properly, eJamming has potential to evolve into the next MySpace. Seriously.
2. Human Network Labs (HNL) – These folks have an unique RF-based locationing technology that have serious potential. Have you seen the Microsoft Productivity Vision video yet? That kind of scenario (particulary the scene at the airport) is precisely enabled by technologies like this. If they can figure out how to distribute their chipset out to every single mobile device (before the handset makers come up with their own technology), the sky is really the limit for HNL.
3. MakeAffinity – This two-man outfit is seriously flying under the radar. They weren’t even one of the nine startups to pitch in the main session. Yet, I find their concept so alluring – a YouTube-like service, but instead of users contributing videos, users can contribute interfaces to their own real-world robots and hardware devices, which can then be used by other users. And all this is done over the Internet! Talk about bringing “user-generated content” to a new level. How much will you pay to be able to safely play with and fire a machine gun at a shooting range situated in another continent? Or remotely control a deep sea submarine for some underwater sightseeing? And we haven’t even started looking at what applications the porn industry can come up with.

Finally, the last word: If I were a VC and I absolutely must invest in one of the 32 startups and nothing else, I will have to say I will choose… eJAMMING AUDiiO.

Update: Singapore Entrepreneurs also wrote a pretty comprehensive report for the event. Fresh Baked Web also had a short writeup on the event.