Thundernewt in Seoul

Before the iPhone, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry owned the smartphone segment.  They did it by remarkably implementing the product that was remarkably envisioned by their founders, then pursuing enterprise sales as the strategy for achieving traction and phenomenal growth.

Enter Apple.

Apple took the incredible foresight of BlackBerry, and added consumer focus… and consumer focus is what I believe gave Apple its incredible advantage of BlackBerry in that critical first battle for mobile platform supremacy that reached beyond enterprise, where inefficient decisions were made by gatekeepers who were influenced by pesky (persistent? helpful?) sales people like me. Research in Motion maintained a formidable fleet of conmen oops, guys who would get you drunk to sign a contract oops, salesmen to keep just the right amount of variable-but-constant pressure on not only decision makers and influencers in enterprise, but also on decision makers and influencers at telecom companies, and among those who make government policy. RIM was definitely one of those companies were you had to drink the company’s generously spiked Kool Aid.

Focusing on the gatekeepers is a recipe for market inefficiency.  In enterprise sales, what’s right rarely matters.  What persuades the gatekeeper(s) to bless your product and sign the damn contract does matter.  And that invariably leads to striving to please That Guy who, in most cases, is probably not as smart as he should be, at least in the area where the sly salesman is pushing for him to make a decision.  In the worst cases, it can even lead to shadiness in the form of elaborate gifts or outright bribes.

Focusing on the end users is hard.  End users often don’t know what they want.  You can’t bribe all the end users. (Or can you?)  But if you’re Steve Jobs, you *tell them* what they want. And they listen.

RIM was comfortable with its proximity and relationship to the gatekeepers.  It made them lazy and complacent.  Further, it gave them a distorted worldview… like, say, Paris Hilton?  Or, worse, Gadaffi?  Or, perhaps more realistically, Dick Cheney?  My point is, RIM associated itself, its product development, and its go-to-market strategy too much with the halls of power and those who reside within them.  They lost touch with what people want when they’re not making decisions for thousands of their underlings.

Facebook is taking over the internet. First the aggregation of our social activities on the web in one destination.  Then the invasion of almost every website through a Like button that centrally gathers preference data for hundreds of millions of users.  Now the upcoming release of a commenting system that any website can embed, bringing all of that comment data back to our FB profiles.

These guys are on a freakishly fast march towards domination of the entire internet.  And you know what?  Most of us don’t mind.

I’ve been offline with MSN Messenger for over a week now. (It’s been a busy week, and there are so many other ways to keep in touch with people that I just haven’t bothered with it until now.)

Apparently I’m not the only one with this problem.

The solution, though, is as follows:

There is an error with your current account history log.

To fix the problem open messenger,

1)Go into sign in with a different account and click, the clear account history button.

2)Then exit and restart messenger.

3)When messenger restarts it will open a Personal contacts and corporate contacts window

4)Enter your desired messenger address into the Personal contacts window and it should log in.

Despite China and America’s economic interdependence, there is substantial cause for concern regarding their military policies.

For those who feel more comfortable with America being the world’s reigning military superpower, there may be some reassurance in America’s dominance on the list of absolute military spending.  America’s $680bn budget is six times larger than China’s.

But it’s not how much money you throw at the military that counts. It’s how the military spends it.  What are the absolute increases in military capabilities?  For the U.S., substantial increases in military capabilities haven’t been seen since the introduction of the stealth bomber (1981), Nimitz-class carriers (1975) and the nuclear bomb (1942-1946).  It’s been arguably over 29 years since we’ve seen substantial American game-changing military capabilities increase from America.

In the meantime, China has recently made a great leap forward in military capabilities:

• Electronic warfare (see this hack-battle between Google and China)
• Air force modernisation
• Navy modernisation
• Long-range missiles for targeting moving aircraft carriers (a tremendous game-changing event)
• Nuclear strike capabilities to the U.S. East coast
• Second-strike capabilities

Despite the efforts (and very interesting projects) of DARPA, the U.S. can only spend so much on R&D.  America is weighed down by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Granted, America’s soldiers are becoming battle-tested — but at no small cost. PTSD, injuries, deaths, and over a trillion dollars.

America’s military spending problem, vis-à-vis China:

• One Chinese soldier earns far less than an American soldier. Less money buys more soldiers in China.
• Unlike America, China doesn’t spend the vast majority of its budget on active war.  Instead, China’s money goes to building new capabilities.
• The theory of disruptive innovation applies -> America has an over-dependence on too many entrenched and successful military equipment manufacturers who may have to erode their own holy cash cows in order to successfully introduce new game-changing technology.
• America is accustomed to fighting wars and battles in which it has the technological advantage. That edge is now gone.

I hope that China’s not-so-subtle departure from its peaceful rise will not result in war. Two opposing forces with this much pent-up energy and capability is sure to create a shockwave felt in every crevice of our world.