As many people are, I find I'm often in a time crunch and there is never enough time to read everything.  As well, with so many good (and some times not so good) book titles, it is hard to know what to read next.  This is where Soundview Executive Book Summaries comes in for me.  What does Soundview do?  From their website:

"Receive 8-page text and 20-minute audio summaries of the top business books of the year in 8 digital formats, accessible anytime, anywhere in your Online Library on our website."

If you want further info, here is a link to a video that gives a good overview as well.

This is a great service that provides me with book summaries that I can download in a number of formats:  PDF, MP3, Kindle, eBook, Blackberry (to name a few).  As well, each month, they mail me a CD with audio summaries of three books.  These are a good added feature as well as I am easily able to listen to them in the car.  Beyond the summaries, they also do a good job of providing interesting extras, like author interviews.  I find these particularly good as they provide added insight to a book.

So how do I use this service and the summaries?  Are they replacing reading books for me?  Not a chance!  I use this service to augment my reading.  Often, the "next" book that I'm going to read is a book in which the summary was rather engaging and I want to read/own the full text.  

So if you are looking to tap into expanding what you read, but are time challenged, this is a good service to explore.  The wide variety of formats they offer are fantastic as they can be consumed how you like on whatever device is your preference.  The summaries themselves are well done, thoughtful and not simple "reviews" or overviews - the provide enough detail to give you the major aspects of the books they are summarizing.  

You can find them at www.summary.com or follow them on Twitter via www.twitter.com/businessbooks

Happy reading!

 Here is the latest podcast in mp3 format.  It is the same audio content as what I posted over on the

Items of interest in today’s podcast are:

1. • mip’s using iPodcastudio software on his iPhone to record the podcast.  A full review will come tomorrow on how it worked out for this podcast
   

2. • some thoughts on blogging and the value of blogging
   

3. • some thoughts on what is taking shape in the mobile wireless space, specifically around SmartPhones.

Hope you enjoy it!  

Mipcast-february-17

Even the types of advertisements will have the potential to deliver value and not simply behave as a marketing tool.  Rather than simply showing a product and building brand awareness or informing, ads will have the ability to provide value, to engage users and allow users to interact with the products/services they are advertising.  In a sense, the ad will cease to be an add.  It'll become content.  

You might think I'm simply drinking the Koolaid on this one.  You might think that if that type of transformation was going to happen, it would have happened on the web.  I say no.  It is something that could have happened on the web, but it didn't.  Publishers simply took print versions of their products and moved it to the web - for free.  Here, with the iPad, they have the chance to create new content-centric products that provide new value to the end consumer.  You might think I'm right out to to lunch on this.  I challenge you - watch the video and tell me you don't get goosebumps.  Tell me you wouldn't pay for that product that you see there?  

The iPad will transform consumption.  It is a content-consumption-centric device and the publishing industry is poised to capitalize on it.  Exciting times ahead!

We've heard about how much bandwidth iPhone users are using.  What I'm talking about though is that all that network usage isn't just downloading/consumption of content.  I posit that there is a lot of outgoing bits & bytes that are a result of users feeding the real time web.  Yes, some of that outgoing traffic is outgoing email and other such "traditional" usage, but I think that the outgoing traffic is increasingly traffic that contributes to the realtime web.  Applications like Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and such are just the tip of the iceberg.  I think that applications will emerge that are going to flood the Internet with realtime data and information.  We will flood the Internet with micro-content and that in turn will result in users consuming increasing amounts of micro-content in the form of "context-sensitive", "location-sensitive" information and alerts.  

Take a moment, as one example, to view the video below that made me think of my good friend and co-worker Stephen.  He's an avid golfer so this app made me think of him.  You are scratching your head now wondering "Golf? What the heck is mip talking about?"  I picked this example because it isn't something that comes to mind in terms of our devices capturing information about the world around us.  Watch the video and I'll continue my thoughts below the video clip.

That video clip shows a unique use for smartphones.  I think that this type of application that captures real-world data will continue to emerge throughout 2010.  It isn't limited to just fun/entertainment/social-like things either.  What about an app that capture my blood sugar levels, my heart rate levels, an app that captures what I've eaten through the day.  Those types of captured data could then be sent out like a Tweet in a secure fashion, not to my followers, but perhaps to a team of doctors.  What about an app that a sales person uses to capture all the things I try on while in the store.  Each time I try something on, he uses his iPhone to snap a picture of the barcode and he snaps a pic of me trying on the article of clothing.  When I'm done, whether I buy something or not, that info is saved into the retail database for later reference AND it is quickly sent out to me and my spouse for instance.  Again, real time feeding of the web, which is then consumed in micro-consumption.  The types of applications & settings for this type of things are limitless.  Organizations should be looking at ways not just to push content out to smartphone users, but look for ways for them to feed the real-time web in ways that are mutually beneficial.

One of the parts of the article that caught my eye was the following paragraph.

Novartis, for example, signed a $24 million deal last month with U.S.-based Proteus Biomedical to create “smart pills” that can transmit data from inside the body to monitor patients' vital signs and check they have taken medicines as prescribed.

 What struck me, as so often does these days, is that the underpinning success to what they are trying to do is going to be found in the data.  It's all about the data.  Big data.  What I mean by big data is that there will be vast amounts of data.  As I started this post above, the pharmaceutical industry wants to demonstrate/prove the value of their medications.  The fact of the matter, though, is that to demonstrate value, you have to first understand what that value is.  You can't do that by just collecting data.  You have to analyze that data.  In this case, as I eluded to, there are going to be mass amounts of data.  Imagine how much one person would generate in terms of data being transmitted from one of these smart pills.  Now multiply that by a week, by a month, by a year.  When you are done that, multiple it by 1000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people.  You see where this is going right?  There will be millions and millions of rows of data streaming into databases.  That is big data.

For the pharmaceutical companies to get value from all that data, there needs to be a robust business intelligence layer that sits atop a very robust enterprise data warehouse (EDW) infrastructure.  Without it, you don't see value.  You only have data.  

The challenge the article highlights is

The new era poses some notable challenges, not least the cultural gap between fast-moving technology companies, with rapid innovation cycles, and a more ponderous drugs industry, where bringing a new product to market typically takes 10 years or more.

but this is effectively overcome by leveraging an IT partner that engages in the rapid approach to business intelligence.  It isn't about the "fast-moving technology companies" at all.  It's about the shifting nature of data.  As they collect this data from new devices and couple that data with other sources, surprise findings will emerge.  That will challenge assumptions and upset well thought out long term plans.  Large business intelligence initiatives will yield little value.  Instead, a series of 100 day projects should be initiated, with each of these short burst initiatives doing two things:

1. providing value to the end-users, allowing the pharmaceutical companies to start to understand the value of their medications and demonstrate that value, and,
2. provide insight from lessons learned so that the next short 100 day initiative is better than the first.

These are things that I've seen inside industry verticals like telecommunication and financial services.  These industries grapple with making sense of what lay within their mass stores of data too.  I find it exciting that what the pharmaceutical industry is preparing to embark upon will allow them to transform their data into intelligence.  With that business intelligence, they can then move on to insight.  

The tagline for this app / service is "your local comic book store in your back pocket"  - that makes me smile!  I love comics.  Have collected them since I was 4 years old.  I'd seen this app for the iPhone and thought that the small screen size would be terrible for viewing such an illustrative form of content.  I like to pour over the detail in my comics.  I like to read the dialogue and study the art, picking up on details that the artist has poured his/her heart into.  

The iPad, with the larger screen and rich colour screen, will make Panelfly a gorgeous app to behold.  The iPad will change the way content is consumed, and it makes sense, that such a visual form of literature (comic / graphic novels) would be very well suited for the iPad.  Does that mean I'll stop buying comics at the local comic store?  No.  I view this type of app as something that will augment comic reading.  It doesn't seem to be available in Canada yet (boo boo), but hopefully it will become available in the near-future.  If it does, this would definitely be an app I'd have on my iPad that I wouldn't use on my iPhone.

Stay tuned for future posts about iPhone apps that I think will rock on the iPad.  If you have apps you'd like to suggest, feel free to post some thoughts in the comments below.

I've been reflecting on this idea-space via blogs over the past while as I've done work in the education vertical. While those of us in IT have blogged for a long time, and other early adopters as well outside of IT, from an industry perspective, many industries lagged behind and have really only just begun to explore, understand and leverage blogs.  They are starting to see that the blog is potential vehicle for students and teachers to create ideas, share ideas, build collaboratively ideas and ultimately build personal online portfolios.  As I've watched my clients within the education vertical discuss blogs and other social media tools I have most enjoyed seeing how it generates enthusiasm and passion coupled with value.

This reflection on blogging deepened for me as I witnessed my wife move into the blogosphere and social media yesterday evening.  She'd been wanting to explore ideas, chronicle things she was exploring with a specific focus on proactively exploring things in the area of health, fitness, family, cooking, getting back to the basics, travel, taking classes and other ideas.  In truth, she wasn't sure exactly where things would go.  She just wanted a forum to talk about some of the things she was exploring and thinking about.  So she create a blog which completely thrilled me.  I'd been using blogs for a long time.  I've been reading blogs of a technical nature and personal interest for a long time.  This thrilled me because it was using the tech in a completely non-tech area/way.  She launched Tomorrow I Will.... yesterday with a brief post.  Today, she was excited to post her most recent outing and thoughts.  She was enthusiastic, not just about the writing, but by the feedback.  It was the potential for conversing with people about these topics that really excited her.  Already, she's planned various people that she plans on chatting with, blogging about and perhaps even videoCasting about!

That got me to thinking about my own blogging and the importance of continuing to use mip's scan as a platform for developing/sharing ideas, providing insight with regards to things I've used/done and engaging in conversations with the many, many creative & smart people that abound.  If you find yourself in an industry / company that is looking to do the same, or if you are personally trying to expand your thinking, a blog might be the perfect vehicle if you haven't tried it.  I leverage Typepad and my wife decided to go with Wordpress.  Be sure to watch for a comparison post where I talk about our individual experiences using these two different blogging platforms.

If you've found a unique use for blogs and would like to share it, feel free to comment below.  I'd love to hear about and start a conversation.

Two companies at the conference exposed me to how much broader the scope of business intelligence is.  I'm talking about BigDataLabs and Visual Crossing.  The offerings these two companies have brought to market, that build off of the MicroStrategy platform highlight that business intelligence is realized in the way you visualize the data & information.  In my strategic consulting work, I often work with clients to look at IT differently.  Often, industry groups that I haven't worked with before want me to participate to bring a fresh perspective to things that they have already been looking at.   Visualization of data is much the same thing; a different perspectives causes you to suddenly see something you hadn't seen before.

In truth I haven't written anything since I heard about it for a number of reasons:

1) what else is there to say at this point that hasn't already been said about the specifics of the device.  

2) I haven't used it or seen it, so it's hard to comment, beyond what the tech specs are

3) I wanted to mull it over a bit; it left a deep impression on me.

Let's get a few things out of the way straight-off the bat.  Of course, I'm excited about the iPad.  I'm looking forward to buying one.  For all those people who want to complain about it's lack of camera or lack of GPS, or lack of [insert whatever you like here] - they are the same people who would have complained about the price, about the battery life, about the resolution of the camera, about [insert what you like here].  Many people are going to bash the iPad - they did the same thing when the iPhone came out and look foolish for it now.

I think that the iPad will surprise us, like the iPhone did.  I believe that somewhere out there, someone is creating an app right now that will take advantage of this new category of device and unlock potential we haven't yet thought of.  There will be an ah-ha moment like so many of us have had when we use our iPhones with that certain app that is just perfect for us.  I believe that certain industries will suddenly have ah-ha moments and be able to leverage the device in unexpected ways.

The other thing that amazes me when I watch the video of the iPad is that it is really freeing the Internet.  The Internet has been "stuck" in our computers - we have gone to it. Smartphones have given us some mobility, but their smaller size limits that experience.  The iPhone browser has done a decent job of tackling that size problem.  The applification of aspects of the web via the iPhone apps has further liberated the web.  The iPad, however, changes the game further.  It allows the Internet to come to us.  In a sense, when I look at the iPad, I don't see a piece of a hardware that has been elegantly engineered.  I don't see beautiful, user-friendly software.  I see the Internet incarnate.  You are holding the web in your hands.  That will change the way we interact, use, leverage, contribute, and consume the "Internet".  I will change the way we think about it.  

And that is really what Apple causes us to do - to think differently.  

I have often said to client, unrelated to BI, that the new model that Apple has introduced to the world is accelerating the widgetization, or from Apple's perspective, the applification of the Internet.  The web can't be consumed on a phone like it is at the desktop.  Apple got this.  They created a really robust browser, but more importantly, they gave developers and ultimately users applications that are like small packaged up piece of web content and functionality.  This drove a more natural usage of the web because it could be done when you needed it.  

MicroStrategy has seen this coming and is building it into their model.  They demo'd a future concept for iPhone apps that will tap into the business intelligence layer.  It'll mean that consumers of business intelligence information, those people needing good information to make decisions, will be able to do that anywhere.  Not just when they are sitting at their desk.  Business intelligence will become like the web - pervasive.  That is enabled by good, game changing mobile devices like the iPhone.  Even more important, I believe, will be what Apple announces tomorrow.  Their slate (or whatever they end up calling it) will be a device that sits between the iphone and the laptop.  It will further enable that mobile-acceleration of data being transformed into intelligence and moving to the places where people work.

I'm excited for a few reasons.  One, I've been a believer in this radical shift in the mobile web that Apple's iPhone was the catalyst for and it is exciting to see that spreading out into other areas, like business intelligence.  Secondly, the work / direction we've been moving towards in our xBusiness group that I am helping shape has been in this area of mobile applications with a focus on extending backend data.  I'm thrilled that the BI technology, MicroStrategy, that we leverage will dovetail so nicely into this.

It's been a great first day.  I will write additional blog entries around other sessions I went to today and gave me food for thought.  

To watch the video over at the mipcast, click here.

Or you can see the version that was uploaded to YouTube after the jump below.

According to the Aberdeen Group report, customers using MicroStrategy software achieved a 6% increase in sales during the time period as compared to an industry average of a 4% decline in sales revenue. Among large BI vendors in the survey, only MicroStrategy customers experienced significant sales growth.

When I saw this information, I must admit, I wasn't surprised. To me, having been in strategic consulting for years and years I have always known and seen in my client work that when you have the correct inputs for your business then you realize greater success.  When I assist organizations with their IT strategy, that strategy is always crafted with an underlying understanding:  help the business get to where it wants to go.  The IT within an organization must be an enabler.

The same is true for business intelligence efforts inside organizations.  The data locked in so many systems and massaged & manipulated in so many Excel worksheets is there to enable the business reach its strategic objectives.  Like IT resources though, that data needs to be strategically used.  In setting an IT strategy, we start with a "vision", in setting a business intelligence strategy, we start with questions.  Key questions you need answered in order to make good strategic decisions.

That is why what the Aberdeen Group study has found makes total sense. Customers realized that 6% growth while others were declining because they were able to make sound decisions against what was happening in the market around them.  Their data wasn't stuck in system-silos or it wasn't being misunderstood or it wasn't being analyzed too late.  Leverage a tier-one BI solution like MicroStrategy allows them to accurately and quickly understand their market.  In today's economic environment, things change quickly; its very volatile.  Companies need to become very agile and adaptable.  Having a tier-one solution like MicroStrategy, coupled with the ever,  important starting point, a Strategic BI Plan that works with the business to identify and articulate the business questions that need answering, will allow your organization to become that nimble agile competitor in your marketplace. 

I simply pulled out my iPhone, opened a tool I use called SoonR and was able to give him the file (I will explain in greater detail how this all works).  An IT person was looking over my shoulder and said "Oh, you should use Dropbox."  I told him I had Dropbox as well and he said "You have both?  That's kind of redundant isn't it?"

By now you may be scratching your head?  SoonR?  Dropbox?  What in the world is mip talking about?  Well it all relates to services that are cloud-based storage.  I want to talk about three such services:  SoonR, Dropbox and Zumodrive.  I'll describe the three and let you know which one I think is worth installing on your computer and (if you have it) a handheld device like the iPhone.

1) Dropbox

A very robust storage service, Dropbox has some real strengths that are appealing.  Installed on my Mac (and other computers) any time I'm working and save a file or drag a file to the Dropbox folder (which shows up and behaves just like a regular folder in my Finder or Windows Explorer) that file is automatically synchronized out into the cloud and pushed to all the other computers I use.  And yes, the iPhone client automatically has access to this file as well.  I can also share a folder and invite people to that folder - instant collaboration.  If I'm at a computer that isn't mine, I can simply login via a web browser which takes me to a screen showing me all my folders and files in my Dropbox.  The no charge version of Dropbox gives you a whopping 2GB of storage space and you can upgrade that quite economically to 50GB for $100/year or 100GB for $199/year. 
Feel free to explore their tour for more information on this great service.

The Million Dollar Question:  Which One Should You Use?

Having looked at these three services and their respective desktop and mobile clients, you are wondering, "Which one will mip recommend?"  Well, my answer might seem a bit facetious, but I assure you, I'm not trying to be.  The simple answer is:  Choose them all.   Given that they all offer free versions that provide a good amount of storage and functionality, you really should take advantage of all three.  In time, if you find one best suits the way you work and you need more storage, it is a simple process to increase your storage capacity.  Using these services will change the way you work, especially if you use a main computer (desktop), a laptop, a netbook and your mobile phone (or some combination of those devices).  You will find it incredibly liberating to have your files available all the time regardless of what device you are using at the time.

I downloaded the Typepad iPhone app again yesterday to see what was new. Now, as I sit on the plane, I'm blogging at 30,000 feet. I'm in "airplane mode" of course, which means my iPhone is not connected currently (obviously not allowed when flying), but the Typepad app will save this as a draft. That is great.

The interface is simple and usable. I like that they've integrated the ability to link my Twitter account via the iPhone app so each post can be Tweeted when published.

I brought my netbook along to do some blogging during conference sessions but may give the iPhone a whirl as my blogging tool.