Lets work together to reduce the number of “template-based and bullet-point-driven” group-reading meetings. We may even free up some time along the way to get serious work done.

Stephen P. Anderson put together this wonderful presentation explaining what sets the iPhone apart from all the other phones. There is a lot to learn from Apple.

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The same could have been presented with tons of slides and bullet points. So, do you think this would have the same effect ?

So what’s their special secret ? Apple are not really inventing new product categories or at least they haven’t in a while. They rather take an existing market segment where something needs to be fixed. Then they design a stylish product with an emphasis on usability/simplicity for it that integrates well with other components (computers, the internet, …). So using these products is easy and fun. They are selling something that makes people feel good (=cool, sexy, happy, …). Something to be proud of and to make them recommend it to others.

Want an example ? So tell me, when was the last time you made an attractive young woman sing a love song about one of your products ? Watch this video and you will know what I mean.

Apple develop products from top down. Design, usability and target price are first, then the engineers have to find ways to built the product around those requirements. That’s not how tech companies usually work. They often go the other way around - engineers go in with things they have done or things that would be worth doing. When marketing comes in with requirements, there are already many things set in stone. Everybody compromises somewhere in the middle. The result - feature rich products with bad design and high levels of complexity. Basically, not so cool products !

Now compare this to Apple: sexy, easy to use, great experience, something thats fun to use and to be proud of - no matter if its iPod Shuffle, iPhone, Apple TV, iMacs or MacBooks. That’s all there is to it. (though I guess having Steve Jobs on board won’t hurt either)

Some of the features of the iPhone include:

• 3.5 inch touchscreen screen with 320×480 pixels
• GSM/EDGE/WiFi/Bluetooth
• Full iPod functionality
• Feature-rich Internet Browsing
• 4 or 8 GB RAM
• iPhone’s accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.

And this is just a short excerpt - the full specs with all “bells and whistles” can be found at Apple’s iPhone site.

One just has to look at the videos further below to see how this revolutionary device will change the way we interact with mobile phones.

Lets take the voicemail inbox. The iPhone lists all voicemails visually just the way you would see SMS and MMS messages on a standard phone. The user decides which message he wants to access/delete/store on the touchscreen. And all this without any “press 2 for next message / press 3 to save message …. etc” voice interaction as we are used to with all those “so much 20th century” mobile phones on the market today. So let me ask you: Why in the world did not any of the other mobile phone vendors come up with this feature a long time ago ? Why does it need Apple to enter the market in 2007 to finally bring usability to mobile phones ? And this is just one example - I could go on with many other innovations of the iPhone.

For me this is just another prove that Apple is by a long shot the best design company (ergonomic&usability) in the IT and consumer electronics environment. I think all other vendors (Nokia, Motorola, … can you hear me ?) can learn a lot from Apple. I am sure the market will prove me right on this one and the iPhone will definitely fly off the shelves. Steve Jobs’ prediction of 10 million units by 2008 should be easy to achieve.

But now for the really bad news: The iPhone will not launch before June 2007 in the US, and then only in cooperation with Cingular. Even worse, the launch on European markets will follow even later in the year.

More details on the iPhone:

Introducing iPhone (apple.com)
iPhone; Up Close and Personal (TUAW.com)
Apple iPhone up close (TUAW.com)
iPhone article collection (TUAW.com)
Interview with iPhone product manager & demo (video)
CBS coverage on iPhone (video)
David Pogue iPhone close up (video)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So through off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Follow your passions, feel the emotions and enjoy your life. I wish everyone a happy and successful New Year!

CampaignMonitor - an online service (SaaS) for companies who create and send email newsletters for themselves and their clients. CampaignMonitor allows you to track the results of your campaigns and to manage your client’s subscribers. Very neat !

Confabb - combines an aggregate database of major conferences, conventions, and trade shows sorted by industry with social networking tools designed to empower conference attendees to improve their overall experience.

RelentaCRM - an online CRM (customer relationship management) tool. Includes email, contact manager, shared calendar, email newsletter marketing, autoresponders. Relenta pricing varies from permanently free to custom plans depending on the number of users and contacts, volume of email, and disk space usage. Short review here.

The Economics of Online Storage - good article comparing the cost of online storage to local file storage. This raises an interesting question: will we store all our files online in the future ?

But, beware! The search for the perfect system is a dangerous one, because:

1) there is a risk to get over-organized - this is something I experienced myself: you implement a sophisticated system that becomes either very complicated to maintain or which simply is incompatible with your personality
2) you are easily traped by the temptation to keep on trying new systems - as a result you will wind up less productive, because “searching for the system” or “improving it” becomes more time/energy consuming than the productivity gains you get through using the system.

So, my advice on this is very simple (and I admit I am sometimes guilty of not following it through myself):

1. look at the different productivity systems/solutions
2. pick one or a combination of them, whatever suits you best
3. make sure the system works for you
4. decide on how you want to use/implement it (PC, MAC, PDA, Blackberry, filofax, paper, …)
5. and then stick to it ! (though minor tweaking is propably ok)

I think this great cartoon by Shannon Wheeler says it all: (and I hope you will agree that we don’t want to end up like this)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”; researched this topic and describes flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”.

Wouldn’t it be great to get yourself into this state, whenever you want ? Nick Smith shares this vision and wrote The little book of flow on his Life 2.0 blog.

The premise of this essay is that those exquisite but all too rare moments when we experience ‘flow’, when we are truly creative, happy and intuitively know exactly what is needed, are simply those instances when we glimpse our original and true nature. It sets out to show how, instead of trying to fathom the conditions for flow, we can realise this ‘true nature’ and make ‘flow’ our normal way of being, wherever we are and in whatever we do.

Nick has some excellent points on how to get yourself into the state of “flow”. A word of warning though: this is not easy to digest. The printed version of this article weighs in at over 30 pages, but its well worth the time and effort.