Colin Charles Agenda

Here are some things I think are well worth reading (also, I’m starting the year fresh with nothing in my tabs :P)

• Wired has a great interview by Steven Levy on Tim O’Reilly’s Key to Creating the Next Big Thing. Tim taught me to work on stuff that matters (fond memories of an O’Reilly Moleskine Christmas gift), and now continues teaching everyone to create more value than they capture.
• Blood Sugar or how the diabetes market is waiting to be disrupted. More needs to be done in terms of controlling this disease. We already have sensible trackers like Fitbit, etc. what more can we do to manage this?
• Why Samsung’s Man in Silicon Valley uses Apple Devices – interesting take in the MIT Technology Review on Yong Sohn, President & Chief Strategy Officer for Samsung based in Silicon Valley. 
• Another from MIT Technology Review is Installable Web Apps WIll Be the Next Tech Battleground. I see web apps as being important, and I’ve been thinking about this space a lot more lately.
• Paul Buchheit wrote an amazing essay titled The Gift. It is a must read on unconditional love & living life to the fullest.
• MIT Technology Review again, this time on disrupting college textbooks. Free Textbooks Spell Disruption for College Publishers profiling Ariel Diaz and his site Boundless Learning. I remember a time buying really expensive textbooks and realized that you only use them for a term, with very few that you plan to keep on your bookshelf forever. The second-hand market naturally thrives but they go out-of-date usually within a year. I know many in Malaysia that love to photocopy textbooks (which I abhor and would never encourage). Imagine free e-book textbooks that you can read on your tablet? Highlight? Have all your notes in one place based on the highlights? This will revolutionize education.
• Marten Mickos asks: What is Innovation?
• I’m always interested in new & innovation publishing mediums, and this summary post leaves a lot to think about: Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: Self-publishing, cell phones & startups.
• Back to a nugget from Tim O’Reilly, a must read is It’s Not About You: The Truth about Social Media Marketing. There’s a money quote there:

• Activism has been the core of our marketing ever since.  We tell big stories that matter to a community of users, and together we use those stories to amplify a message that we all care about. Framing ideas in such a way that they include and reinforce the identity of a group of people who might not previously have seen themselves as part of the same community allows everyone to tell their own story in a way that adds up to something bigger than any one of them might tell alone. And once they start telling their story as part of the bigger story, it suddenly looks like a parade. 

We had Christmas indoors (Merry Christmas) as pretty much everything is closed in London for a bank holiday. As part of the festivities, we watched: The Dictator.

If you’re a fan of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan or anything from Sacha Baron Cohen you’ve got to watch this show. We caught it on pay-per-view, since as a Royal Ambassador we get one free movie per stay. And what better place to watch it than at the newly opened InterContinental London Westminster.

So back to The Dictator. It is a funny show, will take about 80 minutes of your time, and its well worth watching. Some may describe the jokes as crude, but those one-liners are truly memorable. I’m going to endeavor to watch the unrated version as I’m told its about 15 minutes longer with a lot more scenes of comedy!

I’m the only one amongst my close friends & colleagues that still use a BlackBerry. I use it primarily for email. During its heyday, it was dead popular for BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), but group messaging apps like Whatsapp came along to disrupt it.

I see that BlackBerry is now finally offering free calls over WiFi for BBM users. Its unlikely to work on my aging Bold 9700, but I’m holding out for a BB10 device.

Is this a first? No, not really.

In the USA, T-Mobile offered this feature since probably 2007 – see more about UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access). I used to be dead jealous of friends with these kinds of BlackBerries as they could be in Iceland and still call the USA for free over wifi basically.

Now it comes to everyone on the BlackBerry.

However, is this still important? We’ve had several generations of FaceTime that transmits both voice & video over WiFi. The latest iOS 6 even allows this to happen over the 3G/LTE networks, so Apple has just said it is OK to make use of all that bandwidth even when you’re on a mobile connection.

Is BlackBerry being disruptive with this feature? Far from it. I think many have ditched the platform. I am willing to give BB10 a go, but I have no idea if I’ll stick with it for much longer.

And the connection between FaceTime and BBM? Most BlackBerry users carry an iPhone. Don’t forget to read Mark Suster’s good post on this.

Apple is right. What sucks is that they make you wait one whole quarter before you get the new iPhone. So you really only have it as a “new phone” for 3 quarters. A mere 9 months.

I remember similar priced smartphones, like the Nokia Communicator, be the device to have for up to 36 months. When was the last time your iPhone device lasted for 36 months? Software wise, it usually does well though (kudos Apple, you didn’t screw up like the iPad). When was the last time you used a similar priced Android phone for 36 months?

Just half a year in, and comments are back. Received too much feedback on various channels that comments are required. Still haven’t found a way to “sync” comments across all social networks, killer solution still pending :-)

I’ve always wondered how Oracle was getting away with its rather mocking advertising. Usually seen on the front-page of the WSJ on a daily basis. Apparently, they’re not.

Taken January 14 2008, on the front page of the WSJ