Konowe & Associates, LLC

Apple's move into the Cloud yesterday by all measures was nothing that awe inspiring.  Many of us have seen company after company go this direction for several years now and even the government has put some of its programs in reach via the web.  Storage prices have fallen off a cliff thankfully and buying in bulk is now the norm.  What it should signal to those watching is that being connected or tethered (yes, I know Steve got rid of the physical sync) is so much more important than ever before.

Think about all the cloud services you use today without even blinking an eye:

-Google
-eMail
-Document sharing and storage (ala Dropbox)
-Twitter
-Basically any or all publications
-Facebook
-LinkedIn
-Amazon's Hosting Cloud
-iTunes
-Flickr
-YouTube  

Arguably going offline might become a thing of the past as Apple solidified the importance of being connected.  If your off the grid you won't get the latest version of some animal in the wild (Your OS) or even more sinister if your not an Apple users you won't be getting the latest anything.  This might be Steve's best move yet even though the share price got knocked around a bit because he has a loyal audience who love the physical gadgets and now he can pull the ultimate hat-trick of connectivity.  Why did Apple choose to push down this road?  Because they finally could.  Connectivity to the web via any mobile device means there is no need to not be connected.

Hey Verizon and AT&T!  Get ready to build out even more bandwidth.

Inspired by my good friend Lauren Price

What do I mean by this?  I mean that our days are not just filled with us emptying our wallets at some big box store like Costco or even boutique shops you only find in quaint towns in New England...brands actually own our time.

• Starbucks owns coffee time (possibly more than once a day for some)
• Google owns research time
  
• Pottery Barn owns interior decorating idea time (not my style but others seem to like)
  
• Facebook owns social networking time (way, way, way lots of this going on!)
• Twitter owns micro-blogging and follow time
• iTunes owns your music, time, music downloads and possible parts of your body time
• Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy (same company BTW) own Christmas time
• LLBean owns outdoor time
• Amazon owns find anything in the world shopping time
  
• Kayak owns travel time
• YouTube & Netflix own video watching, uploading, commenting, rating, sharing and OMG a lot of freekin' time!
  
• eBay & Craigslist own any leftover "lets make a deal Monty Hall", time.
• Farmville owns the make a fake farm, earn fake money and do nothing useful time - which apparently American's have lots of
  

All of this time is gone, bu-bye!  I did not mention the plethora of dating sites or mobile versions of all of a fore listed.  This is of course also before you get to read the news, find out what stock prices are doing or lest we forget actual productivity for work/personal time.  Beyond the loss or lack of time we have in our lives does this not worry you about how brand owned we have all become?  Add in the points, miles, and gaming mechanics each offer to keep you and you have an endless till-you-die lack of time sucking noise that won't go away. 

Part of me is a bit sad reading this list, part of me enjoys these brands immensely for how easy they make my life and another part is flat out jealous of the monster businesses they have become.  I mostly highlighted digital entities but obviously you could add a whole host of non-electronic characters that have used their scale to drag us in like the Borg from startrek...Remember, "resistance is futile!"

No real commentary from the peanut gallery today.  Enjoy it and happy holidays!

Don't buy a company, buy a CEO

The other morning I was taking The General (Gen is my son's name and in English it looks short for General) to school and after I dropped him off it occurred to me that I am tapping my way around the internet a lot more than I am typing.  Now, I have a small problem of being utterly addicted to my iPhone.  For those who have hung around me for the past 6-12 months you probably notice my urgent need every 20 minutes to check my email, some useful app or texts.  In fact, I sleep with the damn thing in my bed and often wake up with it next to my face or stuck to some part of my body.  RIDICULOUS and it needs to stop but for now let me enjoy my tempered glass web experience.

Enough of my nonsense.. the bigger shoe about to drop is the tapping that is ruling my web existence.  By every personal measuring stick is likely that the death of the keyboard is coming sooner than I thought.  Yes it has an electronic version of a keyboard on it and so does the iPad but its not the same.  While I am using the keyboard now to rip out this blog post it seems to me that if a few more leaps in computing were made like being able to legitimately speak at normal  speaking speed, that you could throw out the keyboard with the bath water.

Not sure how long this takes but I am going to say by 2015 my use of the keyboard will have almost evaporated completely and that cozy sound of tapping away will be a noise relegated to the past.  As app developers churn out hundreds of ways per day to perform things that required a sit down internet experience it is for sure a sign that the train has left the station.  Yes there will be hold outs and I even might be one of them but as soon as it is easier, faster and equally as good its game over.

Then in a few years when Gen is moaning about doing his homework, I can tell him things like, "when I was young, we had to use our fingers to type out everything!  We had to learn where all the keys were by taking a class and we walked up hill in the snow both ways with wind chills below zero...".

I am not sure if anyone has ever labeled this function as their own tactic for how a website should be developed but in lieu of that information I am going to claim it as my own.

So, what is the Konowe 3-Click Rule?

Simple: You have 3 clicks to get me to do what you want as an end user or I leave your site.  Sites minus this 3 click rule will loose users and frankly are not trying.  If your the website owner and your not trying then I got news for you, as a user I am not buying.

The 3 click rule also extends to websites that are just poorly thought out.  You would be surprised in a bad way of the number of major companies, large brands and even marketing entities that have just the crappiest navigation which only ads to the complexity of trying to accomplish things in 3 clicks.

Here is a list to websites that for lack of a better term...suck:

Web Pages That Suck

You may also be asking yourself why I am so adamant about this rule.  It short, I am a very hard core already branded Google user as are most people who access the web at this point.  I spent an insane amount of my previous two company's money with them for both eAgent and BrandClick.  Why? Because it is brutally effective and samurai like in its efficiency.  In 3 clicks I get exactly what I want.

Click1: Google.com
Click2: Search word entered and results displayed
Click3: Find appropriate results in the index or advertisement

Enough said about this topic?

Stumbled across this in the Google labs.  Not sure why I had not seen it before but its a great way to do data visualization for free.  Looks like they also pull from very legitimate sources which is refreshing considering the amount of crap on the web that is not properly marked and referenced. 

I did this on my own in just about 60 seconds:

Today, I was forwarded a link through Facebook for Peter Drucker's challenge which is to write an essay on what you think the challenges are in today's economy and society.  The challenge is over and I think they have already selected a handful of folks to go to Vienna.  But the point of the challenge is one that can be asked again and again as new changes in human patterns and behavior constantly evolve along with our economy. 

After watching the video a few times below it dawned on my that maybe the challenge (I am going to refer to it also as "problem" going forward) is the lack of focus people seem to have regarding the economy and even regarding their daily lives.  I do not remember the world as well as I would have liked growing up in the 70's and 80's but I know this; with less distractions available at my disposal even as a child I had no other choice but to focus on what I was personally doing.  Whether that was sports, my dreaded homework (although I loved math...I know "looser!"), eating, talking at the dinner table with my mom, waiting in line, driving...think about all those same moments as now opportunities we have to not focus.  The problem is we make excuses to not have focus and not look at big picture problems.  People want to disect small ones because they are easier to consume and this is wildly true economically.  Think about how much time we really spent on changing our economy for the 21st century.  Not much, we pumped in some money and hoped to help prop up the one that broke.  Sounds like a pretty bad idea.  Now, I do lean politically left and I think Obama is doing what he can to help the economy but he should have done more to convince us all over a longer period of time to focus on what will get us somewhere that will be useful instead of convincing congress to cough up a big check.  I would say Health Care looks to be something that took time and will in the long run be a great program but other than that, we are pretty bad at taking our time. 

Similar to the digestion of media.  If its not in a 140 characters most of the connected world does not have time to read it.  And because we are presented with so much of it there is no way to get through all of it.  Again, the problem is peoples focus and the world we now live in that almost requires you to move on to the next new item on ones plate.  Be it a tweet, an assignment or the need to not focus on one tiny much smaller topic, the root of the problem is our now lack of ability to stay focused.  The more unfortunate part of this change in the economy as it relates to society is that people expect changes to happen faster, with less effort and of course without having to focus on implementation which can take months, years or even decades and who the heck has time for that!?!?   :)

Sorry I could not resist taking a cheap shot at us all and of course at our own expense.  Society is not to blame for our problems economically or otherwise it is our lack of focus that has to be course corrected.  At the same time we all need to assume a more reasonable time-line for measuring success in the economy and of course in society at large.  FOCUS PEOPLE!

Yes, yes its incredibly expensive but I mean come on...look at that!  Admit it, that is awesome and super cool to think that next year if you want to go to space for shits and giggles you can.  Personally, as a kid I was a huge trek fan and so the mere thought of this gets me excited in ways I probably should not blog about.  Now if I can only drop that freshmen 15 to fit into that snazzy space suit.

Yesterday morning LinkedIn offered to connect me with over a 100 people I had not connected with but whom had accounts with its system, so I said to myself why not.  I hit the send button and within 8 hours I had 52 of them accepted.  I went from 585 contacts to 640-ish.  Not sure this really accomplished anything but it did make my daily usage spike and possibly increase my visibility to others who might want to connect.  LinkedIn seems to be a giant holding place for ones resume and I never use the Q&A sections on it at all.  In fact, currently I do zero social networking if you will and I think it has mostly become a type of Rolodex.

Twitter, I have been completely ignoring.  I have barely been hunting, rarely reading the feed and basically blowing it off because I am a Facebook junkie.  Don't get me wrong, I find Twitter and the 140 characters of immense usefulness at times but Facebook simply has me hornswoggled right now.  Check back with me in a few months...

Then there is Facebook, my home away from home.  Respite, comfort, clarity, interaction, and lots of highly personalized content.  Yummy!  More importantly 500million+ (about 1/4 of the whole internet/mobile user base worldwide at this stage) people of which I have the honor of selecting just 5,000.  I think I am up over 570 and I told myself that I would not go past 500 but since its free who can honestly say "no" to an invite? I mean, come on.

No conclusions to be drawn but I think FB at this point is winning hearts, minds and keyboards.

So, I recently posted on Facebook the following:

"Joshua Konowe Is wondering why some listen, fewer absorb, a tiny fraction kill it and most just don't even hear."

I have no idea if I am the first to say it or not, but it was about as prophetic as I get.  I got a few smart replies from a few of my friends and connections, a few "likes" on the old like button and then I realized...That maybe, just maybe more of my contacts had seen it and read it and decided to possibly act.  Or in this case, not say anything, not comment, not "like" it and simply absorb what I was trying to convey.  My general frustration with a world that seems all consumed with being heard.  The sad part is that there is so much being said its next to impossible to actually be heard by anyone any more.  We all seem to clamor for attention that is fleeting, passing and riffles through the universe as fast as a twitter feed with more than a few hundred followers.

In a similar context I would advise people who are trying to help a client with business related needs to let them tell you what the real pain is.  Basically, just shut up and listen!  Like good doctors, they listen to find the pain faster, then advise and finally help alleviate what is wrong.

I am as guilty as the next at doing the complete opposite and in fact writing this blog post is doing nothing but reinforcing my need to say something to those who may or may not even be reading or listening. So there you go.  An imperfect balance of talk, advice and possibly pain relief?  I will leave that up to you to decide.