Apple'ın suyusunu çıkarmak!

Tamam, son dönemlerde teknoloji, sanat, eğlence alanlarında "en popüler" ne varsa bir şekilde bir Apple ürünü ve dolayısıyla Steve Jobs ile bir bağlantı kurduruyor. Bu da ister istemez hem Jobs hem de Apple hakkında sayısız makale, kitap, blog yazısı vb. doküman oluşturulmasına neden oluyor.

Ama bugün farkettiğim bir kitap (ki yeni de değilmiş, Amerika'da 11 Eylül 2009'da çıkmış) bana, yok artık dedirtti. Kitabın ismi şöyle: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience ve yazarı Carmine Gallo isimli (bana göre fırsatçı) bir Businessweek.com yazarı.

Sunum yeteneği elbette öğrenilebilen ve geliştirilebilen birşey ama elinizde bir iPad ya da bir MacBook Air olmadan bu sunumları böyle etkileyici yapabilir misiniz acaba? Bence Jobs'un asıl başarısı, onu bu sahneye taşıyan inovasyona dayalı şirket kültürü ve ürün geliştirme/pazarlama stratejilerinde yatıyor. Bunları sağladıktan sonra böyle sunum yapmak zaten işin en kolay kısmı.

Sonuç olarak Jobs'un etinden ve sütünden faydalandık, geriye bir sunum yeteneği kaldı ve onu da kapacağız diyorsanız sizi aşağıdaki linke davet ediyorum. Ama bir mucize de beklemeyin derim :-)

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo

A music legend or a tech entrepreneur?

I assume that most of you know Peter Gabriel, the musician and songwriter, who rose to fame as the lead vocalist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel had another successful solo career.

Most of you should recognize his most famous song Sledgehammer, when you click the following link; http://www.petergabriel.com/discography/track/Sledgehammer/1536

Now, something you should not know about him, if you are not extremely interested in digital filtering algorithims and content management systems...

Apperently, almost a decade ago Gabriel imagined a future of infinite choice. He predicted a world in which people would access any entertainment, anywhere at any time and invested in it.

Let's read the story of The Filter from the original source; http://systems.thefilter.com/AboutUs/TheFilterStory.aspx

In 2004, Peter was introduced to the physicist and software entrepreneur, Martin Hopkins. This was a man, who shared Peter's vision, but had also developed a solution. As a passionate music fan, Martin had designed a piece of software to manage his music collection. The programme learned about his tastes and, using artificial intelligence, offered playlists and recommendations.

The two men joined forces with the venture capital specialist, Eden Ventures and The Filter was born... Successful trials of a playlist desktop application and a recommendations website quickly showed how effective and reliable the technology was, even with large volumes and different formats. New user interface tools and applications were launched and vast amounts of consumption and catalogue data were gathered and crunched. The Filter began to attract attention from industry commentators and, crucially, interest from commercial partners grew.

And today...
The Filter uses its world-leading recommendations and relevance systems to help content owners, publishers and aggregators around the world maximise their content and services. The Filter is proven to increase usage and engagement which in turn improves margins... making entertainment services more efficient and competitive. With video, music, applications and games, The Filter consistently out-performs editorial and automated recommendations and crucially, outputs can be skewed or biased to meet specific business goals.
One day, all entertainment will be optimised this way. Until then, The Filter is unique.

Suprising isn't it? This is not only a story of a development of a prospering invention, but also an unknown story of how a music legend can turn into a tech entrepeneur and investor.

Let's see how successful this system and also Gabriel will be in the future. I am sure we will hear more from him and his investments...

For further readings;
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_16/b4174046688330.htm

The 25 Most Innovative Companies 2010

Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Most Innovative Companies special report is based on data from longtime partner Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Last December the consultancy e-mailed a 21-question poll to senior executives around the globe. The 1,590 respondents, who answered anonymously, were asked to name the most innovative companies outside their own industry in 2009. To see the full slide-show please click the following link:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/04/0415_most_innovative_companies/index.htm

Or check the below list:

Some highlights from the list:

• 5 computer (hardware&software), 2 automotive, 2 customer electronics companies in top ten. Only GE is left out, because it is not easy to categorize it.
• 6 from USA, 2 from Japan, 1 from South Korea and 1 from China.
• Automotive giant BYD is the first chinese firm to get to this list, however, it is likely to foresee it won't be the last!

Google vs. Apple?

There is a very nice review of the new competition between Google and Apple on the current Bloomberg Businessweek Turkey issue. This new era has started just after the launch of Google's smart phone Nexus One. Of course there is a very long way for Google to reach the popularity of iPod but it must have Apple frightened, because at the same time Apple was shopping for a mobile advertisement company Quattro Wireless. It looks like Google and Apple are switching the places on the table, isn't it? I have copied a funny comparison table from Businessweek below:

For more information about it, you can check the current issue of Businessweek Turkey.

25 Products That Might Just Change The World

I would like to share a link which offers very interesting and innovative products.

This is a list from Businessweek. Their designers and approx. prices are also included.

My favourite is the "bikedispenser" above.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/12/1209_25_world_changing_products/