When I saw the headline, “Barnes and Noble offers 30 free e-books to switch to Nook” I thought, oh yeah, now we’re talking. When you are competing with the industry leader who has a stronghold on the market, you need to do something pretty dramatic if you’re going to get a leg up. Giving 30 free e-books to switchers would have been just the kind of bold, ballsy move that could have changed the tide, at least a little. Alas, it turns out Barnes and Noble isn’t that gutsy after all and this promotion isn’t going to do a damn thing. The 30 free books, you see, are chosen by Barnes and Noble and span a wide variety of titles from cooking to history to fiction. Great, you gave me 30 books, of which if I am lucky I might be  interested in one or two. They claim it’s a $300 value. Some value.

You see, the real problem is if I already have an Amazon Kindle, I have all my books already stored there. I don’t have access to them on the Nook and this creates a nice lock in for Amazon. Now if you allow me to take 30 of my favorite titles over, and make it even better, the rest of my titles for a nice discount price, you will be able to generate switchers. What would this cost Barnes and Noble? Plenty to be sure but what’s the value of a new lifelong customer? This game is hardball and either you step up and play or you’re going to be out of the game soon.

The same thing can be seen in the tablet wars. Apple is the dominant player with the iPad. Competition is coming now from various Android tablets and most recently HP. But the HP tablet starts at $500 and many of the Android tablets are close to the same price point. That’s the same price as the iPad and like it or not, those tablets are just not as good as the iPad yet. Price being equal, people are going to choose the iPad. If these alternative tablets are going to make any headway, someone is going to have to through down a price like $300. This is not about profit or loss at his point, when you are trailing a dominant player like Apple, you’ve got to grab market share anyway you can.

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I can’t help but feeling we are inflating a new bubble, an app bubble. Cell phones are now smart phones, handheld computers really and a vast wave of applications are being developed for them. There are  getting to be too many apps and they are getting a little silly. Witness Dryer Bro, an application that tells you when your dryer load is done. You have to put your iphone down on the dryer and the accelerometer determines when the shaking has stopped and sends a text message to, well, your iphone which is sitting on the dryer. Actually the app says it sends a text to a group of “bros” you determine so I guess they can go get your laundry…or tell you that it’s done. You can see, this is where apps have jumped the shark. In the coming Internet of Things you don’t think dryers and washers will notify us of their status themselves? Seriously, where is the business model? The core killer technology? There’s just no there there. TechCrunch reviewed this app and gave it a rave review. Remember when we all bought into that Pets.com and Webvan were surely going to be the next great thing?

Apps are all the rage but many of them are just dumb or terrible. There will be another popping of this app bubble soon and it will be a good and cleansing thing. As the popping of the Internet Bubble shook the industry back into the reality of serious ideas and real business models so will the app bubble pop clear out the apps based on, dare I say, nothing but air? Hopefully we will be left with fewer apps that are more valuable and backed by solid technology.

What makes LinkedIn so good for job searching is the same thing that makes the Connected Age so powerful, it’s the connections. Personal connections have always been the best way to find a job, Internet or no. Now applicants have a larger pool of connections to call on. In addition, the entire LinkedIn profile, if done correctly, serves as it’s own resume including recommendations. The other thing smart people are doing is climbing the social graph. Find an individual in a company you want to work for and look for those six degrees of separation.

LinkedIn is a great social network because it has locked in on such a great niche market. LinkedIn knows exactly what it is and it’s tireless at fulfilling that mission. It’s the secret to their success.

Gone are the days of large, powerful laptops designed to handle the work of a desktop on the road. Trends are moving toward smaller, lighter devices driven more from the power of the Net. As notebook computers eventually started to outsell desktop machines, I think we will see these smaller devices, call them NetBooks or tablets or what have you start to outsell typical notebooks. With this, I believe we will also see a resurgence of desktop machines as people give up trying to use one machine for home and mobile use. I have already made this move, as I gave up my laptop for an iMac at home and a small pc based netbook when mobile. Of course I still also have my smart phone when I want complete pocketability.

Apple had no entry in the super small and light portable and the iPad doesn’t quite substitute yet for one. The new MacBook Air fits the bill perfectly. The original Air was maligned with problems and never took off but I think this new model will see much more popularity. As with everything Apple, it’s a bit overpriced but drop dead beautiful and elegant. I think the real legacy of Steve Jobs will be the way he singularly blends cutting edge technology and art. Seth Godin always talks about making products remarkable. It’s an important lesson for all business and Apple gets an A+

I learn so much from watching my kids work with technology. I learn about the future. Having kids is like living with your own personal crystal ball. I also learn a great deal about user interface and ease of use in tech products. My daughter, when she was just nine, picked up my iPhone and knew just what to do with it, no instruction needed. That’s when I knew it was a most amazingly built device. I think every technology company should have kids employed in their labs to do their user testing. If the 5 year old can master it, you’re ready to ship.

Tyler Gray realized the same thing and put it further to test with his iPad and his 5 year old son Cash. I’ve included the video in this post, and here also is a link to the original Fast Company article.

RedBox has been a massive hit without large stores because they put their vending machines where people already are, like the supermarket. No extra trip or hassle required. And at $1 a movie, Blockbuster doesn’t stand a chance. It’s interesting that Blockbuster has watched all this go on in the past few years but has not been able to do much of anything about it. They’ve experimented with a few things, but halfheartedly and they have been failures. Someone at corporate didn’t want to hurt the mainline retail business, which was really bad strategy because that business is dead now anyway and they have nothing to show for it.

Blockbuster has misread and misunderstood most every new business reality of the digital age. There CEO talks a good game but somehow I doubt they will have the boldness and smarts to actually do what it takes to catch up. The only thing they have going for themselves is a still strong brand name. If they can just find the guts to capitalize on it.

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There are indications now that Amazon may try to make a new Kindle with color and multi-touch technology, bringing it much closer to an iPad. I think it’s very dangerous for Amazon to rush headlong into a competition with Apple on their own turf. Maybe the smart play is to remain the dominant player in black and white e-ink technology and let Apple have the rest. Amazon’s strength has always been traditional black and white books, not magazines or comics. Here’s an even smarter play, make a full iPad version of the Kindle reader. Amazon needs to remember their focus, they are a bookstore not a hardware manufacturer. By making a great Kindle reader for the iPad, they stand to sell more books from their online bookstore, even possibly cutting into Apple’s store.

2010 will be THE year of the tablet computer as Sony has also said they want to enter this market. No doubt there will be others. 2010 could also be THE year traditional publishing makes the turn to digital distribution. People have been predicting the death of traditional publishing for years now. These new tablet machines go a long way to bringing that prediction to pass.

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I try not to spend my time chasing fireflies. I try to zoom in on business value. Could this be of use to any of my customers and if so, how? Because an application is “cool” or is even fun doesn’t mean it has business value. Time is precious and you should be careful not to invest too much time in things that are just not going to make it. Now that’s a tough call to make sometimes. After all, I didn’t think Twitter had any value when I first saw it. But that’s why my ear is always to the ground and my eyes are always open. When I saw Twitter continue to flourish, I jumped back in and went deep with it. I found the value. An open mind the flexibility are critical aspects of surviving in this new chaotic time.

Beware of bright shiny objects. Focus on real business value. Focus on your customers.