July 2010
3 posts
How do you celebrate new employees?
This morning I was explaining my personal view about how to integrate new employees into a company to a client I’m advising and it dawned on me this might actually be of interest to others.
First off, my philosophy is to focus on the new hire and celebrate the fact they have decided to come to work with us at our company. The decision to take a job at one company versus another is always a...
4 tags
How to Mobilize the Masses
Five years ago, I read a report about Nigerian grain farmers leveraging mobile networks and a Nokia feature phone to determine the best local market to sell their grain based on the asking price at each market.
The cost of each call was the equivalent to $2, instead of the travel investment of $20 to get their grain to market only to discover their chosen market was already saturated.
This...
June 2010
4 posts
4 tags
An interview I did on CBC Morning about...
WatchCTV Canada video of a few Ottawa mobile firms (GlitchSoft and WickSoft) and a little bit of UNTETHER.tv
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WatchMy convocation speech for the Algonquin College School of Business class of 2010.
May 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Is mobile a brand killer? The future of pricing in...
That’s a fairly dramatic title but if you look ever so close enough, you will see that we are entering a very volatile era in pricing that may eventually lead to the extinction of brand loyalty and a sharp change in the way prices are determined.
If you are a Star Trek fan — either the original Shatner version or the Next Generation Picard version — you know that the world in Gene ...
April 2010
8 posts
5 tags
5 tags
WatchWhy mobile is an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube — and that’s a good thing for entrepreneurs — according to Adenyo’s Kevin McGuire
WatchWhat’s cool in BlackBerry w/ BlackBerryCool — Episode 2
Episode 2 is in the can. This week, Kyle and I discuss the app-enings around some BlackBerry releases — including the new LinkedIn for BlackBerry and Tristan Interactive’s BlackBerry launch (I interviewed CEO Chris MacLaren about Tristan a while ago. It can be found here).
The core of the conversation is focused...
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March 2010
8 posts
5 tags
Case Study: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle
Two years ago, Magmic Inc., one of the companies in the forefront of connected mobile game development secured the rights to create and distribute the coveted New York Times Crossword game on all cellphones and smartphones — including Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and Apple’s iPhone.
I recently sat down with Jeff Bacon Director of Product Management for Magmic, about the company’s...
WatchBlackBerry gets the Xobni treatment and gives mobile searching a great user interface — with Michael Holzer
Rob | March 25th, 2010 - 8:15 am
Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards) makes email indexing and searching for the common person along with great integration to the latest social networks all from within Microsoft Outlook and now they’ve released their first mobile version for BlackBerry.
...
WatchHow to leverage a personal brand to build a company with “Heroes” star Greg Grunberg, co-founder of Yowza
Rob | March 12th, 2010 - 7:10 am
This is a great example of life imitating art. Greg Grunberg played an idea tinkerer named Sean Blumberg on a TV show called Felicity about 10 years ago. His character came up with one idea after another after another including the condom that plays “here...
2 tags
February 2010
7 posts
5 tags
The 80-50 rule of Mobile Application Marketing
To do a terrible injustice to Yogi Berra, 80% of mobile application success is half marketing — so sorry! Actually, mobile application success is more like 20% effort on development and 80% of marketing and market awareness.
This is one of those things that gets lost in the hype of the Stores — AppStore and AppWorld. Putting your effort into building an application is such a small...
2 tags
How CTV missed the boat with their Olympic iPhone...
Canada has Olympic fever. I have Olympic fever. So just like everybody else with an iPhone and a sudden immediate need to know who is ahead in the snowboard cross I downloaded the ‘official’ iPhone application from CTV.
CTV has the broadcast rights for the Olympics in Canada and are doing an incredible job on the old-fashioned telly-vision as well as a stellar job online. It seems...
1 tag
January 2010
12 posts
WatchMy thoughts on the Apple iPAD launch — yes, it is disruptive
The hardware wasn’t the story when Apple launched their iPAD yesterday, it was the business implication that the software developers will face as this device sets the standard for portable devices. I’m not the only one that thinks that, check out this article from Slate: http://su.pr/8axys5
What do you think?
Watchgary:
Drawing lines in the sand Wayyyyyy to many of you are drawing lines in the sand, it’s dangerous and it will cost you.
Having trouble viewing this video? Try the Quicktime version.
1 tag
Hockey should get rid of the shoot out loss #FB
I’m a Canadian. By default we love hockey — I mean LOVE hockey. We breath the Canadian franchise and revere Canadian players and I am no exception (although, admittedly, I was a late bloomer).
But one thing I can’t stand is the concept of points awarded for losing — the over time loss point. For you non-Canadian, non-hockey-loving folks, standings in hockey look like this:...
4 tags
Bud Selig should step aside. #fb
As much as I feel, in my bones, that taking any form of steroids is the wrong choice every time and will be a blight on baseball forever, I can’t help but feel that the real fault for this disaster lies with Bud Selig. Baseball was reeling from the strike, needed something to re-energize lagging ticket sales and had no prospects until the Sosa-McGwire homerun battle of ‘98. I know it...
6 tags
WatchThis is the first in a series of video podcasts that focus on the business of mobility and wireless. We are interviewing entrepreneurs who are coming up with new and innovative business models leveraging this platform. Our first is with Anthony Rizk of Zeebu Mobile and author of Beginning BlackBerry Development.
Very interested in some feedback on this and if there are any companies you’d...
3 tags
I’m blown away that I still get this type of...
December 2009
8 posts
My first 16 Tweets
It’s always neat to go back and review at this time of year and I was very curious about my fist twitter posts of the year. Haven’t figured that out yet but did find a site that allowed me to see the first 16 twitter posts I did. Any here they are: Watching John Mayer on stage in front of a sea of BlackBerry’s filming the whole thing. What ever happened to the good old fashioned...
Some great reading for Christmas.
The best part of Christmas is my bookshelf gets replenished. Posted via web from Rob Woodbridge’s posterous | Comment »