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Apple's Obsession With Simplicity Can Really Complicate Things February 28, 2013 
Apple makes powerful products that do complicated things very simply and easily, and are mostly intuitive. You don't need an owner's manual to figure out how to use most Apple products. Apple aggressively whittles down its products so they become the essence of the most important things they do.
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Planting Seeds of Injustice February 26, 2013 
At the oral argument in Bowman v. Monsanto, Chief Justice Roberts cut off Bowman's attorney seconds into his delivery, questioning his thesis, which undermined the purposes of patent law. "Why in the world would anybody spend any money to try to improve the seed if as soon as they sold the first one anybody could grow more and have as many of those seeds as they want?"
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Week of Weird: Sony Jumps the Gun, Google Luxury-Prices Its Yugo February 25, 2013 
This really has been an entire month of the strange. We had Boeing's Dreamliner sidelined for batteries that catch fire. We had Tesla locking horns with the NYT. We had Sony announce its new game system nearly nine months before it would be available -- but not actually show it. Biggest of all, despite Chromebooks failing to sell in the $250 range, we had Google offer a refresh priced at $1,500.
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Robotics: Revitalizing American Manufacturing February 21, 2013 
Much has been said over the last few years about the loss of American jobs to other countries. The fact is that China and India, as well as other cheap labor countries, have taken a good number of jobs. Many of these jobs will likely never return. I wrote an article in 2006 titled "Why Money Chases Cheap Labor -- The Outsourcing Phenomenon."
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Why Free Apps Turn Me Off February 21, 2013 
Of the 300 million-plus people using iOS 6 in one form or another -- and millions more using iOS 5 -- I get the feeling I'm a dying breed. Why? I generally dislike and distrust free apps. I can blame some of this on the overwhelming influence of games, kids, and the psychology of the masses.
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Secrets for Speeding CRM Time to Value February 21, 2013 
We all know about the idea of total cost of ownership and the concept of return on investment. Both have their place in business evaluations of CRM. There's another measurement, however, that should be considered -- one I like to call "time to value." The T2V test is simple.
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Elevating Customer Service to the Next Level February 21, 2013 
Do you dread calling a company to get customer support? Most of us do. We are on hold forever and the problem drags on way too long, leaving brand loyalty damaged.
Some companies are solving that problem by partnering with Support.com -- building customer loyalty, developing a competitive advantage, and turning a profit at the same time.
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Getting to the Root of Patent Exhaustion February 19, 2013 
Patent laws remain in the crosshairs, despite the passage and near final implementation of the infamous America Invents Act of 2011. The Supreme Court is again hearing a case that has far-reaching implications for future innovation in self-replicating systems in fields such as nanotechnology, cell and DNA lines, new medical treatments and others.
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IBM's New PureSystems Promise to Ease Big Data, Cloud Adoption February 19, 2013 
Business IT solution development generally follows specific trends and overlapping eras. The first, calculation, occurred as digital products and services wholly replaced adding machines and other mechanical business devices. The second, computation, mirrored the evolution of digitized solutions for increasingly complex processes and applications.
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Building Social Into the Customer Service and Support Infrastructure February 19, 2013 
Surprisingly, many customer service organizations have yet to put their toes in the water when it comes to social media engagement. In fact, fewer than half of them actively respond to consumer complaints via Twitter and other social media channels. For companies that do actively engage in social media for customer support purposes, the average response time is an estimated 24 hours.
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Killing Tesla Slowly: Horse vs. Gas vs. Electric and 1 Foolish CEO February 18, 2013 
I watched in horror last week as Tesla's CEO Elon Musk attempted to turn a New York Times reporter into the next Ralph Nader and kill his company. It brought back memories of the Chevrolet Corvair that died as a result of GM's decision to fight what turned out to be false allegations instead of just making the car better.
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The Patient and Telling Vocabulary of Apple CEO Tim Cook February 14, 2013 
Apple CEO Tim Cook is growing on me. His reputation comes from being an operational genius, a guy who could manage supply chains and factories around the world, and connect them with suppliers and distributors and all sorts of trucks, boats, planes and trains to get products into the hands of customers.
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BlackBerry's Do-or-Die Marketing Challenge February 14, 2013 
Frank Boulben is the new chief marketing officer at BlackBerry and he has his hands full. Did you ever stand in front of a mountain of work and wonder how to get started? Marketing was one of several key weaknesses before RIM became BlackBerry. Can Boulben refresh, reinvigorate and save the smartphone maker? No one yet knows; however, marketing is key -- and Boulben is now center stage.
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Dell Goes Private - Should Apple Follow? February 11, 2013 
I'm not asking the question, "Could Apple follow?" because the amount of cash that would need to be raised would be mind-boggling. Most thought that taking Dell private was impossible, and once you get past "impossible," degree doesn't make that much difference. With Apple stock down sharply, the opportunity may increase to eliminate the impossible part.
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Bringing SaaS Apps to the Masses February 08, 2013 
One of the age-old challenges that has plagued the software industry, like many others, is how vendors can reach small- and mid-sized businesses with their software products. Although today's Software as a Service model eliminates many of the distribution challenges of the past, it hasn't overcome the obstacles associated with selling cloud-based applications to SMBs.
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Nearly a Million iOS Apps and Discovery Still Sucks February 07, 2013 
There are well over 800,000 iOS apps in the App Store, 300,000 of which are native to the iPad, and I'm constantly surprised and irritated at Apple's inability to help its customers discover great apps. Of course, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one who actively goes into Apple's various App Store points of entry -- iTunes, iPad and iPhone -- only to walk away without downloading anything.
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5 Business Lessons to Learn From PR Flacks February 07, 2013 
As a journalist covering technology, you get bombarded with material from PR people trying to get you to write about their clients. Although there are some stellar PR people, the majority of pitches I get are not targeted at what I write about, addressed to the wrong person, or make claims that are demonstrably false or inaccurate.
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Small Cells Could Solve AT&T's Data Problem February 07, 2013 
It looks as though AT&T Mobility has developed a small cell solution to the wireless industry's spectrum shortage -- a data capacity problem that will affect customers of every carrier. AT&T's is not the only solution -- there will be others as well -- but it is an important one. The wireless industry has been dealing with this ever since the explosion of smartphones several years ago.
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Rethinking the Service Paradigm February 06, 2013 
I just got off a phone briefing with Freshdesk, an Indian company with a subscription customer service and support system that it refers to as a "help desk." Freshdesk's got most of the bells and whistles you might expect to find in a solution like that, and it has gamified the business processes as well. That's what inspired this column.
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Linux Netbooks: Hiding in Plain Sight February 05, 2013 
You just think that's a Chromebook beckoning you with an open source OS, easier upgradeability and fast connections to the cloud. All those qualities could make it a Linux netbook in disguise -- or at least what the netbooks of a few years ago promised before they all started selling preloaded with Windows. The key? More manufacturers buying into the flexibility of the Linux kernel in the Chrome OS.
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