Thought leadership by design

Just a quickie to share with you a book I stumbled onto and find rather insightful: “Thought Leadership by Design”.

I will order a few of those and distribute them to all my business contacts… it is, as they claim one of those “no-frills” books I like. You can actually read it and it is actually worth it.

On the “no-frills” line, I strongly urge you to take a peak at getAbstract.com which produces timely abstracts of business books that you can scan and decide for yourself if you really want to invest the time to actually read through the full 300-page version. Very useful indeed in this time-constrained world of ours.

Technorati Tags: digital design, user experience

Microsoft Surface: accidental hit?

A lot has been said already about Surface, the killer UI making “Minority Report” look like “Driving Miss Daisy”.
A video from the application to be found at the Caesars’ Palace can be found here, and Manuel Diaz posted a very complete video on the .Gr blog.

Following the analysts’ meetings and our FY07 results, the press is all over Microsoft. Interestingly enough my favorite Richard Waters has posted a note on Surface in the FT’s Tech blog (which you should all be reading by now). The bottom line seemed too obvious for even him had to write it which makes me feel kinda sad. Here it goes:

It’s a reminder that the company’s developers can indeed come up with hot products, though it also says a lot about its internal development process. You could never see Steve Jobs accidentally stumbling onto something in this way.

Technorati Tags: Apple, digital design, emakina, Groupe Reflect, Microsoft, surface, user experience

Windows Live QuickApps: register NOW!

The Windows Live Quick Application program has been launched following the Worldwide Partner Conference to minimize the learning curve of Windows Live services and technologies. If you are even remotely interested in web technologies I think you should take a close look at these applications and join the program as it will provide you with valuable insight as these services become available.

Technorati Tags: Live, Microsoft, Windows Live

Outinnovating on the web

This is the financial results period in the US and yesterday both Yahoo and eBay reported their earnings which generated disappointment as their stellar growth rates and cocaine-like margins are slowly falling victim of gravity. In yet another good article, Richard Waters, the Information Industries Editor for the Financial Times, explains why the web behemoths are facing difficult challenges ahead as smaller companies keep on out-innovating them.

And before you go any further, Apple also announced its financial results for the quarter and they indeed managed to sell 270k iPhones during the first 30 hours, which means that they actually sold 2.5 devices per second nonstop! Even though it is less than expected, they maintained their forecast that 1 million devices will have been sold come October.

Technorati Tags: Apple

Venture Capital life prognosis

Just a quick note to share this good paper found on Wired about pressures facing the Venture Capital industry and its limited returns (on average that is; if you only backed NSCP, YHOO and GOOG you’re good!)

My take on this one is that as soon as the first major failure hits the fan with PE leveraged deals, the VC asset class will automagically be considered again, if only to diversify your portfolio’s risk.

Technorati Tags: Wired, venture capital

Nike Pulsing Back in Shape

I talked earlier about RG/A and the Nike+ concept. Well, I decided to use it myself and after close to two sportless years (this is what happens when you have kids!) I went back to running using a beautiful iPod Nano (Red) coupled with the Nike+ sensor.

I decided against changing my Adidas running shoes which are still fine (regardless of repeated threats from my favorite interactive agencies to switch to Nike) and just bought a $7 shoe wallet to insert the sensor inside. Believe it works fine!

So today I ran and did 5km in 27 minutes (on the graph you can see I reduced my speed right after that and cooled down for another 1k or so).

Bottom line, the system is great and I strongly encourage you to use it… I feel much better now!

My Nike+ alias is “nborgis”, so if you want to challenge me, please do

Technorati Tags: Apple, digital advertising, e-marketing, Nike+, RG/A

Burn baby, burn!

Just a quickie to let you faithful readers know that I have decided to burn my feed at FeedBurner. The result should be much more RSS reader friendly, therefore I strongly encourage you to update your feed settings and point to this one.

Keep tuned for more announcement as the Microsoft Global Exchange Summit (aka. MGX) is about to begin here in Orlando.

Technorati Tags: nBlog, FeedBurner

Microsoft Surface @ Caesars Palace

I managed to get one of the product managers from Microsoft Surface to do a quick demo of how the table will be used at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

It is interesting and a good complement to other videos you can find on the web. The table price point is currently set around $10k and should decrease steadily (think flat screen price curve) as large deals with large volume make the unit costs go down.

Technorati Tags: digital design, Microsoft, surface, user experience

Executive lunch with Kevin Turner

Today the Interactive Agencies (AKQA, Frog Design, Monochrome, FullSix, Emakina-Groupe Reflect, aso.) had an executive lunch with Kevin Turner and Alison Watson to discuss Microsoft’s engagement towards the web ecosystem.

Damon and Manuel share their feedbacks on this lunch and explain the next steps going forward. As before, they do it in French, but they do it with style!

Feedback from French Web Agencies @ WPC2007

While seating in a great Windows Vista Ford Mustang, Damon and Manuel share their feedbacks on the WPC2007, Microsoft’s engagement towards interactive agencies and they do it with style! 

Technorati Tags: 7Seven, digital advertising, emakina, e-marketing, FullSix, Groupe Reflect, Microsoft, WPC2007, web 2.0