iPhone Connected: ACU

Link: Abilene Christian University. It is no secret the Kansas Business Attorney has been skeptical of the iPhone. The rest of the story. While the AT&T 8525 has certainly filled the bill for mobile connectedness, there is a quiet concession to be made. Fewer keystrokes may have value. Some may have had a tendency (due to an old stereotype that Apple products are merely “more expensive and prettier”) to bash the iPhone in favor of the Windows Mobile (first 5, now 6) platform. True, it still seems the Windows Mobile can ultimately do more (and it already meshes well with Outlook), but for what it will do (and yes, that list is growing and many are eager to be its primary grower) the iPhone will do it faster than than a WinMo device.

Remarkable Concept: ACU Connected: Convergence and the 21st-Century Classroom. In its brief discourse (”Implications for the Emerging Classroom”) on the “flexibility, creativity, and community manifest in Web 2.0″ ACU suggest today’s students are

“born multitaskers for whom convergence is second nature.

Rather than fighting against a change that’s old news for our students, and rather than passively waiting for the development of new pedagogical models, we think it’s important to embrace and nurture the trends demonstrated by the 21st-century classroom and Web 2.0. We believe that the best way to fulfill these goals is to encourage communication and convergence. We see the new generation of converged mobile devices like the iPhone or Blackberry as devices uniquely suited to this purpose, offering multiple communication technologies - phone, voicemail, email, multi-session chat - while also bringing together an unprecedented level of media and information access - audio, video, photography, and the web.

At their core, these devices offer compelling support for the strategies of the 21st-century classroom. Further, they offer students, faculty, and staff unprecedented opportunities for building academic and social community, bringing technologies together in a way that encourages participation, creation, and exploration rather than passive consumption. We see them as ideal platforms for developing innovative and integrative applications for higher education.”

What are those terms Jobs always throws around: remarkable … fascinating … groundbreaking. Pick one. Any way you slice, convergence and the classroom — the iPhone on any campus = pretty cool.

Second Amendment: are Robot Dogs included?

Big Dog: Does the inviolate “right to keep and bear arms” include one of these bad boys? If Boston Dynamics will send me one of these, I will be glad to sample it for a month and write a deep review. (They pay shipping.) I am quite comfortable that the Big Dog (with the proper loyalty-to-me firmware upgrade) will stop those unwelcome and unfriendlies (including The Man) at or near my curtilage.

How to Accomplish More: Can it be this Simple?

Link ExecutiveHacks. 
David Hutchison suggests,

How can you do more in a few hours than most of your colleagues do in a day? Simple. Do only one thing.

It’s not GTD, it’s not Seven Habits … it’s more Nike — Just Do It.  You don’t incorporate a new system, there is no cross-reference of immediacy and importance … really.  Check out David’s strategy, then rather than mulling it over, try it!

“Start Me Up!” Program: One-on-one help to get launched in ‘08

Link: StartUpNation. 

Need advice?  We all do.  Get advice “by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs” on starting your small business.  Litmus test:  if you can get advice, planning tips, a timeline from a consultant (and here’s a hint: the price is right), and much more, and you do not immediately contact StartUpNation, are you sure you have the proper constitution to be an entrepreneur?

As you join StartUpNation, it promises:

• A dedicated consultant
• A customized startup schedule
• Weekly articles, tutorials, and advice tailored to the stage of your business
• Assistance to help you select the best vendors
• Support in setting up your legal entity, insurance, marketing, and more

While I have not tried this service, I’ll say this much:  as promises go … this one … shows promise.

Alltop: looking for a few good feeds?

  What to read, what to read.  Let’s say you don’t already have a dozen opml’s here and there, and let’s say further that you don’t constantly struggle to pare down your feeds to 50 or so.  Take a gander at Alltop.  Not a show-stopping sort of deal, but good at what it’s good at.

I’m going to call it some kind of hybrid between newser (but without the news-only focus and pictures) and a kind of ready-made netvibes page.  It’s, quite simply, an index of topics with a sub-index of high-quality blogs.  Right away, I can see the allure for at least a couple fairly distinct demographics:

•  you’re a little new to the feed thing (RSS what?) but ready to step out past google news, your yahoo page, and a half-dozen newspaper sites; Alltop is a great place for you to click up a couple of interest areas, and find a steady stream of varying perspectives respecting that scope; or
• you’re feeling a little lulled to a discomforting level of complacency… you’re suffering from a little bit of group think since it has become more and more evident to you that fully 1/2 of the feeds you read spend 3/4 of their energy covering well-duplicated stories and the other half spend 7/8 of their keystrokes covering one another’s coverage (of the same stories already well-duplicated by that first 1/2 of your feeds); in the end, there you are feeling like only 3/8 of the posts you read have some shot at showing you something original and to be honest, only two-fifths of that is of interest to you; enter stage left: Alltop; you go to Alltop, you find maybe a dozen new feeds (and the quality is there, so I’ll bet you can) to put in your main opml; then you follow a classic honing rule for feed-lovers — you remove two of your current feeds for every new feed you add.  Voila! The time you spend (compulsively) reading feeds once again has a broadening effect on your mind.  And it isn’t that the aim?

For this writer (and as you know I’m in that latter demo), Alltop brought me a nearly instant reward:  Lifedev.  Don’t ask me what internet I’ve been reading, but thanks to Alltop for getting me here.  I can somewhat fairly say I’ve been a devoted reader of Gina and the gang at Lifehacker for quite a time (and by devoted, I just mean that it’s in all of my (both mobile and non) opml’s and I glance its way probably 15-25 times a week). However comma the “Lifehacks” index at Alltop has introduced me to Lifedev, and I have to say my DIY brainscan now indicates additional areas of cerebral activity.

See for yourself, Lifedev’s last few:

• 11 Steps to Becoming Addicted to Running
• Maybe Friday is the New Saturday?
• The Freelancer’s Guide to Setting Perfect Deadlines

So go, delight … prosper.

A watched pot…

So, here we are: 4,992 “absolute unique visitors” since I released the traffic-tracking hounds. (While I can’t really think of the punchline, it reminds me of the old joke: the guy’s jumping on a manhole cover, counting “29…29…29…” just over and over; perhaps you know the rest.)

As one who tends to recite (perhaps it goes with the territory) the it-is-what-it-is assessment from time to time, I guess I’m not really going to sing (and I’m certainly not going to cry). Probably some time during tonight’s commute I’ll have the quiet (and mild) satisfaction that this little corner of the web by an amateur blogger on a fraction of a part-time basis has found its way in front of 5,000 different browsers.  Neat.

Moreover, I’ve come to know a handful of these absolute unique visitors, and that is certainly my privilege.   And I thank you.

iPhone for Business: revisited

  Based on Apple’s latest (03/06/08) announcement:

• the iPhone has 28% of market share among “smartphones”;
• it makes up 71% of US mobile browser usage (their figure, not mine);
• but iPhone (enterprise) users want push email, push calendar, push contacts (you can see where this list is going);

Captain Jobs able Lt. was “happy to announce” [drum roll] “we’re doing all of these things in the next release of the iPhone software”.  That’s it … straight from the apple’s mouth; they’re working directly with Microsoft … licensed the ActiveSync software … supporting Microsoft Exchange …

So there it is: the iPhone for business.

(Stay tuned to find out:  iPhone: All things to All people yet?)