3 posts tagged “mikejsolutions”

Golden Gate Fog

Some of you may have heard by now that our family’s life is about to change dramatically. Over the last few months I have been able to consolidate our business life to focus solely on the launch of my wifes new company, Storybook Anytime and my new full-time dream job...

Several weeks ago I accepted an offer from the San Francisco based company, Millions of Us, to become their full-time technical director. I will be working on 2D and 3D virtual worlds as well as marketing systems for major brands inside video games and social networks. It’s going to be fun, challenging and ground breaking.

This will of course mean that we will be relocating to the San Francisco Bay area in January. We are currently in the process of house hunting in Marin County and are excited about the opportunities that Silicon Valley brings to both Storybook Anytime, my career and our overall quality of life.

We suspect that we will miss Atlanta greatly but are excited about this new adventurous chapter in our life. My website, http://www.mikejsolutions.com, will be updated soon to reflect all the new happenings and will be a great place to keep up with our progress. There you will find access to our Flickr! photos, Blog and daily Twitter updates in a single location.

Great things are on the horizon!

I have been helping companies create and execute unique and focused strategies as a technology evangelist for several years now. It is often difficult to communicate the difference between real and perceived strategies when helping companies increase the bottom line. Seth Godin delivers a fantastic explanation of the difference between real strategy and tactics in a recent blog post.

Many companies get so tangled up in perceived strategies that they find it extremely difficult to execute meaningful tactics. This process inevitably results in lost revenue due to ineffective execution. Most business leaders quickly recognize the results of failed tactical execution. The fact that this failure could be a direct result of a bad strategy is rarely considered. Tactics should be easy to execute if the appropriate strategy is in place and led with the correct vision and values. The next time you find yourself a midst a series of failed executions, I submit to you that perhaps it's time to re-examine your strategic direction.

I recently upgraded my "lifeline" to a Nokia E62. Having used the Treo 650 since the day it was released, I have been absolutely craving a better solution with every passing day. I was encouraged when the much anticipated Motorola Q was released by Verizon, but purposely waited. Being a first adopter of the Treo made me gun shy to move quickly a second time. It was also irrelevant to me if I needed to switch from Cingular to Verizon. My good friend Guy Kawasaki encouraged me to do so (as he did) just to use the EVDO system-- he purchased a Motorola Q and Verizon's EVDO was supporting our new MacBook Pros.

Needless to say I was very close to upgrading to the Motorola Q but I just could not get passed the Windows Mobile OS thing. It was also important to me that I have a world phone as my wife and I travel quite extensively. For a while I was beginning to wonder if I would ever have a better option or would have to join Guy as a Q evangelist. The high speed EVDO network thing was appealing.

Geek Porn

Enter the Nokia E62. Getting rave reviews from Europe I was completely unfamiliar with the Symbian OS. The more I read however the more I liked. The only complaints I could find about the E62 was the wait time when switching between applications and no built in camera. I would miss my camera phone "slightly" but being completely in love with my Nikon D-70 what the hell did I really use my camera phone for anyway? As far as wait time between applications, no big deal.  The more information you load on your Q, the longer it takes to boot. Boot time is irrelevant on a mobile phone right? That may be true but then again it is a Windows OS. How many times will I need to reboot? The Treo re-boots three times a freakin' day! And bonus... the E62 supports both Cingular's EDGE service and EVDO at the same time. Sold.

I purchased the Nokia E62 for almost a third of the cost of the Treo. The Symbian OS is rock solid and as stable as OS X. I was even able to mod the background with the OS X desktop background. It has been running solid for three weeks straight with no issues or reboots. The battery is lasting almost three days on a single charge- and I spend a great deal of my day on the phone. I gave up my land-line phone a year ago and have not looked back. Bluetooth actually works the way it was imagined. My headset and phone recognize each other instantly when I walk in/out of range. My headset rings in my ear and digitally announces the name of the caller in my ear- awesome! I have effectively managed call-waiting and three way calling while 40 feet away from my phone with just my bluetooth headset. Perhaps this has always been the case with phones other than the Treo.

Now, all that said, nothing is perfect. Out of the box support for Mac OS X is not available (come on Nokia, get with the program). To correct this I was able to locate a program from Nova Media that installed in seconds, and like all OS X apps, just worked. It allows my calendar and contacts to sync instantly through bluetooth. It took longer to find out about the app through Google than it did to install it and get it operational. This also allows OS X to recognize the phone as a hard drive. This let's me literally drag n' drop music, images and any other files that I wish to store on the phone direct from my MacBook Pro. Groovy! Did I mention the E62 has instant support for MP3 as ringtones and will display just about any image format you throw at it? I can also read & edit any document from Microsoft Office. With the addition of a 2 Gig Mini-SD card I have elemenated my alternate thumbdrive requirements as well. Add a custom case from Boxwave and I think I have the perfect phone- at least for now.

Can you tell I am in love with this phone? I absolutely don't know how I have managed up to this point without it.