There are many products that simply wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for an enabling technology or service. I am designing a pivot strategy for @ExumaTech that could revolutionize the way owners of late model cars, trucks, boats and RVs communicate with their dealers. One of the risk factors I’ve identified is the dependence this solution will have on dealer management systems (DMS). If the link between this app and the DMS breaks, no more value to customers.

Being dependent upon another technology is very different than simply providing another interface to an existing product or service, or adding new functionality. There are thousands of products that add a missing feature to popular services like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The Twitter “auto-reply” products are a good example. If the giants cough, the enablement technologies can either catch a cold or worse yet become irreparably broken.The legion of Twitter auto-responders are a good example of this. When and if Twitter releases this feature, so much for those products.

There is another class of products like Market Samurai that help people improve efficiencies by coalescing and organizing data from numerous sources and presenting it to the user in a common interface. A good example of this is HootSuite. Like Market Samurai, HootSuite is a great service because it helps us manage our social media activities across multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts. Twitter and Facebook have published APIs in their services to enable companies like HootSuite and thousands to create valuable products. This of course bolsters the value of those services and creates an ecosystem of developers and designers promoting those services.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the giants (Google) coughed and it seriously disrupted the service provided by Market Samurai. Many companies that don’t have an open and honest relationship with their customers and the blogosphere would have hidden from these issues while their customers suffered. Worse yet they could have blamed Google for all of their problems in one simple blog post and then gone silent while they paniked behind closed doors. However Market Samurai did what any company operating in our open socially engaged world would do – they threw the doors open to conversation with their customers, fans and ditracters. That door was left open 24-hours a day through the weekend and into the following week.  Eugene Ware, their CEO, lays it all out on the line here. Bravo!

This is an email I sent to my company on Thursday, Oct 6th, the day after Steve Jobs passed away. I felt compelled to make it public:

Team,

By now everyone on the planet knows that Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. He only resigned six weeks ago from Apple so the world was pretty shocked that he passed away so suddenly. Whether you love or hate Apple, what he deserves credit for is asking Why.

One of his favorite sayings was Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. This statement is plastered on my desktop background. He didn’t come up with this. He first saw this on the back cover of the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog. (The Whole Earth Catalog was a hip collection of stuff you could buy mail order in the early 70s). He was inspired by this statement because he felt this statement encapsulated two primary beliefs that guided him throughout his life.

1. Stay Hungry — never rest on your laurels, never give up, its about the journey not the destination
2. Stay Foolish — you learn something every day. Never think you know it all or that you have everything figured out. Thats when its over.

To me the iPhone was Apple’s greatest invention. One of Jobs mentors was a guy named Alan Kay. Kay once said People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware and thats what Apple did with the iPhone. They looked at the popular smartphones on the market in those days like BlackBerry, Palm Treo and Motorola Q, and asked: Why have a keyboard? Why is half of the device taken up by something that isn’t really needed for every application?

In other words, software developers were having to work around limitations of the hardware. Why not make the hardware a clean slate, and let the software developer use whatever he or she needs to provide the best user experience for the problem they are trying to solve? Well the rest is history. Now we have a completely different way of interacting with computers in both the smartphone and tablet market.

Here is the video of the unveiling of the iPhone

So what’s the other piece of news? Buried in the headlines of Jobs untimely death and Amanda Knox arriving in Seattle (Seriously? This is news?), there was a little story in the LA Times that a company in India, with the help of the Indian government had just produced a tablet that costs $50 to make. With subsidies from the government they plan to sell them to students and schools for $35 OR LESS. I thought the Kindle Fire was cheap at $199. But $35 for something less functional and smaller than an iPad that starts at $500?

Here is the complete story

So what could all of this mean for us? The revolutionary changes in how people interact with computers from the iPhone to tablets is fundamentally changing how people work. No longer are they tethered to a desktop, monitor and mouse. They are now on the road, in the service yard, on the showroom floor, with something in their hand that is as powerful as the computer on their desktop just a few years ago.

This is an extraordinary time for us because we have the opportunity to now provide products to serve both our current customers and future customers in ways we couldn’t before. In the not too distant future our customers will be able to enter or look-up work orders, enter time, search for parts, accept payments on the move and check out a customer at a mobile register. All of these things are possible by doing what we’ve always done on a new platform.

Those of you that haven’t tried out our new DockMaster in the Cloud platform really must. We haven’t made a formal internal announcement about it yet, because we want to make sure that IT is ready for everyone to start using it. More to come on this. DockMaster in the Cloud is just a start. There are so many things this company can do with the right vision and guts to get out there and do it. So Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish and thank Steve Jobs while you are at it!

Cam

As a kid I remember adults talking about where they were and what they were doing the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The same holds true the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

Ten years ago today our country was attacked by terrorists. Nearly 3,000 people died in New York, DC and Pennsylvania. Like most people, I remember where I was and what I was doing. However what hit home recently for me was my eleven year old’s recollection of that day. This is what he wrote recently for a class project whereby he was asked to write a news story about an important event in his life.

“It was 9/11/01. Ten days after my birthday. It was the day when the twin towers exploded. When my mom heard the news she fell on her knees crying because my dad was on a plane from Manhattan to Florida. Then she got a call and was happy when she found out my dad was still alive. I would say that was the scariest day of my life!”

I was actually flying from Palm Beach to Laguardia. Someone in the seat across from me had called home from the air phone and was told that there was a terrorist attack in New York. It was right around 9 AM, so there weren’t a lot of details at that time. A couple more people called down to the ground and we began to get sketchy reports about what was happening. Talk started flying around about airplanes crashing into buildings and a couple of us started to wonder if we were safe. Just then, the pilot got on the PA and said “There has been a terrorist attack in New York. We are safe and in control of the aircraft, but this flight is being diverted to Atlanta”.

Hartsfield International was a zoo when we landed. Everyone was heading in the same direction – out! I found a rental car (thankfully) even though I stood in line for two hours. I remember the 8-hour drive home and seeing people on the side of the road waving flags. The way we came together as a country was breath taking. We need to remember 9/11 often. We need to embrace our neighbors like we did that day and the days that followed. Some people will stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing has changed. Others like Scott Heiferman, Co-Founder & CEO of Meetup will start great companies that promote the the connections made post-9/11. What will you do? God bless America!!