If this is true, it’s over for me on whether I get an iPhone

3G is available in June?  I doubt the OLED part, but who cares?  I can’t wait to get rid of Sprint.

LiveBlogging Lotusphere 2008

Bob Costas was the guest speaker. What was impressive was his ability to present improptu….I was watching his teleprompter and he had relatively no text, just keywords like Bonds-Ruth/Steroids, Olympics broad strokes…something left to the professionals.Claim to fame was Bob Uecker, a comedy transition. He mentioned a Sox fan who predicted a World Series win in ‘92 as Sox win the world series after a Russian revolution. He said Patriots might be the single best team in history. His job is to highlight and separate what is important from the barrage of information. He gets reams of information which are just facts prior to a broadcast, old school tools, but are not that helpful, just information…like hard copy encyclopedia.Insight and interpretation have lasting value, those are good old school tools. Relevant facts are teams that beat winners are significant like this years Pats. He pointed out that my team the 72 Dolphins, the only other perfect team didn’t have as tough a schedule, but they were still my team. Loyalty is important.

Here’s one example, steroids make inauthentic stats of today’s home run records.

He transitioned to Lotus - lots of information is out there, but when you look for a fact, are you just going to get a fact, or knowledge, truth, context, insight and information.

On what he’s going to say about the Olympics? Human rights abuse of Chinese were exposed by the internet….The Chinese took his comments at the 1996 Olympics as representative of the US Government, as the media is controlled by the state in China.. The key question, are these Olympics a postive force to showing the world that they have come a long way, or does it embolden them to be not as happy and productive as the rest of the world. He will time this into his comments during his interpretation of the Olympics. That is why he is like what Lotus does.

Mike Rhodin - today’s tools are revolutionary, not evolutionary. Facebook is out in the open as a tool. If we don’t provide the tools, the world will seek out collaboration tools. Profitable growth via cost savings is harder.

It is easier to bend systems to people than people to systems, like the Blackberry announcement with RIM…it’s flexible, adaptable and open…..and not in my pocket. Unfortunately, it now works on the iPhone, which is in my future…looks like they got me either way.

SAP Atlantic announcement, having Lotus software work together for contact management, management tools and other extensions. Levels of detail from non notes applications and subscriptions are now integrated into the user experience. This is big, btw SAP is a Partner

Notes is on Linux, Ubuntu and Mac…Security, reduction in bandwith, storage and cpu consumption…and starts 46% faster….at a lower cost per user.

Widgets are now drag and drop,,,,,I love this new stuff.

Notes 8.5 had much I didn’t understand, but 35% reduction in attachments and storage management, and anti spam and anti virus did resonate to me. The other announcements were administrator specific….and got the only real claps and shouts in the crowd

I will note a Web 2.0 (bingo Ed Brill, and Rob Novak) is in the new Domino.

Here’s what I liked, lots of partners are onboard.

Sametime Entry now works with outlook….they have everything covered. Including secure public IM…take that politicians.

Sametime unified telephony can figure out how contact you, I might as well surrender to the crackberry now…except I love the iPhone and Mac capability.

Oh, and since it also covered Symphony, there was a symphony with one of my favorites…The Barber of Seville here at YouTube.

As for the real Symphony, here was the real talent:

What is very interesting is that I’m conversing with Judith Hurwitz electronically while I’m blogging about the show, she’s somewhere in the audience ….both of us are liveblogging as is Ed Brill and others.

I want and iPhone, but I want an iPhone killer even more

I think the iPhone is a really cool tech tool.  My doctor even told me it changed how he runs his business because he switched.  I love my iPod and I hate Sprint, so it’s a no brainer for me.

So why am I so happy about products like the Nokia N95  and the new iPhone killer from Dell? Competition baby.

It’s no secret that I love capitalism.  Why, because it drives down the price and drives up the features, functions and quality.  It makes everyone get better and the ultimate winner is me, the consumer.

One thing I’m hoping for is the 3G and/or some IP capability.  In the spirit of better products, this will help us divorce ourselves from the service handcuffs that the cellphone companies strangle provide us with.  We should be tied to the phone and it’s capabilities, not the carrier.

So I normally am not a Dell fan, but in the spirit of capitalism, please bring this out before Christmas.  I know that the next two revsions (maybe even more) are already functioning in the Apple labs, so turn up the heat and get it out!

Apple opens up to 3rd party devlopment on the iPhone - why it will live and not die

Apple announced that there will be an SDK for the iPhone for 3rd party developers starting in February, even though there are many 3rd party applications already developed.

Why this matters.   Having been in the technology industry, I’ve seen many great products die (token ring, Micro Channel) and average products (Windows) prosper.  It’s not magical to see that adoption of the product is a major reason.  Even the biggest company can’t ram a product down consumers throats if they don’t want it or it doesn’t fit their needs.

Here is an example.  The PS/2, based on the Micro-Channel Architecture was way ahead of it’s time with a new bus design that was better than the standard IBM compatible bus that morphed into PCI and on from there.  IBM chose to keep it closed to third parties at the time and the clones wars were in full speed mode with Compaq leading the way.  I think we all know the history of who won and what design we now use.  Who even uses the Micro-Channel?

I worked at a company who tried to make 3rd party add on’s to the PS/2 back then and we had to reverse engineer the architecture then build a product without a rulebook.  Hard, but we did it and learned more about the product than all but a couple of IBM’rs.  But it was so hard to build an buy 3rd party hardware and software that the industry did what human nature does, take the path of least resistance.

I hope to own an iPhone one day as everyone I’ve talked to loves it (for the most part with the biggest complaint being the lack of add on’s).  I’ve watched the iBrick episode and saw doom for a good product.  Why stifle creativeness on a good platform?   Well, maybe Apple saw the same thing and just wanted more control over the 3rd party, imagine that from Steve Jobs.

Anyway, this will allow the device to grow into far more than Apple imagined.  Harness the power of an industry and industrious capitalists and the future is unlimited.