The Key Difference Between Apple and Google

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Jessica Nyoman

Apple and Google may look similar on the surface, but the companies couldn’t be any more different. That much has become clear to me after reading both the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and Steven Levy’s In the Plex.

Google and Apple are technology behemoths that bucked the system, created game-changing products and are worth more than $550 billion collectively. Both companies have successful mobile phone divisions and web browsers, and both companies have a common enemy in Microsoft.

The two companies are built on completely different foundations, though. Sergey Brin and Larry Page firmly believe in the power of data and numbers, and that reliance on the metrics is the cornerstone of every major decision the company makes. “Information was the great leveler at Google,” Levy says in his book.

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, believed in the power of design and often threw out the data. “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups,” he famously said in a 1998 BusinessWeek interview. “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

There is no starker contrast of the ying-yang battle of data vs. design. It’s that conflicting yet complementary relationship that sparked one of the industry’s closest friendships and, more recently, one of technology’s fiercest rivalries.

Google: Data Is King

For some reason, I decided to read both Steve Jobs and In the Plex at the same time (the former via Kindle, the latter via audiobook). It was a surreal experience, but it made it clear to me that Google and Apple are polar opposites.

Let’s start with Google. If you need proof that data is king at Google, look no further than In the Plex. The word “data” appears in Levy’s book approximately 319 times. “Design,” on the other hand, appears fewer than 60 times.

The emphasis on design comes directly from the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Here’s how Levy describes them in the beginning of the book:

“[Page and Brin] felt most comfortable in the meritocracy of academia, where brains trumped everything else. Both had an innate understanding of how the ultraconnected world that they enjoyed as computer science students was about to spread throughout society. Both shared a core belief in the primacy of data.”

The result is a company with a deliberately collegiate atmosphere, a strong meritocracy where engineers are king, and most of all a “deep respect for data.” Google is famous for making the tiniest changes to pixel locations based on the data it accrues through its tests. Google will always choose a spartan webpage that converts over a beautiful page that doesn’t have the data to back it up.

“It looks like a human was involved in choosing what went where,” Marissa Mayer once told an upset team of designers about a product design she rejected. “It looks too editorialized. Google products are machine-driven. They’re created by machines. And that is what makes us powerful. That’s what makes our products great.”

Apple: Design Is in Its DNA

Apple, on the other hand, falls on the opposite end of the spectrum. The word “design” and its variations appears in the Steve Jobs biography 432 times. The word “data” appears just 26 times in the book.

“I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much,” Jobs once told Isaacson. “It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”

That emphasis on design derives from Jobs’s childhood experiences. Early in his life, his father taught him that it was important to craft the back of fences and cabinets properly, even though nobody would see them. Later in life, Jobs traveled through Asia and connected with the simplicity of Zen Buddhism.

Those lessons and experiences became part of his quest for perfection, a philosophy that is now essential to every product Apple ships.

Conclusion

Google has placed its faith in data, while Apple worships the power of design. This dichotomy made the two companies complementary. Apple would ship the phones and computers, while Google would provide Maps, Search, YouTube, and other web tools that made the devices more useful. But when Google decided to release its own mobile OS, their friendship quickly turned into a rivalry. And with Google poised to acquire a hardware company, that rivalry will only get stronger.

What can we learn from the battle between data and design? What can we learn from the relationship between Google and Apple?

Clearly no one school of thought is right: Apple and Google are both wildly successful and profitable companies that changed the world. Building a successful company (or living a happy life, for that matter) is not about embracing someone else’s philosophy, but staying true to your own beliefs about the world and learning from the mistakes you make along the way.

Second, design-focused companies tackle different types of problems than data-focused ones. A design-focused company like Apple (or Flipboard) will focus on creating revolutionary, never-before-seen products, because data isn’t great at predicting market revolutions. Data-focused companies like Google, however, have a better chance at revolutionizing existing markets because their products are simply better and more efficient. The search engine existed before Google, but the company used data to make the most effective one in the world. Apple, on the other hand, is credited with launching multiple revolutions, starting with personal computing.

Finally, while data and design are often opposing forces, they need each other as well. Jobs may have focused on design, but he didn’t ignore the data. When he saw the dropped call data from AT&T at the beginning of “Antennagate,” he rushed back from Hawaii to deal with it. The data provided the context on which he could design a response. Great design, even revolutionary ones, is built on solid data.

The Social Analyst is a column by Mashable Editor-at-Large Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

The Challenge of Creating Web-Based Identity Standards

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Jessica Nyoman

John Fontana is the identity evangelist for Ping Identity and editor of the PingTalk Blog. Prior to joining Ping, he spent 11 years as a senior editor at Network World.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others all want to be your identity platform on the web. But while it’s certainly convenient to have one credential for multiple websites, many would argue these services are only secure enough to access your grandmother’s online recipe book.

Growing numbers of technologists, IT executives, organizations and governments believe an identity authentication model must establish set standards.

But can any set of standards answer the tough security challenges, and to what degree? Is it safe to check your social security account on a credential issued by Google? To access health records using your Facebook ID?

Not today. And tomorrow is not likely either.

However, OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 (open authentication) are pointing to some of the best and most promising standards of today. OAuth is the foundation for OpenID Connect (the basis for consumer ID) and for User Managed Access (UMA), a model that lets users control their personal data. Companies such as Bechtel, Chevron, Cisco, GE, M&T Bank, Salesforce.com, and others are already enjoying early success. OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 offer a place where consumer and corporate IDs can co-mingle in a secure cloud, protected by acceptable levels of security.

While it’s too early to tell if OpenID and OAuth will succeed, so far, they appear able to validate a user’s identity — perhaps even identities created by search engines and social sites.

“Street Identity” and Identity Attribute Data

Furthermore, big names are supporting the standards push. Google, Verizon, data exchange service ID/Webdata, and trust framework provider Open Identity Exchange (OIX) proposed a service called Street Identity at a conference last week. Street Identity is designed to strengthen authentication on the web. Loosely-coupled “providers” contribute user data called attributes, such as street address, age and/or mobile phone number that can be used to more accurately validate a user’s identity.

“Google’s [efforts] recognize what is happening now, which is identities are being deconstructed into attributes,” says Don Thibeau, chairman of OIX.

Ironically, Google and other companies with massive user data repositories don’t have enough validated pieces of user information to strengthen authentication. Google would need to partner with an attribute provider that would incorporate that information into the authentication process — with user consent, of course. The service would include a revenue model for businesses and organizations that agree to participate.

Google’s idea doesn’t replace the current identity standards effort. Rather, Street Identity is building on OpenID Connect and OAuth. It incorporates UMA for user control and features the first implementation of OpenID Connect’s spec for attribute aggregation and distribution, which was largely championed by Microsoft and its internal identity guru, Mike Jones.

Google and its partners believe that by aggregating a user’s data from various trusted sources, Street Identity can solve three problems: First, the service would connect to real-world identities, which OpenID does not do. It would provide a financial incentive for mobile operators that collect fees for providing data. Finally, it allows the government to steer clear of the electronic ID business by accessing needed data via attribute providers.

The prospect sounds promising, but so did pure PKI before its implementers began telling war stories. It seems, however, that Google continues to work toward a user authentication standard. The caveat is that standardization still has a lot more work ahead.

Using Google+ to build your business

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

Google+ is the new player in the block. It has quickly become the place to be in social media.

The last thing entrepreneurs need is another social network to join, right? Weren’t you just getting the hang of Twitter? Didn’t you just start putting that Facebook business page together? So why is this important to get into Google+ now?

What I’ve seen so far is that the new social network from Google has a lot of advantages that are worth thinking about, and entrepreneurial types should take a look-see.

THE NEXT BIG THING
Google+ is a social networking platform, but you can look at it a lot of different ways. You can say it’s like Facebook, only cleaner. It’s like Twitter, only more engaging. It has the potential to be a great collaboration and communication platform (you can isolate who sees information by sharing it with specific Circles, or groupings of people).

Also, realize that Google+ is indexed by the biggest search engine in the world, also known as Google. Other search engines like it, too. And it has a lot of integration points, such as Google Places (which shows you location information), and an incredible potential for integrating even more of Google’s services over time.

HOW IT WILL HELP YOUR BUSINESS
Social networks are built to try and emulate real-world connectivity and information-sharing. On one hand, they’re like a more interesting telephone. On the other hand, they’re built to augment (not replace) cocktail parties, chamber of commerce meetings and other places where people get to know each other (or at least used to). Google+ does this surprisingly well, for a few reasons.
Google+ lets you share photos, videos, links and location data with everyone, or with your select Circles. Thus, when you find the good stuff that applies to your real estate friends, if you’ve grouped them into a Circle, you can send that information only to them. Other times, you can share with the general public to try and grow your audience.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT
First (and important) Facebook is not indexed by Google for search results, meaning that everything you do inside there stays inside there. Second, Facebook and LinkedIn both are set up for more of an “exclusive” model, which means that you have to know someone to know something. That’s why you see companies pushing so hard for “likes,” and why you see people spam the LinkedIn Groups.
Google+ is slowly rolling out their “for business” parts of the platform.

GET IN EARLY
Simply put, it’s important to take action on Google+ right now. I saw the benefits of this when I joined Twitter a while ago. If you get in, get familiar, start growing connections and learn how to curate and share, you’ll be ahead of the game.

What Do Facebook Users Expect from Brands?

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Suwandhi Taswin

Facebook users have both + and – expectations when “liking” a brand! Many Companies are very often on the hunt for more “likes” for their Facebook pages with hopes that people will soon recognize its brand or sometimes it’s just for increasing number of exposures on social media. However only 42% of US Facebook users think marketers should interpret a “like” in that way.

Study from ExactTarget on June 2011 study from, “Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Meaning of Like,” which found that 25% of US Facebook users disagree that marketers should interpret “like” to mean they are a fan or advocate of the company”.

Facebook users themselves have some preconceived notions about what to expect when they “like” a company on the site, and among those who do not become brand fans, many are negative. More than half of users expect to be bombarded with messages or ads (54%), while 45% do not want to give companies access to profile information and 31% do not want to push content from a company into friends’ newsfeeds. These possibilities have prevented users from making brand connections on the social networking giant.

On the flip side, many US Facebook users also have certain expectations of perks they should get after following a company’s Facebook page.

Study from The ExactTarget study found that “58% of US Facebook users expect to gain access to exclusive content, events or sales after “liking” a company, while 58% also expect to receive discounts or promotions. Additionally 47% expect to see updates about the company, person or organization they “liked” in their newsfeed, which bodes well for brands as they work to have their content always show up for their followers.”

Additionally, younger consumers, ExactTarget found, have fewer expectations and generally “like” brands as a form of expression, not to get certain perks. Meanwhile, older consumers want something of value for “liking” a brand. By listening to what their target fanbase wants out of the Facebook relationship, marketers can get more interaction on their page and encourage more people to “like” rather than avoid brands on Facebook.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008630

How to Optimize Your Press Release

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

Why Submit Your Press Release to Distribution Services?

Think about Google News and Yahoo! News as different search engines. In order to get your content to be indexed in these places, you need to submit your press release to one of the recognized press release distribution services.

Where to Submit Your Press Release?
The five big ones are: PRWeb, PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire and PrimeNewswire. There are other less popular ones, plus free services you may be able to use. While we encourage you to experiment, make sure you know what you are getting. You should have access to the main search engines and the capability to hyperlink from the press release to your site.

The # 1 Critical Element in Press Releases
Including hyperlinks in your press releases is critical. Make sure to hyperlink relevant words directing to targeted pages. For instance, if your press release is about a new product launch, you should hyperlink the most important phrases and send people to your website pages corresponding to these phrases. This is essential for search engine optimization.

Don’t Forget to Publish on Your Site
In addition to sending the press release to reputable distribution services, you should also publish it on your own website. Put it up on the Media page, on your blog or wherever you think is appropriate. If you put it on your site, it is going to get indexed by the main part of Google.

7 Ways to Know if a Development Project Is Worth Your Time

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Jessica Nyoman

Brett Miller is the president of Custom Software by Preston(CSP). For more than 10 years, CSP has impressed clients with highly effective software solutions and teams of multi-talented software engineers.

Remember the old 80/20 rule? The same applies to software development inquiries, as in 20% of sales inquiries result in 80% of new sales volume. The challenge is being able to identify which inquiries will be fruitful, and which will only cost you time and effort.

Potential clients expect accurate estimates — clearly a reasonable request. For any developer, accurate estimates are a time consuming and challenging task because custom software development and technology are constantly changing, and it’s not the same as buying an off-the-shelf item.

Even worse, many prospects decide not to move forward with their project at all (with any vendor). It’s not because the bidders did anything wrong, but because the client did not realize the full extent of the commitment required (usually defined by cost).

I have spent 15 years of my career in software development, both as a freelance developer and as a business owner. That practical experience has taught me to quickly recognize which potential projects are going to move forward and which are just not worth pursuing. There are Seven Axioms I use to help identify the solid opportunities.

1. Documented Requirements

If the client took the time to write down what they want, it is a strong indicator that they are serious. Otherwise, you will need to do this for them. Then time and documentation flows back and forth until a project’s parameters are finalized.

Rule: Lean toward clients who have taken the initiative in identifying and drafting their own software project requirements.

2. Urgent Need

This goes right to the heart of the matter. Is software development a logical next step in their growth or does it seem more whimsical/experimental in nature? For example, does the software project tie in to the launch of a new product without which, they might falter?

Rule: Lean toward projects that have an immediate nature, where the client absolutely needs it done.

3. Deal With the Decision Makers

Many times decision makers send underlings to gather the initial project information and specifications. In my experience, information gathering usually results in little else. Decision makers are involved when projects are deemed critical.

Rule: Lean toward projects where you work directly with the decision makers — the ones who steer the project and identify priorities.

4. Budgeted Project

Could anything be more critical than having realistic expectations about the cost of development? Many prospects may have misconceptions about cost, which is further exacerbated by vendors who shy away from early discussion on the subject. Sales professionals consider rough estimates to be an important applied mechanism of the trial close, potentially saving many hours of time and effort.

Rule: Use rough estimates to measure a client’s continuing interest. You could say something like, “Based on these preliminary estimates, does it make sense for us to take the next step?”

5. Process and Timeframe

Questions about the bidding process and timeframe should be addressed up front to uncover internal processes (like board reviews) or external influences (like venture capital availability). If the process seems extensive or the time frame is not well-defined, there is good reason to question if the project will ever happen.

Rule: Realize that the quality of your work and the accuracy of your estimate will not win the project if their timeframes or processes are inhibited by roadblocks. Lean toward projects that have appropriate funding, immediate need and the attention of decision makers.

6. How do I Earn the Business?

Asking about the client’s selection criteria make sense. If they haven’t already done so, they need to think about these things now and you need to know the rules of the game. Their processes and criteria may even play into the overall desirability of the project.

Rule: Understanding what is required to get the job reveals a lot about what it might be like to have the job. Do you even want to work within the structure and environment the client creates?

7. Show Me Some Money!

Your time and expertise has value. It is not that unusual for a potential client to be looking for a free consultation, which may only be used internally (if at all). If possible, ask the client for a small amount to put together the initial requirements and specifications for the project. If they are willing to spend real hard cash on developing the specifications, they are really serious about the project (and you as a potential vendor).

Rule: Initial project analysis, documentation drafting and identifying deliverables take considerable time and effort. Describe the process to the client and don’t be afraid to ask for payment for these services.

Sophistication, Process and Specifics

Legitimately qualified software development opportunities can be summarized in three words: sophistication, process and specifics. You need all three in your approach to the sales cycle and should expect all three in return.

Sophistication is about the approach to the project, indicating that available information and outcomes have been given thorough consideration upfront. Process relates to both parties understanding the steps and effort it will take to achieve success. Specifics have to do with identifying and sharing the salient properties of all project parameters — before, during, and after the project.

Approach every potential project with these factors in mind and you will know which ones are worthy of your attention, leading you down the path to a sale.

7 Tips for Boo-tiful Web Design [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Jessica Nyoman

Listen up, ghouls and boos, we’ve written a lot about web design here at Mashable, but on one day a year, it’s appropriate to call on some more, um, spirited individuals to lay down the laws of basic and proper web design.

We hope you know by now not to use Comic Sans. And while everyone loves an animated GIF, they’re only funny or entertaining when they’re … funny or entertaining. And that blinking text? Get rid of it, unless you’d like to be liable for a few seizures.

Below, you’ll learn from Frankenstein font snobs, mouthy mummies, impatient pumpkins and spiders on the web to help you make your website more of a treat than a scare to browse.

How Do You Use Your Email List Effectively?

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Rionald Soerjanto

Do you remember the sweet anticipation of receiving new email messages? If you are like most people today, you hardly think of your inbox fondly.

Here are the two things you need to consider when using your email for marketing. It is great to see people opening and enjoying your emails. Here is how you can achieve more of this:
Don’t Use Email to Only Sell
“The biggest problem that I see is that companies use them [emails] exclusively to try to sell things,” says David Meerman Scott in his book “Real-Time Marketing.”

The messages they send revolve around product offers, discounts and free shipping. Emails from B2B companies, on the other hand, are always trying to push the recipients toward engaging with sales people. While this approach is okay every now and then, it should occur only after a company has earned the attention of its email subscribers.

Earn the Attention of Email Subscribers
Every email you send to people needs to lead with something valuable. You might want to share a link to a video, a new webinar or some type of industry report or an infographic. In this way, your recipients will be excited to open your messages because they will expect to see real value there. So, before sending your next email, ask yourself: “Why is this going to be valuable to the person I am sending it?”

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