BlueStacks says it plans to come up with
a Ms. Android in 2012.(Credit: BlueStacks)
The typical Android user apparently does not look kindly upon flip-flops, opting instead to pair his jeans and T-shirt with the far-more-practical sneakers.
We say "he," because the typical Android user is male, according to the folks at BlueStacks, a startup that makes software for running Android apps on Windows PCs. Using data from Nielsen, as well as information culled this month from more than 145,000 of its Facebook followers, BlueStacks created a composite Android user dubbed Mr. Android 2011.
"Mr. Android is everything Android users are...all their dynamism, visualized as one person," John Gargiulo, vice president of marketing and business development at BlueStacks, tells CNET.
So how would you spot Mr. A 2011 walking down the street?
Well, while there's a 47 percent chance he has black hair, green-haired Android users are an extremely rare species, clocking in at only 3 percent of those polled. Subtle pompadours, however, appear to fit the Android aesthetic, a trend marketers of hair products may wish to keep in mind.
It's worth noting, as BlueStacks points out, that the data used to create composite Android guy is "unscientific, but then again, so is love" (an area, according to the poll, where Android users fare just fine, thank you very much, nerd stereotypes).
Nonetheless, makers of Android hardware and software may be able to glean a few useful (if not brand new) insights here.
For example, 62 of those polled use Android for play; 38 percent use Android for work; a third have zero paid apps on their phone; and average monthly data usage tallies up to 582MB (compared with iPhone users, who grabbed 492MB of data, according to a Nielsen survey conducted earlier this year).
But onto the stuff that's really going to matter in that Mr. Android pageant...
When it comes to accessorizing, 37 percent of Android users polled wear glasses; and, somewhat oddly, 45 percent wear one of those fast-becoming-obsolete wristwatches (a mind bender from Tokyoflash, we're guessing).
We're especially interested to hear that 30 percent of Android fans polled have freckles, a stat that baffled us at first but could be explained by Android's reported dominance of the Sun Belt.
So, Android users, do you see yourself in this image?
Leslie Katz Leslie Katz, senior editor of CNET's Crave, covers gadgets, games, and myriad other digital distractions. As a co-host of the now-retired CNET News Daily Podcast, she was sometimes known to channel Terry Gross and still uses her trained "podcast voice" to bully the speech recognition software on automated customer service lines.
It may be small but the Sony Ericsson Xperia ray smartphone is packed with features. By SUBASHINI SELVARATNAM, bytz@thestar.com.my The first thing you will notice about the Sony Ericsson Xperia ray is its size. In a market dominated by large Android smartphones, the Xperia ray is rather unique. Of course, the small size makes it easy to use and store - the Xperia ray can easily slip into one's front pocket or even in a women's dinner bag. The review unit we received has a pink shell which makes it look rather feminine. But not to worry as it also comes in other colours, namely black, gold and white.
HARDY: Xperia ray's display is made from scratch resistant mineral glass so you don't have to worry about it being scratched easily.
In use Since it is a compact smartphone the obviously downside will be the screen size which is only 3.3in. Some may find the screen a bit too small to play games while others may find watching videos a bit of a hassle. Although it was good enough for browsing webpages but one can't help but wish for a bigger screen for a better experience. Despite its size, the Xperia ray's display is sharp and vibrant. Sony Ericsson says it is powered by its mobile Bravia Engine which makes it great for viewing photos and watching videos. The display is also made from scratch resistant mineral glass so you don't have to worry about it being scratched easily. Snapping photos and videos with the Xperia ray was a fun experience. The front-facing camera on the smartphone makes it easy to snap self-portraits in VGA resolution. For more serious photo taking there's the 8.1-megapixel rear camera which works great and has lots of cool features such as face detection, scene detection and smile detection. You even get three options for smile detection - big, normal and faint smile. How cool is that? Although it doesn't have two cameras the smarphone has a feature called 3D Sweep Panorama which allows it to capture 3D images. However, you will need a 3D TV to view them. Other standard features include geo-tagging and red-eye reduction. The camera can also shoot 720p HD videos and can be easily uploaded to YouTube to share them with family and friends. The Xperia ray, which is powered by 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor, is fast. Launching apps is almost instantaneous and there is no lag generally. You can download tons of app from the Android marketplace and the phone comes with a 4GB card for storing them. For text input, the phone has a virtual keypad. It wasn't easy for me to type messages as the screen is small and the keypad is very tiny. I would have much prefferd a physical Qwerty keypad instead. One of the nice features of the Xperia ray is its built-in radio tuner which allowed me to listen to my favourite radio station while waiting for friends. Also, the bundled earphones were pretty decent for listening to music. In terms of battery life, the Xperia ray lasted a whole day of usage which mainly consisted of surfing the Web, watching videos on YouTube and downloading applications.
Conclusion Overall, the Sony Ericsson Xperia ray was a fun smartphone to use even for a non-Android fan like me. It is fast, has a great camera, the screen is beautiful and comes with a nice pair of earphones. On the downside, the Xperia ray's small screen makes it difficult to use the virtual keypad. If you are looking for a compact Android smartphone, the Xperia ray is definitely one of the better ones. Pros: Sharp and vibrant screen, decent camera, nice earphones. Cons: Small screen. Xperia ray (Sony Ericsson) Android smartphone NETWORK: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSPA 850/900/1900/2100, GPRS/EDGE OPERATING SYSTEM: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) DISPLAY: 3.3in touchscreen (480 x 854-pixels) CAMERA: 8.1-megapixels (rear) with autofocus, VGA camera (front) CONNECTIVITY: Bluetooth, WiFi, micro USB MEMORY: 300MB EXPANSION SLOT: MicroSD (bundled with 4GB card) STANDBY/TALK TIME: 440 hours/7hours OTHER FEATURES: A-GPS, radio tuner, 720p HD video recording (720p) DIMENSIONS (W x D x H): 111 x 53 x 9.4mm WEIGHT: 100g PRICE: RM1,279 RATING: 3.5 Review unit courtesy of Sony Ericsson, 1-800-88-9900
Armchair critics of the world rejoice. It's time to select the year's best and worst tech CEOs. It's a judgment that some no doubt will lambaste as arbitrary, even biased. On both counts we plead guilty. So if you have candidates for either category, or take issue with our choices, add your voice in the talkback section below.
Skip to the next section if you're thoroughly sick of reading about how Apple keeps hitting the ball out of the park. Truth be told, it was more fun in the mid-1990s when Apple was Silicon Valley's running soap opera. Nowadays the company operates with the sort of steamroller efficiency epitomized by the 1927 New York Yankees led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. And for that, you have to credit the CEO tandem of the late Steve Jobs and his successor -- and alter ego -- Tim Cook.
Tim Cook sitting at Steve Jobs' right at an event in 2007.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
Jobs may be gone but his influence at Apple remains in the management team and product design philosophy that he left behind. Even though illness forced Apple's legendary co-founder to relinquish the reins to Cook in late August, his half-year as CEO was still better than full-year performances turned in by most of his peers. This wasn't an overnight handover. Whenever Jobs needed to take a step back, Cook was in the unique position of receiving extended on-the-job training, and whatever rough patches he might have encountered were well hidden behind Apple's carefully constructed PR screen. All the while, Cook got to learn first-hand from the tech industry's master marketer how it's done.
What a shame Jobs wasn't healthy enough to introduce the iPhone 4S. How the fan boys would have swooned when he offered them the first look at Siri. Cook's not a matinee idol and he doesn't try to be. Maybe that explains the relatively muted reaction to what was otherwise a very successful product debut. Some quibbled that the lines in front of Apple stores were smaller than for previous releases. But the bloggers and reporters who get hung up by the different style are making a big deal out of the trivial. Like Jobs, Cook has offered the leadership that you'd expect from a strong CEO. He more than justified Jobs' confidence as Apple's iPhones, iPads and iMacs continued to sell at a torrid clip in the second half of 2011, sending the company's shares are up more than 17 percent year-to-date, beating both the Nasdaq index and S&P 500.
The question everyone is asking is whether Cook can muster the magic on his own now that he's flying solo. Maybe we'll find out the answer in 2012. But so far, this rates as one of the most seamless managerial handovers in corporate history. And one of the most successful.
President Obama chats with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February. (Credit: The White House)
Mark Zuckerberg
Here's one way to think about how entrenched Facebook has become in the cultural lexicon: When someone decides they actually want to leave everyone's favorite social network grid, this now qualifies as "news." That is no small accomplishment. Even though Google now offers its own rival service, Facebook remains by a wide margin the preferred social network for revelers, revolutionaries, and just plain folk posting their musings, pictures, and videos uploads.
Wall Street has apparently decided that Facebook is not of this world, according it a pre-IPO valuation now north of $80 billion. But somehow the peanut gallery remains reluctant to give Mark Zuckerberg his full due for building a magnificent platform. Yes, he's profiled in business magazines and gets sought out for interviews by everyone from Charlie Rose to "60 Minutes." But when you listen to discussions of the great CEOs of Silicon Valley, you're more likely to hear mention of John Chambers, who had Cisco buy the company that makes the Flip video camera for $590 million and then shut the division less than two years later. The worst Zuckerberg ever did is get sloppy with privacy controls, a faux pas that some within the blogosphere may never forgive.
But as 2011 closes, it's time to give it up for the Z-man. Through the years he has remained true to his vision and resisted sundry offers to sell out. Back in 2006, when he was approached with a $750 million offer, more than a few people thought he should take the money and run. Who was Zuckerberg and what was Facebook to think they could outrun then-juggernaut MySpace? But five years later, MySpace is irrelevant, while Facebook has over 750 million active users and earned $500 million on $1.6 billion of revenue during the first half of 2011.
Like Bill Gates, an entrepreneur who managed very well as CEO at a young age, Zuckerberg is growing into the role (helped in no small part by his able No. 2, Sheryl Sandberg.). The best example came this fall when he put a potentially distracting privacy fight with the government in the rear view mirror instead of venting publicly about government persecution. He's familiar with Microsoft's less than happy experience battling Uncle Sam and wisely ordered Facebook to strike a deal with the Federal Trade Commission that should put this issue to bed.
Zuckerberg can't go on auto-pilot. His biggest immediate challenge, of course, comes from Google, which launched its Google+ service in July and passed the 40 million user mark in October. Facebook has to keep pushing. It did a nice job with Timeline, the new profile design that finally went live last week. And with an eye toward avoiding further complaints about user privacy, Facebook also rolled out a useful tool called Activity Log which may go down as one of the site's most important additions since the inclusion of the News Feed.
The coming IPO, presumably sometime in 2012, will be a barometer of Zuckerberg's success, as well as the event of the year's tech calendar. And who knows what the future holds? Is it altogether nutso to imagine Facebook bringing out its own search technology, one that could sort through a gold mind of data about social interactions? Zuckerberg is aiming high, and Facebook is already a good part of the way there. This is how legacies get created. If it all works as Zuckerberg hopes, then maybe that $80 billion valuation will turn out to be on the low side. Scary but true.
From left, Google's Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.(Credit: Google)
"Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."
A bit full of himself, sure, but now that the proverbial buck stops at his desk -- he became CEO in April -- Page has had an opportunity to back up his words. Though his brief reign, this much is clear: While he may not be an unconventional CEO, Page has ably handled the awesome responsibility that he sought out. He set the company on a new course with the blockbuster announcement of a $12.5 billion deal for Motorola Mobility (a deal that gives Google more than 17,000 patents and will prove useful now that Apple is trying to nukeAndroid in a court case). Meanwhile, Android continues to grow by leaps -- according to Nielsen, it now powers about 40 percent of smartphones -- while Google's search dominance remains unquestioned. The company also made a successful entry into social networking with Google+, which finally offers Facebook its first serious competition for advertising dollars and user attention. Wall Street likes what it's seen. On the day Page took over, Google's shares closed at $587.68; with less than a couple of weeks left in the year, they're hovering around the $630 level.
By all accounts, Page's accession to the top job -- technically this is his second turn as CEO, though his first as the head of Google as a public company -- has been annotated by drive and energy. He wants to accelerate Google's corporate DNA, and in the near term, that may be his biggest challenge. The flip side of being big and successful is the spread of corporate sloth (as both Microsoft and IBM veterans can attest). With around 25,000 employees at Google, this is no longer a scrappy startup and it's become tougher than ever for good ideas to bubble up from the ranks and get proper consideration. That's why Page has winnowed the number of projects Google's engineers are working on, focusing their efforts on the areas where he thinks there's the best chance for the biggest returns.
OK, how difficult can it be to sit at the top of the mountain, take in your immense kingdom, and bloviate in SEC docs about being unconventional? In fairness, it's not as easy as it looks, so give Page deserving kudos for not screwing up what continues to be one of the most vibrant tech companies around. We're often reminded of the spectacular success stories registered by the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (his second time at the helm more so than his first go around) but any fair recording of CEO-founders includes no shortage of flameouts. Remember George Shaheen at Webvan.com, Philippe Kahn at Borland, and Ted Waitt at Gateway, to name a few? All were smart guys and their companies were once the toast of the town. Then the good times ended and they couldn't reverse the slide. If Page turns out to be as good as we think, Google's CEO won't ever find himself facing that sort of predicament.
THE GOATSReed Hastings
Yesterday's hero can turn into today's goat in the amount of time it takes to launch a press release. Just ask Netflix CEO and founder Reed Hastings, who must still be wondering if it was all a nightmare.
Netflix founder Reed Hastings at one of the company's warehouses in Silicon Valley.(Credit: CBS)
Up until this year, Hastings was an Internet rock star, lauded for having changed the way we consume movies and television shows. Netflix was an easy-to-use service priced at the sweet spot. Consumers flocked to it. Wall Street sang its praises. But it all came a cropper in September when Hastings executed the sort of maneuver that one might have expected from F-Troop.
It wasn't just the 60 percent price hike on one of Netflix's most popular plans that got peoples' dander up. Netflix also planned to split into two parts: One unit named "Qwikster" would mail DVDs to subscribers, while the other would continue to focus on streaming movies over the Internet.
This turned out to be a public relations disaster. Even though the price increase would impact only subscribers who used both the streaming and mail-order sides of the business, the announcement left Netflix loyalists steamed. Two separate websites with two billing systems and two names? If there was a higher logic at play, it escaped most people. The reviews were uniformly lousy and Netflix became the butt of late-night TV hosts' jokes. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter summed up the general reaction with this icy observation to a reporter from USA Today: "They raised prices. They offered lower-quality content, and they made it more complicated." Within three weeks Hastings reversed the Qwikster decision and publicly apologized for having "slipped into arrogance" (though Netflix kept the price increase in place.) But the apology was too late to repair the damage. During the third quarter, 800,000 subscribers responded to the Qwikster fiasco by dumping the service. Shares of Netflix, which earlier in the year poked above $300, have since fallen to the $70 range.
People have short memories and this isn't necessarily the end of the world for Netflix. Fans do return. Think Bob Dylan and his move to electric guitar. After the initial freak-out, most of the faithful got over it. Nothing here rules out that kind of rebound for Hastings -- as long as he avoids hitting another sour chord. At that point, Neflix really could be left blowing in the wind.
Leo Apotheker and Meg Whitman (Credit: Graphic by James Martin/CNET)
Leo Apotheker
In our quiet moments, it's reasonable to wonder whether some mischievous warlock left the curse of the cat people on Hewlett-Packard.
Carly Fiorina's years were marked by corporate drift and tumult. Her replacement, Mark Hurd, was ousted in an expense-fudging scandal involving a former soft-porn actress. In between, there was a bizarre novella in which corporate officers trying to plug a leak ordered investigators to spy on journalists.
But nothing -- and I mean nothing -- compares with the brief and utterly feckless tenure of one Leo Apotheker, hired in November 2010 to replace Hurd.
Apotheker was a highly regarded software executive who had been chief executive of SAP AG. Although he had little experience as a hardware executive, the company hoped he could take the management skills he had picked up over the course of his long career and apply them to the job at hand. It was only much later on that we learned most members of HP's board of directors had never even met Apotheker before voting to hire him. That's what you get when the company is overseen by what a former board member has described as the "worst" board of directors in the history of business. But I digress.
After 11 months as CEO, Apotheker got the boot and HP, once one of Silicon Valley's storied company, was reduced to a laughingstock. The chronology played out over the summer, when Apotheker announced that HP would kill off the TouchPad tablet computer, which had only recently debuted. He also canceled a crop of phones and products based on Palm's WebOS operating system. He was also convinced HP would be better off selling the PC business, a $30 billion division which at the time still enjoyed big market presence.
His plan now is easy to mock. But Apotheker had a strategy to remake HP into something resembling his former company and specialize in catering to enterprise-sized companies. On the surface, at least, it was intriguing. After all, the idea of jettisoning low-margin businesses to focus on software and service worked wonders at IBM under Lou Gerstner and Sam Palmisano. But it took time for those two to get all the pieces in place and plan IBM's exit from the commodity stuff.
In contrast, the clock was ticking for Apotheker right from the start. And with HP missing its financial targets, Apotheker quickly lost credibility with the financial community, making investors even antsier as HP's stock lost 40 percent of its value. He also lost credibility with another key constituency as the board grumbled at his poor communications skills (starting with the decision to kill the TouchPad) as well as the company's product direction. Rightly or not, Apotheker was labeled a zig-zagger with little feel for HP's hardware business. The board executed a mercy killing in September, replacing Apotheker with Meg Whitman. The former eBay CEO has since announced that HP would keep the PC business.
You can't make this stuff up.
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis shows off the BlackBerry PlayBook.(Credit: BlackBerry PlayBook, Mike Lazaridis)
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis
After their company's latest earnings debacle, Research In Motion's co-CEOs James Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis announced they would take just $1 in salary. Given the collapse of this one-time tech darling, some shareholders may grumble these two are still being overpaid.
It's hard to believe how quickly RIM has collapsed. The company's stock has lost more than three-quarters of its market value in the last year while a myriad of app-hip mobile handset rivals have prospered. That's all the more remarkable given how we're talking about what once was the premier mobile device maker for businesses. Now RIM is a company that can't seem to keep up. With every new Android and Apple update, RIM promises a next-generation BlackBerry phone -- sometime in the second half of next year. Meanwhile, its PlayBook tablet has been turned into a bargain-bin product with RIM offering massive discounts.
Cue up Clayton Christensen and the perils of the innovator's dilemma, where one-time market leaders fail to capitalize on new waves of innovation. In the meantime, here's Lazaridis trying to explain why the on BlackBerry 10, the upcoming product RIM has touted as the basis for its superphone, is going to be delayed:
We need a highly integrated dual-core LTE platform.The processor we selected offers industry-leading power and efficiency, and also allows us to deliver the industrial design, that we believe is critical to the success in this market segment. This chipset will not be available until mid 2012. And as a result of this and certain other factors, we now expect our first BlackBerry 10 smartphones to reach markets in the latter part of calendar 2012. In the meantime, we believe that our strong BlackBerry 7 portfolio will continue to drive adoption of BlackBerry around the world.
One problem: In July, Lazaridis told shareholders that the BlackBerry 7 handsets were just "messaging" handsets compared to the "mobile computing" handsets slated to come out with the BlackBerry 10 software. Now the company's stuck with these same "messaging" handsets while the market keeps moving along. Sanford Bernstein responded to that performance by calling management "in complete denial of the situation" while another brokerage, Robert W. Baird, said RIM's U.S. business was "in a freefall."
There's a growing feeling that Balsillie and Lazardis, who share responsibilities for leading RIM, are congenitally conventional managers ill-equipped to handle an unconventional challenge. The situation has reached the point that some are even floating suggestions that RIM may need to consider dumping the BlackBerry if it's to survive. That sounds like a stretch but at this rate the situation is impossibly grim, with investors and customers holding onto faint promises of better times ahead. The fact that RIM has even reached this point constitutes Exhibits A, B, and C for the chorus of critics demanding new leadership.
Tim Armstrong
As an early user of AOL's dial-up service, I have to confess to a twinge of nostalgia each time I watch "You've Got Mail." That's about the only warm and fuzzy feeling AOL gives off these days as CEO Tim Armstrong seeks to find on a formula that will save the company from media also-ran status.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.(Credit: Google)
Give the man credit for believing in a strategy. But after two years making the same pitch, the question is whether he's got the right strategy. Armstrong is an online ad sales guy -- he was Google's president of the Americas operations -- and has gone shopping for new content that AOL's ad sales team can sell against. Like Yahoo, AOL has a legacy business in the form of its dial-up operations which, remarkably, still throws off a lot of cash each quarter. That's allowed Armstrong to fund his bet that that content will create scale when he acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million as well as TechCrunch for a reported $30 million. It's still too early to say how those deals are going to work out for AOL though they were grand slams for the two blogs' creators, Arianna Huffington and Michael Arrington, who sold at the peak. The other big hope is Patch, the company's network of hyperlocal Web sites. AOL this year has sunk $40 million into Patch on top of the $75 million that it spent on the project last year. Good money after bad? Not according to Armstrong, who has predicted that Patch will start generating a profit by the end of 2011.
But despite adding a collection of works in progress, AOL has failed to distinguish itself from the pack. AOL may argue that its content Web site pickups will help boost traffic and revenues in a meaningful way but it is unclear whether traditional remedies for a traditional media company will provide the needed fix. Wall Street has not bought the story. With Armstrong scheduled to take home a total annual compensation package of $1 million, AOL's stock plummeted from nearly 25 earlier in the year to the mid-teens.
On top of that, Armstrong's reputation as a leader suffered when he was unable to effectively resolve the summer soap opera involving Arrington and Huffington. After losing a turf war, Arrington very publicly left AOL; he was soon followed out the door by several key staffers - including, most recently, TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde. But that was just a circus sideshow to the central question about whether Armstrong has what it takes to turn AOL into a money maker. Already calls are coming to split the company into pieces and jettison the units that aren't adding to growth. How long before some of those same voices begin asking why Armstrong should escape paying the same penalty exacted from Carol Bartz when she failed to revive Yahoo? After all, you can only be in turnaround mode for so long.
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
Before we can start talking about the need for innovation or speak of the need to create geniuses, we have to learn that creativity and innovation are first and foremost cultural phenomena.
STEVE Jobs is dead. Apple’s co-founder did more than anyone – and this includes his arch-rival Microsoft’s Bill Gates – to make computing manageable for everyone. Indeed, even my seventy-something mother owns a well-used iPad2.
Jobs’ brilliance lay in his ability to look at technology from the viewpoint of the user, stripping down the complexity and jargon until a machine became a tool in the hand of the user.
He asked straight forward but critical questions: what do consumers want and need? How can I meet these demands?
Instead of producing computers that flaunt their sophistication, Jobs made his devices ever more accessible and simple.
Apple products were the perfect marriage of form and function. They were sleek, intuitive and useful – objects that we enjoy touching and holding so much so that we develop a strange emotional link with them.
In order to achieve this aim, Jobs also upended the way we’ve traditionally thought of music, books and films – freeing them from their analogue formats. He discarded the old-fashioned ways of receiving entertainment and placed his products – the iPod, the iPhone and iPad at the heart of future solutions.
His success was prodigious and extraordinary. At one stage last year, Apple briefly eclipsed ExxonMobil in terms of market capitalisation.
Indeed, it’s estimated that well over 100 million iPhones and 25 million iPads have been sold to date. That the Indian government, on the day he died, rolled out its own tablet computer, called the Aakash (or “Sky”) is a greater tribute than the legions of obituaries.
The global outpouring of grief on Jobs’ death is hence a measure of the man’s reach even in death. It’s also a testament to his iconoclastic style as well as his breath-taking ability to think unconventionally.
Furthermore, Jobs executed his ideas with flamboyance and flair, disregarding the consequences as his various inspirational ideas wrought havoc with long established industries.
Standing back from the man’s achievements, it’s hard to deny that all entrepreneurs have a little bit of Steve Jobs in them.
They all possess a modicum of his verve, dynamism and, yes, madness. Wouldn’t they have become bank managers or civil servants otherwise?
However, we can’t deny the element of luck either: had Jobs died in the 90s, he would probably have been consigned to history’s footnotes, yet another businessman ousted from a company he had founded.
Also, as the son of a Syrian emigrant, Jobs was lucky he was born in America, where the opportunities to succeed were more pronounced than anywhere else.
Indeed, it’s hard to see where else a college dropout could turn a company that he started in his parent’s garage into a multinational with a market capitalisation of US$222.12bil (RM694.78bil).
This is not to say he was some kind of secular saint. His paranoia and abuse of friends and subordinates alike were well-documented. Neither was he a flag-waving patriot either.
Unlike Henry Ford, most of Apple’s products were contracted out to East Asian manufacturers, particularly China, where allegations of sweatshop labour and poor working conditions continue to haunt the tech-giant even today.
Nevertheless, no one can deny that Jobs displayed the individualism and entrepreneurial spirit that are the hallmarks of the American character.
Indeed, if we shift the discussion from Jobs to the idea of entrepreneurialism, we have to acknowledge that we are all shaped by the environment we are born into.
We can separate ourselves from the world that surrounds us on our birth.
So as we start talking about the need for “innovation” in Malaysia’s economy or speak piously of the need to “create” geniuses we have to address the national condition.
Let me ask a question then: what if Steve Jobs were born in Malaysia? Could he have reached the same dizzying heights or would he have been consigned, like so many others, to dead-end jobs.
Alternatively, would he have directed his prodigious talents to chasing after government contracts? I’m not joking.
If Malaysia is to compete in the future, we have got to learn that creativity and innovation are first and foremost cultural phenomena. These are things that you cannot pay for or legislate into existence.
Creativity cannot thrive in an environment where the balance between risk and reward is skewered. Can we truly say we’re allowing people to reach their fullest potential when our obsessions with race and religion are so dominant?
Innovation in Malaysia is hampered by our Government’s constant interventions: protecting and bailing-out businesses and individuals that ought to have gone bust ages ago.
There’s absolutely no incentive for people to think unconventionally if the most important criteria for creating wealth is your “know who” rather than “know how”.
How many Malaysian Jobs’ or Gates’ or Zuckerberg’s have we smothered because they lacked connections or were born in the “wrong” community?
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has declared 2012 to be the “National Innovation Movement” year, but it won’t count for much unless we start really rewarding hard work and genius rather than mediocrity or mindless conformity.
With Steve Jobs’ passing after a long battle with cancer, tributes have poured from across the globe, and countless viewpoints have been offered on what his legacy shall be.
A visionary. A designer. A perfectionist. An exacting CEO. An entrepreneur. The man who redefined the Digital Age. The man who understood what politicians didn’t.”
Even before the iPhone and the iPad, Jobs freed up graphic designers, editors, film-makers from the shackles of pre- and post-production, by adding new tools to their trade. Jobs leveled the playing field in the media industry. With the iTunes, he revolutionized multi-media, music and content-sharing. He was the drive behind many start-ups, including his own. He pushed the envelope of Internet communication, social media and networking, as no one had ever done before him.
Image via Wikipedia
Jobs was that, and more. As President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev said, Jobs has “changed the world.”
Apple Inc. under Jobs’ leadership had another profound legacy. Its commitment to diversity. It was plain obvious when you walked into any Apple store. Diversity of gender, of race, of sexual orientation, of disability.
At Apple stores in New York and Washington, I have been helped by legally-blind Apple staff, through every step of a purchase, from selecting the product I was interested in to scanning the bar code and forwarding the invoice to my mail inbox. Once I pressed a young woman, who must have been legally-blind and was assisted by her dog, on what technology made it possible for her to perform so effectively. She answered that Apple, as a company, had always lived up to its commitment to disabled people. Whatever the technology, voice-recognition, screen-touch, disabled people were counted in at Apple, trained and assisted, to perform.
We take it for granted and, yet, I have not yet seen staff with disability, at a sports shoe store or at an eye glasses store. It is always a thrill to walk into an Apple store, and get to talk with the “Apple geniuses.”
There is one thing, though, that Steve Jobs did not have a chance to do: to oversee the opening of an Apple Store in Africa––at least, based on Apple’s own list of its stores worldwide.
There are no Apple stores in Cairo, in Kenya or in Johannesburg. Just to be clear. That does not mean that there are no Apple products in Africa. Any visitor to any city in Africa would have had a chance to see a range of Apple devices, from iPods to iPhones to iPads and Macs, all purchased in London, New York or Dubai. The rapidly emerging consumer class in Africa, who can afford Apple products, do so with the same hype, enthusiasm and love, as any consumer in New York, Tokyo or Beijing.
In an interview on Public Radio The World, Harvard Professor Calestous Juma recounts his first encounter with an Apple computer in the mid-1980s, and how he put it to use to “set up a desktop publishing house for $5,000, down from the normal cost of $50, 000.”
Steve Jobs, Juma says, revolutionized publishing houses in Africa.”
I have often thought of how fantastic it would be to walk into an Apple store in Cairo, Cape Town, Jo’Burg or Nairobi and to get helped by an “Apple genius” from Kibera or Soweto. Think of it. How revolutionary. How democratic.
For that dream, and for all that he has, indeed, given Apple’s fans, Steve Jobs will be greatly missed.
Have you been phished? Whether you use a Mac, Windows, or Linux, iOS or Android, there's a real strong chance that somebody has sent you an e-mail or text message in an attempt to get at your personal information. Data means money, and you're a big ol' dollar sign to the bad guys.
The best recommendation I can offer is to browse smart. That means you ought to always double-check the URL of your banking site, social networking site, and e-mail site before you log in. Most browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer, now include a color-change on the left side of the location bar to indicate that the site has been verified as legitimate. It's always a good idea to type in the URL by hand, and to never follow links from an e-mail. Also, checking for HTTPS instead of the less-secure HTTP is a good idea, although HTTPS isn't foolproof.
But what about that link to some ostensibly hilarious video your best friend just posted to Twitter? There are several services you can use to verify a link. Google Safe Browsing is a good place to start. If you type in that URL, you can then enter in a site name or an IP address to find out if it has hosted malware in the past 90 days.
Another similar service is hpHosts. Enter a site into the search box and its database will tell you if the site has been used to distribute malware or phishing attacks. HpHosts gives you more-detailed information than Google Safe Browsing, if you're into that kind of thing. Two other excellent services are Norton Safe Web, from Symantec, and Unmasked Parasites. Pop in the URL, and you're good to go. Or if the site comes back as unsafe, don't go.
Many security suites come with browser add-ons to check links you click on the fly, and those work fairly well at scanning your search results and adding icons to indicate if a link is safe or not. If you don't have a suite, AVG LinkScanner (download for Windows | Mac)is a free add-on that works with both Windows and Mac, and AVG's free Mobilation Android app (download) or Lookout Mobile Security (download) will block malicious links on your Android device.
Sadly, iPhone and iPad users are out of luck. Even though phishing over social networking has been proven to work on iOS devices that haven't been jailbroken, Apple doesn't allow such link-checking apps. Feel free to recommend your favorite in the comments below.
Cities are built for tomorrow. As Asia progresses and joins the ranks of advanced economies, green-related issues such as sustainability, liveability and smart cities have cropped up as this drawing by a child from India illustrates.
THERE is a 20-something person let's call him T who has a I Wanna Be a Millionaire ringtone on his iPhone. Every now and then, he would touch base with his roots in Gemencheh, Negri Sembilan. There are many Ts in Kuala Lumpur, and other Ts from neighbouring countries who have made Kuala Lumpur their home and job market. The city and its promise of a better life draws many young people here.
They come, or their parents came decades ago, to eke out a living and over the years, this working class moved up to join the ranks of the middle-class who make up much of Kuala Lumpur today. But like any other city, the have and the have-nots create the diverse demographic landscape of Kuala Lumpur.
I lives in a nice middle-class Petaling Jaya, about 15km from the Kuala Lumpur City Centre. There are many others who are not so fortunate. Many live in slums, besides rivers and on the fringes of Kuala Lumpur.
It is not that the city draws the poor and succours the rich, but that the working class are attracted by job and economic opportunities in the city and the rich enjoy the urban pleasures like art and culture (or what we currently have) and consumption culture of the city. They may not live cheek by jowl as housing from low-cost government-subsidised flats and gated communities and shopping districts, separate them, but all of them are here because they want to be at the centre of activities, be it political, economic or cultural. As the country evolves, so does the city. In fact, because the city is the gateway to the nation, the rate of evolution begins and goes at a faster pace than the country.
The city we know today is the result of an evolution which began in 19th century Malaya. Kuala Lumpur started at the meeting point of the Gombak and Klang Rivers when early travel was by foot, boat and on bullock carts.
Today, the Federal Government is planning to have mass rapid transit (MRT) among other infrastructures. Much has taken place between the bullock days and today's rail travel. There is the Petronas Twin Towers and, before that, the current railway station and Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad.
Heritage buildings have today given way to iconic buildings. But it is not buildings that make up a city. It is the community of people who gave breath and life to the city.
According to the United Nations Population Division, the share of Asians living in urban areas has grown from 32% in 1990 to 42% last year. In 15 years, the UN forecasts that half of Asians will be city dwellers.
This can be seen in the population growth of Kuala Lumpur. In 2000, it had a population of 1.305 million (density of 53.7 persons/ha). Today, it stands at 1.627 million (density of 66.9 persons/ha).
Says Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur, or City Hall, the guardian of the city in a statement: “KL's population is growing at the rate of 2.2% per annum in the last 10 years, exceeding the national population growth rate of 2.17% per annum.” This excludes the number of foreigners who have made Kuala Lumpur their home.
What will this mean for the city's infrastructure? More people also means a greater demand on the infrastructure transport, water, amenities, healthcare, education and services. More people also means greater waste. How will the city manage this? These are the challenges confronting Kuala Lumpur today.
The Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked Kuala Lumpur 79 out of 130 listed liveable cities. The ranking has given Federal Territory and Urban Well Being Minister Datuk Raja Nong Chik a new vision to see it in the top 20 by the year 2020. That is just nine years away. Before getting to the 20th spot, he says there are several measures that need to be fulfulled, and one of the main criteria is an effective infrastructure.
In its Asian Green City Index, German power house Siemens independently commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit to assess the performances of 22 Asian cities. Kuala Lumpur is one of them. It was given a rating of average. It was judged based on its performance in eight areas: energy and CO2 emission, transport, land use and buildings, waste management, water mangement, sanitation, air quality and environmental governance. Among the greatest concerns were waste and water management. It scored well in transport.
Says Siemens chief sustainability officer Barbara Kux: “The battle against climate change will be decided in cities. This applies to Asia, with its booming conurbations, more than anywhere else on earth. Only green cities will make life worth living over the long-term.”
US-based technology company IBM did a presentation on Smart Cities last month. It compared Kuala Lumpur with some of the best international practices in areas such as city services, people, business, communications, transport, water and energy. Kuala Lumpur was ranked below international best practices in all areas and lagged further behind in the people, business and city services systems. It was just close to average in its water and energy segments.
IBM's general manager (government and healthcare) Nazerollnizam Kasim in his paper notes that “smarter cities are working to infuse intelligence into each of their core systems.”
Therein lies the crux of the issue human intelligence. A city thrives because of its creative, productive and talented workforce. Smart people go out in search of smart people to benefit from that interaction. Over this, there is the great need for governance and government. Which is why the Government is trying hard to pull talent and high-value human capital back to the country.
But people will only return, and new ones come, if Kuala Lumpur promises more than just tall skyscrappers. Security, amenities, liveability, education, financial rewards for hard work and talent among other urban pleasures are their measure.
Harvard economic professor Edward Glaeser in his book Triumph of the City writes: “London's amenities have helped the city attract 32 billionaires, according to Forbes, an impressive share of the world's wealthiest people. About half of those mega-rich Londoners are not English ... Human capital, far more than physical infrastructure, explains which cities succeed.”
The fact that we are trying to bring back our own is very telling.
Last year, the Government through Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala unveiled the Government's plan to improve the city's liveability. His tool urbanisation.
His rationale is that the city will provide the engine of growth for the entire country. That means, the next 10 years will be crucial. A decade is a short time, actually, to do all that he has laid down. His emphasis on liveability is based on improving the public transport system, stability, healthcare, edcuation, infrastructure, culture and environment.
At the moment, the city has big plans for infrastructure. By the middle of this year, the Government will begin work on the RM50bil MRT system to connect the entire city. Seven mega projects are currently being planned in and around the city. There is another type of infrastrasture which is not so physically visual, but of utmost importance water and waste management. Both the studies by Siemens and IBM have highlighted the fact that these two areas need attention.
The issue of water management was brought up by Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Peter Chin Fah Kui last week. He lamented that Malaysians use an average of 226 litres of water per person daily, which is way above Singapore's 154 litres and Thailand's 90 litres.
Unlike our neighbour Singapore, which has two-thirds of its land area as water catchment areas, Kuala Lumpur, together with the state of Selangor and Putrajaya, are expected to suffer water shortage by 2014.
Says Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd corporate affairs department executive director Abdul Halem Mat Som: “We only have 6% reserve (of water supply). By right, we should have 20%. During the dry season, the demand goes up, so the reserve is gone. We cannot maintain a 20% reserve, which is why the Selangor government is buying water from Pahang.”
Says Economist Intelligence Unit head of research Jan Friederich: “The wastage comes from old pipes and high water consumption. Water leakages is running at an estimated 37%, compared with the Asian Green Index of 22%.” Today, there is an impasse as the water sector is being restructured.
Water and waste management is crucial because many diseases are water-borne. Before the days of air travel, some of the diseases that had ruined many a city were due to contaminated water. City Hall is also planning to plant more trees from 25,000 to 100,000 and clean up the Klang river. All these efforts are to add value to the city.
“Intensive cleaning of the river and flood mitigation works are the most crucial parts of the whole programme. These works will include rivers from upstream in Gombak and Selayang and scheduled progressively until 2020. The budget allocated for these works is RM3bil,” City Hall says.
Botanist and researcher Dr Francis Ng is all for beautification. But he stresses the need for diversity. “We have a total of 4,000 species compared to Britain's 50. But our city does not reflect the biodivesity of our forest. There are about 50 species planted in and around Kuala Lumpur today, about half of which are imported.
“Diversification will help to address the problem of extinction, as more areas are opened up for development and other uses besides putting a bit more creativity in our planting, such as creating small clusters of three to five trees.”
Ng, who is the former deputy director-general of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, says the country works with five-year plans, “basically to keep contractors going and all they can think of is having concrete, but no maintenance. So the lack of maintenance is built into our culture. That's why trees fall on rail lines and cars in the city. There has to be a tree maintenance programme which includes fertilising and pruning.”
But beautification programmes alone will not draw people into the city. Security, still an issue, is being progressively and successfully addressed. Cities are crime-prone because people bring their social problems such as poverty with them. It's hard to make a living as a snatch thief in small towns, although some do as some of our newspaper headlines testify. The many pockets riding on the rail system promise better returns.
So as Kuala Lumpur restructures and weeds out crime, builds new rail linkages, addresses water and waste management issues, the issue of balancing competing needs comes into the picture. Opening up green fields versus reducing water catchment areas, congestion versus crime, carbon dioxide emissions versus selling more cars, there is no end to competing needs.
But if it is to be ranked as a city for the future, it must build for the future.
Meet Google's Android smartphone
The typical Android user apparently does not look kindly upon flip-flops, opting instead to pair his jeans and T-shirt with the far-more-practical sneakers.
It may be small but the Sony Ericsson Xperia ray smartphone is packed with features.
