Bring Out Yer Dead

Palm's tenacity reminds me of that old Monty Python movie, I think it was "Life of Brian", where the guy is roaming the streets collecting bodies for his cart saying "Bring Out Yer Dead" and one of the guys on the cart says, "I'm not dead yet.".

Palm has recently released the Palm Pre handheld do-it-all, which is great, but the really interesting thing I just found out is the Palm Pre syncs with iTunes - Apple 2.0! Good on them for making bold moves. I think that's the right strategy in their position.

I like Palm and they remind me of Borland. Borland Software, was a company that created software development tools that blew the doors of of all of the competition in terms of innovation and performance. (They invented little things like what to do with the right mouse button).

Their marketing efforts were terrible but their software was amazing. (life lesson: superior technology doesn't win). What I always found fascinating about Borland was that they always seemed to be going out of business. It seemed they were going out of business for 20 years!

But what they did right was they made bold moves. They were innovative and they were not a company to ask permission. They would just add some crazy awesome new functionality and their fans would love it. They were the rock stars of development tool developers.

I can remember breathing a sigh of relief every time they released a new version of Borland C++ or Delphi because I wasn't sure they were going to make it to the next version. But they always did...

Until they stopped making those bold moves. Borland is no more. Okay, there is a company around called Borland, that does some of the same things, but the old innovative Borland is gone.

So, good on Palm, for continuing to innovate, to make bold moves. I think playing in Apple's recently acquired playground (embrace and extend) is a smart move for them and it's good for us as for the last year or two there hasn't been much competition.

They're clearly not dead yet.

Open Source Vancouver

The City of Vancouver, BC is making a fantastic bold move toward openness. A move many governments would do well to notice. It's the future. Facebook for government is an interesting idea but, it's not nearly enough. This, on the other hand, is game changing. This is government 2.0.