Why Palm Fails

Palm recently released the Palm Treo Pro to a thundering wall of silence from the masses. Why? In my opinion, because no matter how great and innovative the device is, the company has become irrelevant. Palm was the only one not talking about the iPhone over the past year. I used to be a Treo fan (I think I had the only Treos that never crashed). By putting its head down and not engaging in the only conversation its peers were engaged in, Palm faded and not even an incredibly innovative device is likely to save it.

Momentum for mobile open source e-mail

After a roughly two year stint running PR for IBM's pervasive computing/wireless business and a similar period of time working with some of the best and brightest in open source, I find posts like this one from Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco encouraging:

"I read Hal's recent press release about Fusemail (another smart email provider who realized there is ton of money to be made in mobilizing their customers, behind the carriers) and the last sentence hit me:

FuseMail selected Funambol's software during the second calendar quarter of 2008, the most successful quarter in Funambol's history. Funambol completed a company-record ten sales transactions with innovative providers of email and PIM sync around the world, including several well-known service providers, online portals, such as AOL, and mobile operators. In the second quarter, the company also closed a Series B round of $12.5M in venture capital and significantly strengthened its solution by introducing important new support for BlackBerry and the iPhone 3G.

Kudos to Fabrizio, Hal and the rest of the Funambol team!

Philippe Kahn Successful in Transpac Sailing Record Attempt

Congratulations to Philippe on his and Richard Clarke's successful Transpac Sailing Record. I'm by no means a close friend of Philippe's, but I have been lucky enough to have had an e-mail conversation with him (we have a mutual professional acquaintance). I'm not a sailor, but it's fun following one I know.

Lyons is right. Lying is wrong.

Rule #1 in PR is don't lie. Spin? Sure, we all do it to some extent (I'd claim spin is no longer the sole domain of PR even). But never, ever lie. The truth always comes out.

The current Bush Administration is a prime example of this. Another is the current dustup around Apple's PR team trying to game the press and shareholders about their CEO's health.

I encourage you to read the posts by former Fake Steve and current Real Dan Lyons for an inside look at how both sides are playing this game. The Fourth Estate smells blood and rather than getting out of the water (or getting a bigger boat), Apple's PR team continues to chum the waters.

The Passion of the Community

UPDATE: Added direct link to Roberto's post.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a firestorm erupt over Roberto Galoppini's open source multilevel marketing suggestions in this post by CNET blogger Matt Asay:

Users promoting the software that they're already adopting, but getting paid something for it.

One of the underlying tenets of open source is the passion of the communities that form around specific (and popular) projects. Adoption is, in large part, driven by The Breck Principle: You tell your friends, they'll tell theirs, and so on. Of course, in order for that to happen, the software needs to be well-written and useful.

Roberto floats the idea that project leaders and companies can spur greater adoption of their products by employing the basic ideals of pyramid marketing schemes. Pay your best users to promote your software within their communities, who recruit new users to do likewise, with each newer user getting a smaller promotional payout and the original evangelist making more dinero as the foundation of his or her pyramid gets bigger.

In a normal proprietary software setting, I'm not sure anyone would blink an eye at this approach. In fact, the way affiliate marketing dollars are allocated, it's basically already being done. The problem with this approach is that the money corrupts, forcing software on users at the expense of choice. The reason Dell and HP sell Windows-based systems is not because it's a better operating system (this is not to debate the merits of Windows versus Linux), but because Microsoft spends bucketloads of marketing dollars to make it fiscally irresponsible to explore other avenues. And those dollars don't stop at the computer makers. They funnel down through channels and across applications. Take Microsoft's "pyramid" marketing dollars away and I suspect the Dell and HP marketing budgets would be drastically smaller. This is not an indictment of Microsoft (nor Dell or HP). It's how they market. And there's no denying it works.

Is it a model that could work in open source? Would it create a caste system within open source between those projects that have marketing dollars and those that don't? Does it usher in a new phase in the lifecycle of open source software that puts a premium on marketing at the expense of great software?

Don't Cry for Them Argentina

According to this post by CNET's Matt Asay, Argentina's government is considering moving its entire information technology infrastructure to open source. There's nothing earth-shattering in Argentina's cost-savings rationale for considering open source. In fact, governments (and corporations, for that matter) adopting open source is rather ho-hum at this point.

Matt also points out that an underlying driver behind this is software piracy. Open source helps Argentina comply with proprietary software license compliance by...gasp!...doing away with the issue altogether. Read Matt's post for more on the cultural issues surrounding this.

What's happening in Argentina is an example of the problem Microsoft and other proprietary companies have gotten into. Their businesses are based on selling restrictive software and enforcing licenses through organizations like the BSA. It's a model that open source sent to the dustbin long ago. In fact, there is little doubt that their core license policing/anti-customer business model is driving sales for open source. Rather than locking customers in, it's driving them away.

The Problem with Verizon's $100 Unlimited Wireless Plan

Interested in Verizon Wireless's new $100 all-you-can-eat voice plan? May want to check out this post by Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer first.

Who's Who...Open Source Style

Italy's Roberto Galoppini posts his thoughts from the recent Open Source Think Tank. It's great seeing the long list of open source leaders Page One PR does business with.

Roblimo Interviews New Red Hat CEO Whitehurst

When Red Hat named Jim Whitehurst as its new CEO, many in the open source community wondered, "Huh?" But Whitehurst made himself available to reporters and bloggers and quickly gave everyone an inside look at who he was, what he knew and what he had planned for the open source powerhouse.

Which is why this interview by Robin 'Roblimo' Miller is so important.

The majority of Whitehurst's "rainbow tour" when he was announced was conveyed through words on paper or on a screen. Roblimo caught Whitehurst in Orland at JBoss World and put him on tape -- uncut and unplugged. The video adds to what we already know about Whitehurst, giving us a more personal connection to the man who will lead one of the industry's most visible brands...warts and all.

It's an example of how the interactivity of the Web is changing the face of journalism. Is Roblimo a broadcast reporter? I'd claim not (although I could be wrong). But it was simple enough to throw a video camera on a tripod to capture the questions he was going to ask Whitehurst anyway. And we're all the richer for him doing so.

Cmdr Taco on Digg Revolt

Interesting story by New York Times reporter Brad Stone (the reporter who broke the identity of Fake Steve Jobs) on the recent uprising at Digg. Slashdot founder Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda does a standup job in the interview explaining why Digg ran into the troubles it did and why the two sites don't necessarily compete for the same audience.

Disclaimer: Slashdot is part of SourceForge, Inc., which is represented by my agency, Page One PR.

Open Source Rogue's Gallery

LinuxWorld.com's Mark Hinkle pulls together a who's who of the open source movement in this list of the publication's top leaders for 2008.

Luddites Be Damned!

There are those who think the pervasiveness of technology in our lives is a bad thing. There are others -- a camp which I freely admit to falling into -- who believe that being always-on, always-connected is a good thing.

This really hit home for me today while I was walking through the Moscone Center in San Francisco where the JavaOne conference is being held. The organizers had set up a quasi lounge area, complete with a big screen to watch the conference keynotes, as well as the requisite multi-colored bean bag chairs. Nearly 90% of those sitting and watching the keynotes had their laptops open (Note: a *vast* majority of the laptops at the show were Powerbooks.). Some were catching up on work, some were blogging what they heard in the keynotes, others were surfing Web sites or catching up on personal e-mail.

And since when is producing, learning or communicating such a bad thing?