As a creature of habit, most folks are just “happier” using Word, PowerPoint and Excel for productivity on the desktop. I said “happier”, since I am not sure its about being happy anymore. I had a great discussion with Sridhar of Zoho at the office 2.0 conference about applications on the cloud.

I have never purchased a computer so far for personal use alone. All of them have been provided by the company I worked for or in many cases (when I started my own company) had my co founder source for me. I admit all of them came with all the bells and whistles included – Office, Outlook etc.

This week as I start again on my own I do have my old laptop 2003 DELL PC (yes its a PC and still works after all these years) and I have the same applications on them. I am inclined to use Google applications since I had a VERY bad experience with Office 2007. I am more of a keyboard user and the new 2007 suite made me unlearn a lot of keyboard strokes I had known and used for a long time.

So I took the plunge and uninstalled Office 2003 from my laptop.

A week of usage of Google applications and my top observations are:
1. Its just simple. It has all the features I need and the ones it does not have I am beginning to not miss any more.

2. Its much easier to share. I was sending my editorial calendar around (bad Mukund) via email as a PDF file, but I could have just as easily pointed folks to the online version.

3. At some point my laptop will fail and when I get my new PowerBook Pro I doubt I’ll ever go back to Office if its not already installed.

My kids use the online Google docs (for fun typing stuff) and they dont notice that its not on the laptop.

Its a matter of time is my sense. A long time (10-20 years) and many things will happen between now and then, but I like things on the cloud better.

History and emergence of online communities catalogs the virtual interaction environment. Its old but a good starting point and fairly concise.

http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/paper/6%20Final%20Enc%20preece%20et%20al.pdf

Michael Hyatt makes an excellent case for why books are eventually going to die. I am not going to revisit the Kindle announcement, but I agree with all his points on why the book buying, storing, publishing and selling processes are broken. I wont say books are dead, but the processes are broken.

I disagree that Kindle’s going to make it happen. I read a lot of blogs and buy a lot of books on Amazon.

I read most of my blogs on Google reader (Nothing can beat free). My blackberry and the iPhone do a great job of letting me do that. I dont need the Kindle to help me with that. As before I maintain that Sony Reader and Kindle are going to be DOA because of iPhone. I carry a lot of devices. I dont need another device that I have to charge.

I was talking to Sean Murphy yesterday (who I met at the Online Community Unconference) and mentioned to him how difficult it was to write about communities alone, given that I have a wide variety of interests.

He made some very good points about the importance of focus. The fact is that over 300 subscribers to this blog are “community related” and about 200+ are friends with various interests.

I think I hit upon an idea after talking to him about possibly being a guest blogger on other blogs that focus on topics that interest me but are not related to community. I am going to reach out to a few friends and try that concept out. So topics of Investing, Enterprise Software, Marketing in general would be available from other blogs with a possible “plug” on this blog alone is a concept I am mulling over.

Similarly I would offer to have others in areas of their interest talk about community from their perspective on this blog.

What do you think? Have you tried that? Does it work.

Betty asked a good question yesterday about managing competitive information online.

”
Mr. Mohan!
My name’s betty and i recently joined live
admins, an online customer service for web based businesses. I am new
to this field but after reading your blog, i am wondering if businesses
such as liveadmins can create an edge for themselves by ‘not tipping
the hat’ to the competition as you said. it is a competitive world. how
do you know what kind of information to share especially since its a
service, you hold back the info, you lose your clients. what if you
hold back and there is no thunder left to steal? i’d love to know your
comments.”
Betty

I have 3 perspectives on managing competitive information online. While the previous post was specific to pre announcing a possible new product or approach, this is also relevant for information about your products and services.

a) Focus on everything your customer (or prospect) needs to get them the information to make the decision to engage with you (or initiate dialog assuming that you are in a B2B environment)- in their terms not yours, after all the “buyer’s always in charge”. If you really do have differentiated and superior services (or products) then an educated prospect is good for you and they will make the decision based on your product / service superiority. If that means giving them information about the competition like Progressive Insurance or Inovis, do it. Most customers do not make the decision without “shopping around”. They might as well shop around on your site than others.

2. Only hold back information to a more personal setting when you know the next step in the process is a broader discussion. In most B2B scenarios, a prospect does not go from learning about your offering to buying in one step. Its usually a 4-7 step process. You have to understand that, all you need to do is to get the prospect to next step in the cycle – either their buying process or your selling process.

3. Always use an element of surprise when it comes to a launch (unless you are Apple). Most people like to “learn something new” each time they meet with you. If the amount of information you share is sufficient to pique their curiosity and ask to learn more, you’ve most likely done the job.

What do you think?

I read through a 94 page McKinsey report on the costs & economics of US Healthcare.

Here’s a summary.

1. 7 cost categories of healthcare: hospital care, outpatient care, drugs, administration & insurance, public investment, long term care & durable medical equipment.
2. US spends more on healthcare than any other nation. 16% of GDP or $1.9 Trillion in 2003, compared to 6.5% in 1960
3. Why: a) Not enough incentive for patients and consumers to make value-conscious choices b) not enough incentives for providers and suppliers and c) no reliable mechanism to drive down input prices
4. Despite higher costs, US does not deliver any better medical care than any peer country.
5. Additional spending in US NOT explained by more diseases in US
6. US outspends more in hospital care and outpatient care. (Which make up over 80% of spend over comparable countries)
7. Three main components of US healthcare: a) inputs consumed – salaries, drugs, devices, etc. ARE the largest portion of the spend b) inefficiencies in operational costs are 2nd and c) intermediation processes – administration & regulation.
8. US consumes 20% LESS prescription drugs than other countries (Canada, Germany, UK), but pays a lot more.
9. Prices of branded products in US are 60% higher.
Why? 1: 10. Use of Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) is unique to US – 1 to 3% extra costs to US system
Why? 2: 11. Use of rebates between pharma and PBM – average about 10% of the cost of drugs
12. US drugs on overall cost 50-70% higher than peer countries.
13. In US physician compensation is 6.6 of GDP per capita compared to 4 times GDP per capita elsewhere.
Why? 1: 14. Fee for service creates incentives to see more patients
Why? 2: 15: Physicians tend to co-own outpatient facilities like ambulatory surgery, imaging centers, etc.
16. US spends more on nurses. Why? We employ more nurses per patient & Complex structure in regulation mandates higher staffing

I was away in Orlando with the family last week on vacation. Which explains the very light posting. I had some time to think about the Facebook, Myspace and Google (OpenSocial & Social Graph and GPhone) announcements.

One thing struck me as odd. Why was there SO much around the Nov 5th time frame. Its certainly slow news month.

Then I learned that Facebook actually “ pre-announced” that it would preview its new social ads and platform a few weeks ago. Google had enough time to respond and attempt to one-up them.

Actually thanks to Facebook, Google had over 3 weeks to plan and execute their announcements so they could “steal the thunder”.

I am positive Google was working on the Gphone and OpenSocial announcements long before they got to know about the Facebook announcement, but it begs the question, did they time it just before so they could reduce the limelight from Facebook?

Most cases announcements such as the one Facebook did are kept under the wraps for a long time so as to not “tip the hat” to the competition. The counterpoint is that you build a sense of excitement – a la Apple with the iPhone, but even Apple’s very good about managing their announcements.

This is probably a very good lesson in making sure you dont give anything away for your competition to steal your thunder.

Very short blog since I am “supposed” to be on vacation in Orlando with the family. Community 101 states be happy for your community and celebrate all events. Two great events to celebrate:

1. Eric’s a friend I met at BarCamp a few months ago and we’ve been chatting about a bunch of different things and I was pleased to hear he joined SocialText. Congratulations Eric, its a great company.

2. Speaking of SocialText, its new Chairman is also another great guy and good friend Ross Mayfield, who just this week raised a good $9.5 Million series C and hired a new CEO.

So what’s this got to do with community 101? This blog itself is a community of mostly good friends, that I have made over the years and I just realized they matter a lot more to me now.

Great content one of the critical needs of any community. And good blogging takes time, patience and inspiration. Here are 3 stories I ran into last week, they were pretty inspiring so I wanted to share.

Scott Adams writes the Dilbert cartoon and a great blog. He has been giving away pieces of his books for free and has had mixed success. In a piece for the WSJ ( Excerpted) he said:
“putting Dilbert online for free years ago has yielded mixed though
mostly positive results. It gave a huge boost to the newspaper sales
and licensing. The ad income was good too. Giving away the Dilbert
comic for free continues to work well, although it cannibalizes my
reprint book sales to some extent, and a fast-growing percentage of
readers bypass the online ads with widgets, unauthorized RSS feeds and
other workarounds.”

But what about books? How did blogging help Scott?
“Over time, I noticed something unexpected and wonderful was
happening with the blog. I had an army of volunteer editors, and they
never slept. The readers were changing the course of my writing in real
time. I would post my thoughts on a topic, and the masses told me what
they thought of the day’s offering without holding anything back….At
some point I realized we were collectively writing a book, or at least
the guts of one.“

Lois Kelly points us to what language tells you about a person. “Plenty, especially if you learn how to use the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program developed by James Pennebaker and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin.”

Please give the online edition a try (you have to put in one of your blog posts to get results). I scored better at self references, positive emotion, & overall cognitive words. Love to hear from you on your words.

Finally Greg Makinw pointed me to Mark Sellers speech. Here’s a summary. Bottom line: “To be a good investor be a good writer. If you can’t write clearly, it is my opinion that you don’t think very clearly.”

Read a speech by Mark Sellers (oobackground). I quote to summarize: Emphasis mine:

“The way I see it, there are really only four sources of economic moats that are hard to duplicate, and thus, long-lasting.

1. One source would be economies of scale and scope. Wal-Mart is an example of this, as is Cintas in the uniform rental business or Procter & Gamble or Home Depot and Lowe’s.
2. Another source is the network affect, ala eBay or Mastercard or Visa or American Express.
3. A third would be intellectual property rights, such as patents, trademarks, regulatory approvals, or customer goodwill. Disney, Nike, or Genentech would be good examples here.
4. A fourth and final type of moat would be high customer switching costs. Paychex and Microsoft are great examples of companies that benefit from high customer switching costs.”

“These are the only four types of competitive advantages that are durable, because they are very difficult for competitors to duplicate. And just like a company needs to develop a moat or suffer from mediocrity, an investor needs some sort of edge over the competition or he’ll suffer from mediocrity.”

What are not sources of competitive advantages:

“Well, one thing that is not a source is reading a lot of books and magazines and newspapers. Anyone can read a book. Reading is incredibly important, but it won’t give you a big advantage over others. It will just allow you to keep up. Everyone reads a lot in this business. Some read more than others, but I don’t necessarily think there’s a correlation between investment performance and number of books read. Once you reach a certain point in your knowledge base, there are diminishing returns to reading more. And in fact, reading too much news can actually be detrimental to performance because you start to believe all the crap the journalists pump out to sell more papers.”

“Another thing that won’t make you a great investor is an MBA from a top school or a CFA or PhD or CPA or MS or any of the other dozens of possible degrees and designations you can obtain.”

“Experience is another over-rated thing. I mean, it’s incredibly important, but it’s not a source of competitive advantage.”

“So what are the sources of competitive advantage for an investor? Just as with a company or an industry, the moats for investors are structural. They have to do with psychology, and psychology is hard wired into your brain.”

Seven traits great investors share
1. Trait #1 is the ability to buy stocks while others are panicking and sell stocks while others are euphoric.

2. The second character trait of a great investor is that he is obsessive about playing the game and wanting to win.

3. A third trait is the willingness to learn from past mistakes.

4. A fourth trait is an inherent sense of risk based on common sense.

5. Trait #5: Great investors have confidence in their own convictions and stick with them, even when facing criticism.

6. Sixth, it’s important to have both sides of your brain working, not just the left side (the side that’s good at math and organization.) In business school, I met a lot of people who were incredibly smart. But those who were majoring in finance couldn’t write worth a damn and had a hard time coming up with inventive ways to look at a problem.

7. And most important, I believe you need to be a good writer. If you can’t write clearly, it is my opinion that you don’t
think very clearly. And if you don’t think clearly, you’re in trouble.