Last year I managed quite a detailed post about 2009, which although worthwhile, took me a long time to do, and I’m not about to repeat this year. However, a short recap of the year that was 2010 is something I want to do, so do join me below on a whistle-stop tour… Highlights Where do I start? It was an incredible year, which I could never even dream of completing without the wonderful support and love of Kate who is the person who keeps me sane, listens, encourages, chastises, and questions. How she puts up with me, I have no idea

Apple once again proved they were (and still are) the force in our digital lives. From OSX, to the new MacBookAirs, to the iPhone4 and of course the iPad, no other brand comes close to making my live more fun, productive and effective. Just for one minute, imagine being in the engineering / marketing / sales / management department of Microsoft, Nokia, et al. Not a happy place to be when you are getting crushed by the design, simplicity and effectiveness of Apple. 2010 was the year I got fit, and I cannot tell you how good it makes you feel. It makes a HUGE difference in everything you do. How did I do this? Cycling. I am officially addicted! You can check out my cycling stats below, all recorded with my trusty Garmin…

Rapha and Assos were the dominant brands for me, and the Enigma bikes have continued to be brilliant. Hull Digital continued to grow, and more importantly, HDLive, Hull and East Yorkshire’s Digital and Technology conference happened again with the most amazing feedback from speakers and attendees. It takes nearly 10 months to organise the event, and to hear, read and listen to people raving about the day makes it all worthwhile, and you can listen and watch below! What the speakers and public thought about HD Live 2010 from Hull Digital on Vimeo. All the speaker videos are available to watch here in glorious HD! >> Click! 2010 proved to be an exciting, fun and very successful year for theappleofmyi, with the emphasis on fun! The biggest change, and the most rewarding was setting up Hull Apps with the legendary John Connolly. I cannot thank him enough for being a brilliant business partner, but also a superb friend – seriously, thanks mate
Both Hull Apps and theappleofmyi have had some wonderful new clients, who, without exception are now good friends. I’d also like to thank them for putting faith in me / John and importantly, for making the working part of the relationship easy and fun! Other work highlights have been the radio slots on BBC Radio Humberside and Lincolnshire, speaking at the DPA Conference in Brighton, and also being featured on the FreeAgent web site! For those of you who don’t know what FreeAgent is, it is accounting for individuals and businesses, but simplified! I don’t say this lightly, but it has transformed the way I run my business, making it more efficient, more profitable and more fun. If you are using some clunky old accounting package, then do yourself a big favour and click below now!

So what does 2011 have in store? There are a number of very important things that I already have in mind… 1. Be a better partner to Kate (let’s face it, there is always room for improvement)
2. Continue to cycle, get the miles in and get super-fit 3. Keep going with the healthy diet (I’ve just started the Four Hour Body diet courtesy of Mr Tim Ferriss). Diet is one of many things Tim covers in his new book and having managed to have a good preview of it, you should order it now >> click! 4. Deliver another amazing HDLive event 5. Continue to give exemplary service, and effective ideas to the clients 6. Update all my web properties 7. Continue to get out of bed looking forward to the day ahead! 8. See more of my lovely family, who have continued to be so supportive 9. Spend less on general cr*p 10. Focus on productivity, decluttering the house and making the most of the seconds, minutes and hours in the day – the most valuable commodity we possess! So there you have it. It was a whirlwind tour of 2010, but probably longer than initially anticipated! I really look forward to hearing about what you’re planning in 2011, and I’d like to say a very Happy New Year to you! Just make sure you are doing stuff you love, and don’t let fears get in the way of your dreams!

Related posts:Twitter 2010 Review It’s certainly been another huge year for the microblogging company.... Getty Images 2010 year in review This is a lovely 2 minute slideshow of some amazing... HDLive09 videos starting tomorrow I’m pleased to say that I’m starting to post the...

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It’s one thing running a conference, but it’s another speaking at one. So I’m going from HDLive to the DPA Conference, and very much looking forward to it. I’m going to be running a workshop for the attendees about how they can get the most from social media – some good examples, some bad ones, immediate actions they can take and a few time-savers. However, I’m also going to be reinforcing that social media, for most companies and brands, is a big, fat, smelly red herring. Why would a marketing department be getting excited about social media when the website is shocking (looks bad, cannot be found and does not meet the needs of the visitor) and they never use email? This is something I’m seeing on a weekly, even daily basis. The workshop attendees are going to have this drilled into them. And then some.

Related posts:HD Video and how conference connectivity should be I’ve posted this for 2 reasons: 1. Shows off Robert...

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FreeAgent has been one of the revelations of 2011 for me. It’s accounting software simplified. Prior to using FreeAgent I was using Billings. Now this pretty good for tracking invoices, creating them and sending them to clients, but missed out some pretty major items. Namely expenses and the tax side of things.

With FreeAgent, this has been taken care of and taken care of with style, ease of use and some really outstanding functionality. I like it so much, I wrote to Roan and the team up in Edinburgh and they have now featured me on the website. I’m going to be writing a proper review of FreeAgent after the conference, and by the way, the FreeAgent team will be there as they are HDLive sponsors! Want to accelerate your marketing and get better results?, Free Online Marketing Course

Related posts:A rather good line up of speakers… We are go for HDLive 2010!!!!! Get your tickets now...

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What a great place to work and an ace company to be part of
Looks like the opposite of what a lot of companies practice (and I am speaking from experience). Want to accelerate your marketing and get better results?, Free Online Marketing Course

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Happy and busy. It’s been a great week. A really good week. A trip to London to see a new client and also managed to catch up with three friends. (Plus got a long overdue haircut in at the always excellent Murdocks). The go ahead for a great Hull Digital event coming soon (and I don’t mean this year’s HDLive either). Feedback from a client that they love the website concept we’re doing for them. Confirmation on 2 excellent mobile projects – more to follow soon. I’m feeling excited and inspired and also because of the great people I’m working with like John, Rob, Darren, Chris, Maria, Jacqui and Mark. So, that’s why the blogging has been somewhat sparse. I know, B- for effort. Anyway, here’s yet another digital magazine concept, but it really is rather cool, and the ‘behind the scenes’ film makes it a must watch. We just need the iPad pre-orders for the UK now!

VIV Mag Featurette: A Digital Magazine Motion Cover and Feature for the iPad from Alexx Henry on Vimeo. Want to accelerate your marketing and get better results?, Free Online Marketing Course

Related posts:Wired’s iPad magazine concept Now this looks amazing… Want to accelerate your marketing and... Hull Digital Hits 100 members! I’m delighted to announce that earlier this week, Hull... Hull Digital Live – meeting Rory Cellan-Jones I was in London for a couple of days last...

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I’ve been here, believe me, and it wasn’t pretty

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Filed under: Multimedia, Retail, Software, iTunes, Apple, iPhone, App Store You readers were skeptical that BarMax, the iPhone app that offered up a full law prep system for $1000, would make too big a splash in the law prep community. But apparently that's exactly what happened -- three weeks later, BarBri, one of the more traditional competitors to the new app, has made significant changes to their pricing and service that appear to be aimed at keeping law students away from BarMax. First, they've decided to offer complete online access for free to every student that takes their courses (we don't know how much they charged previously, but it used to be an additional cost). Second, in direct opposition to BarMax's "buy once, use forever" deal, they've allowed students to save at least $2000 every time they retake the test courses, by offering retakes for free as well.

That's pretty incredible. Just by offering up one much cheaper alternative through Apple's iPhone platform, BarMax has already started to revamp the entire business. Of course, I couldn't tell you anything about the quality of these two programs (and whether either BarMax or BarBri is worth using at all), but clearly BarBri smells danger in the wind. It's just not possible to publish content the old way when even one competitor has an alternative through cheaper channels, and the App Store model is as cheap a channel as you can get.

Just imagine what's going to happen when the iPad opens up iBooks and launches the revolution in education publishing that everyone's talking about. The next twelve months are going to be very interesting for textbook customers and/or publishers.TUAW$1000 iPhone law exam review app sends traditional publisher running for cover originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Terry McGraw likely to anger Steve Jobs by revealing previously unknown facts about the Apple tablet on live TVApple tablet launch: live coverageApple is notorious for the levels of secrecy it keeps around new products - and never more so than with the impending launch of its tablet computer, which has seen the company clamp down and let only a select few pieces of information leak out. Why? Because Steve Jobs is (in his words) "a big bang guy": building anticipation and appetite is part of the marketing game.So what will Jobs - whose temper has been likened to a flamethrower - make of the latest leak, which came courtesy of the boss of US publishing company McGraw-Hill?In an interview on American business news network CNBC, Terry McGraw - the chairman, president and chief executive of the company - let slip a few choice pieces of data that were previously unknown."Yeah, very exciting," he told the programme, when asked about his company's link to the Apple product. "They'll make their announcement tomorrow on this one." All well and good - but then McGraw went on to offer some new details."We have worked with Apple for quite a while - the tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system, and so it will be transferrable. So what you're going to be able to do now... we have a consortium of ebooks - we have 95% of all our materials that are in ebook format on that one - so with the tabloid you're going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tabloid, the tablet is going to be just really terrific." McGraw calls it both the "tablet" and "tabloid", so it's not clear whether either is the actual product name (something you bet on being called the iPad). And the involvement of various publishers was already widely reported, too. But the fact that it runs on the same system as the iPhone? That's new, and letting it out early is not something that Jobs is likely to take lying down. AppleTablet computersiPodiPhoneComputingSteve JobsTechnology sectorBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Strategic objectives are the Holy Grail of a company's being. They typically involve big plans, so the natural inclination is to compose a lengthy description of each objective.

That means strategies and tactics are often piled into the wording of the objective. That unnecessarily complicates the objective, making it less likely to be understood quickly and efficiently. Anything not understood easily is unlikely to spread.

Here's a fictitious, slightly over-the-top example of what a top-heavy objective might look like: Understand how to create better innovation opportunities for our products by listening closely to our customers' needs through a world-class  community solution that deepens our customer relationships and helps customers share and collaborate together.

That's an unspreadable objective. It lacks clarity because it tries to say everything. It's loaded with strategies and solutions. It has a poor chance of blossoming because there's nothing simple to rally behind.

A strong objective is clear and concise like a headline. An objective is an intention, as my friend Stephen Harvill says when he helps companies clarify their thinking. A comparable example is when champion tennis player says simply, "I intend to win" before heading out to a court. How she'll win is through a series of strategies and tactics.

Therefore, to create a simple objective, strip away anything that looks like an action, a program or a piece of technology. Remove anything resembling buzzwords. Get to the soul of an intention, and make it simple.

Using that approach, the complicated objective above could be rewritten to say:Innovate using customer feedback.

More on this topic:

Definitions of Objectives, Strategies, Tactics and Goals How to Create a 1-Page Strategic Plan

Terry McGraw likely to anger Steve Jobs by revealing previously unknown facts about the Apple tablet on live TVApple is notorious for the levels of secrecy it keeps around new products - and never more so than with the impending launch of its tablet computer, which has seen the company clamp down and let only a select few pieces of information leak out. Why? Because Steve Jobs is (in his words) "a big bang guy": building anticipation and appetite is part of the marketing game.So what will Jobs - whose temper has been likened to a flamethrower - make of the latest leak, which came courtesy of the boss of US publishing company McGraw-Hill?In an interview on American business news network CNBC, Terry McGraw - the chairman, president and chief executive of the company - let slip a few choice pieces of data that were previously unknown."Yeah, very exciting," he told the programme, when asked about his company's link to the Apple product. "They'll make their announcement tomorrow on this one." All well and good - but then McGraw went on to offer some new details."We have worked with Apple for quite a while - the tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system, and so it will be transferrable. So what you're going to be able to do now... we have a consortium of ebooks - we have 95% of all our materials that are in ebook format on that one - so with the tabloid you're going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tabloid, the tablet is going to be just really terrific." McGraw calls it both the "tablet" and "tabloid", so it's not clear whether either is the actual product name (something you bet on being called the iPad). And the involvement of various publishers was already widely reported, too. But the fact that it runs on the same system as the iPhone? That's new, and letting it out early is not something that Jobs is likely to take lying down. AppleTablet computersiPodiPhoneComputingSteve JobsTechnology sectorBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Apple watchers can now see how truly huge the company's iPhone business has become, thanks to a new accounting method the company started using this past quarter. In less than three years, the iPhone has grown to become Apple's biggest business—up from zero. Specifically, during Apple's December quarter, the company reported $5.6 billion of iPhone-related revenue, up 90% year-over-year. That edged out the Mac business ($4.5 billion) and iPod business ($3.4 billion) for the second quarter in a row and the third time ever. It was the first time the iPhone has beat the Mac and iPod businesses by more than $1 billion each. And this despite Apple missing Wall Street's expectations for iPhone sales, thanks to increased competition from Google Android and other smartphones. Why the new visibility? During the quarter, Apple started taking advantage of new accounting rules that lets it report the vast majority of revenue from iPhones and Apple TV devices immediately. Previously, it had to spread the revenue over 24 months to account for free software updates it would offer those customers.

Apple reports a 50% increase in profits after seeing its most profitable quarter ever over the Christmas period.

Apple shares rise by more than 1% in early trading on Wednesday amid further speculation over new products.

Very wise words indeed from @jasonfried – written for Seth Godin’s new free ebook – What Matters Now. Don’t miss it, it really is superb. Want to accelerate your marketing and get better results?, Free Online Marketing Course

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It's that time: time to create strategic plans for next year.

Most people use some form of objectives, goals, strategies and tactics for their plans, but get a group of 10 people into a room and you might have 10 different definitions of what those terms mean? That's why agreeing on their meaning is vital to your plan. Term agreement is a lubricant to productivity.

With that in mind, here's how we define the intention, purpose and usage of "objectives, goals, strategies and tactics" when assembling a strategic plan.

Objectives

An objective is a high-level achievement. The simpler the better, like "Improve customer loyalty" or "Grow our market share." They can also be mountain-tops of company success: "Make our brand a word of mouth success story." They could be trying to solve a nagging, systemic problem or doing something big, like entering a new market. Objectives are a rally point for leaders who manage day-to-day efforts: "Will the idea being pitched to me help us reduce our churn?" or "Will this project help us develop a new market?" For us, objectives sit at the top of the strategic plan, and an ideal plan has no more than a handful of them. Anything more can be overload -- for leaders and the people who work for them.

Goals

In our framework, a goal is anything that's measured. Goals can be revenue, profit margin, members in a community, certifications delivered, a Net Promoter Score number, etc. Goals determine how you fulfill an objective. Multiple goals can, and should, support a single objective. A goal of "Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 59" can support multiple objectives like "become a word of mouth success story" and "deliver best-in-class service." Just like in sports, a goal is based on numbers.

Strategies

A strategy is a way to describe a series of tactics, or very specific actions. In sports or war, strategy is often described as an action: Increase troop levels in a region. Do man-to-man coverage. The commonality is action performed by a team or group of people. Each strategy description begins with a verb to signify that something is being done. Example verbs include: create, hire, develop, launch, etc. Each strategy is supported, typically, by a series of specific tactics that may or may not be linear in execution or time. Every item in our strategic planning framework begins with a verb.

Tactics

A tactic is a very specific action, like creating a new program or improving an existing one. In our framework, a tactic might be "Launch a online listening program" or "Form a customer advisory board for the manufacturing group." Each tactic has an owner who may rely on the work of multiple people in direct or dotted-line reporting relationships to make the tactic work. Each tactic typically has its own plan, too, whether laid out in a spreadsheet or a Gantt chart. Tactics are best, too, when they are preceded with a verb. Specificity is the driver to improvement.

Later: Afterward, Beth Harte raised this point: Who should own the definition of terms like objectives, goals, strategies and tactics? If you believe language is a reflection of culture, and that culture is largely driven from the top, then I would suggest definitions come from office of the CEO and/or COO. It's from there that planning terminology, and even the planning process, should be taught clearly, succinctly and repeatedly. Beth thinks definitions could be owned by an outside association. If you have an opinion, hop into the comments.

Oh c'mon, don't act so surprised. Amazon started out small selling books and CDs, but as of today, you can purchase just about anything on iconic e-tailer's website. From lawnmowers to HDTVs to upright freezers, Amazon now sells a wide enough variety of wares to warrant the stocking of standard office envelops and truck-sized brown boxes for shipping purposes. To that end, Times Online is reporting that the outfit may be secretly looking for brick-and-mortar locations to open its first store(s) across the pond. We're guessing that the first store would land in the heart of London, but the report does state that at least some locations would be on the outskirts of town in order to easy potential parking worries. There's no doubt that an Amazon B&M location would benefit greatly from the whole "order online, pickup in store" agenda, but can the outfit maintain the leanness that has enabled it to strive in tough times when it starts paying property taxes on more than just warehouses? Guess we'll see, now won't we?Amazon secretly scouting B&M retail locations in England? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink TG Daily  |  Times Online  | Email this | Comments

Today's announcement by Google that it will change the way that subscription content is listed in Google News is nothing if not carefully timed. The internet's most powerful company hopes it can quieten some of the aggravation with newspaper groups and shift the conversation about paywalls and potential collaboration with its rivals.But underneath the headlines, it's worth unpacking the news - because while some paywall-happy publishers may feel giddy at forcing Google's hand, the truth is that the changes are actually a limitation, not an expansion, of what they can do.Here are a few points worth remembering.• This change really only affects the small proportion of traffic coming through Google News. Despite the obsession that some media industry folk have with it, Google News is small fry compared to Google's main search index. A quick look at the traffic figures for the Guardian's technology pages, for example, suggests that Google News is responsible for around 2% of all the readers that come our way, while Google itself brings maybe a quarter of traffic. Those figures are pretty representative across the industry.• Google News already allowed subscription content, but in the past a publisher had to agree to let Google privately index the entire article. That's why, if you search for some obscure term like "orange space camel" in Google News, you might end up getting a link back to a big subscription database or pay-per-article newspaper archive. Google knew your article included the terms you were looking for, but readers had to pay to find out why. This isn't a new thing.• These changes reduce the visibility of subscription content because Google News will now only index the content that readers can actually see. Whether that's the headline, the first paragraph or a summary of the article, it means your paywalled content is most likely going to become more obscure with this move. It doesn't matter whether your story mentions the "orange space camel" somewhere - if it's not in the preview text, it won't appear in a search.• First Click Free makes Google more powerful, not publishers. The scheme which allows Google's main search index to send traffic to paywalled stories is used by lots of publishers (including Rupert Murdoch's own Wall Street Journal). It lets readers get a taste of the product before bringing down the subscription curtain. Google says it's expanding FCF to give publishers finer controls, but the irony is that it actually makes Googling the news easier for casual drive-by readers without increasing the value to publishers. Just compare a visit to the WSJ for a subscriber and a casual Googler: if I'm a subscriber, I have to make sure I'm logged in or I can't see the page in question. If I come from Google, there's no sign-in, no barrier to entry, no annoying reminders. It's easier - and cheaper - for readers to use Google as an intermediary precisely because the Wall Street Journal uses FCF.• It's the job of the news business to fix its problems. There's a lot of rhetoric banging about that visitors from sites like Google are "worthless" or of little value. While that's true in one sense (in fact, serving millions of page impressions to people who don't bring you profit actually costs you money), the language shows that there's been a fundamental misdiagnosis of the problem. Readers who arrive at your website have the potential to be turned into more valuable customers, and it's a publisher's responsibility to convert their attention into profit. It isn't the fault of the referrer or the readers themselves that news companies are unable to do that to the same extent that they did in the past. If hundreds of people like your shop's window display so much that they come in, it's the owner's responsibility to sell your products to them - not the window dresser's.Ultimately, Google knows it has a bit of a PR problem with news publishers. Rupert Murdoch's banging the drum fiercely and trying to unite the troops, either in the hope of squeezing money out of Google or (on a more Machiavellian note) forcing everyone to bring in paywalls before launching a price war. That's why the internet giant is making this sort of announcement in an attempt to appease those who grow angry with it.But if publishers think today's news is a solution, then it's because they've misunderstood what's happening and how to fix it. It reminds me of an episode of House - a bizarre complication emerges that sends everyone into a tizzy; the medical team think they know what the issue is, but in treating for the wrong condition they actually make things worse; eventually, Hugh Laurie has a blinding insight that tells him what the real disease is - and suddenly curing it becomes the simplest thing.The truth is, you'll never fix something if you don't really understand what's going on.GoogleDigital mediaRupert MurdochCharging for contentNewspapersMagazinesInternetBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Google will let newspaper publishers limit the number of articles people can read for free through its search engine.

Google will let newspaper publishers limit the number of articles people can read for free through its search engine.

Google will let newspaper publishers limit the number of articles people can read for free through its search engine.