Interesting color profile personality test. Check it out.

USA Today: Favorite colors test shows CEOs are different; take the test

Great read on customer service over @ Inc. Great way to improve product and process simultaneously. Would your organization obsess like this? Maybe you should.

They say, “Why would you pay an engineer $150,000 to answer phones when you could pay someone in Arizona $8 an hour?” If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.

Inc. The Way I Work: Paul English of Kayak

Lots of chatter about iPad as the Kindle killer. The chatter is bunk. Kindle has a specific target audience, a niche. That niche loves the Kindle. Niche is the new critical mass.

Look at some of the advantages Kindle has:

1. Battery Life. Kindle can last up to 7 days without a charge. Seriously.
2. Content delivery. Kindle has it included. No extra charges or higher price tag.
3. Readability. Do you want to read a backlit screen all day?
4. Opening an App Store that people will care about.

The iPad is a very slick device, but it will not be the only one to change the tablet game. Apple App Store developers will start to run into some of the issues that cross-platform mobile developers are dealing with. Namely screen size and incompatible devices. Apple has been very smart with their device hardware and software release cycles. This will become more difficult as different devices begin to proliferate. The iPad will face way more competition than the iPod. Repeating success is, in fact, harder than initial success. Other players and other platforms (HP, Asus, Dell, Everyone on Microsoft or Android) are ready this time. My take is that the biggest losers will be the publishers. Their pricing models will now be more fully exposed to the buying public. That new knowledge will suppress their margins.

On of the better reads on the “Kindle killer” iPad at TechFlash: 5 reasons why the iPad is not a Kindle killer

Disclosure: The wife is employed by Amazon, does not work on Kindle, and does not read my blog.

With all the talk of an Apple tablet, it is worth taking the time to understand that this is far from a new idea. Jerry Kaplan’s

Startup

is not only a great read on the Silicon Valley start up life but on the origins and game of tablet computing. Notable characters in this tale include Jobs and Gates. Worth picking up a copy – to read on your Kindle!

For many years I have found the notion of price controls interesting mainly because there is vast amounts of historical evidence that state they do not work. Time after time, price controls are put forward as a solution, most recently in Venezuela. Interesting read at Forbes that tracts price controls back to Diocletian, which came as a surprise to this Catholic school boy who only knew about his Christian persecutions.

Forbes: The Futility Of Price Controls

All the incredible and horrible stories from the Haiti earthquake made me think of an article I awhile back in Forbes. Digicel CEO Denis O’Brien has brought mobile telecommunications to the world’s poorest countries. Digicel has been a large part of the surviving communications infrastructure in Haiti and has offered €3.5m in charitable funding. It would be frightening to think what Haiti would look like right now without Digicel.

In time, Haiti will begin the rebuilding process, it will need more people with vision and guts like Denis O’Brien.
Forbes: Denis O’Brien Cover Story, July 2008

What it’s not willing to compromise is the security of the cloud, on which its entire business rests.
~ Nicholas Carr

Carr is spot on, again.

Check the full article here: Nicholas Carr: Rough Type

UPDATE 1/17

Another fine read on the topic from Forbes. Different take. Google has been beat by Baidu. This incident put the issue over the top.

Article here Forbes: Why Google Is Quitting China

Not your typical interview. Cool ideas.

Solid read. Worth taking the time.

Read Write Web: Let’s Move Away From Social Media and Get Down to Business

A post worth checking out on Andy Sernovitz’s Damn, I Wish I Thought of That! blog. The blog in general is worthwhile, but this post is relevant to the social CRM space.

Damn, I Wish I Thought of That!: How to use fan feedback to improve customer service and build trust