Four short links: 21 November 2011

Early Jobs, Personal Computing Sticks, Short-Sighted Profits, and Ford's Software Business

  1. Steve Jobs in Early NeXT Days (YouTube) — documentary footage of the early retreats at NeXT, where Jobs talks about plans and priorities. Very interesting to watch this knowing how the story ends. I’m astonished by how well Jobs spoke, even then, and delighted by the glimpses of impatience and dismissiveness. I wonder where the raw footage went. (via The Next Web)
  2. Cotton Candy Prototype — an Android-running computer on a USB stick. Plug it in, use the software on the stick to talk to the onboard OS, and you’re off. The ease of carrying your systems and data with you like this is the only long-term challenge I can see to the convenience of cloud storage of your digital life. For more details see Laptop Mag.
  3. Clayton Christensen on Short-Sighted Pursuit of Profits (Forbes) — love this quote from an overseas semiconductor manufacturer: You Americans measure profitability by a ratio. There’s a problem with that. No banks accept deposits denominated in ratios.
  4. Ford Just Became a Software Company (Information Week) — Ford are shipping memory sticks with software upgrades to the touchscreen computer in their cars. This is the future of manufacturing: your physical products will need software, which will for your business to have software competencies you haven’t begun to dream of. Business opportunity?
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