The big buzz around tech today is Microsoft’s annual financial analyst meeting held yesterday. At the meeting, Microsoft trotted out a line of execs and talked about how rosy their company future is. My favorite version of the proceedings comes from BoomTown reporter Kara Swisher (summed up in her piece today: Slide Presentations From Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting).

The most stunning revelation for me is that Microsoft seems not to get it at all.

CEO Steve Ballmer touts “slates” and “Windows Phone 7″ while saying that Apple has sold more iPads than he wanted them to. His comments about the marketplace make it obvious that he has no idea how to lead or how to innovate. What Microsoft is doing is struggling to figure out which latest craze to follow, and they are now in the middle of a series of utter failures to innovate or compete on a number of products in multiple markets.

For example, their Xbox game system, while beloved by customers, loses money. They have had a string of embarrassments, from Windows Vista to the Microsoft Kin phones that lasted less than 90 days on the market. If it wasn’t for their long-term cash cows of Windows and Office, Microsoft would be in serious financial trouble. As it is, they are right where many giant companies before them have been… before those companies either reinvented themselves or died. If it takes Microsoft longer than 24 months to introduce their next major version of Windows, they’ll be in even more financial trouble. After all, the cloud may make operating systems virtually unimportant, rendering their big cash cow moot.

Regardless, innovation doesn’t come from following others. It comes from imagining what could be, picturing how people would love to live, and then providing products that spark their creativity, imagination, and productivity.

Does that sound like any companies you know?

Competition is good for everyone, especially consumers. If Microsoft doesn’t find a way to become a leader again, someone else will. In the meantime, Microsoft management will fight to keep from becoming completely irrelevant, and hurt consumers on their way down. Limiting the innovations of others and creating irrelevant products is a waste of time and energy, but it’s the common path of the increasingly irrelevant.

Microsoft, it’s time to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

There is a war among geeks and the tech press over “open.” The Google Android system is “open” while the Apple iOS ecosystem is “closed.” Underlying the conversation is the assumption that “open” is good and “closed” is bad, but is that really the case?

This week during the Black Hat security conference, mobile security firm Lookout delivered their analysis of an Android wallpaper app that takes your data was downloaded by millions. Unfortunately, it sends personal information to a user in China and no one knows why.

Given that I have been a standards proponent since the early ’80s and a staunch support of open source systems (OSS) since before the term was coined, I understand the value of open standards and open source. However, most people primarily care first about getting stuff done or enjoying their entertainment, not how open the systems are. If this wasn’t the case, Microsoft Windows would not be the dominant desktop worldwide.

Furthermore, people prefer that their systems work, that they not introduce threats, and that they don’t get in the way.

I have come to realize that there are environments that are especially well-suited to the vast majority of people, and they are those that are fully-integrated systems that are open enough to interact with current and emerging standards in the marketplace. They are not those that allow the user too much freedom, require too much technical skill, or demand more attention be given to the tools than to getting stuff done.

Those are the strengths and weaknesses today, and those are also the reasons why Apple is still on the rise, Google is in second-place, and Microsoft is huffing, puffing, and sweating trying to keep up.

Follow-up: After review, Google has decided that the app is actually OK. There was quite a bit published about this in the technology press, but the points made in this article still hold: There are big differences between open and closed, and you’ll need to make your own choices about what the best value is given your experience and expertise and what you want to apply to the environment.

I wrote the following a couple of weeks ago, shortly after buying my iPhone 4. I decided to wait based on some of the initial reports of issues with the iPhone 4. Following the Apple Press Conference today, I’ve realized that I let the press’s typical bad-news advertising-driven reporting skew my thinking. The following remains the truth, and if you are a business person trying to read through the hype, here’s what you need to know:

Which Phone for You?

With everyone interested in the battle of the smartphones, Nielsen released their smartphone analysis. The analysis shows steady growth of smartphones when compared to the overall mobile phone market, with 23% of users carrying smartphones in 1Q10, a 2% increase from 4Q09.

Perhaps more interesting, both RIM’s Blackberry market share and Microsoft’s various Windows Mobile systems lost 2% market share, and Apple’s iPhone and the variety of Google’s Android phones picked up 2% each (to 28% and 9%, respectively).

As interesting as numbers geeks might find this, what is the real implication for those trying to make a decision about a smartphone?

Here’s the easy version:

1. An iPhone is the choice if you are looking for a full-featured handset.
2. If you do not like Apple, or since the iPhone is saddled with AT&T in the US and you will not (or can not) use their network, choose an Android phone.
3. If you only want to use your smartphone for phone calls and email, a Blackberry may be your best choice. I’d still choose an iPhone for you, though.

…and that’s really your answer in a nutshell.

It’s hard for most people to remember what phones were like in the first half of 2007 when most of the analysts were talking about how Apple was finally going to make a poor choice and fail as they entered the overcrowded smartphone market. Instead, the iPhone completely changed the face of mobile phones–and the mobile Internet–forever.

As Apple introduces the iPhone 4, they are once again creating a challenge for their competitors. The quality and precision of the device itself sets a new standard for how your phone should feel in your hand. Doing so will make every other phone feel cheap in comparison.

This is simply brilliantly competitive.

Steve Jobs and his illustration of Apple's perspective

In continuing to push for their “intersection of technology and liberal arts” as CEO Steve Jobs has mentioned in two separate keynotes, they are developing technology that is far more natural than its competitors. The fact that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer said during this year’s D8 conference that the iPad is “just another PC” shows just how limited the vision of most technology companies is.

So, unless you hate AT&T–or Apple–the iPhone is your best smartphone choice today.

Last week, someone suggested on my Facebook page that my middle name should be “Mac” since everyone just expects that I’ll have the new Apple products as they come out. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and checking in on myself to see whether I have simply become an “Apple fanboy.”

I don’t think so.

About a year ago I wrote about an experience on an airplane talking about my MacBook Pro (MBP) and my thoughts about the almost religious fervor surrounding much of technology. As the iPad emerged, that fervor has been renewed, it seems, and Apple is reaping the financial benefit of a constituency fed up with the technology status quo.

What does that mean for what I write?

Well, right now, I think that Apple products in general represent the most effective human-centric products available today. As a result, other technology companies are making efforts to improve their products to better address the needs of typical people instead of for the technically-astute minority. In fact, systems and applications have become so complex that many of the technorati are having difficulty keeping up and working with them.

I saw the sea change begin a few years ago when I began to notice that many of those I know in the technology industry were moving from IBM Thinkpads to Apple MacBook Pros. Many of them were not using Microsoft Windows on their Thinkpad computers, either, but were running some form of Linux or Unix. When the shift occurred, they all began to work less on their computers, and more simply using them as tools. That was a big shift in productivity!

Ultimately, that’s my focus: your productivity. When I recommend products, it’s because I think they will make you more effective. Remember what Peter Drucker taught: Efficiency is doing things right… Effectiveness is doing the right things efficiently. Be effective!

So no, I’m not an Apple fanboy. I am instead committed to what works best for you. You’ll read about those products here as I review more… Coming up soon…

With the emergence of real mobility as demonstrated by the Apple iPhone, Google Nexus One, Microsoft Windows Phone, Windows netbooks, and now the Apple iPad, we have a new problem: keeping track of our data and making sure that it’s available everywhere we might want it. Last week, I wrote about using Dropbox to keep track of all of our files, and it is a key component to the overall system of keeping track of your stuff.

Another key is to be able to capture notes, photos, web pages, and even screen shots and have them organized and available wherever you are and whichever of your devices is at hand.

Enter Evernote, the ubiquitous capture tool.

Like Dropbox, Evernote is a system designed from the cloud out, and it uses the cloud for some very interesting functions that I’ll discuss more in a bit. First, though, let’s look at the basic functions.

Capturing Where You Are

One of the keys to your personal organization is being able to capture your ideas, notes from meetings, white boards, web sites, and your computer screen in the moment wherever you are. Evernote is the tool I use to do that.

Two weeks ago, a prospective client invited me into their headquarters to meet with the CEO, President, two Vice-Presidents, and a member of their board who had introduced them to me. As we sat in the executive suite, I pulled out my iPad to take notes and opened Evernote. I typed into Evernote during the meeting, capturing their concerns, the key outcomes they wanted, the people involved, and the next steps. Then, before I left, I sync’d the note to the cloud. When I arrived back to my office, the notes were already there. They were on my iPhone, too. In other words, I could go to work on the project using my other computers without skipping a beat.

That’s how I want to work! Do it once, use it everywhere. Perfect.

iPad App

The Evernote iPad app has even more interesting capabilities that make the overall system more powerful. For example, you can view all of your notebooks and see the number of notes in each:

You can also see everywhere that you created notes, provided the device you were using allowed Evernote to figure that out:

And you can look at all of your notes by tags that you create and assign to your notes:

Cloud Functions

In addition to the synchronization functions, and browser-based access to your notes, the Evernote servers also process your image notes and perform character recognition (OCR) on them so you can search their content. This is especially useful when you’ve taken a photo of a whiteboard and loaded it into your Evernote notebook.

The servers also organize your files using metadata plus information you enter yourself such as tags and the notebook into which you store it.

Together this creates a powerful storage and recovery environment for text, images, audio, PDFs, digital ink, and attached files (the latter with the premium service only).

Try it and let me know how it works for you.

Microsoft’s newest operating system is officially available today. Windows 7 has long been available for those willing to use beta software, and so many people have already experienced what is likely to be Microsoft’s most successful operating system release ever.

Since I have been using it for a while both on test machines and on all of the Windows virtual machines on my Macs, I will have a number of blog entries reviewing specifics about Windows 7 new features and altered approach to the user experience. Right now, though, you may want to know the simple answer to the question, “Should I or shouldn’t I?”

Windows 7 released today

I’ll give you those short answers: If you are using Windows Vista on your computer today, upgrade. Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been but wasn’t. It is faster, has fewer annoyances like the intrusive security dialogs, and provides a significantly better overall experience. Besides all that, the upgrade path to Windows 7 is very clean from Vista, so you should have a seamless experience.

If you are upgrading from Windows XP, however, the answer isn’t as simple and the path is not as seamless.

First, depending on the computer you’re using to run Windows XP, it may not be capable of running Windows 7 with all of its features. Microsoft lists the minimum requirements for running Windows 7 as these:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

In addition, for some features, Microsoft says that the system requires:

• Internet access (fees may apply)
• Depending on resolution, video playback may require additional memory and advanced graphics hardware
• For some Windows Media Center functionality a TV tuner and additional hardware may be required
• Windows Touch and Tablet PCs require specific hardware
• HomeGroup requires a network and PCs running Windows 7
• DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive
• BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2
• BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive
• Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on
• Music and sound require audio output

In addition to all of these, Microsoft also says, “Product functionality and graphics may vary based on your system configuration. Some features may require advanced or additional hardware.” All of this information is on the Windows 7 System Requirements page. To see if Microsoft thinks your system is suitable to run Windows 7, you can run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

The point of all of this is that you want to understand beforehand what limitations you are likely to experience, and whether or not it makes sense to upgrade your existing computer. A better approach may be to purchase a new PC with the appropriate hardware capabilities to best run Windows 7.

The upgrade path feeds into this, since there isn’t an official upgrade path to Windows 7 from XP. In fact, while you could upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista and then upgrade Windows Vista to Windows 7, such a path is foolish. Don’t attempt it. You’re two options are:

1. Install Windows 7 alongside Windows XP
2. Wipe your hard drive clean and install Windows 7

While wiping your hard drive clean may seem drastic, for most people who want to continue to use their old hardware, it’s the best path. The better path is to bite the bullet and buy a new system, maintaining your old system long enough to make sure you’ve migrated completely to it.

One of the aspects of Apple’s Leopard update to OS X that was so attractive to so many was Time Machine, the transparent yet effective backup system. I recommend Leopard upgrades to my clients that use Macs simply for the value that Time Machine provides. But, backup of Windows machines has been notoriously challenging, and virtually impossible for the typical PC owner. Enter Clickfree, who announce their new Clickfree Traveler and DVD Transformer today.

The Traveler is a credit card-sized device with a 64GB capacity. Like all Clickfree devices, simply plugging it into a Windows computer causes the application to run and to back up the selected files. The combination of size and simplicity makes the system usable for any PC owner at home, at work, or on the road.

The DVD Transformer similarly provides one-step backup to the writable DVD or CD drive in your computer without the challenges of typical burning software. Plug the device into your PC’s USB port, stick a writable disk into the drive, and it goes to work. You can span disks, and both backup and restore are straight-forward.

Over the next few days I’ll have a more in-depth review, but if you have a Windows PC and haven’t come up with a clean, consistent, and simple way to back up your files, the Clickfree devices are definitely worth a look.