It may be old news to some, but I hadn’t heard about it until I read the story.

Here’s a quick video from the Google Developer’s Day in London with a quick demo.

The device is rumored to be an HTC Dream. I thought the interesting things about the phone were integrated GPS, built in acceleramator for “browsing the web” but has some neat implications for games and apps, java based programming. I’m not sure about the appeal of the phone itself, and how much of a selling point it’d be to be able to write your own apps; or have a slew of developers creating apps out there.

But it’s definitely piqued my interest.

Will be looking out for more details when they are revealed. You can check out some more videos of HTC Dream below:

For More videos check out Phone Mag’s article about the HTC Dream. Things are definitely getting interesting with the new mobile phones that are coming out.

You can find out more about the Open Handset Alliance by clicking here. And check out the list of companies that are part of the alliance here. From the US it looks like T-Mobile and Sprint will be the main carriers and HTC, LG Electronics and Samsung will be the primary manufacturers.

If you’re a programmer interesetd in testing out the sdk you can get more info get more info or download it.

So go check it out, and follow along with me. I’ll be posting updates as I go. But why don’t you join in on the fun.

2007 had been a great year. I went through a lot of growth and changes in both my personal and business life. The hoildays were busy days but a good time to connect wiht friends & family and just spending time with loved ones.

The New Year reminds us that we are starting anew. Starting fresh. I remember when I was a child, in school, that it’d be great to go away for Christmas, or I think they call it winter break now to be PC. Anyways, it was great because you knew you were starting all over again when you returned from school. In business and life (outside of the 4 walls of school) we seldom get to reset or start over as we did when we were in school.

We typically just plod on and continue to do the things that we were doing. There’s no summer breaks, winter breaks or even spring vacation for us entreprenuers and business owners. Even people who work at corporate jobs. We just continue to plod along. And then once a year we go through the Holidays and come to a New Year where we are reminded to examine our lives and to try, reflect and make adjustments.

I really think doing this once a year is not enough. But it is also a good reminder that, althought we might not be able to reset our lives as we did when we were in school. We can definitely make changes and adjustments. And we shouldn’t only do them once a year for new years because we feel the social pressures to make new years resolutions (just like everybody else)…many of them that we won’t even keep.

No we should be examining our lives and measure and test to make sure that we are on the path that we that leads us to our goals, dreams and the end results that we desire.

But we shouldn’t forget to stop and smell the roses along the journey. I am often reminded that we get into the hustle and bustle of life and often forget to stop and just appreciate the things around us. Like go out for a walk on a sunny day and just lie downand watch the clouds, floating through the blue sky. Or listen to birds chirp and do their dance and sing a song. Or how about just watching the rain fall and seeing if we can see the lightining.

Those are some of the mysteries of nature and life that we often over look.

Or spending time with your son or daughter, if you have any and just play with them or be with them without having to worry about a phone call, rushing to a meeting or getting to that done. Just giving them 100% of your undivided attention. How many of us can honestly tell ourselves that we can do that? I know, I am guilty of that as well … so you are definitely not alone.

If you don’t have children, I’d say you can try applying that with neices, nephes, cousin’s kids or even just when you spend time with your friends or significant other.

There will be definite adjustments and changes for 2008 that I’ll be making, but I will also remember to stop and smell the roses from time to time. And why not have a little check up and exam once a quarter or if you’re ambitious, you might even try once a month or even more frequently. For me I’ll be trying out the monthly time interval and seeing how that goes.

Happy New Year to you and yours and we welcome 2008!
May it be your best year yet!

It has been quite an interesting read so far.

I just finished reading through “Part One, The E-Myth Entrepreneur”. The book is broken into two main parts Part One discusses the mindset for becoming an entrepreneur and the second part discusses the Seven Essential disciplines as outlined by Gerber.

One of the very unique points of this first part for me was to create a World Class Company. It had never occurred to me that I should be working on or trying to build a World Class Company. I had always thought of just creating a company to make money, and provide me with some freedom and a decent lifestyle.

This was a totally unique idea to me because it had never entered my consciousness that I would want to be creating a World Class Company. me? create a world class company. It’s tough enough right now transitioning from a one man army to outsourcing and looking for team members and outsourcers. How can I build a world class company? Who am I to think I can build a World Class Company?

But the thing is, after reading through Gerber’s book (so far that is). It occurred to me that yes I can build a World Class Company. I should be working on building a World Class Company. Why, you might ask? Well, it’s pretty simple because it doesn’t take that much more work to build a World Class Company vs a mediocre company. But the results for the entrepreneur and business owner are substantial. Gerber sites an example of Sam Walton and Peggy Diner. 30 years later Sam Walton had Wal-Mart and 30 years later Peggy still has a Diner where she’s doing it and doing it.

It’s really about using your energy, time and resources in the most efficient manner possible. If I’m going to be doing all of the work to build up a company and business, why build a mediocre one when I can build a world Class one? So I will be working on building my World Class Company. Will You?

This is probably the biggest killer to your productivity. If you could focus 100% on a task and get it done or completed, you’d be able to be much more effective.

Most entrepreneurs, especially home based ones and ones that are just starting out have so many things going on that they are just asking to be side tracked. Take a look at the list below and see if you fit any of these.

Have your cellphone with you at all times
chat on skype, msn, aim, yahoo messenger, icq etc.
have outlook pop up a window every time a new email comes in
check your email 20 times or more per day (constantly)
answer the phone when it rings, even though you’re not expecting a call
dogs barking
kids running around
have lots of clutter around your desk and work area to distract you

I’m not saying any of these things are bad, they’re not. They are all just tools for communications or to “help” your productivity, but you need to reclaim your time and focus. In order to be effective you need to have massive focus. Take action and get things done.

I am just as guilty as you in having all these things going on and trying to do work.

I remember reading that if you’re working and in the flow everytime that you get distracted or an interruption comes up, it can take as much as 8 to 10 minutes to re-engage in that activity. If you have just a minute questions / meetings, phone calls, messengers coming in and all sorts of other distractions occurring how are you going to be engaged in what you are trying to do?

The things I had mentioned are all discussing external distractions. There are also internal distractions that we all have. Our mind goes wandering off in different directions and the next thing we know we’re driving over to krispy kreme for a donut, when we were supposed to have been getting that report written up.

Attention Compression is my terminology for the limited amount of attention we have anymore becuase we are constantly barraged with all sorts of things to steal our attention and time. Tools that were meant to improve our productivity have increased the hours we work and made us more accessible then ever.

Remember when people had pagers and it took a little longer to get back to people. Now everyone calls your cell phone at the drop of a bucket. Our attention is getting compressed into smaller and smaller chuncks, and it’s difficult to regain our attention and focus.

What distractions can you remove to increase your foucs?
How can you improve your attention span, and improve the attention that you’re focusing on things you need to get done.

Until Next Time!

Or as W. Clement Stone wrote

“Do It Now!”

in his book The Success System that Never Fails. If you haven’t
read that book. I encourage you to read it. It has some great insights
into personal development and how to really develop a Success
System that Never Fails.

If you don’t know who W. Clement Stone is he co-authored
Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, along with several
other books with Napolean Hill of Think and Grow Rich fame.
W. Clement Stone built the Combined Insurance Company of America which
by 1979, exceeded $1 billion in assets. It was later merged to form Aon
Corporation and Combined Insurance Company of America is one of the
largest subsidies.

As the Nike logo says “Just Do It!”

Take Action

There are no substitutes to it.

Taking action, even if you do it wrong, or screw it up is much more
powerful than sitting on the sidelines and watching life happen to you.

As one of my mentors’ Mike Litman says,

You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going

I’ve started to use that motto or mantra, along with W. Clement Stone’s
idea of

Do It Now!

Yup, that’s all there is to it.

Actually, I thought that the U. K. version was the most explicit and reasonable. If I were to buy something in the United States and a vendor really ticked me off, I now know that I could pay them all in pennies…or just do it for fun since it has to be accepted as legal tender.

I never really thought about this issue and it was interesting to see people’s varying perspectives on how to handle this everyday occurrence that most of us never think about.

An excellent quote by President Dwight D. Eisenhower says:

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Recently, I had gotten involved in many projects; and was trying
to get back on track. I sat down and laid out all the different things
that I needed to do to actually complete this particular project.

It really cleared things up for me seeing exactly all the different
components and things that I needed to accomplish. It helped me
get a handle and break things down into managable chunks.

Before that point, I had been procrastinating, and telling myself
that I’d get to it when I had time. Or I’ll work on it later. It’ll
all come together fine.

I thought I only had a little bit more to do to complete the whole
project. But it turns out that I had a lot of work to do. But once
I had it all laid out in front of me. I knew exactly what I had to do,
the time frame that I had set for myself, and the cost of the
endeavor.

I was willing to put up the time, energy, money and focus that would
be necessary in order to complete the project. I committed to it
and began working on it.

Nothing is attained without effort or cost. It may be “Free” to you, but someone, somewhere is paying for it.

It can cost you, your time, money, energy, relationships, such as friendship, family, business etc.

Have you gotten a free ticket to a show before? What did you have to do in order to get the ticket? You had to fill out a survey, answer some questions. You invested your time, energy, attention and opportunity cost into that “free” ticket.

When you begin a project, you need to sit down and create a plan for the time frame, the cost and possible contingencies (or Plan B’s, in case Plan A doesn’t work).

Now sit down and write down all the costs that will be entailed in achieving your goal or object. How much money is it going to take, how much time, will there be a commitment for it, how much energy will it require from you.

If after having sat down and planned all this out you realize that the cost is not worth it for you then it’s a good time to stop and either change your goal or just get rid of it totally.

Many times we begin a project without first sitting down to determine what it will cost, and it ends up sucking the life and energy out of us because we didn’t first sit down and take a look at everything.

Suppose a friend of yours wants to build a house. Won’t he first sit down and estimate the cost, create a blueprint and draw up plans to build the house?

If he lays the foundation and is not able to finish building the house, won’t others laugh and poke fun at him by saying “that guy started to build a house but wasn’t able to finish.”

Their hope is to make money. No definition of how much, by when or how…
Just to make money.

Perhaps they dislike their jobs, they are frustrated with the amount of
money that that they currently receive, got passed up for a promotion,
don’t feel challenged with what they’re doing. For whatever reason, some
people decide to begin internet marketing to try to make some money.

It is good to have a desire to change, but it is still not concrete enough.

In order to be successful and complete your objective you need a goal.

I have heard it said in many different ways.

A goal is a dream with a deadline.
It’s something that you want to be, have or do by a set amount of time.

Notice that there is something that is desired to be achieved or attained
and a deadline for that goal.

The deadline is very important because if we all had infinite time
then we would be able to do everything.

However we only have a finite amount of time, and we must make it count.

Write down as specifically as you can exactly what your goal is, if you can
imagine what it will look like, where you will be, how you feel after having
achieved that goal, imagine the smells, who will be around you. Write that
all down and get a very clear picture of your goal.

Next take a look at the time frame that you’d like to acheive that goal. Make
it a stretch, where you are pushing yourself a little bit, but don’t make it
totally unrealistic. Write that down as well.