The sequel to Triumph of the Nerds – The Rise of Accidental Empires, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet documents the development of ARPANET, the Internet, the World Wide Web and the dot-com bubble of the mid- and late-1990s.

Join Robert X Cringely in this much-anticipated sequel to Triumph of the Nerds, as he turns his well-informed and irreverent eye on the intriguing history of the Internet. Go deep into the bowels of the Pentagon to witness the birth of the Internet and follow its rapid rise to the cutting edge of the World Wide Web. On his journey, Cringely interviews the unknown nerds who laid the Internet’s foundations, visits the Silicon Valley of India and grills the founders of the networking companies who have made millions from this fascinating new technology.

Click to Watch Episode 2

Following on from Episode 1 & Episode 2 – Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires continues: “Great Artists Steal” Episode Outline:

• Steve Jobs, having viewed a demonstration of Xerox’s Star graphical user interface, developed a desktop manager for the Macintosh with an icon-based interface modeled on the Star. Cringely suggested that Xerox had the potential to be one of the key companies in the up and coming PC industry, had they managed to protect the intellectual property rights of Star GUI.

• Apple agreed to license parts of the Mac OS GUI to Microsoft who went on to develop Windows. Upon the release of Windows 2.0, Apple sued Microsoft in 1988 over the “look and feel” of the Mac OS. Apple lost the lawsuit in 1994, leaving Microsoft dominant in the operating system business.

• Steve Jobs had recruited Pepsi-Cola executive John Sculley to become CEO of Apple, saying to the latter “do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

• The Apple Macintosh pioneered many of the features now standard in the PC, particularly ease of use. However, the Macintosh was considerable more expensive, so it was rapidly overtaken by the IBM PC, with some pundits not only saying that IBM had won, but also that Apple could potentially go out of business.

• Chris Espinosa described Sculley’s ouster of Jobs saying “The grandiose plans of what Macintosh were going to be was just so far out of whack with the truth of what the product was doing and the truth of what the product was doing was not horrible it was salvageable but the gap between the two was just so unthinkable that somebody had to do something and that somebody was John Sculley”.

Following on from Episode 1, – Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires continues:
“Riding The Bear” Episode Outline:

• Compaq’s successful reverse-engineering of the IBM PC, which led to many competitors producing IBM-clones that undercut IBM’s own offering. While IBM was one of the key companies that fostered the growth of the PC industry and initially dominated it, by 1990 it had lost its lead.

• IBM’s unsuccessful attempt to recapture a dominate share in the PC market with the PS/2 and OS/2, the latter being the successor to MS-DOS. The proprietary nature of the PS/2 and exclusivity of OS/2 was intended to drive sales of IBM’s own hardware and made it difficult for other manufacturers of PC compatibles to compete.

• Microsoft had originally profited from the initial success of the IBM PC. It did even better with the proliferation of clones as IBM’s own market share shrunk, so Microsoft saw no business sense in following IBM’s lead. Microsoft saw more potential in developing Windows, a project they pursued parallel to their cooperating with IBM on OS/2, and Windows 3.0 proved to be a great success (along with MS-DOS) bundled with new PCs. This led to the split between the two titans, with Microsoft setting the standard for PCs, while IBM concentrated on its mainframe and services businesses.

These days everywhere we look there is a huge amount of buzz about “The Digital Revolution”. We ourselves recognise daily the impact that cutting edge technology plays in our lives. The following tag cloud has many of the terms we associate with the Digital Revolution…

Technology has changed the way we live our lives, communicate, work, shop, educate, in fact there has been such a shift that we barely remember what life was like before the Internet.

We recognise that the digital revolution started way before Web2.0 and even the invention of the Internet. But yet we are all talking about this revolution as if it is a recent phenomena. Just stop for a moment and think about the history of the life changing technology we have at our fingertips today. The invention of the home computer, the Internet and the Visionaries/Founding Fathers of the TRUE Digital Revolution. Their dream envisioned a personal computer on every desk in every home… Wow, with the world more and more becoming a global village, we are pretty much there and beyond. Where will it take us next?

SO, in homage to the “nerds” the next few blog posts tell their story via the 3 part documentary series, Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) which tells the important role they play in our history. The documentary film was written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely and produced for British television by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The documentary itself is based on Cringely’s book Accidental Empires. The documentary chronicles the rise of the personal computer/home computer beginning in the 1970s with the Altair 8800, Apple I and Apple II and VisiCalc. It continues through the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh revolution through the 1980s and the mid 1990s, ending at the beginning of the Dot-com boom with the release of Windows 95.

The documentary cites the several major milestones in the PC industry: It includes interviews with many influential figures in the PC industry, including Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

Watch the first episode below. “Impressing Their Friends” Follows the story of the pure genius techies (Nerds) who could get excited about a box with flashing lights, flicking switches and binary code. Through to the development of the first mass produced personal computer which the non techies could get excited about.

Enjoy!

Digital marketing trends are constantly evolving. If you don’t want to get left behind, you must keep up-to-date and look forward to see what new strategies are emerging. Mobile marketing has been around for a while, but what was once only available for the big boys like Coke and American Idol is now available for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs via cost effective mobile marketing solutions.

But, if you are not yet convinced that mobile marketing is worth your time or resources it’s essential to take note of the following stats. These were mentioned at the beginning of Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the launch of the Apple iPad.

It is obvious to see that the world is becoming well adapted to accessing the Internet while mobile. By looking at Apple’s major success in the mobile space it becomes very clear that marketing to these mobile platforms is quickly becoming a must.

Apple now considers itself a mobile devices company, as the majority of their sales are being generated by the iPhone, iPod touch and now adding the iPad to that list. Further to that, they also sell more laptops (which are mobile devices after all) than desktop Macs. Perhaps the days of the desktop computer really are numbered…

Apple reported revenues for the last Financial Quarter of 2009 of $15.6 Billion, making them an over $50 billion a year company. This gives Apple the title of largest mobile devices company in the world, by revenue. This is truly amazing considering Apple’s competitors being companies such as Sony, Samsung and Nokia.

Due to the massive demand for Apple’s mobile devices, they now have 284 retail stores. These stores received a staggering 50 000 000 visitors in the last quarter of 2009. This is ground breaking. Especially if you consider that huge retail businesses are going out of business, due to the financial climate and adding on top of that, the year-on-year growth of online shopping.

Adding to their retail success, they also have major success with their online stores, iTunes & the App Store. Since the launch of the iPhone & App Store in June 2008, there are now over 140 000 applications to choose from. These Apps make your phone an even more useful tool. Allowing you to do all sorts of fun/useful/business/social/financial/weird and wonderful tasks.  Whatever you are looking for, it’s more than likely “there’s an app for that”. In fact Apps are so popular, that just a few weeks ago the 3 billionth application was downloaded.

Apple’s virtual stores (iTune Store, App Store and iBookstore) now have over 125 million accounts with credit cards on file, all enabled for one click shopping. In fact users of these stores to-date have racked up 12 billion product sales already.

It is clear that these stores bring major opportunities for Small Businesses and Solo Entrepreneurs. These stores open up massive digital and mobile distribution channels, to easily put your expert content or products into the hands of your customers, without large overheads.

Reasons you should take advantage of Apple’s iTunes & App Store

iTunes

• Drive traffic back to your site
• Podcasts are simple to create
• Free to publish your Video or Audio Podcast
• Easy to consume on desktop computer or mobile devices such as iPhone and iPod touch
• Great for building credibility and positioning you as a leader and expert
• Effective way to build your personal brand and in return building strong relationships with your target audience

But be warned – Podcasting will only establish you as a leader or authority if you provide quality content, which brings massive value to your audience. By “value” we mean for example: Answering your audience’s most common questions about your product or service.

Don’t be scared to push the limits on your free content. The more free content you sow, the more rewards you will reap in return. Finally remember the golden rule is to make sure this is not a pitch fest as this will instantly lose you credibility.

App Store

• Drive traffic back to your site
• Create FREE Apps to build your brand and credibility
• Create PAID Apps to generate extra income streams
• Create company specific Apps to run your business in a more productive way
• Create Apps making it easier for your clients to effectively communicate and interact with you

As you will see from Apple and the other mobile device manufacturer’s success, mobile Internet is a trend quickly gaining momentum.  With more people using mobile devices to access the Internet, it makes sense to concentrate more of your marketing efforts here.

Especially if you consider the uptake of mobile phones in the third world. Research showed that Africans are buying mobile phones at a world record rate. With up take soaring to 550% in 5 years. Mobile subscriptions on the continent rose from 54 million in 2003 to almost 350 million at the end of 2008. Further, countries like South Africa (population approx. 50 million) have almost 100% mobile penetration, with the global total reaching 4 billion at the end of 2008.

With numbers like this and with the uptake of smart phones becoming the norm, it is clear to see that mobile Internet will become the connection method of choice for the majority of the world.

Finally. If you consider that almost all mobile phones can recieve text messages, mobile marketing technologies like SMS Text and Bluetooth Marketing must be a first choice way to reach these markets.