Is This the iPhone 5?

It may be iPad 2 day, but that doesn't stop the Apple news mill from grinding--now there's a fresh leak from China that hints what the iPhone 5 may look like. It's convincing.

The images are of a purported engineering drawing of the iPhone 5 that's been circulated ahead of the actual device's release (in three months or so?). They're renderings, so potentially very easy to fake, but they really have a ring of authority. What can we learn from them? Apple is embracing big-screen thinking to match up to the increasing number of Android devices that sport screens over 3.5 inches across diagonally.

In fact, if you peep at the drawings and make some scale guesses based on the existing iPhone 4, the screen on the iPhone 5 is close to 4 inches in size. It's much bigger, and requires a slimmer bezel that places the screen as filling the iPhone's top surface practically edge-to-edge. Better yet, this tallies with another alleged leak from inside Apple's Chinese supply chain that revealed a bezel for the next iPhone--it almost identically matches this new drawing.

We can make the guess about the phone's screen size from this leaked bezel, and also thanks to one big design hint we're seeing here: The iPhone 5 is essentially the same as the iPhone 4. This makes good sense. Apple included some revolutionary design decisions in the current iPhone, and would be unlikely to step away from them so fast, partly thanks to the cash investment the iPhone 4's design must have required. We can also believe these really are design drawings, given to case and peripheral manufacturers, because many of the leaked case designs that arrived before the iPad 2 proved to be accurate--right down to the position of the buttons, ports, and speaker grilles.

But what about Antennagate? Apple seems to consider the matter closed, although it included some subtle antenna design tweaks in the recent Verizon CDMA version. It could easily evolve the antenna design further still for the iPhone 5 to ensure there's still less signal attenuation when users hold the phone. The all-metal rear chassis rumor from the other day isn't ruled out by this new information either, since it's entirely plausible Apple could replace the sheer glass rear face with a metal one to make the device slightly thinner, lighter, and potentially cheaper--the same design refinements that have just gone into the iPad 2.

This data, though easily dismissed, is actually interesting because Apple's smartphone will define the path that all the others will tread along this year, including the next batch of Android phones and anything Nokia comes up with (in collaboration with Microsoft) to try to revive its smartphone hopes. With news today that Nokia may have wasted 2,000 man years developing failed devices, this is important।

Your Business Plan

How often have you seen business and marketing plans that people have slaved over for hours merely flicked through (if that!) by staff members, investors and sometimes even the business owner themselves? Even investors and venture capitalists who need to understand the business plans in order to make their investment decisions get thoroughly bored looking through boilerplate business plans day after day. That is no way to wow them into investing in your company. It is no way to get your staff to buy into the company direction - they can't even understand all the pages of boring text.

As any good salesperson knows, you have to know everything you can about your products or services in order to persuade someone to buy them. In this discussion, you are the salesperson and your products represent your business. Your customers are potential investors and employees. Since you want your customers to believe in you, you must be able to convince them that you know what you are talking about when it comes to your business.

You must be willing to roll up your sleeves and begin digging through information. Since not all information that you gather will be relevant to the development of your business plan, it will help you to know what you are looking for before you get started. In order to help you with this process, we have developed an outline of the essential elements of a good business plan.

What needs to be in the plan?

Every successful business plan should include something about each of the following areas, since these are what make up the essentials of a good business plan:

• Executive Summary
• Market Analysis
• Company Description
• Organization & Management
• Marketing & Sales Management
• Service or Product Line
• Funding Request
• Financials
• Appendix

Mind Mapping your Business Plan

Using Mind Maps for your business plan is an effective way to ensure the business plan actually gets used. The point of a business plan is not to reach a certain number of pages or to display the size of your vocabulary - it's to map out where your business is, where it is heading and how you're going to get there.

By Mind Mapping this plan, you are forced to be concise. Mind Mapping doesn't allow for long sentences and big words - you have to think of the shortest, clearest way to express the concepts you want to communicate - try limiting yourself to one word, or dispense with words altogether and represent concepts with meaningful graphics.

When setting up a new business it is useful to create a Mind Map to show what your goals and aspirations are and what things you need to think about when setting up your business. Then you need to define your business - where you define your company values, target market, levels of service etc, so you know who you are as far as the market is concerned.

You will also want to create a Mind Map of the entire organizational structure for the "finished" business, including job descriptions, so you can plan ahead for the way the business will be when completed. It may well be that you put your name beside every position to start with, but as you grow, you will be able to take a main branch at a time and hand that off to someone else, and progressively move down to the leaf branches as the company grows.

How to create a Mind Mapped Business Plan

Place the name of your business in the centre and use a picture that you think describes it. This doesn't necessarily have to be the company logo, perhaps it is a picture of what you want to achieve via your business.

Now, from the centre the parent branches will be titled: Marketing, Financial Management, Management, Service and Sales.

Marketing

I recommend that your 'Marketing' branch is a link to an entirely new Mind Map that focuses solely on your Marketing Plan.

Financial Management

For the Financial Management branch, use sub-branches to ask and answer the following questions:

• What is our start-up budget?
• What is our ongoing budget?
• What type of accounting system will we use?
• What are our sales and profit goals for the next 12 months?
• If you are a franchisee, will the franchisor expect you to reach and retain a certain sales level and profit margin?
• What financial projections will we need to include in our business plan?
• What kind of stock control system will we use?
  

Management

Split the Management branch into two sub-branches: 'Management Team' and 'Staff' (if staff is appropriate) and ask and answer the following questions.

Management Team

• How does my background/ business experience help me in this business?
• What are my weaknesses and how can I compensate for them?
• Who will be on the management team and what are their duties?
• Are their duties clearly defined?
• What are their strengths / weaknesses?
• If operating a franchise, what type of assistance can I expect from the franchisor and will this assistance be ongoing?

Staff

• What are our current personnel needs?
• What are our plans for hiring and training personnel?
• What salaries and holidays will we offer?
• If you are a franchise, are these issues covered in the management package the franchisor will provide?
• What benefits, if any, do we offer?

Do this rapid-fire using what we call "branch storming" where you just add branches as quickly as possible and force your brain to come up with a word for each branch, so that you can capture the essence of your thoughts and feelings.

Remember, this is a brainstorming exercise, so there are no wrong or silly answers. You'll go back later and expand or delete points and ideas as you need to.

Service and Sales

There are four keys to excellent customer service: trust, knowledge, efficiency and friendliness. On your Service branch, answer these kinds of questions:

• Why can our clients trust us, our products and our service?
• What do we know that makes our clients lives easier?
• How do we exhibit efficiency in our dealings with our clients?
• How can we ensure our clients think of us as their trusted friends?

On your Sales branch, think about the process that your clients will go through to buy from you - that is from the time they walk in the store (or contact you to enquire about your product or services) to the moment they settle the final bill.

How to Use the Business Plan Mind Map

Mind Mapped business plans are great for presenting information to investors and franchisees, as they allow logical connections between items to become immediately clear - much better than a 60 page text document that nobody reads or understands. At the same time, the Mind Map is also presenting a one-page overview of the business. This allows people to understand the concepts you are trying to explain to them much quicker, making those funding
requests and franchise sales that much easier.

Using software makes the Mind Mapping process a breeze. When dealing with the specifics of the business directions, you'll find it easy to brainstorm the ideas, adding them at the appropriate place and rearranging as necessary, all at the click of a mouse.

Updating the business and marketing plan becomes less of a chore when these plans are put together using NovaMind. The software makes it easy to move ideas around and add and delete ideas as necessary.

You could even turn the Mind Map into a large poster that could be displayed in your offices - one of the many cool things about Mind Maps is that they are appealing to the eye and so become an asset you can be proud of showing to employees, clients and suppliers alike.

Best of all - Mind Mapping makes the planning process fun! The brain is naturally attracted to the process of Mind Mapping. The colours, images and process will ensure you'll never be stuck writing boring plans that you know will never be read by (let alone be of use to) anyone else!

More: http://namecardmy.com/2011年兔年运程
(from 1 Name Card, 1 Malaysia)

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Apple removing the home button on iPad 2 and iPhone 5 – Replacing with Multi-touch Gestures

The guys at BGR claims that Apple is planning on removing the home buttons on the next version of iPhone and iPad.

Yes, we are told that Apple, at some point in time, will remove the home button from the iPad’s design. Instead of button taps, you will use new multitouch gestures to navigate to the home screen and also to launch the app switcher. Our source said Apple employees are already testing iPads and iPhones with no home buttons on the Apple campus, and it’s possible we will see this new change materialize with the next-generation iPad and iPhone devices set to launch this year. Additionally, we’re told Apple’s popular photo-taking application, Photo Booth, will be appearing on the next iPad. It’s also very possible that we’ll see iLife apps for iOS unveiled around the iPad 2 release as well.

App Store about to hit 10 Billion downloads!

As of today, nearly 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. Download the 10 billionth app, and you could win a US $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. Just visit the App Store, and download what could be your best app yet.

Shazam and Spotify team up on iOS and Android apps

Shazam, the world’s leading mobile discovery company, today announced that Spotify, the popular music service, will be integrated across the full range of Shazam’s free and premium Apps for iPhone, iPod touch and Android. As a result, Shazamers will be able to access Spotify directly through a new ‘Play in Spotify’ feature, which will take them directly to Spotify where they can immediately begin listening to the full track that they either tagged or discovered within Shazam from recommendations or the Shazam charts.
The new capability will allow users of Shazam and Spotify full playback of tracks via a fully-integrated experience on both the free and premium Shazam Encore Apps on Android and Apple’s iOS – including (SHAZAM) RED. ‘Play in Spotify’ integrates with the Spotify Premium App in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

“Integrating Spotify into Shazam’s applications combines music discovery with one of the world’s most popular music streaming services, providing a seamless experience for music fans at the point of inspiration in any location,” says Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam. “Spotify is delivering an innovative, high quality experience to music lovers and we’re excited to bring the Spotify service to Shazam.”

“Shazam is a very innovative company in the mobile space, having achieved a massive following around the world and we’re excited about the potential of this partnership for new music discovery through Spotify,” says Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify. “Now if you hear a great new track you can identify it, listen to it instantly in its entirety and easily add it to your music collection. That’s pretty powerful stuff.”

As of today, users of premium Apps Shazam Encore and (SHAZAM) RED will be able to combine their ability to access unlimited tagging with the new ‘Play in Spotify’ feature for an unparalleled and unrestricted mobile music discovery and streaming service.

The Shazam free App, available with five tags per month, will include the same feature later in Q1. The service combines Shazam’s database of more than 10 million tracks, which powers music identification and song and artist recommendations, with Spotify Premium’s mobile App on the iPhone, iPod touch and Android-powered phones, which offers instant access to millions of tracks and playlists.