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So, I just did what every geek has done in the last couple of months: I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

I have been reading about Steve Jobs since I was young. If I recall correctly, I first saw the internet operating on a Mac (a LGIII, for the other mac nerds out there). I was 13. That was 15 years ago. Shortly thereafter, the school where my parents lived and worked got email access. Shortly after that, we were online. Those 56k connections could really rock. It was around that time that I started reading about Bill Gates (evil) and the Steves, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the creators of Apple (and clearly good).

Reading it all rehashed, with detail and clarity and honesty was profound. I really enjoyed it. Yes, Steve Jobs had a nasty side. He got incredible things done. That doesn’t excuse him being a jerk, but it does help to compensate a little bit for it.

What did I learn? I think the most important lesson from Steve Jobs life and work is focus. Whatever he did, he applied an overwhelming sense of focus to it. He cut through extraneous details and to the core. A lot of that came from great instincts, but even those instincts seemed honed by his ability to focus, to say no to almost everything and yes only to the most important things.

I have a tendency to do exactly the opposite. And the reality is that I end up chasing my tail sometimes as a result. I hope that it’s okay, that I’m still young enough to learn. It’s a lesson I want to learn. Through focus, great things can be accomplished.

Should you read Steve Jobs? It does detail the life of one of the smartest executives in recent american history. If you can’t learn something from him, it’d be a surprise.

dvice.com photo

I’ve got a place in my heart for watching how and when technology finally makes it over the border from the US to Canada. So, the launch of the Kindle Fire has been on my radar for a while. They’re not offering it in Canada yet, and they haven’t announced a date, but the Globe and Mail did a great job the other day of breaking down what the issues would be even if you could get a Kindle Fire in the Great White North today.

You can read the article at the link above, but I’ll give you the gist: the issue is content. While Amazon has streaming video rights in the USA that are starting to rival Netflix’s, the same can’t be said for the land of snow. The Globe writer makes the connection to Pandora’s struggles to get into the Canadian market. Apparently content licensing in Canada is just expensive.

So, if you’re ready to buy a tablet and you live in Canada, which one should you get? You’re in tablet limbo, honestly. You’ve got three main choices:

- The iPad 2. It’s the “best” option in terms of function and finish. It feels like a complete product. It’s great. It’s way expensive.

- Android based tablets. These range from the Galaxy Tab from Samsung to the Acer Iconia to the HTC Flyer and many more. Frankly, these are still better suited for a tech nerd like me than for the general population. Many of the apps available are just phone apps running a little bigger (and uglier). Where Apple has “helped” (encouraged… forced?) developers to optimize for the iPad, the Android market isn’t as far along in the tablet revolution. If you don’t like playing with setting and trying to make things work, this is probably not a great option, but it may be the most cost-effective one.

- Forthcoming Windows tablets. Now, I’m no huge microsoft fan, but we’re getting ready to see what Microsoft and its hardware partners can bring to the tablet world. I’m pretty sure it’s going to end up being the same mish-mash of options that exist on the Android side of things. But, if they can streamline things a little bit, they may make themselves the default number two option in Canada, at least until the Kindle Fire finally launches.

There you go, a quick tablet lesson.

It is hard to measure the actual impact of any given tech fad when it launches. The craze that accompanies a device like the Iphone is roughly the same as the craze that accompanies a software launch like Hulu plus, the Palm Pre, OnLive, and more significant because it’s what I’m writing about today, GoogleWave.

A little over a year ago, Google Wave was this mysterious new service from Google that was going to combine the best features of email, facebook, and instant messaging to change the way we collaborate. As with many new Google services, you had to have an invitation to participate. It created all kinds of hype. People who had invitations to give out could create huge waves of “tweets” on twitter, all from people in search of an opportunity to experience this brand new collaborative communication experience. If we could all just use it, the world would work more efficiently.

Then, Google started to ease up… there were lots of invitations available. As we all signed up, we excitedly anticipated how our world would be changed.

Then we logged in. I’m not going to lie, I got in there and tried to use it. And the general impression I was left with was… “What the heck was that?”

Not exactly world shattering stuff.

Fast forward to just a couple of days ago, and Google has announced that they’ll no longer be developing Wave as a stand alone product.

So, what went wrong? Why didn’t we all get it? Why aren’t we all collaborating in new, innovative ways? Is the world worse-off for not adopting Wave as a communication form?

The thing to remember is that this sort of thing has been happening for years. The Ford Edsel. New Coke. Clear Pepsi. The Blackberry Torch. Wait, I’m early on the last one. Sorry. I digress. The fact is that when engineers and marketers work together to make radical changes to the way a commonly used device or service works, sometimes they will get it right. Sometimes they will fail spectacularly. The latter will be much more fun to watch than the former.

Wave over-promised and under-delivered. It wasn’t that impressive. It didn’t make collaboration easier, at least not the way we collaborate at my company. It was easy to evaluate it and think, “eh… meh.” Then we went back to our email. It just didn’t deliver a revolution.

Maybe if it hadn’t been so over-sold, we would’ve been kinder in our evaluation. Tech fads are kind of like this, though. We never know when the next “game changer” will actually deliver. It’s very possible to invest time/money/brainpower into figuring out how something works only to find it deemed useless by the crowd.

Googlewave, I still don’t really think I got it. But, you’ll be missed. Or not.