31/01: Getting on the homepage of an iPhone
Greetings from Japan! I can finally reveal why I have been traveling back and forth to Tokyo so much over the past year. The great electronics giant Mashusta is changing its name to its more visible brand, Panasonic. Changing a company name is a difficult task for any company, let alone one that reported earning one billion dollars last quarter alone.
While they have great variety in Tokyo, I wanted to take the team some place special to celebrate our accomplishments. We loaded up and flew to Singapore, to eat at Hai Tien Lo, on the 37th floor of the opulent Pan Asian Hotel. We had most of the top execs from the new Panasonic, so we took over the entire restaurant for the evening.
Those of you who have dined with Japanese business executives will understand what I mean by the ‘seating wait.’ Japanese customs specify when/where and how people sit based upon their position in the organization. Being a consultant, I was a spectator during this whole affair, but just seating took over an hour.
During my wait, I sat at the bar and enjoyed some Saki with another consultant and toyed with my iPhone. Despite being a cell phone (something Steve Jobs always yells at me for if I call it ‘just a cell phone’) the iPhone always draws a crowd. We were surfing the web and going to some interesting sites to see how they would appear on the iPhone.
I’m a firm believer that checking in on finances is something that power phone users will do, (I was able to fish a lost receipt for a purchase via my phone while in line with a cranky returns clerk) The consultant I was with surfed on the phone over to his bank’s site and started searching around. Then something neat happened, the iPhone asked to put the icon on front screen. A click later and I now had the bank’s icon front and center on my home page. Very nifty! A quick note to my creative director back i nthe states revealed that it is a fairly simple step to add this functionality to a website. As the iPhone gets in more hands, ways to make your content available to that audience will become a great way to reach the tech savvy.
Well, I was starving by the time we got seated. Having spent an hour watching the event, I memorized the menu and had appetizers right behind me. I drank so much Saki and ate so much food that I ended up sleeping on the jet before we even left the runway.
While they have great variety in Tokyo, I wanted to take the team some place special to celebrate our accomplishments. We loaded up and flew to Singapore, to eat at Hai Tien Lo, on the 37th floor of the opulent Pan Asian Hotel. We had most of the top execs from the new Panasonic, so we took over the entire restaurant for the evening.
Those of you who have dined with Japanese business executives will understand what I mean by the ‘seating wait.’ Japanese customs specify when/where and how people sit based upon their position in the organization. Being a consultant, I was a spectator during this whole affair, but just seating took over an hour.
During my wait, I sat at the bar and enjoyed some Saki with another consultant and toyed with my iPhone. Despite being a cell phone (something Steve Jobs always yells at me for if I call it ‘just a cell phone’) the iPhone always draws a crowd. We were surfing the web and going to some interesting sites to see how they would appear on the iPhone.
Well, I was starving by the time we got seated. Having spent an hour watching the event, I memorized the menu and had appetizers right behind me. I drank so much Saki and ate so much food that I ended up sleeping on the jet before we even left the runway.
J.S. wrote:
I've been a reader of your blog for some time, and thank you for writing about your great adventures so I can live vicariously through you.
One simple question I have for you: What's the secret behind your success? I am an aspiring entrepreneur myself, motivated by the success of people like you. Yet the statistics depressingly say that so few entrepreneurs last, let alone achieve your kind of success.
A few words of wisdom, if you would be so kind?
~j.s.