Why do I bring this up? Because I increasingly see companies, both big and small, often focusing too much on their competitors and not focusing on being unique. A few weeks ago, when I stopped by at the Square offices, COO Keith Rabois, in response to a question about his competition, succinctly said it was what he and his company does which will determine the outcome for the company.

If one sets the rules, then there is a distinct advantage when it comes to winning. However, if a company spends all its energy trying to be the same as another, it has already lost the game. It’s letting someone else define the agenda. Instead of trying to be great at what they do, companies start to come-up with reactive and mediocre strategies that are well, mediocre.

Let’s take this year’s big news: tablets, or rather, rivals of Apple’s iPad. HP announced its WebOS-based TouchPad. Motorola announced Xoom, which is powered by Google’s Honeycomb tablet-oriented Android OS. There are scores of others that have been announced and/or are waiting in the wings. They all have one thing in common: They are desperately trying to be the iPad. HP couldn’t resist using “pad” in the name. Others may not have the name, but are essentially trying to beat iPad on what was known in the PC world as “feeds and speeds.”

The problem is that the minute Apple announces its rumored iPad 2, all these devices are going to take on a look of last season’s couture. What Apple does so well is that it doesn’t pay too much attention to what others are doing, and instead, builds what it feels is the right product. Same goes for other iconic brands such as Mercedes.

The big companies can be excused for catching this “keep up with Joneses” disease, but what is inexcusable is startups spending all their energy on trying to keep tabs on their competitors, taking a cue from their rivals (and often copying them) and in the process, not focusing on what really matters: their product and strategy as it relates to their customers.

In my professional career, especially as an entrepreneur, I found that whenever I did things my way, I found not only great satisfaction, but also found an edge that was entirely my own. When I’ve deviated from that approach, I’ve found things have started to go wrong. Today, the world of news is commoditized and has turned into churnalism; the way we stand out is by focusing on analysis and our own unique twist on news. It might not be for everyone’s taste, but there are many who find that useful.

In my favorite TV show, House, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, when trying to convince Dr. House that they should be together, said that what they had was unique and not common. “Because common is just common.” Next time, remember that.

App of the Day: Ex.fm

I am taking a day off from the world of mobile apps and recommending a Chrome extension called ex.fm. It is incredibly simple way to find and listen to music when you surf through music blogs. I do that all the time and ex.fm makes it very easy for me to create an easy-to-organize library of songs (without bothering to download them) and also share the songs with my friends. The user interface could be a little simpler, but ex.fm’s benefits outweigh the design shortcomings.

Around the Web

• Esri: The Middle East Protests Mapped
• Rohit Bhargava: How Advertising Saved Art, Pixar and (maybe) Creativity
• John Gruber: Why Apple’s App Store Subscription Policy is Good for Users
• Basab Pradhan: Welcoming Our New Computer Overlord

Image courtesy of Flickr user Eoghan OLionnain

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GigaOM

The Define R2 is not available in Canada yet, but I’ve got my hands on an early sample and I’m very excited to check this case out.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

define operating system

In this article I’m going to clarify common but frequently confused computer terminology: “operating system”, or “OS”.

If you find yourself with questions and wonder what is the operating system, if so, you’re not the only one.

This actually is a fairly simple concept to get when you have it explained the right way, as you’ll find by the time you’re done reading this computer dictionary article.

Now an operating system, or OS, is a type of software.

If you aren’t sure what I mean by software, let me explain:

“Software” is all of the parts of the computer that you really aren’t able to observe or handle directly. Software would include things like Microsoft Word, an email program like Outlook, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your personal files like letters, pictures, MP3s, etc.

Here’s how you can think about it: hardware is like your brain, a physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts — the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts “run on” your brain.

Does that make sense? So let’s look at the operating system specifically.

So, let me give a couple of examples:  the two best known OS right now are Windows, and Mac OS X (pronounced “Oh Ess Ten” — as in the Roman numeral ten).

Windows XP and Windows Vista are two versions of Windows.  While Mac OS 10.4 (also known as “Tiger”) and the newer Mac OS 10.5 (also called “Leopard”) are two examples of versions of Mac OS X.

OK, so what is an OS?

Think about it like this: when a person is born, they have the instinct to eat, to breathe, etc., and also the instinct to watch, listen and soak up everything going on around them.

as the years go by, a young child learns to talk and walk by watching the people around them, and as they mature, they also learn more basic skills like reading and writing, hand-eye coordination, etc.

Another way to say this is, they go from being able to do not a lot except eat, sleep, and fill diapers, to physical and mental maturity where they have all the general skills a person needs to learn more specific skills such as learning to drive, playing a sport like basketball, writing a paper for a class, working a job — you get the idea.

In many ways, when you turn a computer on, it’s kind of like a newborn baby, only having a couple of fundamental “instincts.”

It can power on, and show an image on the monitor, but that’s about it.

The only other thing it can do is look at the hard drive, and if it finds the files it needs there, the computer can start up.

This is called “booting”, which is what happens between when you turn the computer on, and when you’re able to actually start using it.

So, it’s just like when a child is born and grows up: the operating system contains the “life experiences” and lessons that give a “child” all the basic skills equivalent to walking, talking, reading, writing, and so on, that allow everything else to hapen.

So in a sense, it’sas if your computer is “born” and “grows up” in the space of thirty to sixty seconds or so (or longer for some computers) that it takes to “boot” the operating system.

In other words, the OS is much like those fundamental skills we all have and learned as children. More specifically, it’s the software on the computer that displays the desktop, your icons on it, moves the little mouse pointer around on the screen as you move your mouse around,allows you to view and open files, lets you type, and so on.

Without the operating system, you couldn’t do anything with your PC but turn it on and see an unhelpful message such as “non system disk or disk error” on a Microsoft Windows computer, or a flashing question mark on a Mac.

So even though lots of people don’t really understand what an OS is, or what it does, you couldn’t use your computer without one.

Make sense?