day 1188: One Thing

“You must not have any other god but me."

I watch the smartphone category with much interest and intrigue. What I find most fascinating is that the market remains bifurcated along the lines of work and personal interactions and no one has figured out how to blend those two so that the working person actually isn't caught in between.  RIM (makers of the Blackberry) owned the working market. They had, and have, the support of the security people inside of corporations and government.  The President of the U.S. carries a Blackberry, so it's proven that they have the security advantage.  Unfortunately, they don't have an application economy and marketplace, so that means that a business person can't access those fun apps that others can, and really, just because we are at work doesn't mean that we can't and don't need a little fun at the same time.  They have tried to blend the two together by allowing us to have two firewalls but that still isn't enough to make them unique above all others.  The one thing that Blackberry has going for it, that all other other smartphones have abandoned is, the raised tile qwerty keyboard.  Business is about speed and accuracy.  As we all know who are sitting in front of a keyboard right now, a raised tile keyboard is the only way to ensure both.  Yet, I never see RIM featuring this, what is now their unique feature.  In each of out businesses we have one thing that the other doesn't.  Do we know what it is?  Are we bold and courageous enough to bring it forward and market, sell and stand behind it? That one thing may be the one thing that takes you to number one!

It is clear what our one thing must be and that is our full belief and following of God.  As early as it gets God laid out that commandment to us and told us to not put any other god before Him.  No, of course we don't walk around talking about our other gods that we worship, but as we all know it is easier than we like for other gods to find their way into our lives and move up in our priorities.  We have to be careful and always on the watch that we keep our focus and commitment to God first and all else second.  Work, our jobs, our careers can become our god if we are not careful.  Let's start this week with ensuring that we have our one thing clear and firmly in the forefront of our lives.

Reference: Exodus 20:3 (New Living Translation)

day 1030: Happy Birthday SMS and Merry Christmas

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”

From TechCrunch:

"On December 3rd, 1992 in the little town of Newbury, Berkshire, a UK programmer sent his best mate a few lines of greeting using a unique new technique called Short Messaging Service. The programmer, Neil Papworth, was a test engineer for the Sema Group, and sent the message via PC to the phone of Richard Jarvis, a Vodafone employee. The message was “Merry Christmas.” Vodafone intended the service as a fun and easy way to communicate internally. That obviously wasn’t the case. It took seven years after that first message for texting to take off, but now nearly 8 trillion messages cross the air every year. Adults 18-25 send 133 messages a week each.  SMS was, at least in Europe, popular for a number of reasons. Before inexpensive service plans, a single ring to a person’s phone from yours was used as a sort of signal that you had arrived or that you wanted to chat. This gave way to texts, which were often cheaper than “phone impulses,” relegating voice calls to the back burner. SMS began with pagers which, in turn, got their start in telegraphy and telex. Messages like 911 and 07734 (read it upside down) were ways to send quick notes to friends. This led to “text pagers” and the first BlackBerry, a two-way pager launched in 1999, with its “druplet” keyboard. Text, in many ways, became the preferred mode of communication in business and between friends."

It struck me that centuries and generations later, a soon to be standard way of communicating world-wide and the way many of us stay close and personal, all started with two very important words:  "Merry Christmas".  And as we know, Immanuel who came, for whom we celebrate Christmas, means that "God is with us". As we start this day and the rest of the month, how uplifting and powerful could it be if we started all of our communications, with "Merry Christmas" as a reminder of why it is that we celebrate this special month and that He is with us, even closer than that next text message.

Reference: Matthew 1:23 (New Living Translation)