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By Steve Pearl, President, HomeFront Corporate Services, Inc.

In part I of this series we got mighty depressed.  We looked around, foretold the future, and saw grim realities bearing down on all sides.  The ripple effects of recent hyper-inflation in crude oil and at-the-pump costs are still on the horizon as we grapple with the impact on food harvesting, packaging, transport, and distribution.  That says nothing about the way this will all come home to roost in construction materials that are based on oil and infrastructure materials such as asphalt.

If all we did was wallow in doomsday scenarios and did nothing to address these problems we’d be wasting your time.  You don’t come here to see us whine.  You come here to get wise counsel about how to apply technology and organizational leadership tools to grow your company and respond to new challenges, both external and internal.

If the last installment was about the wake-up call, sounding the alarm bells, and getting people to anticipate the disaster to come, this installment is about taking the first steps toward doing something about it.  This installment is about steering the Titanic before we find ourselves sitting on top of the iceberg...

By Steve Pearl, President, HomeFront Corporate Services, Inc.

Lost among the hoopla surrounding the launch of the iPhone 3G phone is a subtle, but crucial development that will revolutionize the technology economy.  That’s a bold statement, but one that is backed up by my decades of watching and accurately predicting technology trends.  Hang in with me for a moment and you’ll see why…

Is the iPhone 3G in itself revolutionary?  Not particularly.  The original iPhone was a pretty revolutionary development in its own right, but the 3G is more evolution than revolution.  The 3G version of the iPhone is a little thinner, definitely has a faster pipeline to the Internet now that it supports HSDPA protocols, and now sports the addition of built-in GPS.  On those three points alone it’s worthy of serious consideration for any road warrior.  The battery life issues notwithstanding, (Pogue and others indicate battery life is actually shorter), serious iPhone users and even corporate users will crave the speed and GPS features not to mention now-legendary iPhone Safari browser quality.

The other add-ons that are hitting the market with the 3G version of the phone, though, are available to just about anyone with a Rev 1 iPhone.  The entire Rev 2 operating system is available today for owners of the first generation iPhone, so from an application compatibility standpoint even first-gen owners get the new Microsoft Exchange push support and Apple MobileMe support (the now renamed Mac.com service on steroids with it’s own push technology).

The real sizzle, the thing that is getting lost in the hoopla, is a new distribution mechanism for software that is about to turn the industry on its head.  I have seen the future of the software distribution supply chain and it is the iTunes App Store...