Death is likely the single best invention of Life

By Steve Jobs

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

(Excerpted from Steve Jobs' Commencement address to graduating students at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.)

Steve Jobs authorized biography so his kids can know him

CALIFORNIA/SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 7: Steve Jobs, in pain and too weak to climb stairs a few weeks before his death, wanted his children to understand why he wasn't always there for them, according to the author of his highly anticipated biography.

"I wanted my kids to know me," Jobs was quoted as saying by Pulitzer Prize nominee Walter Isaacson, when he asked the Apple Inc co-founder why he authorized a tell-all biography after living a private, almost ascetic life.

"I wasn't always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did," Jobs told Isaacson in their final interview at Jobs' home in Palo Alto, California.

Isaacson said he visited Jobs for the last time a few weeks ago and found him curled up in some pain in a downstairs bedroom. Jobs had moved there because he was too weak to go up and down stairs, "but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant," Isaacson wrote in an essay on Time.com that will be published in the magazine's October 17 edition.

Meanwhile, the release date for a Steve Jobs biography has been pushed up to October 24 in the wake of the Apple co-founder's death on Wednesday, according to a spokesman for publishing house Simon & Schuster.

The book was originally planned for release on November 21. The authorized biography "Steve Jobs", written by Walter Isaacson, is currently the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon's customer purchase list.

Meanwhile, Bluewater Productions said it was rushing out a a special edition e-book of its forthcoming comic book on Jobs. The 32-page comic titled "Steve Jobs: Founder of Apple" can be purchased on the NOOK and Kindle reading devices from Thursday. The print edition comic-book is due for release at the end of October, with a portion of the profits from both issues going to the American Cancer Society.

Jobs Well Done, Steve (1955-2011) RIP

By Deepak Arora

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 6: Steve Jobs, who had revolutionized the way we communicate through his unparallel innovations like iPod, iPhone and iPad, is no more. The co-founder of Apple Inc, one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, was surrounded by his wife and immediate family when he died in Palo Alto, California on Wednesday at the age of 56.

The news of his death spread like a wild fire and invoked sadness and sympathy from world leaders, competitiors and other businessmen including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Steve’s (1955-2011) brilliance, passion and energy were the source of his countless innovations that enriched and improved our lives and made the world a better place.

Though Steve had health issues in the last few years and was battling with ka rare form of pancreatic cancer, he had prepared himself to face death and had converted the sense of mortality as a major driver for his vision.

Speaking at a Stanford commencement ceremony in 2005, Steve had said: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices of my life.”

“Because almost everything – all external expectation, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

And indeed he did that and made Apple one of the leading companies of the world.

A college dropout, Buddhist and son of adoptive parents, Jobs started Apple Computer with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976. The company soon introduced the Apple 1 computer.
But it was the Apple II that became a huge success and gave Apple its position as a critical player in the then-nascent PC industry, culminating in a 1980 initial public offering that made Jobs a multimillionaire.

Despite the subsequent success of the Macintosh computer, Jobs' relationship with top management and the board soured. The company removed most of his powers and then in 1985 he was fired.

Apple's fortunes waned after that. However, its purchase of NeXT -- the computer company Jobs founded after leaving Apple -- in 1997 brought him back into the fold. Later that year, he became interim CEO and in 2000, the company dropped "interim" from his title.

Along the way Jobs also had managed to revolutionize computer animation with his other company, Pixar, but it was the iPhone in 2007 that secured his legacy in the annals of modern technology history.

Forbes estimates Jobs' net worth at $6.1 billion in 2010, placing him in 42nd place on the list of America's richest. It was not immediately known how his estate would be handled.

Tubifi Launches Next Generation of Online Video Advertising

By Deepak Arora

BURLINGTON (USA), Sept 14: The online video creation and distribution has burned the barriers of high costs and time commitment, thanks to Tubifi Inc., a US-based company.

Tubify on Wednesday has launched a new solution for online video creation, distribution and analytics designed to remove the barriers of high costs, time commitment and in-house talent required to produce world class videos for business.

“But, in today’s world of video-centric, connected mobile devices, all companies need compelling video to be competitive.”

Tubifi’s offering features a world-class creative team led by a former CLIO-winning advertising executive and a global network of skilled videographers. The new company also has access to extensive libraries of high quality video footage through partnerships with leading video content providers and is developing its full technology platform for release in 2012.

“Excellent advertising and video creation were, until now, the preserve of large corporations with vast marketing departments and deep pockets,” said Ian Brower, award-winning chief creative officer and co-founder, Tubifi.

“But, in today’s world of video-centric, connected mobile devices, all companies need compelling video to be competitive.”

Video is critical in a world that is increasingly mobile, connected and social. Forrester Research reports that, compared with standard SEO (search engine optimization) techniques, a properly submitted video is 50 times more likely to achieve a first-page Google ranking.

As SEO guru Bruce Clay has said "If your competition has a video and you don’t, the competition wins. So I think we are going to see video on almost every site that at least wants to rank.”

Tubifi provides a complete answer to how companies can excel in the digital world with game-changing video quality and distribution. Tubifi’s online video platform will host video for websites using the leading video player and delivering video that is optimized for viewers’ devices and network connection speed.

Tubifi also enables uploading of video to free online video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, sharing video through social networks like Facebook and Twitter, bringing email campaigns to life with video links, and attaching video to third party content to expand reach.

“Most companies simply cannot afford, and often don’t have, the skill set in-house, to develop world- class videos and determine the best channels for distribution,” said John Belchers, CEO and co-founder, Tubifi. “With our solution they now have a simple yet powerful answer to their video communication needs.”

Harbaldeep Singh, Tubifi’s chief product officer and co-founder, states that “Tubifi’s process is built on collaboration with the customer from creating a concept and developing the storyboard, to completing the online video or advertisement and distributing it via the most impactful channels.”

Tubifi’s offering is completed by the measurement tools companies need to analyze their video’s performance and adjust their distribution strategy and/or video for better results and maximum impact.

To help streamline the content licensing process within Tubifi’s ad creation and distribution platform, the company will work with Thought Equity Motion’s application programming interface (API) to access the millions of hours of video in Thought Equity Motion’s large library of sports, news and entertainment footage.

The new company was founded by long-time software, video and advertising executives including Belchers, a seasoned professional who has managed various technology companies with similar rapid growth opportunities, Brower, a CLIO-award winning creative director, Singh, an Emmy-award winning video software engineer, and Micha Barnum, who has expertise using innovative technology in next generation video solutions.

Tubifi provides a complete solution for video ad creation, distribution, analytics and improvement, empowering companies of all sizes to engage with a mobile, connected, social world through the power of world class video, at a very affordable price.

With an award winning creative team and global network of videographers across the US, Canada and Europe, Tubifi ensures that a company’s message will come to life. Tubifi’s works with best-of-breed partners throughout the ad creation and distribution workflow to ensure messages are seen in the most powerful way in the channels that maximize impact.

Nokia CEO wants to take advantage of Android uncertainty

BEIJING, Sept 12: In an interview last week, Nokia's CEO seemed more interested in sowing the seeds of uncertainty about Android than explaining exactly why his company's decision to back Windows Phone makes sense.

Stephen Elop, who has also held prominent executive positions with Macromedia, Juniper Networks & Microsoft, told a Chinese interviewer Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, "creates a great deal of uncertainty for the Android ecosystem that I'm sure is of great concern to many of the Android participants."

While it's true Android manufacturers like Samsung and HTC are concerned about Google's decision to buy Motorola Mobility, so far Google appears to remain a good partner. If anything, Microsoft's apparent preferential treatment of Nokia seems like more of a barrier for those companies than anything Google has done.

He repeatedly emphasized the Motorola acquisition as a key to Nokia regaining their previous market position, saying:

I think particularly with the uncertainty around Android created by the Motorola acquisition and so forth, it's clear that the formation of the Windows Phone ecosystem as another ecosystem that can compete - in large part because Nokia made a commitment to that ecosystem - I think it's the case that some of those other vendors are now in a position where they also have options in terms of how to balance their efforts, which I think is good for the industry and certainly good for Nokia.

Unfortunately for Elop and Nokia it appears Samsung, arguably the hottest smartphone vendor after Apple, may be exercising their option to abandon Windows Phone entirely after next year, a rumor that surfaced on Twitter Saturday.

This might make Elop happy given Apple's unprecedented legal campaign against Samsung devices and a reasonable fear it could spill over into the Windows Phone world.

At the same time, if Windows Phone manages to be anywhere near as successful as he predicts it would likely result Nokia becoming public enemy number two for Apple's patent lawyers.

But will Nokia's phones actually help make the Windows Phone platform successful? Based on Elop's statements, they plan to concentrate more on making Nokia phones unique rather than focusing on Windows Phone itself:

We are contributing services and a development of cloud based services to support Windows Phone. Some of those things will be available to everybody, but some of them will be uniquely for Nokia, and those things that are uniquely for Nokia that we do will no doubt be things that we can use to differentiate from the other Windows Phone players as well.

The only rationale he gave for Nokia's decision not to make Android phones was being, "organized around the people," rather than around applications. He cited a greater, "opportunity to differentiate."

Considering the trend in Android phones of customizizing every part of the interface, that seems like a weak argument. Android phones typically come highly customized from the manufacturer, including everything from the home screen to proprietary core apps.

If he is right about Android's weakness it seems like an advantage for a company willing to create that sort of experience themselves. If, on the other hand, that sort of experience is baked into the Windows Phone interface you would expect it to make Nokia phones more like everybody else's.

Nokia's Windows phones, according to Elop, will be rolled out gradually in various countries later this year. But who exactly does he expect to sell them to?

He seems to think existing Nokia customers are still their core market, but that ship may have already sailed. In the last year Nokia's position as the dominant mobile phone and smartphone vendor in western Europe has been hit hard by the iPhone and Android.

Certainly, Elop's confidence, apparently based on Nokia's former glory and unproven assumptions about Android, seems optimistic to say the least.

Considering Nokia's continued efforts on the the competing MeeGo platform, apparently they aren't completely sold on Windows Phone either.

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