A little over a decade ago comedian Eddie Izzard joked that Britain built its empire by stealing countries through the cunning use of flags.

• I claim India for Britain.
• You can’t claim us, we live here?  500-million of us.
• (Smug) Do you have a flag?
• (Flabbergasted) We don’t need a bloody flag.  It’s our country.
• No flag, no country.  You can’t have one.  That’s the rules…

Staying on the cutting edge of the technology curve works much the same way.  You may think you have your market cornered - then someone you’ve never heard of comes along and plants their “flag” …

The American Dialect Society selected tweet as the 2009 Word of the Year. (Google was their Word of the Decade.) I consider tweet to be a surprising choice, mostly because it wasn’t one of the 27 words on the ballot.

To consider why tweet became WoTY—and if it will remain part of our vocabulary—I looked at past winners to see what factors nudge a word up, up , up on the list all the way to Word of The Year.  What I noticed was that the Big Award goes, each year, to a “vocabulary item” that:

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Many credit the explosive popularity of the iPhone to the App Store - a single, easy to find, easy to access clearing house of all Apple approved iPhone Apps.  And Apple hasn’t exactly been stingy with their product approvals.

The slogan, “There’s an App for that,” will not and cannot always be true.  However, by making it central to the iPhone’s advertising campaign, Apple is declaring that they wish to encourage developers who will make programs that can run on Apple’s mobile hardware, and that they will put it out there for users to find.

There are exceptions (for example, Apple does …

According to Mobile Internet Report put out by the researchers at Morgan Stanley, there are five elements that identify the onset of a new computing cycle.

• Better Processing Power
• Improved User Interface
• Smaller Devices
• Lower Prices
• Additional Services

This is certainly true of the jump from Mainframes to Minicomputers, from Minicomputers to Personal Computers, and even from Personal Computers to Desktops with Internet Access.  The Researchers at Morgan Stanley even see it in the jump from Desktop Internet to Smartphones (which are already as powerful as the early iMacs).

But why does that matter?

Well because the each computing cycle has been about ten times as big as …

Web browsers have …

The American Dialect Society chooses the Word of the Year each January for the year previous.

But this year, 2010, they’ll also pick the Word of the Decade. Let’s consider the candidates! It’s remarkable to consider that these words, which we use every day, did not exist or existed with a different meaning, only ten years ago.

Drum roll, please! Here are the candidates for Word of the Decade (and my opinion of them):

9/11 Two words packed with immense meaning:  “The terrorist attacks on the United States, specifically in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington with horrendous suffering …

Time to freshen up your web site? I’ve just finished updating mine! I’m delighted with the new and improved Blue Ribbon Writing.Com but-whew!-getting it done was a challenge. Oh, MB/I did a sterling job on the design and production. My challenge was with the content. And I was the writer.

I write Web site content professionally but preparing my own was an eye-opening experience. Now that I’ve been my own customer, I offer you three pieces of advice as you work on your site:

Know Thyself. If you are planning to write your site content yourself, please sit in front of …

Until Apple’s release of the iPhone and accompanying App Store, Japan was more or less the undisputed leader in mobile technology and innovation.  Roughly 90% of the population owns some form of mobile phone.  Their mobile networks are faster and cover a greater portion of the country.

What’s more interesting, 8 years ago the breakdown of revenue from Japan’s mobile internet looked remarkably similar to the current breakdown of revenues for the rest of the world.  These are just a small number of the many observations to appear in Morgan Stanley’s 424-page Mobile Internet Report.

Japan’s market anticipated the popularity of recreational …

No, this isn’t the 6-Million Dollar Man we’re talking about, but your telephone.

The combined market share of smartphones has been growing, and not even the Great Recession could slow it down.

$6 million is a pittance to this behemoth.  Palm alone grossed approximately $20 million on smart phones last year, and they aren’t even considered the industry leader.

Proof in the Usage

The NPD Group found that smartphones made up 28% of all cell phones purchased in the 2nd Quarter of 2009, up from only 12% at the end of 2007.  On top of that, Gerry Purdy of Frost & Sullivan predicts that …

Be it resolved in the year 2010, I will: