So what did I actually want to see in terms of hardware? Let’s take a look:

1. Albeit less essential (relatively speaking) wireless charging would certainly be a welcome feature. I don’t mean that recent technology that powers devices at a distance, instead I’m referring to those pads that you put your devices on that charges them. I’d like to invest in a couple of those and leave them around the house to keep devices juiced.
2. There are some truly innovative products out there to provide much better audio without increasing weight or complexity in devices. The iPad has a seemingly tiny mono speaker, that I’m confident is going to leave me disappointed, whether giving a presentation or trying to watch some TED videos.
3. No camera? That’s a good way to keep this from being a gift for non-tech savvy relatives and being a living room fixture that actually stood a chance of replacing the use of the mobile and landline phones (now the Skype can make calls over 3G or even cumbersome TVs). No doubt that this is coming soon, but I think this was definitely a foolish sacrifice for the first generation. Likely to be able to make the battery life claims that are made without having to do too much research and development or delaying release.
4. HDMI, without better audio, higher quality video etc, how am I going to enjoy the videos etc that I happen to download or want to share on my iPad? So I can’t pop over to a friend’s house and with a single cable pour out high definition content into the flat screen TV that hangs on their wall? This is a real use case even in business today. Not even a thought of this scenario? For shame.
5. I know the “stylus” concept is a bit passé at this point, but not when it records what you’re hearing while you make your notes, which are subsequently converted from handwriting into actual documents. After all, apple called this device the iPad right? This use case takes shape in nearly every way you can imagine, and unlike other products that exist, the data is already stored in a device (or easily synced) in such a way that you can manipulate it easily.
6. The mobile landscape is changing with the proliferation of free WIFI in communities and businesses, but the roll out of 4G is also on the horizon by many service providers as well. Granted, some mobile companies are admittedly removing the bottlenecks from their 3G networks, but mobile standards must be backwards compatible, so why not give a device that cannot be upgraded more longevity?
7. Only 802.11n support? What about the new “hub-less” WIFI technology that allows wireless devices to directly discover and interface with each other at high speed? Not having forward thinking features makes me think that this device is supposed to be disposed of annually, I mean upgraded. And not the healthy upgrades like swapping out modems or memory or disk, unhealthy ones where the entire unit is tossed or sold on eBay if I somehow find the time.
8. Bluetooth 3, where is that? There are already devices with the standard and most of us gadget lovers already know that we still have a pairing and performance issues with our Bluetooth networks as it is, even with the enhanced data rate devices that are available now.
9. Video is actually key here, where is the 1080p? Even youtube.com, vimeo.com etc supports this standard now, how can this be missing today. The Simpson’s is finally widescreen after 20 years, let’s keep taking steps forward.
10. One of my use cases is using the device for travel, this includes in a car. However, I can’t use this for turn-by-turn directions without a decent speaker, so I guess I will have to look at the screen in that case? A bit dangerous. I guess this thing is going to remain in its specially designed Apple carry case anyway since there’s no active GPS. Garmin can breath a sigh of relief.
11. The battery life is impressive, but at the compromise (no doubt) of multi-tasking support. So after completing that thought, the battery life is NOT impressive. So where is multi-tasking support? Even my RIM BlackBerry 8800 could manage that even with its rubbish interface.

For completeness I should mention that the lack of Flash support is not a concern of mine, all of the largest videos sites are supporting HTML 5 as are the browsers that I love.

If having these features means that I have to spend more, I certainly will. Knowing that subsequent operating system updates with richen my productivity and allow for greater innovation in the app’s that are developed. But what I won’t do is make compromises on these points unless I can find a reason to compromise my use cases as well: presentations, travel, business tasks, conferences/seminars etc. All of these uses cases (and more) demand a device of the description I’ve made. We’ll see if Apple will ever cater to such a small sector of their market, the hardcore.

Only six out of 100 on-line businesses succeed. That’s an astonishing failure rate. And you can bet that a significant percentage of those failures all suffered from one, almost-universal problem for any start-up.

Undercapitalization.

Great idea. Excellent product. Decent execution. And still the e-nterprise vanishes into cyberspace. The Internet is populated with failures, sometimes called ‘ghost sites’. The shell is still there, but the site owner and his/her investment are long gone.

Cash is King on the WWW
It takes money to make money on the Internet. You’ll need an attractive site, you’ll need search engine optimization, hosting and a bunch of other stuff that will be, in fact, your business.

Regardless of how much you’re starting with in your account, website design and implementation is not the place to cut corners. Again, this is the digital face of your business. And you want it right.

So, does that mean you have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get noticed on the net? Maybe. It all depends on just what you need to meet your on-line objectives. Cash is flash and you want at least a little bling on your site.

Low-Ball Site = Snowball’s Chance in Hell
Sure, you can low-ball it. In fact, there are lots of sites that will register your domain name, provide some website templates and even provide hosting services at remarkably low costs. And why are the costs so low? Because these DIY sites don’t work.

You can spot these sites like road kill and they tell you a great deal about the people behind them. They don’t exactly instill the kind of confidence you want your customers or clients to have in your business.

Or, you can outsource to the Ukraine or India or the Philippines. You might get lucky and find a decent designer, but frankly, the chances are remote. (Pun intended.)

The key to success isn’t to find the lowest cost designer. In fact, the key to success is to find a pricey designer because you know they’re good. Then, work with this professional to design the best site to fit your budget.

What Website Features Do You Need?
Features cost money so it’s important to determine which features you’ll need and which you can do without. Here are some common website features and e-biz services that you might or might not need.

A Checkout
A must have for any on-line business selling products or services. This is how customers will pay you and you’ll know when to ship what and where. A pretty important feature for any e-tailer.

Now, you can buy a checkout in a box — basically software that gets back-engineered to fit your site. But these checkout software programs are only so flexible and offer only so many features. They work, but they’re probably not the best representation of your commitment to customer satisfaction.

Then there’s that confidence question, again.

Now, of course, not all sites need a checkout. Informational sites that don’t sell products don’t need a checkout. The regional tourist bureau, government sites and other similar site owners don’t have to put out cash for a checkout. But that doesn’t mean that money should be used to print up some cool stationery.

Security
Certainly related to a checkout (boxed or not), security goes much further than just the checkout.

Do you plan to collect data from visitors? Will they be completing forms or providing sensitive data? If so, your site will need to be encrypted — 64-bit or 128-bit depending on the sensitivity of the information.

And that’s another expense you may or may not have to consider. Obviously, if your site is public, with no sensitive data available to a cracker, security won’t be a major concern or a major expense.

Search Engine Optimization
Sure, you’ll pay for SEO but you may not need it. Let’s say you’re the owner of a brick and mortar tire store in Illinois. You don’t sell tires to people in Rangoon so your need for SEO is limited by geography.

On the other hand, if you’re selling batteries at “low, low prices”, chances are you sell and ship worldwide (or at least you plan to). In this case, the ultimate goal is to design a relevant site that appears “above the fold” in the SERPs for high-traffic keywords — like ‘batteries’.

Site Skin
Let’s use our tire store and on-line battery outlet to consider the importance of your website’s skin — the presentation layer that people see when they visit your site.

Our tire storeowner doesn’t need much in the way of SEO because his market is specific to a small, geographic area. And he doesn’t need a checkout because he doesn’t sell tires on-line. He’s saving website design money in those two areas.

So, should those savings go somewhere else in the site’s design? Absolutely. The tire store website is, in essence, an on-line billboard. The owner lists the store’s web address on local TV commercials, his yellow pages display ads and in all of his print materials. This is his primary means of driving traffic to the tire site.

As such, the storeowner should consider adding a little flash to the site’s skin — literally. How about a Flash presentation of the owner pitching the monthly sales? Or how about video clips of the tire techs working in the neat, clean bays?

Once again, site design is the last place you want to cut corners.

Now, things are a bit different with the on-line battery outlet. First, the owner carries a huge inventory. She sells worldwide and needs to drive traffic by way of search engines. She sells exclusively on-line. That means she needs a full-featured checkout complete with currency converter!

Working with a limited budget (aren’t we all?), the battery outlet must have a secure checkout with a long list of features and she needs a site designed for easy and accurate indexing by search engines. Because of the complexity of the site’s sub-structure, there won’t be much left over for the skin.

This is where a professional design firm will more than pay for itself. Even on a small budget, a one-stop digital design shop will not only help allocate where your design dollars must and/or should go, they’ll work within your budget to balance site needs with site esthetics and features.

The point is, analyze the purpose of your site. Who are you trying to reach and what are you trying to do or say? From there, meet the needs and whatever’s left over goes into the site skin.

You Only Have One Chance to Make a Good First Impression
In fact, you’ve got less than 10 seconds to make a good impression. That’s how long visitors take to assess the value or interest of your site. That’s where intelligent design, good-looking graphics and persuasive, compelling sales copy — the site’s skin — comes in. If it doesn’t look good or read well, they’re gone.

But once you’ve captured the visitor’s attention, the site must continue to deliver the features users expect. Easy ordering, direct links to products, confidence in the site’s security, convenience and easy navigation — the “behind the curtain” design the public never sees.

It takes both a well-designed architecture and an engaging, attractive, compelling presentation layer to ensure on-line success.

Cut corners when designing your on-line business model. But don’t cut them on the design and function of your website.

This is where success is made.

In February, 2006, the US Senate Commerce held hearings in Washington that may well affect your on-line business. And, despite the fact that e-commerce growth out-paces brick-and-mortar, same-store growth by 96% annually (since 2000), no one noticed these important hearings. A short piece in the Wall St. Journal, 68 seconds on the evening news, a sound bite here and there, and the question of maintaining a neutral network faded from public consciousness like Vanilla Ice.

And this is important to our on-line industry!

What is a neutral network?
It’s what we have now.

On today’s Internet, all bits are created equal. No preference is given to one transmission over another. Data moves from place to place in a “best practices” sort of way, but no one receives preferential treatment, right?

Consider this. The pipelines that hook us all together (interconnectivity) can no longer handle the traffic load. Just as there are traffic jams on the highway, there are traffic jams on the Information Super-Highway — and they’re going to get worse.

Throughout the entire history of the Net, data has been delivered on a ‘first-come, first-served’ basis. It’s blind egalitarianism. My byte just as important as yours. Which means, when there’s a data-jam, your jpg of the kids’ birthday party receives equal access to Net facilities as the daily accounts of an overseas bank or Fortune 50 company. Now that’s what the Internet is all about.

What’s the dispute?
Money. Bet you didn’t see that coming. It’s all about money — and lots of it.

With the ever-expanding menu of net services, from video and music downloads to podcasts, the demand for data transmission space is increasing — quickly! Daily. And that brings into play the Economics 101 concept of supply and demand. Where demand is greater than supply, prices rise. And that’s what the owners of the Net’s infrastructure want to happen. A rise in prices.

Content vs. Infrastructure
There are two, distinct branches of the Internet experience. First, there are those companies that provide the nuts-and-bolts infrastructure that makes the net possible. We’re talking telephone companies, cable companies, hybrids and hard-wired companies like Cisco and Intel. These are the investor darlings that provide the means to deliver Internet content.

Then there’s the content side of the experience. Google, Napster, Amazon and a few million other on-line sources of data deliver the stuff that passes through the infrastructure (see above) before showing up on you monitor.

Now, the content people want to keep things just the way they are. The vast majority of these ‘pixel publishers’ want to keep unfettered access for all. The infrastructure guys see dollar signs. They want to change the very heart and soul of the Internet and undercut its raison d’etre.

Preferred Pricing
So, what if the infrastructure companies started offering premium services for a price? What if certain users were given preferential access to transmission services — for a fee? It would be like the commuter fast lanes you see on highways.

This would mean that your jpg would sit stalled for a minute or two (or longer) while the data from the overseas bank zips right through. It’s like cutting in line. You didn’t do it in third grade, you don’t do it now.

But that’s what the Senate Commerce Committee was considering during public hearings in February, 2006. The concept of preferred pricing programs should send shivers down the spine of everyone from Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, to the smallest site owner on the W3.

Death to Preferred Pricing
The reason the Internet has become such a vital, robust part of our professional and personal lives is because it is endlessly innovative. It brings together the collective smarts, creativity and business acumen of the worldwide community. New ideas are developed and implemented in weeks and months, not years.

The Internet is wild. Law enforcement is spotty, black hats are always at the gates, but the Internet dynamic encourages new thinking, new strategies and new ways to expand the economy. (Are you kidding? Google’s per share price went up 100% in fiscal year 2005. You better believe numbers like that have an impact on the economy.)

It’s the wide-open, level playing field that has made the Net such a potent force for innovation and such an important part of the US economy. Preferred pricing would change that level playing field, meaning some other company’s data would receive a faster ride than your equally precious data.

So, Are We Just Going to Take This?
What do you think? There’s just too much at stake here, regardless of what position you play on that level playing field. Webmasters, hosting companies, site owners, content providers — the proposed legislation under consideration must be stopped and the Internet community has the power to do just that.

First, contact your senators and congressional representatives. Send e-mails. Lots of them. Keep the Internet Free. Power to the People!

Second, use your outlets to spread the word. Put up a notice on your home page to Free the Net from the bean counters and link to this article.

It’s not too late to keep the Net out of the hands of Verizon, Comcast and SBC/ATT and keep it open for the little guys hatching the next Google in their garage right now.

Free the Net!