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Here’s a breakdown of some awesome Features Office 3651. Work Smarter, EverywhereAfter buying Office 365, you also gain access to its accompanying mobile apps and browser apps. This allows you to access their cloud service from any up to date web browser on your desktop or mobile device. Even better yet, you don’t have to install Office software on your computer to do this.The mobile app allows you to access all of your Office 365 subscriptions and Office products right from your smartphone or tablet; this includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Onenote, and more. Cut the cord and stop working on your PC only — download the Microsoft Office 365 mobile app to stay productive, even while on the go.2. Enjoy 50 GB of StorageEach Office 365 user receives a whopping 50 GB of storage with Exchange Online; this can be used to save emails, calendar events, task lists, meeting notes, contact information, and email attachments.You can save some more space in your mailbox by utilizing the OneDrive cloud storage feature to share attachments.Your OneDrive storage is also synced to your device, enabling you to work offline on files. As soon as you reconnect to the web, the newest versions of your documents will be automatically uploaded to your cloud storage. The new versions of your documents will also be sent to any other connected device, including your phone or tablet — nifty!3. Edit Documents with Real-Time Co-AuthoringCollaborate online and see changes your team makes to shared documents within your Office apps as they happen with the real-time co-authoring feature in Word. Save your file to OneDrive cloud storage or SharePoint so your team can access the document and make any necessary edits or updates. You can also share it directly from Word by utilizing a handily integrated sidebar. As the publisher and access-giver, you can edit accessibility settings at any time.With the improved version control that was rolled out with Office 2016 co-authoring, you can see which changes to the document were made by which contributor and when the update was made. You can also easily revert back to a previous version of the file whenever you need to.4. Connect with Co-WorkersYou may not have known this, but Office apps include a Skype in-app integration. You can use this feature to instant message your teammates, share your screen during meetings and have audio or visual conversations — without even exiting the Office apps you’re working in. You can continue Skype conversations even after you close your office apps via your desktop or mobile version of Skype. The best part? Your team will receive unlimited Skype minutes.Source: Microsoft5. Send Links, Not FilesIt’s time to move away from email attachments. It’s never been easier to share documents for co-authoring!Simply upload your file to Office 365’s cloud storage. Then, write your email via Outlook or the Outlook web app. Rather than attaching your document to the email, you can insert a link to the file on your cloud. Outlook will automatically allow email recipients to edit the document you wish to share. You can always change permissions on any document at your convenience.6. Convert OneNote Items into Outlook Calendar EventsEasily configure OneNote items to tasks within your Outlook calendar. You can also assign tasks to colleagues, complete with follow-up reminders and concise due dates. You can also transfer meeting notes taken in OneNote via email to your teammates, and add important details (date, location, and attendees) to their respective meeting.7. Use Your Mouse as a Laser Pointer during PowerPoint PresentationsWith only a simple keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + P), your mouse can be used as a laser pointer during your PowerPoint presentations. You can also use the “presenter mode” commands while using this feature.The laser pointer tool has been a nifty trick within older versions of the office apps for years; however, it was only recently integrated for touch-screen devices. All you have to do is hold down on your device’s screen, and the laser pointer will appear.8. Create a Power Map Using ExcelTurn data into a 3-D interactive map with Power Map, one of the many Power BI-enhanced data visualization features that Excel has to offer. It comes with three different filters: List, Range, or Advanced. The Power Map will help you not only convey your data more effectively, but also support your claims by creating a tangible story from the numbers.

I have wrote a blog on quora itself forHow to generate more traffic on website or blog?read it and get benefited.

hiSEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATIONGoogle, Bing, and smaller search engines control the internet. They control it because they are the ones that they choose what users can find on the internet. These search engines are the ones that dictate what will appear on page one of the searches.As a business that has an online presence, it is imperative that it appears on page 1 of Google, and more importantly to appear as the first result on the first page. This is due to the fact that the first site gets 36.4% of the clicks while the site at the bottom gets 2%.With over a billion websites out there, all t...

Here is quite a list of ideas, I am sure you'll find something interesting (source 101 Simple Tips To Increase Website Traffic | Graph Paper Press)Content Is KingWrite eye-catching headlines.Write excellent content — make a name for blog as a source of informative, useful, funny, entertaining, or inspiring articles.Write longer posts — expand on your content, fill out your blog posts and create truly epic content.Write shorter posts — follow Seth Godin’s example with short but sweet posts.Write more often — the more content you can produce, the better.Blog on a consistent schedule so your readers know when to expect new content.Write list blog posts — they get more traffic than any other kind of post.Write about current news stories.Write about topics trending on Twitter and in Google trends.Search forums in your niche to see what people are talking about and write an article about it.Ask your readers what they’d like you to write about.Write about something controversial and start a debate.Use link bait techniques to write content that promotes massive sharing.Explore your analytics, find out which is your most popular content and create more of the same.Interview influential people in your niche/industry.Create a “best blogs” list post and let the bloggers know you’ve included them — a bit of flattery can go a long way.Enhance With MultimediaUse eye-catching photos and graphics to draw attention to your posts.Create Pinterest-friendly graphics with text on top of images to encourage people to pin your posts.Create an interesting infographic and share it with everyone you can think of.Upload videos to YouTube and Vimeo — make sure a link to your site is in the description and the video.Produce a podcast and distribute it through iTunes.Convert some of your content into a presentation and upload it to SlideShare.Host or take part in a webinar.Transcribe your videos and webinars for extra content.Be SocialCreate a Facebook page for your blog. Use it to communicate with your readers and post a notification every time you publish a new blog article.Tweet all your posts when you publish them.Link to your posts on your Google+ page when you publish them.Use social media scheduling software like Buffer to post automatically on social media at the best times of the day.Link to your old posts periodically from your social media accounts.Join a collaborative Pinterest board and tap into the audiences of all the other bloggers pinning to that board.Regularly pin images from other sites. The more you pin, the more followers you’ll attract on Pinterest. Make sure your blog address is in your profile!Create a Tumblr blog and add content related to your niche as well as re-blogging content from your own site.Set up an Instagram account and tell your followers when you publish a new post.Comment on other blogs with insightful, useful comments.Link out to other bloggers generously.Share others’ posts on Facebook and retweet useful information to your readers.signNow out to other bloggers through their blog, by email or on social media —build relationships.Follow all the followers of other influential bloggers in your niche on Twitter.Include social sharing buttons on all your posts.Swap sidebar links and buttons with other sites.Include quotable phrases in your content and use Clicktotweet to encourage sharing on Twitter.Encourage engagement on your blog by ending your posts with a question.Link to all your posts with StumbleUpon.Add some of the users Twitter recommends you to follow every day — a percentage will follow you back.Reply to your comments and emails — show your readership that you’re interested in what they have to sayJoin blogger Facebook groups and communities to share knowledge and help to promote each other’s content.Create a LinkedIn profile with a link to your blog and contribute to groups and discussions in your field.Submit your best posts to Digg and Reddit.Add your favorite blogs to your blogroll — they’ll notice and may return the favor.Ask your blogger friends to include you in their blogroll.Collaborate with other bloggers to produce and share content.Guest Posting And Link BuildingGuest post on other blogs — try pitching to one new blog every week.Include a link to your blog in every single online profile you have.Set up a free blog related to your niche with supplementary content on Blogger,Livejournal, Typepad etc. and reference back to your main blog.Invite others to guest post on your blog — they’ll send traffic your way when they link to the post.List your blog in as many free blog directories as you can find.Do interviews for other blogs.Take part in link parties and blog carnivals.Include your blog’s URL in your email signature.Post helpful information in forums related to your niche and include your blog’s URL in your signature.Post helpful articles on sites like Hubpages and Squidoo with links back to your blog.Submit articles to syndicated article directories like Ezine Articles. If your article is re-published on another blog you’ll benefit from extra links.Write and syndicate a press release linking back to your blog.Use a link inspection tool like Open Site Explorer to find where your competitors are getting links from and copy them.Add your blog to Technorati.Syndicate your blog on Amazon Kindle.SEOInterlink your blog posts — link to old posts from new ones and edit old posts to link to more recent ones.Install a related content plugin to link each post to several other related posts.Use keyword research tools to write about the things that many people are searching for.Install an SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack or the Yoast SEO plugin and optimize your site for search engines.Use relevant keywords in your image file names and alt tags.Use keywords in your post title and subheadings.Link out to authority sites in your niche.Set up Google authorship on your blog.E-books And FreebiesRun a blog giveaway or competition.Put an opt-in form on your website and send out a free newsletter.Publish an e-book and sell it or offer it for free on Amazon Kindle. Make sure your web address is in the first 10% of the book so it shows up in the sample.Write an e-book and offer a generous affiliate commission to encourage others to distribute it and link to your site.Create a free report and get site visitors to tweet or post about your site on Facebook to access itOffer a free e-course or digital product and encourage your readers to tell people about it.Offline IdeasInclude your blog’s URL on your printed business cards and give them out to everyone you meet.Attend blogging conferences and networking events — distribute your business cards!Speak at conferences and special events.Tell your friends and family about your blog.Other Miscellaneous IdeasEnter blogging competitions — your blog will usually be promoted on the website hosting the competition and social media for free.Answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and leave a link to your website.Ping your blog posts with a tool like Pingomatic.Create a WordPress theme and include a link to your site in the footer.Choose a beautiful theme for your blog.Review products and share your content with brands. They may link to your site from their social media accountsAsk a bigger blogger to be your mentor and start a case study about improving your blog.Submit photographs to free stock photography sites and Flickr and ask for a credit link back to your site.Include a link to your RSS feed.Include links to read your blog via Bloglovin‘.Link to your best and most popular posts from your sidebar.Go back to old posts and edit them to update and improve them from time to timeOptimize your website for viewing on mobile devices.Include different ways to access your content such as category and date archivesInclude a search function on your blog.Create an app for iPhone or Android.Be helpful and be nice — be likeable and help to solve people’s problems and they will send traffic your way with no encouragement required.

I would say VIDEO MARKETING is your answer. Why? Because everyone will be looking for videos in 2018. The Six Point Checklist for Video Marketing Domination [ https://medium.com/@flaviu_91616/the-six-point-checklist-for-video-marketing-domination-8078ca148447 ] Why becoming your OWN Media Company will keep your business alive in 2018 [ https://medium.com/@flaviu_91616/why-becoming-your-own-media-company-will-keep-your-business-alive-in-2018-560f06c40afa ] Video is all about communicating an idea to the crowds. Crowds of people looking for something special, something that makes the click in a special way. Video content [ https://www.patonmarketing.com/ ] is fast, it provides an instant reaction from your audience, it communicates on multiple levels. The massive growth of video marketing during the past 10 years is truly incredible — let’s see some statistics [ https://www.patonmarketing.com/audit-your-site/ ] that will blow your mind! * YouTube has 1 billion registered users — that’s more than a third of the total internet users worldwide (1) [ https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/ ] * more than 72 hours of video content is uploaded on YouTube every 60 seconds (1) [ https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/ ] * 85 percent of Americans watch video online (2) [ http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2012/1/comScore-Releases-December-2011-US-Online-Video-Rankings?cs_edgescape_cc=US ] * 82 percent of Twitter users watch video on the platform (3) [ https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/ ] * 87 percent of digital marketers use video content (4) [ http://www.outbrain.com/blog/state-of-content-marketing-2012 ] * 90 percent of video traffic on Twitter comes from mobile devices (3) [ https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/ ] * 92 percent of video users share their videos with others (5) [ https://www.virtuets.com/45-video-marketing-statistics/ ] * more than 350,000 hours of broadcasts are streamed daily on Periscope (6) [ https://www.omnicoreagency.com/periscope-statistics/ ] * Snapchat users watch 10 billion videos every day (7) [ http://mashable.com/2016/04/28/snapchat-video-views-billion/#QKsc_s0Oruqu ] * 50 percent of potential customers look for a video related to a product before making a purchase (14) [ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/micro-moments/purchase-decision-mobile-growth/ ] * shoppers who view video demos or reviews are 1.81x more likely to make a purchase (15) [ https://blogs.signNow.com/digitalmarketing/search-marketing/seo-for-success-in-video-marketing/ ] * 4 times as many customers would rather watch a video on a product than read about it (16) [ https://animoto.com/blog/business/video-marketing-cheat-sheet-infographic/ ]

Shortly after the release of the first iPhone, Verizon asked BlackBerry to create a touchscreen “iPhone killer.” But the result was a flop, so Verizon turned to Motorola and Google instead.In 2012, one-time co-CEO Jim Balsillie quit the board and cut all ties to BlackBerry in protest after his plan to shift focus to instant-messaging software, which had been opposed by founder Mike Lazaridis, was killed by current CEO Thorsten Heins.Mr. Lazaridis opposed the launch plan for the BlackBerry 10 phones and argued strongly in favour of emphasizing keyboard devices. But Mr. Heins and his executives did not take the advice and launched the touchscreen Z10, with disastrous resultsLate last year, Research In Motion Ltd. chief executive officer Thorsten Heins sat down with the board of directors at the company’s Waterloo, Ont., headquarters to review plans for the launch of a new phone designed to turn around the company’s fortunes.His weapon was the BlackBerry Z10, a slim device with the kind of glass touchscreen that had made Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. the dominant names in the global smartphone market.But one of RIM’s directors was frustrated by what he saw, and spoke out, according to one person who was in the room. There is a cultural problem at RIM, he told the group, and the Z10 was a glaring manifestation of it.The speaker was none other than Michael Lazaridis, the genius behind the BlackBerry, the company’s co-founder and its former co-CEO. Minutes earlier, he said, he had spoken with Mr. Heins’s newest executive recruits, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief operating officer Kristian Tear.Mr. Boulben and Mr. Tear had dismissively told Mr. Lazaridis that the market for keyboard-equipped mobile phones – RIM’s signature offering – was dead.In the board meeting, Mr. Lazaridis pointed to a BlackBerry with a keyboard. “I get this,” he said. “It’s clearly differentiated.” Then he pointed to a touchscreen phone. “I don’t get this.”To turn away from a product that had always done well with corporate customers, and focus on selling yet another all-touch smartphone in a market crowded with them, was a huge mistake, Mr. Lazaridis warned his fellow directors. Some of them agreed.The boardroom confrontation was a telling moment in the downfall of Research In Motion.Once the giant of the smartphone business, RIM, which was renamed BlackBerry Ltd. in the summer, is now on its knees. The company reported a $965-million (U.S.) fiscal second-quarter loss Friday, primarily because of a massive writedown of Z10 phones that sit, unsold and unwanted, about eight months after they first hit the market. The company is cutting 4,500 jobs, 40 per cent of its work force, in a desperate bid to bring costs in line with plummeting revenue.Investors, who have lived through the destruction of more than $75-billion of the company’s market value over the past five years, are still wondering how BlackBerry managed to blow its runaway lead and became a bit player in the smartphone market it invented.An investigation by The Globe and Mail, which included interviews with two dozen past and present company insiders, exposes a series of deep rifts at the executive and boardroom levels.Those divisions hurt the company’s ability to develop products just as it faced its greatest challenge from more nimble and creative rivals – and contributed to the downfall of Canada’s biggest technology company.Once a fast-moving innovator that kept two steps ahead of the competition, RIM grew into a stumbling corporation, blinded by its own success and unable to replicate it. Several years ago, it owned the smartphone world: Even U.S. President Barack Obama was a BlackBerry addict. But after new rivals redefined the market, RIM responded with a string of devices that were late to market, missed the mark with consumers, and opened dangerous fault lines across the organization.Months before their boardroom showdown, Mr. Heins and Mr. Lazaridis found themselves in another strategic standoff in which they were pitted against Jim Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis’s long-time business partner and co-CEO.Inside RIM, the brash Mr. Balsillie had championed a bold strategy to re-establish the company’s place at the forefront of mobile communications. The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone their customers used.It was a novel plan. If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, the company would have an enormous new source of profit, Mr. Balsillie believed. “It was a really big idea,” said an employee who was involved in the project.But the plan ran into stiff opposition at senior levels. Not long after Mr. Heins took over as RIM’s CEO in January, 2012, he killed it, with Mr. Lazaridis’s support.That was it for Mr. Balsillie. Weeks later, he resigned from the board and cut his ties to the company.“My reason for leaving the RIM board in March, 2012, was due to the company’s decision to cancel the BBM cross-platform strategy,” Mr. Balsillie said in a brief statement to The Globe and Mail, his first public comments on his departure. He declined a request for an interview.Mr. Lazaridis, who declined to speak about board matters, resigned as a director this past March after delaying his retirement by a year at the board's request.Now, BlackBerry’s future is in doubt. This week, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., a Toronto-based investment company, announced a plan to lead a $4.7-billion takeover of the company. The offer is conditional, and requires a group of so-far uncommitted institutional investors to back Fairfax and provide financing.The company’s near-collapse is a painful situation for Mr. Lazaridis, a gifted engineer who co-founded RIM in a tiny Waterloo office above a bagel shop in 1984.“It’s really hurting me,” he said in an interview. “I can’t imagine what the employees must be thinking. Everyone is talking about the most likely scenario being that it will be broken up and sold off for parts. What will happen to the Waterloo region, or Canada? What company will take its place?”Competition risingMike Lazaridis was at home on his treadmill and watching television when he first saw the Apple iPhone in early 2007. There were a few things he didn’t understand about the product. So, that summer, he pried one open to look inside and was shocked. It was like Apple had stuffed a Mac computer into a cellphone, he thought.To Mr. Lazaridis, a life-long tinkerer who had built an oscilloscope and computer while in high school, the iPhone was a device that broke all the rules. The operating system alone took up 700 megabytes of memory, and the device used two processors. The entire BlackBerry ran on one processor and used 32 MB. Unlike the BlackBerry, the iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser. That meant it would strain the networks of wireless companies like AT&T Inc., something those carriers hadn’t previously allowed. RIM by contrast used a rudimentary browser that limited data usage.“I said, ‘How did they get AT&T to allow [that]?’ Mr. Lazaridis recalled in the interview at his Waterloo office. “ ‘It’s going to collapse the network.’ And in fact, some time later it did.”Publicly, Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie belittled the iPhone and its shortcomings, including its short battery life, weaker security and initial lack of e-mail. That earned them a reputation for being cocky and, eventually, out of touch. “That’s marketing,” Mr. Lazaridis explained. “You position your strengths against their weaknesses.”Internally, he had a very different message. “If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia,” he recalled telling his staff.RIM soon earned a chance to show up its new rival. RIM’s early smartphones had been a hit for Verizon Wireless, one of the biggest U.S. wireless players. Frozen out of the iPhone – Apple had signed an exclusive deal with AT&T – Verizon executives approached RIM in June, 2007, and asked if it could develop “an iPhone killer.” The product would need to have a touchscreen with no physical keyboard. Verizon would back the U.S. launch with a massive marketing campaign.RIM executives jumped at the chance. At one management meeting, Mr. Balsillie called it RIM’s most important strategic opportunity since the launch of its two-way e-mail pager.The product was the BlackBerry Storm. It was the most complex and ambitious project the company had ever done, but “the technology was cobbled together quickly and wasn’t quite ready,” said one former senior company insider who was involved in the project.The product was months late, hitting the market just before U.S. Thanksgiving in 2008. Many customers hated it. The touchscreen, RIM’s first, was awkward to manipulate. The product ran on a single processor and was slow and buggy. Mr. Balsillie put on a brave face, declaring the launch to be “an overwhelming success,” but sales lagged the iPhone and customer returns were high.The Storm campaign didn’t seem so disastrous at the time: RIM was in the midst of a torrid global expansion. In August, 2009, Fortune crowned it the world’s fastest-growing company. A year after the Storm launch, market research firm comScore reported that four of the top five smartphones U.S. customers intended to buy in the next three months were BlackBerrys.But the Storm had failed to give Verizon Wireless the Apple-killer it coveted, and RIM soon abandoned the product. So the carrier turned to Google Inc. and its new operating system, Android, and built a massive marketing campaign around Motorola’s Droid phone in 2009 – at the expense of marketing dollars to support BlackBerry products. Verizon’s “iDon’t” campaign highlighted all the shortcomings of the iPhone that Android addressed with its consumer-friendly user interface.Rather than hurt Apple, the Droid and other Android-powered phones began to steal share first from Palm and Microsoft, and then RIM. By December, 2010, Android’s market share in the U.S. had grown to 23.5 per cent from 5.2 per cent a year earlier, as RIM’s dropped by 10 points, to 31.6 per cent, according to comScore. By late 2011, Android commanded 47.3 per cent of the U.S. market, while RIM had just 16 per cent.A shift by smartphone usersThis post-iPhone period was an era of strategic confusion for RIM. The overall state of the industry “was a bit schizophrenic,” said Patrick Spence, RIM’s former executive vice-president of global sales, who left in 2012. “There was a time when the [wireless] carriers tried to keep data usage predictable. Then it shifted to a period of trying to drive much more usage in different packages, when the iPhone became compelling.”If there were new rules of the game, RIM would require new tools. The summer after the Storm launched, Mr. Lazaridis bought Torch Mobile, a software development firm that created Internet browsers for mobile phones.But the process of moving, or “porting,” the Torch browser onto RIM’s highly-customized system proved complex and time-consuming. RIM’s technology was based on Java computer code and an operating system built in the 1990s, while the Apple and Android systems used newer software platforms and standards that made it easier to build friendlier user interfaces. “This really meant we were not positioned for the future,” Mr. Lazaridis said. In order to survive, RIM would have to change its DNA.RIM executives figured they had time to reinvent the company. For years they had successfully fended off a host of challengers. Apple’s aggressive negotiating tactics had alienated many carriers, and the iPhone didn’t seem like a threat to RIM’s most loyal base of customers – businesses and governments. They would sustain RIM while it fixed its technology issues.But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s Android systems were relatively easy for outside software developers to use, compared to BlackBerry’s technically complicated Java-based system.Blackberry’s apps looked “uglier” than those programmed in more modern languages, and the simulator used to test the apps often didn’t recreate the actual experience, said Trevor Nimegeers, a Calgary-based entrepreneur whose software company, Wmode, has developed apps for BlackBerry. Further, RIM exerted tight control over developers before it would sign off on their apps for use on BlackBerrys, stifling creativity. “Developers wanted to be embraced, not controlled,” Mr. Nimegeers said. As a result, hot apps such as Instagram and Tumblr bypassed BlackBerry.A split companyOne key to RIM’s early success was its corporate structure. It is unusual for a company to have two CEOs – Mr. Lazaridis focused on engineering, product management and supply chain, while Mr. Balsillie looked after sales, finance and other corporate functions – but for a long time, it worked. Mr. Lazaridis’s side of the shop made the phones, and Mr. Balsillie’s sold them. The two men were collegial and collaborative.Below the top executives, however, the two sides of the company didn’t always get along. And as the company grew into a leviathan with $20-billion in annual sales, the structure sometimes made it difficult to get definitive decisions or establish clear accountability. That contributed to a chronic problem for RIM: speed. “They were always slow to market, and there were always delays in launching,” said James Moorman, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ Equity Research. “It was compounded by miscalculating the speed at which the consumer market changed.”Sometimes, feedback from customers that might inspire changes would die at middle management, because senior executives didn’t want to bring it to Mr. Lazaridis, a former insider said.The split company also lost a major unifying force when chief operating officer Larry Conlee retired in 2009. Mr. Conlee was a whip-cracker who held executives to account for decisions and deadlines, establishing a project management office. Many insiders agreed that after he left, a slack attitude toward hitting targets began to permeate the company. “There was a gap” after Mr. Conlee’s departure, Adam Belsher, a former RIM vice-president, told The Globe last year. “There was no real operational executive on the product side that would really get teams to hit deadlines.”After relying on its own technology for so long, Mr. Lazaridis decided the company’s next advance would come from outside. In April, 2010, RIM announced a deal to acquire Ottawa-based QNX Software, a cutting-edge software maker that would provide the building blocks for the BlackBerry 10 operating system – the new platform Mr. Lazaridis knew the company needed.QNX was a specialist in industrial controls that used up-to-date software tools to run applications ranging from 911 call centres to wireless broadband services in vehicles. Its technology was the perfect core for smartphones and tablets, RIM’s leaders felt.Mr. Lazaridis decided to take a page from the business strategy book The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. The book outlines how established organizations that succeeded against challengers often did so by allowing small, cloistered teams to develop their own disruptive products, free from the influence of the rest of the organization.Mr. Lazaridis decided he would isolate the QNX team and get them to focus solely on the new operating system, while leaving existing programmers to work on products for its existing platform, BlackBerry 7. Eventually he hoped QNX, led by its CEO Dan Dodge, would retrain his entire organization.But first, RIM had to answer a key question: If it wanted to remake the BlackBerry on the QNX system, what was the best way to do that? Should it move over some of its old Java-based applications, or rewrite them all from scratch? If the company abandoned Java altogether, what would it mean for third-party developers who used it?These were not easy decisions. Discussions among the senior leaders in Mr. Lazaridis’ organization dragged on for a year – far too long, according to several insiders.Eventually, the decision was made: BlackBerry 10 would be built from scratch. The problem with that approach was that a new team was being entrusted to recreate the BlackBerry. Those who had created the original system were still working on devices for the BlackBerry 7 platform. Once again, the company was split.“We had bought a powerful operating system and needed to move to it. But the BB7 was late,” Mr. Lazaridis said. “Every week, I was getting requests for more hires, more resources. The conundrum was, how do I pull resources off the BB7 to rewrite all the apps on top of QNX?”PlayBook painThe QNX team’s first assignment was to work on an operating system for the PlayBook, RIM’s answer to Apple’s successful iPad tablet. Mr. Lazaridis saw the work as a precursor to the BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones and was impressed by what the team brought to the product. “It helped our developers experience the power and elegance of QNX,” he said.But the QNX team was overwhelmed and needed to draw heavily on the company’s other resources to complete the PlayBook. Similar issues arose later on the BlackBerry 10. The tablet, originally slated to come out in the fall of 2010, didn’t appear until April, 2011, and it failed to sell. It was an awkward accessory to RIM’s smartphones, and lacked e-mail, contacts and apps. Once again, RIM had missed the mark: Tablets that sold well worked as standalone devices, which the PlayBook wasn’t.Some questioned the wisdom of launching the PlayBook in the first place, feeling it was a needless and costly distraction. And the decision to isolate QNX also created tensions and morale problems: Those who weren’t on the team worried about their future.“To me, the most logical thing would have been to integrate the operating system organizations into one,” said one senior executive who was caught up in the fray. “Then you’d have a whole team, not 150 people sitting around saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next,’ and another 150 people saying ‘I’m over my head.’ ”Meanwhile, RIM’s lack of an advanced smartphone meant that it continued to bleed market share to Apple and Android, especially in the United States. In December, 2010, Verizon Wireless announced it would invest in fourth generation (4G) LTE technology to accommodate the growing demands of customers who wanted to surf the Internet on their phones. It signalled to device makers that it would look to feature 4G smartphones in its marketing.RIM’s 4G phone effort was the BlackBerry 10, but it was far from ready. RIM executives tried to make an engineering argument to carriers that 4G technology was no more efficient than 3G, and that its Bold phones were just fine. Mr. Lazaridis, Mr. Heins and chief technology officer David Yach “were trying to reshape the argument because they knew our products couldn’t go there,” a former executive said. “It was a fight to stay in [promotional] programs with carriers. We lost channel support and feature ads.”The PlayBook debacle and mounting delays of the BlackBerry 10 harmed the organization in other ways.For years, Mr. Yach and Mr. Lazaridis had enjoyed a close working relationship. But as the well-regarded Mr. Yach began to question the company’s ability to hit deadlines on products, his views were dismissed and he was made to feel he wasn’t a team player, damaging their relationship, observers said. He left the company in early 2012.The PlayBook flop merely added to the sense of a company in decline; 2011 became a signNow turning point for RIM. As it became clear the brand was getting trounced in the market, and the BlackBerry 10 project was hit by signNow delays, the stock plunged, falling from $69 (Canadian) in February to less than $15 by the year’s end.The pressure mounted on Mr. Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis and the board. In January, 2012, they stepped aside as co-CEOs and handed it over to Thorsten Heins, a German executive who had run the company’s handset division.Almost immediately, there was division about how to roll out the BlackBerry 10. The original strategy had called for the company to launch an all-touchscreen version first, because sales were still going well for the company’s BlackBerry 7 keyboard phone.But by 2012, sales of BlackBerry 7 phones had lost steam, and Mr. Lazaridis, now deputy chairman, felt the company should switch its priority to getting a keyboard version out, to meet the demand from BlackBerry die-hards.“This is our bread and butter, our iconic device,” he told an executive at the company. “The keyboard is one of the reasons they buy BlackBerrys.”Mr. Heins’s new management team held firm, sources close to the board said. “They believed everything was going to full touch” and that the QNX-designed system was clearly superior to what was available on other mobile operating systems.To Mr. Lazaridis, abandoning the company’s competitive advantage in the hopes consumers would embrace yet another touchscreen was too risky a strategy, setting up the showdown at the board last year. In the end, management agreed to continue developing the Q10 keyboard phone. But the all-touchscreen Z10 would be launched first.By the time the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones were unveiled in January of this year, market observers generally agreed that the products were two years too late – a view widely shared among many senior RIM insiders.“Buying QNX was the right play ultimately,” said Mr. Spence. “But we didn’t make the turn fast enough. Everyone underestimated the complexity” involved in building the new system.A BBM planFor 20 years, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis operated in tandem, building an increasingly successful partnership that allowed each other’s strengths to flourish.They shared an office in their early years, even possessing each other’s voice mail passwords.As RIM grew, they worked in separate buildings but spoke several times a day. “They had a relationship I wish I had with my wife,” one mid-level executive said.But they had different personalities and their lives seldom intersected outside the office. They have barely spoken since leaving the company.For Mr. Lazaridis, science was both a job and a pastime. Mr. Balsillie was brash, competitive and athletic, and wore his reputation for being aggressive, even bullying in meetings, as a badge of honour. If anything, he viewed that outward toughness as a job requirement, not unlike tech CEOs such as Steve Ballmer at Microsoft Corp. or Apple’s Steve Jobs. “Show me how else you build a $20-billion company,” he once confided to a colleague. “If I was Mr. Easy-going, they would kill BlackBerry.”The two rarely disagreed on key strategic moves – until their last year together. Mr. Lazaridis believed BlackBerry 10 would herald RIM’s renaissance. Mr. Balsillie wasn’t so sure.Mr. Balsillie was concerned that Google had commoditized the smartphone market by making its Android operating system available for free to any handset maker. By 2011, wireless carriers were warning him that they would be ordering fewer BlackBerry products unless he dropped his prices to match rival manufacturers.So Mr. Balsillie pushed an alternative plan.The idea started with Aaron Brown, the executive who oversaw the services division at RIM. By 2010, this division was earning $800-million per quarter in revenue from the monthly service access fee it charged mobile carriers for every BlackBerry subscriber. More than 90 per cent of that was profit. Carriers tried to chip away at those fees – Google and Apple didn’t charge them – but RIM always pushed back. Mr. Balsillie was particularly insistent on keeping the service fees. But the executives knew the company’s weakening position in devices would increase pressure on services revenues as well.Even after its terrible year in 2011, RIM still had several advantages, including close relationships with the world’s major carriers. It also had BlackBerry Messenger.RIM developers created the BBM app in 2005 to enable users to communicate not by e-mail but by using their devices’ “personal identification numbers” or PINs. It was the first instant messaging service built for wireless devices, and it caught on quickly. It was reliable, free, always on and users could send as many messages as they wanted at no extra cost, unlike basic text messages. PINs were random codes, not phone numbers or e-mail addresses, enhancing privacy. That made BBM extremely popular in countries where citizens didn’t enjoy as many freedoms as Western democracies, and helped drive handset sales there.BBM’s developers added a few clever elements that also made it addictive. For example, users would know when a message had been delivered and when it had been read, marked D and R. Today there are 60 million monthly active users.But BBM only worked on BlackBerrys. As Apple and Android took off, BBM knock-offs appeared that could function on those devices, including Kik Interactive Inc., founded by Ted Livingston, a former RIM co-op student. Today Kik, boasts 85 million users, more than BlackBerry (which sued Mr. Livingston for allegedly copying its program). Others, such as WhatsApp, are even larger. Instant messaging “is the killer app of the mobile era,” Mr. Livingston said. “We think there will be a Google or Facebook-sized company that comes out of this category.”RIM’s Mr. Brown believed he could tap into this unfolding trend. While working with Mr. Balsillie on other projects, around late 2010 and early 2011, he began to talk up the concept of offering BBM on other mobile platforms.Mr. Balsillie loved it. At the time, some carriers were pushing for rebates on their monthly service fees. Mr. Brown was willing to comply if the carriers would agree to open new parts of their business to RIM. He and Mr. Balsillie struck upon an idea: Why not give carriers the opportunity to offer BBM to all their customers – no matter what devices they used?Most wireless executives were not fans of instant messaging services and other “over-the-top” apps such as Skype because they eroded the carriers’ revenue from text messaging.To counter that threat, carriers banded together to develop a standardized “rich communication service” (RCS) platform that would enable their customers to exchange text messages, videos, games and other digital information. But the initiative has gained little traction; one commentator recently labelled RCS a “zombie technology.”SMS 2.0Mr. Balsillie began floating the idea that carriers could instead offer BBM as their own enhanced version of text messaging, generating revenue for carriers while providing a cut for RIM. He called it “SMS 2.0.” (SMS stands for “short message service.”) RIM would agree to reduce the fees it charged for services, in exchange for gaining access to hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry users.He and Mr. Brown discussed several options. For example, carriers could offer BBM as part of a standard “talk and text” plan for entry-level smartphone users. Because of its extra functions, BBM would save customers from having to buy a data plan.Or, carriers could offer an expensive plan that included BBM and other offerings from BlackBerry, including one gigabyte of cloud storage on which they could keep photos or songs. The carriers could then sell extra services such as radio through BBM. It would also make the wireless companies’ customers “stickier” – less likely to defect – since they couldn’t move stored data to rival mobile carriers as easily.The SMS 2.0 plan was a throwback to RIM’s move a decade earlier to form partnerships with mobile providers and share revenues. It was a chance to make BBM the dominant chat messaging service, and would have created a new storyfor the BlackBerry brand.A few carriers responded positively to Mr. Balsillie’s initial entreaties and by mid-2011, he was calling SMS 2.0 the company’s top strategic priority.To round out the strategy, and build a suite of cross-platform services, RIM made a few acquisitions, such as instant messaging firm LiveProfile. The service had about 15 million users and worked on Apple and Android devices, giving BBM the entrée it needed to those platforms.But the plan deeply divided the company. BBM was still an important driver of BlackBerry sales. Making it widely available to competitors represented an added threat to RIM’s faltering handset business, led by Mr. Heins at the time. Many inside the company felt a cross-platform BBM made sense, but only when BlackBerry 10 was out. Mr. Balsillie and proponents of his plan felt that would be too late.“It’s fair to say [the risk to handset sales] was a shared concern of everybody I spoke to,” said former RIM executive Mr. Spence. “But it was hard to deny the fact [carriers’ text messaging] revenue was declining. These carriers were looking for a solution and this was a potential solution.”One former executive felt Mr. Balsillie was overestimating the revenue potential of his software-driven strategy. As Mr. Balsillie talked up SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins and his team increasingly cast doubt on it internally. “He was absolutely canvassing behind the scenes working to kill it,” said one company insider.As for Mr. Lazaridis, he was supportive of launching BBM for rival operating systems, but was concerned about the costs and risks involved in building out the SMS 2.0 strategy, said a source close to the board. “We weren’t in a position to be investing in free services that required massive capital expenditure [and could provide] zero payback for maybe a few years if we’re successful,” the source said. Like others, Mr. Lazaridis worried about handset sales.But Mr. Balsillie was increasingly convinced that SMS 2.0 was the way to go. After pitching the plan to CEOs of 12 of the largest wireless carriers in the world in late 2011, he believed he could sign up at least one major U.S. carrier – insiders say AT&T was interested – as well as Telefonica and one or two other European carriers. That’s all it would take, he felt, to convince others to adopt BBM en masse.But other RIM executives who were part of the growing SMS 2.0 team also encountered resistance.Mr. Balsillie was pushing to formally launch SMS 2.0 at an industry conference at the end of February, 2013. But with the company under mounting pressure to overhaul its top leadership, he and Mr. Lazaridis handed the reins to Mr. Heins in late January.A few weeks later, Mr. Heins killed the SMS 2.0 strategy, backed by Mr. Lazaridis.“We had to get the BlackBerry 10 out, and we couldn’t be distracted,” said a source close to the board. “Everything else was shelved. And if that meant getting rid of strategies that didn’t fit, or weren’t complete, or required resources, I think [Mr. Heins] did the right thing.”The Globe and Mail requested interviews with Mr. Heins and with Barbara Stymiest, the chair of the board. The company declined, but agreed to agreed to provide answers to written questions.Asked why he shelved SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins said in an e-mailed response: “There are so many [instant messaging] alternatives in the marketplace that we wanted to be careful to launch only when we felt we could clearly differentiate our offering.”Mr. Balsillie, no longer an executive but still a board member, urged directors to reconsider, but they backed the new CEO. Mr. Balsillie couldn’t abide by the decision. He resigned from the board in late March, then sold all his stock. Few people knew the reason for his departure, including his long-time co-CEO, Mr. Lazaridis.BlackBerry did launch a version of its BBM application last weekend for iPhones and Android devices, but simply as a stand-alone app. Andrew Bocking, the executive who oversees BBM, said that with built-in capabilities to have group chats, share photos, calendar items and other features, “it really takes BBM to a whole other level … I believe there is an opportunity for a dominant player in instant messaging and there will be one winner-take-all.”To those who championed the SMS 2.0 strategy, most of them now gone, RIM should have been well on its way there already.A fizzled launchFinally, close to six years after Apple unveiled the iPhone, the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 made its debut at a glitzy launch event in January, featuring singer Alicia Keys as the company’s “global creative director.” It was a minor detail in a much larger story, but the made-up title and meaningless job irked some who wondered why the company was distracting itself with celebrity endorsements while in the fight of its life.The Z10 device itself won a number of positive reviews. The New York Times’ David Pogue, who previously had predicted that the BlackBerry was doomed, began his review: “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” But eight months later, it’s hard to see the launch as anything other than a total business failure, given the sheer volume of unsold smartphones now written off.The marketing campaign was confusing and vague: An ad that ran during the Super Bowl failed to explain what made the product distinct. A source close to the board said directors weren’t shown the ad before it ran, and some didn’t understand the content or the slogan, “Keep Moving.” There were no lineups, and no buzz for the product – nothing like the frenzy of publicity that seems to surround the launch of each new version of the iPhone.Once again, the market had shifted, and there was little demand for the Z10 in an era where sophisticated operating systems were commonplace and phones were getting cheaper. The one advantage the BlackBerry may have had over its rivals – a physical keyboard – wasn’t present in the first model to hit the market.“The only people still clamouring for a new smartphone from BlackBerry were in it for the keyboard,” said S&P’s Mr. Moorman. “Then they come out with a touchscreen. Anyone who wanted a touchscreen was already gone.”As it turns out, both Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis were proven right. It was hard enough to compete in a commoditizing smartphone market. Leading with the wrong product on top of that only made BlackBerry’s task more hopeless. Mr. Heins’s strategic errors only compounded the challenging situation he had inherited.The product was difficult to sell for other reasons. One company insider said it could take close to an hour for young sales staff to demonstrate the product in dealer stores.And many long-time BlackBerry users found that the new system was too different from the classic BlackBerry experience for their liking. Many of the little “moments of delight,” as they are called in the company, were forgotten or overlooked by the QNX developers who lacked ties to the company’s past. For example, users can’t hit “u” and look at the last unread message in their inbox, nor can they easily shift to the next or previous e-mail, as they could on older BlackBerrys. Pocket-dialling is a constant hazard.Meanwhile, the company was slow to provide service to business users – such as helping them to transfer applications they had written for the old BlackBerry system. Software developers were left with dead-end investments after learning they would have to rewrite their apps for the new system if they wanted to remain part of the BlackBerry world. Many simply didn’t bother.“The decisions we made over the last two years were made within the context of a volatile, competitive and ever-changing marketplace – and always with the goal of delivering the vital technology that our customers need,” Mr. Heins said in a written response to questions about the success of the BlackBerry 10 launch. While he called the launch “a signNow accomplishment and one that involved the reinvention of our company,” he acknowledged it “did not meet our expectations.”As for Mr. Lazaridis, he has not given up on the enterprise he founded 29 years ago.He is still a minority shareholder in BlackBerry, and continues to be the subject of rumours he may join a group to buy out his former company.Mr. Lazaridis declined to discuss any such plans, but it is clear he believes the BlackBerry story is not over.“Many companies go through cycles. Intel experienced it, IBM experienced it, Apple experienced it. Our job was to reinvent ourselves, which we all believed BB10 would do,” he said.“The fact that a Canadian company was able to compete in that space with two of the largest tech companies in the world is a big deal. People counted IBM, Apple and other companies out only to be proven wrong. I am rooting that they are wrong on BlackBerry as well.”

Last summer, I went to America on my own. It was the first time that I had travelled alone. I was all excited about it.As soon as I got off the plane, I found difficulty finding the right bus to my hotel. I tried to ask for help and a lovely girl helped me find my bus and also gave me dibs to make it convenient for me to get on the bus. It is strange that people tend to help others when they are alone. But, it feels good to me. :DIn the next few days, I learnt how to use Uber and Airbnb to arrange transportation and accommadations. Also, I bought a TAP card for public transportation. (BTW it is not that good in L.A.)I made friends with my hosts and they took me to dinner. (Very kind and friendly, aren' they?)Very beautiful view, right?It kinda suprised me because before I went here, people told me that it was common that people go dutch in America, but I got treated a lot. Maybe we just have to experience everythiing by ourselves I guess.I went to a science musuem, which I would never possibily go if I was with my family or friends. Travelling alone can help you find a new version of yourself.This pic was taken by the staff there. Very nice guy he offered me a second chance to try but I chickened out haha.I helped my host wash his car with another guest and he treated us chickens hahah.My host is the guy with white T-shirt. He never said he could speak Chinese on his profile on Airbnb, but when I got to his place, his perfect Chinese shocked me! And the guy with black shirt was the other guest. His was a model in his country and he told me that his former host who was a guy from Couchsurfing flirted with him. He was too scared so he chose another place to stay.We get to meet different people when we are travelling and we get to talk to them. We are both the story-tellers and the listeners.One day, when I was having lunch alone in a fastfood place inside UCLA, a Chinese guy who was travelling alone too talked to me and suggested that we should go travel together for a few days. So we went to San Diego together. I got a free ride and he got a free lunch. I was so lucky that he brough his HD camera and caught a beautiful pic of me and the beautiful scenery of La Jolla.Again I was super lucky. When I got back to L.A. and decided to go to Santa Monica, I encountered these lovely softball players from Canada on the bus. I didn't know that Special Olympics was held in L.A. that time, so I was just wondering why they all wore the same shirts and seemed so excited so I talked to one of them sitting next to me and it was a nice talk. They talked about the differences between America and Canada.We got a picture taken after we arrived at Santa Monica.Travelling alone kinda makes people talkative. I was not like that when I was back in China. I didn't talk to strangers. But when I was travelling by myself, I did it a lot.Later on, I flew to Utah for the mountaineous scenery. I got to make a cute friend on the flight. She happened to be studying Chinese and decided to go to China to teach English. We still keep in touch on facebook.I was so happy that I got one more friend even on a flight!I did my first hiking alone in Utah! I spent my whole afternoon from 12 to 5 p.m. on that mountain and yet I forgot the name of it...So beautiful! I felt the clouds were so close that I could touch them.When I was leaving Salt Lake City, I was packing my stuff and my host was so surprised at my strength. Yeah... I might seem small but I am powful! :PA lovely host took this pic of me and my luggage..I have to give Airbnb a big THUMB-UP! Most of the friends I made there were my hosts and roommates. I also recommended a Chinese messenger app to my host.And here's what we chatted lol.I did a lot of things with my hosts. And I considered them to be the reason why this trip is so memorable.I seldom cook in China, because my parents cook better than me and also I am afraid of the oil sparking. But I did cook for my host because she took me to the movie and Mexican food. I wanted to thank her by cooking my favourite Chinese food for her.It turnt out delicious! She liked it!She also bagged some for her colleagues, which made me feel a sense of satisfaction.No wonder people say cooking is the signal of loving life.I also went to Universal Studio and asked an old lady to take pic for me. I didn't know she was French. She told me she could not speak English very well and she was not good at photography. I picked up some French for half a year, so I talked to her in French. What did I say? Somethine like “Je suis Chinoise.” I can count in French. “Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq..." Just like 123456. She laughed.Well, I think the pic is not bad though. :DThe way of making friends while travelling alone is to be proactive. When people helped me take pics, they were curious about why I was travelling alone and the stories happend to me. I was all excited to tell them about it like at the very beginning when my parents agreed me to travel by myself.I was in America for a month. And I felt happy and refreshed everyday. I was always ready to meet new people and accept new challenges and discover new abilities of me. I never felt this way when I travelled with my family or friends. That is when I loved travelling alone.P.S.: I really like using Uber. The first time I used it was when I was lost and I couldn't find my way to the place I was staying in. I used Uber and talked with the driver about it. He was really helpful and he said "You got money, cell phone, people around you, don't panic, you always find your way." When I got where I was going to, he reminded me by "What you do when you lose your way?"Very lovely. Very caring.Actually I have a lot of stories to tell with Uber drivers. They were all talkative unlike the taxi drivers we have in China. They are usually quiet and always in a rush. If you would like to know more about it, let me know!I will never forget the memory and the people I met there.It always makes me smile when I think about it.