ReadWriteWeb

This weekend, many people elected to buy a tablet that runs software whose future is uncertain. Its fire sale price seemed to tip the scales. But we wondered if that was a flash in the pan. Is it something most of you would do, typically, or was this just a reaction to a one-time sale. If some tablet manufacturer tried this as a business model, would people buy their inferior product over the market leader? So, rather than continue to ruminate on this, we asked you, "Would you buy an inferior tablet, over an iPad, if it was priced at less than $200?".

You answered and we culled your responses from Twitter, the original post and Facebook, and used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

Evernote just announced the launch of sponsored business accounts for organizations and businesses. These new account types will give schools, businesses and other organizations the option to pay for their members' and employees' accounts. As the company's CEO Phil Libin just told us during an interview at LeWeb in Paris, the majority of the tools' users (80%) are already using it both at home and at work. The sponsoring organizations won't be able to access their users' accounts, though. As Libin told us, while this is a business-focused feature, the company has no interest in launching a separate enterprise version of Evernote but its customers demanded this new feature.

Much has been written about the technology aspects of cloud computing and its game-changing service characteristics. But focusing only on technology and service aspects of the cloud ignores the fact that cloud computing is in actuality more of a disruptive business model than just a combination of technology changes.

By changing the potential speed of IT services provisioning from weeks to hours and reducing the cost of investment through on-demand self-service, cloud computing promises to transform the competitive advantage a business can have. Companies large and small may be able to quickly jump-start new initiatives and enter new markets because cloud computing offers reductions in time and a low cost of entry, thus allowing them to leapfrog the competition.

Let's face it - the traditional business plan as we know it (or as we knew it) is slowly slowly going away. Or is it? Startups and small businesses move at such lightning pace these days that a static document quickly becomes outdated, but the principals and lessons involved with its creation could be valuable in a new form. Many young entrepreneurs still think a business plan is a must-have cornerstone of their business, but as many venture capitalists have said recently, the traditional business plan is not the end-all be-all for startup success.

The Freemium Summit, an event focused on discussing the ever popular business model and how new companies can best take advantage of it, was held last Friday in San Francisco, and since then, interesting stats and bits of information have been popping up on blogs and news sites. New business models have been a hot topic of discussion lately as we've debated both the benefits of freemium and it's possible replacement model, subscriptions. For any company taking its first steps into the freemium model, it takes careful consideration when deciding how to structure a freemium model, from how much to charge, to which services to charge for.

Back in early February, while aboard a red-eye to New York, Dave McClure wrote a long, humorous, rambling, profanity-laden rant of a blog post that focused on startup business models. While it makes for an entertaining read, McClure's post is also very insightful and makes a solid case for why startups should shift from advertising models and instead build their new businesses on subscriptions and micropayments. Earlier this month I had the chance to visit the headquarters of ZooLoo, a startup that witnessed this very shift first-hand with their own business model.

As much as startups want to launch their applications across all mobile platforms, it's often more realistic to focus on just one. But which one? The iPhone has the biggest numbers in terms of both apps and app buyers, whereas Android usage stats are rocketing.

Earlier today we wrote about a new mobile analytics report that showed that Google is no Apple. We explained the difference between these two as relates to phone sales and usage. Now we'd like to highlight the difference for startups that are deciding which one to do business with. It's tempting to go with Apple because of their current sales figures, but in the long run Google is going to be a far less limiting business partner.

With the highly anticipated Apple event finally underway in San Francisco, tech fans around the globe are already speculating how Apple's new iPad might change the state of computing. Another group of people listening intently to the happenings at the Yerba Buena Center are iPhone application developers, who are curious to see when they may be able to begin developing apps for the iPad.

As we've seen, the iPad is a blend of the iPhone OS and OS X, and it opens up opportunities for new business models for developers, so we thought we would point out a story of a man who rejuvenated his business by taking advantage of new iPhone and iPod Touch business models.

While business plans are a must in this environment, the startup world can hardly be considered predictable. Companies like Flickr, Seemic and Redux were all launched with different original concepts. Nevertheless, the market embraced the new products and each of these companies has done well in carving out a niche. But not every 180 degree shift can be successful, ReadWriteWeb looks at one theory on how to reduce risk while changing focus.

Author of Four Steps to the Epiphany and blogger Steve Blank has not only been an entrepreneur in several startups, he also teaches entrepreneurship in universities. In his latest blog post entitled, "A Startup is Not a Smaller Version of a Large Company", Blank argues that the process of transition from "garage to Google" is a bumpy ride that requires more than just agile development and team building.