I remember the first time I saw an IBM Activa – the mental space that had “my computer” and “every other computer” now had “I wish I had that computer” trust unceremoniously between them. If my life were a movie, there would have been violins in the background. It was yearning of the mystical sort. (Then again, if my life were a movie, I would have gotten the machine – somehow – at the end of the two hours. But nevermind.)

The same thing happened, to a lesser extent, when I first saw the flat-screen monitors that came out a year or so ago.

Now it would have happened again, except that the super-sexy super-fast super-computer called the G4 Cube is a Mac. Mac is a dirty word. It has been ever since we nerds were tinkering around inside our IBM-compatible PCs. Better writers than myself have written on the PC-Mac divide (Umberto Eco, for one, compared the difference to the Catholic and Protestant Churches).

But this isn’t about the G4 – a machine so fast it couldn’t be exported to China a year ago because US export laws classified it as a super-computer (you know, those machines that nuclear scientists use). It isn’t even about the new iMacs in Indigo, Graphite and Snow, which I think look really good.

You see, the reason I would never consider using a Mac is the same reason a designer on her Mac will never use a PC. Because of standards.

Working in an Internet start-up, I encounter a lot of VCs and other people we are trying to squeeze some money out of. Most of them fail to understand the importance of attempting to establish yourself as a standard, they see it as a waste of resources. Lets look at some facts.

Microsoft’s success is due in large part to the fact that its OSs are the standard for the PC. Microsoft’s current legal problems can be traced to the fact that it is so good at leveraging on the wide-use of its platform – it used it to make its office suite the standard for office applications, and then did the same to dominate the Internet with its IE browser.

And, of course, a dot com example – MP3.com very impressively reached IPO in only eighteen months, due to the fact that the mp3 format is the standard for music compression.

At the base level, the OS your computer is running on is a standard – be it PC, Mac or UNIX. The protocols that the Internet uses, such as TCP/IP and FTP, are standards. Files formats, like .mp3 or .doc, are standards.

The company that sets a standard in effect creates the barrier to entry similar to the “first-mover” advantage – people are unlikely to stop using something they have already taken the time to learn to use. Unlike the “first-mover” advantage, standards are open.

This is key. Instead of jealously guarding your space, you either have to license out your standard, or, better yet, allow other companies to use it for free, turning competitors into partners. Think of it as “first-mover” for the Internet, we already know that the “first-mover” advantage is not as significant a barrier to entry as it was in the traditional marketplace. The Internet consumer is more savvy, more dicerning, and, yes, more fickle.

MP3.com does not make a cent whenever an .mp3 song is played. No one would buy Macromedia’s Flash or Shockwave creators if Macromedia had not set the standard for multimedia on the web. And, of course, Real Networks.

With the Internet constantly evolving into richer media, new standards have to be set. Company X is developing software that will allow companies to better communicate within itself and with its customers. Since its customers are enterprises, Company X can choose to spend its resources on sales and marketing directly to these enterprises – as is traditionally done, or Company X can spend that budget to give the software free to general users, in the hope of establishing itself as a new standard of communication. Either way, revenues will still be generated from sales of the server software.

The point is simple. Your company profits if a million people use your product, even if you do not make a cent from that million users. In addition to the “first-mover” advantage, you gain the Holy Grail of marketing – branding.

A good example of the rise and fall of a standard can be seen in Netscape. Its chief revenue stream, servers, is unconnected to its most popular product, its browser. Yet the dominance of Netscape 3 as the main browser – the standard – of its time led Netscape the company to grow in Internet time, though the company makes little from the browser itself.

Was Netscape’s position secure? Would any other company less than Microsoft have been able to conquer the browser market? I would say yes – Any company, regardless of size, can establish a standard. The only qualifier is that your new standard must be better than the one you are attempting to replace. In certain markets, this is easy – 22:1 compression is better than 20:1 compression, say. In larger markets, like if you were trying to replace Windows, a lot of other factors, obviously, come into play.

Think about it.