I learned an important lesson yesterday: Sometimes, it’s about what you DON’T say.

The big consumer-tech news this week is that Rogers has finally reached an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in Canada. The technologist in me thinks this is neat, and I’ve been chatting with journalists - including Canadian Press, CTV NewsNet and AM640 - about what this means.

Although we can chat for days about the iPhone’s impending arrival, what sticks out is what Rogers didn’t say:

• When it would be available
• How much it would cost to buy
• How much subscriptions would cost
• Which device it would be (old, slow iPhone or snazzy new 3G iPhone)

So, essentially, Rogers had nothing to say yesterday. But they released their "news" anyway. And got tons of free media coverage in the process.

The lesson? Sometimes, you don’t need to wait until all your ducks are in a row before you go public. Sometimes, saying nothing is enough to get people to start talking about your product or service. Of course, it helps if your product or service is buzzworthy to begin with - and you need to eventually deliver on what you’ve promised, otherwise all that great buzz will go sour pretty quickly. But there’s a nugget of truth in the Rogers experience that’s applicable in a lot of business marketing scenarios.

Nice job, Ted.

I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with my BlackBerry this week. Although I’ve owned mobile devices powered by virtually every kind of pocketable operating system you can imagine, the stripped down simplicity of BlackBerry’s design philosophy is starting to win me over. A few observations:

So by replacing my older wireless device that was practically bursting with features but couldn’t really manage anything all that well with one that chooses instead to focus on doing a few things exceptionally well, I’ve become much more adept at using the thing as a real business tool.

I can’t help but wonder if the simplicity of my newfound wireless buddy doesn’t also hold lessons for the other aspects of my business life. Simplicity…I think I need to mull that concept around a bit more.

What do you carry with you when you leave the office?