All evening the world has been sharing their stories, favorite quotes, and recollections of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs who passed away earlier today. He's been honored by an unprecedented number of industry heads and even the President of the United States. Steve touched the world in such a way that everyone can say something about him. Maybe they ran into him at an industry event and he said something witty and Jobsian. Perhaps they saw his Stanford commencement speech in which he touched on the very subject of death. Even non-technical people that use their iPod every day knows Steve Jobs. His DNA is in every device Apple has made in recent memory. I'm writing this entry on an iPad 2, which may turn out to be even more revolutionary to the computing industry than Jobs' earlier iMacs or even NeXT. Reading through all the articles, blogs, and tweets about Jobs really made me think about why he was important. Not only was he CEO of the most profitable computer company in the world, but he was a part of the culture. The world craved his next keynote speech. Journalists built their career covering what Steve Jobs was planning at Apple and what next great thing would come out of Cupertino. But it wasn't just Steve's tone, it was his passion. Whenever he spoke about Apple you could feel the fire in him. You knew he loved what he did and you knew he wanted to help people not only work better, but play better as well. It's this passion that many companies lack and it's this passion that makes Apple different. People are sharing such wonderful memories of how they interacted with Steve. It reenforces the fact that people do remember how you treat them and that you should act the way you want to be remembered. I never got an opportunity to even see him in person but given the amount of reflection going on he was the real deal. He cared about his company, he cared about his customers, he cared about his family. I feel inspired. His story is remarkable yet attainable. He worked hard to get where he was and he made his own destiny. We'll miss you Steve, thanks for everything. I think different because of you.