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2011-08-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Dean Kamen's Bionic Luke Arm

2009-11-15T14:13:00.001-08:00

http://gizmodo.com/5048872/dean-kamens-full-bionic-luke-arm-video-from-all-things-d

A colleague of mine sent me this and it really is mind-blowing. In Star Wars, Luke only had to replace his arm from the wrist down. Kamen's connected a robotic arm w/ a hand and five fingers to its user AT THE SHOULDER. Wow.

Server Huggers Anonymous

2009-07-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

A buddy of mine is a reseller for Google Apps. He made this EXCELLENT site to help all of you Server Huggers finally let go:

www.serverhuggersanonymous.com

Check it out. Pass it on.

Strategy, Scalability, and Sleep Deprivation

2009-04-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

I'd love to write more about each of these three topics, but I've blogged so infrequently, that I'm going to post three links and declare victory by just getting a post up. Here they are:

Spotlight on Scalability - Great talk by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg about scaling a vision, a product, and yourself. LOVE the career advice about finding and giving solid mentoring.

Contribution Revolution - Article by Intuit co-founder Scott Cook about leveraging customer communities to deliver better products at a lower cost. Great stuff.

The Myth of the Tireless Leader - The title pretty much says it all. Timely reading for a guy who was up until 1am fighting w/ Pivot Tables of sales and defect data. Poor Larry Summers. Just this morning, I was talking to someone who sleeps quite a bit less than I do and my first reaction was the typical, "I don't know how you do it." I changed the comment, instead, to "I don't know why you do that to yourself." At the end of the day, it's a CHOICE. One that I'm going to make a little differently going forward.

What's your TESLA? I LOVE THIS!

2009-01-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

I just read a couple of articles about user testing and I LOVE the idea of the TESLA (Time Elapsed Since Lab Attended) as a measure of how customer-centric your organization is. I still have to think about how practical it is to implement and what a realistic target could/should be for my executive team, but what a fantastically simple metric for a customer-centric software company to use.

Should all SaaS Companies Focus on Customer Intimacy?

2008-12-22T12:30:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking lately about our corporate strategy, and I find myself pondering the relationship between business model (software-as-a-service) and corporate strategy (customer intimacy). My wife just rolled her eyes and stopped reading . . . it's probably time to separate my personal and professional blog posts.

Adopting a SaaS model requires more change than you think
Software as a Service (SaaS) has been a buzzword for several years now, as more and more companies have adopted the model as a way of generating regular income and delivering significantly new and different value to their customers. What most (if not all) of those companies learn is that switching business models necessitates fairly radical changes to almost every aspect of their business, from development to operations to sales to finance. PLATO started the transition to a SaaS business over three years ago, and we're still working through some of the needed changes to our organization's structure and processes.

When companies transition to a SaaS business model, their financial success becomes highly dependent on their subscription renewal rate. This dependence is what forces all of the organizational changes that I mention above. You have to sell, service, and support customers very differently when your financial success depends almost entirely on your customers' renewal decision, which in turn depends on their continued successful use of your product.

BUT, what effect (if any) should a SaaS business model have on other parts of your corporate strategy?
The Discipline of Market Leaders (Treacy & Wiersema) is one of the more influential business books published in the last 15 years. In it, the authors posit that successful companies must focus on one of three Value Disciplines: Product Leadership, Customer Intimacy, or Operational Excellence. They must maintain minimum levels in the other two, but pick one and focus on it passionately.

In looking at the three value disciplines, customer intimacy seems like a natural fit for a SaaS company. Focusing on customer intimacy means that you understand your customers better than your competitors. Providing a SaaS solution means that you have access to vast amounts of customer data to analyze and understand their behavior. Focusing on customer intimacy means that invest in making sure that customers get the most out of your product. Providing a SaaS solution means that your livelihood depends on renewals and renewals depend on making sure that customers get the most out of your product.

I suppose you could make a case that focusing on product leadership also fits well w/ a SaaS business model because product leadership makes your product & platform sticky, but I'm not convinced. For my money, SaaS companies should almost always be customer-intimate companies as well. I'd love to see someone do a study that looks for a correlation . . .

Another Nice Article on Online Customer Connections

2008-12-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Marina Gil-Santamaria posted a nice article over on Pragmatic Marketing that highlights a few interesting tools for connecting to customers online. That's two days in a row that I've stumbled across something that's gotten me jazzed on this topic. Today is also the second consecutive day that I'm conducting a customer open forum via WebEx, which is a BLAST.

A Couple of Links on Social Media in Business

2008-12-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

I had a couple of noteworthy experiences that are worth blogging. First, I sat through a webinar given by Vovici, my company's SaaS survey tool vendor. Although we're not ready for the product they demo'd (we're just starting to use their basic tool), it was good to get a feel for the way that they conducted the webinar, as I'm about to do one myself in a few hours. Click here to register for this one or another session.

The session also turned me on to the Vovici Blog that had some interesting posts on Building Online Communities.

I also listened to an episode of TWiT yesterday that included the author of Twitter Means Business.

All of that to say that I'm thinking a lot about online communities and how PLATO needs to be building one. Look for something soon . . .

Nice way to notify on a new release

2008-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

Nothing groundbreaking here, but I really like the way that LinkedIn did this new feature notification:

The screenshot is a little grainy, but you get the idea. The word balloon with the X to dismiss is pretty standard practice, but I thought it was artfully done and made me recognize the value of the feature without intruding into the experience.

Viva George Fairbanks!

2008-11-01T06:56:00.001-07:00

My Boulder homeboy and resident software architecture super-genius is "trying to convince Google that George Fairbanks means georgefairbanks.com." Seems like a fairly simple task, but apparently he has another site (which I won't mention so as not to confuse The Google) that shows up in searches for his name.

Well, Google, I vote with George Fairbanks. Searches for his name (George Fairbanks) should return his domain (georgefairbanks.com). The name really starts to sound a little goofy when you write it and say it that much.

How NOT to design a marketing website - Exhibit 3

2008-10-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I can't stop finding these things. I'm looking for a simple, cost-effective portfolio management tool. Gensight came up on Google, so I'm checking it out. As I'm looking at a product detail page, I decide I want to get some pricing info and get more serious. I have NO IDEA what to do next. No call to action anywhere. Seriously, people, you're driving me nuts. Tell me what to do next. Take me to the next step in the sales cycle. Do you really expect people to just throw money at you?

Best Girly Blog Ever

2008-08-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law's blog is one of the most clever and stylish blogs I've read in a long time. So good, in fact, that I'd probably read it even if she didn't post ridiculously cute pictures of my son and her husband.

Go check out the blog and throw her some love. If I'm lucky, she'll let me be the full-time publicist for her blog.

Horribly Hilarious

2008-07-27T17:09:00.000-07:00

Last night, Michelle and I watched all three episodes of Joss Whedon's new Internet mini-series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (not to be confused with Mr. Horrible by They Might Be Giants, which I can't get out of my head right now). As much as it pains me to tell you this, you need to stop reading my blog and go check it out. Right now. It's such a better use of your time.

What, still reading? Well, if you won't take my word for it, maybe you'll listen to JoCo. He's right, by the way, he really does have a great supervillain love song.

I picked up my wetsuit...

2008-07-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

I picked up my wetsuit yesterday and I'm ready for my first triathlon on Saturday. listen

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NO MEANS NO (Why is Apple acting like Microsoft?)

2008-04-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

How many times do I have to say no to Safari before Apple stops asking me to install it?? I think I'm up to four times now. I like the Apple updater, but not if Apple's going to use it to shove new software onto my system rather than just keeping the stuff I have up to date. That's a Microsoft move, not an Apple move. Yuck.

Role Models for Rookie Managers

2008-04-08T12:39:00.001-07:00

Being, I think, a relatively rookie manager, I was immediately drawn to this post on the Harvard Business Blog. The author suggests Barney Miller as a role model for new and aspiring managers. I, however, prefer Dr. Jack Shephard from Lost. He's bold, decisive, inspiring, and focused on the well-being of those he leads. Anybody else got any good ideas?

The top ten (OK, 64) reasons you're the only one reading this blog (and why I write it anyway)

2008-03-31T09:34:00.001-07:00

From Feb 29 - March 30, this blog got 63 visits. Once you take out the random stumblers and my immediate family, that's not a whole heck of a lot. And the main reason (there are many, I'm sure, including the quality of my writing, but the MAIN reason) is immediately obvious as soon as you look at the label counts on my posts. I've used 64 unique labels to categorize my 51 posts on this blog. And the highest count on any of those labels is 5 (shared by marketing, product-management, and Web 2.0). Out of 51 posts, no more than 5 have anything to do with each other. And the topics range from scouting and strongbad to obama and underwear. No wonder my main referrer is DMoe's Family Doings (thanks, Mal!).

Anyway, I'm going to keep writing, even though my most faithful audience seems to be a bored grad student in North Carolina (what up, Sam!). It's a great way for me to crystallize my thoughts, sharpen my writing, and just spout off. And if you want to know how I know so much about my traffic, check out Google Analytics - it is easy, insightful, and oh-so-addicting.

How NOT to design an online chat invitation

2008-03-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

OK, this is getting to be a theme. A colleague just forwarded an invite to an online chat hosted by EdWeek. When I followed the link (the content may have changed since I captured it), the content looked fairly compelling: "Please join us for this online chat to discuss ideas for producing more innovation in K-12 education." OK, I'll join you. BUT HOW??? Is there a special site? Do I need a password? A secret handshake? All I know for sure is that, "This is not an audio chat. No special equipment needed." Cool. But HOW DO I JOIN THE CHAT? From looking at things (primarily the fact that the info is on the root of the domain www.edweek-chat.org), it appears that all I have to do is come back to this URL at the time of the chat and I'll be able to participate. Assuming that's true, that's a really straightforward way to hold a chat. No passwords, no secret handshakes, just come back to the site at the right time. Simple. All the more reason to point it out. All it would take is one sentence. In fact, I almost wrote the sentence just now: "To participate in the chat, simply come back to this URL at the scheduled time." Not only would that sentence have given me the information I need, it would have made me say, "Wow, that's a really straightforward way to hold a chat." Instead, I'm writing this post, bemoaning yet another lack of a call to action.

March Madness + Vasectomy = GENIU$!

2008-03-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most fantastic marketing ideas I have EVER heard. The title pretty much says it all. Scott Simon is hilarious.

[UPDATE] Props to my wife for hearing this live and pointing it out.

How NOT to design a marketing website - Exhibit 2

2008-03-04T12:26:00.000-08:00

Back in November, I blogged about an example of how not to design a marketing website. I just came across another example of the exact same thing. After a nice tax refund and a little end of year bonus, I'm in the market for a piano. I've always thought a digital piano would be nice, but my wife has always dismissed the idea out of hand. Until she played the Yamaha Clavinova CLP-240 this afternoon. Realistic action, great sound, headphones to limit the pain of listening to our daughter practice, and a decent price means that we're now in the market for a digital piano.

When I got home, I decided to look at some alternatives to the Yamaha, since that was all the music store carries (fascinating channel strategy - great topic for a future post). I found that the Kawai CN41 Digital Piano has pretty similar specs to the Yamaha that we looked at. So now I'm looking at the product page for the CN41, and I want to learn more. OK, I can download a brochure from the product page, but I just read the specs. I want to get a price, call a dealer, go somewhere and play it. Kawai has me exactly where they want me in their sales cycle, and I'm STUCK. I have no idea what to do next. I'm just sitting here staring at their product page. As previously mentioned, a call to action is a fundamental element to building successful marketing websites (and especially e-commerce sites) and it is NOWHERE on the product page for the CN41. When I went up a level to the digital piano page, the closes thing to a call to action was the polite invitation to "Click here to receive a free copy of the Kawai Concert Performer Series Church Music Demonstration CD." Um, OK, but I'm interested in BUYING something from you, and you're making it hard for me. I had to go all the way up the kawaius home page to find the delaer locator, which pointed me to the music store we just visited. Hmmm, they didn't even mention that they sold Kawai digital pianos. Guess Kawai needs to work on that piece of the channel as well.

Andreesen on Obama

2008-03-03T08:08:00.001-08:00

For those who don't instantly recognize his name, Marc Andreesen is largely credited with creating the first Web browser ever while he was a graduate student. He went on to found Netscape, then LoudCloud and is now running a social networking site called Ning. In short, Marc is geek royalty and he just wrote a great post on spending an hour and a half with Barack Obama right before the campaign started in earnest. It was a fascinating post, and I was heartened to see that Marc's personal encounter validated many of the reasons that I've chosen to support Obama. He also mentioned that he contributed to Romney's campaign, which makes me think he might with a post that I've been meaning to write for a while now. The working title is, "Why I'm splitting my ticket." Since I'm off work all week to be home w/ the new baby, maybe I'll actually finish writing it.

Star Wars According to a Three-Year-Old

2008-02-25T18:08:00.000-08:00

As funny and adorable as this is, it also speaks volumes about the importance of context and cognitive anchoring for information processing and learning. People connect new concepts and information to concepts and information that already exist - "it's kind of like a garage sale." It's relevant both to education and to marketing (and, I suppose, to education marketing).

Maybe that's a stretch. Either way, enjoy the video.

Oops, forgot one . . .

2008-02-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

NoSquint is a Firefox plugin that records a default zoom level per site. Very handy.

Winer on Obama

2008-02-18T17:57:00.000-08:00

Usually, Dave Winer's blog posts are about technology. So are mine. But yesterday he posted an entry called The Obama Express. While I may not share the vitriole he directs at the Bush administration, I absolutely share his enthusiasm for a new administration that unites, inspires, and leads in a way that hasn't really happened in my political memory. As I write this post, I'm listening to the C-SPAN video of Obama's speech in Wisconsin. It's remarkably similar to the speech we heard him give here in Minneapolis and every bit as inspirational. As Winer says, "even in anger Obama is the man, he keeps getting better and now he's in league with the best American political oratory."

Can't resist the Fox

2008-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

The hard drive on my desktop crashed and I had to reformat and reinstall Windows. Then comes the tedious, but somewhat refreshing task of reinstalling all of the apps. It's kind of a nice feeling to start from scratch without all the crapware that's piled up over the years. Right out of the gate, I tried to migrate from MS Money to Quicken and bailed. That should be the subject of a different post.

The subject of this post, though, is my browser angst. Firefox and I have an on-again-off-again relationship that goes back to last summer. Lately it's been on-again, but ever since I upgraded to 2.0, Firefox has been downright flaky - at one point I checked the quality feedback agent and it had crashed more than once a week for 5-6 weeks. I can't find the link right now, but Leo Laporte has said the same thing on TWiT more than once. So, I decide to give IE7 another spin as my browser of choice. That lasted about two weeks. The zoom on IE7 totally slows down Google Reader to the point that I can't use it and I missed all my cool add-ons (see below). So I'm back to the Fox (again).

For those of you who use Firefox (or want to try), here are the first add-ons I downloaded after installing Firefox just now. Collectively, they make the whole Firefox experience rock.

del.icio.us integration - Gotta have my del.icio.us buttons. Quick and easy to bookmark stuff as I browse. MUCH better than the IE experience.
IETab - LOVE this - let's you toggle the rendering engine from IE to Firefox and back without ever leaving the Firefox browser. If anything looks funky or isn't working quite right in Firefox, I just click a button and Firefox renders it w/ the IE engine. Awesome.
Greasemonkey - Absolutely a must-have. Among other things, it allows me to run the Homestar-fullon script so that my favorite flash cartoons automagically fill up my screen.
Fasterfox - The name pretty much says it - makes everything run faster by pre-loading stuff you're likely to need and tweaking the network settings.
Noia eXtreme - my theme of choice. Makes the whole thing look cool.

Can't resist the Fox. Here's hoping 3.0 will be more stable.

Why I'm Voting for Obama

2008-02-14T00:02:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of people, I want to see a change, a real change in American politics and government. And like an increasing number of Americans, I think Obama has the approach, the mind, and the message to bring about that change. Here's why.

First, he has the right approach. I believe strongly in a centrist approach to governance. I think it's great that people have strong opinions and ideas, but government should be about finding common ground to solve problems and not beating each other over the head with our ideologies. When I saw early in the campaign that Obama wasn't accepting donations from PACs or lobbyists and that his campaign was being funded primarily in denominations of $25 and $50, I was intrigued. I absolutely LOVED his DNC speech in 2004 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56-m8wx1mwo - jump to 3:30 for the best part), and his campaign financing showed early signs that he would practice what he had preached. I got excited thinking that a candidate might actually win his party's nomination without swinging to the extreme wing of the party in order to "crank the base." That's what Romney (and Hillary and almost every other candidate before them) has done and it always turns me off. Barack started in the center and stayed in the center and I'm pumped up at the thought that it might actually work this time.

Then there's the mind. The guy is freakin' brilliant. Editor of the Harvard Law Review and a brilliant orator that can convince, inspire, and lead all
at the same time. Check out his Call to Renewal keynote (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-tdM265j7Q). Fantastic stuff. We need this kind of a mind in the White House. Not just to solve problems and hand down solutions, but to convince and communicate and compromise to real solutions for real problems.

And finally, the message. One of the most common complaints about Obama is the apparent lack of meat behind the message. "Yeah, he talks pretty, but what does he really stand for? What are his positions? What experience has he had?" While Obama does, in fact, have plenty of solid policy proposals and sufficient experience to convince me that he can do the job, the question misses the point. The message IS the meat. We can solve tough problems by respecting each other, working together, and compromising for the common good. Seriously, I'm pretty smart (no, really, I can show you my test scores) and I feel completely lost when I think about how to solve health care. I have a MBA from a top twenty school, and I'm not at all sure what we should do to stimulate the economy. But I LOVE the idea of having a president who can bring great minds together, take the best from all of them, create solutions that all (or most) of them can support, and then rally the country around a common cause. I LOVE the idea of having a president that can engage people in the process that have previously felt cynical and disenfranchised. I LOVE the idea that we can elect a skinny kid with a funny name not because he has all of the right views or policies, but because he has the temperament, the mind, and the message to LEAD.

Professional Development in Education

2008-01-28T11:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Mitch Weissburgh made an interesting post on professional development in education. I actually chatted w/ Mitch about this vision after a SIIA breakfast meeting at FETC. And Don Hall wrote the discussion guide for our BLEGroup forum there.

Mitch's vision is a fascinating one. What schools and vendors are working through now is how to overcome the barriers to implementing on-line, on-demand professional development in a way that drives student achievement. In fact, that's part of what we explored in our BLEGroup panel. The vision makes sense, but there are a number of barriers to overcome in order to make it a reality. I'll go into depth in a later post, but here are they key issues:

Access to technology - although schools have made great strides in this arena, we're not yet to a point where all (or even most) teachers have anytime access to a computer so they can watch streaming video online.
Availability (and alignment) of PD content - as Mitch points out, companies like School Improvement Network and Knowledge Delivery Systems (who I also met at FETC) are putting a lot of great content online. We're still not to the point, though, where we have a critical mass of content indexed, accessible, and aligned to the PD requirements of a typical teacher (and educational standards, per the vision in Mitch's post) .
Market acceptance - this is the least tangible and most tricky piece of the puzzle. People (specifically, teachers and administrators) aren't comfortable yet with the medium. That will change with time, it's just difficult to say how fast.

Those points are in reverse order of difficulty. Technology access will be a non-issue in five years (maybe as little as three). Companies like SIN (did anyone check that acronym before they named the company?) and KDS are already making a go of content, so there's no reason to think we won't get to a critical mass of content. And working for a compnay that does alignment and correlation all the time, I'm comfortable that alignment's also a solvable problem. The key variable (and the one that's hardest to gauge) is market acceptance. We saw some encouraging signs at FETC, but mostly by thought leaders and early adopters. It will be fun to see how fast the market moves along the adoption curve.

One more interesting reference on this one (and another effort that will be fun to watch) is the 6-month professional development project that Will Richardson is working on.

Put it away, Anderson!

2008-01-17T21:43:00.000-08:00

I couldn't agree more with Bill Scott about CNN's latest piece of stupid, distracting visual wizardry. I almost had to turn off the TV. And anyone that references Edward Tufte looks smart in my eyes.

Put it away, Anderson!

How NOT to design a marketing Website

2007-11-26T15:11:00.000-08:00

Someone just forwarded me a link to an interesting new online market research tool targeted at the education space. It's got some interesting features and the founders have a reasonably good reputation in the market. I want to learn more, I might even want to buy . . . and they won't let me. They posted their email addresses on the Website, so I guess I can email them and ask what the next step is, but it really shouldn't be that hard. I shouldn't have to think about what to do next. The whole Website should gracefully and clearly lead me to DO something. "Click here for more information." "If you're ready to change your business, email us now to learn more." "Click here to reserve your room." "Become a member NOW." "Sign up for our newsletter HERE." "DO SOMETHING." As it is, I was more motivated to write this blog post than to take the next step in their sales cycle (which I will do at some point . . . probably).

At any rate, it's commonly known as a "call to action" and it's conspicuously missing from the EdRoom Website. Hopefully they'll add it, because it seems like an interesting product that deserves to succeed.

Video Rentals on iTunes?

2007-11-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

My boy Evan Dibiase, resident wunderkind and key contributor to FeedHub (sweet tool!), made the following intriguing observation about the latest iTunes upgrade, "It sure looks like video rentals are coming to iTunes soon." Dang if that boy ain't smart - I wouldn't even think to "dump the strings from the iTunes binary" and then compare after the upgrade.

Renting videos via iTunes would be a fascinating next step for Apple and would make me think even harder about buying an appleTV (or whatever Sling has in the works).

New PLATO Learning Podcast

2007-11-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

I'm excited to be hosting the brand new PLATO Learning Podcast. The first (technically third) episode is the first half of an interview with Dr. Jay Smink, executive director of the National Dropout Prevention Center. Great info in general, and especially for educators struggling w/ how to increase graduation rates. Take a listen (and subscribe) at the PLATO website or search the iTunes Store for "PLATO Learning."

I just sent five notes...

2007-10-30T19:24:00.001-07:00

I just sent five notes to myself while driving home from my appointment and starting to dig Jott. listen

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Maren looks more like Michelle

2007-10-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

Toby Looks More Like Me

2007-10-26T22:05:00.001-07:00

This little face recognition demo has a great web 2.0 interface, it's easy to use, and it's compelling (at least for 15 minutes). The larger site is a pretty direct competitor with myfamily.com, which is owned by ancestry.com. We've been using myfamily.com for several years now, and it is way too sticky to give up, even for the cool face recognition stuff. We've got thousands of conversations, announcements, and pictures stored there. It would be ridiculously hard to even think about switching. If only we could build something that sticky where I work . . .

I'm an Omnivore

2007-10-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

Take this quiz and find out what you are. I found the quiz by reading this post from the (soon to be former) head of User Experience design at Yahoo!.

The Other President Faust

2007-10-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Drew Faust was inaugurated as the 28th president of Harvard.

Last Saturday, President James E Faust, who passed away in August, was replaced by Henry B. Eyring as the Second Counselor to Gordon B. Hinckley, 15th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

So, here's the question: which one is "the other President Faust" to you?

Minty, but not too fresh (yet)

2007-10-07T17:03:00.000-07:00

mint.com is a financial management Website that's been getting a lot of attention lately. You create a login and give them your credentials for all your bank and credit card accounts. Two basic value props: 1) they consolidate your financial information so you can track your finances and 2) they find you lower rates on credit cards, bills, etc.

The first time I heard about it a couple of months ago, I passed - I already use MS Money. Then it won the TechCrunch 40, so I decided to give it a try. For me, it's not worth it. MS Money does a MUCH better job at tracking my finances and the only savings it found was a lower rate credit card and I never carry a balance (plus I like my Amazon points).

So I'll probably close my account and get them to delete my data. Leo Laporte and his TWiT buddies think I'm crazy to give away access to all my financial info. I may be naive, I suppose, but I just don't think it's that risky.

All that said, Mint will be interesting to watch. They've got a fair bit of buzz and a potentially disruptive trajectory to travel. They're doing what MS Money and Quicken do (albeit not as well) with a snazzy interface and the promise of saving you money. Offering the credit card deals makes it free to the users, so if it's good enough for people who don't use Money or Quicken, they can compete against non-consumption. Assuming MS and Intuit are willing to give up the cheap end of their market and move up-market rather than compete, Mint can continue to invest in new features and gradually eat away at the bottom-end of their market. Classic disruption story.

So, if I were the VP of Product Management at Mint, the roadmap would look something like this:

- Support for different account types (mortgages, car loans, retirement, investment, etc)
- Bill pay
- Better auto-categorization
- More sophisticated reporting
- Budget tracking
- Integration with online tax software (or maybe even build it yourself, though that's a lot to bite off)
- Investment tools (i.e. portfolio analysis)

I'll be interested to see if they can generate enough cash to fund that kind of a roadmap. It sure would be fun.

Instant Jott

2007-10-06T10:51:00.001-07:00

Instant Jott
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This is my first post...

2007-09-28T18:22:00.001-07:00

This is my first post via Jott.com if you can read this its because Jott transcribed this using voice recognition [...] and cool.
Click here to listen

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Joel's pretty freakin' smart

2007-09-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

Despite following the well-used "history repeating itself" form of analysis, Spolsky's Strategy Letter VI makes for some good reading. Joel makes a pretty compelling analogy between what's happening w/ AJAX webapps and what happened w/ mainframes and PCs. The story ends w/ Google going the way of OS/2. Google looks pretty unstoppable right now, so it's fun to envision the conditions that would precipitate a fall from grace. Don't get me wrong, I'm not selling my Google stock, but it's an interesting mental exercise.

My First Google Presentation

2007-09-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

Just read on TechCrunch that Google officially launched Presently, completing the triple-play of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint replacements. Sweet. I just tried it out and it took me less than five minutes to create this masterpiece.

Gotta get rid of the HiPPOs

2007-09-17T20:12:00.001-07:00

Oh, how I related to the latest post on the 37signals blog. The post details some of the lessons learned from watching Amazon. Some really interesting points there. Here's the one that struck home:

"Getting rid of the influence of the HiPPO’s, the highest paid people in the room. This is done with techniques like A/B testing and Web Analytics. If you have a question about what you should do code it up, let people use it, and see which alternative gives you the results you want."

This happened this very afternoon as we were listening to a vendor report on the results of some usability testing. After the mtg, our CTO (definitely a HiPPO) said, "usability is all opinion anyway." And he's right. And as long as he's the HiPPO, his opinion (right or wrong) is the one that matters most. We've been talking about getting real analytics out of our web-based platform for a long time now. It's time to figure it out and DO IT. I'm sick of having to bow to the HiPPO.

So I Married A Bookworm

2007-09-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

I always knew that my wife reads a lot. I was pretty impressed, though, when I saw the volume and type of books she's read in her most recent blog post. According to the NPR story she cites, avid female readers (who, statistically, read more than men) read nine books per year. Since last July (about 14 months), Michelle has read 42(!). I always thought she was an avid reader. Turns out she's actually FOUR avid readers.

Marissa Mayer and the birth of GMail

2007-09-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

Fascinating interview with Marissa Mayer from Google on Stanford's iinovate site. I've listened to a previous podcast interview with her from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

This one is FASCINATING - she tells a great story about the genesis of GMail and how she almost killed AdSense. Great inside-baseball stuff as well as lessons on innovation and product management.

The agony of slow recruiting and the thrill of real customer feedback

2007-08-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

This morning we started the testing portion of a usability study at work. I reserved a conference room, I popped popcorn, and I invited the whole executive team to come watch our vendor remotely interview users as they use our system. And there was nothing to watch. The vendor was on Pacific time, there were some setup issues, and the recruiting was slow, so the first truly observable session didn't happen until 4:45. I basicaly paced around the room all day and IM'd the moderator of the study to get updates. All day. I had to explain to the CEO why there wasn't anything to see. And to the COO. And to the VP of HR. And to a bunch of my colleagues. Not a fun day.

And then, when all hope seemed lost - a live recruit! A real user. Using OUR system. Being interviewed by a usability expert. Giving valuable feedback on her experience with the system and the way she understands and uses it. So worth the wait. It's such a great feeling to get concrete customer input. And even more fun when someone else is collecting it and I can kick back w/ my popcorn and watch. We've got eight more to do this week - I can't wait.

175 emails and still going strong

2007-08-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Concert is fantastic. Makes me want a pair of "Hollywood Boulevards."

Buzzword Bingo - Order of Magnitude

2007-08-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

For the record, I use this one correctly.

Order of Magnitude

Poorly Designed Underwear

2007-08-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot of product management literature that encourages you to go out and see your products in use. Most of it says something like, "You never know how people are actually using your products until you observe them directly."

Whoever designed my 3-yr-old son's underwear needs to come to our house. T was so excited to get his 6-pack of Elmo underwear - he loves them. One pair in particular caught his fancy. They have a big picture of Elmo dunking a basketball on the back. The front just has a really small picture of Elmo in the corner. He loves the picture so much that he wants to see it when the underwear is on. So what does he do? Naturally, he wears the underwear backwards. There is no power on heaven or earth that can make that kid turn around the underwear the "right" way. "I want to see the picture." And that's the end of the conversation.

My New Favorite Euphemism and Acronym

2007-08-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

Today I visited an alternative high school in Virginia. I showed up with a colleague and walked into the high school office and asked for the program director. After not finding him in the lab where we were directed, we asked another teacher who then kindly pointed to the door and said, “Mr. Roy is outside in the second learning cottage on the right.” Learning cottage? Oh, you mean those trailers outside? Nice. My new favorite euphemism.

And my new favorite acronym? It’s the abbreviation for the Virginia state education standards. They are called the Standards of Learning. SOL. Seriously. Oh, to teleport back to the meeting where they chose that name. I wonder how many people were sitting in the back of the room snickering violently as they doodled the initials on a piece of paper.

Selective Ignorance and The Attention Economy

2007-08-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

I listened to two unrelated but surprisingly similar podcasts during my trip to Virginia. On the flight out, I listened to an iinovate interview with Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferris makes some fascinating points and I’ll definitely be checking out the book. His topics are somewhat wide-ranging, but all seem to relate to crafting a lifestyle and (at the risk of overusing a worn-out cliché) achieving better work-life balance. At one point in the interview he suggests that people practice “selective ignorance.” Crafting a fulfilling and rewarding lifestyle, says Ferris, requires one to give up any illusion that he can read/absorb all of the most important and/or entertaining information that is available.

On the return flight, I listened to Wesley Fryer talk about 1997 article by Michael Goldhaber called, “The Attention Economy and the Net.” While the ideas sounded interesting, I wasn't dying to read the full article. Instead, the idea that caught my ear and connected me back to the Ferris interview is the idea that “what’s in short supply today is not information, it’s attention.”

In writing this post, though, I remembered my friend Sean Ammirati. As it turns out, Sean has actually blogged quite a bit on the topic of attention. He turned me on to the whole topic and an interesting (though largely theoretical) tool for attention management last year. Check out his stuff - the guy is freakin' brilliant. So, yeah, I guess I will go read Goldhaber's article.

In the meantime, I wish I was allowed to blog about the alpha that Sean's company is running. Very cool and very relevant. Go get 'em mSpoke!

Transforming a Services Business

2007-08-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

Although it wasn't the main point of his post, I was struck by a quote from a recent Irving Wladawsky-Berger blog post. In it, he said, "While huge progress has been made in the productivity of the industrial and agricultural sectors, the service sector has lagged far behind."

The company I work for, like many of its competitors, is struggling to transform its services business from one that has one offering with one price (a day of on-site training, no matter what the topic) to one that has a wide range of offerings (from product training to implementation strategies to curriculum design) with a wide range of delivery modalities (on-site, distance, hybrid) offered at appropriate prices (including free).

This is a thorny problem for any number of reasons, not the least of which is simple organizational inertia. Oh, how I would love to take IWB's new class at MIT. Hopefully they'll post the materials under the OpenCourseware project.

I'm back!

2007-06-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

OK, I admit it. When IE7 first came out, I was seduced back. Microsoft had effectively copied enough of Firefox's features to make it a pretty slick user experience, and the real estate layout was even a little tighter than Firefox. Throw in the fact that all of my company's internal single sign-on stuff worked on IE7, and it was enough to make me switch from Firefox back to IE. But not for good.

After a couple of months using IE7 almost exclusively, I'm back to Firefox. Usually (though not always) I like Firefox's text zoom better than IE's full-screen magnification. With the IETab addin, I can run any of the IE-specific stuff like Sharepoint, and in my two months away, all the single sign-on stuff started working, too!

So, I'm back.

Perceptive pixel video - Information Interface

2007-03-12T20:00:00.001-07:00

Saw this video on David Warlick's blog. David is an information literacy evangelist and speaks at most of the major ed tech conferences. I don't know much about Perceptive Pixel, but DANG.

My (late) Thanksgiving post

2007-01-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

OK, I know there have been two holidays already since Thanksgiving, but I'm in an especially thankful mood. Most specifically, I'm thankful for:
1) My kids
2) My wife
3) Church members willing to watch my son on a moment's notice while my wife brings me pajamas and a toothbrush so that I can stay overnight in the hospital w/ our daughter while she receives IV antibiotics to treat a seemingly random infection in her leg.
4) A clergyman willing to come to the hospital on a moment's notice to help me bless our daughter by the power of the Priesthood.
5) Other church members willing to watch my son the next morning while my wife comes to take my place at the hospital.
6) Keflex, vancomycin, and any other antibiotics the docs decide to use to treat my daughter.

Andy 2.0

2006-12-21T19:59:00.000-08:00

Another Matthew Stibbe wanna-be post. His Matthew 2.0 post made me want to do something similar. Here's the list of Web 2.0 tools that I'm using on a regular basis:

Email: Gmail
Blogging: Blogger
RSS reader: Bloglines (and maybe soon Google Reader)
Business networking: LinkedIn
Online address book: Plaxo
Motivation: Joe's Goals

Like Matthew, I'm not always sure exactly what Web 2.0 is (not sure anyone is), but these sites/tools are definitely a quantum leap from static HTML. They've also become an integral part of the way I work and process information.

Matching PJs make me cool

2006-12-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

I have a pair of pajama pants that are red, white, and black. I got them as a Christmas Eve present a year or two back. I also have a t-shirt from business school. It's gray with black trim and red and white lettering. One night, I discovered that these two pieces make a striking coordinated sleepwear ensemble. Didn't buy either of them, didn't plan it, but wearing the matching PJs somehow convinces me that I'm more fashionable than I really am. Kind of like flossing my teeth convinces me that I'm more meticulous and hygienic than I really am. My self-image is remarkably malleable. Is that bad?

Christmas Cards from Neverland

2006-12-17T20:37:00.000-08:00

Writing Christmas cards has an awe-inspring and unsettling effect. Two hours ago, I was a guy hurrying to do the dishes in the vain hope that I might get a decent night's sleep before my two-year-old barges into my room and I have to get ready for work. Then, as I sat down to help my wife crank out the Christmas cards, I read my high-school girlfriend's front-and-back 8-pt single-spaced discourse on her four boys and their 2005 home school adventures (aka last year's Christmas card). She also included a hand-written note about her mother's recently diagnosed leukemia and her sister's divorce. And just that fast, the time-space continuum collapsed and I am no longer just a guy doing the dishes. I'm a high-school football player with a girlfriend on the Pom Squad, a Mormon missionary learning Portuguese in Provo, and a wide-eyed young father of two crazy kids.

Of all the reasons for writing and sending Christmas cards (keeping in touch, breathing life into flagging friendships, and propping up my own self-worth come to mind), perhaps the most striking (at the moment at least) is the opportunity to contextualize my every-day experiences into a larger whole. How does the football player connect to the missionary connect to the new dad? How much and in what ways have I changed since then? Looking at my life, I've achieved a great many of my goals. So why do I feel so crappy so often? I've been richly blessed - I should remember that. I'm also living far below my privilege (and potential) in any number of arenas. I should remember that, too.

Well, the next batch of letters is almost finished printing. The metaphysical musings will have to wait a little longer - that decent night's sleep is rapidly becoming a pipe dream (again).

4 for 4

2006-12-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I woke up early, read my scriptures, brought my lunch to work, and exercised. Those are the four goals that I'm tracking w/ a cool little Web 2.0 tool that I found via Matthew Stibbe's blog (great read). The tool is called Joe's Goals and it is SLICK. Just create an account, throw in as many (or as few) goals as you want and then check them off as you go. VERY easy and a nice little motivational tool. It also produces a chart that you can embed in your blog (mine's in the right column). As you can see, I'm only 2 for 4 today and I've already given myself credit for reading my scriptures before I go to bed. Better get on that.

Mormon Scouting is Funky

2006-12-02T22:58:00.000-08:00

As of two weeks ago, I am the Team Coach for a brand new Varsity Scouting Team (a slightly mature version of a Boy Scout Troop). The Team is chartered by the LDS (Mormon) Church ward that I attend. Tonight, while I was at a party, I ran into my next-door neighbor, who is also associated with a local Boy Scout troop that meets at the Catholic church around the corner. As we chatted at some length about our Scouting experiences (I've had a few other Scouting experiences in the LDS church), I was struck by a couple of things that make LDS Scouting a bit, well, funky.

1) With few exceptions, neither the kids, nor their parents, nor their leaders sought out Scouting as a program in which they wanted to participate. The kids didn't say, "Hey, I love to camp, earn badges, and go to summer camp . . . I want to be a Scout." Instead, Scouting is given to them as the "activity arm" of the Young Men's program of their Church. In large part, being a Boy Scout is part of being a good Mormon. This tends to mean that the boys don't always want to be there and the parents aren't always as supportive as the parents in other Scout troops (NB: the parents in my ward seem to be very supportive).

2) Related to the above, leaders don't volunteer. Rather, they are called by their priesthood leaders. This means that many leaders (myself included) step into their roles somewhat reluctantly and without necessarily knowing what to do. I've got a long way to go before I have a decent handle on how to lead this kind of a group. I've also got a long way to go before my wife feels OK w/ the idea of me spending up to a third of my vacation time away from her and our 2 kids.

All that said, I love working with boys this age and I'm looking forward to "coaching the team."

Homestar Full-on (or how to jack up your geek quotient)

2005-05-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

One of the people I'm working with on my summer internship said, "You seem like you know what's cool in the tech world, you'll have to help me." In his honor, and because I just found a SWEET tool, I'm starting a list. This is also important for Homestar Runner fans, so listen up.

First, if you're reading this in Internet Explorer, STOP. Before you do anything else, go download and install Firefox. And don't ever use IE again.
No seriously, do it now and come back. We'll wait.
OK, good. Now go install the Grease Monkey extension for Firefox. Congratulations, you've officially jacked up your geek quotient. The next time you run Firefox, you should see a monkey smiling back at you from the lower right-hand corner. Grease Monkey allows you (or people geekier than you) to write custom scripts that will alter the way certain web pages appear. Don't like Amazon's layout? Write a script that will change it! Several people already have - read on.
Now, here's the part that's important for Homestar Runner fans. Go to the Grease Monkey User Script Catalog and install the Homestar-fullon user script. If you're not a Homestar fan (ouch - you're pretty much hopeless), go ahead and browse through the other scripts to see which sites you'd like to look at differently. The script that convinced me Grease Monkey is for everyone is the My Yahoo! cleaner. Just last week, my wife was adding content to her MyYahoo! homepage and said, "If only there wasn't all that crap at the top, I could see more news without scrolling." Voila, dear! Wish granted. Seriously, check them out. There's some pretty cool ones. I'm still excited about seeing Homestar cartoons take up the whole browser window no matter what my screen resolution happens to be. Strong Bad deserves technology this cool!
Oh, and if this is the first time you've read a blog post, that raises the geek quotient as well. Welcome to the party.

Musings on information acquisition and retrieval

2005-05-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

My summer internship has got me pondering the twin issues of information acquisition and retrieval. I will admit that I am quite the novice in this arena, but it is a fascinating one.

First, this may be an artificial delineation I've created. The difference between acquisition and retrieval for me is the difference between finding information you've never seen and retrieving information that you've seen at least once. I have a hunch that both of these belong to the same academic field of information retrieval, but for my purposes, they're two separate things.

So, for my summer project, I'm working on information acquisition. Specifically, how can we leverage the information embedded in you social network to predict what news articles, blog entries, or web pages you will want to read. Our premise is that you will want to read things that your friends are reading and that their friends are reading. This is pretty closely related to personalized search, which is also pretty hot right now. Not only do we think that we can build a system to predict what you will want to read, but we think we can build a system that will get better at predicting what you want to read. It's called predictive/adaptive computing and it's pretty cool stuff.

Once you start thinking about finding all this great new content, it's natural to think, "how am I going to find it again once I've seen it?" That (to me, at least) is information retrieval and for now it's outside the scope of our project. It's only a summer internship. It's pretty cool to think about. It's already gotten a lot of attention - witness Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft falling over each other to release desktop search tools. All of these tools use indexing to help you find files on your PC. I use Vonage's Voice Over IP (VOIP) service (before you sign up, let me know so that I can get my 2 free months for referring you), which makes it easy to imagine that one day in the not-too-distant future I will be able to use a similar tool to search the digital audio recordings of all my phone calls (cue spooky big brother music). Based on what some of my friends in speech recognition say about audio indexing, it's not that far away. Then comes the ability to do face recognition on my photo collection so that I don't have to spend all that blasted time tagging my photos in a digital album program (note to Google - add this to Picasa and I'll bail on Adobe).

Anyways, it's all quite fascinating. If you have other thoughts or suggestions on where I should be reading to learn about this stuff or where I should be looking for the next innovation, let me know.

Yahoo! Search Web Services - pretty cool stuff

2005-05-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Search Web Services

I found this in some research for my summer internship, and it's got me pretty excited. I wonder if Google provides anything similar . . .

Harvard to boost women

2005-05-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Harvard to boost women: "

Harvard University is to spend $50m on promoting women in science following controversial comments by its president.

The Best of Strongbad

2005-05-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

Here is my ongoing list of the best episodes of the best entertainment on the Web - Strongbad email. Feel free to reply and include your own.

Dragon - The birth of Trogdor!
Japanese Cartoon - The genesis of Stinkoman.
No Loafing - An ode to workplace productivity and effective corporate leadership.
CGNU - Crazy Go Nuts University, for people who want to be more awesome.
Trevor the Vampire - This one is important historically, as it marked the lengthening of the email responses.
Montage - Nothing to say here, it's just eye-watering, gut-splitting, freaking hilarious.
Lures and jigs - This is my brother's favorite, so it's here in his honor.

2005-05-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Andy