Blaise Aguera y Arcas of MSN Live Labs giving an awesome demo of Seadragon and Photosynth. Just watch it. Really. Watch it.
Given that I'm reading a magazine in Zinio right now... I *really* want to see the Seadragon technology get released and used elsewhere... like in Zinio :)
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Ignorance of Crowds
I was reading JP's blog, and noticed that Nick Carr's written a new article for Strategy-Business.
Always one to pick an inflammatory title, the new one's called The Ignorance of Crowds. Unlike some of his other writing, though, I'm inclined to wholeheartedly agree with this one. Carr talks about the differences between the open and closed source development processes, talking quite specifically about Eric Raymond's seminal work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Basically Carr suggests that the bazaar model of development isn't the best fit for innovation. As Carr says,
So, the community's great at debugging things, and great at incremental development and iterating on code over time. What else? The bazaar model of development works seems to work well for projects that have heavy porting requirements: developers are great at scratching their own itches (wasn't that he whole point of the birth of open source?), and not being able to run a cool app on your computer is definitely an itch worth scratching.
What else?
What are the tradeoffs that come with open sourcing a development project? Is Mozilla the best example of a joint community/corporate development structure, or are there others we can learn from?
Carr's article's a great starting point for beginning to understand the new production model that's beginning to emerge... and the management model that needs to emerge to support it. As for me, I've just got a hundred new questions in my head.. :)
Always one to pick an inflammatory title, the new one's called The Ignorance of Crowds. Unlike some of his other writing, though, I'm inclined to wholeheartedly agree with this one. Carr talks about the differences between the open and closed source development processes, talking quite specifically about Eric Raymond's seminal work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Basically Carr suggests that the bazaar model of development isn't the best fit for innovation. As Carr says,
The open source model has proven to be an extraordinarily powerful way to refine programs that already exist - Linux, for instance, is an elaboration of the venerable Unix operating system, and the open source Firefox browser builds on Netscape's old Navigator - but it has proven less successful at creating exciting new programs from scratch.It's telling that the majority of open source projects (if Sourceforge is any indicator) are typically run by one or two project founders with very few other contributors. Looking at Firefox as a case study for a job done well, it seems that it's the combination of the core benevolent dictatorship (stewardship?) of the Mozilla Corporation combined with the power and diversity of the community that have made Firefox successful.
So, the community's great at debugging things, and great at incremental development and iterating on code over time. What else? The bazaar model of development works seems to work well for projects that have heavy porting requirements: developers are great at scratching their own itches (wasn't that he whole point of the birth of open source?), and not being able to run a cool app on your computer is definitely an itch worth scratching.
What else?
What are the tradeoffs that come with open sourcing a development project? Is Mozilla the best example of a joint community/corporate development structure, or are there others we can learn from?
Carr's article's a great starting point for beginning to understand the new production model that's beginning to emerge... and the management model that needs to emerge to support it. As for me, I've just got a hundred new questions in my head.. :)
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Never. Missing. Another. Workout.
So, let me start this with a little disclosure:
First, a bit about Ottawa: this town has spirit... a little too much Senators spirit at the moment, but spirit nonetheless, and everyone was out and cheering in full force... even in the rain. Even Mike and I spent an hour and a half cheering on the 10k runners on Saturday. Go Ottawa!
Now, about that run... for a guy that's fatted out, and who's not been terribly diligent about workouts recently, I was amazed that I was doing a little faster than a 2:00 half-marathon pace for the first 13 km. Then the cramps began.
For the next 8.1k I had to stop 2-3 times a kilometer to nurse the shooting pains in my leg. It's one of those tricky things... think of pain on a 1-10 scale. If the pain gets above 8, you're toast... it's going to hurt like hell, and it's not easily going to stop. So, when you feel around a 6 or 7, you've got to walk (like a sucker... as all those amazingly cheerful spectators cheer you on... for the record, I looked at my feet) for a few minutes. It's also deceptive: you start running, get back to a nice comfortably fast pace with an easy stride and then out of nowhere the pain starts again. This isn't cool.
Another thing about Ottawa: the people doing the race (from O-town or not) are super friendly. During one of my forced walking breaks a nice lady ran past me, turned around and said, "You do!" I stood puzzled for a minute and realized that I was wearing a Nike Run TO tshirt that had "Who runs this town?" written on the back. I assured the kindly lady that this was sweet of her... but untrue. Either way, she got me to grit through the pain for another couple hundred meters.
Another lady around the 1.1km mark came up behind me and tried to fire me up "You're almost there!" she said. "I'm not tired at all... I've got muscle spasms from hell." She'd been through the same last year and sympathetically pulled me along with her. She was even friendly once I explained that my lack of training was causing this (i.e. this was definitely a self-inflicted wound).
I made it another 300m, where I had the spasm of a lifetime. I nearly fell to the ground in pain, clutching my leg. A super friendly medic quickly rode over to me and asked me if it was my calf or my quad. "The worst: both... So I can't stretch it out," I said. On came the latex gloves and he spent the next ten minutes (yes, I looked at my watch) massaging my calf, just so I could limp the last half-mile to the finish line. He rocks.
Oh, so when'd I finish? I think my chip time was like 2:35 or something... pretty bad. Not that the 2:00 I was on track for was particularly good, but wasn't too embarrassing for a guy who'd not trained at all.
Anyway, the shaming's got me motivated, if nothing else: no more missed runs, bikes, swims, or dates with the weight-rack. The goal's to get back in shape by September, maybe do a triathlon, but definitely run the Scotia in September, and get in Boston-qualifying shape in the next four or five years. As much as I admire the elite marathoners, I'd rather have a triathlete's body... the point is that I've finally been shamed into doing something about it.
See you on the trails.
- I've been doing a horrible job keeping up the running and other workouts for a few months now
- By horrible job, I mean I think I went for a run a week or two ago.
- Doing this has caused me to - as Hans might say - "fat out"
- I woke up this morning ill and coughing up phlegm... I'm sure that was great for my breathing...
First, a bit about Ottawa: this town has spirit... a little too much Senators spirit at the moment, but spirit nonetheless, and everyone was out and cheering in full force... even in the rain. Even Mike and I spent an hour and a half cheering on the 10k runners on Saturday. Go Ottawa!
Now, about that run... for a guy that's fatted out, and who's not been terribly diligent about workouts recently, I was amazed that I was doing a little faster than a 2:00 half-marathon pace for the first 13 km. Then the cramps began.
For the next 8.1k I had to stop 2-3 times a kilometer to nurse the shooting pains in my leg. It's one of those tricky things... think of pain on a 1-10 scale. If the pain gets above 8, you're toast... it's going to hurt like hell, and it's not easily going to stop. So, when you feel around a 6 or 7, you've got to walk (like a sucker... as all those amazingly cheerful spectators cheer you on... for the record, I looked at my feet) for a few minutes. It's also deceptive: you start running, get back to a nice comfortably fast pace with an easy stride and then out of nowhere the pain starts again. This isn't cool.
Another thing about Ottawa: the people doing the race (from O-town or not) are super friendly. During one of my forced walking breaks a nice lady ran past me, turned around and said, "You do!" I stood puzzled for a minute and realized that I was wearing a Nike Run TO tshirt that had "Who runs this town?" written on the back. I assured the kindly lady that this was sweet of her... but untrue. Either way, she got me to grit through the pain for another couple hundred meters.
Another lady around the 1.1km mark came up behind me and tried to fire me up "You're almost there!" she said. "I'm not tired at all... I've got muscle spasms from hell." She'd been through the same last year and sympathetically pulled me along with her. She was even friendly once I explained that my lack of training was causing this (i.e. this was definitely a self-inflicted wound).
I made it another 300m, where I had the spasm of a lifetime. I nearly fell to the ground in pain, clutching my leg. A super friendly medic quickly rode over to me and asked me if it was my calf or my quad. "The worst: both... So I can't stretch it out," I said. On came the latex gloves and he spent the next ten minutes (yes, I looked at my watch) massaging my calf, just so I could limp the last half-mile to the finish line. He rocks.
Oh, so when'd I finish? I think my chip time was like 2:35 or something... pretty bad. Not that the 2:00 I was on track for was particularly good, but wasn't too embarrassing for a guy who'd not trained at all.
Anyway, the shaming's got me motivated, if nothing else: no more missed runs, bikes, swims, or dates with the weight-rack. The goal's to get back in shape by September, maybe do a triathlon, but definitely run the Scotia in September, and get in Boston-qualifying shape in the next four or five years. As much as I admire the elite marathoners, I'd rather have a triathlete's body... the point is that I've finally been shamed into doing something about it.
See you on the trails.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Discovery ISN'T a problem on mobile!
I've been in a lot of meetings recently with people in the mobile industry. We've spent a lot of time trying to understand just why mobile is as bad as it is. There's one thing I've been hearing from a lot of sides... it's the idea that mobile data service adoption has been held back because of the "discoverability problem".
What is the discoverability problem? The basic idea is that people can't find the cool services that exist on mobile because the interface is too bad. It's too hard to navigate from the home screen of your phone to your browser, and then hard to find most things once you've got your browser open.
Some operators even go so far as to point out "when we drop something right on to the BlackBerry home screen, people click on it."
Admittedly, there is this problem of getting your app/service above the noise floor, and with Plan Q, the company that I'm working on starting, some of my colleagues are thinking of how we can address this problem, but I've also got a contrarian view I'd like to test with you: The discoverability problem isn't real.
Huh? Well, why don't people use all sorts of cool mobile applications? There aren't any. Or at least not many.
Operators will tell you that putting things on their homedecks greatly increases the click-through (and hence discoverability) of applications... which argues that they can help solve the discoverability problem. But this sounds a whole lot like the early days of the Internet, doesn't it? There wasn't much interesting stuff out there (save webcams overlooking beaches in Hawaii) and so portals like Yahoo! were created. Portals on the web solved the discovery problem on the Internet back in the late 90's. As the Internet grew, the portals took on a different role: helping separate out the good sites from the rest. Back then, it was all about the portal. Remember when your broadband provider used to ship you a custom version of their browser that took you to their "rich media portal"? So... um... how's that business model working out these days?
RIM created an incredibly strong mobile brand around BlackBerry because it was incredibly useful, and it spread by word of mouth. The same was true of YouTube, Facebook and all the other social apps we're using. So why should we believe that it's any different on mobile?
When was the last time you used a website that was so mindblowingly cool that you told a friend about it? Now, when was the last time you used a mobile app that was similarly cool? What we're missing in mobile isn't a slicker homedeck or a more personalized home screen on your phone... we need insanely great apps that get you excited enough to share them with your friends...
The other stuff'll sort itself out.
What is the discoverability problem? The basic idea is that people can't find the cool services that exist on mobile because the interface is too bad. It's too hard to navigate from the home screen of your phone to your browser, and then hard to find most things once you've got your browser open.
Some operators even go so far as to point out "when we drop something right on to the BlackBerry home screen, people click on it."
Admittedly, there is this problem of getting your app/service above the noise floor, and with Plan Q, the company that I'm working on starting, some of my colleagues are thinking of how we can address this problem, but I've also got a contrarian view I'd like to test with you: The discoverability problem isn't real.
Huh? Well, why don't people use all sorts of cool mobile applications? There aren't any. Or at least not many.
Operators will tell you that putting things on their homedecks greatly increases the click-through (and hence discoverability) of applications... which argues that they can help solve the discoverability problem. But this sounds a whole lot like the early days of the Internet, doesn't it? There wasn't much interesting stuff out there (save webcams overlooking beaches in Hawaii) and so portals like Yahoo! were created. Portals on the web solved the discovery problem on the Internet back in the late 90's. As the Internet grew, the portals took on a different role: helping separate out the good sites from the rest. Back then, it was all about the portal. Remember when your broadband provider used to ship you a custom version of their browser that took you to their "rich media portal"? So... um... how's that business model working out these days?
RIM created an incredibly strong mobile brand around BlackBerry because it was incredibly useful, and it spread by word of mouth. The same was true of YouTube, Facebook and all the other social apps we're using. So why should we believe that it's any different on mobile?
When was the last time you used a website that was so mindblowingly cool that you told a friend about it? Now, when was the last time you used a mobile app that was similarly cool? What we're missing in mobile isn't a slicker homedeck or a more personalized home screen on your phone... we need insanely great apps that get you excited enough to share them with your friends...
The other stuff'll sort itself out.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Booq : Great product. Awful service.
I've got a Booq Folee XM laptop bag... perfect fit for my MacBook Pro, super comfortable, and has lots of space to store all the stuff I lug with me when I travel (display adaptors, power adaptors, sunglasses, spare battery, a book or magazine, passport, ipod, etc.).
So what's my gripe? The bag managed to get a tear in it ... all that wonderful ballistic nylon seems to have held up, but one of the seams hasn't.
I sent Booq an email, and after waiting about a day, got an email telling me that I'd need to send them a copy of a receipt to have them even consider warranty service. Who keeps the receipt for their laptop bag for over a year? Not me. It's got a 5 year warranty, and the product hasn't been in the market for much more than a year!
Anyway, the folks at CPUsed were incredibly nice, and managed to find and fax my receipt to me. I sent it and (per Booq's request) a pair of pictures of the bag, and the damage to it along to Booq.
So... you'd figure they'd see the failure pretty clearly, and then send me a new bag? Nope. They want me to ship at my expense a pretty large laptop bag back to them (and a not-cheap-bag at that), and then if they decide it is considered under warranty, they'll ship it back to me el-cheapo class. Recall that I already sent them pictures and proof of purchase of the bags... shouldn't this be enough?
Anyone else think this is abysmally poor customer service?
Let's compare this to the good folks at Acme. I've got one of their bags as well. I had a problem with a strap once. Sent them an email, and no questions asked, received two replacement straps, couriered to me within a couple of days.
So:
Acme = Great Product + Great Service
Booq = Great product + Awful Service
I almost feel bad for having recommended the Booq bags to so many friends... If they could just add great service to an awesome product, they'd be a no-brainer Tumi-killer for laptop bags.
So what's my gripe? The bag managed to get a tear in it ... all that wonderful ballistic nylon seems to have held up, but one of the seams hasn't.
I sent Booq an email, and after waiting about a day, got an email telling me that I'd need to send them a copy of a receipt to have them even consider warranty service. Who keeps the receipt for their laptop bag for over a year? Not me. It's got a 5 year warranty, and the product hasn't been in the market for much more than a year!
Anyway, the folks at CPUsed were incredibly nice, and managed to find and fax my receipt to me. I sent it and (per Booq's request) a pair of pictures of the bag, and the damage to it along to Booq.
So... you'd figure they'd see the failure pretty clearly, and then send me a new bag? Nope. They want me to ship at my expense a pretty large laptop bag back to them (and a not-cheap-bag at that), and then if they decide it is considered under warranty, they'll ship it back to me el-cheapo class. Recall that I already sent them pictures and proof of purchase of the bags... shouldn't this be enough?
Anyone else think this is abysmally poor customer service?
Let's compare this to the good folks at Acme. I've got one of their bags as well. I had a problem with a strap once. Sent them an email, and no questions asked, received two replacement straps, couriered to me within a couple of days.
So:
Acme = Great Product + Great Service
Booq = Great product + Awful Service
I almost feel bad for having recommended the Booq bags to so many friends... If they could just add great service to an awesome product, they'd be a no-brainer Tumi-killer for laptop bags.
Ideas aren't worth much
Recently I've had two friends of mine begin the process of starting companies... and while I'm thrilled that they're doing this, I'm more than a little wary about the perceived value of their ideas...
So, one friend is working with a sibling on a startup. The friend's thought a lot about building a startup in the past (and has her own consultancy) so is definitely ready to give this a world. Her sibling, though, has a bit of a confused view of the value of the idea. Basically, the company is YouTube for a particular vertical, with an e-learning spin on it. It's a pretty cool idea, and I'm pretty eager to see what happens with it.
The problem? The founder here is so paranoid about his idea that he's refused to show it off to potential customers to get feedback on this. I think my friend's managed to get him past this recently... but you get the idea.
The other friend is working on a cool Internet service for the healthcare space. It's a cool idea, and he's got it in trials already, and the feedback so far seems fantastic.
The problem here? He's worried that VCs might copy his idea and is bothered that they don't sign NDAs. Now, while I can think of one particular Canadian VC that DOES copy people's ideas and build companies around these ideas... they're NOT a good VC. Good VCs have lots of deals to choose from : They don't want to build your idea. If they like the space, they'll invest in it... and while that means they may invest in one of your competitors, they're unlikely to steal your idea to start and build a new company: they're better off using the time to go and find other companies they want to invest in.
Guy Kawasaki's got a great quote (I hope I don't misquote him too badly): If you've got a good idea, five people are already working on it. If you've got a great idea, ten people are already working on it.
Let's think about this : we all read the same papers, blogs, and magazines. We all go to the same conferences and talk to the same people. Do you really think that the core idea is something someone else hasn't? It's pretty unlikely.
So what differentiates? Team. Business model. Structurally unfair advantages (i.e. "my entrenched competitors can't do this, and here's why..."... and it's got to be a business reason, not a technical one).
I've felt this way for a while, but recently I've been working on starting a new company. Many friends keep asking "can you talk about what you're doing, or is it all hush-hush?" Most are pretty surprised when I reply by telling them all about it, or just forwarding a slide deck that goes pretty deep into what we're doing.
Most are even more surprised when I talk to people that work for potential competitors and tell them what we're up to.
Why would I do that? Well, for the first part, the feedback we can get to make the company stronger is worth more than any risk of someone "stealing the idea"... and as far as competitors? They're not stupid. They'll see what we're doing soon enough, if they're not already thinking about it ... I'd rather tell someone there why I think we'll win... and maybe they'll decide to come and join us!
So there you go... my quick thoughts on ideas and their value. Don't get me wrong, a fleshed out business plan, team, customer validation, partnerships, etc. All this stuff has real value... but the paragraph pitch? Worthless.
I'd love to hear what other people think about this. It's not just me ... right? :)
So, one friend is working with a sibling on a startup. The friend's thought a lot about building a startup in the past (and has her own consultancy) so is definitely ready to give this a world. Her sibling, though, has a bit of a confused view of the value of the idea. Basically, the company is YouTube for a particular vertical, with an e-learning spin on it. It's a pretty cool idea, and I'm pretty eager to see what happens with it.
The problem? The founder here is so paranoid about his idea that he's refused to show it off to potential customers to get feedback on this. I think my friend's managed to get him past this recently... but you get the idea.
The other friend is working on a cool Internet service for the healthcare space. It's a cool idea, and he's got it in trials already, and the feedback so far seems fantastic.
The problem here? He's worried that VCs might copy his idea and is bothered that they don't sign NDAs. Now, while I can think of one particular Canadian VC that DOES copy people's ideas and build companies around these ideas... they're NOT a good VC. Good VCs have lots of deals to choose from : They don't want to build your idea. If they like the space, they'll invest in it... and while that means they may invest in one of your competitors, they're unlikely to steal your idea to start and build a new company: they're better off using the time to go and find other companies they want to invest in.
Guy Kawasaki's got a great quote (I hope I don't misquote him too badly): If you've got a good idea, five people are already working on it. If you've got a great idea, ten people are already working on it.
Let's think about this : we all read the same papers, blogs, and magazines. We all go to the same conferences and talk to the same people. Do you really think that the core idea is something someone else hasn't? It's pretty unlikely.
So what differentiates? Team. Business model. Structurally unfair advantages (i.e. "my entrenched competitors can't do this, and here's why..."... and it's got to be a business reason, not a technical one).
I've felt this way for a while, but recently I've been working on starting a new company. Many friends keep asking "can you talk about what you're doing, or is it all hush-hush?" Most are pretty surprised when I reply by telling them all about it, or just forwarding a slide deck that goes pretty deep into what we're doing.
Most are even more surprised when I talk to people that work for potential competitors and tell them what we're up to.
Why would I do that? Well, for the first part, the feedback we can get to make the company stronger is worth more than any risk of someone "stealing the idea"... and as far as competitors? They're not stupid. They'll see what we're doing soon enough, if they're not already thinking about it ... I'd rather tell someone there why I think we'll win... and maybe they'll decide to come and join us!
So there you go... my quick thoughts on ideas and their value. Don't get me wrong, a fleshed out business plan, team, customer validation, partnerships, etc. All this stuff has real value... but the paragraph pitch? Worthless.
I'd love to hear what other people think about this. It's not just me ... right? :)
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