Product Managing for Ourselves: My Parents Get It, Bloggers Don't
So the other night, my parents asked me what an iPhone was at Gino's...
...Clearly, that's some fantastic PR when new technology trickles its way into my parents' conversations just days after launch. I mean, my dad just got broadband last week. (Wooo!)
"It's a phone and an iPod in one, so you don't have to carry both things around."
"Wow, that's great."
They didn't care about iHandcuffs, third party apps or whether or not they are locking themselves into Apple.
The fact is... Apple's products are such a vast improvement in overall consumer experience that most users will be more than satisfied. All the technobloggers are bitching about the lack of openness.
I ask you: Open to what??
I have a $600 PocketPC Phone and you know what third party apps I have on it? Newsgator Mobile and Typepad, and Typepad I could just blog through an e-mail address anyway. A lot of good my open Windows Mobile platform is doing me. Two apps. Two goddamn apps. Plus, the stupid thing can't switch out of apps fast enough to answer the phone a lot of times anyway. Without apps that people really care about, no one gives a rat's ass about open.
I wouldn't switch, because I'm a business user that needs more robust e-mail and contact management, but I recognize that this product isn't for me.
Closed? Bleh. DRM? Boo. But, give Apple credit for singlehandedly carrying the whole digital download market on its back and putting music in our ears in the first place. Do I think it's stupid that I basically walk around with a small computer in my iPod that can run no apps at all? Yes. Do I hate their DRM? Yes. Is it a ridiculously better product than anything than came before it? Yes, absolutely.
Open is great when you have something to be open to...and, geekery aside, if I had to choose between open for open's sake and a great consumer experience, put me in handcuffs, baby.
Let Microsoft come out with a better product that has a development platform for it. Zune was a punchline... and until someone starts understanding what consumers want as job one, no amount of handwringing is going to bring about "open".
Its funny, because we bloggers say the same thing about carriers. My non-techie non-blogger friends bitch about carriers, too, but not because they can't get off-deck apps or don't have an open OS... because they pay too much per month and that's what my parents thought of the iPhone.. it costs too much.
People want value. Value means more or less money in their pocket. They can touch and feel money.
They also want real improvement in function. iPod+Phone... that's a real improvement. That's one less device that we need. Third party apps? Which apps? What do they look like? Who wants them?
There's a reason why people buy Apple's stuff and if there's no useable alternative that is open, can you blame them?
No good pocket knife wielding sons of bitches
So this morning, despite the fact that my alarm is set to 6:45, I don't wake up until 8:30. Fine, no gym. Oh, but now I have to rush a little because the car is on the wrong side of the street and I have to move it by 9:30. No prob. Comb my hair and grab my hat... out the door in seconds flat. (Its a Beatles line...I have neither hair nor a hat.)
Checking the car as I always do before getting in, I notice that the back left tire is really low. Strange..didn't notice that before. So I drove to the gas station to get some air. Pretty much right at the moment that I realize the tire wasn't really reinflating was when I noticed the stab wounds. Some fucker (or fuckers) put four half inch holes in my vinyl top, directly above the tire. Goddammit. Why you gotta mess with a man's ride? Oh, by the way, did I mention I jammed my thumb badly at last night's dodgeball game. (We swept all four games for those of you keeping score at home.) Do you know how hard it is to change a tire with no right thumb? Functioning opposable thumbs are a critical component of the tire changing process, particularly since the jack that Ford provides was ergonomically designed to be a cruel practical joke. Throw on top of that the ridiculous amount of softball equipment I usually keep in my trunk, making access to the donut quite the exercise in one thumbed unpacking. I got the tire, which on the Mustang, of course, is heavy and fat off, but not before playing wheel lock adapter scavenger hunt inside the car. An examination of the tire pinpointed the last and most devistating of the half inch stab wounds inflicted on my car.
Now its 10:42 and I'm on the Manhattan bring, transmitting this post from Typepad Mobile, finally on my way. Do you know how badly I would have liked to catch the assholes who did this? Note to self...store tire iron in winter coat. My thumb hurts from thumbing this, too.
I'll deal with the donut and new tire over the weekend. For now, its parked. Who stabs cars in Bay Ridge?
links for 2007-01-11
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Personally, I don't think I'll ever go wireless with my headphones, because the wire prevents me from loosing them.
2007 Digital Ad Trends on the Oddcast Blog
Hey folks, check out this post I wrote over on the Oddcast blog about what we might see in 2007.
Tomorrow: 70 AND snow. Friday: Locusts
I case you didn't notice, it snowed this morning in NYC.
Robocop the Historian?
So I turn on the history channel the other day and Robocop is talking about the Roman Empire.
So bizzare.
It turns out that, according to the Daily News, "
Weller, 58, who holds a master's degree in Roman and Renaissance art
and is working toward a Ph.D., has become one of Syracuse University's
most popular professors."
You know what he says at the end of each class?
"Thank you for your cooperation."
We have left the group "Facebook Newsfeed Sucks"
Because, in the end, it actually doesn't. The put in the privacy features that allow people to decide for themselves what gets broadcast, but a lot of people never even bothered changing them. I have to say that I find it to be one of the most engaging features on any social site.
In fact, yesterday, I was at a Fordham Young Alumni Committee meeting, and someone mentioned this girl that two of us knew. I couldn't help but add, "And it was her 25th birthday" and someone else said, "Yeah, I'm sorry I missed that...it looked like fun." Everyone else was a little confused, but what the two of us realized was that both of us had seen separate friends of ours tagged in photos from the part in our Facebook Newsfeeds that day.
What the Newsfeed does is to keep oiling the social gears in the machine. I have no doubt that it causes more comments, more messages, and more importantly, more offline interaction. That's something a lot of other networks are missing. I'm signed up to about a dozen other networks at least. Friendster I hear from once a week with similar updates on friends, but my friends just aren't that active anymore there. Once in a blue moon I get a Tagworld invite. And the flurry of Kaneva friend requests? They've dropped off the table...not sure why.
Keeping people engaged is so critical to a social network, and what Facebook does best is to put keepping people engaged with each other over keeping people engaged with the site. For example, they just sliced an extra (advertising supported) pageview off the poke. When you poke, you get a quick java popup, not a full page refresh or new page to confirm. Slick, easy, faster. Another good example is how they show me my friend data. They actually tell me who my friends just became friends with. Friendster, on the other hand, makes me click through to my friend's friends to discover that on my own, and see another ad.
The Newsfeed has also started to feature sponsored items and I really don't find them intrusive at all. If I'm not interested in them, unlike email, they disappear down the page.
So, despite the weeping of tears and beating of the breast, I think the Newsfeed turned out pretty well, actually. It's definatlely keeping me more engaged with my friends and the site, too.
Eleven Minutes to Blog
I'm sitting outside Joe's Pub waiting for my friend Alicia. We know each other from when I was a sophomore in high school and I did Oklahoma at her school. That was a great way to meet girls when you went to single sex high schools...doing plays. They always needed guys at the girls schools and you really didn't have to be that good. Anyway, I don't even know what I'm seeing or what we're here for. I totally didn't read the email. I just know where I'm supposed to be and what time. I do know I'm getting fed, though, which is great because I'm eating for the first time today in days. Because of that damn Bread (Bacteria) Factory chicken sandwich last Thursday, all I had to eat in three days was a pork chop and two bagels and none of it took. (eww...I know) I dropped seven pounds, but today, I'm all better. In fact, its a good excuse to have a peanut butter moo'd at Jamba tomorrow now that I think of it. I did, however, play dodgeball on Sunday, despite my illness, and played quite well. I signed up for a Sunday team as an individual since my knee is bothering me and I can't really bike, so I needed another activity to make up for it. Twenty seven and I'm falling apart! Don't baseball players peak at 27? Two minutes to go... no Alicia. I'm surprised she's not early. Hmm... now I'm just sort of filling time. Oh, hey, get this. I found MySpace to be a great recruiting tool today for that social media instigator job. I searched by industy, age, and location and found a lot of socially savvy candidates that I contacted directly. Here's a question. Is it sexist to believe that women generally have more influence in online social networks than men? I feel like most of the female profiles I see, with the exception of artists and musicians, have a lot more friends and comments than guys. Am I sitting in the right place? Is there a different entrance somewhere else? She just called... "Just wanted to make sure you're not inside..." :)
Yesterday's Bizzare Convertible Weather
Yup...January 6th was convertible weather in NYC. Hmm... Maybe Al Gore was right about this global warming thing.
links for 2007-01-07
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Most underage users of MySpace.com don't display information or photos that could attract pedophiles, but a sizable percentage still post potentially provocative photos, a new study concludes.
In and Out (of the browser): Why I'm long web connected desktop apps
A few years ago, we saw a big push for software as a service (SaaS). Why built big clunky pieces of software that required installs and updates when you could sign folks up with just a browser and a registration, and push updates on the fly... makes a lot of sense, right?
Well, now I'm thinking that the browser isn't really the right place for a lot of these apps. I think the tipping point for me was yesterday when I tried to run Zimbra, Gmail, Facebook, MySpace, Google Docs, Typepad, and Newsgator all out of the same browser window in tabs. Firefox and it's lovely memory leak ballooned to 800MB of memory usage and my computer started spitting up Mentos and Coke. Ok, so not really, but it definitely slowed to a crawl.
Today, I'm back in Outlook, patched into our Zimbra server in a desktop e-mail client.
Browsers were historically meant to show text and graphics in a one way broadcast, and now we're asking them to run some pretty resource intensive apps. I don't know if Apollo is the answer, but it seems pretty clear to me that we're going to see some apps bust back out of the browser and onto the desktop while retaining some connection to the web.
Desktop apps are better for uploading, which is key in a two-way, interactive web and notifications as well. (That's why I was never a fan of MeeboMe.... didn't want to have to sit in the browser window the whole day to see IMs.)
So are desktop widgets the answer or does someone need to build a better browser for running apps? And when does this start to happen?
Unsympathetic or Oblivious?
We had a meeting with some outside folks here yesterday and we ordered some sandwiches from The Bread Factory. I grabbed a chicken sandwich and it was terrible from bite one... just, well... blah. Just tasted really processed and artificial... that's the best way I can describe it.
By the end of the day, my stomach wasn't feeling well at all, so when my friend Susie told me she wanted to have some bar food after work, I was a little hesitant, but went along. We went to Heartland Brewery in Union Square.
I ordered a salmon burger and mashed potatoes. I didn't each two bites of the mashed potatoes before I realized that any further consumption would cause something bad to happen, so I stopped. If you know me, you know that not only do I never get sick, but it takes a lot to get me to stop eating.... so things weren't good at all. I asked our waitress for a ginger ale after I already had an iced tea still sitting full.
That should have been the first thing that tipped her off.
The whole time she keeps walking by us, glancing over, and I'm not eating at all. Hint two. Something's obviously wrong. I got annoyed because I figured she thought there was something wrong with the food and wanted to avoid having to take something back.
When Susie was almost done with her food, she comes over to me, and completely oblvious of the fact that I hadn't eaten at all, she goes, "Are you done with that?"
Done? I hadn't touched it! So I asked her to wrap it up because I had eaten something bad for lunch and wasn't feeling well, but there was nothing wrong with the food (not that she cared).
She didn't ask if I was ok or felt sick. If I were her, I might have casually mentioned where the restrooms were, just in case. But, nothing. She comes back with the food wrapped and the check. No, "Feel better".
Susie thought I was being ridiculous, but I was really annoyed. I think a good waitress would have been a little more sympathetic.
In case you people care, I'm still not feeling too well... That's the last time I get anything at the Bread Factory.