June 24, 2009
Just played against grandview alumni. Their oldest guy, nicknamed PaPa, was 26. I kept my helmet on.
Posted via email from phos4
In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.
Posted via email from phos4
June 22, 2009
Life choice in college costing me today
I distinctly remember not taking statistics because the prof had a rep for never giving out an A. Yes that is the sound of my skirt flapping. Having graduated with a math degree, I picked enough skill to know I am presently getting my statistical ass kicked.
Posted via email from phos4
June 17, 2009
From Google: If users can't spell, it's our problem. If they don't know how to form the syntax, it's our problem. If there's not enough content, it's our problem.
From teacher Karl Fisch: “Hmm. I wonder whose problem it is if our students don’t know how to question, ask/search, find, evaluate, synthesize, repurpose, remix, and solve problems using tools like Google and Wolfram Alpha?”
Technological progress overtakes a previously accepted and expected human skill. Travel & transportation are categories that through technology progress we stopped expecting to learn to ride a horse, camel, camp on the trail during a multi day journey. Food is another. Growing or hunting what you eat is what the unibomber did, not what normal people do anymore. I’m wondering at what point are old expected skills thrown out for the new way to a degree such that they become the new expected skill. Keyboarding over penmanship... Social networking over f2f networking, video conference over physical meeting. What stays sacred…
It doesn’t feel right that Google is taking responsibility for spelling and syntax. They still seem like accepted and expected human skills. I’m guessing at some point such skills won’t be necessary as systems will handle it for you.
Some transitions in an in-between state:
· Online banking - no branches, no paper checks or cash
· Real Estate, auto sales, travel purchasing with no agent involved
·span Energy of the non-fossil variety
Posted via email from phos4
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. - Seth Godin, tribes p. 132
Posted via email from phos4
Points and fine reduced because judge says, 'who could drive a mini slow anyway?' Dream back on!
Posted via email from phos4
June 16, 2009
Search Add-ons :: Add-ons for Firefox
Check out this website I found at addons.mozilla.org
June 14, 2009
comScore Twitter Facebook YouTube Google data
Interesting data on the first 3 years of adoption for Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Youtube. http://trkk.us/?ZZa
The big diff is that Twitter is an api service and the others are websites. This data highlights what is lacking in consumer measurement services like comScore. They are measuring a variable that is incomplete at best and subsequently irrelevant in more and more cases.
Facebook as weather vane or DSM 4 diagnostic
With winter finally taking a break this summer, those with a stiff case of seasonal affective disorder that live in the west (me) are all giddy for seeing the elusive sun.
June 12, 2009
October 11, 2006
Feld post on first 25,000 users being irrelevant.
Web 2.0: The First 25,000 Users Are Irrelevant
For the past few months, whenever I talk to
someone about a Web 2.0 application and hear that they already have
“10,000 users”, I’ve been telling that them the first 25,000 users are
irrelevant.
Josh Kopelman has a perfect post up today called 53,651. This is the number of RSS subscribers to Michael Arrington’s great TechCruch blog,
and is exactly at the core of the “first 25,000 user” issue. Since
there are 53,651 RSS subscribers of TechCrunch (at least as of 5/12/06)
, if something gets reviewed there, it’s likely to get 5,000 to 10,000
users in the next 24 hours “just to try it out.” As so many traffic
graphs of these “TechCrunched” products show, there is a huge spike in
use for a day or two, and then it goes right back down to where things
were before they were TechCrunched. For example:
Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs (and many VCs) confused one time
“tryout users” with real sustainable users. As an analytics freak
(I’ve invested in a number of web / Internet analytics related
companies over the past 10 years, including NetGenesis, Service
Metrics, and now FeedBurner),
you only have to ask two more questions to know whether (a) the company
really understands its traffic / user base and (b) whether they’ve got
the “first 25,000 user problem.”
Thanks Josh for the outstanding post and putting the gap between the
Web 2.0 geeks and Mainstreet USA front and center. Remember - the
first 25,000 users are the same dudes (such as me) that play with
everything. Oh – and yes – I’ve fallen victim to this also.
September 24, 2006
amazon custome rfocus & featuritis
shmula » Focus on the Customer
Jeff Bezos, during a pre-peak meeting once said to a small group of us that there will be many, many winners on the internet. He said that some follow the close-follower mentality and those companies focus on the competition. He continued to say that Amazon has and always will be customer obsessed. He vowed that neither he nor Amazon would ever focus on the competition. He said that customer happiness is the right and only solid thing that we could ever hope to spend our time on. Focusing on the customer breeds innovation and ensures healthy direction. In creating great products, software, or companies, his words are good words to live by.Often I hear people focused on the competitor. This approach is not only lame, but misguided. The competitor-obsessed approach often creates products that nobody wants. The excellent book The Design of Everyday Things points out that simplicity and a focus on the customer’s success ought to be the outcome of products — from software to radios — any product. But, that’s not often the case. I wonder why?
I can think of several reasons:
1. Creativity and Misguided Effort leads to featuritis — Featuritis is the act of too many features where a great percentage don’t fulfill a real human, customer need. This is also known as “Feature Bloat.”
2. The Features Arms Race — the act of being “one-up” on your competitor on the features list.
3. Pure stupidity and utterly forgetting the customer and her real needs.I’m sure you can think of more. It’s a tragedy that the casualty of poorly-designed products, software, services is the customer.
From their perspective, the competitor-focused strategy leads to the chart below, developed by Kathy Sierra:www.shmula.com, software, featuritis
I definitely agree with Kathy’s curve above. What has been your experience as a user of products?
One way to avoid the above result is to focus on the customer and abandon the competitor-focused strategy all-together. Okay, that’s good, but there is a whole different effort in determining user’s needs and then prioritizing them. Determining user’s needs is a whole science in itself that I’ll leave alone for now, but cover in future posts. Methods using ethnography and other qualitative and quantitative marketing research are very helpful in learning and better understanding the needs of the customer.
Pareto Principle Plus
The 80-19-1 RuleI expect that many of you are familiar with the Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule.) If you aren’t, the simple definition is that for many phenomena 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes. Or – more practically – 80% of your company’s revenue comes from 20% of your customers, or 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers, or 80% of your employee problems come from 20% of your employees. While it’s overused, it’s a good rule of thumb.
I was in a meeting the other day where we were talking about the concept I described in my post “The First 25,000 Users Are Irrelevant” that built off of Josh Kopelman’s superb post titled “53,651” (which appears to need to be updated to 100K due to the ever increasing readership of TechCrunch.) We were deep into a discussion about user generated content and how communities tended to grow. I’ve had plenty of experience observing this at Judy’s Book, working with several new content companies that I’ve invested in, and closely following the discussion that made the rounds about the 1% rule as it applies to Digg (e.g. 1% of the Digg users generate most of the Digg’s – resulting in Jason Calacanis offering to pay these 1% of Digg users to bookmark for Netscape.)
I get the 80–20 rule. I get the 1% Rule. But what about those other 19%?
It dawned on me that the gold is in the other 19%. Maybe this is obvious, but here’s how I’m thinking about it. Assume a web site content business (or social network, or bookmarking service, or something else along those lines) that incorporates user generated content (or user interaction) as a core part of it. Apply the 1% Rule. You’ve got your active users - these are the folks that are going to create content “just because.” In some communities I’m part of that 1% and - when I think about why I participate as actively as I do – I always have some non-standard rationale or motivation (or – more abstractly – the behavior and motivation of the 1% doesn’t scale to the rest of the community.)
Now apply the 80–20 rule. 80% of the users are the site are simply going to be fly bys. They won’t engage deeply – they are merely skimming / scanning content. It’s nice to have them, but they are the consumers, not the contributors.
That leaves 19%. This is the golden segment. If you can figure out how to engage these folks, you win. If you don’t, you’ll have a site driven merely by the 1%, which ultimately won’t scale. While theoretically the law of large numbers should apply (e.g. as N (= number of users) gets big enough, life is good), I hypothesize that if you don’t figure out how to engage this 19%, you won’t drive growth in N that will get you big enough to have the law of large numbers effect deliver you to happiness. There’s a virtuous cycle here – the 1% disproportionately seeds the activity of the site, the 80% consume content, and the 19% sit on the fence. If you can get the 19% to engage, this drives more vibrant content, which increases reach, which increases N, which means the activity driven by the 1% and 19% increases, which drives more content, etc.
Now – the 19% don’t have to contribute as much as the 1% (in fact, if you believe in the power law or are a long tail disciple – the sum of the contribution of the 19% probably equals the sum of the contribution of the 1%.) In addition, the critical mass associated with the 19% gets you to a true 80/20 rule (vs. a 99/1 rule) – which – if you buy into the Pareto principle – has very powerful (positive) implications.
June 16, 2006
Metcalfe's law states that the
Metcalfe's law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2). Since a user cannot connect to itself, the actual calculation is the number of diagonals and sides in an n-agon:
The law is often illustrated with the example of fax machines: A single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom you may send and receive documents increases.
In March 2005, Andrew Odlyzko and Benjamin Tilly published a preliminary paper which concludes Metcalfe's law significantly overestimates the value of adding connections. The rule of thumb becomes: "the value of a network with n members is not n squared, but rather n times the logarithm of n." Their primary justification for this is the idea that not all potential connections in a network are equally valuable. For example, most people call their families a great deal more often than they call strangers in other countries, and so do not derive the full value n from the phone service.
Small is the new big
From Seth Godin. Don’t wait. Get small. Think big.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/06/small_is_the_ne.html
May 10, 2006
Whats in a name
Not as much as you think. This column from Inc magazine
explores the importance of a name—or the lack of importance. We know
the names General Motors, Apple, McDonald's and the Red Cross not
because the names are original, slick and cool, but because the company
did something. They gave their name meaning by what they did. Bottom
line: Spend more time doing what you do and less time trying to come up
with a clever name.
"transformative value solutions" ha :)
"let's face it: value in information technology is coming down to how efficiently you can get something done."
- Jonathan Schwartz
The conversation that never took place
You could all but see the gears turning in his head as he pondered the statement. "Clearly," he thought to himself, "I've misheard. He can't seriously be saying what I think he's saying."
"Excuse me?" Bill replied assuming that he would hear something different the second time around.
"That's right. Apple wants to build a Media Center PC."
There was a brief pause as Bill closely inspected his colleague. Blue Jeans, check... turtleneck, check... half-soothing / half-arrogant smile, check... This was the real deal; this was Steve Jobs.
"Let me get this straight…" Gates, now a little bit confused, continued, "You want to build a Windows Media Center Edition PC?"
"That's right."
"Apple?"
"Yes. Apple!"
"Let me come at this from a slightly different angle. You're telling me that Apple wants to ship a Media Center PC?"
"That's what I'm telling you."
"You do understand that Media Center is part of the OS?"
"Yes, I understand."
"This isn't some program that we can port for you."
"Bill... listen clearly: Apple wants to build a Media Center box with Windows Media Center Edition pre-installed."
"Don't you already have an OS? Marmot? Crocodile? Aardvark?..."
"Tiger, Bill, It's called Tiger. Why do you always have to do that joke?"
"HA! It's always funny, Steve. It's always funny."
Bill paused and pondered the enormity of it all. Finally he would have an OEM whom he could trust to get it right.
"Well… who am I to say no?"
"That's great. I'll have my people call your people."
With business concluded they talked for a few more minutes. Bill admitted that he used an iPod. Steve implied that Windows was his work OS. In truth, both already knew each other's secret. The conversation was pleasant if not revealing.
Steve gathered his belongings and headed for the door.
"One more thing," Bill said with a half chuckle. "Do you have a codename for this project?"
"Yes. We call it iRobot." Steve said as the door closed behind him.
January 14, 2006
Year planning
- What were the significant events of the year?
- What were my accomplishments?
- What trips did I take?
- Who was I closest to?
- What significant reading did I do?
- What gave me joy?
- In what ways did I grow?
- What personal gifts did I use to serve this year?
- What did I learn this year?
- What in my life is dying (literally or figuratively)?
- What in my life is rising (literally or figuratively)?
- What are my goals for the next year?
November 14, 2005
IBM hosts mmo web event
Dang - IBM the source of bleary eyed, Taco Bell eating MMO addited youngsters. It ain't your Daddys IBM.
GameDev.net - Events Calendar.
Join game industry leaders from Ubisoft, NCSoft, Sony Online Entertainment, BigWorld and Turbine Entertainment, along with IBM game industry executives, for a real-time, online discussion of the business and technology aspects affecting Massive Multi-Player Online Games (MMOG) and the interactive entertainment industry.
GameDev
Video Game sales fall 24% in last quarter to $365M. No real surprise given the run up to the holidays and the Xbox360 release in but a week.
Video game sales fall 24 percent - GameDev.Net Discussion Forums.
I hate to be terribly practical, but we're sitting right on the cusp of a major next-gen console release. Isn't it possible that the sales slack you're seeing is people holding off on purchasing PS2/XBox/GC games in leiu of buying themselves/their child a shiny new next-gen console games for Christmas (or slightly after Christmas)?
Never mind that it's the end of the console cycle - aside from a few exceptions, all your big-name super blockbuster titles have gotten pushed into next-gen releases, what you have releasing for present consoles is end-of-cycle dregs.
November 09, 2005
Gamasutra - In-Game Ad Firm Double Fusion Gets New CEO, Funding
Link: Gamasutra - In-Game Ad Firm Double Fusion Gets New CEO, Funding.
In-game advertising firm Double Fusion has announced that it has appointed Geoff Graber, the former general manager of Yahoo! Games and EA China executive, as its chief executive officer. The company also announced that it closed a $10 million financing round led by Accel Partners and JVP (Jerusalem Venture Partners).
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- 100 foot wind turbine blade rolling down the highway at 75MPH. Wind Power!
- Just played against grandview alumni. Their oldest guy, nicknamed PaPa, was 26. I kept my helmet on.
- In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.
- Life choice in college costing me today
- From Google: If users can't spell, it's our problem. If they don't know how to form the syntax, it's our problem. If there's not enough content, it's our problem.
- If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. - Seth Godin, tribes p. 132
- Points and fine reduced because judge says, 'who could drive a mini slow anyway?' Dream back on!
- Dream officially over. Heading into traffic court.
- Living the dream this week and it's only Tuesday
- Search Add-ons :: Add-ons for Firefox
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