The Open Source Car by Local Motors
The last SXSW session Paul and I caught before leaving Austin was called “No Straight Lines: Straight Line Thinking Stops Here” given by Alan Moore (@alansmlxl).
I enjoyed his talk and found his ideas inspiring, and among many other things he covered was the story of Local Motors.
Local Motors is essentially an open source car company. Anyone can submit designs for the community to review. The designs are voted on, and when a design has a critical mass of support from the community, it graduates into production.
The production phase is transparent and local. Different geographical locations have different needs, so location matters.
Local Motors has small shops scattered throughout the US, the opposite of the monolithic, centralized manufacturing plant that is common for automakers.
Finally, when you buy a Local Motors car, you participate in the build process at your local shop.
What you get is a car that you helped design and build, tailored to where you live. Incidentally, being part of the process seems to make people less likely to default on their auto loans. Read more
PM Should Know How to Code, Part 2
So, if you’re monitoring the comments on my post yesterday, Product Managers Should Know How to Write Code, you’ll know Bex (@bex) and I are having a bit of a disagreement.
This is good. I really like intellectual (vs. emotional) disagreement on the intertubes because it opens eyes to new viewpoints.
Too bad Bex is wrong. Read more
Smartphone: The Ultimate People Repellent
Photo by the_toe_stubber from Flickr used under Creative Commons
Last week, I realized that the smartphone is the ultimate anti-social device.
Sure, you can be all social, checking Facebook, tweeting and checking in to venues, but the paradox is that your smartphone makes you look like unapproachable IRL.
And by you, I mean me.
The week before SXSW, I attended a social gathering. There were about a hundred or so people there, milling around chatting with each other. Looking at some photos taken at the event, I found myself in the crowd, standing alone stabbing at my iPhone.
I noticed the same problem on my trip to Austin. Before I left Portland, we were shuffled off our plane for mechanical difficulties, i.e. there was a lightbulb out in the cockpit and no one could find a replacement. Go figure.
As a shared annoyance, airline travel difficulty makes for a great social icebreaker because misery loves company.
Still, many of us, stood idly by in the gate area poking our phones, rather than commiserating about the woes of air travel.
Actually, I made an effort once I realized how many people were doing this, and in so doing, got my first hands-on with a Kindle, which incidentally is very slick in person. The photos I’ve seen online do it absolutely no justice.
Anyway, I’m not the only one who’s noticed that smartphones make IRL more distracted and potentially less interesting.
Product Managers Should Know How to Write Code
I’ve been absent for a while, not sure if this tweet from Chet was related to my silence, but if it was, I have an excuse.
Paul and I just returned from Austin and SXSWi, which ran March 12-16.
For those unfamiliar, SXSW is comprised of three festivals: film, music and interactive. It began in 1987 as a music festival, and in 1994, the film and interactive festivals were added. SXSWi includes very bright people in web design and development, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, and game development and design.
SXSWi has recently been the launchpad for web apps like Twitter, which won the SXSWi Web Award in 2007, and foursquare, which launched at SXSWi in 2009.
Anyway, we spent four days in Austin learning about everything from How to Design for the 15 Minutes to Monkeys with Internet Access, Clay Shirky’s (@cshirky) talk and probably my highlight of the conference.
Rather than comment on each of the panels and sessions we attended, I’ll cover a few of the recurring themes I found interesting and useful, the first of which is that product managers should be able to write code.
Of course, I’m referring to software product management here, and I’m not suggesting that PMs should write the production code. There are always exceptions to the rule, natch. Insert disclaimer.
Say it Ain’t So Rich, a Palm Pre?
Rich (@rmanalan), a borderline Apple fanboi, told me just weeks ago when I was contemplating my iPhone dilemma, that he’d never give up his iPhone. They’d have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers.
Apparently, Rich died, and his alien leaders haven’t done their homework because he told me yesterday he had given his iPhone to his wife and was currently rocking a Palm Pre.
I nearly rolled off the exercise ball I use as a chair.
What happened?
He assured me it wasn’t an alien invasion, but I was expecting that. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
So, we chatted a bit about the device and what he liked about it. I’m actually pretty familiar with the Palm Pre and its (very few) apologists, since I have friend (@unclenate) whom I like to tease about his Pre fanboi-ism.
It’s actually a pretty slick device, and if there weren’t an iPhone, it would give the Android devices a run for their money.
I’m not by any means a Palm hater either. I had one of the first 3Com-branded PalmPilots way back in the day. I probably still have it in a box somewhere in the basement. Read more
Fourface Exposes New Interface Paradigms
Thanks to a tweet from the @foursquare team and a post from TechCrunch, I have a new app for checking in to foursquare, Fourface.
Yeah, I know foursquare and location generally have been getting a lot of ink here and other place. Get used to it though because heading into SXSW later this week, location is expected to be all the rage.
Before you move on, this post isn’t really about foursquare. It’s about interface paradigms.
Fourface uses foursquare’s API and OAuth to present functional data visualizations. By functional, I mean you can use them to checkin to venues, not just browse data. Although, like any good visualization, Fourface does an elegant job modeling the checking data, and is reminiscent of Digg Labs, one of my favorite data pr0n sites.
This is interesting to me because normally data visualizations can’t be used to create the data they model. So really these are new interfaces based on visualizations. Read more
Is Simple Viable In Enterprise Land?
The tradeoff between simplicity and features has been around for ages, but it was hotly debated on the web by two of the most forward thinking software luminaries: Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky. Their back and forth debate hit a crescendo last year around the time I attended the wonderful Business of Software conference put on by Spolsky.
The general notion is that the 37 Signals crew sees simple designs as not only better for users, but better for the product as well. Doing less means less code, less bugs, less training and among other things, a more focused clear experience. They advocate having a real point of view about your application and driving it from your own compass. Customers can ask for things, and they may get em, but not just because they asked and the tie goes to 37 Signals.
There is a lot to like in this model and I have always been a huge 37 Signals fan. Through their blog and book, I have learned many new things and validated some things I already figured out. No doubt they have helped countless others as well. Incidentally, the same can be said of Joel and his books. These are smart, experienced people.
Joel and his product FogBugz would of course agree that simple is better. The issue arises when customers actually want something you don’t provide and they have options. See in the world of no competition life is easy. If you are the only car maker and you don’t have cupholders, big deal. People still need a car and you are the only game in town. Life is substantially different if you are an email provider who doesn’t allow attachments. You can be sure your customers are heading elsewhere.
But wait, adding attachments means another icon or label. More code. Perhaps a bit of training and potential confusion over how the feature works. Over time the storage of big files may me performance hit or storage issues (for you or the customer). What about maximum file sizes? You have to document that limitation and probably have some code to check and provide error messages. Should pricing change in this model? Hmm, this gets complex fast. Again, simple is so smart because software is so hard. Read more
Friday Ramblings
I started three different placeholders today that I thought might be post-worthy, but since it’s Friday afternoon, I decided to cram them all into a single post.
You understand.
Free does not mean open source.
Eddie tweeted a link yesterday that caught my eye called “20 Reasons Why Oracle is the World’s Largest Open Source Company“.
Interesting article and definitely much closer to true now that the Sun acquisition has closed.The problem is that several of the 20 reasons listed are not open source, e.g. Oracle Express Edition 10g. Yes, XE is free. No, it is not open source.
Open source means the source code is available to anyone to use and modify, under a free license. To the best of my knowledge, XE’s source code is not available. Is it?
So, open source is free, but free is not necessarily open source. Although I can understand that calling something freeware has a seedy connotation.
I love open source and use a lot of it, and one of the main reasons why I’ve been geeked about the Sun deal is all the open source it brings to Oracle.
Welcome people of Sun.
While we’re talking about Sun, we welcomed them into the fold this week. Yesterday, I started to see Sun groups appear on Connect, and our traffic numbers spiked yesterday and today. Read more
OK Go’s Epic Rube Goldberg Machine Video
This video is awesome and brilliant, even if you don’t care for the song. There’s so much going on each second that it’s difficult to focus on any one thing.
Even more interesting, you might notice it’s a single Steadicam shot, no cuts. Apparently, that shot took 60 takes over two days to get. Wired has more details of this epic win.
Too Much Information Makes People Something Something
When we started this team, three years ago, most people we talked to hadn’t heard of Facebook or Twitter and associated MySpace, assuming they’d heard of it, with something kids do.
Some people knew LinkedIn and that often helped get the wheels turning about social and how it could benefit work.
It was a lot like 1997 all over again, when the Internet’s best use cases for work began to gather momentum.
By 2000, every company had an external website and most also had internal ones.
The same is true for social; now three years later, seems like everyone tweets and facebooks, but I don’t feel like the work use cases have kept the pace.
I stated before that the best use cases have yet to be discovered, but it’s not happening as quickly as I expected.
Why? I suspect the firehose of information that comes out of Twitter and Facebook and n number of other sources has people completely overcommitted. Like Rich observed, we all try too hard to stay informed, which inevitably leads to backlash.
So, when you ask people to use something new or try this or that new product, they cry uncle. Read more
Do You Search or Organize?
Photo by mcfarlandmo on Flickr used under Creative Commons
On a web conference today, I caught a glimpse of someone’s inbox.
Protip: Close your email and IM if you’re presenting something. Unless of course, you want me to see your email folders, including the ones where you store “house” email.
But I digress. The person’s inbox had probably 40 folders, some of them with nested folders, which I’m guessing isn’t that uncommon.
As I’ve stated before, I used to organize email into logical folders, but filing email always took too much time. Inevitably, some email wouldn’t fit nicely into an existing folder, prompting a new folder, causing an infinite loop of organizing and reorganizing.
Years ago, I switched to the flat inbox approach. No folders, just one long list. I now have a local email store of 35,000 emails, plus another 4,000 on the server.
I’m generally able to find email I need based on attributes like, who I think sent it, when I received it, etc. For any others, I use Google Desktop. It’s a lot like my workspace and personal paperwork, i.e. organized clutter.
This system works well for me. As a hopelessly neurotic organizer, I’m freed from the obsessive compulsive desire to file everything. I usually have a good recall of where something is based on its attributes, which is kind of like organizing I suppose, without the filing bit.
Of course, there are occasions when I can’t find something by searching, which is maddening, but they’re rare.
I know a lot of people file email (and dead tree documents) and many even use filters and rules to file email for them.
This seems counterproductive to me. People complain endlessly about having too much digital communication, so why do they add meta-work to each artifact?
Maybe that’s why people cannot achieve inbox Zen because they enforce filing constraints on the process of “doing email”, rather than just doing it.
What do you think? Are you a filer? If so, why? Are you like me, i.e. a searcher? What works/does not work for you about that system?
Find the comments.
Update: Realizing I feel the same way about Facebook and Twitter lists, i.e. too much work. Search needs to be better.
Software is Hard
Photo by jared on Flickr used under Creative Commons
I’m convinced that innovation on the consumer side of the web is great for enterprise software.
I’m similarly convinced that innovation on the consumer side of the web is terrible for enterprise software.
Reading Marc Benioff’s post “The Facebook Imperative” on TechCrunch last week reminded me of these mutually-exclusive conclusions.
On the one hand, as Benioff points out, the consumer web has driven new methods for delivering software, i.e. the xSP model to make enterprise software more like Amazon.
Well before that, the browser was facilitating collaboration and distributed work within the walls of companies, as intranets and networked software applied the concepts of the WWW to their businesses.
And now, Facebook is completing the old question “why can’t enterprise software be more like blank?”
Obviously, the consumer web has driven major innovation into enterprise software.
It has also simultaneously driven complexity and cost.
What do I mean by that? Read more
We’ll Be at Chirp
Not long ago, Twitter announced its inaugural developer conference, whimsically called Chirp, would be held April 14 and 15, 2010 in San Francisco.
It may or may not be coincidental that the dates are one week earlier than Facebook’s annual f8 developer conference.
Anyway, Chirp looks to be an outstanding opportunity to learn more about Twitter, the Twitter API and the developers using it.
The agenda is equally interesting. April 14 is an expected day of conference sessions about the API, its features, OAuth, strategies, roadmap, all the usual content.
April 15 is a 24-hack day, starting at 6 PM and ending until the following day at 6 PM. It’s not that unusual for developer-focused conferences to provide a space for around-the-clock hacking, after all, coding in groups can often produces the best code.
This is the first time I’ve seen an entire day of a conference devoted solely to hacking, but then again, I’m not a developer.
I do play one on TV though.
I hear you asking why we’re going to a Twitter developer conference at all, which is a fair question.
Apply Caution to Interwebs, Rinse, Repeat
Photo by chokola from Flickr used under Creative Commons
Last week’s kerfuffle about foursquare and how it exposes you to would-be burglars was hilarious to me.
More accurately, it’s Twitter that poses the risk, which isn’t a new problem. Foursquare encourages people to socialize their game-playing by adding friends from Facebook, Twitter and GMail. As with any service, this is to their advantage.
Although, I would argue foursquare is not a classic social network and should not be played with the same cast of interwebs characters with whom you tweet, the majority of people join foursquare and immediately invite their entire list of followers.
So many people merrily broadcast their movements about town to a network of people they “know” from Twitter. Not something I’d recommend, but hey, what do I know.
This obviously isn’t a fourquare problem.
The tongue-in-cheek burglary site points out a different problem, i.e. that if you’ve authenticated Twitter, you can broadcast your checkins there as well, which in turn announces your location not only to your followers, but to everyone on the intertubes thanks to Twitter search, Google and Bing.
By announcing to everyone that you’re not home, you’re making yourself easier to rob.
ZOMG. Read more
Raimonds Updates ActiveRecord Oracle Adapter
Ruby enthusiast and friend of the ‘Lab Raimonds Simanovskis (@rsim) just released a maintenance update to his ActiveRecord oracle-enhanced-adapter, bringing it to version 1.2.4.
This will be the final version of the adapter for Rails 2, after which he’ll move it to Rails 3.
Last month, he updated ruby-plsql.
As you know, we’re big fans of Ruby in all its incarnations, and if you’re an Oracle developer, you know PL/SQL. So, the great thing about Raimonds’ work with Oracle and Ruby is that allows you to build dynamic web apps against data in Oracle databases leveraging skills you already have.
Of course, now the Oracle database stable also includes MySQL, which is the database for Rails apps.
So now you can use Raimonds’ adapters to build dynamic and modern web apps against Oracle databases using your existing skills and expand those skills by tinkering with MySQL and the tens of thousands of Rails gems out there built for it.
It’s a good time to be an Oracle developer.
Are you planning to learn MySQL and/or Rails now that the Sun acquisition has closed?
Find the comments.
Coined a New Term: Computer Plumber
I did some printer support over the weekend, which reminded me of the whole “facebook login” fiasco from earlier in the month.
Long story short, the person I was supporting couldn’t get Windows to recognize the printer.
The PC tower was under a desk and in a difficult spot to reach. The area was so snug that the cable actually did feel like it was in a port, but when I finally got in there, turns out the printer wasn’t plugged into the back of the PC at all.
The USB cable was resting snugly between two other cables directly over the port, but it wasn’t actually making contact. I finally found an open USB port nestled between the network port and two occupied USB ports.
No way I could have found that just by touch.
This diagnosis made the person feel stupid, and before you agree, let’s examine the facts.
This isn’t as obvious to everyone as it may seem to you. The instructions from the printer manufacturer can’t be specific for every single computer configuration out there. Case in point, what if you have an iMac?
The iMac’s design removes the need to dig under a desk, and the ports are separated enough to ensure you don’t get the same bogus feeling that a cable is plugged in when it ain’t.
Still, if you had an iMac, you might not be able to follow the instructions for a standard PC tower. So, this was a combination of generic instructions and cost/space-saving design.
Add to that the fact that this particular user wasn’t very spry and couldn’t dig around like a computer plumber under the desk. Read more
Learning from Buzz
In life if something doesn’t work out, at least you can learn from it. That is the power of doing. The beauty of being a human being is that we are exceptionally good at learning from others. As I watched Google launch Buzz, and the ensuing mess, it got me thinking. Why did a project like Buzz not exactly work out (as of yet) when something like Twitter did? They are both kinda the same, right?
I am sure the guys at Google have a whole lot so say on the matter, but from my outside perspective I gleaned a few lessons:
1. Big Bang is Tough – Anytime you do a big launch you are placing a bet that you got it perfect. The fact is that you never will. There are always people who love you and those that can find something bad to say about a free pizza. Such is life. So we best just accept it and do something we think is great and hopefully, slowly, others will find us, and agree. Making everyone happy is not a real goal. Let’s just make ourselves, and maybe a few others happy. Remember Cuil?
2. Solve A Problem, Don’t Create More - The reason a site like Twitter worked was that it filled a niche. It enabled very simple broadcasting (and consumption) of information. No one on twitter expects a reply. Email is different. IM is different. Those are tools for private communications and they work very well. However, when you want to tell the world that you slept in and missed the bus, where do you turn? Thankfully we have Twitter. Whether we think it is useful or not is irrelevant, it fills a missing element in the communications continuum. Buzz was just doing the same thing. Was anyone really asking for more noise in their inbox? Doesn’t everyone already feel overwhelmed by the volume they already have? If not, just turn off the spam filter and enjoy.
3. Networks Hate Competition - Why is it that we are ok with a million twitter clients but not Buzz? It comes down to the network. Personally, I’d love a single network, but my request to the Internet Gods has fallen on deaf ears and I have both Twitter and Facebook. The problem is not having the network or assembling it – It is managing it. The whole point of a network is to communicate with it. I don’t think people have the energy to be witty in 3 places – it is hard enough to blow people’s minds regularly on Twitter. In fact, I have even linked my Twitter and Facebook publishing to avoid just this issue.
4. People Hate Change - I don’t care what you are doing, if people are even remotely content, you will lose. You need some serious dissatisfaction for people to change what they do. If you ask them to lift a finger, even the baby pinky finger in zero gravity, forget it. You ever wonder why there are no Facebook group called “I can find 100,000,000 people who can’t live without the next Facebook redesign”. Did you ever wonder why iphone apps took off and dashboard widgets never did? We are all lazy, and telling me I now have to do something to get what I already have is a non-starter. Uh, no thanks.
Ok, so I never like pointing out issues without at least shining a light on possible answers.
The net of this for me is that if you want to play in this space, don’t copy. If you are into collaboration, realize that the 1:1 and 1:Many problems are solved quite well. However, that means that the small group collaboration (1:Some) market is wide open. Being able to share very, very easily with a few people privately could be a very useful tool people might adopt. They might also just stick with email (see #4).
Another possible answer here is to tame the noise, as Rich has alluded to. Now if you want solve this problem and unify existing networks and magically figure out what is important I commend you. Just realize (a) that is a monster problem, (b) do it for yourself and no one else, and (c) you need something to call your own. No product built on someone elses value lasts long without their own value. Amazon sells other people’s books, but has an incredible end to end buying experience. Google maps uses someone elses map data, but now adds user maps, street view, etc. So aggregating is not enough, think hard about what you will do that no one else does. Yes, I know, it will be your algorithm.
Technology is tough. It moves very fast, people can be unforgiving and failures are very public, but don’t let that stop you. Every now and then people will root for you if you step out into the darkness like Google did with Buzz. The fact is that no one remembers the critics. So get out there and be amazing.
My Anti-Social Experiment
In an IM conversation I had with Paul this morning, I decided to embark on an experiment. I’ve decided to drop out of all things social (online) for a few weeks. This includes Twitter, Buzz, Facebook, blogging, etc. The only thing this doesn’t include is email and IM — those are essential.
My online activities can be broken down to about 95% consumption and only 5% contribution. I know… I should give back more. If I were a “Jake”, I would. The thing is, I get more value from the intertubes by consuming it. I have no real excuse for not giving back as much as I consume. Reciprocity is something I need to practice more in general.
Anyway, the big reason I’m doing this is that since last Tuesday, I’ve sunk a lot of time into futzing with Google Buzz. That’s time I’ll never get back. Meanwhile, I have yet to see the real value of Google Buzz. Before Buzz, conversations and information sharing were already fragmented. Between Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., it has become increasingly difficult to consume information — especially for someone who spends 95% of their online time doing it.
The goal of my experiment is to figure out if I’ll miss using these social tools as a way to find new and interesting content — and, more importantly, if I’ll miss out on something I might find important. I didn’t include Google Reader in the list because out of all the tools I use online Reader is actually one that brings order to chaos… even if I have 1000+ unread postings. In the end, I’m hoping to filter out some of the noise out of my day. I spend 9-12 hours staring at a screen and would love it if there was less clutter that distracted me from actually getting things done. If I happen to miss one of these channels at the end of this experiment, I’m going to figure out what I miss and why, then I’m going to try to improve my process in order to bring order to it all. This all started because Paul sent out a link on OraTweet (Oracle’s internal version of Twitter) pointing to the “Side effects of developing for yourself” — a post about the positive consequences from solving a problem for yourself by the creator of Instapaper. Well, this is my problem… and this is the start of how I’m planning to solve it.
Am I the only one with this problem?
Facebook Knows When You Need a Hug
Halfway through a blah post about Google Buzz, I ran across this post about the correlation between Facebook relationship status and happiness.
I’ve largely ignored Facebook for a while now, and it didn’t occur to me until Pete Warden released his initial observations about Facebook and US geography how much statistical gold exists there.
Turns out Facebook has a team of people crunching data and producing analysis like today’s gem, and they keep a happiness index for the US based on word sentiment analysis of status updates. Sounds like Twistori, only more serious.
I find statistical and data visualization pr0n fascinating, and I’m both geeked to see this analysis and mildly unnerved that it exists at all.
Not surprised though.
With 400 million users pumping their emotions into Facebook, it only makes sense that someone would mine the data. Google does it with keyword searches, e.g. Google Flu Trends.
The emotional aspect is interesting. Sure, analyzing sentiment based on words isn’t foolproof; who out there hasn’t had a sarcasm fail over email or IM?
Still, with so many active users, Facebook could produce a decent, real-time emotional pulse of the World, which is pretty cool and totally scary all at once.
For example, check out the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index for the week Michael Jackson died. It dipped below zero pretty noticeably, indicating how Facebook’s US users were feeling.
Of course, these trends help (supposedly) to target better ads, e.g. relationship status and Valentine’s Day suggestions, but it starts to get creepy when ads target changes here, e.g. grief counseling based on an RIP status message or a recent change in relationship status.
And of course, even though we all agreed to the terms, selling these data and they accompanying analyses walks the ever blurring privacy line.
Anyway, something to think about next time you update your Facebook status.
So, what do you think? Surprised? Intrigued? Hoping to game the system with bogus updates?
Discuss in comments cause that’s where the good stuff happens. Mulling over a post on that too.
The Obligatory Google Buzz Review
- Don’t require GMail for Buzz. It should have launched as a stand-alone app with close links to Gmail and the ability to launch inside Gmail (as it does today). I find it confusing that you can use Buzz from your mobile devise in a stand-alone app, but you can’t from your desktop. One of my Google buddies did tell me to be patient when I told him about this, so maybe that’s in the works. Either way, it should have launched as a stand-alone app. The motivation for doing so means that you can capture people who don’t have and want GMail accounts, but maybe it was Google’s intention to require GMail. Also, for those that don’t think your social network should start with your inbox (I’m not one of them BTW), this would have been a good way to separate the two.
- Fix the signal-to-noise algorithms. I ended up sinking lots of valuable time avoiding and muting items I was being forced to see over and over again. This is not something I expect from Google. Fix it.
- All the usual patterns we’ve come to know and love from Twitter would be nice: hashtag support, search, trending, and a solid API out the gate are keys to success.
- Better profile pages. I appreciate Google’s sense and discipline for spartan user interfaces, but when you give me my own page to allow me to share a piece of me to the world, I’d love it if you can allow me to add my own flair and dress it with my own unique style. It doesn’t need to be fancy… just allow me to change the background and colors around and use a better looking font. Google profiles remind me of profiles you’d see in a company directory, bleh.
- Media handling. I love that when I put a URL in, it extracts images from the site, very cool.
- Longer postings. I love that I can post more than 140 characters, but the UI serves as a subtle suggestion that this isn’t a place for posting essays.
- Private postings. I’m not sure why I’d post a private message that only I could see, but I do love that I can share privately to a group of people.
- Shortcut keys. I love that Buzz has some of it’s siblings DNA and allows me to wade through posts using the same shortcut keys.
- Aggregation of other sites. I love that Buzz follows FriendFeed’s lead on allowing users to share more than just messages but also twitter posts, blog posts, reader items, flickr images, etc. I just wish we had the ability to cross post to Twitter/Facebook… highly unlikely this will happen though and I understand.
