"One of our liveliest discussions was on the subject of open vs. closed models of innovation. We examined the contrasting approaches of Google vs. Apple."
Open vs. Closed Innovation: How Much Evil Is Just Right? - DavidRogers.biz
"One of our liveliest discussions was on the subject of open vs. closed models of innovation. We examined the contrasting approaches of Google vs. Apple."
David Packard" “More organizations die of indigestion than starvation” - Bob Sutton
Reading this, I feel proud I joined in '96 when these guys were alive.
I have blogged about it before, but it is a good time to revisit David Packard's wisdom. His quote in the title is wonderful. The worst managers and companies often seem to be doing too many things, making things too complicated for insiders and outsiders, and suffering from scattered attention rather than a sharp focus on what matters most. If you think about Apple, a big part of their brilliance is how few things they do -- they have a remarkably small product line for such a big company, for example.
I especially love Dave's 11 Simple Rules, which he first presented at a company meeting in 1958 but are just as valid now as they were then. Here are the first five:
1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be "a breeze."
2. Build up the other person's sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along with him.
3. Respect the other man's personality rights.Respect as something sacred the other fellow's right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.
4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical "phony" who stoops to it.
5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.
Young people: A phone is for talking?
Reminds me of my Masters Thesis at Stanford back in '99. Feels like an Ron ago.
TEXTING GENERATION DOESN'T SHARE BOOMERS' TASTE FOR TALK
Boomers in their mid-50s and early 60s are the only ones still talking.
The fall of the call is driven by 18- to 34-year-olds, whose average monthly voice minutes have plunged from about 1,200 to 900 in the past two years, according to research by Nielsen.
Texting among 18- to 24-year-olds has more than doubled in the same period, from an average of 600 messages a month two years ago to more than 1,400 texts a month, according to Nielsen.
Young people say they avoid voice calls because the immediacy of a phone call strips them of the control that they have over the arguably less-intimate pleasures of texting, e-mailing, Facebooking or tweeting. They even complain that phone calls are by their nature impolite, more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving text.
Customer reviews help both doctors and patients
Useful tool for bringing the "whole customer experience" to light?
Social media meets health care
A. Patients stick to things they think they are qualified to evaluate. I think doctors don’t recognize the whole patient experience, but patients do: whether the parking was accessible and whether the receptionist was polite and whether they got into the room and sat for 45 minutes or whether they were seen promptly and were able to communicate with the doctor in a way that was pleasing to them. It is notable we saw very few reviews saying they got the wrong diagnosis, or surgery was bad.
Mobile-friendly: The mobile web optimization guide
A force of nature?
It's easy to see why people wish to make their sites mobile friendly; Gartner research suggests that by 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. And don't forget other visits from devices such as games consoles like Nintendo Wii, DSi, web-enabled TVs, in-car browsers and the like.
Many customers are already using mobile devices as their main method of Web access, particularly in emerging markets — theJuly 2009 Statistical Report on Internet Development in Chinastates that the proportion of [people] accessing the Internet by mobile increased enormously from 39.5% in late 2008 to 46% in June 2009, while the proportion of using desktops and laptops decreased. That translates to 150 million people. In the developed world, many have a mobile device as their secondary method of accessing the Web while they’re out and about.
Don’t Be Ugly By Accident! « OkTrends
Brilliant example of datamining ambient (pre-existing) datasets. What else can we learn by deploying correlation searches in the deluge of data that's floating invisibly around us?
If you're anything like me, you usually think of your pics in terms of content: Here's me smiling. Here's me looking tough. Here's me in Hawaii with that wacky turtle. And so on. Today, however, we'll analyze photography from a numerical angle—we'll discuss flash, focus, and aperture instead. We feel like people don't really think about these things when they choose a profile photo, and yet, as we shall see, their misuse can seriously mess you up.
As always, our data comes from dating siteOkCupid, one of the largest, and most interesting, datasets on the web. This article aggregates 11.4 million opinions on what makes a great photo.
Beautiful "Evites" from @iizLiz
http://www.paperlesspost.com - online invites that look high-end/ classy. Makes evite look "ghetto"
LukeW | Fast and Real
A good reminder for us...
Real
Real refers to using realistic data and environments to design. Get your hands on as much actual data as you can. The more real data you consider while designing, the better you'll be able to define the right product experience.
Real data is not Lorem Ipsum. That just fills space and results in layouts based on "wishful thinking" instead of reality. Designing without real content/data is art at best. Decoration at worst.
Real data also gets you to a scalable designs.
The other part of real is environment: realistic context. Get into the actual code your product will run in as fast as possible. Look at your designs on the actual device you are targeting. Get out to where your product will actually be used.
Sent from iPhone
The $75 Google Android Apple iPad Tablet, Sort Of - Gady Epstein - Beijing Dispatch - Forbes
It's coming! These Chinese low-cost Android devices may not be ready for primetime yet, but if history is any guide they will be. It all depends on how quickly/effectively Google is able to perfect its free, open-source Android UI, so design-driven companies like HTC and Motorola no longer enjoy competitive advantage from dropping custom UI shells on top of Android to make it usable or attractive.
Google's hiring of WebOS head Mathias is indication they're pointed in the right direction. Google would like nothing more than Google-powered Android/Chrome devices to be everywhere, as ubiquitous sockets for its real business of monetizing off web services.
For today's big name tech HW companies, the big question is how valuable their brand names and entrenched marketing/distribution arms are -- in the wake of no name, low cost upstarts. I've been wrong before, and history also shows HP and Dell laoptops/netbooks dominating in ways that are antithetical to my hypothesis.
An excerpt:
"Apple has yet to roll out the iPad in China, and Google’s business plan hit a rough patch here this year, but Chinese masterinnovators
"It’s the best of all worlds! Unless you want everything a real iPad or real Android device like the new Dell Streak really has to offer, and you want to pay for it. Or, you know, an HP tablet that runs on Microsoft Windows, if you’re into that. Why do that when you can get an ePad or a FlyPad via Taobao, the popular online marketplace? A quick search finds this Android-supporting iPad ePad starting as low as 554 RMB, or $82. Why pay nearly 10 times that much for an iPad, the company asks, when you can get this made-in-China product, with “Chinese characteristics,” instead? And another seller openly admits their product is a “shanzhai” (rough translation: pirated) iPad,selling for as low as 520 RMB, or $77."
Sent from iPhone
The End of Outsourcing (As We Know It)
Interesting... A technology lifecycle / Web 2.0 model for human labor? Where new-fangled web companies have the natural competitive advantage?
An excerpt:
"In the next five years outsourcing as we know it will disappear. The legion of Indian service providers will be sidelined or absorbed. U.S. and European companies that pioneered this corner of the high tech industry will suffer similar fates if they don't wake up. Who will emerge as the new leaders? Google (GOOG) and Amazon.com (AMZN), brands that we associate with search and retail, will become better known for outsourcing.
"Ludicrous? Not if you follow this industry. Desktop computers yielded to laptops. Web portals AOL (AOL), MSN (MSFT), and Yahoo! (YHOO) are giving way to social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Software once distributed by disk is now available as apps over the Web—often for less than the cost of a slice of pizza. And so it goes. The same Darwinian process is creating a fresh ecosystem in outsourcing, one that will usher in an era of consolidation and a new way of working with clients."
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