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Unboxing my latest Apple product

Since no Apple product should go without an online documentary of it’s unboxing process, I present to you, <voice type=”monster truck rally”>The Amazing Unboxing of the Apple Battery Recall Replacement Battery!</voice>

Not quite as sexy as an iPod.

In-car hillclimb footage

A little something for your @Friday folder — here’s some fantastic in-car footage from an Audi RS4 and an Audi R8. The soundtrack alone is worth it:

Audi RS4 Hillclimb (A record-breaking run, from what I gather): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1806221753710392507

Audi R8 Hillclimb: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6184680728064832823

(Via Autoblog)

Feature-bloat and customer satisfaction

In my day job as a Product Manager of mobile development tools, there’s a frequent struggle between feature-bloat and a desire to simplify the development process. Even when you know that it will improve the user experience, it can be difficult to build a business case for removing features or re-factoring a user interface. Because of this, I’m always excited to find any tangible data on the ROI of simplifying complex technology. (ie., It’s not enough to say “customers will like it better”, and it’s not easy to find compelling data to clearly demonstrate a tie between improved usability and improved consumer uptake.)

Even still, war stories and the occasional bits of research do help the cause. For example, the post “Capability, usability and feature fatigue” offers a short summary of a Harvard Business Review article titled, “Defeating Feature Fatigue“, which features the following quotes:

“Before use, capability mattered more to the participants than usability, but after use, usability drove satisfaction rates. As a result, satisfaction was higher with the simpler version of the product.”

“If companies conduct market research by asking consumers to evaluate products without using them, too much weight will be given to capability, and the result will likely be products with too many features.”

This idea ties nicely to another Harvard article, titled, “Feature Bloat: The Product Manager’s Dilemma“, which also caught my eye.

(Via In-store good or at-home good?)

GPS + Compass for location-aware mobile search

Found this nice piece on an application of geo-aware (location based) mobile search:

What’s that? In Japan, phone has answer

“If you stand on a street corner in Tokyo today, you can point a specialized cellphone at a hotel, a restaurant or a historical monument, and with the press of a button the phone will display information from the Internet describing the object you are looking at.”

The technology is a combination of GPS + compass + internet connectivity. With the GPS chip on-board, the phone knows where it is, and with the compass it can tell which direction you are facing. Using that information, the phone can perform a very accurate location-based search.

It would be interesting to combine this technology with what the ZoneTag folks are doing on location-based image recognition. It’s pretty easy to imagine mobile devices that can tell exactly what you are looking at, translate signs, give directions, and pull in community feedback to help navigate and explore the world. Anyone who’s experienced the joy of wandering foreign cities can appreciate the value in having your mobile keep an eye out for restaurants and activities nearby that you won’t want to miss!

Google Group setup headache

Tip of the day: If you’re setting up a Google Group, don’t try to invite 400+ people at once no matter how legitimate the group is — it will get you “flagged for review”, which will leave your group “pending approval” for an undetermined amount of time.

And how do I know? I’m continuing to wait an undetermined amount of time ;-) I suppose in hindsight that I should have issued invites in small blocks rather then all at once. But then I didn’t know it was going to be a problem. I guess from Google’s perspective, inviting hundreds of people could be seen as a convoluted means of spamming people.

So.. if you’re one of the 400+ people who I’m emailed about a Google Group invite “coming soon”… well… there’s been an unforeseen delay.

—
[Update: May 2nd, 2006] It took two weeks, but the group was finally authorized and invites went out today! Woo hoo!

Looking across the pond for new media innovation

I just watched the BBC demo from mix06. Stunning. But while watching it, it occurred to me that the BBC’s unique position of being publicly funded is a huge advantage for adopting new media technology, and that advertising-funded media in the States seems to be battling against these same advancements.

Since UK citizens fund the BBC (at least, that’s my simplified interpretation), it is in the BBC’s interest to make their content easily available to all (paying) citizens. In other words, DVR’s, IPTV, and video iPod’s can be embraced rather then feared. Additionally, since their funding is somewhat fixed and consistent (ie., no spiky ad revenue), it is also in the BBC’s interest to reduce content distribution costs where possible to free up money for new content creation (ie., P2P file sharing amongst their customers is a good thing since it cuts the BBC’s direct bandwidth costs.)

Where it gets particularly interesting though, is that the BBC should be in no way threatened by the idea that their viewers will be copying, re-mixing, fast-forwarding, place-shifting, and sharing the content. With no need to track ad impressions, there’s no dreaded “30-second-skip” attacking legacy business models. Surly they still need to track customer interest to know which shows to fund, but that seems a lot easier then developing content based on how lucrative a viewing audience is for advertisers.

What’s great about this situation is how well it demonstrates the connection between business models and the ability to embrace change and adopt to consumer needs. In the States, we are at risk of legislation making it illegal to watch movies on one’s computer and even more illegal to share a video with a friend. In the UK, IPTV and P2P networks might just save the country money.

SXSWi — quick post

Instead of blogging throughout SXSW Interactive (there were plenty of bloggers there), I decided to wait until after the conference and pull together a few highlights from my notes. I’m still working on that, but until then I have a few quick comments about the conference.

First of all, it was fantastic. It really was one of the better conferences I’ve been to in a long time (and I’m glad that was the case, since this was the first tech conference I’ve paid for completely out of my own pocket — I even had to take vacation time to attend!) The last SXSWi I attended was during the down-fall of the dot-com economy, so the conference wasn’t exactly ripe with enthusiasm; However, the recent spike in entrepreneurialism and innovation happening on the web was certainly fueling the excitement this year. The conference was practically over-booked with friendly people.

My second comment is more of a general conference-going tip: For whatever reason, presentations and panels rarely end up being about the topic listed in the schedules. Because of this, you want to pick sessions based on: (1) Whether you have an opportunity to learn something new (ie., it’s a topic that’s at least somewhat new to you); and (2) The actual people presenting, rather then the topic. For example, even if you weren’t interested in Darknets, “The Future of Darknets” panel included Ian Clarke (of the Freenet Project) and Kori Bernards (VP Corp Comm for the MPAA)! You knew that was going to be a heated discussion. And the “Interview with Henry Rollins” — no way was I going to miss that!

In the end, I think part of what made the conference so enjoyable was the opportunity to go to panels and sessions that weren’t just mobile-specific. If my attendance had been company-paid, I would have been in all (instead of some) of the mobile panels, and I’d be spending my evenings writing up trip reports instead of out having drinks with other conference goers. Call it a mixed-blessing… but I’m looking forward to next years’ conference already!

Greasemonkey-away GMail popups

Along with adding Chat to Google Mail, the engineers seem to have gone a little pop-up crazy with the latest GMail updates. Those who’s accounts have chat activated know what I’m talking about — the pop-up’s on every person’s name are driving me mad! Thankfully I’m not the only one, and a solution has been found via a simple Greasemonkey script: “Solution to annoying GMail Talk popup“