January 2011
1 post
Samsung Announces “Free the TV Challenge” Winners →
Jeremiah, congratulations on your win with Samsung’s Free the TV app challenge.
October 2010
3 posts
some services will not be available for the rest...
Ops: Our AC unit is dripping water on our servers in the 3rd floor data closet. Electronics usually don't perform well when wet.We are going to power them off and cover them until the leak is fixed. The good news is that its not leaking on our networking equipment so we should be able to work through this.
IT: Actually, no need to power anything down just yet. We deployed a bucket on top of the rack...
Engineer 1: I hate to be a stickler, but did anyone write any unit tests for the bucket v1.0 ?
Engineer 2: Please also keep in mind that our drip coverage goal is over 80%...
Engineer 3: I keep getting this:
*** bucket overflow detected ***: ogr2ogr terminated ======= Backtrace: ========= /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(fortify_fail+0x48)[0xb7805548] /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6[0xb7803670] /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6[0xb7802f77] /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(snprintf_chk+0x34)[0xb7802e64] /usr/lib/libgdal1.5.0.so.1(_ZN10OGRFeature16GetFieldAsStringEi+0x36f)
/usr/lib/libgdal1.5.0.so.1(_ZN18OGRMySQLTableLayer13CreateFeatureEP
ogr2ogr(gxx_personality_v0+0x1c9)[0x8049221]
I think QA must be stress testing with the fire hose.
QA Engineer: QA reported the issue days ago
What does a $10 million dollar ad campaign look...
Whatever it looks like, Apple will no longer be running a $10 million campaign for Adidas1. Of course, one would assume a campaign like this would include complex and extravagant custom integrations, but let’s say it did not. What might $10 million buy?
Because ad rates can range dramatically depending on targeting, topic, geo, time frame, etc, I’ll use Adify’s network as a...
“When he enlisted me in the dressing of a deer or the beheading and plucking of a...”
– Koontz, Dean. “Lunch Lessons.” Saveur. Oct. 2010.
August 2010
2 posts
Dowling Duncan redesign the US bank notes →
I love the mix of form, function, and history.
(via jeremiahlee)
July 2010
8 posts
Metaweb: Barcodes for words?
How does your site handle a search for “Boston” when it’s a city in Massachusetts, 26 other cities around the world, a basketball team, and a band?
Metaweb has an interesting solution to that problem.
Find more information on Metaweb’s site.
6 tags
Mobile App Development - Consider a Framework
Does your company already have a web application that would make a stellar mobile app, but you are concerned about the investment to produce the product? This investment can seem daunting and prohibitive as it can require:
Mobile engineers specializing in one or several mobile platforms: Android (Dalvik Java), iPhone (Objective-C, C++), RIM (Java, J2ME), Palm WebOS (C++, JavaScript, HTML, AJAX)...
Hiring Tools, Job listings, & Candidate...
After working as a product manager in the hiring space I could not help but pick up some Human Resources hiring best practices. Most of these items are common sense. If a company you interview with does not employ them, it is a likely sign of internal disorganization and poor communication skills.
Auto responses to candidate applications are fine. Actually, they are great because they validate...
10 Free Wire-framing tools →
— Mashable
“When it comes to implementing science in retailing, the ‘missionary’...”
– Ananth Raman, The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance
Rocket Science Retailing →
Ananth Raman’s new book The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance offers a practical guide for retailers to implement analytics campaigns with store sales data. This book is targeted at physical stores, but web product parallels are not difficult to intuit.
Q & A exert form the Harvard Business Working Knowledge Blog
Martha...
Chris Glode: 6 Simple Steps to Being a Great... →
I’ve been doing some thinking lately about what I like about product management, and in the process compiled this list of tips:
Tip #1 - Focus on the Problem, Not the Solution
Our inclination as hominids is to solve problems. Cold? Me make fire. Hungry? Me bake bread.
You have to train…
June 2010
2 posts
Freemium vs Free Trial →
Check out this comprehensive argument for ditching the Freemium model by Eroc Northam from EasyBroker.
Online music, the death of Lala, and how...
I enjoy music. I’ll admit it, I cannot rattle off song names, bands, or artists from the last 25 years, but I know what I like. My favorite is that one that goes like do doo da dat dat and that other Desperado song, sung by Linda Ronstadt… not the one by that flying bird group. Oh and I like Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me.
My sad musical taste aside, I loved using the...
May 2010
13 posts
Document, Documenting, Documented.
Today we documented:
Back-end Code - Ruby, Rails etc
Front-end Code - CSS
Product Vendors - Companies we’re in bed with
Common Internal Terms - Nicknames for features
Site Processes - Getting from A to B
Subscription and Billing Information - greenbacks
Administrative Considerations - How to manage users
Typical Support Issues - How to manage users’ problems
Development...
Final Hand Off
Yesterday I put the final touches on the product documentation. It really is less product documentation and more a “how to use administer” the product guide. Today I arrived once again to empty offices. My only task was a meeting at 11am for the official handoff to the person who will be supporting our paying customers. I was surprised that someone who worked physically so closely to...
Fragile, Brittle, Likely to Break
Today is our Senior Software Engineer’s and company President’s last day. The Jr. Software Engineer and designer moved to new offices. This afternoon left me alone in the “south wing” of our two room office. I was left to contemplate a thought from our senior engineer:
When we’re working with the code every day it flows and moves; it’s very much alive. Once we...
PUSH!
Found a few last bugs this morning. They are easy fixes that will drastically improve user experience. It is funny how a small change can completely remove confusion. Or further how presenting a feature in a slightly different way can significantly increase it’s visibility.
With QA completed and the team’s sign off, our Sr. Software Engineer deployed one last time to production. At...
Why did the drop down box default to an odd...
Oh yes… in Ruby the nil value is 4.
Automatic Emails
FYI… if you replicate a customer’s account on the QA server to test a potential bug, make sure to turn automatic emails off.
“… it’s much more accurate to compare software development to war than it...”
– Effective UI. Jonathan Anderson, John McRee, Robb Wilson and the EffectiveUI Team. O’Reilly, 2010.
A Need for Explicit Goals
I am out of the office today, heading to a less than liberal locale for a family event. Traveling takes me out of my comfort zone and always kicks my reflexive side into gear.
I have been trying to identify what our team could have planned, built and/or delivered differently to avoid abandoning the product.
Questions
Did we focus on the wrong features?
Did we not built enough, fast enough?
Did...
5 Days Remaining
This is the final week of our team’s work on the product. Design and development of new features has halted. I’m putting items from the backlog back into the icebox hoping they don’t get freezer burn. They shouldn’t, I used the Ziplock fresh saver bags.
Today’s agenda is to give the iteration sitting on our QA servers an extremely thorough work out. Every production...
A Nice Note
Our team just received this from one of our business customer’s customers:
You guys have the best [INSERT common problem we solve with cool technology] platform I’ve seen. If you’re ever looking for people to join your outreach team, please contact me.
To Kill or Let Limp Along
Every company is different, so to offer some perspective it may important to know our company’s structure and a brief product history. Then I’ll address our team’s first road fork.
Company History
My company started as a department of a medium sized firm in the education space. As the product grew a decision was made to break the department off and wrap it in it’s own...
The Startup. Beginning at the end.
For the last 4 months I have worked with an awesome team:
Senior Software Engineer sweet, funny, and dedicated to the iterative process
Jr Software Engineer quiet, well read, and a JavaScript whiz
Designer / Front End Engineer thoughtful, tall, and UX focused
Company President confident, trusting, an active participator in the iterative process
Of course, I’m the product manager....