4 Shots of Espresso

Samsung Announces “Free the TV Challenge” Winners

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:05:16 -0500

Samsung Announces “Free the TV Challenge” Winners:

Jeremiah, congratulations on your win with Samsung’s Free the TV app challenge.

some services will not be available for the rest of the day

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 13:39:00 -0400

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 like?

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:16:19 -0400

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 baseline. In Q2, 2010 the beauty and fashion sector on Adify’s network averaged a banner rate of $3.14 CPM².

$10,000,000 would buy:

3,184,713,376 impressions
31,847,134 clicks (@1% CTR)

Yes, that is over three billion impressions. This means that every person in the United States of America (all 307 million of us³) could see the ad slightly more than 10 times each. I don’t even think I have seen the Geico squealing pig ad 10 times yet, and Hulu Plus is actively trying.

Frommer, Dan. Adidas Gives Up On Apple’s iAds Because Steve Jobs Is Too Much Of A Control Freak — Scuttlebutt. 2 Oct. 2010. ↩
Adify Vertical Gauge Q2 2010. ↩
United States Population Estimates, 2009. U.S. Census Bureau. ↩

"When he enlisted me in the dressing of a deer or the beheading and plucking of a turkey, he would..."

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 15:30:51 -0400

“When he enlisted me in the dressing of a deer or the beheading and plucking of a turkey, he would make the point that our food isn’t just something we buy, that if we don’t labor directly to produce it, we need to remember that others do labor to provide it for us and that often their labor is of an unpleasant kind that we prefer not to do ourselves. This is true not just of the food we eat but of everything we need in life, and its a truth about which we become ever more ignorant as our technological progress steadily distances us from the sources of life’s necessities.”

- Koontz, Dean. “Lunch Lessons.” Saveur. Oct. 2010.

Yelp decided to compete with Groupon. Why not, when they have...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:52:45 -0400

Yelp decided to compete with Groupon. Why not, when they have the right channel, committed users, and B2B facing sales / marketing teams.

Dowling Duncan redesign the US bank notes

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:48:55 -0400

Dowling Duncan redesign the US bank notes:

I love the mix of form, function, and history.

(via jeremiahlee)

Metaweb: Barcodes for words?

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:44:00 -0400

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.

Mobile App Development - Consider a Framework

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:00:00 -0400

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) and Symbian (C++)
UI designers familiar with cross-platform mobile conventions
Retooled services for mobile
Extensive QA process to identify and treat a motley collection of platform specific bugs
Constant monitoring of OS updates and bug fixes
Mobile marketing initiatives
Monitoring new distribution channels
Evaluating the impact on user life-cycle
Updated business case and P&L estimates

I am sure that I have missed some other reasons investing in mobile applications can appear daunting, but ultimately the point is that this type of investment poses a significant risk. If your company is approaching this decision it might consider using a development framework to reduce expenses by condensing programing language requirements, increasing QA consistency, and reducing impact on the current system architecture.

One opensource framework I have worked with in the past, and enjoyed, is PhoneGap. It enables products to be delivered on many mobile devices with a singular code base. Of course there are UI differences that must be accounted for between mobile platforms so that applications look, act, and feel as users expect them to. Using a PhoneGap type framework significantly reduces product complexity, speeding time to market and reducing costs.

Here’s a brief video description of the platform and how to get up and running. The video features Jeremiah Cohick and was produced by Digital Dandelion.

Even though PhoneGap was a great solution for this project it may not be the best alternative for every mobile application. The deciding factor here is how much your application’s use of device inputs (e.g. Accelerometer, GPS, Camera, Compass) will stray from typical use cases. Even if you don’t end up using this or a similar framework, the initial investigation is worth the time.

For more information: PhoneGap | Sony WebSDK | Mavericks Application Source Code

Hiring Tools, Job listings, & Candidate Interactions - HR Best Practices

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:00:00 -0400

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 the candidate’s submission and give the hiring manager time to complete an initial resume screen.
Auto rejection letters are fine if an initial resume screen determines a candidate is not qualified.
Auto rejection letters are not OK when the HR team has had any form of direct communication with a candidate e.g. email, phone screen, in person interview. Auto rejection letters at this stage demean the candidate and hurt the company brand image within its industry.
Status reports are important. Candidates can and should know that they are a strong possibility for a position, that they are not a fit, or that other candidates are still being interviewed. It takes very little effort to keep a candidate in the loop. Ignoring this simple step is an indicator of ill placed priorities and a tendency towards internal job self-preservation.
If the HR team is using a hiring tool, verify the built in communication system. It’s difficult to build communications components that operate as expected. Try scheduling in-person interviews with a phone call; then confirm the appointment with the hiring tool’s communication system.
Updating the job description? Make sure the update propagates to all the sites it’s posted on. Even though the hiring tool sends the job to Simply Hired, Indeed, Monster, Craigslist, Oodle, and more, it must be manually edited in many places like Dice, Linked-in, Krop, and in some cases, the hiring company’s company’s website.
Job descriptions are marketing tools. Hiring organizations want great candidates, but great candidates skip posts with grammatical, spelling, and other general communication errors.
Job descriptions are pubic company status statements. If a company is hiring 3 mobile engineers, they must be building a mobile application. If another firm is hiring a project manager who knows HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript, who also knows how to implement the MVC architecture, but can wireframe, build production ready designs, knows Project, Visio, Excel, can build product and marketing requirement documents and has a PMP, they must have lost a key developer, a designer, and a product manager, but don’t have the resources to replace them all.
If candidates are allowed to upload a resume, they should not be required to also re-enter it just so the hiring tool can eliminate them more efficiently. Either the candidate should be required to enter it from the start, or the company should get a better hiring tool.

Ultimately, it’s important for companies and candidates to realize that the hiring process is not about either one individually. Companies expose their brand and offer strategy hints with job listings. Candidates expose personal information in an emotionally stressful way. Hiring the right way is as easy as clear, appropriate, and timely communication. It is a relationship after all.

This list will continue evolving. If you have your own thoughts please feel free to add them in the notes!

jeremiahlee: “Google me on Bing!” @jeremiahlee and I attending...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:41:29 -0400

jeremiahlee:

“Google me on Bing!”

@jeremiahlee and I attending the Mashable summer tour. Someone… please… Google him on Bing.

10 Free Wire-framing tools

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:37:32 -0400

10 Free Wire-framing tools:

— Mashable

"When it comes to implementing science in retailing, the ‘missionary’ is more important..."

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:00:00 -0400

“When it comes to implementing science in retailing, the ‘missionary’ is more important than the scientist.”

- Ananth Raman, The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance

Rocket Science Retailing

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:41:00 -0400

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 Lagace: In a nutshell, what is rocket science retailing?
Ananth Raman: It means that retailers should

Use the data generated at stores to understand customers and their needs deeply.
Develop the ability to respond to this understanding with better-tailored assortments, replenishment of the hits, and timely markdowns on what is left over.
Execute well, especially at the stores. Attend to data inaccuracy and placement of products within stores.
Align incentives within your organization and in the supply chain.
Use technology judiciously and pay attention to emerging new technologies, whose value might still not be apparent.
Explain the changes you are making to your investors.

Check out the Q&A over at the HBSWK Blog and Raman’s book.

Chris Glode: 6 Simple Steps to Being a Great Software Product Manager:

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:56:37 -0400

Chris Glode: 6 Simple Steps to Being a Great Software Product Manager::

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…

Freemium vs Free Trial

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:44:00 -0400

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 subscriptions may now be ok

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:00:00 -0400

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 Lala music service that closed at the end of May. I’d call myself a moderate user. My iTunes library was synced with the service, so I had access to all of my music while away from my personal computer. To tell you the truth, that was the key selling point for me. From there I could connect with other users with different tastes. I found myself listening and discovering more music then at any other point in my life. Most of this discovery was spurred by the social features integrated with Lala. Apple’s purchase and eventual closure of the service left many wondering what is next. It is easy to assume that Apple will introduce their own version of Lala but in what timeframe and with what revenue model?

We many need to wait only a few days for Steve Jobs to announce a new Lala-esque service during his keynote on June 6th. In the meantime (and over the last month since the closing was announced) I have had an opportunity to explore the other options in the online music space. There are quite a few good services: Mog, Rhapsody, Pandora, etc. These sites all offer some free or trial experience alongside their paid subscription plans. Lala took this model a step further and offered free access online to any song I had in my iTunes library. They gave me 50 credits to add songs to my online library, and once those were exhausted I added real money into the system. At that time I never would have paid a monthly fee to use Lala. Now that the product is gone, I realize that it successfully created a need where one previously had not existed. Because I have had easy access to an essentially unlimited collection of music, I now need it. I am willing to shell out $5 per month for similar access.

The Opportunity

Now that I’m willing to pay a minimal monthly fee for access to music online, I’ve joined Mog and plan to try Rhapsody. Why not? These services could not really compete against Lala when the site offered a free play of every song in their collection and unlimited plays of any song that I already own (legally or illegally). In Lala’s absence, these sites have had an incredible opportunity to attract many new users to their services. The question is: Have they been spending the money needed to grab the attention of these listeners? In short, no. I’ve seen no PPC bids on searches like lala shutting down, lala closing or even just Lala. I’ve seen no ads on Facebook or PR placement in traditional media. A solid month and 4 days of opportunity have passed. Apple will release an option that will undoubtably have a better user experience then Mog and Rhapsody. That UX and Apple brand will attract users. Sure other companies will be able to lure music lovers that don’t want to pay into Apple’s corporate pocketbook, but those companies will merely survive, not succeed.

For now I’ll get my Mog on.

The Overview

Lala shut down
A need was created for this type of service
Mog, Rhapsody, & Pandora are the current available options
They failed to take actively take advantage of the opportunity
Apple’s product will be sexy, cool, and easy-to-use
And they will likely have a new subscription model
And it will have majority market share
I’m getting my Mog on

Document, Documenting, Documented.

Wed, 26 May 2010 14:14:44 -0400

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 History - Where we have been and where we were going
Known Bugs - Yes, they exist, they were just low priority
QA Testing Environment - Change your host file
Paying Customers - They need some love… they do pay for it
Marketing & Sales Tools - Know what we said, where, and to whom

Final Hand Off

Fri, 14 May 2010 14:22:00 -0400

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 the product, just in the next room, had no idea what it had become. He was impressed, and it felt good… and sad. After an hour of discussing the ins and outs of the product, common support topics, and our development history (on the off chance they would pick it up again in the future) the meeting ended, and I was finished. As I packed up my things, the new person managing our product ran in, frantic, a trial user was ready to pay and he wasn’t sure how to walk them through it.

At least it ended with a positive.

Fragile, Brittle, Likely to Break

Thu, 13 May 2010 16:16:00 -0400

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 all leave, it will get brittle and fragile.

PUSH!

Tue, 11 May 2010 14:49:00 -0400

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 his side was our Jr. Software Engineer. The Jr. Engineer will stay on with with our investor’s other company. The moment was a quiet passing of the baton. This is, in my personal opinion, is one of the most stable releases we’ve made, but then again, it had to be.

The testing: complete, the production push: successful, the site: live, and best of all, customers are already using the new features. There is something therapeutic about checking off iteration use cases.