talkingpics: the iphone's first real research app

I've been paying close attention to the applications being developed for the iPhone in the hope of finding a few that take full advantage of the device's unique strengths.

I found one today. Dan Rockwell's article iPhone's first real research app for Lextant reviews an app called TalkingPics that allows you to take a picture an annotate it on your iPhone.

Big frickin' deal, you might say. Dan responds:

Big frickin’ deal, eh? Well, yes, actually it is. There’s no other app on the iPhone that does this, and more importantly, it’s not as cumbersome as traditional audio and video capture methods. It’s a great way to capture what the participant is talking about, and then provide additional context to that image — what’s right or wrong about a product; what needs attention in a store; etc. Simply take a picture, and then record an audio snippet describing it.

For the researcher presented with lots and lots of information, the ability to synthesize visuals and audio annotation is a powerful tool. And as Dan notes:

As an added bonus, TalkingPics also lets you audio annotate locations on a map, which makes it easy to connect who said what where.

So if you were on a walking tour of a city, saw something neat and wanted to take a picture of it, mark it on the map and capture your thoughts about it all in real-time, TalkingPics allows you to do that.

I think this app has value for everyone with an iPhone, not simply the research-inclined.

feynman: cargo cult science

Richard Feynman's talk on Cargo Cult Science (found here) was adapted from a Caltech commencement address given in 1974 and is excerpted from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character).

Here's the payoff:

But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves -- of having utter integrity -- is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool others. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

How do we fool ourselves as product managers? How do we learn not to?

(Thanks to Luboš Motl for the link)

ballmer: experiences experiences experiences experiences!

In a memo to Microsoft employees last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer addressed a number of "strategic topics" facing the company in its new fiscal year. It's very interesting. You should read it.

There are two specific things in the memo that caught my eye. The first is the emphasis on "experiences". For your convenience, here is the paragraph (my highlights):

Apple: In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.

Here's one way to think about the value of the experience - say you want a birthday cake for your 6-year old son. You could:

1. Buy the ingredients off the shelf and bake it from scratch according to a family recipe
2. Buy a Duncan Hines cake mix and bake it according to the instructions
3. Go to Costco and buy one of their famous sheet cakes (make sure to give them careful instructions on what to put on the cake)
4. Schedule a party at Chuck E Cheese which comes with a cake [WARNING: LINK INCLUDES ANNOYING MUSIC]

The first choice is the least expensive, the fourth is the most expensive. But the fourth isn't just a cake - it's an experience that includes a cake. Their argument is that the experience is what the consumer wants - something consistently memorable, valued and pleasurable.

The Chuck E Cheese value proposition to people with birthday cake needs is "why fumble around making a cake (which odds are won't turn out well) or buy some nasty sheet-cake (which will have odd things written on it) when you can have a complete birthday experience that your child will treasure! It's more convenient for you, more fun for your child and his friends, and we can craft exactly the sort of party you want to meet your budget."

Microsoft has woken up to the fact that it is a scratch-made cake, and it's eyeballing Apple's high-margin birthday party experience. Finally, they get it.

Now that I think about it, they once got it - with the Microsoft Windows XP Operating System, where XP=Experience.

Remember how unwilling consumers were to let go of XP? Could it be that they liked the experience of stability, interoperability and familiarity? Hmm.

(On a related note, AppleInsider noticed this focus on 'experience' too.)

The second item that caught my eye is Mr. Ballmer's choice of words in reference to an upcoming marketing push surrounding The Microsoft Windows Vista Operating System:

And later this year, you’ll see a more comprehensive effort to redefine the meaning and value of Windows for our customers.

Any time you have to tell your customers what the meaning and value of your product or service is - something is broken. To borrow a thought from the new book Tuned In by Craig Stuff, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott (my italics):

We often see tuned out companies create products and services that do not resonate. To compensate, they must adopt drastic strategies to drum up business for their offerings. You know how many companies talk about their "product evangelists"? And how many organizations say that they are "missionaries in the market" and that they need to "educate people about the issues so that they see the value of our product or service"? These missionary selling strategies are simply symptoms of a tuned out company. You shouldn't have to wave your arms around and shout at people to convince them to pay attention to your product or service. A resonator is a product or service that sells itself.

The reality is that the Microsoft Windows Vista Operating System did not and does not resonate with the marketplace. This is not the fault of Apple's superior marketing. This is the fault of the product.

The bad experience caused by customers being forced to use a product that they don't want/need/understand/appreciate is creating negative brand equity every day, and no amount of "here is why you should like it" will work. Even moderately tech-savvy consumers will see this as intellectually dishonest and offensive.

So rather than lecture us on how valuable and meaningful their product is, perhaps a better approach for Microsoft would be to clean up the mess around the Microsoft Windows Vista Operating System, spend some time talking to the market about what it really wants, and then build and launch that instead.

My guess is that customers and potential customers will tell Microsoft that they want to have a great experience with their computer and the software that runs on it.

Go figure. Is it any wonder people are buying more and more Apple products when they have the choice to do so.

Oh, and in case Mr. Ballmer does decide to adopt the "experiences experiences experiences experiences" mantra to replace his "developers developers developers developers" mantra that worked so well for him, here is a video you can enjoy to see how that will look.

news: cheeto elvis in time, maybe

What follows is an excerpt from an article on the topic of Cheeto Elvis which has been submitted to Time Magazine, as well as a cover mock-up to accompany the article. I am grateful to the ack/nak reader responsible for obtaining and forwarding me this information.

Known for works which draw both admiration and ire, the highly reclusive and controversial artist known simply as “rabbi’ is back in the spotlight with his latest work, Cheeto Elvis. Always a lightning rod for critics his art has been described as everything from “frivolously ironic” to “total s__t.” Like all great works Cheeto Elvis asks more questions than it answers and leaves you thinking “what did I just look at?”

The man who fondly refers to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his muse and was linked romantically to Burl Ives (and is widely blamed for breaking up his 60+ year marriage) tends to bring out the best and worst from critics. Lisa Dennison the former artistic director of the Guggenheim and now head of sculpture sales for Sotheby’s proclaimed that Cheeto Elvis is utterly powerful and will, over the coming years, likely prove to be more impactful than Picasso’s Guernica. Conversely, Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times commented “Is this some kind of joke” and “This is, without question the most banal and sophomoric piece of crap that I have ever seen.”

Knowing the current frail state of the “rabbi” I have chosen to withhold my critique of his most recent work. Evidently the creation of Cheeto Elvis took a heavy toll on the artist. During the 6 month period of researching and crafting the work he stopped sleeping and became very depressed. Comparing his erratic behavior to that of Heath Ledger during the filming of Batman, those close to the “rabbi” claimed that by the time the piece was complete, they could no longer tell where madness ended and Cheeto Elvis began.

Our prayers go out to his ½ sister in Boca Raton and his dozens of loyal fans.

NOTE - Cheeto Elvis en repose is attracting brisk bidding on eBay.  You can read my previous post on Cheeto Elvis here.

discovered: tenser, said the tensor

Fans of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man will recognize the phrase "Tenser, said the Tensor" immediately.

But you may not know of the irregularly updated but particularly entertaining and often fascinating blog of the same name.

The author describes himself as. . .

. . . a graduate student in Linguistics, having recently completed my MA and currently working towards my Ph.D. My undergraduate degree was in Computer Science, so my focus is computational linguistics, but I'm also interested in syntax, typology, psycholinguistics, and, um, everything else. Clearly, some focus is required.

On the topic of "everything else", the author relates:

Basically, I spend a lot of time yammering at my wife about things that don't interest her—she's been cultivating a very realistic expression of glazed disinterest that she pulls when I go on (and on...) about, for example, the problem of maintaining continuity in long-running multi-author works like comic books and television shows. It's taken several years, but I've finally taken the hint, so I plan to write about that stuff here.

Believe me, I can sympathize.  Whenever I get to prattling on about product management, my wife slips into an attentive fugue state in which she is capable of nodding, smiling and a few keywords like "really", "can you explain that some more" and "you know, I think I smell something burning."

So let's summarize.  Tenser, said the Tensor brings together:

Languages and Linguistics,
Japanese and Japanese Animation,
Science and Science Fiction,
Comedy and Comic Books

and a number of other topics.   What's not to love.  When you visit his blog (Which You Will) pay particular attention to the right-hand sidebar where you will find a lengthy list of links on the topic of Linguistics in Science Fiction.  Wow!

success?: starbucks $2 cold drink after 2pm promo

I visited a Starbucks in the Chicago loop this morning. No, there was no Clover machine in evidence. Yes, they make a mean ersatz McMuffin. But I digress. The barista on duty offered me the following:

"This is a special receipt, if you bring it back after 2:00pm today you can get a grande cold drink for $2 plus tax."

"So, how's that working out for you guys?" I asked.

The baristae on duty rolled their collective eyes. "It's like a second morning rush. People are queued up outside. It's total madness."

I wonder what else those 2pm visitors are buying. Or if that matters. Creating repeat traffic in non-peak hours is a trick and a half, and this one anecdotal report suggests that Starbucks' attempt to do just that is working.

If you are one of those post-2pm visitors, let me know.

example: following requirements literally

Example of Requirements:

Employee: "Hello, how can I help you?"

Customer: "I would like to order a cake for a going-away party this week."

Employee: "What do you want written on the cake?"

Customer: "'Best Wishes Suzanne' and underneath that 'We will miss you'."

Employee: "OK."

Example of Product that Meets these Requirements:






Example of QA's Review of the Implementation of these Requirements:

"You spelled 'underneath' wrong. Add an 'h'."

phillips medical: installation developer job opening

Are you an installation engineer with InstallShield experience?

Are you interested in a permanent position in Boca Raton, Florida?

Are you interested in making some serious $ and getting your relocation fees paid?

If you are, Mike Mascenik from CSI Tech has a job he'd like to talk to you about at Phillips Medical Systems.

In case you're not familiar with them, Philips Medical Systems is one of the world's top three medical device companies. "Our mission is to improve the quality of people's lives. Our focus areas include imaging systems, customer services, information and monitoring systems. We strive to deliver ‘advanced' technology that is ‘designed around you' and ‘easy to experience'."

Give Mike a call at 303-990-3996 and let him know you heard about the job from ack/nak - because if you get the job, I get a ham! Woo hoo!

on ebay: cheeto elvis en repose

Item number: 200241150423

Title: Outsider Folk Art: Cheeto® Elvis en repose

Starting Bid: $100.00

Auction Ends: Jul-29-08 18:19:15 PDT

Final Bid: ?

Item Specifics - Folk Art, Primitives 

Original/ Reproduction: Original
Type:  Sculpture, Carvings
Listed By: Artist
Material: mixed media
Signed?: Signed
Style: Outsider
Size Type/ Largest Dimension: ACEO, Art Card (2.5'' x 3.5'')
Date of Creation: 2000-Now
Region of Origin: US- Midwest

Available for bid, a stunning and highly collectible example of the new-millennium-retro-outsider-folk art movement. Artfully crafted from genuine leather, a single hand-selected Cheeto and real human hair. Created by the highly reclusive and remarkably unprolific midwestern American artist simply known as “rabbi.” Known for having one of the longest creative refractory periods in all of modern art his output is stunningly small making his pieces extraordinarily rare and highly prized.

Hauntingly beautiful and eerily human, this piece truly captures the essence of the man at the peak of his fame and power. The wild hair, thick sideburns and frayed leather scream rock and roll but the sullen expression reminds us of the pathos and sadness which plagued his all too short life. The work’s diminutive size makes it an ideal piece for those with limited space although it is visually powerful enough to be the centerpiece of any gallery. This is one of only two Cheeto Elvii know to exist and has an unrivaled provenance.

Shipping, insurance and papers of authenticity included.

NOTE - This is not my auction.  Really.  But I wish it were.  Bid early, bid often.

reader request: (short) books on leadership

An ack/nak reader and over-all good guy dropped me a note last night.  I will now share it with you.

I'm being asked to step up my leadership effectiveness at work (a minor promotion prompted this comment from my superior), perhaps you know of a (short) book to help me out? 

 I'll offer my USD$0.02 on the topic - I'm counting on the rest of you to chime in with your favorites.

First of all, congratulations. A promotion of any sort is a good thing, especially when it brings with it an opportunity to do something new.  

So you're being challenged to use people resources to achieve results. Neat.

And you're asking for advice on how to be good at it.

Untold thousands of trees have been chopped down, chewed up and smooshed into paper, printed with words, and turned into books on this topic. Leadership is one of those Great Big Ideas, right next to Cheese Moving.

There are two short books on the topic of leadership I've read and enjoyed lately that benefit from being a) short and b) short.  Oh, and they're both fables.  So sue me, I like fables.  And did I mention that they're short?

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni.  His "five dysfunctions" - absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results - are easy to spot, and curiously straight-forward to address, as they build on each other in a progressive way.  Translation - nothing good will happen in the absence of trust, so work on that first before you start working on the others. 

The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann.  This slim little book is chock-full of hackneyed dialog, stock characters straight out of central casting, and features an ending that will remind you of a Disney movie.  But I loved it for the simplicity of its message - the key to success (sorry, "stratospheric" success) is. . .  I won't spoil it for you, but you can probably already figure it out from the title.  I carry this book around with me and dip in to it on a frequent basis.  No kidding.  It's 144 pages of goodness.  

So there are my two short books.  Others like The West Point Way of Leadership by Col. Larry R. Donnithorne (ret.) can wait for another day. 

putting the pieces together: bad salsa UPDATED

WARNING - GROSS MEDICAL TOPIC ALERT

Let's say you've got a fever, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps and pain. Your diarrhea is very liquid, and lasts about four days. You're sick for about five to seven days.


You are not a happy camper.

What the hell happened?

Could be salmonella poisoning, an infection caused by a gram-negative bacterium of the Salmonella genus, most likely S. enterica.

Could be a Quato. More likely salmonella.

Around 1,000 Americans since April of this year have been clobbered by something usually prevented by effectively sanitizing food contact surfaces. That's not good.

In their search for the source of the worst case of food-borne illness in a decade, the Bright Minds in charge of making sure that our food supply isn't lightly garnished with S. enterica first turned their spotlight of shame on tomatoes.

Then it was peppers.

Then cilantro.

Now basil.

America, the truth can now be told. Someone evil-doer has turned salsa into a weapon of mass eruption.

UPDATE - Thanks go out to the ack/nak reader who left such outstanding comments to this post - make sure to scroll down to the comments section and read them.

pwned: HIV envelope protein gp120

From today's Science Daily:

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they have uncovered the Achilles heel in the armor of the virus that continues to kill millions.

It's a quick article that's accessible to people who didn't get their undergrad in microbiology or who have forgotten their Greek mythology. Go read it.

Wouldn't it be nice to smack this bastard of a virus in the jumblies once and for all.

reading: on the pleasure of hating

Amazon link

I am completely entranced by the quality of the Penguin Great Ideas imprint.  You probably read about it on Boing Boing last week, so go there for links to all three series.

Finding time to read great books is hard, but it's easier when the books themselves are a) small and b) a pleasure to have and hold.  Especially if you're a total wonk for typography and cover design.

parsing: an anonymous comment

One of the great pleasures enjoyed by your humble author is receiving reader comments to ack/nak articles. Whether by email or through the Blogger comment system, I value your annotations, commentary, criticisms, discussions, explanations, expositions, illustrations, interjections, notations, observations, opinions, reflections, remarks, statements, wisecracks and even your thoughts. Oh, and input. I'm particularly fond of comments, to be honest. Keep them coming.

Every now and then someone chooses to leave a comment that seems oddly out of place with the article to which it is attached. In general these comments are too literate to be comment spam, so I can only conclude that Someone Out There had a thought, found ack/nak, chose a post, and after a few simple steps, achieved their goal: to leave a comment for our collective consideration.

Consider this comment, left to the post I wrote yesterday morning:

I fired the Obama supporters who worked for me. They seemed to think it was ok for them to take unauthorized time off to work for him for free while using Company property for the liberal's benefit. Sad really.

What an interesting comment! Let's parse it together.

1. The author, by virtue of claiming to be able to fire people, is someone in a position of power in the business world. Hooray! I always knew the powerful would come to regard ack/nak as a preferred source of. . . whatever it is that we make here. Let's continue.

2. This individual has characterized those individuals he fired as "Obama supporters". How exciting! The conflict between the freedom of speech and workplace harassment law is an interesting topic. I invite the author to let us know where he/she works, so that all of his/her co-workers can share in the discussion.

3. Then the author goes on to attribute some activities with the individuals whose employment he terminated. As a class, he associates the following with Obama supporters:

• They took unauthorized time off.
  
• They worked for Senator Obama for free.
  
• They used work resources for the benefit of Senator Obama.
  

I can understand how the author would be rightfully upset at the first and last points - taking unauthorized time off and using company resources for non-company activities are verboten.

But the author has chosen to enumerate "working for free" as equally offensive. This is a breakthrough! I had wondered when right-thinking employers would finally conclude that volunteering is not only wasteful, but grounds for dismissal as evidence of defective thinking.

4. The author concludes the list of termination-worthy activities by characterizing the subject of those activities as a "liberal". I am left to wonder whether or not the same activities would have met with similar action had the beneficiary been "not liberal". Say, a Republican. Or one of the following registered political parties:

Alaskan Green Party
Alaskan Independence Party
America First
American Heritage Party
American Civil Liberties Union
American Conservative Union
American Independent Party, California
American Monarchist League
American Patriot Party, Oregon
American Reform Party
American Synthesis Party
America's Open Debates Foundation
Black Panther
California Peace and Freedom Party
Cascadian National Party
Centrist Reform Party
The Christian Coalition
Christian Falangist Party of America
Citizens For Reasonable Growth
Commonwealth Party for Conservatives & Classical Liberals
Communist Party USA
The Concord Coalition
The Conservative Party of New York State
Conservatives Online
Conservative Think
Constitutionalist Party
Constitution Party
Constitution Party of Tennessee
Democratic Socialists of America
Expansionist Party of the United States
Family Values Party
Freedom Alliance
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Socialist Party
Free Hawaii, a voice for the Kingdom of Hawaii
Green Parties of North America
Green Party of the US
Hawai`i, independence movement
The Heart Political Party
Independence Party of Minnesota
Independent American Party
Independent Unity Campaign, New York State
International Socialist Organization
Irish National Caucus
Irish Northern Aid Inc
Irish Republican Socialist Movement
Irish Republican Socialist Party
The Jeffersonian Party
Labor Party
League for the Revolutionary Party (Fourth International)
League for the Fifth International
League of Revolutionaries for a New America
League of the South
Left Green Network
The Legal Party
The Liberal Party of New York State
Libertarian Party
The Light Party
Moderate Party
Monarchist Society of America
National Socialist Movement
The Natural Law Party
New Liberty Party
The New Party

New Union Party
North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists
Pansexual Peace Party
The Patriot Party
Personal Choice
ProLife Alliance
Progressive Labor Party
Prohibition Party
Public Citizen
Reform Party
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Royalist Party of America
Social Democrats
Socialist Action
Socialist Alternative
The Socialist Labor Party
Socialist Party USA
Solidarity
Southern Independence Party of Kentucky
Southern Independence Party of Texas
Southern Loyalists
Southern Party of Louisiana
Southern Party of Tennessee
Stormfront

Third parties and electoral reform.
US Marxist-Leninist Organization
US Socialist Party
The United States Official Monster Raving Loony Party
The United States Pacifist Party
Unity Party of America
Utah's Progressive Anarchist Party
Workers Party
Workers World
Working Families Party
World Socialist Party of the United States

(source)

By not calling out any of these parties, the author is making it clear that he is making specific reference to the Democratic Party to which Senator Obama belongs. It's a tidy way to narrow the argument, and the author does it masterfully.

5. The author concludes the comment with "Sad really", and in doing so, raises the issue of lex naturalis (Natural Law) as described by Thomas Aquinas for our consideration. How elegant! The primary precept of Aquinas' Summa Theologica is "Good is to be sought, evil avoided." If the author asserts that those who did wrong were liberals, on the left of the political spectrum, then those on the right must be good. Applied to the situation described by the author, Aquinas' teachings can be interpreted as "The right is to be sought, the left avoided".

It is sad, concludes the author, that the individuals he fired chose to support Senator Obama, for in doing so they sought to destroy social relations established by the employer, who by virtue of being the employer is the embodiment of good. Truly, how sad!

Taken together, the author makes a compelling argument that business owners should preemptively and immediately scour their workplaces for any individuals who support the political views of Senator Obama and fire them tout de suite. It's an entirely logical argument. Nothing less than the productivity of a nation is at risk, and if we allow our productivity to decrease, the terrorists win.

Thanks for the comment.

UPDATE: I neglected to note that the author capitalized "company" - another sign that the author considers the company to be an archetype of sorts. I need to think about this a little more, but the author wouldn't have done it if it wasn't important. Riddles within riddles!

UPDATE: Just a heads up, if you leave an anonymous comment, make it interesting. Posting links to YouTube videos of talking heads isn't interesting.

reigncom: "offer features customers want first"

Saul Hansell's article A Fresh Start for iRiver should be required reading for all PMs in the blogosphere today.

That's because in his article he relates a diagnosis made by Myoung Woo Lee, the chief executive of Reigncom, the South Korean company behind the iRiver MP3 player:

iRiver had produced innovative and attractive products that appealed more to its engineers than its customers. [Myoung Woo Lee's] remedy is to try to replicate Samsung’s approach to market sensing, a method of observing demand to be able to offer the features customers want first.

So building what your engineers find interesting didn't work for you. Hmm. You think that getting in tune with what your buyers want and being the first to meet those needs will work better. Hmm. Except now you have to compete in a market inhabited by a single well-established market leader who owns the "in tune with what buyers want" market perception and an undifferentiated cloud of low-cost, ankle-biter brands. Oh, and the Zune.

Hmm.

Mr. Hansell goes on to shine more light on Reigncom's plans for reviving the iRiver, and makes some solid observations on the MP3 player marketplace in general.

It's useful reading.