A good summary from Thoughtworks of the applicability of “lean” techniques to a financially-constrained business.
Information week reports on some figures from ComScore which show huge growth in US mobile access to the web.
Mobile Web Usage Doubles — Cell Phone — InformationWeek.
Anyone creating or managing a web project without considering mobile users is missing something important.
How much television do you watch each day? How much time do you spend using computers, mobile phones, and all the other devices which allow you to be in control?
The traditional broadcast TV business is in decline, even if the TV companies like to pretend that it is not. The passive, one-way, synchronous nature of television is being usurped both by active involvement and communication on one hand, and asynchronous time-shifting on the other.
If I want to feel involved with other people, I don’t need to talk about last night’s TV – I can join in with active interaction on everything from facebook and twitter to simple SMS. If I want to watch a particular program or movie I don’t wait for it to come around on a local channel and re-arrange my life to fit the TV schedules – I get a DVD, grab it from bittorrent, or watch it on youtube.
Paul Graham writes
Now would be a good time to start any company that competes with TV networks. That’s what a lot of Internet startups are, though they may not have had this as an explicit goal. People only have so many leisure hours a day, and TV is premised on such long sessions (unlike Google, which prides itself on sending users on their way quickly) that anything that takes up their time is competing with it. But in addition to such indirect competitors, I think TV companies will increasingly face direct ones.
and
opyright owners tend to focus on the aspect they see of piracy, which is the lost revenue. They therefore think what drives users to do it is the desire to get something for free. But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience.
A neat term for an important but under-mentioned concept.
We are all unique individuals and every situation too – at work, at home, and in the community – is unlike any other; as unique as every snowflake. Yet despite this fundamental truth which has arguably been true for all time, the world seems to be designed for the opposite: sameness.
image by CaptPiper
Diversity is all around us. Everyone has different abilities, preferences, skills, and knowledge, just as everyone has different access to technology and devices. Yet most systems are built on limiting assumptions about users and/or devices. Software designers expect people who use the software will be happy to adapt to the the way the software works. Device manufacturers try to “lock in” customers and prevent them using other devices.
The challenge in a world where a vision of convergence is near enough to reach out and touch, is to celebrate and empower this diversity, allowing every person to interact with each system in whichever way which suits. Even more, though, the real effectiveness comes as this interaction changes over time and mood, and situation.
Breakthrough software solutions, the ones which set the baseline for the future, will be the ones which adapt so well to user preference, history, and context that each interaction is as different as a snowflake.
Read more at The Snowflake Effect: The Future of Mashups and Learning (Wayne Hodgins) 2009 and the associated Word document about the snowflake effect in learning.
Following from my previous post about an agile approach to business, there are a lot of practical things which can be done for almost no cost and which have a very positive impact on the agility of a team.
A recent article from InfoQ looks at some good ways to set up a working environment to get the best from an agile approach.
In the world of software development, the hot term is “agile“. Agile is about making what’s really needed, even when things change, to ensure that the business gets the best value for the work put in.
It’s always interesting to see how this approach translates to other types of business. Shane Hastie has recently written an article for InfoQ examining how an agile approach suits the habits of successful restauranteurs.
Recently, Google has contacted site publishers to inform them of a change in the way google ads are targeted. User activity will now be recorded and categorized, and used to select and prioritize which ads are displayed.
The interesting part of the announcement for me is not that Google are doing this, it’s a natural step, but that they seem to be using some sort of fixed ontology to classify ads and characterize users. General wisdom is that this is considerably less flexible than a looser “folksonomy” approach.
Either way, it will be interesting to see how this pans out, and whether Google can manage to grow its already huge advertising income even more.
Read more at Interest-based advertising – AdSense Help.
When planning work, it’s easy to get tangled in detail and lose sight of the real goals of the organization.
A product rarely sells itself. What sells a product is the advantage it brings and the benefits it delivers to the customer. It is the benefit of the product that sells rather than the product itself. What is the advantage of the requirement you are stating, and what is the benefit it will bring the customer?
Marc McNeill has some interesting observations on how to translate this approach to gathering and prioritising requirements for software systems.
Thinking about value in terms of advantage and benefit | dancingmango.
Sumeet Moghe has put together a good list of ten aspects of leadership. Well worth reflecting on if you are in any sort of leadership role.
Guy Kawasaki says, “A players hire A players, B players hire C players.” This leads to the inexorable slide to Z players which finally leads to a Bozo explosion. What you want to do is avoid that slide by hiring A players and as Kawasaki rightly says, the A players actually hire A+ players. This in my opinion is the first step to building a high performance work culture where people want to learn from the colleagues they hire.
You can’t hire the best people and not trust them. That’s like buying a BMW, but pushing it to work everyday — you can never enjoy the benefits. Sometimes, people may frustrate you, disappoint you but as Randy Pausch said famously in his speech – “Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you”. He said, when you are pissed off at somebody, and you’re angry at them, you just haven’t given them enough time. Just give them a little more time — and they’ll almost always impress you.
Read more at Free as in Freedom: My “Ten”ets of Leadership.
For years Frank Carver has been paying attention to the strange world of convergent technology. During that time he has discussed and researched broad subject areas, come to some surprising conclusions, produced and distributed digital media, scattered ideas and opinions like sparks from a firework, and above all consulted for businesses both large and small to help develop and deploy successful systems, services, and products in this highly complex arena.
