The ongoing evolution of technology…Cameras

Digital cameras continue to evolve very rapidly.  (VERY).  Back in April, I passed on a link about a high-speed digital camera, reviewed by David Pogue of the New York Times.  Since then, the field has evolved to the point of having a DSLR that is capable of shooting movies. (And thanks again to Chris Schmitt for sending this along.)

Er, wow. This elevates the DSLR from the ‘better image quality, and, by the way, status symbol’ camera to a real, high-value imaging tool.  It’s also a brilliant move on the part of Nikon:  leverage camera owners existing lens investment; this is what marketing folks call ’stickiness.’

Aside from being extraordinarily cool in its own rite, this is an important reminder:  innovate, or die.  If you aren’t working to obsolete your product line, rest assured, your competitors are!

Camcorders are now just waiting to shuffle off this mortal coil, in my humble opinion.

Regards,

Dak

A brilliant management two-for-one

There are two excellent ideas in this posting on ZDnet, aside from the observation that you can scale Ruby on Rails if you avoid hitting the disk farm for static content:

1) Have a team devoted to rapid scalable prototyping.  (LinkedIn Light Engineering Development)

2) Use free apps for both proof of concept testing and marketing.

Read and enjoy.

Ruby on Rails: scaling to 1 billion page views per month by ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett — While a lot of attention has been focused on Twitter with questions about whether Ruby on Rails scales, LinkedIn has been quietly running a RoR application on Facebook that is beating down around 1 billion page view per month. Bumpersticker, a relatively trivial Facebook application that allows you to create a cartoon that you can [...]

Best,

Dak

SubVersion (SVN) for fun and profit

Lifehacker had a reference to a really excellent posting on “Using SubVersion for Writers.”

This is a really good overview, with examples, of how to use SubVersion for writing, web projects, etc.

Getting cranky about “IT Policy,” and improving your password practices

I just read a helpful article about tuning organizational password policy but I’m afraid it rubbed me the wrong way.

What it says is helpful and mostly good practice, but it fails to address the problem from the perspective of the users, and does the usual “well, this will be a pain for the users, but it’s good policy, so we’re recommending it,” which is one of many reasons why people hate IT departments. (I say this as a seasoned IT professional, and I hate us, too.

IF you notice that YOUR passwords violate any of these rules, chances are that they are already broken. Change them now.

To all password users, everywhere: Make your passwords unguessable as best you can. If someone guesses your password, change it. Corollary 1: Since you can’t know if someone might have guessed your password, change it from time to time. If you feel that you have to make a list of passwords, make a list of reminders, not the actual passwords, and keep it safe (not where someone can look at it without you knowing about it). More detail below.

HOW:

Tieing it all together [tips, opinions, musings]

So, what, on earth, do all these postings have to do with each other?

Like you, I am a “person in the loop” system. I observe, tune myself to what’s going on, act, observe what happens, and repeat. What I’m sharing with you is what I’m currently observing, that’s “on the fringe” that is my “reading outside of my area.”

I personally view reading outside of my area as being critical to success. We have to be able to bring all kinds of ideas into play when we are looking for creating consulting and management solutions, and bring them up in a heartbeat.

The challenge is maintaining focus while doing this. One solution is setting a limited time budget, and a low energy time, when other, more critical things need to be done, so that it adds value rather than rationalizing distraction. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun, which is all the more reason to put it as a ‘time reward’ or ‘play period’ with limits.

Best,
Dak

Sources of inspiration, part 2: Dr. Randy Pausch and the Last Lecture

Being on vacation, I’m taking it easy on the business and software development management topics for a bit.

A friend of mine sent me this link, on another video of a source of inspiration.

It’s worth your time. It’s a real-life example of an answer to the question: if you were to give the last lecture of your life, knowing that you only have a few months to live, what would you say? If you had to live your life that way, what would you do?

Have an excellent week,
Dak

Summary for this week: do it now, do it fast, do it cheap

So, what does all this mean?

Prototypes are your friend. Keep it simple.

1) In developing any product, especially software, DO IT NOW. So pick the things you can do NOW and get them done. Not partially done, not sloppily done…DONE, as in IT WORKS! This frees you to do something more, different…if you keep slogging on the same old thing, you are trapped in diminishing returns.

2) Decide when you are ready to show something GOOD to your customer. Keep the pace up. Don’t fall into the trap of “We can’t ship it, because the next version will be so much better!”. Show it, agree on what has to happen next[*], and then ship when you say you will.

3) Ship it, and follow up. Make a list of things you can do NOW. See step 1.

[*] Agreement means “We will pay you money when it does this.” Not “It would be nice if it did this”…that’s not agreement, that’s just socializing. You need agreement, or you aren’t DONE.

How does this fit into what I was talking about before?

A really good prototype might well be something you can sell; if not you can sell the idea, get feedback, and make something that can be taken to the market. It also allows you to play with something completely new, or the crazy idea for your main product that is too risky to actually DO with the main product.

As always, comments are more than welcome.

Best,
Dak

Dan Keldsen: Innovate or die

My brother, who is a Director with AIIM, presented this at the AIIM conference in Boston this week. I thought I’d share it here, as it directly relates to how costs inflect the innovation/return curve.Thanks,
Dak

Do Or Die Innovation By Process Based Information Management

From: dan.keldsen, 2 days ago

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Another “hyper-keynote” – although about half the the slides I’ve been using lately. 75 slides in 50 minutes, when done live. If you’re at the AIIM Conference in Boston this week (March 3rd, 2008), I’m giving this presentation on Tuesday, March 4th, at 2:30pm. Hope to see you there – and if note, feel free to comment here.

SlideShare Link

Design trade-offs, and the virtue of cheap (part 2 of 3)

Another data point (for delivery over the web).

This is a Vlog of an interview of fixed gear bike rider. (Thanks to Bruce Sharpe for twittering this one).

High end gear vs. the “flip video” camcorder (not a lot more than $100).

Good Enough not to distract from the task at hand. There’s a lesson here (a whole flock of them, really). What do you think it is?

Dak