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

‘Free’ is always good for business

Now that I’ve got your attention, the next best thing to FREE is painless and predictable. Flat rate, as we know from telephony and other similar business models, reduces ambivalence about using a service, and increases the rate at which people BUY.

I received this in email today, and frankly, WOW.

Canada has, relative to the US, a low adoption of mail-order and therefore internet-order business models.

This is a pretty innovative way to get people over that hump. Good work, Ebay and Canada Post

Dak

The Free Economy and Your Business

I recently had a conversation with Nathon Gunn (CEO of Bitcasters) and this article came up. Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business.

Why you should read it: Not everything is going to be free, and at least 80% of the readers of this blog haven’t thought of all the business models that Chris Anderson (Editor of Wired, author of The Long Tail) lists in this article…and frankly, it’s the best and fastest overview you are going to see on the topic. If you think that every free business model is the same as Google, Yahoo! or broadcast TV, you are missing something.

Definitely worth a read. Why you should listen to me: for you old-timers on the web, remember HoTMetaL PRO and HoTMetaL Free? That was SoftQuad, and I was there. And, frankly, your competitors ARE thinking about this, if you aren’t, and they’ll eat your free lunch.

Best,
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

Design trade-offs, the knee in the price curve, and appropriate solutions

Poor man’s camera stabilizer
http://littlegreatideas.com/steadycam/

This is an important reminder that cheaper does NOT have to mean “radically worse.” This is brilliant; you may well have seen it before, but if you haven’t, go look. If you have…

Consider this. A good low-end, name brand stabilizer (Steadicam ‘Merlin’) is about $900. It’s a LOT nicer than this, won’t tire you out, and is beautiful (really). It buys you credibility if you have to Go Somewhere Important. The big, impressive-as-all-getout rigs for Professional Film cannot be beat…if you are carrying a 15 to 70 lb. camera.

The question, as always, is: what is your application, and what matters? Web video for personal use? $15 + your labor buys you what you need to do a few motion shots without that “hand held, make the audience ill” documentary look.

Now, consider what this means in the context of product evolution. Generally speaking, broader market adoption of products means a reduction in cost and features. When working in product development, it’s tempting to think of this as “sliding down hill” in terms of reducing your beautiful boutique product to least-common-denominator “mass market” stuff that “those people” might use.

This is a trap, and smart product managers know this. Quantity is its own quality. Go ahead, own the high end. But introduce the low-end product. If the high end product is that much better, you can still sell it. (Steadicam comes to mind!). But it’s better to make the low-end product that might cannibalize your high-end sales, before someone else does, if and only if there’s a sufficiently large market for it.

Now, you are thinking, how does this apply to software? And to software engineering?

I’ll give you a hint: amortization of development costs. More later.