Zeke Sneaker

Thoughts on Retail Transformation. Part 1

2007-06-02T11:35:00.001-04:00

SUCCESS METRICS:
In the selling environment, retailers are primarily focused on the following four success metrics. There are more than this obviously but for the sake of discussion, let's keep it to these four:

Conversion Rate: Every retailer has a focus on Conversion Rate, the number of browsers that convert to purchasing shoppers. Anything that can be done to increase Conversion Rate is positive but there is a metric that can diminish the positive effects of Conversion Rate and that is Return Rate. (Higher % is better.)

Attachment Rate: Also called “bundles”, these are the things that go with the thing you are buying. If you buy something on Amazon.com you will see something in the checkout process that says, “People who bought (insert: what you are buying) also bought (insert: list of associated products). Retailers like to increase the
Attachment Rate because it increases Average Order Value. (Higher % is better.)

Average Order Value: This is when a retailer looks at the average of each customers checkout amount. This is typically used to chart trends, is Average Order Value going up or going down? (Higher % is better.)

Return Rate: You can sell 100 units of a product and 50 are returned by your customers (a 50% Return Rate) your net profit starts diminishing quickly. Years ago in New York a clothing retailer named Sy Syms launched a tagline that declared, “An educated consumer is our best customer”. This concept can be taken to heart by today’s retailers no matter what industry you are in. Costco recently started selling televisions in their stores but two forces worked against them; television are now increasingly complex to install, they are no longer the plug-and-play units they once were. Additionally, Costco didn’t have the “resident experts” sales force to support such a complex purchase so people bought them, got them home, couldn’t get the things to work and promptly returned the purchase. Costco’s return rate was so high that they considered getting out of that business altogether. (Lower% is better.)

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CUSTOMER DECISION MATRIX:
Customers generally go through a relatively simple decision process and the best retailers continue to worked hard to facilitate this process. (See diagram below).

Remember, this is just the customer decision process at retail, there is much more that happens before they get to this point but let's look at this. The customer will say, "I bought the best television with the cables that I needed, the DVD player that I wanted, but I didn't need the speakers." If we diagramed that it would look like this:

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SOCIAL SHOPPING
Social Shopping, from a retail point of view has some benefits and some risks. The benefits include the fact that online social shopping is really an extension of the “customer self-service” concept that guides customers to cheaper, more efficient modes of interaction. ATM’s, online bank statements, and self-serve restaurants are all good examples of customer self-service. But there are risks in this strategy. While expenses may be driven down, customers may be driven off if they do not feel supported in their shopping experience. And customers that do not feel supported in their shopping experience simply leave. There are too many other options available to them, sometimes with just the click of a mouse.

Increasingly customers do not trust sales associates, instead turning to the wisdom of crowds, sometimes complete strangers to solicit advice on products and services. Somewhat astonishingly, one or two positive reviews from someone who has bought the product carries more weight with the consumer than all the marketing materials the company has produced. This is a dramatic and profound change in sales and marketing. It is no longer what a company says it is that is most important, it is what all the other customers say that is most important.

It has often been said that, “Control is an illusion” and this is the reality facing retailers today. The old marketing plans and programs no longer work the way they once did and that is best evidenced by the prominence of Google in the marketplace. Slow-to-react and atrophying advertising agencies have watched Google fly past them as Google offers marketers targeted, quantifiable information that, mark this, the customer actually really, truly wants! When was the last time you actually wanted a TV commercial?
The takeaway is that the sales and marketing dynamic has radically shifted and the power is firmly in the hands on the consumer.

The wise and ultimately successful retail sales and marketer will embrace this change and employ every tool and initiative that guides and supports consumers in their purchase decision process.

Flexible Retirements...or Perhaps Pre-Retirement.

2007-05-22T21:02:00.000-04:00

Time magazine had a thought-provoking article entitled, "Flexible Retirements" (Dan Kadlec) in the May 21, 2007 issue. The article made the point that the most exciting news is here now: flexible work for pay in rewarding fields for folks past 50.

I am not 50 but the way people work has always fascinated me and besides, I hope to be over 50 some day and the thought of being put out to pasture is not terribly compelling. The article mentions the pesky looming financial issue that here in the U.S. a bulge of "baby boomers are about to retire and tap Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. To make good on the promises of these programs, the government may have to go deeper into debt or increase the tax burden. The math is suffocating. Something has to give."

The article continues, "Inside the beltway, one answer is increasingly heard: let's get a continuing economic contribution from folks after their primary career has ended and before they start draining the system's pension and healthcare assets".

Makes sense to me. I don't know anyone who wants to retire and do absolutely nothing.

This is why I have my eye on sites like Blue Chip Experts. A robust network of talent is an incredibly valuable asset and incredibly valuable to be a part of. If you think about it, movie producers have a pretty portable business model. A group of people are brought together based on their skills, talent, and availability to create a product. There's no reason why the same concept wouldn't work for a massive talent pool over 50.

User Generated Content Database

2007-05-21T15:44:00.000-04:00

I still can't find a good TV-Guide type thing for all the user-generated content that is popping up online but the User Generated Content Database promises to be as helpful as the Internet Movie Database. In fact, it will probably become a destination for talent discovery which blurs the line very nicely. It's a lovely self-feeding plan.

Recently launched over the weekend, this is an insanely good idea whose timing is exactly right. Organized into three sections; People, Content, and Community this site promises to be the official who's who of user-generated content.

What LinkedIn Is Not.

2007-05-20T13:09:00.000-04:00

Having worked in advertising and marketing for many years it has been obvious to me for quite some time that my job is temporary. Even those that are "permanent/full time". Especially those that are "permanent/full time"! Companies get acquired, markets change, business is simply in a state of accelerated change and that tends to make all jobs temporary.

I recently heard this business environment described by the CEO of a major consumer electronics retailer as "perpetual whitewater" and that's a phrase that describes it for me as well as anything. Perpetual whitewater.

It seems to me in this environment that we are all consultants in a "Brand Called You" Tom Peters kind of way. So it makes sense that having a strong and vibrant network is more important now than it ever was. It would make sense to me that this perpetual whitewater could be leveraged by the increased buoyancy that an better network would afford you.

I recently joined Blue Chip Expert network, which is in beta but aspires to do everything that LinkedIn fails to deliver. It will be interesting to see if this initiative lives up to their mission because I am hoping that they do. It is a strong and powerful concept if it they can execute successfully. (They also have a blog here.)

Million Ready Minds explains their mission thusly :
* Bringing people together in a common cause of good for the individual and the globe.
* Providing coaching and mentoring on the secrets of adding value as a consultant – a skill that is not intuitive for people who come from typical careers.
* Providing a place where people of similar backgrounds and interests can share ideas, stories and learning, becoming a rich repository of information.

Virtual Worlds Conference 2007

2007-04-02T20:09:00.000-04:00

Here are my raw unedited notes from the 2007 Virtual Worlds Conference. No links, no nuthin'. Just notes.

VIRTUAL WORLDS CONFERENCE 2007: NYC
((600+ people attending))
__________________________________
DEFINING QUOTES:
“We are at the silent movie stage.”
“This is one freaky, geeky 21st century we are moving into.”
“A lot of this is going to happen and a lot of it is not going to happen.”

Companies in this space to pay attention to are:
The Electric Sheep Company
Rivers Run Red
GSD&M
Forterra
3pointD.com
Reallusion
There.com
Second Life
Parks Associates
Multiverse
McKenna (?)
Entropia Universe
Proton Media
Project Entropia
Whyville
Habbo
Trilogy Studios
Links here:
http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/sponsors/index.html

My personal favorites building companies in this space are
The Electric Sheep Company and Rivers Run Red.

These guys rocked:
Sibley Verbeck
http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/speakers/sibleyverbeck.html
Jerry Paffendorf
http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/speakers/jerrypaffendorf.html
Justin Bovington
http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/speakers/justinbovington.html
They were just so full of passion and so authentic that you just had to love them!

RANDOM THOUGHTS:
SecondLife is not the only game in town. There.com, Whyville, Habbo Hotel, Cyworld.com Project Entropia are all worthy of attention.
These early virtual world companies were built by technologists that focused on physics rather than people. There will be great opportunity to build upon the relationships and usability.

The question isn’t how do people change the technology, it is how does the technology change people? What are they doing now that they didn’t do before?

Virtual worlds are at the point of being extraordinarily undefined. The incredible interest is in the potential at this point in time.

A big issue right now is that these virtual worlds are islands unto themselves. People want their digital assets to be moveable, if they build something in Second Life they want to be able to transport it to There.com. In fact, they want to move seamlessly between these virtual worlds. People want a universal client for virtual worlds. Like Netscape was when it first came out.

Virtual worlds are a communication medium although it has started as entertainment and amusement first. But that’s a lot like the Internet in 1995, isn’t it?

An interesting learning emerges when people of different cultures get together for virtual meetings in-world. Brits and Germans and other people would never think of interrupting someone else in real life...but in-world they will certainly start typing when someone else is talking. That’s interesting.

If someone invented real-time language translation for these virtual worlds you would have one amazing collaboration tool. (Business opportunity)

Adidas has done some work in virtual worlds and they have found that for the same price as 6 minutes of media in other medias they were able to get 11 minutes in virtual worlds. Not sure how they calculated that but it is important because over the last two years 80% of advertising agencies TV budget has been cut. Advertisers and Media companies are scrambling for opportunity.

33 is the average age on Second Life.

Think beyond chat, email, and html. Kids spend HOURS finding out about products. Smart marketers will feed them.

Virtual worlds don’t necessarily need to be 3D. One could argue that MySpace is the largest virtual world.

Media is additive. One new media does not replace existing media, it adds to it.

The goal of marketers like MTV is to fit more media into their audiences' day. They are not looking to eat into the existing media consumption, they are looking to augment it. Watch it on TV, visit the website, visit the virtual world. In fact, their mantra is Watch TV/Live TV.

The BBC saw a 10% drop in viewership last Christmas. The audience IS shifting despite what MTV is trying to do.

MTV/Viacom has found that in-world 85% choose to interact with the brand.

Last month on virtual MTV, 92,170 clicked on “Add to Buddy List”. That’s a big number.

The goal is a deeper engagement model. We want to move people from exposure to engagement. (Note to self: Sell this concept to ad agencies, you’ll get hired in an minute). When you turn off your ad spend, it stays off and your message goes away. Build a community and your messaging lives on.

Here’s the plan. Have our audience say:
I SAW it
I INTERACTED with it
I TALKED about it
I BOUGHT it

Buzzword Alert: “Level Up”...taken from the gaming world meaning moving to a higher level. May be used in any context when you want to say “more”.

Issue: Open vs. Safe Environments. Second Life is "open" and you will experience all kinds of crazy human behavior and some brands may not appreciate this.
There.com is "safe" and more closely governed. Some brands may prefer this.

Neopets has original content and is translated into 11 languages simultaneously.

Netropolis launched on Jan 30th and already has 2.4 million registered users.

Worlds of Warcraft has 8 million paid subscribers and is the 800 pound gorilla in the virtual world space.

It is easy to get money into and out of Project Entropia. It is not easy to get money out of Second Life.

Consultant Chart Alert:
Access > Find > Share > Participate > Collaborate > Co-Create

Consultant Quote Alert:
“If content is king, context is emperor.”
“The avatars ARE the content.”
“Kids love brands but they hate advertising.”
“Enhanced pre-sales activities” (Good euphemism for no revenue yet).

Excellent Random Technology Adoption Observation: “Education is the industry that took 25 years to take the overhead projector from the bowling alley to the classroom.”

Marco Polo is an online portal that educators are paying attention to...also Artid is virtual Shakespeare and kids love using it.

“Use your brand to establish relationships...not necessarily with your brand but rather with one another”.

Ethical Issue: With data, avatars can know a tremendous amount about people in virtual worlds. How much of this data is ethical to use? Should avatars disclose the fact that they know this information? Is it OK to delve into Avatar-Based Marketing? (Kind of a rhetorical question...credit card companies use customer data mercilessly).

Books to read: Convergance Culture and Fourth Turning

Marketers are still scared of MySpace.

Girl Scouts of America has an awesome MySpace page.

“Make it market-driven, not marketing driven.” (Disney approach)

Forterra is a company that comes to the virtual world space with experience with the U.S. Department of Defense and the healthcare industry. They are in a different league as they are connecting these worlds with mission-critical business systems.

Case Study: There was a nursing shortage in the US so there was a huge push to get people into nursing programs. That has been achieved but when they graduate they are required to do 900 hours on on-the-job training but that number of people entering the system would jeopardize the quality of healthcare. Forterra has developed virtual 3D training that gets the nurses the training they need without putting healthcare quality at risk. And, as a bonus, it is a scalable system.

We need taxonomies over virtual data. You can’t find anything easily.

The University of South Florida has a newly created Virtual Worlds Research Center. Rochester Polytechnic Institute also has a program and I think I heard that NYU does also.

eHarmony Marriage: Bringing More Than Couples Together

2006-05-05T07:20:00.000-04:00

eHarmony has extended their offering to include a service for married couples which is a logical extension of their matchmaking offering. Who, after all, hasn't had difficulties with relationships?

But what is fascinating to me here is the way that their site brings together not just couples, but also a hint of what the convergence (arggh, I used an old buzzword) experience is going to be like when the interactive experience of the internet lands firmly on those big plasma screens in people's media rooms.

We all know that passive television viewing is falling away in favor of a more consumer-directed experience. Instead of having information broadcast to people, the internet has made people expect an environment where they can discover for themselves what they want to know, when they want to know it.

Waiting? Oh, people don't wait anymore.

And this is why the eHarmony Marriage offering on the internet is so intriguing. It informs, entertains, and educates so much better than a static text page could ever do and it makes me think of, oh, about a thousand other ways that this experience could be employed by marketers. I believe that smart marketers want to engage the marketplace with intelligent, compelling experiences that help, not hinder, people to feel in control of their decision to buy.

The point here is that eHarmony is doing that now and it bodes well for the future because, hey, creative marketing is going to be a whole lot of fun over the next five years.

> Veoh: Disruptive Technology/Entertainment Industry

2006-03-30T08:54:00.002-05:00

Before you visit this site you will need to remember (or be made aware of) something. When broadcast television first got rolling there was not much to broadcast. Boxing matches were some of the first sporting events to be shown on the cathode ray tube...woo-hoo! Then advertisers developed content that are, to this day, of dubious value; the soap opera was developed by advertisers to show something in between their commercials. Kind of bassackwards from a viewers perspective but, hey, that's business, kids.

OK, history lesson over. Let's look at Veoh, a peer-to-peer video network that just might be the disruptive technology that kills traditional broadcast networks. All right, that might be gushing hyperbole, so let's say that this might be the disruptive technology that inflicts a serious wound in broadcast networks.

Started by Dmitry Shapiro, Veoh brings democracy to the viewing audience and like many things that allow people to do things without the constraints of previous barriers, the results are sometimes brilliant, sometimes cringe-worthy. But that said, American culture has advanced enough to know that "Friends don't let friends watch Friends".

My friend and colleague, David Tames, said on Rocketboom that the best HD television is a computer screen. Apple's Front Row should clear up any doubts that this is true. Veoh is such a natural progression that it is a disruptive technology that it was inevitable that someone would come up with something like this but I will bet you that network execs didn't see it coming.

And, of course, there is also AtomFilms which was formed 5 years ago by the merger of Atom Films and Shockwave.com. And, yeah, YouTube is in the mix also.

And one that will be fascinating to watch, and I mean that on many levels.

> Sky-click: The New Face of the Call Center

2006-03-26T20:20:00.000-05:00

Having spent the last year working at a reasonably well-known catalogue company, I have come to understand the importance of having a robust call center. With so much call center outsourcing going on these days it is pretty much the norm to call an American company's service number yet end up speaking to someone with a very thick accent who is not always as helpful as one would hope.

I understand the cost-saving aspect of outsourcing call centers but sometimes it just doesn't work for the brand. We have a company that is deeply associated with the American northeast and our customers are thrilled to hear that our call center is right here at our main office.

But, that said, it is expensive.

Along comes a company called Sky-click which is built on top of Skpe, and it is an awesome idea. I first heard about the service over on TechCrunch and they had this to say, "Sky-Click is a 100% web-based solution to set up your call center, built on Skype API and very easy to implement and use. The service does not require any particular hardware investment and can be easily integrated in a web site (e-commerce for example). All you have to do is downloading Skype client on the call-center collaborators’ computer. On the end-user side all you have to do is press the “call” button that will initiate a call (or a video call) to the call-center. This call-center has all the important features you could expect from a professional solution: time management, availability of collaborators, call dispatching, waiting background music, feedback management."

So here is an opportunity to "pull a JetBlue" so to speak. Set up a call center using sweet local people and hack away at huge infrastructure costs. Sounds like something for existing SME companies with call centers to look at...as well as any other web-vased business looking to strengthen their customer experience and who knows, maybe a little cross-sell, upsell perhaps?

sky-click

> Melodyne 3: Absolutely Incredible Audio Editing

2006-03-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

At the risk of sounding like an old guy...or like my father, who to me was always an old guy...it is amazing what they can do these days with recording. When I was a kid it was the amazing sounds that the Beatles, Beach Boys and Phil Spector got onto vinyl that amazed the old man. Today it is things like Melodyne that makes me quote, word for word, the old man's, "It's amazing what they can do these days with recording".

Except it is no longer, "they", it is "us". We can all do it...and it is amazing!

Here's the official marketing pitch but I will distill it down to the Wow-Essence after the quote:
"Recording artists and engineers have known about Melodyne for years. Until now, though, it was only monophonic vocal and instrumental parts that could benefit from Melodyne’s much-admired editing algorithms: algorithms capable of everything from minor corrections of intonation to extreme pitch shifting and from the subtle modification of grooves to drastic time stretching. With Version 3, Melodyne is no longer limited to melodies but offers a unique algorithm that can perform high quality time stretching on full chords and complex audio signals; so now harmonic material (such as rhythm guitar or piano parts) — whether monophonic or polyphonic — can be transposed (without altering the tempo), slowed down or sped up (without altering the pitch) and even quantized. What’s more, all this can be done in real time with the sound quality for which Melodyne is famous."

What that means is that you can move individual audio notes up and down, ahead and behind with a simple point and click. If you are familiar with audio editing I am going to let that set in for a spell. It is really quite astonishing. Intonation problems? No problem. Need that trombone to sound like a trumpet (and who doesn't?), no worries.

Lastly, before I go back to hours and hours of uninterrupted playing, Melodyne 3 allows you to edit a virtually unlimited number of tracks at the same time. It is amazing what we can do these days with recording.

Want to know more? The Technofile has a great post on Melodyne 3.

> MicroMedia Paper/Digital Paper

2006-03-24T19:09:00.000-05:00

I have spent the last year or so creating catalogues and...whew, I have certainly learned a lot. Besides all the technological advancements in digital workflow, I found myself wondering, "Why DO we spend all this money on postage and printing?"

Well, according to the good people at the MIT Advertising Lab who seem to have answers to many of my musings, by 2015 that will all change.

"MicroMedia Paper
This snapshot-sized display can play music, movies, and more
Price: $50 for a 10-pack
Designer: Lunar Design
Executive Summary: Wafer-thin display and storage finally brings digital media to the familiar format of paper
Tech Barriers: Flexible, disposable displays; radical new GUI; millimeter-thick batteries
Target Market: Photo-sharing families, 35 and up, plus execs wanting fancy business cards
Projected release: 2015"

And according to Forbes, "There is no shortage of designs for futuristic electronic paper. Various designs of this magical stuff will allow entire books to fit on a single memory-enabled, polymer sheet, displayed using infinitely reconfigurable magnetically-charged pigments; or futuristic printing technologies that will allow mass-produced super-cheap color screens that could be applied like wallpaper. One of the more interesting e-paper concepts comes from the techno-futurists at Lunar Design, who have imagined a product for the year 2015 called MicroMedia Paper. Available in packs of ten for around $35, these ultra-thin, mini color screens would work using replaceable "power sticker" batteries and would be controlled using touch sensitive buttons and a volume dial that adjusts the integrated speakers. Video, pictures and teleconferencing imagery could be transferred using a built-in wireless connection."

> DabbleDB: A Programming Tool Even a Creative Could Love

2006-03-18T19:30:00.000-05:00

Model your business. Share your data. Explore your data. Get smart results.

These are the things that they say Dabble DB can do when it launches and I can think of at least ten things that I could do with this right now to exponentially help my business. Filemaker/Access is not terribly collaborative, Sharepoint is a steep wallet, and Quickbase is certainly a strong offering but at a not-suitable-for-noodling $250/month pricepoint...and I am a creative, not a database guy, so Dabble DB looks like I might be able to do something useful quickly and easily.

The way it works now is I sketch out what I want the system to do and then bounce it off of IT and then I wait. And wait. And wait for something to possibly, maybe, perhaps happen.

If Dabble DB afforded me the ability to cobble something that actually worked, hey, that would be incredibly useful. And (this is important) IT would FEAR me!

> UXMag: Design/Tech/Strategy

2006-03-16T13:20:00.000-05:00

Years ago I worked at a company that was founded on the very valuable and very dangerous concept that Design, Strategy, and Technology should live together in one company.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't...but it was an incredible social experiment and, for a period of time, also quite profitable.

UXMagazine, with it's perplexingly ambitious tagline, "We cover common sense." will be interesting to watch because, AS WE KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE, when you combine design, tech, and strategy it doesn't always yield common sense. In fact, for it all come together it is more like the aligning of the planets than a predictable event.

If nothing else, I learned that certain phrases have different meanings to different people. For instance:
"Not Trivial" (Design): I will figure this out if it kills me...and you!
"Not Trivial" (Strategy): This is going to cost a lot of money.
"Not Trivial" (Tech): This will never, on God's green earth, ever happen.

Well, the good news is that UX Magazine has launched in beta and encompasses those three crafty disciplines; Design, Strategy, Technology.

> Alarm:Clock

2006-03-16T13:05:00.000-05:00

It is hard not to smell the aroma of enthusiasm wafting out of the valley. When I want to see what's cooking, I head over to the alarm clock because, hey, I know what time it is.

> iWood: The Return of Elegance.

2006-03-14T13:23:00.001-05:00

There is something about the wonderful countervalence that wood lends to these digital devices. Something about the iWood and the wood briefcase from MoMA that just remind me of the Swedish furniture that my parents had when I was growing up. (No, not Ikea. I am older than that and their furniture was the expensive stuff.)

More blogs about design.

> VAST: Cars, Jobs, Profiles, It's All Here.

2006-03-14T08:18:00.000-05:00

If you are selling something...or looking for something, be it a car, a job or a person, anything that shortens the hunting time is probably appreciated. I can certainly see the wisdom in enjoying the journey of life but that journey can be just a wee bit more enjoyable if you start with good directions.

I think Tom Waits said something like that once. Or perhaps it was a cautionary tale about the dangers of starting out with bad directions.

In any event, Vast has indexed 4.4 million cars for sale, 4.7 million job listings and 8.6 million user profiles which makes them the largest car sale database on the web, the 2nd or 3rd largest job listing site, and in the top 5 for number of personal listings (profiles from social networks, blogs etc.).

Whenever I see something like this I usually ask myself, "Would I like shopping like this?" and in this case the answer was yes. True, women shop, men hunt. But that said, this is a tasty lookup and it will be interesting to see where this goes.

Nik Cubrilovic over at Techcrunch had this to say ab out what makes Vast work, "There are a few secrets to Vast that makes them very good at aggregating listings and organizing them. The first is that they are very good at crawling the whole web, not just the pages that every crawler can see but also beyond authentication screens and into what is known as the ‘deep web’. Vast is very good at extracting information out of all types of web pages, those with complex markup, Javascript, Flash , different document types etc. so the index is very comprehensive."

From an portal interface design perspective it is always amusing to watch history repeat itself. First Yahoo with 173 links on their homepage. Then Google with, like, one. Now Vast with the "Yahoo!" homepage design. Ah, it's all just a little bit of history repeating. (Shirley Bassey sang that, kids).

> Ruby On Rails: Permission To Fail Faster

2006-03-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

OK, two disclaimers here: 1) You need to be kinda nerdy to appreciate this stuff but if you are interested and invested in what is possible, you will want to pay some attention to Ruby On Rails.
2) A few years back Fast Company published an article entited, Fail Faster and the premise was that making mistakes and failing was actually good, we just need to do it faster.

Karl Long authors a blog called Customer Experience Strategy and in it he asks a very good question, "Does “rails” contribute to a better customer experience?"

Karl writes, "Now, I’m not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have taken a few tutorials, and viewed a few of the video screencasts of “rails” in action, giving me some limited insight. It seems that the “rails” “write once” philosophy forms an incredibly tight relationship between the User Interface and the database. In other words you write one piece of code and it creates all the UI elements and database stuff automatically. The “creating a weblog in 15 minutes” screencast provides a great example where the programmer creates an item in the program called a “post”. A post has a title and a body that contain text, and as the programmer specifies this, a web view of a post is created, with a title and a body. Not only that but the functions for creating, deleting, and viewing lists of posts are all there as well, with the requisite “create”, “edit”, “delete” buttons.

In 15 minutes, we go from scratch to complete weblog engine: with comments and an administrative interface. But since the actual application only took 58 lines to complete, we also have time left over to do unit testing, examine the logs, and play around with the domain model. What this illustrates to me is really the “power of patterns” on customer experience, and the value of consistency."

Simon de Haast posted this response to Karl's thoughts and I just think it is spot on...

It just doesn’t matter. Check out this blog entry from 37Signals that reinforces their “focus on keeping it simple.
http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/it_just_doesnt_matter.php”
“I think that statement embodies what makes a product great. Figuring out what matters and leaving out the rest.”

Sage advice for web design...and life: Figuring out what matters and leaving out the rest.

> Real Estate Advertising That Is Actually Useful.

2006-03-13T14:04:00.000-05:00

Unityworks has lauched a service that is actually making the web a more valuable place. When my wife and I were looking for a house last year it was astonishing how much information the real estate agent was keeping from us. Not necessarily intentionally, but asymetrical information IS what has kept the real estate and car sales industries humming along for many years.

Now, if I want to know about a neighborhood, I'll go to zillow.com .

And if I want to get a good feel for a specific house, I will look for something like Unityworks is offering.

Years ago I worked at a big global ad agency and a burning desire involved putting their television commercials on the internet. This was 1996, mind you, so bandwidth was a huge buzzbuster, not to mention the immutable fact that people didn't much want to see a commercial on the internet.

Much of that has changed. Bandwidth has increased and people really do go to the internet for information that they can use. Unityworks joins companies such as Productorials who are combining (arguably) high production values and internet marketing. If this is done well, with excellent production values and dead-on usability, it can be a great way to inform, educate, entertain...and make a sale.

> Cedar Briefcase: Art For Your Science

2006-03-13T12:42:00.000-05:00

According to the Museum of Modern Art, "Takumi Shimamura delivers this unique briefcase made of ecological thinned Japanese cedar."

I confess that I have no idea what ecologically thinned Japanese cedar might be although I suspect that it might be close to the "rich Corinthian leather" that graced the Chrysler ads decades ago. In any event, a 17" Powerbook would fit in this and could not help but imagine walking into a client meeting, placing this stunning briefcase on the table and then pulling out a sleek 17" Apple Powerbook.

Now, that would be making a design statement!

More blogs about design.

> CrazyEgg: Seeing Is Better Than Wading Through a Roiling Sea of Data.

2006-03-13T08:28:00.001-05:00

When it comes to web statistic and usage reports, for my money, seeing is better than wading through my body weight in analytic reports that confuse thud-factor data dumps with understandable, actionable intelligence.

Come to think of it, cataloguers could use this also...not in regards to web activity but rather for historical sales data, square inch analysis, and return rates...all things that would be best viewed via a dashboard approach.

But I digress, back to the web.

Crazy Egg has taken a different approach where you can measure and actually see what your users are doing when they visit your site, and from these results you can immediately optimize your site based on your visitors usage patterns.

And while I am a visual person, I do prefer the "overlay" view that gives me numbers as opposed to the "heatmap" view which makes me feel like I am reading auras or something.

I suppose the biggest "Ah-Ha!" to Crazyegg is that business people have complained/screamed/bellowed that they have been drowning in a sea of data. Crazyegg adresses that very real business need.
Analytics
Web2.0
Web

> David Tames on Rocketboom

2006-03-11T20:13:00.000-05:00

Being an old creative guy, I am totally bedazzled by
the advances that are being made in video production.
Gone are the days where very expensive creatives sat
in the very expensive video editing bay eating sushi that the client
is paying for...while someone else does the editing.

While I do sometimes miss the free sushi, I do love
the fact that I can write, shoot, edit and produce
video all by myself. And I love discovering new
technological advances that can be understood by mere
mortals and sub-mortals such as myself.

So I was thrilled to see my old colleague, David Tames, presenting the joys of
Panasonic's new HD camera on Rocketboom.

He also has some interesting thoughts on HD TV if you are thinking of buying one.

That, and Amanda Congdon is pretty easy on the eyes.
Rocketboom
Video

> The Tube Network: A Simple Idea That Is Radically Different

2006-03-10T21:07:00.000-05:00

Music = Memories.

It's a simple equation, a simple statement but one that is incredibly powerful. We remember certain times, certain people, and certain places when we hear a song. Some of us, myself included, have a running soundtrack in our heads. At this point in history I am pretty much convinced that there is nothing that cannot be addressed by a rock lyric. Try it sometime, there really is a rock lyric for pretty much any situation you find yourself in.

For those of us who have such a near-psychotic connection to music there is The Tube Music Network.

But what is on TTN is only part of the story. The broadcast of The Tube Music Network will be achieved via a unique concept referred to as "multicasting," which will enable consumers to receive The Tube Music Network, free, over-the-air on new television sets that are enabled with digital tuners and via digital cable service. Multicasting has only recently been possible due to improvements in digital signal transmission compression and new FCC regulations that enable programming to be carried on a broadcaster's digital bandwidth.

In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act which gave the new digital spectrum to existing broadcasters for the transmittal of digital broadcast signals beginning in 1998. The FCC has mandated the move to the digital spectrum, thus enabling broadcast stations the ability to air additional programming channels.

Hey, an FCC mandate plus the ability to air additional programming channels. Sounds like a new market to me.
US News & World Report Article-4/24/06

musicvideo
digitalspectrum
television
More blogs about musicvideo.

> Yaris: Toyota's Pre-Market Community

2006-03-10T16:05:00.000-05:00

With links to topics such as "What to Expect at the Dealership" and "Understanding Credit", Toyota has launched their first-time-buyer-friendly website...and car... bafflingly called Yaris. Oddly, the perky little website takes you to a painfully corporate Toyota-speak website that dims the experience but if you ignore those pesky real-world details, it is a fun place to dream.

While one has to wonder what process yielded the regrettable name, you do have to admire Toyota's offering here. Sure, it is a little bit too "aw, gee shucks" and while the interface for the Yaris Configurator is rather slow, it is kind of fun. I'm sorry, I have to return to the name...what if it turns out to be an acronym for "You'll Always Remember It's Slow"?

I also thought it was notable that the decision process copy starts by asking about "Your Yaris" and further down the decision path it starts referring to the vehicle as "My Yaris". Ahhh, the swinging-watch-in-front-of-eyes school of copywriting.

> Postsecret: Visual Confessional.

2006-03-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

They say the most interesting businessplans/movie plots/storylines can be captured in a simple sentence. Here's one now:
"PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard."

I am a visual person so I appreciate seeing the images that people have crafted for their confessions.

But there is also tremendous value in this:

Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2006 1:02 PM
Subject: Question for you

Which postcard is your favorite?

---Reply---
I was inspired to write my secret on a postcard and mail it to you. But when I faced my secret on the card it made me sick. So instead I tore-up the card and decided to change me life right then. For me, that unseen card represents the hold secrets can have on us and our power to break free.

> Thumbstacks: The Blessed End of "Did You Get My Powerpoint?"

2006-03-10T10:44:00.000-05:00

Presentations used to be fun, you could do a grownup version of show and tell and you would either get the business or not.

Then, in the era of Powerpoint presentations, there came an apparently non-optional step whereas entire rooms of people were bored to tears by screen after screen of information.

Soon people realized that they could email someone a Powerpoint presentation. Or, in a complete reversal of progress, one could snailmail a CD of a presentation.

It wasn't long before offerings like WebEx offered some hope to those who wished to present to prospective business partners but not spend excessive time in airports. But, alas, it wasn't the most friction-free experience for many and it usually ended up having to call in Ned from IT before every WebEx presentation.

Now there is Thumbstacks, a bare bones but functional application that allows users to build presentations online and present them via a permanent URL. It uses both Flash and Ajax - it uses Flash if its installed, and defaults to Ajax if not.

A demo can be found here.

> Entrepreneurial Proverbs

2006-03-09T19:55:00.000-05:00

Sometimes in life you stumble across something that makes you stop. A few of these things will make you stop and hit "print". Out of these, even fewer will make it into the pile that you will take home and actually read. And out of those few that you read one or two have the ability to change your life.

Marc Hedlund is an entrepreneur-in-residence at O'Reilly Media and he has written (collected during his life is more accurate) what he call Entrepreneurial Proverbs.

If you have ever noodled in front of your computer and pondered something greater than what you are currently doing, read on...sage advice.

I am old creative guy, I have been part of big ad agencies, rockin' tech startups and small businesses that grew quickly and imploded just as quickly. Trust me here, Marc's EP's are worth taking to heart.