Reports of the Death of the Keyboard Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
For almost all of computing history, we have interacted with computing devices via keyboard for input and printer, then screen, for output. Computers are logical devices, and require clean, defined...
View ArticleFor the Love of Brilliant Advertising
Great technology companies have been built on advertising: Google, Facebook, Yahoo (in the old days), not to mention many a magazine, newspaper and television network. I have always loved the...
View ArticleThe Hidden Dangers of Interim Solutions
One of the hardest challenges in business is knowing when to use an interim solution and when to start over from scratch. From a pure financial perspective, interim solutions almost always win out. I...
View ArticleHeroku and Product Management
I have been impressed with Heroku for a long time. Their simple to use platform-as-a-service (PaaS) has made it incredibly easy for software developers to deploy applications lightly and cheaply, and...
View ArticleCan Early Markets Survive Without Product Management?
In earlier articles, especially here, we have discussed why great product management is crucial to a company’s success. It is the role that is responsible for a product as a whole, the only one that...
View ArticleInternet Trends and Internet Values
This week, Mary Meeker of KPCB has released her “Internet Trends” report. I look forward to the release of this report. While I rarely can sit through a nearly-200-slide presentation, the insights in...
View ArticleThere Is Nothing New Under the Sun
Following on our review of Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report, today we will look at the “Re-Imagining” section. On slides 28-44, the report looks at business processes and how they have changed...
View ArticleNothing is New Under the Sun Server
As Ecclesiastes said, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Last week, we explored how much of the innovation in the tech business is just retooling existing processes, while much innovation exists in...
View ArticlePricing Inversions, or Smart vs. Lucky
Pricing is one of the most important – and mysterious – parts of a business. Price too high, and you lose customers; price too low, and you leave lots of profit on the table. An entire price consulting...
View ArticleMore Fun To Higher Sales
For many years, business was assumed to be “staid” or “proper”. Certain dress and behaviour was appropriate for outside the office, and never to be seen inside. While the distinction between...
View ArticleGrowing Independent: Laptop to Smartphone to Wearable
When does a personal technology – a computer, a smartphone, a watch – “grow up”? There is a slow but continuous process I have observed with every new personal computing technology. Stage 1 – Child:...
View ArticleAgile Advertising
Friday I had lunch with a friend who does marketing for a pharmaceutical company. He described to me the process by which he manages major ads. “Ads are very expensive,” says he. “First you have to...
View ArticleOld URLs Don’t Die… They Come Back to Haunt You
What do Heinz Ketchup, QR codes and adult Web sites have in common? Apparently, everything. QR codes are those two-dimensional barcodes you often see on ads or consumer products. Just like regular...
View ArticleDeodorant for Software
Although the title for this article might imply suggestions for Proctor & Gamble’s IT department, instead we will address how badly code can “smell” and how and when to prevent it. In business as...
View ArticleWhen Not to Outsource
In earlier articles, we discussed How to Outsource and When to Outsource. Today, we turn to when not to Outsource. At first blush, we expect not to outsource when our candidate does not meet at least...
View ArticleBare Metal Cloud
Infrastructure-as-a-Service, cloud servers, whatever you call them, have been around for years. Amazon is the clear leader in the pack (and, according to Simon Wardley, is likely to remain so for a...
View ArticleThe Prisoner’s Software Dilemma
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a famous model in game theory. I am far from an expert in game theory – although I did have the pleasure of meeting Prof. Israel Aumann, nobel laureate in economics and world...
View ArticleManaging Your Users… Right and Wrong
Is your user management an afterthought? For most companies building technology systems, how to manage users – the process of creating, managing, grouping and linking accounts – is bolted on later....
View ArticleWho Are You Going to Tell?
There is an old joke about a rabbi who goes golfing on Yom Kippur, although I am sure there are variants about an imam in ramadan or priest during Lent. It is such a beautiful day, and the rabbi never...
View ArticleDon’t Break Your Customers
Anyone who does Web-scale or information technology over the past two years knows containers. The primary reason is the success of docker in making not-so-new containers easy to build, deploy, manage...
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