“Computers make us software”

A thought provoking piece in the Atlantic Monthly entitled: Is Google making us stupid? has attracted a good deal of media attention.

Almost instantly, a semi rebuttal cum discussion of this piece appeared in the New York Times exploring the hypothesis that computers might not be so good for our mental health after all.

Or put in a slightly different manner, computers are rapidly contributing to global sensory overload. We have become like a sparrow devouring enormous amounts of information yet without the requisite filtration system to retain what is of bodily value. This filtration system, as these authors argue, is based on good old analog thinking encouraging contemplation, discussion and deeper reflection. Instead, such age old skills have been sacrificed at the digital alter in favor of Twitter-like ambient awareness, an ‘on demand’ trivia feast lacking any real lredeeming human qualities.

Part of the problem seems to be generational: those who are crying foul are more often than not analog veterans, information warriors of the past who bled to get knowledge somewhere in a university library stack.

Another part of the problem is misinterpretation. McCluhan, the guru most often cited in these discussions, has a doozy of an aphorism to sum up this predicament:

” Computers make us software.”

And as we all know, software is only as good as the human brain that carves it out of silicon.

In short, the media has changed: goodbye paper, hello silicon.

No big deal!

Japanese linen, out of the closet and into the mainstream

By Kaori Shoji
Monday, August 25, 2008

New York Times
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/26/style/flinen.php

TOKYO: Japanese linen, once made almost obsolete by the general preference for the much cheaper Chinese product, is quietly making a comeback. Up until now, linen had been about summer shirts and suits, but these days the subtext is changing from mere summer fashion to year-round lifestyle.

“‘People are starting to think differently about textiles, and more are buying or using linen in the way Europeans did in the 19th century,” said the interior stylist Mika Sonomiya. “Unlike cotton, good linen is expensive but grows more beautiful with time and washing.”

Sonomiya is a self-professed “laundry fiend” and considers the washing/drying of linen products to be the highest of stress relievers. She insists on 100 percent domestic linen for sheets, towels and wraps, used lovingly in every aspect of daily living.

“Before, I loved the feel of French linen but now I’ve come to recommend the Japan-made product,” she said. “It makes sense to support the domestic textile industry, not just for cost purposes but simply because new companies in that field are doing great work.”

Kyoto and the nearby Omi region had been well known for domestic linen, and a few textile artisans had kept the flame going. But the problem is, their linen products are often formal (mostly kimono materials and related paraphernalia) and too expensive to use on a daily basis, which had kept the average linen user from crossing over to home-grown products.

Recognizing the demand for more casual linen, the textile giant Teikoku set up an online linen shop called Teisen where finely woven sheets, towels, pajamas and other sundries bearing the “made in Japan” logo are available.

“But the ones to watch are the smaller companies,” Sonomiya said. “Hardly anyone knows about them, because they operate on such a small basis and rarely bother to advertise.”

In Omi, the family-operated Loop produces bed and bath items made from ramie and hemp – stitched by hand and the brand logo (artfully faded) stamped with typewriter keys.

Closer to Tokyo, Oldman’s Tailor, run by the young couple Toku and Yuji Shimura, has become a metaphor for domestic linen products in just seven years, from its start in 2001. Oldman’s Tailor has no shop, and there are no employees, apart from the Shimuras (not counting Yuji’s mother, who helps out by washing and then sun-drying the finished products). The office is in their home (located at the foot of Mount Fuji, an area once renowned for textiles) and the more than 200 linen products they create (by themselves or collaborating with weavers) are sold in a handful of selected boutiques, or online.

The Shimuras, intent on making linen products “that would enchant and entice people 100 years later” are not only dedicated craftsmen but also designers – towels, for instance, have a marine theme that is reminiscent of the captain’s cabin of a French naval fleet in the late 19th century.

Sonomiya, a fan of the couple’s work, said: “There’s an unmistakable air of authenticity and romance in everything they make. You can tell that they understand and love linen, how romantic and evocative it is.”

Analysts see the revival of Japanese linen as part of a bigger trend, one that bears the stamp of ecology. The textile artist Hiromi Kanzaki said she sees a shift from “design to materials” in Japanese fashion.

“It’s less about the cut and the silhouette” than “whether the material is natural and how it feels on the skin, where it was made, whether the process damaged the environment unnecessarily,” Kanzaki said. “People are much more attuned to that sort of information.”

The concern and interest in materials is bolstering the domestic textile industry, and design companies, quick to ride the wave, are now creating textile products made from domestic organic cotton, washi and wood charcoal and colored with 100 percent water-soluble plant dyes.

As the editorial director Masanobu Sugatsuke said: “Right now, no fashion trend could emerge or last very long without giving a big bow to the environment, because the consumer is so much more concerned about such things than they were 10 years ago. Now whatever is wasteful, excessive or selfish just won’t cut it anymore, no matter how snazzy the design.”

Jesus phone test

This is rather interesting: blogging from the Jesus phone directly to WordPress and it actually works. You can grab the WordPress app at the iPhone App Store!

High Cost of Driving Ignites Online Classes Boom

July 11, 2008
New York Times

By SAM DILLON
NEWTOWN, Pa. — First, Ryan Gibbons bought a Hyundai so he would not have to drive his gas-guzzling Chevy Blazer to college classes here. When fuel prices kept rising, he cut expenses again, eliminating two campus visits a week by enrolling in an online version of one of his courses.

Like Mr. Gibbons, thousands of students nationwide, including many who were previously reluctant to study online, have suddenly decided to take one or more college classes over the Internet.

“Gas prices have pushed people over the edge,” said Georglyn Davidson, director of online learning at Bucks County Community College, where Mr. Gibbons studies, and where online enrollments are up 35 percent this summer over last year.

The vast majority of the nation’s 15 million college students — at least 79 percent — live off campus, and with gas prices above $4 a gallon, many are seeking to cut commuting costs by studying online. Colleges from Massachusetts and Florida to Texas to Oregon have reported significant online enrollment increases for summer sessions, with student numbers in some cases 50 percent or 100 percent higher than last year. Although some four-year institutions with large online programs — like the University of Massachusetts and Villanova — have experienced these increases, the greatest surges have been registered at two-year community colleges, where most students are commuters, many support families and few can absorb large new expenditures for fuel.

At Bristol Community College in Fall River, Mass., for instance, online enrollments were up 114 percent this summer over last, and half the students queried cited gas costs or some other transportation obstacle as a reason for signing up to study over the Internet, said April Bellafiore, an assistant dean there.

“Online classes filled up immediately,” Ms. Bellafiore said. “It blew my mind.”

Enrollments in online classes expanded rapidly early in this decade, but growth slowed in 2006 to less than 10 percent, according to statistics compiled last year by researchers at Babson College in Massachusetts. Some recent increases reported by college officials in interviews were much larger, which they attributed to the rising cost of gasoline. Pricing policies for online courses vary by campus, but most classes cost as much as, or more than, traditional ones.

At Brevard Community College in Cocoa, Fla., online enrollment rose to 2,726 this summer from 2,190 last year, a 24.5 percent increase. “That is a dramatic increase we can only attribute to gas prices,” said Jim Drake, Brevard’s president.

Dr. Drake and officials at several other colleges expressed concern that mounting fuel costs could force some students to drop out of college altogether, especially since only a fraction of courses at most colleges are offered online. Dr. Drake has put Brevard on a four-day week to help employees and students save gas.

David Gray, chief executive of UMass Online, the distance education program at the University of Massachusetts, said that at an educators’ conference this week in San Francisco, officials from scores of universities discussed how the energy crisis could affect higher education. “There was broad agreement that gas price increases will be a source of continued growth in online enrollments,” Mr. Gray said.

Once an incidental expense, fuel for commuting to campus now costs some students half of what they pay for tuition, in some cases more. Sergey Sosnovsky, who is pursuing pre-engineering studies at Bucks County Community College, paid $240 a month for gas during the spring semester, while his full-time tuition cost about $500 a month, he said. Other students here and in half a dozen other states told similar stories.

Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo., which enrolls residents on both sides of the Arkansas-Missouri border, had 52 percent more students sign up for Internet-based courses this summer than last, said Witt Salley, the college’s director of online teaching and learning.

One student taking online coursework for the first time is Kameron Miller, a 30-year-old working mother who lives in Buffalo, Mo., 40 miles north of Springfield. Her commute to classes in her 1998 Chevy Venture during the spring semester cost her at least $200 a month for gas, Ms. Miller said. This summer, she is taking courses in health, humanities and world music — all online.

“I don’t feel I get as much out of an online class as a campus course,” Ms. Miller said. “But I couldn’t afford any other decision.”

Among the four-year institutions reporting increased online enrollment, UMass Online, which enrolls students at its five Massachusetts campuses and worldwide, experienced 46 percent growth this summer over last among students at the university’s Dartmouth, Mass., campus. At Villanova University in Pennsylvania, enrollment in online, graduate, engineering, nursing and business courses has increased more than 40 percent this summer, said Robert Stokes, an assistant vice president there.

Waiting lists for Web-based courses have lengthened at some institutions. At the University of Colorado, Denver, for instance, 361 students are on the waiting list for online courses for the fall term, compared to 233 last year on the same date, said Bob Tolsma, an assistant vice chancellor.

In Tennessee, the six universities, 13 two-year colleges and 26 technology centers overseen by the Tennessee Board of Regents enrolled 9,000 students for online courses this summer, compared with about 7,000 last summer, a 29 percent increase, said Robbie K. Melton, an associate vice chancellor.

“We had to train more faculty and provide more online courses because students just couldn’t afford to drive to our campuses,” Dr. Melton said.

Sandra Jobe, a 46-year-old bookkeeper who is studying for a master’s degree in education at Tennessee State University, said she reduced the number of trips she had to make each week to the university’s Nashville campus to two from four by enrolling in an online course.

“The campus experience is good; I wouldn’t diminish that,” Ms. Jobe said. “But when you’re penny-pinching, online is a good alternative.”

South Texas College, which has five campuses in Hidalgo and Starr Counties in the Rio Grande Valley, saw a 35 percent increase in online enrollments this summer over last, said William Serrata, a vice president. Other years have seen summer increases of 10 percent to 15 percent, he said. “This really speaks to students’ not wanting to travel due to the gas prices,” Mr. Serrata said.

Elvira Ozuna, who is 37 and studying for an associate’s degree in occupational therapy, was driving four times a week, 50 miles round trip from her home to South Texas College’s campus in McAllen. But this summer she enrolled in two online courses, eliminating that commute.

Ms. Ozuna said she found online work more difficult than classroom study. “But I saved on the gasoline,” she said.

Distance education is no silver bullet that can alone solve the challenges posed for higher education by rising gasoline prices, officials warned.

For one thing, many students, especially in rural areas, lack the high-speed Internet connections on which online courses depend.

“The infrastructure doesn’t exist to give all rural students clear online access,” said Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor at the University of Alabama. “Rural America is where the digital divide is most dramatic.”

Furthermore, most colleges still offer only a fraction of their courses over the Internet. Bucks County Community College, for instance, will offer 414 credit courses during the fall term. Only 103 of those will be offered online, and another 48 as hybrid courses, that is, partly online but with some campus visits required. So most students will still need to come to campus.

Mr. Gibbons, who is 20, works days and aspires to be a writer. He said his online course, “Introduction to the Novel,” had been a good experience, especially the Web-based discussions of Jane Austen’s novels. (He likes posting comments by e-mail better than speaking in class.) He said he still preferred on-campus study, “but with the price of gas jumping up, I’ll probably be taking more courses online now.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

This srikes me as pefectly normal behavior… how about you?

Tuesday 27th May, 10:02 AM JST

Man disguised as schoolgirl arrested for trespassing in Ibaraki school

IBARAKI —
A 30-year-old man was arrested Monday night for sneaking into an Ibaraki high school, wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform and wig, police said Tuesday.

Shigemitsu Kajiro, 30, was caught by a teacher in a corridor around 5:30 p.m. after the teacher noticed he was wearing shoes which did not match the school’s uniform. After discovering the student was a man, the teacher took him to a staff room and called police. The suspect has so far said nothing about what he was up to or whether he had done this before, police said.

E-COMMERCE REPORT

A Referral Service That Ensures Someone Actually Makes a Sale

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/technology/18ecom.html

By BOB TEDESCHI
ONLINE shoppers who can’t decide whether to pull the trigger on their next purchase may be surprised at a new alternative: an offer to get it free.

The offer is not a swindle, nor is it a return to the insanity of the early days of the dot-com boom, when retailers practically gave away goods in order to attract buzz and customers. Rather, it is a new marketing method that relies on a web of business relationships to give consumers free goods, as long as they buy something else from a long list of well-known online stores.

The idea comes from TrialPay, a company that has recently gained a following among online businesses and investors. Now that the idea is attracting more well-known retailers, analysts said, consumers could see more free offers in the coming months.

“This is a very strange, unique animal, but I could see where it would work,” said Dana Gould, an analyst with Financial Insights, a consultant group based in Framingham, Mass. “And since these offers come at exit points, companies are basically saving lost sales.”

Stopzilla, which sells computer security software for around $40, already offers 15-day free trials for prospective customers. After the trial period, those who go to the site to uninstall the program are shown a pop-up window asking if they would like to receive the product free.

They are then shown a list of companies, including Blockbuster, GameFly and Citi, that have agreed to subsidize the cost of the Stopzilla purchase if the customer agrees to also sign up with them.

If they agree, customers are taken, at that point, to a Web site like Blockbuster or Gap, and when they complete their purchase they are sent a code by e-mail for redeeming their free item. Sometimes, these merchants and other TrialPay advertisers, like Gap and Stamps.com, will sweeten the deal with discounts of their own.

“All three parties benefit,” said James M. Bortnak, the chief marketing officer of Stamps.com. “The consumer gets a sizable and immediate discount on a purchase, advertisers like us find new long-term customers, and the original merchant is more likely to complete a sale.”

Mr. Bortnak said he started using TrialPay’s service in March, after hearing some industry talk about it. He would not disclose details, other than to say it has a “very positive” effect on his business.

TrialPay’s service is a twist of sorts on a longstanding online practice, where merchants offer bounties of 5 to 15 percent to Web sites that deliver paying customers. This so-called affiliate advertising model is popular because merchants spend less to acquire customers. Meanwhile, as long as the customers buy more than an item or two, the merchant earns back whatever bounty was paid.

As the intermediary, TrialPay receives an undisclosed portion of that commission, and it also uses some technological wizardry to determine which free-product offers a prospective customer is more likely to click on.

TrialPay is the brainchild of Alex Rampell, who achieved a measure of fame when, as a 15-year-old in 1996, he wrote a popular software program that allowed AOL users to avoid losing their connections.

Mr. Rampell started TrialPay in 2003 as he looked for creative ways to entice software customers to pay for his products. In the first incarnation of the service, he offered customers his PC-security software free, as long as they signed up for a Netflix account.

“We made more money on that than we did selling our applications, which cost $25,” Mr. Rampell said. “If someone signed up for Netflix, we might make $40.”

The list of merchants who offer free products is heavily weighted toward software companies, Mr. Rampell said, “because almost nobody will pay for software.” Aside from companies like Stopzilla, WinZip and ZoneAlarm, there are roughly 2,500 merchants who now display TrialPay offers to prospective customers, with about 10 signing up daily, Mr. Rampell said. That volume helped increase revenue more than 10 percent, with annual sales likely to exceed $20 million, he added.

Based largely on the strength of those figures, TrialPay said it recently raised $12.7 million in financing from, among others, Index Ventures, an early investor in Skype, and Battery Ventures, which backed Akamai Technologies.

Merchants who make free offers on their site with TrialPay said that after compensating TrialPay for managing the transaction, they must typically squeeze more business out of the customer to generate a profit. Rick Trefzger, vice president of sales for Stopzilla’s parent, iS3, said his company profits on customers it attracts through TrialPay if those customers renew their annual software subscriptions.

Mr. Trefzger said an additional benefit of the service is that it does not diminish the perceived value of his software, as other discount offers might. “It’s not like we’re saying ‘Hey, buy this for less than what you would’ve paid when you first got to our site,’ ” he said. “TrialPay has to follow through with an offer.”

TrialPay is yielding improved dividends as it reaches a broader audience of merchants and advertisers, said Will Hunsinger, general manager of Gap.com. And, he said TrialPay attracts customers who frequent stores, like Blockbuster, that one might not immediately consider fertile ground for Gap shoppers.

“That’s the kicker here,” Mr. Hunsinger said. “You can reach out into the virtual space and find new customers you wouldn’t have otherwise reached. It’s a little different model, which is something we haven’t seen come out of the Valley in a little while.”

Quebec language police nab Montreal bar for vintage posters

CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/02/14/qc-olf-0214.html

An Irish pub in Montreal will fight an order from Quebec’s language watchdog to take down antique advertising posters from its walls.

The Office de la langue francaise (OLF) issued the order to McKibbins Irish Pub on Feb. 6, informing the tavern it was violating Quebec’s language charter by displaying the imported vintage posters.

The wall hangings include vintage advertisements for Guinness and St. James Gate Dublin, imported from Ireland.

McKibbins owner Rick Fon told CBC News he will not take the posters down because they serve as decoration, not to advertise beer.

The OLF said it received a complaint about the pub and sent an inspector to investigate the downtown watering hole.

The inspector ruled McKibbins’ bilingual menu, bar service and vintage posters do not respect article 58 of Quebec’s language charter.

The OLF was not available for comment on Thursday.

Good German inspired Japanese Ad!

Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea

Evan WilliamsSource: http://evhead.com/2007/12/how-to-evaluate-new-product-idea.asp

I’ve been thinking about a number of new product ideas lately. In doing so, I’ve been trying to come up with a way more structured way of evaluating them. Here’s a first attempt at defining that. It’s not as clear as I’d like it to be. But perhaps you’ll find it useful.

Tractability

Question: How difficult will it be to launch a worthwhile version 1.0?

Blogger was highly tractable. Twitter was tractable, but sightly less-so because of the SMS component. Google web search had quite low tractability when they launched it. Vista?: About as low as you can get.

Tractability is partially about technical difficulty and much about timing and competition—i.e., How advanced are the other solutions? Building a new blogging tool today is less-tractable, because the bar is higher. Building the very first web search engine was probably pretty easy. Conversely, building the very first airplane was difficult, even though there wasn’t any competition.

In general, if you’re tiny and have few resources, tractability is key, because it means you can build momentum quickly—and momentum is everything for a startup. However, tractability often goes hand and hand with being early in a market, which has its own drawbacks (e.g., obviousness, as we’ll discuss below).

If you’re big and/or have a lot of resources—or not very good at spotting new opportunities, but great at executing—a less-tractable idea may be for you. It may take longer to launch something worthwhile, but once you crack the nut, you have something clearly valuable.

Obviousness

Question: Is it clear why people should use it?

Everything is obvious once its successful. Big wins come when you can spot something before its obvious to everyone else. There are several vectors to this: 1) Is it obvious why people should use it? 2) Is it obvious how to use? 3) Is it an obviously good business?

Number two is more affected by the design of the product than the idea itself. You don’t actually want number three to be true. You want it to be a good business, but not an obviously good business, because than you get more competition. Web search was not an obviously good business before Google demonstrated it. This allowed them to leap-frog the competition that was in it for years, but not taking it very seriously. But, like Google, the business may not be clear until later.

The key question for evaluating an idea is number one: Is it obvious why people should use it? In most cases, obviousness in this regard is inversely proportional to tractability. The cost of Blogger and Twitter’s high tractability was the fact that they were defining a new type of behavior. The number one response to Twitter, still, is Why would anyone do that? Once people try it, they tend to like it. But communicating its benefits is difficult. We’re heartened by the fact that Why would anyone do that? was the default response by the mainstream to blogging for years, as well, and eventually tens of millions of people came around.

On the flip side, if you can build an ad network that makes people more money, a better search engine, or a productivity app that actually does tasks for people—all, less-tractable solutions—it will be highly obvious to people why to use your product.

Sometimes you can come up with ideas that are highly tractable and obvious. For example: Top Friends or HotOrNot. These products were not hard to launch and yet, were immediately appealing (to their target market). What was not obvious, in either case, is that they could also be great businesses. HotOrNot has proven this to be true. And I suspect Slide will, as well.

Deepness

Question: How much value can you ultimately deliver?

The most successful products give benefits quickly (both in the life of a product and a user’s relationship with it), but also lend themselves to continual development of and discovery of additional layers of benefit later on.

Facebook is incredibly deep because it leverages your connections, which touch practically every aspect of your life. Scrabulous, on the other hand—a Facebook app for playing Scrabble—is not very deep. How big is the Scrabble-playing part of your life, and how much can it deliver beyond that?

But most things are deeper than they seem at first glance. Practically any application, once people start using it, can be used as a lever to more activity and benefit delivery. Being smart about what you’re leveraging is key.

When Feedburner first launched, their only feature was the ability to take an RSS feed and spit out multiple versions, depending on the capabilities of the feed reader requesting it. It seemed useful, but hardly something to start a company around, especially because that particular problem would probably go away over time. Or so I thought. What I didn’t get and they did (because Dick and gang is smarter than me) is that they were setting themselves up at a great leverage point—between publishers and their readers—where they could offer an ever-deeper value stack. Soon it was feed stylesheets with one-button subscription, feed stats, feed flare, blog stats, email subscriptions, and, of course, advertising, where they made their money.

While we’re talking about Feedburner, its worth mentioning that their product was also very obvious for their core user-base. There were clear benefits and very little drawbacks. They also had no competition, even though there were tons of companies in the RSS/feed space, because most of the others were battling it out on the reader side.

Other times, you stumble into deepness. When they put up HotOrNot on a whim, Jim and James didn’t know they’d be able to leverage it into a highly profitable dating site. Okay, so HotOrNot’s still not the “deepest” of sites, but it’s deeper than you think.

Wideness

Question: How many people may ultimately use it?

Wideness, like deepness, is a fairly classic market analysis measure. They are usually inversely proportional—do you try to offer the mass-market good or the niche one?

Feedburner is not particularly wide. Their market was those who published RSS feeds (and cared about them). This was in the hundreds of thousands, not a hundred million. Turns out, it didn’t need to be used by a hundred million to be worth a hundred million, so going for wideness is not entirely necessary. But it’s something to look at.

Like deepness, wideness can take you by surprise. The web is getting so damn big, what seem like niche ideas can be very decent businesses. When Ted Rheingold launched Dogster, as a joke, he didn’t know there were enough people out there who would be interested in making their dogs web pages to actually build a business. When we launched Blogger, I thought maybe a few thousand people would use it.

Sometimes, you can find a spot that is both deep and wide. This is where multi-billion-dollar businesses are built: Google, Windows, Ebay. It’s easy to think these kinds of opportunities aren’t laying around anymore—at least not for the little guy. But most people would have said the same before Facebook entered the picture.

Discoverability

Question: How will people learn about your product?

I was going to call this criteria “viralness.” However, there’s a lot of focus on viralness these days, and—while sometimes amazingly effective—it’s not the only way to grow a user-base. And it doesn’t make sense in all cases.

Interesting to note: Google web search is not the least bit viral. Nor is Firefox. Nor it Kayak.

It’s possible to get the word out without being “viral.” One way is organic search traffic. Another is pay-per-click ads (if you can monetize). Another is plain old-fashioned word-of-mouth/blog/press. (Twitter has probably grown more through press and blogs references than any inherent viralness.) There’s also distribution deals and partnerships.

Either way, it’s something to think about up front, as different ideas lend themselves to different discoverability strategies. And some things are more difficult than others to spread. Dating sites, for instance, have not historically been viral, because people weren’t going to invite their friends to—or even talk much about—their personal ads. The sites made up for this by buying lots of ads, which worked because they monetized signups via subscription.

Monetizability

Question: How hard will it be to extract the money?

Far be it for me to say that obvious monetizability is a requirement. I’m generally a believer that if you create value, you can figure out the business. However, all things being equal, an idea with clear buck-making potential is better than one without.

Whether or not something is monetizable is not always clear up-front. It wasn’t clear how Google was going to make money early on. Ebay thought it would sell auction software.

In most cases, if you position yourself close to the spending of money, you can extract some. Or if you offer something that clearly saves or makes people money.

Blogger, I believe, makes money for Google, but it’s not the most monetizable of products. Twitter, I believe, will be more-so, but that’s yet to be seen.

Personally Compelling

Question: Do you really want it to exist in the world?

Last on the list, but probably the first question I ask myself is: How important to me is it that this product exists in the world? If I were evaluating a startup, I’d ask this of the founders. As I wrote in “Ten Rules“:

Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world. Be a user of your own product. Hire people who are users of your product. Make it better based on your own desires.

In theory, you can get around this with lots of user research. (It’s pretty clear neither Slide nor Rockyou’s founders are creating widgets based on their own needs and desires.) But you’re more likely to get it wrong that way. When I’ve gone sideways, it’s when I wasn’t listening to my gut on this issue. Specifically, Blogger and Twitter were personally compelling, while Odeo wasn’t.

However, “personally compelling” doesn’t have to mean only that you want it as a user yourself. Curing cancer or helping the world be more green may be highly personally compelling for other reasons, which I think is just as good. My favorite products are those I really want as a user, but that I also think have some “greater good.”

Charting it Out

To bring it home, here’s a table with my estimates on where different products land by these criteria. Obviously, these are subjective measures, and for some of them, it’s hard to judge in retrospect. (I didn’t inlclude Personally Compelling on the list, because I can’t really speak to the founder’s motivations in most cases.)

Product	Tractability	Obviousness	Deepness	Wideness	Discoverability	Monetizability
Blogger	Very High	Low	High	High	High	Low
Google (web search)	Very Low	Very High	Very High	Very High	Low	Very High
Facebook	High1	High	Very High	High	Very High	High2
Twitter	High	Low	High	High	High	Med
Feedburner	Med	High	High	Med	Med	Med3
HotOrNot	Very High	Very High	Med	Med	Med	High4
Scrabulous	High	Very High	Low	Low	Very High	Low
Ebay	Med	High	Very High	Very High	High	Very High

¹ I don’t actually know what Facebook consisted of in version 1.0. It was actually in what looked like an untractable space (MySpace competitor), but applying the constraint of college-only made the competition non-existent and the usefulness and tractability potentially very high from the start.
² In theory
³ Unsure
⁴ Only in the case of “Meet Me at HotOrNot,” the dating side of the site. The original, rating side probably has low monetizability.

posted by Ev. on Sunday, December 16, 2007

Does Japan Need the iPhone?

The world’s most sophisticated users of wireless technology may be unimpressed by Apple’s high-tech gadget

by Kenji Hall
http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/dec2007/gb20071220_152247.htm
The Japanese fell for the iPod. So why should they not embrace the iPhone, too? It’s tempting to think that Japan’s love affair with Apple’s (AAPL) iPods would extend to the mobile phone that shares the same high-tech DNA. After all, the iPod controls about 50% of the Japanese market for portable media players, according to Tokyo market researcher BCN, and Apple’s carefully cultivated image as a maker of hip, edgy, yet user-friendly gizmos should work in its favor.

But when the Cupertino (Calif.) company wades into the world’s most advanced wireless market next year, it could find Japan’s 98 million cell-phone users a hard bunch to please. For one thing, consumers here won’t be as starstruck by the iPhone’s high-tech gadgetry as users elsewhere. Japan’s 10 handset makers, which dominate the domestic market, already offer dozens of models typically costing several hundred dollars that send e-mail, browse the Internet, shoot photos and videos, and even pick up live TV broadcasts. Most come with a built-in global positioning system, and some even double as credit cards and commuter passes or safeguard personal data using fingerprint or face-recognition technology.

In its current form, the iPhone doesn’t work on Japan’s advanced third-generation, or 3G, network. Rumors abound that Steve Jobs & Co. will release a new, faster 3G iPhone next year. But analysts are skeptical that will be enough to please consumers in Japan. In its current form, the iPhone’s 3.5-inch touchscreen and its access to online applications such as YouTube and Google (GOOG) Maps are about all that set it apart from other handsets in Japan.

Potential Turnoff

In other ways, the device is inferior, and some of its functions won’t be all that useful. The iPhone’s Wi-Fi networking, for instance, won’t get much of a workout since few Japanese retailers are wired for such short-range broadband wireless Internet service. “I don’t think it’s going to do that well,” says Makio Inui, a managing director at UBS (UBS) in Tokyo. He predicts the iPhone’s high price and limited features will be a turnoff for many in Japan.

Where the iPhone will fill a need is with consumers like Keiko Ohashi. The 32-year-old sales manager already owns an iPod, doesn’t care for all the bells and whistles of Japanese handsets, and prefers the full QWERTY keypad and browser of a computer-like device. “I’d love to get an iPhone,” she says.

She may get her wish. In recent months, Jobs has met with Masao Nakamura, chief executive at Japan’s No. 1 wireless operator, NTT DoCoMo (DCM), to discuss a possible deal, DoCoMo spokesman Shinya Yokota said. Connecting the iPhone to DoCoMo’s high-speed 3G network isn’t the only draw for Apple. It also could tap into DoCoMo’s sales and marketing muscle. That gives Apple a better shot at grabbing a chunk of the roughly 50 million cell phones sold in Japan annually, and meeting its target of selling 10 million iPhones worldwide by 2008. (Apple had sold 1.4 million by Oct. 22.)

Stumbling Blocks in DoCoMo Talks

But industry executives think the negotiations are likely to get bogged down. DoCoMo declined to elaborate on the details of the talks, but Jobs is reportedly pushing for a cut of the iPhone’s revenues. (Apple officials couldn’t be reached for comment.) DoCoMo executives are likely to strongly resist such demands. One reason: Caving in to Apple would embolden other handset makers to try to win more favorable terms from DoCoMo.

DoCoMo also might balk at the idea of letting iPhone owners activate their handsets using Apple’s iTunes online music store, as AT&T allows in the U.S. DoCoMo subscribers now can only activate their phones at a licensed DoCoMo shop. Letting iPhone owners circumvent DoCoMo’s sales channel suggests they also would be able to avoid using DoCoMo’s proprietary i-mode portal site and all the music, shopping, and investing services that are offered through it. Stripped of the high-margin earnings from services, DoCoMo would simply be left managing the towers and servers of a wireless network. “If that happens, DoCoMo would be reduced to the dumb pipes they live in fear of becoming,” says one telco industry executive, who requested anonymity.

The two sides have a few other options. DoCoMo could rent spectrum to Apple in an arrangement known as mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO. But that would set Apple back at least $30 million just for the data centers to handle voice calls and data transmissions, and Apple would have to hire a local staff to manage the operations of a full-service wireless carrier. The two could work out a hybrid solution, such as having Apple pay a fee for spectrum in exchange for a cut of the iPhone’s revenues from DoCoMo. But finding a middle ground could take some time.

Hall is BusinessWeek’s technology correspondent in Tokyo