Brian Erickson

I've Moved!

2008-06-01T22:32:00.005-06:00

I finally got a real blog and domain and you can now find me at:

http://brianmerickson.com/blog/

See you on the flip side!

GTD, Round 2

2008-05-24T17:44:00.002-06:00

So last fall I spent a couple of weeks getting myself into the Getting Things Done system. Read the book, bought a filing cabinet, labeler, etc and got down to business. Everything went well, I got myself organized and set up a system to track the infamous 'next actions'. I was attempting to use Remember the Milk to track my tasks along with a small notebook for storing tasks while I was mobile. This worked for a little while, especially for schoolwork but fell short for non-school related tasks as I didn't have the list on me except when I was online. I even got an iPod Touch so that I could access the list while I was mobile (and within reach of a hotspot). Suffice it to say the system fell into disuse, although I still have the filing cabinet and all my files organized.

This weekend I decided to give it another go with a different task tracking system, made famous in the 'Hacking a GTD Moleskine' blog post by Eston Bond. I picked up a Moleskine notebook and 'hacked' it in a similar fasion described in the blog post. I spent the morning going through my overflowing inbox and processing everything and feel pretty good about this system. Of course the true test will come with time but I like having something tangible and not depending on a device to keep track of my next actions.

I'll make another post in a month or so with how its working out.

Crossing the Chasm

2008-05-10T18:22:00.004-06:00

I just finished reading 'Crossing the Chasm' by Geoffrey A. Moore. It is one of those books that you hear a lot about in the high-tech industry and especially in MBA programs (well mine anyway). One of my co-workers even mentioned that it was 'required' reading for everyone at one of his former companies. While I wouldn't call this a 'must read' for anyone in the high-tech industry, I did get a lot of take aways related to product management, marketing and general product strategy that I felt like sharing.

The general concept of the book revolves around bringing high-tech products to the market. His observation is that most products will have a fair amount of success initially with early adopters but consistently struggle making the leap across the 'chasm' to be accepted by the mainstream consumer. Even though the book was written in 1991 (updated in 1999) it still holds very true today; so many products especially in the more recent 'Web 2.0' boom never make it over the chasm and become adopted by the mainstream. I would even argue that recentl successful offerings such as Twitter and Facebook have still not truly crossed the chasm in terms of becoming accepted and used by the mainstream Internet 'consumer'.

What I really liked about the book was his strategy for actually creating and delivering a product that can cross the chasm; by choosing a 'beachhead' target market and aggressively positioning your product to attack that market. It really got me interested since I have been more and more interested in Product Management as a career path. I can think of so many products that I've been involved with which are great technical ideas but struggle to really address the needs of any specific target user. This book give some great concrete examples of how to find your 'beachhead' market and then go after it with a 'whole product' solution.

Another aspect of the book which I liked was his skepticism of quantitative market data for unknown and new markets. The example he uses: "It will be a billion dollar market in 1995. If we only get 5 percent of the market ..." struck me because I've seen others using that same logic and been tempted to use it myself in analyzing markets and industry for business plans. He gives some good examples of how to use market data (and lack of it) to make a 'high risk low data decision' as to what market is best to attack.

My only real gripe with the book is that the examples are getting rather dated so its tough to even recall who those companies are (most have gone under or been acquired) at this point without looking them up. Also I'm not sure the chapter on sales and distribution channels is really applicable today particularly for Internet based products.

All in all I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone starting a business or developing strategy for new products. This will definitely be one that I keep on my shelf to read again throughout my career.

My Summer Vacation

2008-04-24T20:21:00.003-06:00

So I remember doing one of these as a kid for school and thought it'd be a good thing to do before my brief respite from classes is over in two months.

Post Guides to GuideSpot
We released GuideSpot.com in the beginning of this year but I have yet to really get into actually using it by creating some guides. Feels like when you are constantly fixing bugs and adding features sometimes you can get disconnected from how the site actually gets used. I want to re-visit my 'Guide to Denver Brews' and add a guide about the process of building my arcade cabinet.
Blog Once a Week
The all too common 'I got too busy to post' definitely applies here. Since I have some time off I want to post a bit about some of the things I've learned in classes over the past months and projects I've been working on.
Read at Least Two Books
I have 'Crossing the Chasm' about a third of the way read so I want to finish that. Also want to finish 'Good to Great' and 'The Omnivores Dilemma' before I head back to classes.
Re-write my Resume
My resume hasn't been overhauled since I was leaving my first job over three years ago. I want to get it a bit less technical and more product focused so when I get closer to graduation I have something ready.
Continue Taking Photos
I got a new Nikon D40 camera a few weeks ago and have taken some interesting (to me) photos with it so far but want to keep getting out and experimenting with it. Hopefully that will give me some good experience before I head out to Denmark for my study abroad program in June. I'm tacking going camping at least twice on to this one and hopefully hiking as well.
Run Three Times a Week
I've gotten started with this already but I want to continue running so I can shed some of the pounds I've gained doing work and school non-stop for the past year and a half.

Well thats about it, hopefully this post will be a good place to revisit my goals and see if I can meet them all while I'm out of classes.

Welcome Mat

2008-04-24T13:20:00.004-06:00

So classes ended last night; our group did a presentation on a new product concept for my company Local Matters. It went really well, even got a few good ideas for the product from my classmates and professor. However, I think we could have done a bit better in two areas:

Market Size - We had some rough numbers of number of movers but didn't go into how many Realtors were out there. We also didn't project how much of the market we hoped to capture in order for the product to be viable.
Financials - I think having a break even point and also some idea of how that equates to market capture rates would be good. Also some specific monitization numbers as far as what we would expect to charge realtors, how much ad revenue we could expect for each product in the customers hands.

I might try and work on these items a bit more as I have time. Almost seems like one could take this idea and spin it off into a company!

Slogan for 2008

2008-02-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

With a recession on the horizon I think we need a new slogan for 2008:

Forget another rate cut...

Colt 45... "It works every time!"

Go back to bed, America

2007-12-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

So I saw a commercial for the new American Gladiators coming soon to NBC (with Hulk Hogan as host no less, he must need some money for legal fees):

I found it greatly amusing, and thought back to this clip by Bill Hicks:

Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what well tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!

Show me the Gold

2007-12-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

So today Alan Greenspan came out with some statements as to how he would handle this current housing 'crisis'. His solution:

"Cash is available and we should use that in larger amounts, as is necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this," Mr Greenspan said. "It's far less damaging to the economy to create a short-term fiscal problem, which we would, than to try to fix the prices of homes or interest rates. If you do that, it'll drag this process out indefinitely."

Then in this same statement he says the following:

He said he was "most concerned" about the risk of inflation moving up, particularly over the medium term, and said it was "critically important that the Fed is allowed politically to do what it has to do" to keep inflation down.

Is it just me or are those two comments completely contradictory? So we should print some more money up to help homeowners and at the same time fight inflation? And on top of all that, its really Greenspan that started this mess. So Greenspan, what happens when the money we hand out to these people is worth half its value in 6 months?

This type of logic, combined with how linked the market has become to these Fed decisions should really be a wake up call. Sadly I don't think we'll get that until we are at a point where the damage is irreversible. Sounds kind of familiar doesn't it? Oh wait, the same thing is happening with our environment...

On another note, check out Tea Party 2007 today!

2007-11-15T12:59:00.001-07:00

Apparently today is a bad day for the Financial Sector as evidenced by my Google Finance widget:

I knew the sub-prime situation was bad but damn! ;)

Please no MBAs

2007-11-01T19:51:00.000-06:00

So I was reading Marc Andreessen's blog today and noticed a post that his company, Ning was hiring. I thought I'd poke my head in and see what they had going on and ran across a position for Product Manager; a career change I've been investigating since I started my MBA program. What astounded me was the line at the bottom of the posting:

Qualifications

Passionate about creating great software that people use
Experience developing and launching new online services
Intuitive sense for feature design: ability to think through every aspect of the experience and make good decisions
General understanding of web technologies (e.g. AJAX, CSS, Flash, Streaming Media), how they're implemented/served, and how they fit together
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
Entrepreneurial spirit and pace. Thrive in a dynamic, fast-moving environment
BA/BS degree. Please no MBAs.

I'm not sure what to make of that comment. Can anyone shed some light on why a company would so plainly reject people with an MBA? I suppose it is Silicon Valley; applying rational logic rarely seems to work in that dimension.

World Series Baby!

2007-10-16T10:01:00.000-06:00

Nuff Said.

Facebooked!

2007-10-08T18:43:00.000-06:00

Well its official. I've been sucked into the Facebook vortex. My company, Local Matters just finished and released our first Facebook application, called 'Go Where?'. The app was developed by myself and a few others (including Jay over at Bar Diver) at Local Matters. The idea was conceived by our Marketing director, one of the founders of The Onion. Go Where? essentially revolves around sending people to places from fictional spots like 'An Elderly Singles Cruise' to actual addresses that are shown as maps on your friend's profile.

It should be interesting to see where this goes; we've put a lot of effort into it and I think its a great looking and functional application. Keep an eye out for future updates, its exciting to be involved in the Facebook revolution!

Mashable has an article up about the app and our CEO Perry Evans has some things to say about it in his blog.

There have also been a couple of Facebook articles out today; one in Business Week on the creators of 'Sticky Notes', Tech Stars graduates J-Squared Media. O'Reilly also released a report about the 'long-tail marketplace' that is the Facebook application sphere.

Web 2(founders).0(revenue)

2007-08-22T10:32:00.000-06:00

I just can't get over the tag line from Don Dodge's post on the state of Web 2.0 applications:

I think Web 2.0 stands for a web app, 2 founders and zero revenue.

His post is an interesting look at what I've hinted at previously, the saturation of the web market in the past year with sites that feature some interesting (or even revolutionary) twist on social connection combined with slick functionality but really no thought on how to actually monetize their idea. The WSJ article he quotes also gives some good examples of how this is feeding into the push by VC's to dictate that sites need to have some sort of advertising revenue model when it isn't appropriate in all cases. Don also includes some good, albeit somewhat obvious, examples of successful models to monetize Web 2.0 sites.

I also picked up on a post from Perry Evans yesterday where he speaks to the death of search as the primary driver of traffic to sites. He includes a couple of articles that point to how new users (specifically the young) are not using the traditional means of Google searching and yellow pages searches to find what they want. Instead this new social connection phase is causing users to rely on their personal networks or aggregated preferences on sites to drive their discovery. This results in people approaching the internet in a different way, one which the traditional SEO techniques don't handle.

Extending from that, I was reading an article from Venture Beat on the Facebook development platform where Kevin Barenblat debunks some of the myths surrounding Facebook applications. I particularly liked his section on NFO being the new SEO:

News feeds that appear whenever a users adds or interacts with an app are one of the most important marketing channels freely available on Facebook. Many applications count on news feeds to drive growth among the users’ friends. However, activity among Facebook’s 33M+ users (half of whom log in daily) generates trillions of news feed items. To provide the best user experience, Facebook culls those down to a digestible number of feed items it thinks will be most interesting to you. The result is that less than 0.2% of possible news feed items actually show up in feeds. And because news feeds are one of the best ways to reach out to users, expect a News Feed Optimization (NFO) industry to develop just like Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Lots of interesting things materializing out of this two founders, zero revenue trend we have going on. It is exciting to watch and see where this all leads over the next year or two!

Respectance

2007-08-10T17:33:00.000-06:00

So a few days ago I wrote about the website Respectance receiving funding and how it seemed like a preposterous concept. Well, I officially proved myself wrong and wanted to write about my recent experience with the site.

On Tuesday of last week I found out that my Grandpa who had been in poor health ever since he had a mild heart attack several months ago, was being moved to Hospice. My family, who keep in regular contact via email, started to collect photos of him in order to make a video for the impending service. Since our family keeps in such regular contact, I thought using a site like Respectance could be a really cool way to collect all of the photos in one place so that others who have been touched by my Grandfather (he delivered over ten thousand babies during his life) could view them and also add their own. In addition, the Respectance site lets users add videos, memories and create videos from the photos on the site.

In creating the site I was also able to add the text from his obituary to the front page, create a video with one of his favorite songs (Big Rock Candy Mountain) and help others in the family add photos. The site so far has been a bit hit with the family, partly because of its ease of use and also I think because it follows modern web standards as far as simplistic and clean design. I applaud the creators of the site for providing such a hassle free environment to honor the memory of my Grandfather and I really hope they are successful in the future.

Some of the things I'd like to see added to the site are the ability to upload audio without video (my grandfather did a radio interview that a couple of the grandkids set up which I would love to include on the site somehow) and also maybe some sort of forum for families to get together and chat.

We will see how the tribute to my Grandfather evolves over the next few months but so far I'd say Respectance is a hit and I am very happy with the level of innovation this new round of investment in social networks has fostered. So keep it up VC's; even if a lot of these sites flare up and disappear, the web and our social connections will be better for it in the end. I already feel closer to my relatives on that side of the family by involving them in this collaborative effort in honor of my Grandfather.

Mash-Up!

2007-08-10T10:36:00.000-06:00

So a friend of mine turned me onto this mix last night and I have to say it is excellent. Not sure if it was done in Ableton or what but I was blown away by the volume of tracks and samples he blends together seamlessly. Just have a look at the track listing (keep in mind this is a 70 min mix):

Rogan Josh - Neon Tetra

001 - Voom:Voom - Baby
002 - Jacques Loussier Trio - Air on a G String
003 - David Holmes - Bonus Beats
004 - Blend Crafters - Melody (Remix) (Acapella)
005 - Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale
006 - Quantic - Wider than the Sky
007 - The Herbaliser - Let it Go
008 - Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes
009 - Suzanne Vega - Fancy Poultry
010 - Block 16 - Slow Hot Wind
011 - Rae & Christian - Catch a Rude Awakening
012 - Soulsavers - Rumblefish
013 - Amerie - One Thing (Acapella)
014 - Chekov - Wartescleife
015 - Alice Donut - War Pigs
016 - Pete Rock - Something Funky
017 - Photek - Santiago
018 - Prefuse 73 - Close Your Eyes & Tell Me You Hate Me
019 - GZA - Legend of the Liquid Sword
020 - Dr. Dre - Ackrite (Instrumental)
021 - Mic Christopher - Heyday
022 - Leafcutter John - All I Could Think of Was Nothing
023 - The Byrds - It Happens Each Day
024 - Dragon Ash - Humanity
025 - Heiroglyphics - Tajai
026 - Divine Styler - Tongue of Labyrinth
027 - Tim Dog - Step to Me
028 - Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
029 - Almighty Marski - Leader of the Pack (Acapella)
030 - Da Damn Phreak Noize Phunk - Dazzafact
031 - Gene Farris - Visions of the Future
032 - Hall & Oates - I Can’t go for That
033 - The Doors - The Changeling
034 - Spoon - Was it You?
035 - Wu Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M. (Acapella)
036 - Outhud - The Zillionth Watt
037 - Shantal - Ya Rayah
038 - M83 - Run Into Flowers (Abstrackt Keal Agram Remix)
039 - M83 - Run Into Flowers (Jackson Remix)
040 - Jimi Hendrix - Little Miss Lover
041 - Super Furry Animals - Slow Life
042 - Peace Orchestra - Domination
043 - Luke Vibert - Come On Chaos
044 - Earth Leakage Trip - No Idea
045 - Conrad Newholmes - Lookout Windows
046 - Clap & Trap - The Grind
047 - Mr. Lif - Return of the B-Boy
048 - Breakestra - Getcho Soul Togetha (Part 2)
049 - JD & The Evils Dynamite Band - Just Some More Haaa-Sheesh
050 - The Jimmy Castor Bunch - King Kong
051 - Last Minister- Tribute to the JB Family
052 - Morel’s Grooves - Lets Groove
053 - Layo & Bushwacka - Shining Through
054 - Smith & Mighty - B-Line Fi Blow
055 - Rufus Thomas - Itch & Scratch
056 - Sourmash - Pilgrimage to Paradise
057 - Rozzo - Into Your Heart (Space)
058 - DJ Marky - Terapia
059 - Castle Trancelott - The Gloom
060 - Boards of Canada - The Devil is in the Details
061 - Dr. Rockit - Hi Speed Rockit
062 - Kraftwerk - Home Computer
063 - Carl Craig - Technology
064 - West Street Mob - Break Dance Electric Boogie
065 - DJ Wildthing - The Game
066 - New Era Sounds - Experience
067 - The Four Tops - Reach Out I’ll be There
068 - Lords of the Underground - Lord Jazz Hit Me One Time (Acapella)
069 - Orbital - The Girl with the Sun in her Head
070 - Mr. Dibbs - Skin Therapy
071 - Riton - Take Control
072 - Chris Morris - Keep Away from the Man with the Funny Eyes
073 - Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
074 - Ween - Zoloft
075 - Rinocerose- La Guitaristic House Organisation
076 - Crass - Banned from the Roxy
077 - Jark Prongo - Convoy
078 - Outhud - It’s for You
079 - Busta Rhymes - Touch It (Instrumental)
080 - Chekov - Wartescleife
081 - Red Snapper - Crease
082 - Television - Marquee Moon
083 - Ol’ Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya (Acapella)
084 - Voom:Voom - Best Friend
085 - Archie Bleyer - Hernandoz Hideaway
086 - The Temptations - Power
087 - Fugazi - Cassavettes
088 - DJ Zinc - Flim (Zinc Breaks Mix)
089 - Daft Punk - Revolution 101
090 - DJ Assault - Ass and Titties
091 - Photek - Touching Down
092 - Hawkeye - Still Jiving
093 - The JBs - Here We Come, Here We Go, Here We Are
094 - Duke Ellington - Didgeridoo
095 - Frank Lorber and Sikora - Untitled A
096 - Mula - All in the Head
097 - Kings of Leon - Milk
098 - Ricardo Villalobos - Dexter (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
099 - Spank Rock - Bump (Acapella)
100 - Cursor Miner - This is Electro
101 - Spanky Wilson - Sunshine of my Love
102 - OMFO - Magic Mamalia
103 - Tiga & Matteo - Night Train
104 - Delta Lady - Anything You Want (Delta Dub Charge)
105 - AtJazz - Wind & Sea (Nail Remix)
106 - Bazeado - Maria (One Rascal Mix)
107 - Koto - Ghetto Blast Ya
108 - John Tejada - Flight to Tokyo
109 - Cursor Miner - Sport of Kings
110 - KRS One - Sound of the Police (Freq Nasty Breakbeat Bacon Remix)
111 - DJ Marky & XRS - Rotation
112 - Strictly Kev - The Time Before Time
113 - Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman

Have a listen and let me know what you think! Also, any Trailer Park Boys fans, there is a little surprise sample in the second half!

Jam On It!

2007-08-05T23:15:00.001-06:00

So this weekend I went to an event in Denver called the 'Legends of Hip-Hop' tour. It was mostly on a whim, my friends gave me a call on Friday night and pretty much gave me no choice, I 'had' to go to this show. Turns out I'm really glad they called; we wound up down at the Paladium in Denver to see some of the founders of the modern Electro / Hip-Hop scene.

The line-up was something straight out of 1983; Angel, Egyptian Lover, Debbie Deb, Newcleus and Freestyle.

Highlights of the night were Egyptian Lover rocking the TR-808, Newcleus getting down to 'Jam on It' and Freestyle doing 'It's Automatic' live. I wasn't big into hip-hop in those early years but my friends, Lex and Mad Wax who have been producing and DJing Electro and putting on the Vocode radio show for the past several years, have really made me appreciate this music. I still get a tingly feeling when I hear that Vocoder and the crisp beats from the 808.

I shot some videos with my phone which should be up online in the next few days so I'll make sure to post a comment with a link for anyone who is interested.

Bubble 2.0?

2007-08-02T09:24:00.000-06:00

Ran across this on Ajaxian this morning, apparently PC Mag has an article by John Dvorak that espouses the new 'Web 2.0' bubble, aka Bubble 2.0. While I share some of his initial sentiment; I think he could have provided a little more backup than six bullet points supported by a sentence each. If you are going to make a broad claim such as: "I can assure you that after this next collapse, nobody will think of the dot-com bubble as anything other than a prelude.", you need to put a little meat behind your justifications. I hate to burst his 'bubble' as it were, but if you just look at the VC funding numbers, as provided yesterday from Venture Beat, you can see we are far from anything near the amount of financial commitment to this new wave of technology sites as we saw in 1999/2000.

So while I do agree we are headed for some sort of critical mass of mobile-user-generated-social-networking widgets I don't think one could expect anything even close to the scale of the 1999/2000 bubble. Unless of course we are only at the beginning...

RIP Business Plans?

2007-07-27T17:58:00.000-06:00

So Don Dodge has a post today questioning whether or not Business Plans have any purpose anymore. I'm just as stumped as everyone else in regards to the Twitter deal, but like most others I don't actually use it. Don makes some great points, especially in regards to the people making the business worth investing in rather than the business plan (or even the idea). What I think he is missing is that the VCs do want something to hold in their hands, even if they will nitpick it. The Deck format I mentioned in my earlier post is a great hybrid approach I think and something I'm surprised entrepreneurs don't use more often.

The Deck business plan basically gives you a short document, written in power point with the main details of your business and why you think it will succeed. One could argue that printing the slides to the presentation is enough but the Deck is a lot more than just printed out slides. First of all, you are getting the advantage of a nice looking format that is consistent with your PowerPoint slides. Second, each slide of the Deck may follow a similar format as your presentation but will convey much more detail such as things you may talk about but don't actually list on your slides. Third, it gives the VC the assurance that although they aren't looking at a 50 page plan, you have done your homework. Finally, although it may give them something to nitpick it gives them an overview of your idea for later reference so they can pay attention to your talk rather than take copious notes for later review.

Obviously in the case of a company like Twitter, this might have actually been a bad thing since they have no business model and no idea of how they are going to generate revenue. Once all of these social networking fads have faded away and we have more stability in the market, new businesses will have to be more thorough when pitching a new idea for funding. Right now it seems like all you need is a high user base and buzz factor and you'll get money thrown at your business.

Market research and a good business plans are not gone, the presentation need some tweaking and I think thats where the Deck and other visually appealing presentation formats can be leveraged.

When is it all too much?

2007-07-24T11:02:00.001-06:00

Okay, I'm all for this new Web 2.0 and social networking boom we have going on, and I love the fact that we're all so much more connected than we once were, but this site made me do a double take...

VentureBeat is reporting that Respecance a Social Network for sharing memories of people who have passed away just got 1.5 million in funding. I suppose it is just a natural extension of the stories that keep popping up when a kid dies who had a profile on MySpace and his profile is turned into a sort of shrine for his friends.

The more I think about it, it could work; my uncle recently passed away and my mom spent several days putting together a posterboard of his memories for the service. If this site would allow everyone to collaborate on that and come up with a video / photo album of memories from people you might not otherwise be able to contact or get media from, it could be pretty cool.

Okay, I started this post to vent on what the critical mass is for Web 2.0 social networking / collaboration sites and the funding they are getting but this one actually does seem like it might be worthwhile.

Another idea, and I'm sure its being done and has funding, is an online cookbook collaboration site where family members / friends can share recipes and then create a printable cookbook (nicely bound and such) for everyone to share. My Mom just did this with my relatives and produced a nice cookbook that I have in my kitchen right now. The problem was she had to get all the recipes from the family, compile them with some archaic software program and then bring it to Kinkos to bind it. A service for that would have been very handy I think (I'll have to poke around the web and find who is doing this sort of thing right now).

Pop-ups, dialogs, panels, oh my!

2007-07-19T12:06:00.000-06:00

So I ran into a dilemma the other day when I needed to show content that had originally existed as tabs, in a pop-up browser window. It led me to thinking of how we might be able to do user interaction better than creating new browser windows for content. This then led me to an exploration of the different ways that we can temporarily display extra content or ask for user input.

Traditionally it was common to use a pop-up browser window to grab extra input from a user, such as log-in information or advanced or uncommon searches with multiple fields. With the advent of AJAX and more sophisticated JavaScript and DOM manipulation, the pop-up window has gone the way of the ghost for the most part. Some of the techniques that I have used recently include sidebar or panel areas of the browser, fly-out layers (ie: pop-up DIVs), modal dialogs, tabbed content and inline collapsible layers.

Sidebars
Google makes extensive use of sidebars in most of its applications, particularly in so called 'one page' applications where the user has a workspace (such as a map or document) and the panel provides a place for controls or user input based on that content. I have found that for maps especially, the panel interface is extremely valuable. One thing that Google does well and is becoming more commonplace, is creating collapsible sidebars that the user can easily close and open. Although no toolkit currently exists for performing this action, I did find this article on a step by step method of creating them. It would be somewhat easy to roll your own using script.aculo.us or YUI animation libraries after creating and placing the panel.

Flyouts
Flyouts can take on any number of forms and started with modest beginnings as the alt tags on images in websites. Now, they are a very effective method of providing extra information to the user about a specific object such as a place of interest on a map or an icon or widget. Another use that has come about recently are flyouts which do not depend on user interaction to activate them but remain on the page statically to give extra information about a thing or as a text bubble as seen on Jaiku. Flyouts are probably the most used and useful in mapping applications where keeping the map itself as uncluttered as possible is key but users also demand increasingly more information on the items they see on the map. Google again makes great use of flyouts in their mapping application for everything from the address of a business to displaying street view images. The key for making flyouts useful again is giving the user clear and easy control over when the pop-ups appear or the ability to collapse them easily when they want to unclutter their display. Finally, it is generally best to only allow the user the ability to have one flyout open at a time.

Dialogs
Dialogs, aka Pop-ups have seen varied usage in the time that I have been developing web-applications. I have generally stayed far away from the traditional browser window pop-ups as they have been exceedingly blocked by browsers as well as can be 'lost' by the user when clicking back to the main window (unless tricks are used to keep them active). The types of interaction typically leading to the use of dialogs can generally be handled better with the use of side-panels, tabbed content or even flyouts for simple user input. If the input is complex enough to not be reasonable in one of those containers, a new page is generally a better idea. The reasoning for this is you force the focus of the user on the input and can give them more meaningful help and error messages to get them through the input and back to whatever they were doing. When I have needed to use dialogs, I have found the YUI Panel to be quite good as it can be readily styled and made modal or not.

Tabbed Content
Finally, tabbed content is sort of a hybrid that can be used within any of these containers and is an effective way to give control to the user over what they see on the page. For example a map legend might be the first thing a new user wants to see on the page but as they get more comfortable with the application a more advanced widget such as a layer control might be what they want to see most often. It is important to consider that when using tabs the application should remember how the user left the application so they see it like that on their next visit. Again, the YUI interface provides a nice TabView control that I have used in designing past applications such as the iFactor StormCenter interface.

So in conclusion, while I'm no expert in User Interaction design I have found the above methods to be useful ways of conveying additional information or soliciting user input. If anyone has other ideas or suggestions I'd love to hear about them.

Social Networking SSO?

2007-07-17T09:53:00.000-06:00

So last night I had a thought that with the increasing number of social networking sites popping up, why isn't there something like a Single Sign On (SSO) for all of the sites. Additionally I was chatting with a friend a few months ago about why isn't there some sort of site that lets users aggregate their MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, etc, etc accounts on one page. Sort of like a feed reader for your profiles. Well, the guys at Mashable have a nice article today going over the different offerings in this arena.

It seems like there has got to be a bubble here; how many profiles on how many sites do you need before you are connected to Kevin Bacon?

I've... got a plan.

2007-07-12T22:31:00.000-06:00

In December of last year I entered the Lunar Ventures business plan competition with a group of students from the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) and University of Colorado at Boulder (CU). I initially joined as something to keep me busy and learn about how to prepare a business plan, but quickly realized this would become a three person venture with myself being the only one with prior business experience (a whole one semester of business school). The idea of the competition was to "collaborate in creating business ventures related to space." This meant creating a business model with both a near-term terrestrial revenue model and a Lunar application to be implemented in future space missions. Although we didn't win, it was a very enlightening experience that I thought would be worth recounting here.

Our starting point was the research of team member and CSM Computer Science doctoral candidate Arta Doci. Her thesis presented an alternative method for performing wireless communication in a mesh sensor network. This method involved a 'cross-layer' protocol stack, transcending the traditional four layer TCP/IP network stack. This technology was found in simulations to provide the following advantages over traditional wireless network protocols:

Performance (data throughput)
Longevity (lifespan of each mote)
Scalability (total number of possible motes in the mesh network)

Our challenge was to take this technology and apply it to both a Lunar and terrestrial scenario and create a business model around it. A daunting task to be sure; instead of taking an idea and forming a technology around that idea, trying to find a market and measurable competitive advantage for a protocol which could be used in any number of applications. On top of that the technology needed to be sound enough that it could solve current terrestrial issues and be useful (or a starting point) for Lunar missions ten to fifteen years from now.

Since the Lunar applications are fairly nebulous I thought I'd share our terrestrial business model. Our primary offering was a mesh sensor network product we dubbed 'AquaSense'. This product was a network of sensors providing a whole system solution for municipal water networks to monitor the quality and safety of their water supply. It leveraged our proprietary cross-layer optimization protocol along with CDMA to provide communication between the sensor motes. While somewhat ambitious, our research indicated that there are a number of advantages this system could provide to municipalities:

Environmental Compliance (Safe Drinking Water Act)
Rapid Threat Warning
24/7 System Status

Without going into too much detail as to the market and our business model itself, the feedback from our judges (one of whom had worked in the water industry for several years) was that while our technology was likely unique and definitely interesting, it wasn't clear that first, this was something municipalities would actually adopt and second that others in the wireless field were not already working on similar technologies that would overshadow ours by the time we got to market.

Some of the things I learned through this process that are worth mentioning:

Don't assume your market research is done until you have actually made contact with people in your target industry. I would suggest making 'first contact' as soon as possible once you think you have a market worth pursuing. It can either serve as a confirmation that you are onto something or save you a lot of work (and potential embarrassment) if the market isn't a fit for what you are trying to do.

I really liked the concept of the business plan in a 'deck' format. We were introduced to the idea by Frank Moyes, a professor at the Leeds School of Business in the University of Colorado at Boulder (where I am currently getting my MBA). He suggests that rather than creating a voluminous business plan, put it together using presentation software formatted like a booklet. We took this approach for our venture and the end result was a business plan which contained all of the necessary information but in a format that really 'sells' your idea instead of forcing the reader to really dig into a long document to get a sense for the business. You can find some examples of using a deck for a business plan on Frank's website.

Finally, and this may be obvious but I think that when you are going into a business venture, even if it is only for a competition, you need to be 'in it to win it'. By this I mean if you don't believe in your idea and want to take it to the next level by actually putting your own blood, sweat and tears (read: time, money, passion) into it then how can you expect someone to want to invest in your idea? I spoke to the the winners of the Lunar Ventures competition, Omega Sensors, Inc. after the competition and it was immediately clear they had a drive and a passion for their idea and their hard work paid off in the end.

This experience certainly opened my eyes to what it will take next time to win a competition like this as well as the foundations of starting and funding a fledgling business.