Yahoo! & E-mail
I’ll give Yahoo! some credit. They really are trying hard to compete with Google, that’s for damned sure. Take a quick read through this article. I’ll still be here, I promise.
OK? Cool.
You know it’s funny when the unofficial Yahoo! blog writes:
"the first serious challenge to Gmail since Google forced competitors to unsuccessfully chase its ever-expanding storage capacity."
When you are attempting to justify your products features and functionality against your top competitor’s, you are definitely in a tough spot. Yahoo! didn’t have the privilege of releasing a statement saying:
"Unprecedented Web-based e-mail storage."
Google had that fun. And they are still going strong. Check out the Gmail home page. They have that active disk space counter running there. I’ve seen it directly correlate to the space in my Gmail account — that’s awesome, and in my opinion, a genius blend of marketing and functionality.
Sadly, I think the only way Yahoo! is going to make a splash in the Web-based e-mail market now is to be the first to offer 1 terabyte of storage. That would be cool, and with the terabyte coming of age, I’m sure Google would step up the plate and offer 2-4 terabytes of space for each user. Imagine that, huh? The more space we get, the more crap we all find to fill it with. It’s like money — usually, the more you have, the more you spend.
Sophistication
Does anyone remember the days when it was considered revolutionary to think that one day you’d be able to connect CGI-based applications to a database? I only recollect this through friends who were old enough at the time to comprehend such a thing; I was still a little hooligan back then with dreams of being a rock star, not a Product Manager, VP, or CEO.
I know it’s a tad cliche to blog on things that are taken for granted nowadays, but I just ran into something while changing my Google AdWord config for this site. I have been doing a little cost-effective experiment since 2005-08-21, and so far it’s paid off. But check this out:
Fans of the movie Van Wilder will recognize this line immediatlely. People who haven’t seen the movie won’t, but it gives them a good excuse to check out a great American classic.
I was trying to combine my display URL with the last line of the ad to see if I could cicumvent Google’s 35-character line limit. I did so by putting a semi-colon after "…Barry White". As shown in the image, the app caught the attempted trick and barfed out an error. Cool. Second, I figured since the Display URL was only for show, I could tack regular English in there — nope, second barf. Even cooler.
This is a great example of the Product Manager, or whomever design this feature, doing their job and it’s inspiring. While I could imagine a ton of people have tried to do this, leading Google to put catches in place for it, I doubt it was something that was in the initial version of the service. Nevertheless, it’s a great lesson for first-time / early product builders — the devil (or God) is in the details.
Again, nice work Google.
Small Town Entrepreneurship
I love this post by Brad Feld. It is well written and to the point regarding his recent day trip to speak with local business owners in Fairbanks, Alaska. While I comprehend his final recommendations for boosting entrepreneurship within the community, the town may always have a hard time keeping solid future business mavens around. I just wanted to jot down a couple of reasons why I think this is.
For the record, I have never been to Fairbanks — I’m sure it’s a lovely town. I did some digging and found that it has the following stats:
- It has 29, 954 active residents
- It was founded in 1902 and subsequently incorporated in 1903
- There is still gold to be found in the hills of
- It has a great climate
Overall, it sounds like a great place to visit. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to Alaska, but if I do, I may make it a point to travel to this city. But, I digress.
I grew up in a small town myself. It was much smaller than Fairbanks, but I know the problems about being somewhere that isn’t exactly a "hot spot". In short, it is tough to keep publicly recognized talent (especially in Business) around when in order to become publicly recognized you need to be somewhere that can happen. A quick look to Brad proves this - one of the most famous VC’s around, hails from Fairbanks, yet does not actively practice investing there, and writes this:
"While I don’t expect I’ll be doing any investments in Fairbanks any time soon, it was fun to explore entrepreneurship in a town like Fairbanks."
Honesty — I love it. I’m not sure why, but I got the impression he was taken on the town, all expenses paid, trying to get him clicking with something local. Hey — it would be good for the town to have a nationally recognized investor in there putting some good coin into on of their businesses. It doesn’t hurt the PR machine either that he’s a local. In addition, such a thing may make the University of Fairbanks graduates think about sticking around to and start their careers.
If I ever get the stature that Brad has, especially in a field I perceive to be so far out of my reach it’s not even funny, would I go back to good ole Bolton and look at some small businesses to invest in? No way. I say that with the kindest heart, but to be honest, I spent 19 years there and I only go back for family. I would never want to have any sort of work tying me there.
I can’t speak for Brad, but I feel I’ve kinda "graduated" from where I grew up, which allows me to move on with my life. I still know plenty of people living with their parents in the same houses we played in as kids, and got in to trouble in as teenagers. Now I travel to the downtown core of Toronto everyday to work. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I really believe you need to be in a major town, or close to one, to get things going. That’s where the resources are, and while great talent can be found anywhere, it may be easier to locate in New York, Chicago, and yes, even Toronto.
However, I’m a long way off from being able to start my own business, so what do I know? I’m just a lucky kid with a blog. My two pennies.
Google Talk
Google is taking over my desktop.
And I’m not going to lie; I like it.
First they release Desktop 2. Now, I love Desktop Search. It’s freakin’ amazing. They have enhanced it with this cool sidebar that, I already kinda know will grow old, but for the time being, it’s killer. I still have to figure out how it’s indexing e-mails though, because there is one Outlook data file that I set it not to index, and that’s how I believe it’s done. I cleared out all the e-mails in the index cache from that file, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed about it working properly.
Google Talk is also SO cool. I can’t wait until there are more people using this beast. My girlfriend and I tried it out briefly this evening, and it seems really cool. To be honest, I’ve never really liked Skype. I can’t say why, but it could be their branding - it never really struck a chord with me. Google, on the other hand, really piques my interest by keeping things extremely simple. Plus, I know they’ll get things right because they remember one key thing: god is in the details.
Thanks for delivering that idea today to me, Ludwig. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.
Mind the Release and Requirements
Traditionally, software-driven companies release around pretty standard cycles. Gather up a bunch of features, plan it, build it, QA it, alpha / beta / RC it, release it. Usually, this can take a huge amount of time - anywhere between 8-24 months. Or something.
This isn’t the way it has to be. Releasing faster can be done. Of course, doing so requires more attention to QA, since developers are under the gun to code their stuff more quickly. Ideally, with RAD, you’re doing minimal increment releases every two weeks.
How can this work? Fit the features to time, not the time to features. Also, mind the release plan and the roadmap. These two (or sometimes one) things have to be killer in order to ensure an agile organization stays agile. It’s the job of the product manager to disseminate this type info, and gather the requirements that will go in to building these artifacts up and out, ultimately ensuring the success of the product - and if the company is small enough, ensuring the product is helping drive the company toward success.
Both release cycle and requirements are critical components. And, making sure that you are talking to everyone that will listen about changes, bugs, successes and solutions. Get the right strategies in place and start managing in any direction you can — bottom -> top or top -> bottom. Both will work, and will help accomplish the objectives you have laid out.
