Month: August 2011

We all get a lot of spam.  I have int he past, used one of my mail accounts to register for something or other.  Don’t know what it was, but it seemed to bring a few offers of “XYZ market report” or “Reach KLM decision makers in solar technology”.  Or some such similar twaddle.  Always addressed to me.  Always crafted to avoid the spam filters.

It was a minor annoyance.  Really, just a couple seconds, and I deleted them unread.  Then one day I opened one of them up, and saw a link to unsubscribe.  Well, these seemed like legitimate offers, I was just not interested.  So I clicked the link and unregistered my email.

Big mistake.

That appears to have validated that I exist.  Now I get 3 – 5 of these offers a day.  A range of market data and reports on: 

• Heavy Industry
• Mining Technology
• Minerals Extraction
• Petroleum engineering
• Photovoltaic production
• LED for Lighting applications
• Photovoltaic installers
• SAP
• Sharepoint
• …

I think you can see the trend.  Alas, I am afraid to try to opt out again.  The signal to noise ratio in my inbox is trashed.

Sigh.  Scummy, semi-legitimate spammers.

I know that I can’t be unique here.  We develop a really cool new feature/module/functionality.  Early validation and customer feedback is hugely positive.  Phrases like “game changing”  “revolutionary” “must have at any cost” are bantered about.

Then comes time for mainstream release, and without question, the sales organization demurs that it should be “bundled” in.  Or offered “gratis”.  Or become part of the main product.  This happens time and time again, and really frustrates the marketing side of my persona.  We just developed something that is a huge value add differentiator, and we have an opportunity to increase our market visiblity and share by a period of exclusivity.  And the stakeholders who can take this and run with it uniformly believe that we should give it away.

They want to turn it into a checkbox in the presales evaluation process.  Huh?  Really?

Sigh.  If the work I do to find differentiation generating features nets to no increased value, and the work of our development team truly does nothing more than fill out a checklist for a presales evaluation, then why bother.

The lowpoint of product management.

I saw a quip on Slashdot about a Google researcher who found that ~90% of his subjects (aka people) that he was observing didn’t know that the keyboard shortcut ctrl+f would bring up a dialog to find the desired phrase/word in the current document.

Amusing in itself, but not too surprising.

The real interesting thread happened in the comments.  (http://goo.gl/Oor9X for the page and the related comments, BTW)

There was a reasonably long thread about why the menu for find was invariably in the “edit” pull down menu.  Lots of odd justifications, and postulates (think: find + replace is an editing function etc).

As a product manager, and one who grew up during the computer revolution, the answer is boneheaded simple.  Back in 1984 (or perhaps 1985) when Apple introduced the original Mac computers.  They also published design guidelines.  There woudl be a mnimum set of pull down menus (file, edit, help) and that certain functions MUST be in the same place if they are used.  This allowed for a consistent user paradigm.  it was an early attempt (quite effective too) to enforce celar and consistent styles and user interactions.   

Compare that to the types of programs used for editing text (non windowed environments.).  You had Wordperfect control commands, Emacs key comands.  In fact each word processor had its own set of codes.  No standardization, no consistency, huge sunk cost to move to a new platform.  

Now, we look back and wonder why this happened, but the truth is that it was good, and we all benefit.

Last week, I was chatting with a colleague, and I made an off the cuff comment that the day my life began to fall apart was the first day that I took a Product Management job.  I was only half joking, and this week has given evidence to support the conjecture.

However, about 25 years ago, a golden opportunity arose, and I foolishly didn’t take advantage of it.  A little known fact is that I worked my way through college as a chef.  At that time, I was a sous chef at a country club, and I rather enjoyed my work.  Challenging, rewarding, exciting, and a great outlet for creative impulses.

Somehow, I caught the eye of a member who owned a few resorts, and lo and behold, I was granted an offer to move to Hawaii for 6 months (under contract) to work at one of his resorts.  Room and board taken care of (I would have a room provided during my stay), spending money, and 6 months to prove myself (which would have been a breeze).  Alas, I was in a (bad) relationship, and I turned down the opportunity.

To this day, I wonder what might have been.  Would I still be there?  Would I have stayed in Hawaii?

Ah, introspective at its finest, as I slog through another round of OEM licensing agreements.

Lately, I have been watching a lot of classic TV series on Netflix Streaming.  Lots of fun, although it did highlight that my cable modem is ancient and needs to be replaced with a DOCSIS 3.0 box, to prevent hiccups.  

One show that I have been cruising through is Hawaii Five-0.  The early episodes are remarkably cheesy.  Hopefully they get less ridiculous as the seasons go on.  

But, one thing I noticed is that there is never a rainy day in Honolulu.  I will keep a vigilant watch, but I suspect that we may never see any precipitation on the big island.  I know from my trips there that some of the wettest places in the US are on the islands.

I will take a bullet, and keep watching for a crappy day in Five-0

This morning I got my second crown.  Both upper rear molars are now crowned.  

The first one I got ~ 20 years ago.  I ate a hard candy and the tooth completely crumbled.  Getting fitted for the crown was a bit arduous.  Two impressions (before and after grinding of the teeth), followed by three weeks of wearing a temporary crown awaiting the porcelain and stanless.  Then, it took some fine finishing to get it all to fit.

This one was much easier.  Numb the mouth, grind the tooth, do an impression, and send in the information.  2 weeks later (plus a few days since I was unable to get in last week) it is back, and it literally took 20 minutes to install.  It was a perfect fit, and no adjustments were required.

What is different?  Well, the fact that digital 3D imaging and modeling software, coupled with high precision mills, and the result is a much better fit, first time around.  

Do a search on “dental implant measurement” for a quick dive into the technology to make this all happen.  Way cool stuff.