The only constant is change.
Vaguely Work Related
Marketing miss.
Jul 12th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in I Think About the Internet
So Netflix hiked rates today, and people are upset.
I don’t get it. Why the angst? I looked, and as far as I can tell, it’s not a big deal – I’m finally getting charged a pittance for something I value highly.
Bear in mind, I signed up for Netflix back in 2002, and have had a 3-disc-at-a-time subscription the whole time. It’s $19.99, which is less than two premium margaritas at Don Pablo’s. On the other hand, I’ve had times when I’ve had a disc out for 3 months because I keep not making time to watch TV. When they introduced streaming as a free feature, I suddenly was getting ten times the value for my subscription. Taking the rate up to $23.99 for the same deal seems reasonable to me. If anything, I’ll drop the disc subscription (which I’m sure Netflix is just fine with, since they’re getting out of physical distribution as fast as they can) and actually save money.
It seems odd, though. Didn’t Netflix do focus tests? Did they leave out the nerds or something? I mean, your target market is “people who use the Internet a lot,” which means they have a disproportionate reach to their size, and the ability to create flash crowds with things like trending on Twitter. Even a small percentage of people who are really pissed off can make the story “people are angry about Netflix price hike” instead of the more desirable “Netflix clarifies pricing plans, increasing customer choice”.
I’ve met some of the Netflix people, (on the data and API side, not marketing), and they are smart, capable people. Clearly, though, somebody missed the key message that needed to go out. From the NYT article:
What cost $10 a month — online streams of movies plus one DVD by mail at a time — will now cost $16 a month, the company said…
No no no! The message you wanted to get out was “This is a 20% price cut on our most essential service.” Unlimited streaming for $8 a month? That’s a *great* offer.
Swing and a miss right there. Dig that back foot in, and watch it all the way to the bat next time. You’ll get ‘em.
Crossposted from Goodreads
Jul 10th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Books You Should Read
Trying out a crosspost from Goodreads, because I really like the observation I made in it. Sometimes I look back at things I have written and really like them.
The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown
Reminding me very strongly of the reading I did in college for Sociology and Anthropology classes, with a focus on enterprise use cases.
I find it strange to read, in 2010, a book written in 2000 about the effect of the Internet on human behavior with information. I can see places where the authors were quite prescient, and areas where they got it wrong – in particular, their prediction that newspapers will continue to be relevant and successful. I think in that case it’s a matter of incomplete understanding of the business model of newspapers; craigslist and ebay have largely destroyed classified advertising, and that’s a big revenue loss.
View all my reviews
Fixing textmate-clojure “env: cake: No such file or directory” error
May 22nd
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Clojure
I spent some time tonight fixing a fatal error with textmate-clojure, and since the solution turned out to be really easy, I thought I’d share it.
I’m running OS X 10.6.7, with an install of Textmate 1.5.10. I installed the textmate-clojure bundle, which looks very nice. I already had Clojure 1.2 installed, as well as Ruby 1.8.7 and Cake 0.6.3 (I also have Leiningen installed, but I am moving to Cake because it’s really slick).
Initial steps of the install went well, but while I could (seemingly) start a REPL from Textmate, I couldn’t load a file, instead getting the env: cake: No such file or directory error.
I spent a while banging my head on the problem, finding a bunch of information about how to resolve conflicts produced by RVM in this situation, but since I don’t use RVM and didn’t think adding a layer to the problem would be likely to fix it, I kept looking. I eventually ran across a couple of blog posts that gave me the information I needed.
Basically, the issue is that Textmate can’t find Cake, even though it looks like it can.
The short form of the solution:
1. In terminal, type which cake to find out where Cake is installed. For me, it’s /opt/local/bin/cake/
2. In Textmate, open Preferences (CMD-,), select Advanced and then Shell Variables
3. Add your path to the list (remember that it starts with a slash and ends without one, and that elements are separated by : — mine now reads /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin)
Hello, REPL. :)
Missed opportunities
Nov 12th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Vaguely Work Related
There’s a new T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents out.
I really liked Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents back in the day; it had a combination of a retro feel to the art and characters and a modern sensibility to the setting — the characters were costumed heroes but they worked for a government agency.
The new one retains the essential idea (as far as I can tell) but provides somewhat more focus on the “your powers are going to kill you” aspect. It reminds me of Strikeforce: Morituri, where the heroes are trading off their lives to get increased power in order to fight the good fight.
The missed opportunity is in regards to DC’s iPad app, and comes in two flavors.
First is an amateur-hour miss. They haven’t set up a synonym for “T.H.U.N.D.E.R.” and “thunder” (or any cased variation). This means that when I searched for “Thunder Agents” a couple of days ago I got no results. Typing all of those periods is a pain in the butt – for this post, I only typed them once and then copied that string. And that’s with a real keyboard – the iPad keyboard is really nice but still far inferior to the real thing.
I initially assumed that the lack of results was due to me searching before the street date of the comic, but when I went back today and search again and still got no results, it occurred to me that they might have missed the synonym, so I tried “agents” and sure enough, there it was. 10-page digital preview.
Which brings me to the second, more serious, miss.
I can’t buy the darned thing. They’ve gone to the effort of digitizing it and putting in the pan-and-zoom features for the first 10 pages, but not the remaining work to finish the last 12 pages (or however many) and make it available for sale. Instead, I’m directed to “buy it in print at your local comic shop.” I buy plenty of books at my local comic shop, but in this case I was actually interested in getting it digitally, and DC missed the chance to sell it to me. I honestly don’t know what they are thinking.
Guess who’s speaking at Gartner AADI?
Nov 12th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Shameless Self-Promotion
Me. I guess that was probably obvious. :)
Thanks to Eric Knipp, I’m going to have the chance to speak at Gartner AADI 2010 in November.
I’m excited – the work we’ve been doing in Dotcom Architecture is some very cool stuff, and this will be the first time we talk publicly about the strides we’ve made in changing the way that Best Buy approaches the Internet. We’re treating infrastructure as code, embracing open source and using cloud computing to deliver real results.
If you’re going to be there, look me up.
Velocity
Oct 1st
Posted by Kevin Matheny in I Think About the Internet
Earlier this year, I attended the Velocity conference. It was a great experience – there’s something exhilarating about spending whole days talking to people who really get the kind of work you’re doing and have similar approaches to solving problems.
There is, of course, the danger of it becoming an echo chamber, but I think we’re still early enough in the process of figuring out how to make faster, more effective Web sites (and mobile web sites, and web-based applications, and other things that pretty much just use HTTP as a data transfer protocol) that there is room for health disagreement.
I had the chance to talk to Josh Bixby from Strangeloop yesterday, and we had a great conversation about measuring the impact of performance. He pointed me to a blog post he did that captured some of the best slides from the conference, and I wanted to share it.
http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2010/07/01/the-best-graphs-of-velocity/
I can still say that I have not bought *an* iPad.
Aug 4th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Vaguely Work Related
Because I bought three of them.
We won the Chairman’s Award for Remix. This is kind of a big deal. Dick Schulze, Founder and Chairman of the Board for Best Buy, created the Chairman’s Award a couple of years ago. He funded it with a million dollars, and it serves to reward employees who come up with innovative, cool things that are really helpful to Best Buy. Remix certainly qualifies, and I’m very proud to have won, and happy to share the award with Bryan Brandau and Joe Zwack, two of the best teammates I have worked with at Best Buy.
It comes with a monetary reward which is very nice. When I submitted the application, I told the Remix team about it. Dave Micko, who was the tech lead for Remix pretty much from Day 1, but is not a Best Buy employee, asked what he was going to get if we won. I told him I’d get him an iPad. He thought I was kidding, I think.
I also told Steve Conover, the lead engineer of the Pivotal Labs team that did the actual coding work for Remix, that I’d get him one. He also thought I was kidding.
So we won. And I went and bought an iPad for Dave, and another one for Steve, and got them engraved with the Remix logo and their names.
When I gave Steve his iPad, he initially thought it was mine. He mentioned that he’d been looking at iPad and almost bought one a couple of days before, but the store he was at was out of stock. It wasn’t until I I opened the box and turned the iPad over and he saw that it had his name on it that he realized it was actually his, and I hadn’t been kidding.
And yes, I did get one for myself. It’s a really really neat device. More on that later.
iPhone app recommendations – free apps
Apr 20th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Advice
The iPhone is now an approved device for Best Buy corporate users, which is excellent. Even better, personal phones can now be attached to corporate email/calendar, which is a huge improvement.
The result is that we’re getting new iPhone users, and several of them have asked me to recommend iPhone applications. Therefore I present the following list, which does not purport to be exhaustive, of iPhone apps that I find worth having around.
Free Apps
Google Mobile App – Google search (including voice search, which works well), Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, and more. It’s Google on your phone. Essential.
Pandora – play Pandora streams on your phone. If you’re not using Pandora, you’re missing out – it’s the best music discovery engine in the Milky Way Galaxy. Essential.
Facebook – Facebook on your iPhone. If you use Facebook, the iPhone app is really neat. Useless if you don’t use Facebook, though.
NYTimes – NY Times headlines and stories. Ad-supported. Excellent for catching up on current events when you have some downtime.
Urbanspoon – The first app that convinced me the iPhone was something special. Location-aware listings of restaurants, so you can find the ones near you. Couple that with reviews/ratings and menu information, and you have something really neat. Unlike Yelp, which is unfocused and therefore (to me) useless.
myWireless – the first app that *should* have been released for the iPhone. It lets you monitor usage and adjust rate plans and features as needed. My daughter got a cell phone over the weekend (not an iPhone!) and I went through 175 text messages in four days, so I upped my text messaging plan using this app. Very hand.
myLite – it’s both useful (you can go with a plain white screen so your iPhone is a light source) and entertaining (it has a lighter screen).
Now Playing – find movie showtimes near you. Really handy for that instant-access-to-information moment that makes you so happy to have an iPhone.
Sportacular – Sports junkies rejoice; box scores, schedules, standings and more for a wide variety of sports.
OpenTable -Dinner reservations made incredibly easy. Last week I made dinner reservations for two on the way to the car and was seated 15 minutes later.
RunKeeper Free – If you run, RunKeeper is really handy – handy enough that I bought the paid version, but since there’s a free one, give it a whirl. If you don’t run, skip it.
Bing – Alternative to Google; stronger map/direction features, not as many app integrations.
Gowalla – I’m still trying this one out; see my previous blog post on location to get a sense of my feelings. I think there’s a lot of potential, but location itself is not enough. Gowalla is trying to do more on top of that, which may work. Worth trying.
Paid apps are coming in the next post.
Location is not enough
Mar 16th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in I Think About the Internet
I deleted Foursquare from my iPhone last night. This was the second time I deleted it, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be re-installing it.
I think location is a killer feature, especially for mobile devices. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about potential applications for location-aware mobile devices, including a great conversation with Omar Abdelwahed of Ubisoft about possible mobile games.
But location alone is not enough to make an application useful. Foursquare is trying, especially with the new “hot potato event” feature they added for South by Southwest. Essentially, Foursquare does two things:
1. It tells me where my friends are, if they remember to use the application. This is sort of useful and possibly interesting. Here at SxSW, I saw Oren Michels (@orenmichels on Twitter, CEO of Mashery) check in at a taco place, and I inferred that he’d be bringing breakfast tacos to the Circus Mashimus lounge.
2. It lets me get a list of people who have checked in a a given location using Foursquare. I can’t tell anything other than that they have been at that location – I have no idea if you’re interesting or not, unlike Twitter, which at least gives me some insight into who you are by letting me look at your tweetstream.
Foursquare does not help me grow my set of friends, because it doesn’t give me any more information than “this person is in (or was in) this place.” It does have gamelike mechanisms for encouraging usage of the app — badges and mayorships — but that’s ultimately self-referential. I’d like Foursquare to be cool and useful, but unless and until it offers something more than simply location awareness, it’s not making it back on to my phone.
(Edits)
Fixed an omitted word in the 3rd paragraph that changed its meaning.
Quoted for Truth
Jan 7th
Posted by Kevin Matheny in Vaguely Work Related
There’s a truly excellent post on the subject of Enterprise IT and how we’re doing it wrong over here. It’s worth reading. And maybe sharing the link with some other people.
Thanks to the Pivotal News Network for the link.
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