The instant presentation effect

This week I've attended a strategic brainstorming session.
During this session, we divided our group into smaller groups, each with the task of analysing strengths and weaknesses of a certain solution.
While most of the groups wrote down their notes in their notebooks, and presented their outcome while reading from it, I took a laptop, and jotted down the team's effort into a 6 slide power point presentation in our company's template:

• Topic slide - Solution name
• Solution main principals
• Customer analysis
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• End slide ('Thank you').

Coming up with a structured presentation was far more effective than reading your conclusions. The impact was immediate, and the message was clear.

And it wasn't more complicated than writing down your ideas.

Give this method a shot the next time you brainstorm. Your message might become much more effective.

For more ideas about how to write effective presentations, my friend Jan Schultink has a great blog (And presentation design company :) 

Facebook stabs spam

The war on spam has failed. Though email providers like Google and Microsoft get a relatively good spam detection rate, there will never be a 100% success rate. And these guys are getting smarter.
Even Facebook were not left out, and many people get spam sent to them (check your 'other' message box...)
Well now Facebook are making a stand against spam, by charging 1$ per message to someone you don't know.
I think that's actually nice.

Mobile web and sandboxing

I've had a few discussions in this blog about mobile web vs. native in app development.
One of the major problems with creating a mobile web app was performance. When an app needs to display a large list of items, rendering a huge DOM tree with lots of layers causes app performance degradation, resulting in poor user experience.
Well - The guys at sencha came up with a neat idea - 'Sandboxing', which means fragmenting your content items into small iframes.
The basic motivation behind this is that it's easier for the browser to render lots of smaller DOM frames than rendering one huge DOM tree. With multi core processors (And supporting OSs like iOS5/ Android 4 and above), this approach becomes even more effective.

You can read more about it here.

[Thanks Danny Livshits for the link]

Google services outage and android crashes

Yesterday afternoon, I've started experiencing hiccups in my Galaxy Nexus (Running 4.2.1).
Crashes, phone getting stuck without provocation from my side, sluggish performance.
Turns out Google's services had a major disruption yesterday.
Coincidence? I don't think so. Problematic? Very much. But this is what we sign for, and this is why Google's devices are so cheap... Actually, Apple's devices are the same in terms of cloud dependency (Siri, iCloud etc.), but you pay more...

In the meantime, legislation is having it's way with Apple's software patents. That is good news for ANYONE creating software these days. (Read the last paragraph of this post for more).

Of products and projects

There are several approaches, when starting your own startup.
Most startups these days are using the approach of 'we build a great product, and users will come'. They begin with a vision, or a problem that needs a solution, and then build their service.
Some startups, however, take a different approach. These startups work mostly in the enterprise (B2B) arena. They actually begin as a one project company, and build their product for one customer. Then they refine, it as more customers come in.

The product approach is more common, because you don't have to do much as an entrepreneur - Just explain your vision, and if it makes sense (And you have some connections), you'll get some funding to begin. You can sprint your product, and then launch, and hope (Or use PR/ Community managers/ Marketing) to generate buzz and acquire users. Sometimes (Like, um, a lot of successful social companies) the product becomes a hit, and then you worry (Or not... Like Instagram) about monetizing it.

The project approach is harder. You need to partner with one (Or few more) customers, which will also pay you for your service (That doesn't necessarily exist yet). And then you have to deal with them, and all the growing pains of sorting out the problems. However, you might not need funding at all - This means, with current valuations and VCs pressing entrepreneurs desperate to keep their dream alive, that you might not need that phase at all. After you gain enough customers, you'll have a sense of what the market needs, and you can actually build a working product.

And then there's another approach.
Find a targeted person (Or small audience) for your idea, and build the product for him. (Or her... I'm using male for comfort reasons only) Treat him as a paying customer. Each one of your audience should be treated as a 'project'. Then you can actually get the real sense of what your product should be. 

Finally, here's a great product that succeeded mostly because the developers that built it did it for a great audience: Themselves. I wrote about MongoDB in previous posts, here's an explanation of what makes this product so popular:
http://blog.mongolab.com/2012/08/why-is-mongodb-wildly-popular/

The Microsoft manoeuvre

Well... October is here, and the three big ones (Google/ Apple/ Microsoft) are rolling new devices, just in time for the holidays.
And while Apple and Google try to kip the lid on official announcements (But most of us already know what's in store...), Microsoft has been all out, revealing everything they've got months ago.
I wonder how it will play out, but the most obvious question for me, having moved in the past years from Microsoft environment (Developing enterprise applications and servers using C++) to Apple and open source environment (Developing web applications, web services and mobile apps), is: What would make me move back to Microsoft environment.

And, seriously, right now - The only answer is 'opportunity'. The fact that not too many people are going to make the switch back, and if you're the first one posting a product to a platform that will reach tens of millions of users (And it will), then there's money in it.

I'm going to see Steve Balmer speak at think next. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

If a tree falls...

In the forest, and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?
If an independent developer publishes an app in the play store, and no one knows about it, will anyone download it?
Apparently, no.
And not only that, but when you search the app by exact name (No parenthesis), it would still appear 10th in search results.
This one's only regarding the play store, as the iTunes works differently.

Why is that? Could it be that Google promotes whoever pays them? I'll try to find out in the coming weeks. 
The first step would be publishing a link to the app from this blog. (And if you want to teach your kid English letters, you should try this... It's free.)

Let's see how it does soon.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myartichoke.youngletters