UX Magazine: Why We Need Storytellers at the Heart of Product Development

This question reflects a painful problem that is common at both small startups and large corporate organizations. Far too often, teams focus on execution before defining the product opportunity and unique value proposition. The result is a familiar set of symptoms including scope creep, missed deadlines, overspent budgets, frustrated teams and, ultimately, confused users. The root cause of these symptoms is the fact that execution focuses on the how and what of a product. But in a world where consumers are inundated with choices, products that want to be noticed and adopted must be rooted in the why.

One of the most obvious places lacking the why is technology products. How often to do we read articles about a company “prepariing a new Product X to fend off Apple’s Product Y”?
So what it really comes down to many times is the why is focused on affecting competition when it should be focused on providing value to the consumer.
Thanks Jory

David Pogue breaks down the realities of the new Blackberry PlayBook tablet:

Remember, the primary competition is an iPad — the same price, but much thinner, much bigger screen and a library of 300,000 apps. In that light, does it make sense to buy a fledgling tablet with no built-in e-mail or calendar, no cellular connection, no videochat, Skype, no Notes app, no GPS app, no videochat, no Pandora radio and no Angry Birds?

You should also know that even now, only days before the PlayBook goes on sale April 19, the software is buggy and still undergoing feverish daily revision. And the all-important BlackBerry Bridge feature is still in beta testing. It’s missing important features, like the ability to view e-mail file attachments or click a link in an e-mail.

And:

But — are you sitting down? — at the moment, BlackBerry Bridge is the only way to do e-mail, calendar, address book and BlackBerry Messenger on the PlayBook. The PlayBook does not have e-mail, calendar or address book apps of its own. You read that right. R.I.M. has just shipped a BlackBerry product that cannot do e-mail. It must be skating season in hell. (R.I.M. says that those missing apps will come this summer.)

This reminds of grade school – when you realize your book report is due the day of, and you hastily cobble it together with lightly reworded chunks from the encyclopedia.

I love the description:

via Vintage Scans

Yesterday Amazon announced their new ad-supported Kindle. They didn’t called it the Ad-Supported Kindle. They wrapped it in a cute little euphemism – Kindle With Special Offers.
Kindle With Special Offers (KWSO) – it’s like a Friend With Benefits – except the benefits are ads in your face. Awesome. But it’s cool, because your friend is a cheaper date because of the ads. Instead of the regular price of $139, the KWSO is only $114!
I say Amazon goes balls-out, Morgan Spurlock styley.

A great, 7-minute Ted Talk by Dave Meslin on the antidote to apathy:

Local politics — schools, zoning, council elections — hit us where we live. So why don’t more of us actually get involved? Is it apathy? Dave Meslin says no. He identifies 7 barriers that keep us from taking part in our communities, even when we truly care.

From Off The Wall TV – Pass The Bucket with Tony Alva:

Considered to be one of the the most influential skateboarders of all time, Tony Alva, an original Z-Boy, hit a bottom 4 years ago battling drug addiction and alcoholism. There, at his lowest point, his reliance on successes and ego came into perspective for the first time. Tony’s fight for sobriety and truth has recently lead him to a new perspective on life and direction moving forward. Dedicated to giving back Tony now see’s passing the bucket as the only way out.

Still skateboarding at 53 years old. Impressive.

The RS-7 camera strap looks awesome:

The RS-7 is specially designed to work with BlackRapid’s MODS system. It features attachment points so you can customize your strap with your choice of storage and other features. It’s constructed of ballistic nylon for extreme durability. With the RS-7, ergonomics are key. It’s designed and shaped to fit perfectly around your shoulder. The weight of your camera is evenly distributed for the ultimate in comfort. Built for speed, for when timing is everything.

Check out the video to see it in action.
Thanks, Bryan.

Would you look at the curves on this one:

via Le Container

Business Insider: Microsoft Executives In A Heated Battle Over Opening More Retail Stores

According to sources close to the company, CEO Steve Ballmer and COO Kevin Turner are both hot on the idea of matching — or even surpassing — Apple’s retail presence of over 300 stores. The stores are a big reason for Apple’s success in the last decade, as they give customers opportunities to play with products like the iPad and iPhone.

But Microsoft has only opened 8 stores in the year and a half since it launched its retail initiative, and has only announced two more, in Atlanta and Seattle, for a total of 10.

The reason: the stores are expensive to build — Microsoft wants them to be high-profile showcases like Apple stores are — and most of them aren’t making money.

My friends always roll their eyes when get into Microsoft-bashing.
With stories like this, though, I don’t even have to try.
*I stole the title for this post from one of the juicy comments on the original story.

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin’s thoughts on their competition (or lack thereof) with Microsoft (via Network World):

Two decades after Linus Torvalds developed his famous operating system kernel, the battle between Linux and Microsoft is over and Linux has won, says Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin.

With the one glaring exception of the desktop computer, Linux has outpaced Microsoft in nearly every market, including server-side computing and mobile, Zemlin claims.

“I think we just don’t care that much [about Microsoft] anymore,” Zemlin said. “They used to be our big rival, but now it’s kind of like kicking a puppy.”

I would say the puppy analogy isn’t needed. Microsoft has become it’s own analogy. They are becoming less and less relevant in almost every industry they’re still in. He should have said, “Competing with Microsoft is, well, like competing with Microsoft.”
As Aziz Ansari said in his story of the girl who gives a guy a blowjob for a half-hour for sold out concert tickets only to find out they were selling tickets at the door:

There’s no other way to complete that analogy because that’s the shittiest thing that could happen to you.

NYTimes: Unpaid Interns, Complicit Colleges

ON college campuses, the annual race for summer internships, many of them unpaid, is well under way. But instead of steering students toward the best opportunities and encouraging them to value their work, many institutions of higher learning are complicit in helping companies skirt a nebulous area of labor law.

Colleges and universities have become cheerleaders and enablers of the unpaid internship boom, failing to inform young people of their rights or protect them from the miserly calculus of employers. In hundreds of interviews with interns over the past three years, I found dejected students resigned to working unpaid for summers, semesters and even entire academic years — and, increasingly, to paying for the privilege.

Unless you’re being subsidized by your parents or crashing on couches, unpaid internships are impossible.
I was lucky enough to intern at an art gallery on 57th & Madison from 1996-1998 when in college. When the second summer came around I insisted that they pay for my transportation from New Jersey in addition to the whopping $7 an hour they paid me.
Realizing the bargain they were getting for someone who could hang all the paintings and photography for shows, deliver packages to clients and purchase and configure all the computers in the gallery, they agreed.
Internships are extremely valuable for kids starting out their careers but while the head start they provide in establishing relationships and acquiring practical skills is great, many employers aren’t meeting students halfway when they don’t pay them.

From Business Insider:

The team of editors that has streamed away from AOL’s Engadget is going to start a tech site for new media startup SB Nation.

Engadget’s former editor in chief Joshua Topolsky announced the move on his blog and in the New York Times tonight.
Topolsky says he’s joining SB Nation because it, “believes in real, independent journalism and the potential for new media to serve as an answer and antidote to big publishing houses and SEO spam — a point we couldn’t be more aligned on.”

It sounds like they really loved having AOL as their daddy at Engadget.

Declaring 2010 “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history,” Transocean Ltd., owner of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig that exploded, killing 11 workers, has awarded its top executives hefty bonuses and raises, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

That includes a $200,000 salary increase for Transocean president and chief executive officer Steven L. Newman, whose base salary will increase from $900,000 to $1.1 million, according to the SEC report. Newman’s bonus was $374,062, the report states.

What a bunch of bullshit. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Business as usual.