Visual Shopping

Alfons showed me a site called browsegoods.com. Love the whole concept of visual shopping and appreciate what they were trying to do from a user experience perspective. Practically speaking though, doubt I would use it for too long. The cost of my time compared to the benefit of the visual shopping execution just didn’t seem worth it.

It's just in beta though so it will be interesting to watch.

Truth, Lies and Mathematics

Ever since I had Ms. Scolnic in grade 11, I have hated math (those of you who went to York Mills CI in Toronto know what I am talking about here). And yet, my career has been filled with having to understand, work with and yes, even manipulate numbers.

Back in the day, I did a study for the implementation of environmental assessment in Greece for the EU and got to assess over 50 cost benefit analysis models. The reason I never pulled my hair out was that I realized that math had nothing to do with it. In fact, most of the time I was reading very well constructed fiction that expressed itself in numbers.

Found through askthevc, Scott Maxwell gives his 10 best ways to lie with metrics. My top 3 of his top 10:

- Gather a lot of metrics and then only present the metrics that are positive
- Use extremely precise numbers
- Hire a graphic designer to turn your metrics into really good looking charts

Lessons From Ning

The day you start to do product development based on what the last potential investor said to you is the day you need to take a step back and remember why you created your invention in the first place.

What a great post from Gina Bianchini of Ning about their lessons learned in the past two years.

Great insight and some lessons I have bumped into most recently. If you are an entrepreneur or thinking about starting a technology company, go read the post and print it out and post it above your desk. You won't believe how easy the simple rules are to forget.

Most Clubs Are For Losers

Via WebTeacher:

Kottke had some interesting stats about the lack of gender diversity at Web conferences. The debate rages on with opinions on both sides.

Anil Dash weighed in with his posting called the boys club is for losers and noted that many of the comments on the Kottke site from the conference organizers ended up being really defensive. In response Anil said something that I think no woman would ever have the chutzpa to say:

“Guys are almost always unable to see the barriers they construct.”

I think most 'exclusive' clubs are for losers, and not just the boys clubs. The Web has always been the anti-thesis of that. Open, collaborative, diverse. It’s what I love about it. Where rules are made to be broken and where the very dna of the network is constructed to go around obstructions.

Hopefully at some point (and maybe the tides are already turning this way) the business of technology will to take some lessons from its very own network.

update: Anil wrote a second post on the subject - I think he's officially pissed (in a good way)!

The Burgeoning Micro-Documentary Market

Documentary film has always been a powerful cinematic genre that attempts to catch "life as it is". With the advent of digital video, and now YouTube, the market is opening up for documentary films to translate our insights about the world around us into compelling and moving moments in less than 10 minutes. See this YouTube video found via Chris Griffen. Chris talks about how video makes our ideas more compelling. To me it is also the opening up of a huge micro-documentary market that is only beginning to challenge our thoughts and change our thinking.

The Drill Vs. The Hole: Research vs. Insights Part Deux

Love when examples come so closely after I have a posting about something. I wrote about research departments needing to focus on insights and the whys the other day and here is a perfect example. Don Tapscott. Mark Evans had a post yesterday post talking about Don's 3.5 million dollar research project on Young People and The Web. Mark paraphrases Don's talk which had this research result:

"[young people] don’t see the Web as a great technology as much as a tool to be used - much like we never saw the remote control was nothing more complicated than a tool to change channels."

You gotta wonder how the research was crafted to come out with that completely sophomoric insight. Here's my guess:

do you see the Web as:
a. technology
b. network
c. portal
d. tool to do things

Personally, I would take someone who could be insightful based on a multitude of various research studies any day of the week.

Case and point, Chris Garrett . On Mark's blog he wrote what I thought was a very insightful comment (including the part where he agreed with me ;-)

"from the younger people I have contact with I have to conclude they don’t see technology as the rest of us older folk do. It’s transparent, every day, mundane, and non-compartmentalized. We think “I will get my phone and SMS so-and-so”, they are just doing what they do. They only notice the technology when it’s not there for some reason.

We see the drill, they see the hole in the wall"

update: Mike Dover from New Paradigm Research has clarified Don's research in the comments

Want To Know What The Kids Are Thinking?

I had posted about Club Penguin a while back and linked to a posting that familywebwatch has on the subject. A really interesting thing has been happening on that post. There has been a conversation going on between the kids and the adults on if Club Penguin is a good or bad thing (32 comments in all).

I am amazed (and yet not really amazed at all having one smart 11 year old daughter) at the articulate and well thought out comments that the kids are making. It is a fascinating conversation to watch. It's been mostly respectful, very informative and I think worth everyone's while to go and check it out.