Experimentation is free

I take lots of digital pictures. Mostly of my kids. In the past I would have been more conservative because of the cost of film and processing. But today it's virtually free.

The same can be said for experimenting online. You can easily set up a Flickr site, a blog, or an email account. Build a wiki. Get a Second Life. Set up a store or start your own radio station.

In most cases, you can build these sites, try these new technologies, and learn for free.

Thomas Edison once said "To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." In that sense, the Internet is an incredible pile of free "junk" to power your imagination.

Innovation stagnation

The New York Times had this great article yesterday about how difficult it is sometimes to look beyond what you know and think like a beginner. Innovation becomes more difficult as knowledge and expertise increase.

I'm reminded of the clever "ideating" ad campaign from IBM.

Wild pitch

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the conference room when these advertising pitches were made.

"Your company name sounds too cold and formal. And insurance is kind of boring. We need something people can relate to. I know! What about a gecko?"

"And when the thirsty kids scream 'Hey Kool-Aid', this cool-aid monster busts through the wall and quenches everyone's thirst."

"No, nothing really happens. The friends just scream at each other. Trust me, it will be funny."

"And we think there should be three animated guys that help sell the cereal named Snap, Crackle and Pop."

Or how did this crazy ad for Outpost.com ever get approved?

Is better always better?

Those of us who work with technology often get caught up thinking that the latest is always the greatest. But that's not always the case. The history books are full of technologies that were hailed as the "next big thing" that turned out to be busts or didn't live up to the hype. Laserdisc, Betamax, DAT. By now weren't we supposed to riding Segways, reading E-books on our PDAs?

Great products that are first to market don't always win. See Netscape Navigator or CompuServe.

You hear a lot of commotion today about the DVD format battle - HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray. But I wonder if both may get replaced by something else. Will we even be using DVDs in 10 years?

Often we're so busy competing in the game, we don't notice something that comes along that changes the rules.

The incredible, embeddable map

Google recently added a much-needed feature to their mapping service. Users can now easily embed an interactive map on their blog or website. Like this one.


View Larger Map

I can see this being of great use for restaurants and other businesses. No longer should we see be forced to endure the static, useless screenshot from Mapquest when one like this allows users to interact with it and get directions.

I'll be on vacation next week so this blog may be quiet. Where will I be? Check the map.

The Toyota way

One of the things that I like most about working on websites is that they are never "finished." In a way they are living things - always evolving, hopefully improving.

Incremental improvement is what it's all about at Toyota. The company is legendary in the business world for its automotive production techniques. This article from Fast Company is a great read and it reminds us all that, no matter what our job title or our specific objectives are, our job is to make things better.

Toyota's luxury division, Lexus, uses the tagline "the relentless pursuit of perfection." After reading that article, I have a new appreciation for those words.

Ideas in action

More on the topic of idea generation:

Marc Andreeson got the ball rolling with his post on Why Brainstorming is a Bad Idea. He quotes from Frans Johansson's book The Medici Effect about how groups that get together to brainstorm consistently underperform groups that split up and brainstorm ideas individually.

In the other corner, Sarah Nelson from Adaptive Path argues for the benefits of brainstorming, but contends that it requires practice and strong facilitation.

From my experience, brainstorming can be a very useful tool. But often organizations have no shortage of good ideas. What is often needed is not more ideas but a person who can filter through the good ideas and make a decision on what action to take.

From mass media to new media

This article is not new but it's new to me. The Economist gives us a bit of a history lesson and discusses the future of media.

The Age of Ideas

Where do good ideas come from?

I'm a firm believer that we all have good ideas inside us. The trick is figuring out how to get at those creative thoughts and apply them to our businesses. Some people keep a notepad by the bed and write down those middle-of-the-night revelations. Others find inspiration in the shower. Or the gym.

But the most important question is: Do you give yourself time to think? It's hard to dream of something "outside the box" if you don't set aside time to dream.

I remember one time a few years ago the radio in my car broke. As I drove in silence, I couldn't believe how active and productive my mind was. Turn off your distractions and let your mind "play." Think about your website and what would make it a better site. Or a better experience for your users.

Some organizations are very good at playing with new ideas and fostering an innovative spirit. Google has its Google Labs. Yahoo has its research area. Plenty of sites go into beta and refine their ideas with the help of users.

Ideas are the lifeblood of the information age. Being able to generate, support and grow good ideas is a modern key to success.

The four-letter "b" word

Many organizations want to jump into the "new web" waters. But they are afraid of "the B word."

It’s a geeky word. An ugly sounding word - blog. Blog. It sounds rude.

It’s short of course for "web log" but we Internet types shorten everything so we’re stuck with it as a term. But relax. It’s not rocket science. It’s not complete geekery. A blog is simply a site full of stories / snippets / information. It usually allows comments and is casual in tone and lists items in chronological order.

That’s it. Nothing to be afraid of.

Maybe your CEO doesn’t think they know how to “blog.” But they probably know how to type and be open and honest.

Sometimes getting a project off the ground is as much about selling it internally as it is about making it work externally. Avoid the jargon words and you’ll change a lot of people’s minds and allay their concerns.

The way we were

The year 1994 doesn't seem like that long ago. Until you watch this video. It was created in 1994 by the Digital Corporation to help spread the word about the business potential of the Internet, which, at that time, many people found hard to imagine. Could this much change over the next 13 years? Stay tuned...

Scrybe

This looks very cool. Watch the video.

Scrybe

My needles please, hold the haystack

The bridge column in the paper. The Farm Report on the radio. The day's closing bond prices. What do these things have in common?

As long as we've had information, we've had information geared for specific audiences. But in the past, that information was delivered the only way possible - broadcast it to everyone and let them figure out what they want to pay attention to. I don't even know how to play bridge, yet the column is in my newspaper every day. I'm not a farmer so the Farm Report doesn't really interest me. And I don't own any bonds. Yet we've always had to wade through a haystack of information that doesn't pertain to us to find the needles of information that do.

Well no more. The web makes it possible to deliver just the right information to the right people. Corporate Intranets often do this based on one's role within an organization - showing the user just what they need to know to do their job.

But more and more public websites are empowering users to configure the sites to deliver information based on the their interests. Pageflakes, Netvibes, and MyYahoo are just three examples of sites that allow you to customize what you want to see. For many people these sites are powerful "homepages" that can deliver much of the information people want online, all in one place - news, weather, RSS feeds, even the bridge column.

Creating knowledge from data

IBM uses computers, lasers and satellites to help the PGA Tour track, record and analyze every golf shot hit by every player. They turn mere statistics into knowledge and knowledge into entertainment.

Watch the video here.

We are awash in data. In this age of information it's not the data or even the access to data that makes someone or something valuable. It's being able to interpret the data and turn it into information that creates real value.

The future of search

Insightful summary of a presentation from Marissa Mayer of Google on where search is headed. Especially interesting was this note:

"According to Mayer, someday in the future Google could automatically search content in all languages and present all the translated results to the user on the same page, regardless of language!"

Wow.

Incremental improvement

Once in a while we get the budget, authority and time to make something big happen - a new project or a website redesign.

But most of the time that's not the case. Our sights are lower - our tasks are smaller. We find something wrong, we fix it. We add new content to fill a gap. We improve the search results by adding meta-data.

A website is never finished. It's both a blessing and a curse. It will always need updating and always have room for improvement. Products can undergo incremental improvement too. Stamps that you don't need to lick. Notes that have sticky stuff on the back. Ketchup in a squeeze bottle. Cars with anti-lock brakes.

I enjoyed one summer I spent working construction building townhouses. I always liked the satisfaction of walking off the work site at the end of the day and being able to look at a wall or a roof that you had helped build that day. Progress was clearly visible. That's not always the case when your job involves pushing paper (or pixels). But by making the little things a little better, we can get that same sense of daily accomplishment in the digital age.

Why people say no to your idea

Seth Godin intimates that there are two reasons people say no to your idea: 1) It's been done before. 2) It's never been done before.

I think there are many more reasons that people say no.

• They are scared of change.
• They don't understand your idea.
• They want to repackage your idea as their own.
• They don't like you.
• Or maybe it's a bad idea.

Ultimately it's your idea and you need to take ownership of it. If the naysayers are in the way, figure out a way to move them.