Seth Godin’s Stupid Idea December 1, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Product Development , 17 comments
I enjoy reading Seth Godin, I really do. He has a knack for saying sensible things in a fresh and engaging way.
This idea of his, though, is completely inane:
What we need is a centralized captcha server that everyone can use for free. And how would it be monetized, you ask?
Easy. Logos.
It might be for soup or a server or an airline…
Type the brand you see above, please.
Which is great, except that a system like that could be so easily gamed that it would be rendered entirely pointless. Brand logos are supposed to be easy to recognize, which is the complete opposite of what a captcha image should be.
You might be able to up its reliability by distorting the hell out of the logo in question, but I don’t see thousands of marketing managers scrambling to take up that opportunity, do you?
Cambrian House: the wisdom of crowds or the myopia of geeks? July 31, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Business, Product Development , add a comment
This is one of the most interesting and audacious ideas I have seen in a while. Cambrian House, who recently entered open beta, are bringing a pretty revolutionary new approach to product development. They describe their mission as follows:
To discover and commercialize software ideas through the wisdom and participation of crowds. Contributors earn royalties, sharing in the success of the products.
The company is focused on a particular type of product: ones that can be sold/realized entirely over the Internet. So, how does the process work?
Underground Bounty Hunter: The Interactive Movie Returns July 26, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Product Development, Games , 10 comments
Next Generation has an interview with one of the people behind a forthcoming web-based interactive movie called Underground Bounty Hunter. For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the term, Next Gen sums it up pretty nicely:
Interactive movies, or live-action games featuring branching stories, first appeared on the back of the CD-ROM in the early 1990s. After a noisy introduction, they were generally reviled for high costs, poor production values and limited interactivity. Game industry lore has it that such things are the mad offspring of Hollywood types who want to bring their skills to our audience.
Living as I do here in Los Angeles, I meet lots of people from the mainstream entertainment business with ideas along these lines. I will be making them read this article as a handy shortcut for explaining why you may want to think twice.
I had a quick poke around the site myself. Hey guys, if you’re reading this, I have three suggestions that will increase your chances of success by an order of magnitude. I’m not kidding.
Hands on with the HeatSeek porn browser July 12, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Product Development, Adult , 16 comments
When I heard about this on TechCrunch today, I was immediately intrigued. The adult industry is notorious for a take no prisoners approach to product development - it will have your eyeballs and your wallet, even if it means opening 300 pop-up windows and installing a dialer that calls premium rate numbers in Karachi when you’re not looking.
Great products make business needs dovetail with what the user wants, and HeatSeek nails it expertly.
(more…)
Toolkit: Gliffy browser based Visio replacement June 28, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Product Development, Toolkit , 1 comment so farGliffy is a free browser based replacement for Microsoft Visio, and I am delighted to report that it rocks. It has the collaboration features you would expect from a web application, a beautifully friendly Flash user interface, and replicates the basic flowchart functions of Visio perfectly. Ninja-grade Visio users might want more than this, but my guess is that this is going to prove good enough for the majority of users.
[Toolkit posts highlight services that make product development cheaper, quicker or more efficient.]
[via Lifehacker]
