The Times article goes on to discuss how email and social media have accelerated feedback to marketers and manufacturers, quoting Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America as saying that consumers can communicate with marketers “more readily and more quickly” than ever. “For companies that put consumers at the center of what they do,” he said, “it’s a good thing.”

What the Times article doesn't emphasize is that the new look was designed at great cost by the exclusive Arnell design shop. I love it when real user feedback overrules pedigreed designers. User feedback is the best designer.

Sixth Sense wearable tech made from off-the-shelf components costing $350Maes and Mistry demonstrated a fundamentally more immediate way to access information about the world in the moment, wherever we are, without the use of a computer - a way that anyone could use - made out of off-the-shelf wearable components costing no more than US$350.

The Sixth Sense wearable system consists of not much more than a portable webcam, projector and a cell phone. The camera records whatever you are facing, the cell phone connects you to information about it and the projector projects information onto it or a nearby surface.

Imagine you could project information from the Internet about any object you encounter right onto the object itself or any nearby surface. At minimum, it would be like having Google results, Wikipedia entries and Amazon ratings on everything all the time without having to lug your laptop around, type in search criteria or even look away from the object. With a little more smarts, it could provide you with ratings of potential purchases or other decisions customized based on your individual criteria.

Get meta-information on anything or anyone just by looking at themMaes and Mistry demonstrated seeing ratings and annotations projected into the end papers and margins of a book in a bookstore. They also showed personalized eco-ratings projected onto a package of toilet paper in a grocery store. The capper was when they projected biographical information and a tag cloud from a student's blog onto the t-shirt of that student.

Who hasn't wanted to look up something or someone in the moment but not had the access or the time to get the information? I'm kind of a nutrition nut so I spend a lot of time in the grocery store reading labels watching out for things like high fructose corn syrup, salt and hydrogenated oils. How much faster would my grocery runs be if I had a device that could recognize a brand of tortillas and overlay a red, yellow or green rating based on my personal criteria the moment I looked at the package without me even having to take out my iPhone? That's game-changing.

Dial your phone on your fingers without taking it out of your pocketImagine if you could take a picture of something just by gesturing at it or dial and talk on your phone without ever taking it out of your pocket? Other parts of the demo, such as the ability to use your hands to frame a photo (like a stereotypical movie director) or the ability to dial a virtual phone dial pad on your fingers were more direct and obvious uses of the technology. They were fun to watch but I didn't feel compelled by them - I didn't drool.

No, the thing that really got me was how close to science fiction this combination of existing affordable devices gets with just a little thinking about how people could really use their combined capabilities. The information Maes and Mistry show in their demos is all accessible to people on the go today via a mobile browser or the right iPhone app. But as Maes said in her introduction, when you meet someone new you don't stop and say 'hang on a minute while I Google you.'

I mean that science fiction comment literally, actually. Watching the demo video immediately put me in mind of Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge - a book that makes me remember why I always liked science fiction. In Vinge's imagined near future, the network is everywhere and everyone wears smart clothing and contact lenses that keep them in full-time contact with each other and with meta-information on everything around them. The information is overlaid privately on each person's point of view by their contact lenses. Like Maes and Mistry, Vinge does a good job of thinking about how people would use a new technology in their everyday lives.

There's more to the book, of course, and one thread is that the books in the world's large libraries are being shredded in order to digitize their content and make it available on the net. Fittingly, Vinge's book is available on Google Books.

Has technology accelerated to the point where it is only a few steps behind science fiction? I certainly hope so. In fact, I predict that in not too many years it will seem quaint to be accessing Google Maps or product ratings via a tiny porthole in your palm when you can see the same information effortlessly overlaid on reality.

As in past years, the goal is to compile the top 10 usability triumphs and top ten usability gaffes of the year past as nominated by you. So please...

Take 10 seconds right now and think of the one thing (product, service, website, software, gadget, whatever) that really works for you, that's so elegant in its design and operation it must be the result of a good feedback loop between the product designers and its intended users. Write down your first thought and add it as a comment to this entry.

Then take 10 more seconds and think of the one thing (same list) that really irks you every time you have to use it because the product designer clearly did not take the time to think about how it would really be used or try it out on one real-life person before getting it to market. Write that down too and post your comment.

Even if your favorite product or service isn't new this past year, if you used it or became aware of it last year, put it down.

The difference this year is that you can either submit your own ideas or simply vote for something someone else has nominated in your comments on this entry. You can submit your thoughts on why you like a specific product or just write "+1 for [product name]." I'll compile all the combined nominations and votes and declare winners for both fame and shame after a couple of weeks of voting.

As last year, the first people to nominate the winners for both fame and shame will receive User>Driven t-shirts from Zazzle.

My Nomination for Fame: Mint.com

Mint's budgeting features are compelling and easyI've been using Mint.com to keep track of my finances for several months now. It's a free service that allows you to centralize and synchronize all of your internet-accessible accounts - banks, investments, credit cards, mortgages, loans - and see where all of your money is going.

To set it up, you first enter all of your usernames and passwords for your online accounts, authorizing Mint to retrieve your transactions for the last 90 days. Then whenever you sign into Mint, your latest transactions are automatically retrieved and added. And though it takes a little training by you, Mint also automatically categorizes all of your transactions into groups such as housing, food and dining, medical care, etc. This enables you to track your expenses by category month-to-month and to easily establish and track budgets for specific types of expenses.

This is the sort of thing I used to do with Quicken. I was a early adopter of Quicken for electronic bill-paying but I got away from it when my bank developed a reasonable web interface for that function and Quicken seemed like extra work for not much benefit. (I never did like Quicken's categorization scheme or canned reports.) The extra effort here is much lower than I found with Quicken and there are several benefits I've discovered in a few months of use.

First, it is very useful to gain some perspective on where your money going. When I first started looking at how things were breaking out, I was actually relieved to see our largest categories were sensible things like housing, food, tuition and savings. And I was surprised to discover what a small portion of our overall budget went to utilities and auto expenses (despite high gas prices).

Mint also has a unique feature that allows you to compare your spending in a category with those of other users either nationally or by state or major city. So you can see if you are spending more or less than average on restaurants than others and gain more perspective that way. I spent more on restaurants and less on home improvement than the average Massachusetts Mint user this month. :( I like this comparison feature but I think I'd like the option also to see guidelines provided by financial experts on the percentage one should ideally spend on each major category.

Mint's iPhone app is very useful for tracking your spending throughout the month. I've set monthly budgets for things like groceries, restaurants, shopping and entertainment and I can see my up to date status against those budgets right on my iPhone any time. It even takes into account and graphically displays how far into the calendar month I am next to how far into the budget I am. This is really handy when trying to decide whether to make a purchase and I can't tell you how often budgeting systems get this bit wrong. Is the fact that I've used 80% of my budget for toys this month good or bad? Well, it depends on whether it's the 2nd or the 29th, doesn't it? With Mint, I can see where I am in my budget right at the moment of temptation and this can help to reign me in or help me feel less guilty, depending on what I see.

I remember describing a feature like this to a friend familiar with the credit card industry back in the late '80s. I said what I wanted was a read-out on my credit card that showed by category what my total spending had been this month. Because it centralizes all of my accounts and allows me to track totals across them, though, this is far more useful in practice than my original idea or my bank's iPhone app or any other app from a single institution.

Mint's Overview page provides a nice glanceable summaryMint.com competes directly with a similar offering from Quicken called Quicken Online. I've been using QO longer, actually, than Mint. Despite their long experience in consumer finance applications, though, I find their offering inferior in many ways and I will probably drop it soon. QO's ability to synch with banks and so on to get transaction data is far less reliable and slower than Mint's. I find I routinely have to manually refresh many of my accounts multiple times and they have never been able to connect to my 401(k) provider. This is bizarre coming from the makers of the most established electronic bill payment provider.

QO's categorization scheme is also less useful than Mint's, providing only a flat list of categories instead of a hierarchical scheme. Mint also has tags that allow you to filter and find expenses related to taxes, vacations, reimbursable expenses or anything else you like. This is very handy if you travel for work and you want to see what your real expenses look like separate from that while still putting hotel expenses into the travel category. It's also handy to see just how much you spent in total on that last vacation or on holiday gifts.

One thing that neither service has right yet is bill reminders and cash-flow prediction. Both services are trying to meet the laudable goal of telling you how much money you really have and when it might run out, rather than just giving you a snapshot of your accounts at the moment. They try to do this by looking at past income and spending patterns and predicting when you may go into the red. This seems like a good idea but in practice I am seeing all sorts of reminders for bills that do not actually recur and dire warnings of negative balances in the future that will not actually happen. as a result, I am really ignoring this feature. Mint makes that easier than QO which plasters their summary page with large colorful predictions of impending doom that I can't configure away.

In summary, Mint.com provides me with a valuable, usable service that I use at least once a week and that beats its direct competition by providing similar features in ways that allow me to work the way I really want to rather than how the vendor thinks I might or should.

My Nomination for Shame: Microsoft Exchange Server

Lately I've been taking to saying "Outlook is no one's friend," and whenever I do I get knowing grimaces and groans from around the room. The truth is, though, that the troubles most people have with Outlook are really troubles with the Exchange Server software behind the scenes.

How often have you said or heard someone say, "Can you send me that invite again? It's fallen off my calendar." Or, "I can't reschedule the meeting. Outlook won't let me." Or, "Outlook is hung up again trying to get information from the server." Or, "I had to reboot again because Outlook was acting weird." These are daily utterances where I work and I hear it from colleagues at other companies too.

Exchange's vulnerabilities were brought home to users at my company this year when a single problematic iPhone trying unsuccessfully to sync to Exchange not only brought down the ActiveSync service but my company's entire email service for some time.

Outlook's well-known usability issues aside, it seems it's very hard to keep an Exchange Server healthy and all of its clients stable and in proper sync. I expect a lot more from one of the largest software companies on earth.

So those are my nominations. What are yours? Click comments below to speak out. Do it now or miss out on winning a User>Driven t-shirt. And if you like my nominations, you can vote for those. (If they get the most votes, the first voters for them win the t-shirts.)

Some see this as Google's latest move in a battle with Microsoft for dominance of the business desktop. I think it's much simpler than that. I think this is the inevitable direction for all webapps. I can't find the reference on his site, but Joel Spolsky once wrote that it turns out to be easier to get connectivity anywhere (including on planes, he claims) than to manage synchronization of offline apps. Nevermind that Outlook has done it for years, Google is making it look easier and easier even for Webapps.

Like Google Reader before it, Gmail uses Google Gears to manage offline access and synchronization. And it makes a few improvements on the Reader model as well. For example, Gmail has something called Flaky Connection Mode that handles low-bandwidth or intermittent connections, allowing synchronization when possible in a seamless fashion. Also, once you have downloaded your email the first time, synchronization always happens when you are connected. This is better than Reader where you have to plan ahead for when you will be offline by downloading all of your feeds. Once "geared up" Gmail just seems to use whatever connection and whatever data is already available with no fuss.

Gmail also has a shortcut option that places an icon on your desktop, Quick launch bar or Start menu. This makes it easier to get access when offline without having to start your browser before you leave the network (something I could never get to work with Reader).

Gears is being adopted outside of the Google family as well. In addition to their nice little iPhone app, Remember The Milk is now Gears-enabled. If it weren't for some of their inherant UI limitations, this might make for the anyplace, anytime, any device task manager I've been searching for all these years.

Offline access and iPhone apps might seem like they are taking off in opposite directions. Really, they are aimed at the same problem. People want access to their data through their favorite apps anywhere, anytime. Access is the new must-have feature.

Steve Jobs introduces the MacBook Wheel in this hilarious video from The OnionThe video is funny because it hits home. People have been critical of the Air for lack of an optical drive and the fact that the battery can't be removed. Providing only what your target market really needs is a tried-and-true principle of good product design, but it remains to be seen whether ignoring the conventional wisdom will pan out for the Air. It certainly has for Apple's similar decisions with the iMac and the iPhone, though. Both devices defined a new type of device and drove imitation throughout the industry.

The video is also funny because it makes fun of the Apple faithful who will "buy almost anything if it's shiny and made by Apple." This may be closer to true than some of us would like to admit. Tanner Morrison of The Apple Blog writes about the success of the iPhone: "As consumers are we beginning to see the keyboard/mouse dynasty come to an end as touch screens become more advanced? Perhaps this is propelling us into the next level of home computing where the nerd fantasy of owning the Minority Report computer becomes a reality."

This is just plain wrong as the several comments on Tanner's post point out. Wheels, fingers on touchscreens, and gestures in the air as in Minority Report are great for navigation but nobody uses them for long-form text entry. By now everyone's seen the TED video where large format multi-touch screens allow for all sorts of impressive object manipulation on screen. In that video Jeff Haan brings up a virtual keyboard but it's telling that he doesn't attempt typing anything longer than a label for a picture.

Similarly, the iPhone virtual keyboard works well once you get used to it (I read one user's comments saying he'd gotten as fast as with his previous Blackberry) but no one would use the iPhone or BlackBerry keyboards for anything longer than a short email. I love my iPhone, but I save my longer replies for when I get back to my laptop.

I do see the possibility that the conventional hard plastic keyboard could be replaced by other form factors over time, but I don't see typing with two full hands going away. It's simply too efficient compared with one-finger or two-thumb entry. People point to improved handwriting recognition as a possible replacement for the keyboard. Watching my kids, though, they seem to have grown more efficient quicker with a keyboard than they have with a pencil.

Typing gloves allow one-handed, no-look text input without a keyboardHow about a glove or a set of rings that detect your finger movements? Or a flexible keyboard you can roll up and put in your bag?Or a small projector to create a virtual keyboard on any available surface?

That last one is similar to a full-size virtual keyboard on a large multi-touch display as in the TED video. I am skeptical of typing without tactile feedback. Having to look at your hands while you type is a serious drain on speed. Jeff Haan suggested that a future touchscreen keyboard could intelligently follow your hands and guess at what you were typing. I've seen some pretty hilarious results from phone software designed to guess your intent. (You know who you are.)

Seeing fancy navigation and object manipulation demos, people forget how much of our use of computers for every day work involves typing. So great as it is, I really don't see the multi-touch screen replacing all separate typing devices. Not until we have mindreading computers or other advanced input devices.

Things have worked out well with my new work projects and I am getting a lot out of interacting with new customers, a new development team, and new sales and support people. I am also gaining a lot of insights into the SaaS side of the software business (that I hope to share with readers). I wish I could say things had gone as well with my contemplated blog migration.

Dealing with this has given me a new appreciation for my current hosting service, Squarespace. So I wish to thank them publicly here for creating and maintaining a useful and flexible platform for bloggers. Thanks, guys.

What's Wrong With WordPress?

WordPress had one layout I really liked but it didn't support their library of widgetsI began my search some months ago when the economy was looking bleak and I was looking for ways to cut monthly expenses. Squarespace charges a monthly fee to host User>Driven and I'd seen many other bloggers successfully use services such as TypePad and WordPress that appear to be free. I quickly discovered, however, that only WordPress had a permanently free option that had the basic features I thought I would need, including a way to import existing content from other hosting services such as Squarespace.

So I signed up, picked a layout template, imported my content and started poking around at the new interface. It looked pretty slick at first, but as I worked at trying to get the new site to do what I wanted, I gradually become disappointed. Firstly, the import process worked fine for written content (including comments, which was nice), but it failed completely with images. I had to painstakingly repost every image I'd included in every post on User>Driven since day one. (There are 95 posts on User>Driven, not including this one, and about a fifth of them have images. Most of those have several.) This took a few days of effort and I was never 100% satisfied with the look of the images in my new layout.

On that topic, I was pretty enthusiastic about the new layout I'd chosen on WordPress for a while. Check out out here while it's still up. It's clean and minimalist and I like the way it shows a quick preview of the content of the two most recent posts at the top but then uses the majority of the space below to provide organized links to content and search capabilities.

I was disappointed, however, to discover I couldn't change anything about the layout (the font is a bit small, for example) without upgrading to a paid account. I also discovered to my frustration that I had chosen one of the few WordPress layouts which do not support widgets. That would mean no links to other blogs, no del.icio.us or other tagging capabilities, etc.

I looked at the other layouts but I couldn't find one I liked as well. Worse, I was hampered in trying to find another by the fact that there wasn't an effective filter for showing which of their many templates support widgets and which don't. (There is such a filter but it shows only a small subset of the layouts it should.)

Without widgets I would also not be able to host downloads of the LookOut search plug-in for Outlook that drives a lot of search traffic to User>Driven. I also wouldn't be able to take advantage of the growing library of user-contributed widgets to WordPress' open platform. This was a strong motivator for choosing WordPress over the more proprietary Squarespace service. Losing that option to something as silly as a layout choice was the last straw for me.

Staying With Squarespace

I have reduced my Squarespace plan somewhat, limiting the maximum number of subscribers and dropping a few other features I hadn't gotten around to trying. So I am saving a bit, but in the end I decided that the flexibility and features of Squarespace were worth the money I pay each month. I'm staying.

I've made a few small tweaks to the site. I bumped the font size up a bit to 13 pixels from 12 for the white body text. I wanted to make it a little larger yet but it quickly began looking blocky. I cleaned up some links to other sites and some minor layout issues as well. I hope it is incrementally more usable.

I also changed the tagline appearing after the title from "Innovation from the outside in" to "About good products and their development" to be a little more transparent. I think this also reflects the broader product management and development themes I've been writing about than the narrower focus on usability techniques I started with back in 2006.

So thanks again to Squarespace. And to those still reading User>Driven, thanks for your patience. Stay tuned for more.

I've used it at work, at home and on vacation and it's worked well for me in all contexts, so much so that I have dropped four other gadgets I was carrying in favor of the iPhone: my Blackberry, my iPod, my mini cassette recorder and my digital camera. It's great walking around with just one slim do-it-all device in my pocket all the time. And despite a few limitations, I'm never going back. Let me give you some specifics.

At Work

Taking advantage of the iPhone's new Exchange integration, I was quickly as productive with the new device as on my Blackberry, checking email, contacts and calendars, accepting appointments, etc. I was worried about whether I could type as well with the virtual keyboard, but I was never very good with my thumbs anyway and I've gotten faster with one finger on the iPhone with practice. I am probably at par for speed and accuracy at this point compared to where I was after a year plus on the BBY.

Email is actually better on the iPhone in several ways. Just the fact that it will display html email properly and that I can follow links quickly and smoothly to the web with Safari and my speedy 3G or wifi connection means that I can deal with all of my email on the device and not just some of it, as with the Blackberry. The quick swiping motion you do to delete emails is a pleasure as well. I never used to delete email from my Blackberry because it was just too many clicks. Emptying my inbox is very satisfying, and the iPhone makes that doable.

I do wish I could file work emails in my personal folders from the iPhone (the way the iPhone lets me do with Gmail). That would really let me empty out the inbox. I store my Outlook personal folders on my laptop, though, so they aren't accessible from mobile devices. One thing I have done is to run all of my Outlook delete filters on the server so that stuff doesn't reach the iPhone either.

Calendaring is a bit weaker than email. I can browse and accept meetings, and I can set up new appointments, but inexplicably, I can't invite anyone else to a meeting from the iPhone. This hasn't been an issue for me to date as I am usually at my computer when scheduling, but I do hope Apple will correct this feature deficit soon. 

Also, while contacts, calendars and email synch automatically with Exchange, tasks and notes do not. The iPhone doesn't have an included task manager but there are a number of inexpensive ones available, even one that synchs with a counterpart app on your Mac (not Windows). I am using WhatTasks on my iPhone and finding it very useful for personal tasks. It wouldn't be up to the load of my work tasks, I don't think, so I am still using Outlook tasks on my laptop as well.

At Home

I carry the iPhone in my pocket at home and it has proven handy there as well. It's a better than average phone, usability-wise. Visual voice mail is a revelation after years of pressing buttons to listen through saved messages one at a time. Having a quick picklist of favorite people to dial is also easier than remembering speed dial numbers. And I like the way the phone recognizes when I have pulled it away from my ear and presents me with options to end call, turn on the speaker or whatever. That's just very deft.

I'm a big user of Google Reader and I find I actually prefer the iPhone interface to the regular web interface. It's cleaner and simpler and allows me to mark 15 articles as read at a time once I've skimmed them. And, of course, I can use it anywhere. I'm getting more reading done this way than on my laptop.

The first iPhone app I downloaded and still my favorite, though, is Remote. This allows me to control iTunes on my iMac or my AppleTV from the iPhone using an interface that looks and acts just like the iPod interface. And I don't even have to be in the same room with the device I'm controlling. It's about as slick as I could imagine it.

At Play

I took my shiny new iPhone on vacation for two weeks to the beach, theme parks, and a car show and here it really shone. The camera isn't as good as my Casio Exilim Z850, but for vacation snapshots it's more than adequate and you can't beat the convenience. The really fun part, though, was posting my photos to MobileMe directly from the iPhone. Every time we sat down for lunch or a drink I whipped out the phone and posted a batch of photos with captions. This was entertaining for my relatives following along with our trip online and made for a lot less work when I got home.

The maps application proved extremely useful on the road as well. When it was time for dinner I would do a search for restaurants and Google would produce a list based on our current location. I could check out an eatery's website and then get directions instantly. The directions were the usual Google Maps turn-by-turn directions, similar to what I've used on my Blackberry before. The coolest part, though, was watching our location dot move in real time as we drove along (or sometimes off) the recommended route in real time.

Listening to music via the iPod features is pretty much like any other iPod but with the most up to date, graphically rich interface. This was a big step up for me from my 3rd generation iPod. I haven't made much use of the video capabilities yet but the screen is bigger and brighter than my PSP screen, something I was quite impressed with a couple of years back.

There are quite a few games available for the iPhone. I haven't found any of them really compelling, though, the way I did PSP games when more were being made. Some of the Tetris and Gems clones make very good use of the touch interface but I've never found that type of game entrancing. There are marble and driving games that make use of the tilt capabilies of the iPhone but that feels much less precise than traditional gaming buttons.

One app you have to see to believe is Shazam. This little gem will analyze any music that's playing in the world around you and identify the title and artist. After several tries with the radio I've yet to stump it. Once it identifies the music in question, it offers you the ability to buy and download the song from the iTunes music store then and there.

There are free apps that will let you look up people in your LinkedIn network, manage your Netflix queue, record audio memos, IM with your friends, check the weather forecast (I do this now rather than checking weather.com), search wikipedia, convert measurements, translate text - the list goes on and on. Soon I predict you'll be able to do anything you can do on the web via your iPhone. That might not seem all that remarkable until you realize that, unlike your computer, the iPhone can be always in your pocket and (almost) always connected. I can't over-emphasize the convenience factor in making access to all of this workable.

Issues

The software is still young, so there are some inevitable issues. Some webpages consistently cause Safari to quit. So I can't check the train schedule on the device - at least not until they update the browser. Some apps are buggy, too. The worst thing that seems to happen, though, is that they quit and send you back to the home screen. And I've noticed most of the apps I run are being updated quickly, so I am hopeful these issues will get ironed out in short order. (Every time you visit the iTunes appstore you get notified of available updates and you can download and install them for free.) 

Battery life was a real issue for me at first. Running 3G all the time and using the new gadget a lot, I was needing to charge twice a day. I learned a few tricks, though, that have made it workable for me. First, I use wifi where I can. I have a wireless network at home and at work (and even occasionally on the train). Wifi uses much less battery than 3G. Second, I don't use 3G when I don't need to. If I am away from wifi for a long period I will shut off 3G to save battery life until I need it for doing a lot of web browsing or whatnot. Edge speeds are fine for email and such. Third, I got a spare cable so I can leave one attached to my Mac for synching with iTunes and still have a charging cable in my bag for when I need it. Fourth, I got a car charger/FM tuner so I am charging when listening to music or using maps in the car. Since making these adaptations I haven't had a battery life issue. I just charge over night while I'm synching.

AT&T's network has occasionally been an issue for me. They've been running bilboard ads showing four bars everywhere and I find them funny because they are often posted in areas where I get one bar or even sometimes no service. The worst for me was visiting the Jersey Shore. From Cape May to Lakewood, I just never got a good signal. I could sometimes get email but couldn't post a single picture in the 3 days we were there. Verizon's network is simply more complete, at least in the northeast. That said, it hasn't been a regular issue since I returned from vacation. I'm sure many people look forward to the day, though, when they can use their iPhone on the network that works best in their area.

I've heard stories about issues with MobileMe but haven't experienced them myself. I did have an issue where after synching the iPhone for the first time, I was no longer able to authorize or synch songs bought with one of the 3 accounts attached to my iTunes. Apparenty this was a common problem for people with multiple iTunes accounts but Apple support was very responsive, apologetic and helpful in fixing the issue.

Conclusion

So in the end is the iPhone that much better than a Blackberry? Yes, it really is. Exchange integration is not yet perfect, but the speed, the display, and a real web-browser combined with the overall smoothness and ease of the interface make me look forward to using it instead of feeling forced to use it when my computer isn't an option. And while the Blackberry was never much more than an Exchange client for me, the iPhone has also replaced my iPod, my camera and my voice recorder. And it's made all of those functions into a seamless, more enjoyable hole. Way to go, Steve. 

Now if the Photos app would just stop quitting every time I try to post a new snapshot to MobileMe a little too quickly...

The venture is called RoomEnergy and the chief product is a card reader that controls the flow of electricity to all of the systems in the room (lights, TV, HVAC). I've seen these kinds of things in operation in Europe. When you arrive in the room, you put your key card in the reader and all of the systems work as expected. When you leave, you take your key card with you and everything is powered off. This makes it easy and painless to be environmentally responsible without ever worrying about leaving the lights on or adjusting the thermostat. And it incidentally provides a convenient spot by the door to place your key card so you won't lose it.

Hotels benefit immediately as well as they save on electric bills. The brilliance of this particular solution (apparently imported through a company called enocean) is that the card reader is both wireless and self-powered. This means that the installation takes about 5 minutes and there are no batteries to run down. The reader can literally be placed anywhere and requires no wiring and no holes in the wall. It actually uses the energy generated by inserting and removing the key card to power the signal to the switch to turn the power on and off. That is way cool. and it should make it a no-brainer for hotels. Want to start saving money and being green with almost no investment? Sounds good to me.

Troy Davis, who wrote in about his startup, was concerned, though, about the reaction of hotel guests. He realizes that the thing that could kill this idea dead would be if hotels thought guests disliked it or found it confusing or difficult to use. He said he'd been socializing the idea with friends and many of them thought (in his words), "they don't worry about conservation on vacation or business trips and at $120+ per night they should be able to have the AC on minus 20 if they want to." I confess the first time I ran into one of these devices in a hotel in Portugal I was confused as to why the lights and TV didn't work. The card reader wasn't labeled, though, and once it was explained I thought it was a great idea. And my guess is that the savings to hotels will be compelling enough that the devices need only be inoffensive to guests rather than a perceived benefit.

So now that I've biased you with my thoughts, my questions to readers of User>Driven are these:

1. What would your reaction be to a (properly labeled) device like this in your hotel room?
2. Would it make any difference if your stay was business or pleasure?
3. Can you think of ways of making the device more convenient, intuitive and/or palatable?

Post your thoughts as comments below and let's help this idea along.

He also attributes the faster horse story I related a while back to Henry Ford. Google seems to agree with him on the source of that meme.

Thanks, John.

We asked why and and she said "The gap between [her brand] and its potential is far greater than the gap between [her brand] and it's competitors." I thought that so well encapsulated my feelings about dealing with the competition that I would share it here.

Competitive analysis is a standard product management task and necessary sometimes. Sales people and prospects ask for feature comparisons. And when your product is closely comparable to another or when you are the discount brand, checklists can be useful for positioning. In my experience, though, much greater market success comes form staking out your own territory.

Think about it this way: would you rather have a conversation with a prospect about whether your feature list is longer than the competition's or about the benefits the prospect will derive from your product? Which of those conversations would allow you to charge more? If you're concentrating on market needs rather than competitive checklists, you have a chance at that second, more profitable conversation.

Similarly, would you rather spend your development efforts on duplicating the competition's every feature so you can say "yes" when asked if you have it, or would you rather concentrate on building the features that will solve your customers' problems? I'd much rather be thought of as great than as just better than someone else.

Building value that responds to market need puts you in partnership with your customers. They come to you to solve their problems. Getting into a checklist war with your competitors just invites your customer to look at you and the competition in the same way - to hold you both arm's length.

So don't be better than the competition. Be great.