Category: Tech

Things about America

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

This is the longest trip back to my homeland in a very long time. Since it is not a business trip I am basically experiencing life again like when I lived here. Which is fun and slightly eye opening since for the last 10+ years I have been centered in Asia.

Around my home area, where I am staying, it feels like nothing has changed much at all. Everyone is older, as I am, and all the same houses are there but with new faces in many of them.

Things that still amaze me are the big box stores that have huge boxes of everything- massive amounts of home electronics, tons of people and the inability to escape the cash register for anything less than 300 USD. I go every trip though to stock up on socks and underwear.

The growth of whole food’s like stores and whole food’s itself is something new. I assume most of it is overpriced nonsense but the selection and quality is pretty amazing. So far this trend hasn’t hit Asia but I can see that it might over time.

What’s strange to me is it still feels like I can buy a pair of shoes made in Asia cheaper in America than in Singapore. Not sure how to grok that one yet.

As we make our way down to Disneyland I am reminded that America is huge and pretty useless without a car. Once you have to live in rural America you must have a car. Must. It’s only the cities that allow non car living. I enjoy the convenience of it but back in Singapore I don’t have or feel like I need one.

Everything is too big. Everywhere you eat the portions are insane and it seems people’s bodies slowly catch up to being able to consume the ultra large portions. People look bigger to me.

Although the market is huge in America I feel like the opportunity to build things and carve into new markets that have better connectivity and a proclivity for mobile devices feels more appealing. It may not be true but it I like building for Asia and the globe more than for America and the globe but it could be that it’s just a feeling more than reality.

That being said I am stunned how bad mobile data is here outside the cities and how crappy rural Internet is. Coming from even Thailand I feel like the Internet is more expensive and slower in rural America than Thailand – apart from the great Thai firewall issues.

My parents live in Alta, CA and they have DSL from ATT that is just crap. I think it is a 5mbps line that barely gets 3 on a good day. There is no other option for them except for some line of sight service that isn’t very reliable.

Might be okay if one could tether their mobile phone but ATT gets like 2 bars there and TMobile won’t work at all. As we drive I5 to Disneyland from Alta I am amazed at how often both our phones have no signal or have edge versus real data. It’s like I am in an emergent market or something – just stunning how America got into this backwater Internet position.

What is absolutely amazing and what gets me thinking about moving back at times though is how beautiful California is and how much I miss the outdoors. The walks, the trees, the oceans, and the mountains are just incredible. Really is no other place like it on earth.

Back to the roadtrip and my shitty gprs connection.

Attitudinal Anomalies

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I was reading this post from Om and was thinking a bit :: http://om.co/2014/11/21/aereo-fab-kaput/

You can skip the whole thing and go to the end of the post to ponder this:

PS: I think both those companies failed the “will I miss them or the service they provide” test!

In the end no matter what happens if people don’t need or yearn for the service then the service probably won’t make it.

For both Fab and Aereo though, the only thing I recall is hearing about the two CEO’s and the negativity around them. The Fab CEO was the I can do no wrong and I will spend huge sums of money to win. In the end it doesn’t look like it worked. He also pushed out a lot of core, early people and continued his very aggressive strategy to win all the way down.

With Aereo I actually feel like it was a neat invention and might have survived but the CEO started out picking a very public fight with the very people who owned the content versus maybe starting out by saying disruption was needed but he would kick revenue back to broadcasters versus make money on them while bad mouthing them. Whether the service was needed or not the company was tainted by the loud mouth of the CEO. Also didn’t work in the end.

Of course there are exceptions to all of this – Uber is good one. Company is killing it even though they have an exec team that appears, but I don’t think they really are, tone deaf to moral issues.

Here is Om again with a perfect post on this dilemma :: http://om.co/2014/11/26/technology-and-the-moral-dimension/

What happens when I dive into all this reading is I think a lot about what I am working on. Does the stuff I do really matter? Will anyone miss it when it goes away? Are my customers delighted? What’s tough for me is sometimes I see people or products succeed even when the people behind them have no moral compass. I know I should not look at it what way but sometimes envy can cloud my own moral compass. I have to remind myself that I should always strive to do the right thing by my product, my co-workers and my customers. 

I do believe Karma wins in the end. 

 

The web is dying

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

There has been a string of posts lately discussing how the web is dying. I just find it weird because folks are acting like the web means using web browsers to view web pages. Seems such a silly notion of what the web is since to me it is just a fabric of connectivity that allows people to use browsers to look at content, it allows people to use apps like Spuul to watch movies or enables small devices to monitor a house from afar. Such a limited vision to say the web is about browsers and web pages.

First article was Farhad, who I like, talking about how the banner ad ruined the web. I get what he is trying to say but I don’t side with it. I think apps are just easier to use for the most part and normally I am holding my phone but I don’t think banner ads force me to use apps. Banners ads have ruined the experience of a lot of web pages but I think people tend to just go to other sites or use the app from the same provider. Not sure a case can be made that banners ads are destroying the web.

As always when tech journalists make such claims other journalists chime in on twitter.

Here is one good thread :: https://storify.com/dreampipe/conversation-with-mathewi-fmanjoo-and-digiphile

Some tweets to refute the advertising claims made about banners :: https://twitter.com/benkunz/status/530189087198572544

This one was funny and Farhad replied :: https://storify.com/dreampipe/conversation-with-benkunz-and-fmanjoo

I realize I don’t look at a lot of sites and the ones I do either don’t abuse banners or they don’t bug me but I know when I do hit a site with a horrid array of banners, popovers, popunders and such – I just bail. I am sure others do but guessing enough don’t to keep everything intact and working.

My premise is the web is not dying and banners exist and work. Like it or not.

Further to this Gruber writes about how apps are part of the web – I tend to agree. The web is much bigger and more successful due to the advent of smartphones and smartphone apps. We could talk a lot about how some experiences might be better as a web page versus an app or how some apps make for terrible apps just like some web pages are horrible too but this is all about user experience. It is not an issue with the web or issues about an app versus the web. Users can vote by using whatever interface they like but regardless it is all the web.

In closing, the web is thriving – no matter how you look at it.

 

Android first

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Marco is obviously a very successful guy but I think this is where he and a lot of people from the states and Europe miss the boat sometimes – they clearly don’t understand the emerging markets and the freedom developers have around Android when it comes to telcos and bizdev. Given this – for some apps going Android first may make a ton of sense.

http://www.marco.org/2014/11/07/business-insider-maintains-usual-level-of-quality

Evolution of the Product Manager

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

I am late to posting this but the article about the full stack developer got me thinking about the subject again.

From time to time I get questions and even have coffee with folks wanting to be a PM and asking how.

This article has some good info about the thesis behind it, the education some folks acquire and the experience that helps in becoming a PM :: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2683579 .

There are so many angles to the role of the PM and of course the startup PM differs highly from the established company PM. Take Spuul for example – we don’t have an eng manager nor do we have a proper PM. We are just too small for this kind of headcount. Other places will have a head of PM to manage other mini PM’s – given this the definition of the PM is quite fluid in my opinion.

That being said, picture in your mind – the PM role in startup land to be a simple Venn diagram – the startup PM is that small spot in the intersection of customers, management and engineers. That is usually where I find myself on most days given the day to day duties I normally encounter.

I am sure there are many other ways to portray this but this is the one that keeps me focused on delighting users, trying to make money and keep a team of product people moving forward.

It’s a delicate but useful dance.

More on the full stack conversations later.

Amazing to see the depth at Google

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

https://www.techinasia.com/googles-lead-apac-product-manager-andrew-mcglinchey-speaks-on-how-the-company-picks-its-battles-in-asia/

Google prints money so it is not surprising they can afford to have resources for a product manager that helps to represent Asia. This is similar to what I was doing at Yahoo but of course we didn’t have this expansive of a charter.

I have to admit that Google is pretty serious about Asia. We are working with them at Spuul on some stuff and they devote ample resources, are very organized and run some strict deadlines.

As I hear about all the dismantling of Yahoo in Asia, I tend to think about what could have been but obviously wasn’t.

Google is not my favorite but I am impressed with how much money and effort they put into Asia.

Will write up another post about an interesting project they are doing with PWC in the region.

The taxi nuttiness in Singapore

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

Adding some of the tweetstorms that roll in:

https://storify.com/dreampipe/conversation-with-bleongcw-and-dreampipe

In reading this article yesterday I was thinking a bit about the whole taxi situation in Singapore. First off in general I have always been impressed with the taxi ecosystem here – apart from the price but that just goes with Singapore. Let’s not get into that but when it comes to the system generally working I mostly don’t have complaints. I tend to use the comfort SMS system and it has been working fine since the moment I got to town. I find it funny that all the “app” people talk up how apps are better and SMS is old skool. Really? If you are carrying an iPhone you probably have your SMS app open all the time. It’s called iMessage. I can simply text one line – book 528686. That is the zip for my condo and in seconds I get a reply saying it is booked and on the way or sometimes you wait to get a all taxis are busy message. Other times it is busy and you wait a while to get a response. I think it would help the system if you got a reply right away to say it is working on it or something. Sure if taxis are all busy which is during rain or peak times or the dreaded shift change then chances are you won’t get a taxi. Usually during those times you never get a taxi though. No matter what system or app you are using.

But back to the SMS system – there is no simpler method. Every app, all of them, takes more steps to book a cab. Many of them want your destination, have a shitty search function and only work when you have a good connection. At the base of my building I have problems with 4g but SMS always works. Also when I plug in an address versus a zip or a taxi station code, the system usually figures it out anyway or replies telling me it is not exact enough but normally I can edit it to make it work. Still faster than an app.

Which leads me to ask why don’t the other taxi apps add this feature? Even if it only works in Singapore it would offer them another leg up on the apps that don’t. Would be awesome if Uber or Grab implemented this so I simply say – book home. Book work. Dead simple. Faster than fussing with an app. Might also force them to implement the zip code stuff which many are not doing well. For those outside of Singapore – every address in Singapore has its own unique zip code which means no matter where you are the zip code is all that is needed but try plugging in the zip code into Uber or Grab and it normally can’t figure it out but yet the Singapore government offers this data so not sure why they can’t solve it.

For all the haters – make an app that works better than Comfort SMS booking if you want to make some waves in the taxi app race.

Moving on from that the other issue is payments. On this subject, as with the SMS, we can discuss this from a regional angle or from a Singapore angle. To be fair the zip code thing is all about Singapore but SMS can work anywhere if implemented right. On the payments subject we know that credit cards are fine in Singapore. The main reason I stick with Uber today is I don’t have to fuss with money. Sounds silly but I don’t know how many times I take a normal taxi in Singapore and when going to pay I get the dreaded look from the uncle. I don’t have change, my machine isn’t working – shit like that. Well uncle – that is your problem. Not mine. The ATM gave me a 50 – what the hell do you want me to do? Whip out my swiss army knife and cut it in half for you? Carry some freaking change. As to the machine not working – why don’t you tell me when I get in the taxi so I can choose to not take it knowing I have no cash on me. Silly shit. Uber wins cause I never have to give a crap about money. I take the ride and I get out. I know some of the other apps offer it but normally when I cannot book a normal taxi I can get an UberX.

Let’s talk about that later though since we are still on payments. So in Singapore the credit card is fine but regionally it will be a problem. Given that, one of these guys needs to work on some payment systems that will work without cards. Maybe some top up card with loyalty points or hooks to telcos. This is where the telcos don’t get a clue at all. I already get billed via the telco – work out something to allow me to use my phone, which I am using to book the taxi, to pay for my taxi. Throw in some loyalty points for it and lock me in. So the taxi app race is going to be somewhat fought on payments and Singapore will look different than say – Thailand.

Back to the UberX comment, the bigger issue I see in Singapore is that the taxi app race in some sense has exasperated the taxi situation a bit in that if utilization is higher but there are not net new taxis coming into the scene than it makes getting a taxi scarcer. I can see how some folks who are not using the apps might feel left out cause they can’t seem to get a taxi when they want one because the taxis are booked via the apps already. I don’t have the stats on this but it feels credible and hence the call for legislation might be needed. This is one reason why Grab and Uber who are brining other cars into the system are helping but to me only the UberX pricing is affordable to be used daily. The rest of the cars are too expensive. I am not sure where this all goes but it feels like we need more capacity while keeping utilization high which benefits the drivers. It is a delicate dance but the apps, and the startups, are key to making this all work. The competition is great but there will be growing pains.

Not sure if everyone noticed but around the time Grab and Uber entered the scene the comfort SMS booking reply started to share the taxi’s phone number. They never did this before. This allowed me to SMS them with location or other info as needed. Funny thing was talking to the taxi drivers who were asking me how I got their phone number – seems Comfort didn’t tell them they were doing this. For sure this is Comfort trying to compete a bit. I would tell them that I could Google them to find their number. 😉

The other issue I notice is that since all these systems are not integrated I think there is some availability inflation at times. Simple example. Many times you will see when you open the Uber or Grab app that it shows you there are a ton of taxis around you. However when you try and get a booking you get nothing – even though Grab will say there are 45 drivers around you and on the Uber app I see 7 yellow cars driving around. What is happening? My guess is that they are already on a ride with their Comfort system, remember all Comfort drivers are obligated to take a certain amount of Comfort bookings per day, but the Comfort system is not connected to the Grab or Uber app which is just running on their phones. So the Uber and Grab app will show taxis but of course those drivers will not take your booking cause they are already on a ride. I have stood on the street and watched the taxis on the map to see their red lights are on. Even looked inside one at a stop light. So the availability the apps are showing is largely inaccurate.

Lastly – let us get to the “rain” issue which we all know in Singapore can happen at any moment. Most people think the taxis are busy cause everyone who might normally walk, ride or motorcycle are suddenly wanting a taxi. However that is not what is happening. The taxis are actually sitting still due to the insurance issues. There is not a lot of information on this subject but I had confirmed with a few drivers before the deposit issue. The nice thing for this situation is services like UberX tend to help get around this since there is no “company” involved.

All that being said. I am no expert but I use taxis a bit and I am a product guy. So I think about this too much but the app guys could do a lot more to lock me in. Right now only payments are the thing locking me in but I still find the SMS booking to be the easiest to use. The apps guys should think about that more when designing their apps. God knows investors are throwing money at this space but so far I don’t see a lot if innovation – just marketing.

carry on…

What is happening with Yahoo?

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

Had a few people pinging me and looks like some serious retrenching in EMEA and Asia.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/03/more-yahoo-restructuring-as-offices-sales-teams-get-cut-across-europe-and-asia/

It makes sense – outside of the USA the biz keeps falling. What is scary though, is in places like Asia, other companies are growing like a weed. Is Yahoo quickly becoming a USA focused company or is this just more centralization around running the biz from the states? But these are sales folks though so not sure how one can grow the number by losing more sales people?

I am sure there is more info to come. What is stunning though is at one point Vietnam was one of the bigger offices in Asia – pricey real estate too. Gone are the days where Yahoo 360 and messenger ruled the roost. I think in places like Vietnam where Yahoo used to be powerful, Yahoo is suddenly looking irrelevant.

I argue the biggest issue in Yahoo Asia is that the team has not brought in new blood similar to what has happened in EMEA and USA.

The numbers are telling – the revenue keeps slipping in Asia and the Alibaba pressure is greater than ever.

Quite the shakeup.

I am sure more news to come.