Brian Feener

Gordon Haff, blogger for CNet, is skeptical about Netbooks.

I think that Gordon is spot on about this being a niche industry.  One reason that we’re seeing so many of these Netbooks pop up (Wiki’s list) in the past couple years is that they are so dang easy and cheap to produce.

Users of the device will accept a 1GB RAM, 20 GB HD, 1.2 GHz processor in a Netbook where in a full Notebook they would never accept something so slow/weak.

There is a niche market in kitchens, on coffee tables, and in classrooms for these light, very portable, utilitarian devices.

How can Netbooks solidify a place in the market?  I think the secret is to focus on a traveling and focused audience: high school and college students.

• Encourage publishers to make their textbooks downloadable.  Or usable with a CD.  Something digitial.  I know if I had the option in college to carry around my unabridged works of Shakespeare (yes, 2 semesters of a 2k page book) or a Netbook, I know what I’m choosing.
• Luck into more wi-fi hotspots in classrooms.  (Not 100% controllable by the tech industry, but subsidies would help.)
• Develop light, user-friendly software for operating home entertainment.  (Can a computer control your Tv or DVR?  Of course!)
• Educate people on Linux.  With more Netbooks running a Linux OS, the more comfortable your audience is with the system, the better for the producers.
• Optimize for presentations.  If you have a Netbook that’s GREAT for presenting lectures, you have an opportunity.
• Leverage cloud computing.  (Its Bill Gates’s one wish, and why can’t you make it happen?  It can lighten the load on your RAM and make things more accessible with the users’ main laptop/desktop.)
• Make it easy to transfer files to and from the main computer to and from the Netbook.  Wireless?  Wired?  If this is going to be an extension of the user’s main system (kinda like an escape pod from the mothership), then it ’s got to be a seemless transfer back and forth.
• Battery life.  It’s supposed to be 100% portable right?  Make it that way.  48 hr battery?  Maybe?
• Keep the price down.  Parents have enough to worry about, schools are always looking to keep budget down.

For the comments, what do you think the Netbooks should have to achieve relevancy in the market?

[photo courtesy: Ruckman.net]

Who’s testing your product?

Blackberry is sending out Bold’s to users.  Real users.  People who are trying to sync their phones to their Macs, their Windows XP machines, and maybe even an Ubuntu machine.  They’re using them in real world environments.

I’m sure if there’s a problem, someone at the home office is going to hear about it.

What happens when you’re not beta testing properly?  You get super-fans and power-users going on 2700 word diatribes about how awful your product is.  [For those not in the know, the author of this blog post is Just Blaze who's put in his work.  Warning: Video below is for super-nerds.]

How can you tell if you’re beta testing properly?

1) What controls are you using?  Are they the same controls you’re going to be using at launch?

2) What is the profile of your beta tester?  Is it exactly like the profile of your user?

3) What will you do if something big is found out to be wrong.  Like, not just big, but BIGG.  Two G’s.  Are you going to be able to fix it?  If not, you’re not beta testing.  You’re a little bit further into your release than you thought.  (Delta launch?)

4) If there aren’t any known bugs in your beta release, it’s not a beta release.

5) If you’re working with software, are the improvements to the full release going to be substantial enough that you can fight back (the right way) against piracy?

For the comments, what makes your beta releases worth the effort you put into them?  How do you get your feedback?

Social media (or social networking) can provide the same benefits and present the same risks as any other marketing initiative. In the same way that a telemarketer or television commercial can present a message and provide a call to action, social media is simply another arena to communicate an idea. Whether that idea is specific to a campaign, promotes the organization’s core values, or whose purpose is organizational awareness, the central idea is the key component to any social media venture.

Social media is unique from many other forms of marketing because it allows for unfiltered, self-perpetuating customer responses to the messaging. Those customers often are tied to the success and failure of the products, whether it is by emotional, financial, professional, or other means. Many times, the responses are written with candor, humor, or additional insight, engaging other readers and responses.

Give-and-take between the content provider and the content consumer, whether monitored, filtered, or otherwise, is what drives social media. Otherwise, it is simply another web-page.

There are two keys to always remember about the messaging.

1. Consistent and relevant messaging are the vital to realizing return on investment. Erratic posting schedules, off-topic banter, inconsistent messaging, and other ills will almost surely guarantee that the programming with not be successful. Furthermore, adhering to consistent and relevant messaging will not guarantee returns.
2. Social media will not fix a weak marketing message. Social media is not a “purple pill.” Giving a campaign the aspects of social media will not guarantee returns.

What can you do with a facebook group?  How can you turn it into something tangible?

We’re going to find out…

(For anyone who is trying to get to this site through the main Brian Feener.com link - you can’t read this anyways. But my lucky Wordpress people can! We’ll talk to them… help is apparently on the way.)

Yesterday, I had registered a hosting plan to go with my domain name at GoDaddy. Stupid me - I ended up setting up a second account, so things weren’t getting linked together. So I called up customer service, and in less than 10 minutes, I had the issue resolved. Great!

Cut to 24 hours later when I’m trying to load my files into the site. It didn’t work and after 12 hours of waiting for things to load up, I decided to call customer service again.

I won’t bore you with the details, but the representative Destry and I went through about 10 possible solutions before he said “I have no idea what’s happening here.” I then mentioned that I had merged the account less than 24 hours ago. “Oh!” he said. “Then let’s check the IP address!” Sure enough, things weren’t pointing in the right direction. In less than 5 minutes, the problem is (apparently) solved.

Destry and I wasted 40 minutes of talk time because GoDaddy had not taken the steps to log my activity. A simple log would have shown that I had called up yesterday and made a change to my account. A simple log would have shown that I had talked to Sergio yesterday. A simple log would have made my day easier, Destry’s day easier, and GoDaddy’s pockets full of the $4.00 it took to handle my call.

$4.00 not a big deal, except that it is about a full month of my hosting plan, and times 1,000 customers, it becomes a big deal.

This proves that the more you work on the back-end of a problem, the more you think a step ahead of your customer, the more you anticipate possible scenarios, the better you are prepared to be remarkable. It’s harder this way, but it’s worth it. Business is chess, not checkers.

What??  You’re not watching PBS all day?

Charlie Rose and Chris Anderson sat down and talked pretty much about everything going on with the web.  Pretty fascinating type-stuff.  (22 mins long but the audio is as good as the video… it’s a black backdrop for pete’s sake.)

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8119949202706402691]

What would an infinitely large table serve the needs of?

What would an infinite amount of tables serve the needs of?