Easily distracted by applications

Has this ever happened to you recently?

Source: https://plus.google.com/102786751626732213960/posts/C3xgisZGWRL

California makes good on its mobile privacy warning

California sued Delta Airline for not displaying privacy policy on its mobile app.  Delta had 30 days to act, and  according to California Attorney General Kamala Harris they failed to act within the deadline.

When the first warning was issued against Delta, United, and Opentable mobile apps back in end of October, I looked at their iPhone apps.  Back then, none of them had the privacy notice pointer from the App Store.

When I checked the Delta app (Fly Delta) today, they fixed the privacy link on their app listing page.  No more broken link.  It was pointing to its online privacy policy page.

So I decided to download Fly Delta app and found out what triggered the lawsuit.

Users are not buyers

I work in enterprise software business.  So I know a thing or two about peculiarity of enterprise software industry.  

One thing that distorts the enterprise software market is the fact that buyers are not the users.  Because those who sign the check are not the users (although it's changing somewhat due to BYOD and Consumerization of IT, it still remains as more common way of software procurement), there are all kinds of distortion in the market.  In enterprise software world, there are many instances where customers pay for licenses not because they like the product, but because it's a product that they know and fear.

Software product does not win by its merit alone.  It wins because of disciplined sales team and great team work in addition to a good product.  But it keeps the users because buyers are often reluctant to migrate out of the current system, or even worse vendors don't make it easy to migrate to other solutions.

But consumer space is a lot different.  Everyone makes their own choice.  When we don't like the choice, we don't hesitate to look for other alternatives or hack our own solution to solve the problem.  Each user is the buyer.

It should be funny, then, to notice the similarities between social networking sites and enterprise software products.

Job market is changing

In case you have not heard, the job market is changing.  And it's changing in a way that further separates those with relevant experiences and drive from those without.

Job market where students go to college, get a diploma, interview and find a decent paying job is the one that we have known.  Many still get entry jobs this way after competitive interviewing process just to get a career started.  Sometimes graduates are not as lucky to find even opening, and have to resort to applying for any job that pays the bill.

But on the other side of fence, I see a new breed of workers.  They are highly entrepreneurial.  They start their own project, find a work that they find meaning, and pursue them for their passion.  They are highly connected, thanks to social media sites.  Because of that they also tend to be highly mobile and sought after by multiple employers.

When I take a look at Hacker News site, I see many people of this new breed.  Then I wonder why there are so many of these new breed that I can see.

I can think of a few reasons:

Nielsen: Social Media Report 2012

Nielsen has recently made their Social Media Report 2012 public.  It has some interesting trends and shows how social media is taking deeper roots among the American people.

Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/2012/

Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/2012/

Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/social/2012/

Kenneth Reitz: APIs for human

Kenneth Reitz is the author of open source project called Requests: HTTP for Humans in Python.  He has been advocating about writing minimalistic README-driven API built for human.

His main thesis is that all software projects, even if internal, should be treated as open source projects with rich documentation and clear separation from the outside layers.  In order to make every module separate, each implementation should start with clear definition of what problem it is solving.  It also forces programmers to think about how it should interface with customers, including developers in case of API.  Interfaces should be minimal, lack of clutters hiding unnecessary details.  Often these details are the results of closely modeling the implementation layers instead of focusing on usability of interface.

Product Management: Hiring

One of the most important things that you must do as a leader is to hire the right person.  When expanding the team, you need someone who can be trusted and be another life jacket instead of a boat anchor.  It's especially true when you are hiring a product manager.  Product management role is where marketing, designing, engineering, shipping, selling and supporting all come together.  If you have a misfire in product management, chance of product success rapidly falls to nil.

Source: http://pinterest.com/pin/47850814760946680/

I wanted to share three links that I found interesting on this topic.