Prior to the iPhone, I would always notice small shots I would like to take — but found I did not have a camera with me. Or, the opposite would happen and I would bring my camera and find nothing interesting to shoot. Now, unless I know I am going to want a large zoom, I leave my my Canon S3-IS at home. My iPhone: I have it with me all the time. It is accessible.

Prior to the iPhone, I had a backlog of photos on the cameras that need to go to my laptop, and then a backlog of photos on my laptop that need to go to flickr. Now, uploading photos to flickr is almost instantaneous with iPhone applications like Klick.

All of this is to make a point about product features. Even with the un-impressive specs of the iPhone camera, I am happy to be able to walk out the door and not wonder, “should I bring a camera?”. I’m happy to finally be sharing photos I take with friends and family.

Actionable point:
- Find something in your product that you think is a underperforming feature and resist the urge to crank up the performance.  Instead, think of the related positives that offer something your competitors don’t.

Just like a good blog, “Blog Blazers” is full of timely information written in a very readable format. The question and answer format is surprisingly effective and Stephane Grenier presents the expertise in a very practical, actionable, motivational, and entertaining format.

Whether you read “Blog Blazers” from front-to-back or jump around to your favorite bloggers, each page offers actionable advice that you can use to immediately improve your efforts. If you do not have an active blog, the discussions on the benefits of blogging and the supportive advice of successful bloggers will make you want to kick start your efforts straight away. Its actionable (”5 best tips for blogging”) and motivational content makes the book a valuable read.

I was impressed with the quality of bloggers interviewed. The focus of the book is how to be _successful_ at blogging and the success of its subjects is impressive. Bloggers that I have read for years such as Eric Sink and Seth Godin are interviewed. It’s like having a direct line to the top bloggers.

The variety of bloggers is also a pleasant surprise. Being in the technology business, it is easy to forget the limitless range of subjects upon with successful blogs are based. “Blog Blazers” interviews include business and software blogs, but also include interviews with bloggers of topics such as weight loss, fashion, parenting, and finance.

Though the author and the bloggers interviewed in “Blog Blazers” present their advice better than I can summarize it here, I will list a few of my favorite take-aways. First, “get started”. Obvious advice, yet a reminder that is evidently required because many of the interviewees mentioned it. Secondly; like any writing, blogging requires writing skills. Do not worry about SEO, ads, or monetization until you have the writing down and honed. (Blog Blazers has plenty of advice on how to write better as well). Third, be consistent and persistent. Successful blogging is not (usually) a result of overnight success.

Rails Rumble is a “48 hour design/develop/deploy competition”. The 2008 Rails Rumble is the weekend of October 18th and 19th (GMT) and the Rails Rumble blog is now online. The organizers explain the rumble this way.

For those of you who weren’t involved last year, the Rumble is a 48 hour design/develop/deploy competition. Basically, you get one weekend to exploit the awesome power of Ruby on Rails to create and launch the best web-based application that you can. Then, the general public gets to vote for the best by rating them in a number of different categories—design/aesthetics, completeness, uniqueness, and overall usefulness. The winners get some pretty great prizes, thanks to our sponsors (who will be announced shortly).

Oh yeah, it’s also a lot of fun . . . Really! Think of the event as a miniature startup incubator, and use it as an excuse to deliver a v1 of that idea you’ve been sitting on for 6 months. Or, if you’re new to Rails, use it as an excuse to test drive a new technology and see just how far you can get with it in a very constrained timeframe.

Find out more at their blog and stay tuned to Rails Rumble on Twitter.

“Issue 1. Companies Depend on Customers and Investors for Resources”.

Most companies listen to their biggest customers and develop their products along the lines of what those customers say they want. These companies find themselves unable to respond to disruptive technologies or to think of a future beyond the customers’ current self-expressed needs. Companies spend resources trying to please their current customers and loose sight of potential new markets and changes in what capabilities the market values and what capabilities are really leveraged vs. simply stated desires.

To break this dependency on customers and investors for company direction, Christensen recommends managers form small, autonomous, breakaway teams that are not constrained by what their mainstream customers want. Fortunately for small software companies, most of the time their organizational structure will directly support the small, autonomous team model.

“2. Small Markets Don’t Solve the Growth Needs of Large Companies”.

This principle is closely related to the first. Large companies will only take on projects and seek customers that provide large returns on their investments. This limits the potential target customer base for large companies. This practice is even further limiting to large companies because their investments are usually large.
Small software companies have an opportunity to build products and customers in markets in which large software companies will not participate.

“3. Markets that Don’t Exist Can Not be Analyzed”.

Besides competing in markets that larger companies will not enter, small software companies also have the opportunity to discover completely new markets that larger companies would never see. Small software companies can be much more effective at discovering new markets and taking advantage of their fast growth rate. This advantage is a result of the cost and time required in large companies to discover new markets and to move into new markets. Large companies have processes and tools used to analyze markets. They do not have as good of processes and tools to discover completely new markets. Even if a new market is discovered, large companies usually have too heavy an organizational structure to move quickly to enter that market.
Small software companies, answering only to themselves and usually making decisions among a group of three or less people, can decide to enter a market quickly and can execute on that entry quickly.

“4. An Organization’s Capabilities Define its Disabilities”.

A new, small, nimble software company is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this principle. These companies have an opportunity to create new capabilities. New, small software companies should ensure that their processes and values serve their target or goal and do not unnecessarily constrain them from leveraging existing capabilities. In other words, assess the target market. Then assess what capabilities are required in that market. Then, be aware that in deciding what capabilities to build you are also deciding which ones not to build. Small companies are at once determining their capabilities and disabilities.

”5. Technology Supply May Not Equal Market Demand.”

In the examples cited by Christensen, technology capabilities exceed what the market really wants. This leaves open a market demand for less capable technologies that is not met. Small software companies have a great opportunity here for two reasons. One – small software companies likely have the resources to create the less capable technology where they may not have the resources to create technology that exceeds demand. Two – small companies will not have the investment in time and capital sunk into the technology supply that a large company would have. New, small software companies can fill the need for simpler, less capable (and therefore more accessible and easy to implement) technologies.

Mor.ph is a scalable cloud-computing deployment “Platform as a Service (PaaS) ” with features like backups, distributed processing, and 99.9% reliability built-in. FiveRuns “provides simple and affordable products for monitoring Rails applications and their supporting infrastructure.”

I have used both companies’ products and services and am excited to see they will be offered in one package. Right now, Mor.ph offers FiveRuns TuneUp integrated into its platform including the free developer version. Which is great because TuneUp is designed to identify performance issues during development, prior to production. TuneUp gives Rails developers insight into performance hogs in their apps. Visualize exactly which pieces of code are taking too much time so that Rails developers can efficiently focus their performance improvement efforts.

In the future, another FiveRuns product, Manage, will be available as a value-added, paid, feature. More info at the Mor.ph blog.

The cloud computing route gets more and more attractive all the time, and with partnerships such as these, the benefits of letting expert third parties build and manage the environment gets more and more attractive as well.

Started using NetBeans for development this week. So far, so good. Things I have found useful:

• Inline, real-time syntax error checking (no more missing ‘end’ statements or misspelled keywords at test or runtime – catch them while typing and in the ‘flow’ instead).
• Code completion, including model attributes (was that attribute name “mac_enabled” or “mac_capable”?)
• Instant, context-aware, Rails and Ruby docs and inline method parameter hints.
• All of the Textmate key bindings and shortcuts included.

Some of these features are available in Textmate and the jury is still out on whether to switch. If so, a more detailed write up will follow.

ScreenFlow

All of our screen recordings are done with ScreenFlow. It’s an excellent, easy, powerful way to create video recordings from the Mac desktop and iSight camera. Everything you need to record and edit is included. Recommended.

Viddler

Viddler makes it very easy to host and embed videos in any webpage and blog. Viddler videos are high quality and have very smooth playback. Our first Viddler video is toward the bottom of this product blog entry.

List Export

PlaybookIQ users can search by any contact field, by tag, and by combination of tags. The search results can then be exported as a csv file. This is a powerful way to create lists for email or postcard mailing providers such as Vertical Response.

Live Search

Live search was expanded to include first name, last name and company name. It was also made faster by some database index tweaking based on log analysis.

Flexible CSV Import

PlaybookIQ users can now specify field mappings during csv import.

As always, full details are at the product blog, http://aboutplaybookiq.com.

List Export

PlaybookIQ users can search by any contact field, by tag, and by combination of tags. The search results can then be exported as a csv file. This is a powerful way to create lists for email or postcard mailing providers such as Vertical Response.

Live Search

Live search was expanded to include first name, last name and company name. It was also made faster by some database index tweaking based on log analysis.

Flexible CSV Import

PlaybookIQ users can now specify field mappings during csv import.

As always, full details are at the product blog, http://aboutplaybookiq.com.