Sell

Microsoft enters the classifieds business. Nice to see them create a brand new online service — it’s been a while. Link

Win

Peter Rip presents a compelling idea for how Microsoft can beat Yahoo and Google at their own game. Link

Skunks

The need for skunkworks to drive disruptive innovations. Link

Ethnography

… a new trend in market research. Link

Desktop Citizenship

An interesting meme here that considers how some software is pushy, rude, and obnoxious; while other programs are courteous. The former group erode the user experience, while the latter enhance it. Just as scalability, security, and flexibility are important attributes (or “ilities”) that are considered during the design of software, perhaps we need to start setting goal for how “courteous” our software is to the rest of the desktop environment.

Erosion

How a poorly designed feature is eroding Yahoo’s brand. Link and Link

Think of the number of users this is driving away from Yahoo, and the cost to acquire each user v. how much (or little) it would cost to fix this product issue. I’m pretty sure the former greatly outweighs the latter

Run

Found this map (pdf) of what would happen to San Francisco in case of a tsunami, from SF’s Office of Emergency Services.

Net-net: if you are at Ocean Beach and you see the water receding extremely far — the sign of an oncoming tsunami — you need to run four or five blocks, to 46th or 45th Streets, in order to be safe. And if you are at the San Francisco Zoo or Lake Merced and somehow learn of the oncoming tsunami, get out.

Lots of other good material on disaster readiness at http://72hours.org/.

Hope you never have to use this.

Great presentation tool

If you do a lot of PowerPoint presentations, buy this Kensington wireless remote. It’s well worth the investment.

Realpolitik

Great article whose title says it all: Product Management is Inherently Political.

Mashonomics

The economics of mashups, explained here by VC Peter Rip.

Gush

I’m playing with “Performancing” an oddly-named but very slick blog editor that appears inline within Firefox. I’m not a fan of installing Firefox extensions — I’m concerned about making my browser slower and less stable by installing too many of them — but Performancing’s functionality is good enough to make my short list. In fact, this is one of those features that browsers should have had a long time ago. Check it out: http://performancing.com/firefox