SaaSalytics – Some SaaS Services Lacking in Tracking

February 4, 2017 By Scott

SaaS (Software as a Service), and its variants, PaaS (Platform as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), DaaS (Data as a Service or Desktop as a Service), and more… are all on a tear right now. In the classic Buy vs. Build argument, we’ve now got more reasons than ever before to hire out for more and more components of our businesses. Unfortunately, these still nascent services may often lack core analytics capabilities or the ability to provide hooks or tags to insert your own collection capabilities.

Quick Review on Why to Build Your Own Code

There remain some key reasons for continuing to build your own technology, even when there’s some great aaS out there for you. Among them… [Read more…]

More Most Annoying Ecommerce Mistakes – Part 1

January 5, 2017 By Scott

We’re Really Still Here?

After so many years in digital commerce, we still see what I think I’ll call “average practices” in surprising places.

I’ll admit I’m not a typical user or digital product manager. Probably from having been in this business for some time, I’m just amazed at some of the things I still see brands doing online. (Or not doing.) William Gibson, the guy who first used the term “cyberspace” in print once said, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” This certainly seems true of Best Practices in ecommerce. [Read more…]

Holiday Marketing Fails 2016

December 25, 2016 By Scott

Digital Marketing 101 Mistakes in 2016

Know Your Customer. Know Your Customer Journey. Understand their Messaging Needs. Do this… Before you send messages!

It’s funny we’re still here in terms of minor league mistakes for major brands. I’m not here today to pick on Macy’s in particular. I like Macy’s. Decent store and brand. They’re a generous corporate citizen with a great Thanksgiving Day parade and they put on great NYC fireworks. My wife and I get stuff there sometimes. I think my mom used to take me there when I was a kid. And then there’s this email my wife got Christmas Day I’ll show you below. So even though I like Macy’s just fine, it’s important to point out errors like this so that maybe digital marketers or more junior digital professionals can learn from the mistakes of others. [Read more…]

Chip Cards – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

September 29, 2016 By Scott

Background

Professionally, I’ve only been involved in the Payments industry peripherally. However, as any industry observer would note this industry has changed drastically over the last decade or so. This stands to reason of course as all things digital have evolved. Once upon a time, a merchant would pass a variety of checks, get themselves a merchant account and could then take credit cards as payment methods. Varying rules applied – and still do – for those at retail, (card present transactions), and those taking payments remotely, (card not present transactions), be they Internet, Mail Order, Phone, or whatever. On the Consumer side, things have always been easier. Unless your credit rating is wholly in the dumper, just about everyone wants to get their plastic in your hands. (Or more recently get you signed up for some form of digital wallet payment using traditional banking systems as a back end. And then there’s the nascent adoption curve of Bitcoin.) [Read more…]

The Return of Face to Face

September 14, 2016 By Scott

My prediction for 2016 going forward: Politicians, Senior Execs and others will increasingly skip the wonderful convenience of electronic communication and start meeting face to face more often.

Why?

Limit Actual Liability
Limit Perceptual Liabilities; e.g. damage to Brand.

[Read more…]

Pokemon Product Manager(s) – Killers?

July 15, 2016 By Scott

Last week I posted about some issue regarding safety and such for autonomous vehicles. My goal was to make some points about the nature of some new technologies and to a degree how they relate to product management and such.

What I really didn’t anticipate is that within a week a new product craze would create a major public safety hazard. [Read more…]

Tesla’s Autopilot Car Crash, Distracted Drivers, and a Demanding Public

July 7, 2016 By Scott

The first known fatal car crash with use of autopilot driving engaged was on May 7th in Florida. This is the first of what will likely be many crashes and injuries involving partially or fully autonomous vehicles. It’s very likely true that over time, autonomous vehicles will make our roadways safer than ever before. This will be from direct benefits such as less accidents, to less obvious cascade effects from less pollution, less traffic jams holding up emergency vehicles, and much, much more that’s already been written about extensively. Motorists will be so happy, they’d be shooting sunbeams out of the exhaust if cars still had exhaust. (We’ll leave aside the reality that for now, most electric vehicles are likely juiced up from electrons being produced at coal fired power plants. So the pollution reduction benefit may have to wait. See Coal Powered Electric Cars and Electric cars and the coal that runs them)

So why is some more destruction on the way?

Well, there’s a whole lot of reasons. [Read more…]

Relationship Cartography – It’s Not Just about the Social Graph Alone

February 17, 2016 By Scott

Let’s talk about Relationship Cartography in general. What is it? Well, I’m not 100% sure yet as I just made it up. The thing is, I’ve been looking at so-called Social Graphs, Commercial Graphs, Economic Graphs and more lately. And I’m struggling to find a unifying theme for these various sub-types of relationship visualizations. Maybe I’ll go into these various types in detail later on in a follow on post Types of Relationship Graphs, but for now I’d like to just blather a bit about graphs in general. You’ve probably heard of them. And maybe done a little research. Still, it’s sometimes useful to take a high level conceptual view of things to understand the parts a little better.

[Read more…]

Tech is Not the New Wall St – At Least, I Hope Not

March 8, 2012 By Scott

This is somewhat a rant on an article about an article… In Tech is the New Wall Street, Joseph Walker seemed to feel like coming up with the pithy headline, “Tech is the New Wall Street.” Quoting from “The End of Wall Street As They Knew It,” there’s an arrogant comment by a current finance exec explaining how right now, you’d go to Silicon Valley instead so maybe you could be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Uh huh. That’s all it takes.

It’s disturbing, though perhaps not surprising just how shallow that article is. While it’s possible a migration of folks who otherwise might have gone to Wall St. into tech will have value, it’s conceivable there’s an attitudinal problem that will need to change on the way to such a transition. That is, one of unbridled selfishness vs. desire to create value. Obviously, a talented manager with financial chops can provide value to just about any company. But tech isn’t just about management; it’s about vision and value. Things the pure quant folks don’t seem to fully realize. While there’s nothing wrong with a healthy amount of personal selfishness, my personal belief is that this kind of motivational imperative isn’t what typically leads to good product craft. In fact, in a lot of cases for B2C products, something decidedly non-finance and not even technical is needed. That being, some empathy that could allow a visionary or product manager to sense a pain point worth solving or an unmet desire.
[Read more…]

Stop SOPA Now!

December 13, 2011 By Scott

Sent to their respective email addresses today:

To:

The Honorable Representative Jim Hines
The Honorable Senator Joe Lieberman
The Honorable Senator Richard Blumenthal

As one of your constituants I urge you to reject the upcoming bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R.3261. While it’s cleverly named in such a way as to suggest anyone against it clearly supports criminality, the provisions of this legislation are more pirate-like than what it proposes to protect.
[Read more…]