Impressionable Musings.

A vicarious journey through the current lens. Also run: Designing Infinity/a> - My tech/ biz / innovation blog Renn Passion - A visual display of Porsche love

[tomemrich]

Forrester finds 21% of US adults use a wearable device

Forrester has published the results of its latest wearable survey and has found that 21% of online US adults use a wearable. Of those that use wearables the majority come from Gen Z and Gen Y with the majority Fitbit users.

Keep reading

[erikford]

Keep tabs on penetration numbers and growth for Gen X-Z. Interestingly Y and Z are neck and neck. 

[erikford]

Testing After Training

Training is wasted if it is not done right. It's just as much a reflection and measurement of us as well.

How can we expect anyone to be good if we are poor at training ourselves?

[erikford]

Think about your #brand. Does it connect with this? How do you storify it? (at Downtown San Francisco)

[michael-wa-deactivated20250901]

[erikford]

Marin Sofware's Co-Founder & CTO Joe Chang and I talking startups, strategy & search! (at 111 Minna Gallery)

[erikford]

The Road Ahead for Millennial Media: Three Must-Address Opportunities

Tied to this article on adexchanger regarding JiWire, I believe Millennial Media will continue to be aggressive in the acquisition field. Thus far they've acquired two programmatic players, MetaResolver and most recently JumpTap in the last 6 months. If JiWire isn't on the table then companies like PlaceIQ will be. Should be very interesting to see how this plays out! Millennial really needs to bolster three more areas of their business before they can aggressively address Google and Apple globally: 

Global expansion and international market share

Cross device inventory AND user penetration (attribution driven)

Meta-data to drive hyper relevance and weave together better opportunities and recommendations (Geo data, wishlists/intents, integration with apps [think people's reviews on yelp, facebook, 4square and Ness], partnerships with retargeting networks, support for testing and optimization platforms to coordinate optimization plays in real time)

What do you think? Anything I am missing that would be opportunistic?

Full article here: http://www.adexchanger.com/mobile/jiwire-better-geo-data-to-drive-next-wave-of-mobile-ads/

[erikford]

Founders, Founding Teams and Founding CEO Roles

Lessons Learned

Founder, Founding team, Founding CEO all have word "founder" in them but have different roles

Founder has the initial idea. May or may not be on the founding team or have a leadership role

Founding team – complementary skills – builds the company

Founding CEO – reality distortion field and comfort in chaos – leads the company

  Full article by Steve Blank here: http://steveblank.com/2013/07/29/building-great-founding-teams/

[erikford]

The Golden Gate Bridge at the North Tower on Flickr.

[erikford]

Life looks better in contrast- #mpsis (at Media Post Search Insider Summit)

[erikford]

What thoughts engulf your mind?

[erikford]

Designing the Ultimate Product: Use Data to Your Advantage

After reading this article by DKR on Svbtle, an astounding point was made. Well a few actually. 

Don't be intimidated by your data

Data has a multitude of uses. However, far often than not, it is relegated to 'data experts' in order to mine, structure and evaluate for reporting purposes. To me that's a great oversight in the true potential of it's usage. When the business side of a business has requests, they are asking within the limited scope and understanding of what the data can provide. 

Know Where You are Going with Your Data

Or rather, what you are looking to accomplish. Approaching both top down and bottom up views of the data you are working with will significantly bolster yield of information. Depending on your position, involvement and tasks, you may already start with one of these approaches very naturally. If you are an analyst, don't be afraid to jump out of your comfort zone, take a step or two back and think of big picture. On the flip side, I also see executives, business leaders and managers be averse to becoming more familiar with the tools or data itself. Put this fear aside and collaborate. The opportunities are endless.

Use Data to Design Product and Deliver Extraordinary Value

Data has the potential to change the way that you look at your product and even your business. For well established businesses, great leadership is quickly recognizing the important use cases of how data can transform a business. At a high level, these are numbers that guide the ship. Financial direction, operational efficiencies throughout each department and a slew of other ‘business metrics’ have become ever-present in executive meetings. Yet I challenge to bring on more. The proliferation of tracking, incredible economics of storing data and the widespread availability of tools will only be further advantageous to those that utilize them. Data can yield insights on how a product is used. How a business is efficiently or non-efficiently servicing customers and a slew of many other historically experience based functions. In digging deeper, taking risks and learning more, we have the keys to unlock incredible gems that will transform not only product but business overall.

The Bottom Line

Use data to your advantage in designing and pioneering intuitive product experiences that yield extraordinary value-

[futuramb]

Ford, GM Open Their Dashboards to Outside Developers | Autopia | Wired.com

LAS VEGAS — Automakers, hoping to get ahead of the technology curve for once, are opening their dashboards and APIs to outside developers in a bid to ramp up the number of apps you can use behind the wheel.

Ford and General Motors rolled into CES saying they want to make it easier than ever for developers to create apps that will make their infotainment systems more entertaining, more engaging and more useful.

The moves are desperately needed, because developers have been slow to code for cars.

I still don’t understand why any one would like to write apps for the car when we everybody have the iPhone, iPad or Android based devices in our pocket. If Apple and Google et al are working on good eye glass interface you don’t even have to fiddle with the device in your lap…

[erikford]

For a number of instances now I've said that the next decade (2010-2020) will no longer be about the internet, computing and communication devices, but rather how technology will start to ubiquitously meld with our day to day lives through hardware (and other currently non-electronic devices). 

[erikford]

Very Scary: Government Inquiries for Google Data Double in Last 3 Years

Google has increasingly been pressed to hand over user data and remove content by governments and courts from around the world, according to its latest transparency report.

There was a total of 20,938 user data inquiries from governments in the first half of 2012, and those requests were for information regarding 34,614 accounts.

"Government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the transparency report," said Google in a blog post announcing the new statistics.

The governmental contact with the search engine doesn't stop there.

[emergentfutures]

CHART OF THE DAY: As Brands Get More Facebook Fans, They Reach A Smaller Percentage Of Their Base

PageLever, a Facebook analytics company, which gave Mashable some data that shows that the bigger fanbase your Facebook page has, the lower reach any individual post has. Brands with small fanbases of fewer than 10,000 people can get nearly 20 percent of them to see any individual post. But brands like Coca-Cola and Walmart, who have more than 1 million fans, can only get about 6 percent of them to see any given post — unless they pay.

Full Story: Business Insider

[visualoop]

Via

[erikford]

Great view of 500 3rd Street for #wired #engineyard #strava and more (Taken with Instagram at BoostCTR)

[erikford]

Solo #Ducati from earlier (Taken with Instagram at Yerba Buena Gardens)