Joe Martin Report

Joe Martin kicked my ass this year. Unlike previous years, the field was Pro , 1. There was less pack-fill than normal -- fewer companions for me. Erik and I made the trip down there late, late Thursday night. So late in fact that the guy at the motel in Bentonville didn't charge us for Thursday (as it was so far into Friday). During Friday's road race I was able to hang till we hit Gaylor climb, at which point I was detached from the pack. I rode the climb with Matt Hansley, who rode Superweek as a Cat 3 when I was a 3. By the time we got to the finish, we had amassed six or seven riders and only lost about sixteen minutes. Saturday's road race didn't go so well. I was detached from the first time up the feed zone climb. I rode the three 23 mile laps with a Colavita development rider and finished just under thirty-two minutes down. Ugh. The good news is that the Men's 1,2 field started 5 minutes behind, but never caught me. In fact, they finished about 5 minutes behind me. I went into the time trial with a positive attitude, but no expectations of doing well. I didn't do well, with a time over two minutes more than the winner's time. I took heart in the people near me on the results, but really, that just means that they did poorly as well. Erik and I stopped in Springdale for some authentic Mexican food for dinner. Yum. Sunday is the crit. It's one of those really hard crits. I predicted lasting three laps, but in actuality lasted about four and a half. It was short and sweet. All-in-all the weekend was good training and team bonding. I'm glad I went. The pictures are courtesy of Action Images.

SXSW: Spotify - Keynote

@Spotify SXSW playlist

http://www.spotify.com/

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/848

#tuesdaykeynote

SXSW: Is Canvas the End of Flash?

https://bespin.mozillalabs.com/

http://code.google.com/p/flot/

progressive enhancement from tables to pie charts.

Haase: The canvas api is good, but there aren't any tools for it.

http://code.google.com/p/explorercanvas/

http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

http://asalant.github.com/snowballs/

http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/

It was interesting to see a few people that I've been listening to on podcasts for a few years. Admittedly it's been a while since I've heard Ben Galbraith's voice, but he looks and acts just as you'd expect. He's an evangelist for sure.

The takeaway is that canvas cool, but lacks the browser support to be a mainstream tool for traditional browser development. I also noticed that the cpu usage on my MBP goes way high when I fire up the canvas demos in FF3.6.

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/561

#canvasendflash

SXSW: Can You Run a 'Serverless' Business?

biggravity, ec2, rackspace, unfuddle, etc.

Know your application. The application characteristics determine if the cloud is right for you.

Ah-ha idea: cloud for government level security.

This panel was interesting and my notes don't really do it justice. I think the really thought provoking ideas were that your infrastructure should be transparent or a tool, not a hindrance. With some of the panelists representing sites that can have 20x traffic spikes, the takeaway quote was, "Don't let your best day become your worst."

This has inspired me to try to go further than I'd planned with our server monitoring and deploy automation. Trouble is that most website failures are a failure of code, not of hardware...

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/439

#runserverlessbiz

SXSW: Prototyping Web Apps - Nobody Loves a Wireframe

The guys at Google prefer prototyping. The ppt was pretty good so hopefully they'll post that soon.

slidefolder.com

hypercard, fireworks

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/637

#prototypingwebapps

SXSW: Augmented Reality - Gimmicky Trend or Market-Ready Technology?

Audience was split 50/50 on whether Yelp's Monacle is a good idea or not.

Good ideas: Lego, USPS, Google SkyMap

Demos: John Mayer's Heartbreak Warfare, DollhouseAR, Zugara's social shopping app

This panel only helped reinforce my opinion that AR is a gimmick in most cases. It can definitely be a great idea when the technology fits and it's executed brilliantly (like Zugara's apps).

That's all I have to say about that.

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/409

#sxswar

SXSW: Beyond the Desktop: Embracing New Interaction Paradigms

Minority Report and Iron Man were used as good example of futuristic interaction paradigms.

Industrial/Mechanical technology 1 input 1 output. Post industrial/digital technology.

This panel got really interesting as questions were asked and conversation developed. The crowd seemed a bit awed with Johnny Lee Chung (of WiiMote hacking fame), but to his credit, he did have some rather insightful slides. David Merrill also had some interesting comments. I'd see him before (at least I think it was him) on TED videos demoing his Siftables.

I don't think Johnny Lee is going to publish his slides, but the thing I found most striking about them was late in the deck, when he talked about the range of interfaces, from an iPod Shuffle, to a in-dash navigation system in a car. Any beyond a desktop computer we begin to use another, smaller device to control. Any device as small as a phone the trend is to use touch, so we can have input and output in the same space. Keyboard and mouse has been so effective for the space in-between a phone and TV that it's unlikely that a new paradigm is going to over take it. Where the challenge becomes more interesting is where you want to have more than one input to your device. Collaborative programming was the example used in the session. Food for thought.

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/421

#bede

SXSW: Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0

Bring when the user is going to receive the item to the fore.

1. Engage through content: reviews. Target vs. Amazon (they're built on the same software). Target shoppers shop at target.com for things they would buy at Target. The users don't think to go back and leave positive reviews.

Reviews are integral to Amazon's success. The 'was this review helpful' question is estimated to be worth 2.7Billion to Amazon in 2009.

Ratio of reviewers to purchasers 1:1300. 20 reviews is the tipping point where reviews gain credence. 2% conversion of viewers to purchasers. You need 1.3Million viewers to get 20 reviews.

2. Don't fear new ideas:

Experimental critical to moving forward.

3. Eliminate Tool Time:

Don't have to authenticate.

Security Levels:

• Level 0. No cookie.
• Level 1. Amazon knows who you are from a cookie. You can
• Level 2. Amazon wants to reveal something only you should know - like address.

Goal Time vs Tool Time:

• Goal time is when the user is improving the outcome of the experience. ex: user is considering the products they wish to purchase.
• Tool time is when the user is moving forward without any improvement in the out come of the user experience

Changing the interface adds tool time. Amazon chooses to phase in interface changes. Took 12 weeks to roll-out updated navigation.

Not all use cases are the same. Salsa: Amazon vs. CD Baby.

Negative operating cycle. Amazon turns inventory in 20 days. BB turns in 74. Standard payment terms are 45. The days between day 22 when they're paid and day 45 when they pay vendors, they have cash float. Amazon can survive on that.

Playmobile security checkpoint, laptop steering wheel here.

Jared Spool did a great job presenting. Not only was the content inherently interesting, but he made it more compelling than it would have been otherwise. You can relive the experience here.

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/647

#Amazon

SXSW: Making Content Relevant To Me

I got to this late cause Dave and I bailed from the interview seminar.

http://hunch.com/

How do the recommendation engines account for aging? They need to forget as the user gets older.

De-anonymizing Social Networks: article

The discussion in this panel was really interesting and therefore few notes. Twitter was popular with this crowd as well and I picked up this very good summary there: http://pattyryan.tumblr.com/post/450169096/making-content-relevant-to-me-sxsw

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/583

#contentrelevanttome

SXSW: Conducting Great Interviews

This was a bust. Too diverse a group in an open conversation and nothing was getting accomplished.

http://www.thingsontop.com/remixing-deep-dive-interviewing-secrets-990.html

http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/447