G1 : iPhone :: PC : Mac :: ugly : pretty

The NY Times had a lot of articles related to the G-1 yesterday. [link here]. This is my 2cents on the debate: most end-users (unless you hail from geekdom) do not care about a lot of features. The iPod convinced everyone that an MP3 player need not have treble and bass adjustments, cataloging features. The mantra I'm trying to stick to these days in product management is:

"More Features = More Clutter = More Features that you will not use"

The "G1 : iPhone :: PC : Mac" analogy seems to hold well, with one major flaw - that a PC (reduced to an appliance these days) did not have to be cool...but it's imperative to have a mobile device that is, especially in the smart-phone world where people are willing to actually spend for a phone and pay a hefty monthly Internet fee.

Apple, with the iPhone has got everything right and all that it will take to keeping the winnings from this round is another $50 price cut right in time for either this holiday season, or the next summer.

Coming soon in an Apple store near you: iPhone in 3 different metallic colors - green, blue and pink!

P.S: Google founders should stop trying so hard to be cool. They made an entry on the stage on roller-blades. Seriously, unless the roller-blades had GPS tracking balls that accepted directions, who cares!

Back to Yuva Studio

I'm back to the drawing board (so to speak) with YUVA. Here's what I've done so far:

1. Ordered Business Cards from one of my favorite web portals. All the cards have different YUVA drawings...can't wait to get them.

2. Created a brochure to go along with the cards so that I can start approaching elementary school teachers. Download it here.

Lessons learnt (so far):
1. Just because it's a "cool" idea doesn't mean it will work. There's been a lot of talk off late by people saying business models/specs/requirement documents are useless; but I think just the process of writing it at reveals some obvious holes and "gotchas" which can prove to be very valuable in the long run.

2. It's okay to start small and not spend $500 per month on the most expensive web hosting server in the market. No shame in admitting to that right?

Still learning:
1. How to "approach" (err...stalk) blogs and get people talking about your product.
2. To "iPhone" or not to. First we needed a Google widget (or gadget or whatever thingamajig it's called these days), then we had to have a "Facebook" application, and now we absolutely need the "iPhone" app. I wonder if there are companies specializing in "porting" applications to different social media these days. I understand these are marketing materials, but when do you decide you absolutely "need" a feature?

Web 2.0 Name Generator

Wondering what your next big website should be called? Check out http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html. That's how I got the name of this blog too. The sarcasm is not lost on me...though I think that in the world of mashups, it's not such a bad thing to generate names of websites either.

(Reminds me of the brilliant "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" by Roald Dahl)