Health Visualizer

Explore the major health issues in the U.S. with a visualization by GE. It works quite well, except that I don’t find the “compare this with that” interface very intuitive.

Lines for iPhones

And people were in line today, waiting for their turn to buy the new iPhone 3GS. This is the third generation of the phone, it’s been around for a long time. I’m impressed.

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I am convinced that the social experience is driving this more than anything else. What a powerful brand. Apple must be ‘the’ most powerful brand in the world, I don’t care what the specialists say. No, it’s not Google or Coca-Cola.

Performance Reviews: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I’ve never been a fan of performance reviews, or at least the performance review process used by the large majority of organizations in the world. It seems so outdated in this day and age to be measuring employee performance the way we do it. But even Google, the bellwether of innovation and one of the best places to work according to numerous surveys, still relies on traditional performance reviews methodologies to make HR decisions.

I recently came across a great post by Hillel over at Jackson Fish Market where he explains what’s wrong with performance reviews in his opinion. A lot of it resonated with me.

Here’s just a short passage, to wet your appetite:

Essentially, the performance review process incentivizes managers to always have only a small handful of super stars and a steady stable of bottom of the rung performers who can take the shitty reviews. There’s no incentive for having a balanced team of good performers. As a manager it’ll just screw you at review time.

At Slife Labs, we don’t have performance reviews. We are too small for that anyways. But if we decide to measure employee performance one day, I am pretty sure we will try lots of different approaches before we fall back to what’s commonly done today.

And by the way, if you like Hillel’s post, I recommend that you subscribe to their blog. I had a chance to work with him briefly at Microsoft and he’s got a lot of interesting things to say from software, design, entrepreneurship and lots more. And watch his new company too. I think they are onto something powerful there.

Microsoft and the Europeans

A while back Opera brought a complaint to the attention of antitrust regulators in Europe. The case had to do with Internet Explorer and how bundling IE with Windows gives Microsoft an unfair advantage in the browser market. That’s fairly old news.

This week, Microsoft made an offer to sell Windows in Europe without their own browser. That’s right, a version of Windows without any trace of Internet Explorer.

You’d think regulators would be satisfied with this offer, but no. According to this New York Times story, the European commission dismissed the offer, saying that “… the move would not further its goal of promoting browsers that compete with Internet Explorer”.

Not only that but “… the commission has indicated it may want Microsoft to distribute Windows with competing Web browsers preinstalled and then allow retailers and computer makers to decide from a “ballot screen” menu which browsers to install.”

I’ve criticized Microsoft in the past numerous times but this time I have to side with Redmond. In my opinion, the commission is stretching its power too much. Enough is enough.

I’ve disagreed with European antitrust regulators before. A while back, there was a draft law in favor of Apple opening up iTunes. I am all for openness. But we can’t forget that Apple built a wonderful end-to-end consumer platform and experience and it should be rewarded in the marketplace for doing so.

The $4 Business Card

How to design a business card that stands out in the crowd.

(via Fabio Seixas txt)

Google’s Next Wave

Seems like everyone is talking about the new Google Wave product, demonstrated at today’s Google I/O event. Of course, it will be much easier to have something to say about it when we can all use it, but it looks very promising.

Not too long ago, all we had was email. Then IM came blog. And then blogs, wikis, Twitter and now Wave. All of these different communication tools bring something new to the table. What’s truly astonishing is how quickly communication technologies have morphed and evolved over the last decade.

One communication angle that I’ve exploring at Slife Labs that I haven’t seen too much out there yet is what I call activity awareness - communicating and staying in touch through the broadcasting of activities. I think there’s room for this form of communications in our arsenal of communication tools, but that’s a topic for another post.

Disney Institute

Have you ever heard of the Disney Institute? Me neither. But I just ran into an ad for it and its logo caught my eye. It’s a great logo and captures the Disney spirit quite well:

Now you might be wondering what the Disney Institute does! Here’s their answer:

Disney Institute is a recognized leader in experiential training, leadership development, benchmarking and cultural change for business professionals across the globe.

You can read more on their site, but they seem to offer classes around Disney’s management approach and its values. Interesting.

Facebook IPO: You Can Run But You Can’t Hide

Facebook takes a $200 million investment from a Russian investment group and sets up a conference call. One of the first questions is:

How does this affect Facebook’s approach with regard to an IPO?

And Zuckerberg answers:

We want to take money that will help us realize the long term vision of the company. For lots of startups the IPO is the end goal. That’s not the case for us, it’s a milestone along the way. It’s not something we see happening on the immediate horizon.

Why is it that Facebook keeps downplaying its IPO? It’s going to happen, there’s no hiding it. Employees want it. Investors need it. It’s almost like they are saying, “that IPO thing, oh that’s just for companies that want to cash out. It’s beneath us. We are different, we are here for the long haul”.

Come on. Maybe in the go-go days of the Internet, circa 2000, one could argue that the IPO was just a money making event. Not today. In fact, claiming that “for lots of startups the IPO is the end goal” is just plain inaccurate.

Google did the exact same thing years ago when it was a private company. It downplayed the IPO as much as possible, saying that it wasn’t the company’s focus, etc and we know what happened. And Google is probably a much better company because of its IPO.

Virgin Trains

Virgin is an amazing company. They change the game plan in every industry they enter. I didn’t know they were in the train business, but that seems to be the case now.

They are promoting Virgin Trains with a line of ads that embody everything Virgin. They are fun and out of the box.

The ad industry is struggling to reinvent itself in large part due to sloppiness. Pushing brands and ads down people’s throats is a losing proposition. If all ads were like Virgin’s I wouldn’t mind watching them.

(via SwissMiss)

Obama The Brand

From the 37Signals security page - “the world’s most respected brands trust our web-based products to run their businesses”.

Interesting. Just goes to show how effective and pervasive the Obama movement is. The brand has staying power. And the logo looks good right next to Adidas, Trek and Kellogg’s.