I've heard people make references to Geoffrey A. Moore's Crossing the CHASM book for several years now but had't read it until this past week.

Moore's book is a must-read for any IT company trying to launch a new product.  Although the concepts in the book are not novel (so admit's Moore) the book brings a vocabulary and metaphoric dictionary to the readers allowing marketing groups, investors, and techies alike to communicate about the playing field in a proactive manner.

Moore discusses the importance of delivering continuous innovation, instead if discontinuous innovation.  Our new innovations need to help people do what they are already doing better, and not force them to abruptly change something that kinda works for something that they are not sure about that may possibly work better.

Moore introduces the Technology Adoption LifeCycle, complete with five categories of market segments.  He discusses how to market in succession to each group:

1. Innovators


2. Early Adopters


3. Early Majority


4. Late Majority


5. Laggards

Finally, Moore introduces some business concepts you may have heard of by now, like the bowling alley, the tornado, and the fault line.

If you haven't heard of these, then you need to get reading!

Mi Berry
www.RedRockResearch.com

NewsCHIME.com, the 'News from everywhere, every 10 minutes' website has officially passed the 100+ repeat visitor mark!  This site was launched in May of '08 with no advertising at all, and now enjoys more than 100 repeat visitors, and over 1000 unique visits per month.

I classify a 'repeat visitor' as somebody who has come back four or more times.   The number four is kind of arbitrary, but I think somebody who comes back only once or twice is not really a captive audience participant.  They are more link a potential customer peering into the store window.

NewsCHIME.com was created to bring headline news to people who, like me, love to read the news.   We love it so much, in fact, that that's all we want to see on the site--news headlines and nothing else.

Have a BlackBerry and a few spare minutes between (or during) your meetings?  Go to NewsCHIME.com and check out what's happing across the world!

Need to do research for education, work, or personal interest?  You can search for headlines topics from the past 18 months or so on the search page.

This works great if you are expected to know about something newsworthy in a short amount of time.

For example, a search for 'Obama' or 'McCain' and a quick headline perusal will give you a one-sentence summary of everything noteworthy these candidates have done for the past 18 months.  10 minutes on NewsCHIME and you be more infomed about the upcoming presidential election than more than 300 million other people.

Need research project material on the mortgage meltdown, type 'mortgage' and you'll see the unfortunate play-by-play.

Be sure to take note of what you will NOT see at NewsCHIME.com.  You will not see lots of useless links to various websites that have nothing to do with your topic.  You will not see pictures of dancing people,  and you will not see ads from GM, Chevy or eHarmony.

I almost forgot to mention, NewsCHIME has free news alerts!  That's right, Free!  Sign up and select which search criteria you want, and as those terms are named in news events you'll be the first one to know about them.

So, impress your friends, impress your boss, impress you teacher.  The faster you can get at information, the more beneficial your decisions will become.  Enjoy.

Mike J.
www.RedRockResearch.com

The value of information...

Here's a fun site if you are a news junkie.  www.NewsChime.com is a simple site that grabs news headlines from major news sites and lists them in an easy-to-peruse text-only format.

I've got the site on my PDA which makes reading news articles perfect for that boring meeting or that inconvenient 10-minute wait you hadn't planned on.

An interesting feature on www.NewsChime.com is the ability to search for keywords in past news headlines.  Want to know what has been newsworthy about Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama?  Housing Crisis?  Gas Prices?  You can easily search for past headline keywords with this feature.

www.NewsChime.com also allows you to get news alerts sent to your phone or email.  I have news alerts sent to my phone about mortgage prices, home-loans, home-lending, and foreclosure because we talk a lot about this at work.  It's been fun to be the first one at the office to know the latest.

www.NewsChime.com is a free service.  Enjoy.

Mike J. Berry www.RedRockResearch.com

Do you have one of those executives that harasses you with status updates to projects, yet never attends the status update meetings?

Perhaps they call you, email you, stop in to your office, and want to know what the latest on project X is?

Is the behavior effecient?  What suggestions do you have about how to convey project status communication within your organization?

Mike J. Berry  www.RedRockResearch.com

SQL Server 2005 is fantastic.  SQL Server 2000 was wonderful.  SQL Server 7 was OK.  I hear SQL Server 2008 will be even better...

...but wait a minute??  Really, SQL Server 2000 does everything I need.  So does Oracle versions 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10!  So does PostgreSQL, so does MySQL.  So what gives? Don't get me wrong.  I've grown up in the Microsoft garden.  I still have a VB for DOS development kit, and I have used VB 3, 4, 5, 6, and .NET 2003 and 2005.  These are superb and superior products.  The madness is accumulating with a new release every 2 years.  Microsoft is now forced to offer a downgrade from Vista to XP option because folks are getting fed up.

One client of mine is busy upgrading their flagship product from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005.  Why?  Not because of any new features.  Not because of a better price.  Not because of really any reason at all, except for the fact their customers are asking for it by name. Because SQL Server (and Oracle) are highly visible in the public's radar, many trade journals speak volumes of marketing info about the new bells and whistles they contain.  As developers, however, we all know that perhaps the management UI is better, and 64-bit it great, but basically the engine worked fine and met all of our needs several versions earlier. So my client is spending $500,000 and seven or eight months upgrading their core product--and all of the internal support tools that must work with it--to SQL 2005.  Again why?  To 'add value to the customer experience'...meaning that the salesperson can say "yes, it works with SQL 2005."

You see, in the real world, often non-technical or semi-technical people make the final purchasing decisions for enterprise software.   They grasp for 'clues' of what should separate an inferior product from a superior product, and--well--version 2005 should be better than 2000, right?  Therefore, a product based on 2005 is better than a product based on 2000!  Right?  In reality, somebody must pay for the $500,000 so that same customer is misleading themselves into requesting a higher price-point.

A better model would be to choose a database that is solid, but not in the customer's radar.  This way, they would have no 'journal information' about the database and would not be pressuring you to spend $500,000 every other year to keep up with Microsoft. PostgreSQL, MySQL, Interbase, etc. are all robust databases with 64-bit support now.  If your software is for an internal client (your own company), this whole dynamic shouldn't affect you, but if you make a commercial client-server product, there's no doubt you've experienced this already.

Mike J Berry www.RedRockResearch.com