CoolNerd

Earlier this year my wife and I decided we would organize a monthly budget into a Google spreadsheet so we could both collaborate and make sure we stayed within our means. This worked for about 3 months because of the pain it was to manually review our monthly transactions and plug them all into the budget spreadsheet. I first saw Mint.com back when it launched as a beta site, but chose not to sign up on the service because I wanted to wait until it was out of beta. Well about 3 weeks ago I signed up on Mint.com an “intelligent online money management” (Mint’s About section). 

There are so many very cool things about Mint.com, but the biggest thing for me is that I no longer have to spend 2 to 3 hours a month manually figuring out our budget. Signing up was extremely simple and having the site auto categorize my expenditures was amazing! This site is definitely in my top five cool sites!

With the advent of this summer I have several hikes and a high adventure backpacking trip to look forward to. My first objective has been to get in shape and My Fitness Partner and a great workout program from Outside.com my co-worker Glen (check out his site: glenerd.com) recommended have set me off in the right direction. My next objective is planning the hikes and the backpacking trip.

While browsing the Internet to find trail maps etc, I came across Backpacker.com and a free map tool called Trimble Adventure Planner. This software program is not super robust but provides some great tools for planning the hike.

Also Backpacker.com has it set up so you can download hike details from the website an import it into the Adventure Planner. So even if you don’t own your GPS unit you can benefit from the hiking and backpacking community on Backpacker.com to get some great details about the adventures you want to go on.

So for all you adventure hungry techies out here are some great tools to making your summer gnarly!

The MadeBig Game Arena just recently launched barely a month ago within the MadeBig social network and it has been gaining a lot of traction with it’s current users and new users. The unique thing with the MadeBig Game Arena is that is ties into the MadeBig virtual economy so that users who play the games win MB Coins. With MB Coins users are able to go the the MarketExchange - and there is some really cool stuff that is available on the MarketExchange (of course there are some pretty lame and goofy things too just like and classified like site that is out there).

With all the craze about casual games and social gaming that is going throughout the web, MadeBig has a unique situation where the users not only get a great selection of games and social interaction, but they can enjoy participating in a simply and fun virtual economy.

One big piece of news from today is the deal between Plaxo and Comcast - yep - another big merger. The purchase price is between $150 and $170 million. All in all I think this is a great move for Plaxo, even though they originally wanted $250 million. Plaxo has been making some great advances on there site over the past year, including Pulse - their version of the Facebook News Feeds and User Feeds. Even though Plaxo may not be as trendy and popular as Facebook, I do think with proper guidance and marketing it can be a great tool for a more business savvy audience and possibly an older generation.

For all you fitness buffs out there - here is a site that will help you all the way to cutting the flab, ripping the abs, and getting that much desired beach bod you have been aspiring for. This is one site that I wanted to use for a few months before posting a blog about simply to see if it is something that I would stick with. I have been tracking my fitness logs off and on over the past 4 years - both on paper and other online sites. By far My Fitness Partner is the easiest and most rewarding fitness tracking and fitness support site that I have used. Check out the screencast and see what I mean.

This is one of the coolest applications I have used in the past while - Jott, a very simple, user-friendly voice to text website. Using Jott I can call the Jott number and it will ask me “Who do you want to Jott” - I say the name of one of my contacts and the system responds: “Got it” - and then I can the message I want…after which it sends either a text message or email to the person I wanted to Jott. Awesome! You are able to create groups of contacts and in one quick Jott message it will send all those people the message. You can also import your contacts from Plaxo - which of course can have all your Gmail, Hotmail, etc contacts imported there.

Another cool thing too is to set up a Google calendar to integrate with Jott. I Jott my Google calendar, and it converts whatever I say into a calendar event. Truly this is a cool app!

Recently I came across one of the sweetest online tools for screen capture and screen video casting - it’s called Jing. This amazing little utility, built by TechSmith, makes it easy to capture the screen image, but the video screen recording is what I really keyed in on as a product manager. Often as a product manager we need to explain to our developers a random bug that occurs on the software or website, but when they go on to replicate it they don’t get the error so the developer will shrug and say “sorry, try to figure out how to replicate it and then let us know” - argh! Now with Jing and its connection with screencast.com, I can easily capture video and audio of anything that is on my screen. So I capture the bug or screen that I want and send a link to the developer and they are able to see what happens and from there they are generally able to fix the problem. Granted there are commercial, more robust screen video capturing software such as Camtasia, but this way my whole team (product managers, content writers, even customer service support) are able to capture the video and provide a link to easily show the dev team what is happening.

The whole video capture with Jing is awesome, but then the other day I started to play with the image capture piece in conjunction with Flickr - wow! I love using this feature! Now I can capture an image, edit the name, and share it on Flickr. Now with Flickr I am able to use the Flickr editing and notation features (Picknik) to indicate aspects of the image. I am using this for both bug issues as well as for doing research on the site.

The other day I was stumbling around and I came across this site with some great quotes about Product Development. One of my favorites from this list is from Seth Godin: “People don’t steal ideas. Ideas are cheap. Implementation makes the difference.”

One thing that is crucial for Product Managers is the ability for using communication when leading the product development. Often there are times when I try to be too diplomatic about a situation, and sometimes that is necessary depending on the circumstances and project. The most successful product managers use a the art “influencing, negotiating, relationship building and other similar similar skills” to make sure the product proves to be successful.

One thing I definitely need to focus more heavily on this year is to focus on the details more. Not sure exactly how to do it, but I am going to find out.

As a product manager I have been seeing more and more variance between this role and what a project manager is supposed to operate as. I’ll admit that until recently I saw very little difference between the project manager and a product manager. Was I ever wrong! I started to poke around the with this question and a slough of great resources was opened up to about this differentiation. Since my world evolves around web technology primarily I needed to find some specifics on web product management. With a few Google searches I found a great blog Rob Grady. He explains on a very simple level the importance of taking a web product beyond a short term project to a point where management continues through the entire “product lifecycle.”

From what I gather, the primary difference between product and project management is that project management is focused on getting the project launched on time and within budget and oft times with no regard to what features are removed to get it launched. However, for the product manager, the customers or users of the product take priority number one and they concern themselves with even the smallest of details. Product managers realize that the cumulation of many small issues can make or break the site and cause users to stop using the product.

With the coming of the new year I will be taking a “cool nerd” approach to Product Management and will be providing periodic updates on what I discover through research and application.

Okay I know this is the band wagon, and this is all yesterdays news, but I couldn’t help blogging about Google’s Open Social.  I know it’s been awhile since I have posted anything new, but I have been swamped with launching a new platform.  ZDnet’s Robin Harris hits on an interesting thought about why Microsoft won the  deal with Facebook - that is was a “bluff”on the part of Google to get Microsoft to throw a bunch of money at Facebook.  I agree that 240 million is a small amount for either Microsoft or Google, and I think Harris is right that Google didn’t really want the deal because they had the plans for Open Social ready to reveal the following week to steal the thunder away from the Microsoft/Facebook deal - and they way I see it - it worked.  There are a lot of big companies, including Myspace that is going to support the Open Social movement.

A friend of mine and I were talking about all these big happenings and it’s like a big tug of war.  The good thing about this tug of war is that the social web is going to greatly benefit by the results.  Working in the social networking industry it continues to amaze me how fast the web and development of social applications are moving.  Making it more open and enhancing broad scale collaboration will only speed that process up even more.