I’ve been hard at work on it with my former Yobongo colleagues at Mixbook for more than six months; in total secrecy. No longer will I have to coyly dodge questions about what we’ve been up to since Yobongo was acquired. There is still much to be done, but today marks a major milestone.

We believe that there’s a need for a fresh approach to the entire photobook experience. There are many people for whom photobooks are purely an intriguing concept, not a must have. We aim to change that with Mosaic.

Mosaic is about your everyday photos and making something beautiful with them incredibly fast. It’s more than just an app, or a book. It’s an entire experience.

We’ll be sharing more details soon, but in the mean time check out http://heymosaic.com/i/caleb and signup to be alerted when we launch.

I would have bet that search advertising, mobile, display, and online video would be in the measured bucket. I was wrong. These are considered unmeasured. TV, radio, and print are considered measured. This seems backwards. How can this be?

It’s because the segmentation came about before the internet existed and ad tracking services like Nielsen were considered the gold standard of measurement. And because big firms have not agreed on a standard, most digital media is still considered unmeasured.

This matters because according to AdAge Internet spending by the Top 100 advertisers is expected to surpass newspapers for the first time, positioning internet in the number two spot, right behind TV.

As companies like Facebook and Twitter battle to attract these Top 100 advertisers they fight a bias that digital is unmeasured. This is peculiar and must be incredibly frustrating for the sales teams inside these technology companies. They will need to work even harder to define standards and create reports that CMO’s will believe in as much as the reports they get for their TV and print spend.

The shift is inevitable. Attention has already shifted online while ad spend hasn’t kept pace. It’s just going to take a while, since something as basic as what is measurable and what isn’t is seemly completely backwards.

The argument seems to go something like this – Windows was dominant, Android is like Windows, ergo Android will dominate. Just as it took Windows a few years to really get its grove, Android is still in this early period, and just like before, Apple’s early lead will deteriorate. At least this is how the argument goes.

Microsoft was able to build Windows into something that manufacturers wanted to use as a way to sell their hardware. Fast forward two decades and we find Google building Android into something that manufacturers wanted to use as a way to sell their hardware, only this time the computers fit into our pocket and happen to make phone calls. Like Windows, Android works on various screen sizes, CPU speeds, and form factors.

However, the key difference is that Microsoft also got the developers. Developers started building for Windows with key productivity apps and soon games for the platform. They chose to build for Windows first and would later port to Mac. This is a critical difference from today. Developers primarily build for iOS first – Instagram, Flipboard, Rovio, OMGPOP, etc. iOS is where the developers start. Android is where they port. In this way, iOS is more like the Windows of old than Android ever has been.

iOS will continue to dominate as long as developers continue to choose iOS first and everyone else second. People care about what these devices can do for them, and great apps are still what matter.

In an attempt to reduce the hurdle of posting, I may post shorter essays more frequently than I did in the past. The ideas may be more raw, but at least they will be written down and shared. 

Here we go.

The benefits are profound. While there are indeed many things to get done, there are usually only one or two that are critical at any point in time. The opportunity cost of sacrificing attention on the high priority tasks just to feel like you are ‘getting more done’ is economically irrational. Answering a random email or taking a coffee meeting are rarely the most important things.

The secondary benefit is psychological. Completing an important task feels good. It feels good to ship. It feels good to sign the deal. It feels good to hire. Days and days without that mental satisfaction is grating.

Technology companies hack the daily routine of parallel to get to serial, they are appropriately called ‘Hack Days’. They are wildly productive and energizing because they focus all attention of a team on one goal. They allow the team to cut scope to ensure high quality. And the end post is clear — the project will be completed before moving on.

At Yobongo we are working hard to stay serial. Focusing our effort on the key task and blocking out everything else. It is hard. But that is the point. Which opportunities are you willing to sacrifice out of the endless possibility set. If you tried to do everything, you might feel like a superhero, but what you choose not to do is definitional. Thinking deeply about what you direct your attention to is critical.

Today will be my last day with Justin.tv as I am leaving to found a company called Yobongo with my great friend David Kasper.

Over the past year at Justin.tv we have accomplished a great deal — we re-imagined how web broadcasting should work, resulting in a 700% increase in conversion rate, redesigned our front page to increase the number of broadcasters on the site and more clearly position the site as a place to create and share live video, and most recently we’ve launched the best mobile broadcasting applications on Android and iPhone to millions of downloads. Justin.tv is thriving and has amazing products in the pipeline with uber-talented people tackling immensely challenging technical and user experience problems. The decision to leave was not easy, but we believe Yobongo is something special.

I have started many web projects in my life from Toluu, a simple way to share what you read, to Kallow which makes buying electronics comprehensible for regular people, to KickPost which is the fastest technology news aggregator. All of these have informed how I think about product — the critical importance of simplicity and focus of purpose. However, these ideas are small. They either serve a niche, in the case of Toluu, or are inherently not web scale businesses, in the case of Kallow. Yobongo is different.

It is clear to us that there will emerge new ways to communicate as a result of the proliferation of always connected location aware mobile devices. We have not seen anything truly new created yet, imagined from the ground up, that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of these new mobile devices. We believe Yobongo will be a new way to communicate and share with people nearby from your mobile device.

We are incredibly pumped to be building this product and company. Over the coming months we will be sharing more and more of our vision and shipping product. We are already hard at work.

If you are interested in learning more or want to join us in building Yobongo follow us on Twitter @Yobongo.

Here we go!

The most obvious symptom is a bloated and unfocused product. I believe founders are afraid that their core idea isn’t smart enough, isn’t big enough, isn’t useful enough — so they add. It is this fear that leads to the rationalization for adding feature after feature in the hope that the sum will be greater than the parts. Founders are very good at convincing themselves that users will need this feature or that feature without actually knowing as such. Expecting to stumble upon a killer feature is a fools errand, that results in a product riddled with half-baked features collecting dust.

A good product is not a bucket of features, a mere bulleted list of things users can do. A good product is an exercise in exclusion. A good product is defined as much by what it doesn’t do as by what it does. This is especially true at the start. At the onset, people don’t care about you, they don’t know what you do, and they certainly won’t put up with a confused product. This apathy must be acknowledged and combated in a product that does one thing extremely well; otherwise it won’t stick.

When the product is merely a half-baked idea the excitement leads to idea after idea, cool feature after cool feature. It is hard evaluating the relative importance of these ideas in the glow of creation. The urge is to do it all, but the critical step is to realize most features are not absolutely necessary in the beginning, and that adding them can be destructive.

At the start, more features means more apathetic users. Every feature a user encounters adds to what is referred to as ‘cognitive load’. This added cognitive load will retard user adoption because there are more actions for users to comprehend and use than their level of engagement will permit. Users are deciding whether to leave your site, not how to take advantage of all your features.

Fear leads these startup founders to add. They add and add. Each additional feature can be rationalized on its own, but what is often left unconsidered is the true impact of these features on the product as a whole. More features require more code. More features require more design. More features lead to more user confusion. More features lead to less focus.

Startups need to be confident in their core idea. The idea should be sharp and pointy, an idea that lodges itself in people’s brains where no other idea has already taken up residence. The more they add, the more they do, the harder it is to own a unique spot in people’s minds. Features upon features is a downward spiral. Features are not the magic bullet, stop treating them that way.

Special thanks to:
Evan Solomon, Corvida Raven, Jordan Fulghum, Alex Hofsteede, Jacob Woodward, Ben Bloch and David Kasper.

Windows Mobile Apps have always been ugly and navigational nightmares. Microsoft’s native apps sucked and 3rd party apps sucked even more. With the launch of the Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Microsoft has obviously been studying Apple’s tactics as they just unveiled a 69 page document alongside the SDK launch entitled “UI Design and Interaction Guide” (Download). The document is strikingly similar to Apple’s “Human Interface Guidelines” it publishes for the Mac and iPhone OS designers and developers. These documents outline how to design intuitive apps for the platform. They outline the design goals for the platform and user expectations to be aware of, but they also dive into the nitty gritty details for good UI design like the correct margin and padding around buttons and which font colors are to be used in particular situations.

Why does this matter? Because people want polished thoughtful apps. Aside from one hit wonder apps like iFart, the majority of the longstanding top selling iPhone apps are impeccably designed and executed. They follow Apple’s conventions by default and stray only when it will actually enhance the user’s experience. Microsoft is going for the jugular with Windows Phone, trying to create the first true iPhone competitor.

They are dictating screen resolution, GPS, accelerometer, memory, CPU, even the number of physical buttons that can exist on a device. This level of control allows for manicured apps that will run well on every Windows Phone. This is critical. Android has struggled with this. They have not established a strong design language, which has led to a hodgepodge of app quality and interaction metaphors which makes it difficult to just “know” how a new app works. iPhone users generally know how a new app will work and this is good for users, developers, and Apple.

Microsoft signaling to designers that they care enough to author a document outlining the specifics of the platform at launch is big. It means they are serious about world class apps being developed, not just knock offs and shoddy ports. The question is, will designers and developers deliver?

Apple didn’t set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past, the same way they didn’t set out to create a phone the same way every other company had in the past. They set out to fundamentally change the way we interact with our computers.

More on the iPad in a bit, but first some background.

I used to build computers from parts when I was 12. I would obsess over the most stable motherboards, geek out on the latest nVidia graphics cards, and study CPU benchmarks seeking the best price to performance ratio of AMD and Intel chips. All that was fun, it was a hobby, but it eventually became a chore. Reformatting and dealing with incompatibilities became frustrating once I had real work to get done. Always a PC guy, I thought Macs were for dumb people — people who couldn’t figure out computers. I overcame this prejudice when I was heading off to college and decided to buy a Mac notebook, because I didn’t want to have to deal with reformatting my windows PC every 6 months and I didn’t want to be chained to my desk anymore.

After a short time with my Mac I came to appreciate the affordances Macs makes for everyday tasks, it was as if the designers actually thought about the common things people do with their computers and really polished those flows. It was during this time that I stopped worrying about the details of my computer and worried more about what I could accomplish with it: browsing the web, listening to music, doing email, and writing papers.

Fast forward a few years and I get an iPhone. The iPhone changed the way I interact with my digital stuff. Being able to access email, music, restaurant reviews, the internet, Twitter, and the like anywhere and everywhere was surreal. I take it for granted now, but I never worry about being disconnected anymore, and I certainly don’t think about what processor powers my iPhone or when (if ever) it should be reformatted. It is natural, intuitive, and gets out of the way. I can do what I want without thinking about the “computer” that the tiny device actually is.

The iPad is the next step. It takes the ideals of the Mac to their logical end. We have been stuck with a windowing UI environment for more than 30 years. It is time for change. It is time for computing to leave behind the last remaining vestiges of geekdom. Apple has seen that multi-touch interfaces are more natural and intuitive and that with iTunes and the App Store they can deliver media and apps to people quickly and easily.

I will buy an iPad because I want the most essential way to get things done. I want the most polished and optimized experience for the tasks I want to accomplish. Apple will provide many of these, but 3rd party developers will fill the void with remarkable apps too, I have no doubt of that. I expect that all of the tasks I do at home will work even better on the iPad than on my notebook, and they will be more enjoyable to boot. It may take a few iterations of the device and software before I use an iPad at work, but I expect in time that day will come.

The iPad is where Apple wants computing to go. It is focused, elegant, and simple. It’s philosophy is centered around humans, not technology. It challenges us to rethink our assumptions of what it means to use a computer and what it takes to be productive with them. There will be resistance, of that I am sure, I expect many people will feel the way I did years ago towards Macs thinking the iPad is for “dumb people”, people who can’t handle a real computer. The iPad isn’t for dumb people, it is for people who don’t want to think about their computer anymore. And I can’t wait to join that group.

Google has been courting device manufacturers for more than 18 months, extolling the virtues of an advanced smartphone OS that is free, open, and is not iPhone. Part of the appeal to many manufacturers is that they can customize it any way they see fit, however the problem with this approach is these manufacturers have already proven they are terrible at software, ala the need for Google to do it for them in the first place! Device manufacturers suck at software. Not only do these guys make strange customizations, their choice of hardware and drivers lead to very buggy devices. Then, because they customized Android and are bad at software, when Google releases a new version of Android they can take months to get their act together and make sure their device will work with the new build. This is the first chink in the Android armor.

Google also must work with carriers. Notorious for draconian control of their networks and the devices they carry, they have been slow to join team Android. They have seen the crippling effect iPhone had on AT&T’s network and they worry about the immense strain these data hungry customers will place on their network, but they have finally acquiesced. They simply could not keep ceding the market to Apple and AT&T. But carriers being carriers, they too want to leave their mark on everything they sell. They load up Android phones with their own media apps, partner’s apps, and other bullshit that is generally poorly designed and useless. These guys also have a say in controlling the speed at which OS updates will be pushed, since all OS updates are OTA (over the air). T-Mobile has been slow to update G-1 owner’s phones to the latest and greatest versions of Android, much to the dismay of T-Mobile customers. Google needs carriers to support Android, and they have been soft with them, allowing them to do things at their own pace. This is bad for consumers. Chink two.

Google must also convince developers to build apps. Apple has a massive head start, that is for sure, and as a developer it is very hard to spend cycles developing for a platform that is still quite buggy, that is fragmented across devices, and has an install base a fraction the size of the iPhone/iPod Touch does. Some developers are excited by the unfettered access they have to the device, however most of these apps are more science experiment than useful consumer app. Comparing some of the most popular apps that are on both iPhone and Android there is little comparison. The iPhone apps are smoother, more polished, and less buggy. This is what consumers care about, not root access. Google needs to work hard to build better tools for developers, document the OS better and provide stronger examples of how to develop world class Android apps. If you were to ask a developer thinking of building a mobile app which platform they are going to support first, my guess is Android will not be their first pick. Chink three.

All of the previous customers pale in comparison to end users. This is where I believe Google is most confused. When the G-1 came out it was positioned as an alternative to iPhone. An alternative. That sucks. It was not leaps and bounds better, just similar in some areas, better in few, and worse in most. Now I say worse in most with the filter of average internet users as the customer. Not tech geeks, valley peeps, or business users, but average internet consumers. People who buy things on Amazon every once in a while, who watch YouTube when they get links from friends and co-workers, people who have most likely owned an iPod, but not a Mac. I think Google wants these people to buy Android phones, but they have made so many design decisions that preference the hardcore geek over the average user that it is scary. Installing apps is a scary process, with alert screens practically suggesting you don’t install the app, menus within menus, notifications overflowing, and an on-boarding process that is laden with text explanation (a sign of un-intuitive design). Android has gotten a bit better since launch, but it still feels like a mini computer, rather than a sleek intuitive device. I have used the HTC Hero, the Droid and the Nexus One, and none of them really make me want to use them more. Chink four.

I realize this all sounds like terrible news for Google and that I am proclaiming the death of Android. That is not my intention. My concern for Android is that it is confused, it has to serve multiple masters and it won’t be able to serve them all while still creating an OS and end user experience people love. I think many Android users are actively choosing to not buy an iPhone. This is not a position of strength, and most consumers are not really looking for multi-tasking, or root access to their device, or the ability to hack their phone. Apple is dominating because they have created an experience with iPhone that people love and seek out. As Apple expands to other carriers in the US it will be even more clear the massively better product they have for consumers. Google really needs to focus on building out the user experience so that average users can pickup the phone and don’t want to put it down. This will require Google being tougher with device manufacturers and carriers, and more investment in the UI of Android to ensure the experience for consumers is great.  I am waiting for that Android. I hope it comes soon.