Darryl.net

As a product manager, you are often the gateway between expectation and reality. The powers that be who circle above hear great things and expect the world. Your team knows what is and is not possible, and often, what is best for the user. But the two groups do not talk to each other – except through you.

Since you spend most of your time with the team making sure you ship, they might find it a bit strange if you start emailing them every day with the team’s latest status. So don’t. Now, the powers that be circling above might also find it a bit strange, but… once you realize that you are at the top of their mind and that they know exactly where the product is and what you need to be successful, you’ll be spamming them on a regular basis.

Ok, so maybe not every day, but at least once a week. Use some majordomo program or an Outlook group. Just get them the goods, be honest, SHOUT when good things happen… and savor the well-deserved attention.

It’s time to step up the editorial quality of the postings on my site. So far I’ve been posting about launches – and there have been many in the photospace as of late – but it’s time to dig a little more into the meaning of each launch.

A few days ago, Flock finally put up a public beta of the branch of the Firefox code they have been working on for some time now. I’ve heard some outcry that Flock is doing a bad thing by taking our beloved Firefox in a different direction and – God forbid – making a commercial venture out of it. Why not contribute back to the Firefox tree? Why ‘pirate’ the hard work of thousands of dedicated developers to line the pockets of a few?

This is capitalism at work. The market had a hole in it: people have been using the same ho-hum browsing experience for a decade now, and as websites and services have advanced, the browser has done nothing (besides add the Javascript, clean up the memory leaks, accept plug-ins, etc etc – which is a lot) to integrate the experience with the rich functionality of the desktop. In fact, the goal has been to isolate it from the desktop for security reasons.

In comes Flock and says “hey, we can make a better broswer that blurs the lines between desktop and web, and, by George, we’ll get paid by the search engines if people come our way.” So, the ever-present drive for innovation (and IPOs) has given us what is, in my opinion, a great new browser.

I met w/ Bart, one of the founders of Flock, last week and he took me through the experience of sharing Photos with my friends. The ease with which he could upload photos, blog photos, or view new photos from his friends was astonishing. A perfect blend of the desktop and web. I predict many downloads for Flock this summer. If this happens, the people will have voted.

The same debate ensued when Apple made OS X out of the Berkeley Systems port of UNIX. Most people on both sides of the debate probably own a Mac by now – OS X is, after all, the most widely-sold UNIX-based operating system.

With newer digital cameras shooting high-quality video, many users are looking for services and sites that solve the pain that is video manipulation.

A friend of mine who “transforms home video into memories” just launched her website, Time Capsule Films. She can make your graduation, baby, or wedding video into a valuable keepsake, rather than a long, boring video that gathers dust on your shelf.

Some photo sites, like One True Media and Snapfish, have taken on the problem, correctly assuming that consumers won’t venture too far away from what they are already used to when sharing pics from their digital camera. 

Expect online video sharing to become as commonplace as online photo sharing in the coming years.  If you’re not convinced, check out You Tube.

Today, Yahoo! Photos launched a limited beta of the new site. We’ve completely revamped the backend to support meta-data and search, incorporated some javascript wizardry on the front end to make a slick drag-and-drop interface, and will be opening our API to 3rd party developers. Here’s the AP article, and a couple other interesting takes. If you want to join, look for the “Join Beta” link at the top right of the page (note that it is not available on SBC/Yahoo or Verizon/Yahoo):

One commonly requested feature is the ability to download high-resolution photos — your own, or your guest’s. Many photo sites, like Ofoto and Snapfish, charge you for this since the bandwidth is expensive and they want to keep you locked into the service. This is the beauty of branded advertising – we can offer customers what they want… for free. In order to keep people from taking their photos elsewhere, we’re just planning on offering a better product.

Today, AOL partnered with Walgreens to offer print-to-store functionality for AOL Pictures. This is a big deal for AOL for two reasons: 1) Walgreens has many, many stores nationwide that are within a few miles of most of the country’s population, and 2) customers love this feature – many have probably been flocking to competitors who have added this goodness over this past year. Indeed, the Target-Yahoo connection has been great for consumers.

While print-to-store is a boon for consumers, it’s really only a boon for the consumers who shop at those stores already. If you use one online photo service that works with a retail store you never visit, you might actually end up putting photos on many services depending on which way you are driving home that day. The online photo site that offers more choices will acquire and retain more users… sending more people to each retail partner.

Consumer Reports just released their Annual Photo Guide and covered online and retail photofinishing as part of their review. They named Yahoo! Photos as the “best online choice overall,” along with Kodak EasyShare Gallery and the Target Photo Center (which, incidentally, is just a co-branded version of Yahoo! Photos). With the new Yahoo! Photos service launching sometime this summer, we look to further our lead.

Is Google finally launching an online complement to Picasa? TechCrunch reports that some inadvertent links on the Picasa site revealed their intentions to launch on online “Web Albums.” No other reports than I can find just yet on what this service will be. Having an integrated desktop-online photo experience could be very interesting, depending on how the integration works. When I was at Ofoto (sorry… Kodak EasyShare Gallery), the EasyShare Software generated a large proportion of the uploads and sharing activity, even though the integration wasn’t as good as it is now.