Wak Oentoenk

Sprint recalls an Ambassador

Summary: Lessons on how to market online, courtesy of the Sprint Ambassador program.The e-mail from Sprint came right to the point:From: service@ambassadormail.sprint.comSubject: Sprint Disconnection NoticeHi,Thank you for your participation in Phase I of the Sprint Ambassador Program. We appreciated receiving your honest and candid feedback about Sprint Power Vision and services, as well as the Samsung A920. We have been able to pass on some very specific information to the marketers, developers,...

Applying market research to product strategy

One of the toughest tasks in the tech industry is using market research to help you make product feature decisions. A lot of people in tech feel you shouldn't do it at all – that customers aren't capable of envisioning what could be built, and if you ask them you'll just distract yourself from your vision.On the other hand, there are a lot of companies that use market research very heavily in their product decision-making, so much so that they're reluctant to make any decisions without tangible...

Who reads Carnival of the Mobilists?

Last week I was guest host of the Carnival of the Mobilists, a weekly collection of interesting mobile-related posts from all over the web. Along with the Carnival, I ran a little survey on its readers. Some of the results surprised me.The poll results below are fun, but not scientific. All they tell us is the opinions of Mobilist readers who like to fill out surveys; we don't know what the rest of the readership thinks. On the other hand, about 25% of the readers filled out the survey, so that's...

Will the smartphone kill the PC?

The quotes coming out of London this week had me wondering: Is Symbian's management insane? Or are they just posturing?Here's what they said:"The personal computer as we know it will soon be dead, replaced by rapidly growing demand for smart mobile devices, according to the head of Symbian." --IT Pro"Mobile phone access will be the next significant Internet phenomenon." --Symbian press release"In five years' time you'll wonder why you need a PC at all." --John Forsyth, Symbian's Head of Market...

SaaS vs. Web 2.0

Here's something I wrote for the Rubicon Consulting weblog. I thought it might be of interest to folks here.Web 2.0, meet Software as a Service. SaaS, meet Web 2.0. You two need to talk. You’re working on many of the same problems, but you don’t communicate well, and sometimes it seems like each of you barely knows that the other exists. Web 2.0, you’re certainly fun to hang out with. Your conferences are full of exciting speakers predicting amazing things, and it seems like you come up with...

Carnival of the Mobilists #49

49, the world's most boring numberI tried very hard to come up with a theme for this week's Carnival of the Mobilists. Unfortunately, I used up all my best carnival photos and metaphors the last time I hosted, so I had to search elsewhere... It turns out that M49 is the Messier catalog number for an elliptical galaxy in the constellaton Virgo. Unfortunately, it's one of the most boring-looking galaxies you've ever seen, just a featureless blob. M49 is also a five-mile-long motorway in the UK....

Will Moore's Law slow down?

I spent time last week with a friend who works in the chip industry. One of the things we talked about was heat, and what it's doing to the world of processor design.For years there have been warnings that heat dissipation was starting to become a problem for microprocessors. Five and a half years ago, Intel's CTO said, "we have a huge problem to cool these devices, given normal cooling technologies." The industry made do for another five years, which is why I've been tuning out the latest round...