Tom Andrus's posterous

Oh yeah, I am the product guy.

One of the great things about always working and continuously striving for that next project, metric, or deliverable, you don't have time to stop and think about how you ended up doing what you are doing. With my current family situation, I have had too much time to think. I am coming up on 20 years of at least being full or part time product management. I have managed my own products for good and bad, I have managed small groups of products again for good and bad, I have run large organzations product departments, mostly for good. :-) and I have been the general manager of product teams in large organization, always for good. :-) Nearly 20 years ago I fell in love with the idea of product management. I was a confused liberal arts kid out of college and I was thinking about being an engineer, a salesperson, or a copywriter. Then applying for a random job at WordPerfect, I was asked to prepare a business plan and explain what I would do with a product line. They loved my plan but laughed at me when they found out I had no experience. I offered to work for free, they refused, but the dye was set. "product manager." was the road for me. During those 20 years I have often wondered if I would be better suited in other roles. I love business development but am not a fine strokes kind of guy, sales is great for a week or two but I like my days to be different, I love the magic of marketing, at points I am technical enough to drop in on architecture discussions but I always end up in some way as the product guy. I have plenty of internal and second hand experience to tell me the mairrage of my position to my person is a good match, but with Google and FB leading a charge to push product to its engineering extreem, I had some doubts. Amazon, Apple and countless others stand as pillars of good business centric product management but one can't help but wonder. So it was great to find this on slideshare. I know my weaknesses more than anyone else but I also know my strenghts. On slide 9 there is a list of personality features benefits of a great product person, I nodded my head, and told myself I made a good choice. In what ever role I do in the future, I will always be the "product" blank.

The Product Management X-Factor: How to be a Rock Star Product Manager

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ray bradbury advice

via fanboy.com

Thanks for the advice. I am working on how to instill this into my kids.

We are all wimps today!

via oi53.tinypic.com

Had twitter existed in Roosevelt's time, I am sure that speech would have gone viral. Right from the opening, his quotes would have been the best. "The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best."

Could you live BYU's honor code for one year? Western US says Yes, Eastern US says No.

If I were to guess the reason for breakdown in this graphic, it would have to do with the general Mormon population, however, I can not explain Mississippi. Tonight I feel for BYU and for Brandon Davies. They both did the right thing, Brandon for coming forward, and the school for suspending him. It will be a hard rest of the season, the world is going to chide and lampoon both him and the team. Hopefully BYU fans will welcome Brandon back next year and hopefully the general poplulation will not belittle a group of people or an organization for being true to their standards; standards every student has agreed to live up to. I know from first hand experience it is very simple, if you don't agree with or want to live BYU's honor code there are many other great schools out there, but if you do go to BYU you need to live by their rules. (During my one semester at BYU, I shaved and wore long pants and socks, which were my personal struggles with the code.)

Thanks Google, I was starting to lose hope. Some non-organic farms being shut down.

# Domain Change SISTRIX (before) SISTRIX (after) # KWs (before) # KWs (after)
1 wisegeek.com -77% 121,58 28,22 74.024 21.940
2 ezinearticles.com -90% 65,08 6,65 184.508 54.277
3 suite101.com -94% 54,04 3,28 178.373 36.904
4 hubpages.com -87% 55,16 7,40 152.998 50.178
5 buzzle.com -85% 43,25 6,55 86.472 24.423
6 associatedcontent.com -93% 38,29 2,57 216.429 53.512
7 freedownloadscenter.com -90% 30,26 3,01 42.486 7.992
8 essortment.com -91% 25,73 2,32 27.501 7.459
9 fixya.com -80% 28,78 5,83 62.034 36.167
10 americantowns.com -91% 24,88 2,18 26.000 9.799
11 lovetoknow.com -83% 25,75 4,28 49.544 17.833
12 articlesbase.com -94% 19,96 1,16 82.274 31.365
13 howtodothings.com -84% 21,20 3,39 33.222 7.601
14 mahalo.com -84% 20,49 3,23 33.875 9.740
15 business.com -93% 17,24 1,13 21.556 4.813
16 doityourself.com -77% 20,89 4,90 23.256 6.870
17 merchantcircle.com -85% 18,43 2,67 93.347 34.681
18 thefind.com -83% 18,95 3,27 74.506 45.495
19 findarticles.com -90% 16,98 1,74 64.810 20.189
20 faqs.org -91% 16,52 1,46 33.648 11.142
21 tradekey.com -89% 16,83 1,79 37.364 16.268
22 answerbag.com -91% 12,93 1,11 67.314 26.054
23 trails.com -87% 12,05 1,62 38.346 8.511
24 examiner.com -79% 10,54 2,19 70.781 31.272
25 allbusiness.com -88% 8,86 1,08 16.457 6.034

#	Domain	Change	SISTRIX (before)	SISTRIX (after)	# KWs (before)	# KWs (after)
1	wisegeek.com	-77%	121,58	28,22	74.024	21.940
2	ezinearticles.com	-90%	65,08	6,65	184.508	54.277
3	suite101.com	-94%	54,04	3,28	178.373	36.904
4	hubpages.com	-87%	55,16	7,40	152.998	50.178
5	buzzle.com	-85%	43,25	6,55	86.472	24.423
6	associatedcontent.com	-93%	38,29	2,57	216.429	53.512
7	freedownloadscenter.com	-90%	30,26	3,01	42.486	7.992
8	essortment.com	-91%	25,73	2,32	27.501	7.459
9	fixya.com	-80%	28,78	5,83	62.034	36.167
10	americantowns.com	-91%	24,88	2,18	26.000	9.799
11	lovetoknow.com	-83%	25,75	4,28	49.544	17.833
12	articlesbase.com	-94%	19,96	1,16	82.274	31.365
13	howtodothings.com	-84%	21,20	3,39	33.222	7.601
14	mahalo.com	-84%	20,49	3,23	33.875	9.740
15	business.com	-93%	17,24	1,13	21.556	4.813
16	doityourself.com	-77%	20,89	4,90	23.256	6.870
17	merchantcircle.com	-85%	18,43	2,67	93.347	34.681
18	thefind.com	-83%	18,95	3,27	74.506	45.495
19	findarticles.com	-90%	16,98	1,74	64.810	20.189
20	faqs.org	-91%	16,52	1,46	33.648	11.142
21	tradekey.com	-89%	16,83	1,79	37.364	16.268
22	answerbag.com	-91%	12,93	1,11	67.314	26.054
23	trails.com	-87%	12,05	1,62	38.346	8.511
24	examiner.com	-79%	10,54	2,19	70.781	31.272
25	allbusiness.com	-88%	8,86	1,08	16.457	6.034

via sistrix.com

When Anne was at her sickest I spent a lot of time on Google trying to get as much medical information as I could. Through that process, I became more and more upset with the results on Google. It appeared that every content farm in the world had honed in on her medical condition and filled the search results with all kinds of crappy pages. After that experience I became very focused on the result sets. The more I focused the less satisfied I was with Google. Bing wasn't much better and I still favor completeness over a smaller subset like Blekko. Fortunately more and more people started raising the issue and Google responded. I am glad Google raised their bar a little. Google has the power to make or break many companies, hopefully they will use that power wisely. I was a little surprised that Demand media is not seen as one of the content farms. Kudos to Demand for creating enough original content and getting over that hurdle.

from sistrix.com

It's good to be King, and if you can't be King it's good to be in the top .01% | Mother Jones

Winners Take All

The superrich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades' gains.

via motherjones.com

If you look at intelligence by percentile you are amazed with how much smarter the top .01% are than the top 1%. Which is sad because being in the top 1% is a great thing and people who are that smart shouldn't have to look and see how dumb they are on an IQ scale next to the others. In Athletics it goes the other way. The difference between being the fastest out of 100 and the fastest out of 10,000 isn't that big of a difference. In fact the biggest difference is probably between being the fastest out of 3.5 billion and the fastest out of 7 billion people. (Go Usain) I think most people picture financial success to be similar to the athletic scale. Most people would therefor be wrong. But most people, or 9999 out of a ten thousand are not in the top .01% in IQ.

The truth is the scale is nearly logarithmic and the top .01 percent are so much richer than the top 1%. They make about about 250x more, I would give you a more accurate number but I am not in the top .01% in intelligence and I am too lazy to get the calculator out. I love the capitalist system, I love the idea of a meritocracy, however, I think things have become a little crazy.

If you live in LA, your deal of the day has become a virtual Goodwill of the day.

I am a big fan of www.yipit.com because it allows me to look at all the deals of the day in one fell swoop. However, today I started to feel like this is getting a little out of control. 90% of them no longer have much relevance to me and I find myself filtering them down to a much more reasonable number. I also think more targeted sites will continue to pop up and flourish. I am advising one of those small but exciting company called www.Roozt.com. What I like about Roozt is they are very focused on a demographic with a specific kind of offering. They target the younger generation of feel-good-consumers who want use their money to purchase from companies who have a second purpose, or as I like to call them "companies with a heart." They have continued to come up with great deals for things like fair trade chocolate, shoes from Africa, recycled bags, teas from the Amazon, etc. Although I am no longer young, I still find these sales to be a great way to find and purchase products I hadn't thought of before, (like an Indian tiffin set for my son to take to school)

Roozt is not the only deal site which targets me. Appsumo.com catches me sometimes with great tech centric deals, familyfinds.com hits me with things for the kids. If only, my japanese grocery store, the farmers market, WholeFoods, Trader Joes, and Costco would join up and create Tom's-saturday-morning deals.com, I would be happy and this proliferation of deal sites will have hit it's ultimate conclusion.

Compare Your State's GDP to Other County's GDP. DataViz

via dataviz.tumblr.com

You wonder if Sudan could get things together if their 43 million people couldn't beat Idaho's 1.5 million. And I am sure it will only be a matter of time before Indonesia becomes a New York and not a Pennsylvania. I am a little disappointed California couldn't make it to UK and got stuck at Italy. Maybe next year.

Political Language ( See references and explanation. ...)

via ilyagerner.tumblr.com

Thanks for giving most of us something to feel good about. Sorry OK.

Fred Wilson Dot VC

“ Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped, South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do.
—
Barack Obama

via fredwilson.vc

Really? You're just noticing this now? Perhaps you could start by nominating some commissioners for he FCC who actually want the US to have the best Internet in the world.

The sad truth is we had the lead in the mid 90's but we have been losing it since the bubble. Lots of innovation at the core which has given us great data centers, cloud computing, more dark fiber than we know what to do with and little to no innovation at the edge leading to crappy networks at the edge. Someday there will be a 3rd option to the duopoly(telcocable) and when that happens, I expect the US to leapfrog back into the lead. Until then, we are going to be running about 20th and below in the world in broadband speeds and near the top in costs for developed countries.

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Winners Take All

The superrich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades' gains.