Time for First-Class on Muni & Bart

Watching Muni trains go by for 20 minutes this morning looking for one where I wouldn’t become a sardine got me thinking.  I would happily pay an additional $3-$5 or more per trip during peak hours for a seat.

I bet we could solve the public transit money issues and make everyone happier if Muni and Bart had both first-class and standard-class trains. The two-tier system works great on trains across Europe.  I believe it would work equally well here in the States.

Even better, I’m guessing the extra revenue from first-class faires would be enough to let people ride on the standard-class trains for free — further helping to increase usage.

Sounds like a win-win to me.  What do you think?

Monday, August 23, 2010
Has anyone else noticed that Google is looking more and more like a blue Pacman about to finish devouring the other search engines in Google Analytics?

Has anyone else noticed that Google is looking more and more like a blue Pacman about to finish devouring the other search engines in Google Analytics?

“Like” (as Facebook uses it) feels wrong when you want to bookmark and/or share something like a BP article.  Anyone have thoughts on a better term to unify those actions online?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

I think if this BP spill were talked about in the long run in the same sort of category as Sputnik, then some good might have come of it.

Trader Joe's Uses Population Education Level to Choose Store Locations (via @timrosenblatt)

Fear Mongering Drives Me Nuts

Just received another forwarded email message filled with bad *facts* from my parents.  They really mean well.  But unless someone is pointing a knife at you — or building an oil rig off your coast ;-) — any fear you feel is most likely a marking device used to make you give up money, power, or both.  You (we) do not need to live in fear.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Funny/cool video: iPad + Velcro = <3

Success and Angry Birds

Angry Bird IconMy son and I are both addicted to the Angry Birds iPhone/iPad game.  We have cleared several levels with all perfect 3-star scores — across 3 devices.  My son, age 5, even called me in a meeting a on Monday to let me know he unlocked a new “egg.”

At a dinner in Bucharest a few weeks ago, someone at the table was playing the game with an equal level of addiction.  I started to wonder why this game was so successful…

First, the gameplay is great.  But that is true with lots of games that never get off the ground.

Second, they nailed pricing.  They have a “lite” version of the app that’s free, with more than enough puzzles to get you hooked.  To get more levels, you can upgrade to the standard version for only $.99 — no brainer.  At the volume the game is selling, I bet the developer is making a killing at that price.  But they did something far cooler…

Finally, when we first downloaded the game, there were a few “Coming Soon” levels.  I looked at the levels but didn’t really think about what they meant.  However, the day after we passed all the levels that came with the standard game, the Angry Bird update came out via iTunes.  Expecting your standard bug-fixes patch, I installed it.  But it wasn’t a minor patch at  all.  It was a new level with 15 additional puzzles to solve; which replaced one of the Coming Soon screens.  My son was so excited.  And with another Coming Soon screen and the note they included with the update, we knew more levels were going to be added.  Awesome.

I think this tactic is great for several reasons.  The developer pushed out a game to the public that wasn’t done!  It is so hard to ship something that isn’t 100%.  But they managed to do it.  They got the game into the wild where people could play with it, give them feedback, and start talking about it with their friends.  Even better, they turned the lack of finished levels into a benefit.  People are now looking forward to new levels being released.  And every time a new level/update comes out, people buzz about it.  So cool.

(As a side note, I’m pretty sure Apple does something similar.  I think they finish the first rev of their new product and Steve Jobs looks it over and says, “If we remove this they will have to upgrade to the next version.”  Srsly Steve, give us our missing iPad camera back!)

This is a great lesson for everyone that waits a little too long — I’m looking in the mirror here — to ship v1.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Very short screencast of a nasty Microsoft Kin phone ad I found in the wild.  The ad takes you to the Kin website just by going over it.  The site is running AdSense, but the ad was passed through from Atlas (e.g. Microsoft Advertising).  Not cool.

iPad as a touch-enabled second monitor for my Mac using Air Display.  (Thanks for the tip @zainy)

iPad as a touch-enabled second monitor for my Mac using Air Display.  (Thanks for the tip @zainy)