Developing Transparent Communication

Posted by jonpape | Filed under Business

IBM Global Services
Image via Wikipedia

A quote from Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. From Dan Frye, IBM’s Director of Linux Development, on IBM early communications with the Linux open source community.

“When we were responding slowly with canned answers we weren’t fast enough or transparent enough. It was not a level of technical exchange that was attractive to Linux developers.”

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , ,

Read more | Comments (0) | October 26th, 2008

Key Benefits of Peer Production for Businesses

Posted by jonpape | Filed under Business

Currently reading Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams and I found an interesting takeaway in the chapter The Peer Pioneers.  Just thought I would paraphrase the contents so I wouldn’t forget it.

The Key Benefits of Peer Production for Business.

Harassing external talent: Companies can use peer production to innovate faster using internal and external developers then the business could innovate on their own.

Keeping up with users: users can determine what features they would like and develop these features if the company is unwilling to or reacts slowly.

Boosting demand for complementary offerings: The number of people/companies involved with development of a product will increase the usefulness and the products ability to proliferate.  Also, a lot of demand for a product will increase the number of spinoff products.

Reducing costs: by working with open source communities, the value of a product can grow exponentually in comparison to the investment in capital.

Shifting the locus of competition: it is easy for competitors to imitate a product but harder to imitate a service or innovation.

Taking the friction out of collaboration: closed systems and a focus on strict intellectual property control makes it harder for companies to band together and innovate.

Read more | Comments (0) | October 24th, 2008

Retail Website Layout Overview

Posted by jonpape | Filed under Usability

I know Smashing Magazine (one of the best blogs on the planet) complied a similar list a couple months ago but I build my own list that including sites that I monitor on a regular basis.

Shopping Site Layout Overview
Merchant Fixed or Fluid Width Minimum Width Alignment
Amazon Fluid 980 px Left
Best Buy Fixed 790 px Left
Circuit City Fixed 980 px Centered
Costco Fixed 770 px Left
HomeDepot Fixed 795 px Centered
JCPenneys Fixed 775 px Centered
Kmart Fixed 800 px Centered
Kohls Fixed 985 px Centered
Kroger Fixed 960 px Centered
Macys Fixed 900 px Centered
Meijer Fixed 775 px Centered
Overstock Fixed 960 px Centered
QVC Fixed 915 px Centered
Sears Fixed 800 px Centered
Target Fixed 730 px Centered
Walmart Fixed 740 px Centered

Additionally, I thought it could be interesting to compare the percentage of sites that use a standard monitor size (800×600) to a larger monitor size (1024×768).

Browser Percentage
800×600 56%
1024×768 44%

Read more | Comments (1) | October 9th, 2008