3 Reasons Google Street View Is Amazing

Google Street View is old news by now. It launched back in May. For those of you not familiar with the product, it's a new spin on maps similar to the satellite imagery already available. Except, with Street View, instead of just seeing the tops of buildings zoomed in from outer space, you can actually see the fronts of buildings as if you were walking down the street. And the photos are threaded together fairly seamlessly so that you can get a 360 degree sense of what someplace looks like while sitting in front of your computer.



Here are 3 reasons why Google Street View is amazing:

1. It revolutionizes how people use maps.

Maps have been around for a long time, even long before Christopher Columbus wondered "hmmm, what's beyond the edge of this map?" And while they've gotten more detailed and more accurate over time, they've never been able to replace the experience of knowing a location from first-hand experience. Let's face it, even reading a conventional map takes some degree of skill (ask any married couple on a roadtrip.) But when you've already been somewhere, you know the lay of the land. Other times, you ask for directions and people respond using locations. "Turn left at the Shell station, then cross the railroad tracks and go right on the street before McDonalds." These are often the most accurate directions but until now maps didn't include the Shell station or the McDonalds.

But with Google Street View, you can see it all. You know where things are and what landmarks to look for near your destination. Even better, you know what your destination looks like. No more hunting around for address numbers....you can pull up and say, "We're here!"

2. You can find places you've been but don't remember the names of.

The other day my wife and I went out to this great little Italian restaurant near our apartment in Burlingame. When a friend asked me the name of the place, I drew a blank. Then, I opened Google maps and pointed it to the general location of the restaurant. Sure, Google maps lists some businesses in the regular map view with little icons, but not all of them. When I couldn't find it, I clicked the Street View button and pointed it towards the front door of the Italian restaurant. Sure enough, they had a sign prominently displayed and Street View was high enough resolution to zoom in and read the name.

3. You can see places that you're never going to go.

I'm not suggesting you take a vacation to New York by surfing Google Street View but you could check out places that you'd otherwise never see. For example, we have friends who live in New Zealand and chances are they may never come see our place in California. I could send them a picture of our building, or even our street but Street View does a better job of this. A single photo doesn't give you a true sense of a place; it's just one snapshot. But a string of photos with a nifty navigational interface provides a pretty accurate description of what the whole environment is like, not just that one slice captured in a photo.


What do you like about Google Street View? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Marshall Goldsmith's "What Got You Here Won't Get You There"

Marshall Goldsmith gave this talk at Google and is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful." This is very relevant to any aspiring MBA student, manager, or leader.

Some of the key messages are surprisingly simple (these are just a couple):

• Be nice to people
  
• Don't try to change the past, you can only change the future
  
• Focus on improving only one thing
  
• Follow up

All of his materials are available for free on his website www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com

Audi understands experiential marketing

According to Wikipedia, experiential marketing "presents an experience that people choose to attend and participate in after identifying the relevance of a brand or product to their needs." This seems pretty accurate of the Audi event I attended two weeks ago. (For details of the event, check out The Audi Driving Experience on my personal blog.)

While experiential marketing is one of the most expensive forms of advertising, I believe it'll continue to gain importance during the coming years. Let's face it, people are becoming immune to advertisements. They've got Tivo to skip TV commercials, pop-up and banner blockers to skip internet ads, satellite radio without commercials, spam filters for email ads, and the national "do not call" registry to avoid telemarketers. How will companies continue to reach their audiences in the future? I say it'll be experiential marketing.

Experiential marketing is similar to public relations in that the goal of good PR is that other people (editors, journalists, bloggers) say something good about your company or product. Therefore, you feel that you're getting an unbiased recommendation regarding the product. It's even better if the recommendation comes from a trusted source or a friend. This is exactly what Facebook's new Beacon advertising platform is capitalizing on. (For reference, Beacon broadcasts your Facebook friend's actions to you through the site. For example you might see something like "Vince bought Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero at Amazon.com" if I was your Facebook friend.)

Experiential marketing lets you test the product yourself and form your own opinion. This is good because you don't feel that you're being subjected to advertising, even though you are. After all, you are putting the product through it's paces and you'll form your own opinion, right? But there are all sorts of ways to bias you from the beginning.

There's also a halo effect when you tell your friends about how impressed you were with the product, as I did after driving Audi's fleet of cars. But the hard part as a company is getting the right people at your experiential marketing event. It's important to target the right folks with the right message, just like in any form of marketing but due to the high cost, it's especially important in experiential marketing.

Audi did a great job of this with their driving event at Infineon Raceway. I'm not sure how they selected people (I registered on their website) but the event was first-class from beginning to end. I, and many others at the event, left feeling great about the Audi brand and it's products. The event was so fun that I'm sure Audi enjoyed having more people as converted brand evangelists.

The danger with experiential marketing is in creating a bad experience. But this wasn't a problem for Audi. Starting with registration, we were greeted promptly and registered quickly. Following that I received a nice little lanyard and badge with my name on it and was directed to the pristine, stainless steel, Scandinavian designed lounge for complimentary coffee and breakfast snacks while awaiting my turn to drive. In the lounge were beautiful B&O plasma TVs and sound systems playing, of course, Audi infomercials. The experience started to set positive impressions before I'd even sat in one of the cars, thus pre-disposing me for a good time and a good image of the Audi products.



Driving the cars was the icing on the cake thanks to an overall great experience. For successful experiential marketing you've got to have a great product too since schmoozing will only get you so far. Had the cars been pieces of junk, the whole experience would've fallen apart. But with experiential marketing always remember the details. If people have to wait in line too long, or the staff isn't friendly, it'll set the stage for failure.

Remember the dot com bubble?

This video makes some good points about the current state of affairs in Silicon Valley. What do you think? Are we headed for another dot com bubble?

I've been saying for awhile that Facebook is a fad. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I certainly think social networking is here to stay but seeing how it leaps from one hot site to another every couple years concerns me. Awhile back it was Friendster, then LinkedIn, then MySpace.com, and now Facebook. Who's next?

I'm working on another blog post regarding Facebook but it may be worth sharing one thought with you now. I simply don't understand the messaging portion of Facebook. Here's how it works: someone sends me a message on Facebook. I get an email in my Gmail account saying "Jeremy sent you a message on Facebook, click here to view it." Then I go sign in to Facebook to retrieve my message. Hey Jeremy, why not just send me the message to me via email in the first place? Why use Facebook to send it?

Retiring in your 40s without striking it rich

Even though I'm still far away from retirement, I'm already looking forward to the day when I can work because I want to rather than because I need money. Undoubtedly, others are in the same boat no matter how old you are currently. This is the first year that Danielle and I maxed out our 401k contributions (though we've been aggressively contributing before that, just not to the max) in the hopes that early savings can lead to early retirement.

And apparently it can work! MSN Money has an interesting article titled, "Retired by 50: What it really takes." Granted, they aren't talking about retiring and traveling the world or spending every day on the golf course. But they do point out that making some sacrifices and saving diligently early in life will reap rewards later. (Thank you compound interest!) Another key piece of advice from the article is eliminate all debt. How can you save when you still owe others?

I'm not advocating giving up stuff you enjoy so that you can retire early at all costs, but just use reason and moderation when making decisions and pocket the extra money. Some of the examples in the article are a bit extreme, like living in a van while working as an engineer at Sun Microsystems but others make perfect sense such as living a minimal life. "It's not about what you have, it's about how little you need."

I've found that living in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife not only saves us rent money each month, it also saves us from buying things we don't need because we simply don't have space for more "stuff". We'll be at the store and see some new gizmo and get all excited about it. Then we ask ourselves "Where will we put it?" and 95% of the time we walk out empty handed.

Anyway, check out the article for some good stories about saving money early on and getting out of the rat-race while you're still young.

MSN Money - Retire by 50: What it really takes

What you need in order to get to the top

One of my favorite sites, lifehack.org, had a great article the other day titled What is most likely to help you reach the top? This seemed appropriate for this site considering that's often the goal of many people pursuing an MBA.

The article lists ten things you should (and shouldn't) do if you want to make it to the top in today's business world. However, there is a recurring theme throughout most of them and it's a simple lesson. Be nice. Seems easy right? Actually the do's and don't are more about being well-liked by everyone in your office and a lot of that can be summarized by simply being a nice, genuine, caring person.

"When it comes to success in today’s world, being the kind of person others like outranks all of the fashionable traits like competitiveness, willingness to work harder then anyone else, piling up qualifications, or blind obedience to the demands of the people at the top. Pleasant, likable people have the best chances of being hired, promoted, and rewarded."

"Being nice" can lead to "being liked" if done right even though the two aren't the same thing. (And if you can't remember all ten points in this article, "being nice" should cover you pretty well.) Once again, going back to something fundamental like this can be your ticket to the top. Remember to focus on these fundamentals. Don't make anything, including getting to the top, more complicated than it needs to be.

What is most likely to help you reach the top? at lifehack.org

Life is not inside a computer

How many times do you find yourself moving from one screen at work to another after work? Let's face it, a lot of us sit in front of a computer most of the day because we're so-called "knowledge workers." But do you ever find that after a hard day of work you come home and plop yourself right back down in front of the computer again? Arguably you are probably not working any longer, maybe you're reading your personal email, browsing Facebook, or checking out the latest lolcats. This might be how you relax, what you do for fun. I do too.

I'm guilty of this all the time. Some of you may choose a different screen to sit in front of, the TV. I even do this too and I don't have cable! (Though I do have a very active Netflix account.) Lately, I've been starting to feel more guilty about this. Perhaps it's the time change. It's dark at 5:30pm now and I feel like the day is over before I'm even home from work.

But there's something to be said for "unplugging" and doing something besides sitting in front of the screen. Even boring chores like washing the dishes or doing the laundry give me a refreshing sense of activity compared to sitting in front of the computer. I find I feel even better if I walk downtown to run errands or just go for a stroll with my wife.

I think a big part of this feeling is that although I love computers and the internet, sometimes I feel like life is passing me by while I surf the web. Ferris Bueller said, "Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it." I hesitate to make any commitment to changing my own behavior but I'm definitely going to try to be more conscious of this and limit the time I spend sitting in front of a screen, at least at home. I challenge everyone to give it a try. Force yourself to take a "screen break" for at least two hours after you get home from work. Instead, spend the time talking to your spouse, cooking dinner, or doing some reading. See if it improves the quality of your life.

(Yes, this is an actual photo of my apartment.)

Conflicting needs for stock price

If you work at a company where they give you "stock option refreshers" based on your performance I'm sure you've been in a similar situation. Chances are that you already own some of your company's stock, so of course it's in your best interest for the stock price to go up.

But then, assume that you've done a great job this year and your boss comes to you after your annual review and says "The company would like to thank you for your hard work thus far and your continued commitment to the success of our company. Here are 100 company stock options." (Remember, cash bonuses are to reward past performance, stock options are to retain top quality people.)

Usually, these new options are granted based on a stock's price for a certain date. You want the grant price to be as low as possible so that you make the difference between the current price and grant price whenever you sell them. What if there's another wrench in the system though too? What if your company enforces a very strict trading window saying you can only sell shares or exercise option between certain dates?

In this case you can find yourself in a bind. You want the stock price to soar so that you can sell your current options while it's high. But you also want it to drop so that your new options have a low grant (strike) price. It's a dilemma and I'd rather have prices going up since the new options don't vest for at least a year in most cases. I'd argue it's best to stick with the long-term outlook and therefore the new option grant price won't be a big issue if the company is healthy and overall the stock prices continue to rise over the new 5-10 years.

Dilbert's Career Advice

Would you consider taking career advice from Dilbert? Ok, maybe not the cartoon with the goofy tie but you might want to consider listening to Dilbert creator Scott Adams about what it takes to have an extraordinary career. This was posted in July but it's worth revisiting. Scott says,

But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people.

This makes a lot of sense. As soon as you can do two or more things moderately well, the unique combination sets you apart from your peers.

Full article - Career Advice from The Dilbert Blog

Why Won't Google Stock Split?

If you watched the stock market Thursday you no doubt saw Google's stock (GOOG) break the $700 mark for the first time. Analysts said they thought it might hit $700 by the end of the year, but few believed it would happen just weeks after Google released their quarterly earnings.

SFGate.com had an article about this big day and noted it took less than a month for the stock to go from $600 to $700.

But I found this quote the most interesting:

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who regard Buffett as an inspiration, have resisted requests to split their company's stock so more people could afford to buy a few shares. Their theory: a high stock price tends to attract more patient and knowledgeable investors who pay closer attention to a company's long-term strategy than its ability to hit short-term earnings targets.

To me, this seems like solid thinking and probably part of why Google isn't another dot com bust. Google has a record of doing things differently and it's been a big contributor to their success. If you recall, they held an auction-style IPO. Sometimes if you want to be successful, you can't just follow the path of others, you need to do your own thing even that goes against the accepted norm. Disclaimer: These are my own independent views (and those of SFgate.com as quoted in the article) and not associated with my employer.

What is "The Poor Man's MBA" All About?

This is officially the first blog post on thepoormansmba.com. At this point, you're probably wondering what this site is going to be about. I am too. Well, I've got a rough idea of what I want to write about but I guess I'll just see how it goes. Here are some subjects you can expect to see covered on this blog:

Advancing your career

Differences between good companies and great companies

Unique business insights

Management tips for time, priorities, and people

Work-Life balance

Looking at situations in unique ways

Current business trends

Applying to business school

Personal investing and financial decisions

And much more...

These days an undergraduate college degree is about the same as a high school degree was 30 years ago. And because of this, more and more people are flocking to the top business schools for an MBA and hoping that this will help them stand out from the crowd or give them the opportunity to pursue their dreams. I know because I'm one of them. But you can learn a lot on your own and immediately test what you've learned at your current job. This blog aims to share successful strategies for the workplace that anyone can use.

Some recurring themes you'll see in many blog posts will be the ideas outlined in the subtitle of the blog:

Consume information - read everything you can get your hands on; be a sponge for knowledge and learn from others

Look for connections - identifying connections between two seemingly unrelated things can be important for unlocking something brand new

Focus on fundamentals - success often comes from breaking things down into their most basic parts; good solutions don't need to be complicated

Think for yourself - don't bother copying what others are doing because you'll already be behind; have the strength to do your own thing

Going back to basics is always a good idea

I'm a big fan of solving tough problems by going back to the basics. It's a tried and true method of getting things done. Some people try to pass themselves off as insanely smart by the way they talk and the complexity of the solutions they come up with. But I remember a saying I learned in engineering school, "Good engineers solve big problems with complex solutions you could never understand. Great engineers apply such simple solutions that you can't believe you didn't figure them out yourself."

This is true and is part of the reason why the subtitle of this blog includes "Focus on Fundamentals." You can't go wrong if you go back to the most basic building blocks of a theory.

A recent article about Google's datacenters also points out the power of relying on fundamental concepts. This time trusting that basic heat transfer theory will break new ground in datacenter design -- which is essentially a big heat transfer problem.

What we did at Google is essentially throw out the book on how to build data centers, and went back to basic heat transfer theory, went back to basic electrical theory, and essentially threw away everything that wasn't strictly necessary in sort of a minimalist design. Essentially the integrated circuit industry concept is step and repeat.

So the next time you think you're in over your head, don't try to wow the boss with a complicated solution. Instead, wow him or her with a simple solution that leaves them wondering why they hadn't come up with it. You'll gain respect and have less chance of screwing up.