Inov8-Trail and Mountain Running Shoes

Inov-8 is a scrappy British trail running shoe company which is equipping many of the top mountain runners worldwide, including the world champion John Wyatt of New Zealand. Even the recent Applachian Trail speed record breaker did the entire trail, all 2174 miles in 47 days in Inov-8's.

Why? A unique approach to getting the foot in a more level/neutral position to the ground for greater stability combined with wrap around ankle and arch support via the upper. I also like their product matrix which clearly differentiates different sole and shoe constructions for different terrains: mud, rock, grassy, mixed terrain thus going well beyond the usual breathable and waterproof uppers.

OllyDog- Outdoor Retailer Show

Ollydog
is a Berkeley based start-up launched by former North Face and Sierra Designs folks focused on colorful, fun and functional "equipment" for outdoor dogs. They know rugged materials and have applied them to dog products. I joined them in their booth as one of their advisors is a Dartmouth friend.

Their products include a great folding (flat like a wallet) dog bowl the Lapper for your dog travels in all kinds of neat colors and patterns using super rugged pack cloth. It actually stays up even with no or little water. And, as was demonstrated at the show put a 6 pack and some ice and you have an instant beer cooler.

They offer a series of very colorful collars which are rugged but smooth, not the usual frayable webbing.

Their doggy beds looked very comfortable with many of the dogs at the show taking a rest at the booth in the beds. They have a sling bag for the morning walk with the pooch and then all day use. The "cell phone" pocket included a pass through port to pull out one of those blue bags for you know what...

Finally, their dog toys which included a very rugged fabric covered bone and a frisbee were put to good use right there in the booth.

Ollydog is a fun dynamic company which is working the growing niche of families and baby boomers, and empty nesters with dogs.

Outdoor Retail Show

I recently had the good fortune, for a total outdoor and outdoor gear nut, to attend the Outdoor Retail Show in Salt Lake City. Literally thousands of backpacking, trail running, apparel, footwear, gadgets, skiing, snowshoeing exhibitors. To try to categorize it all is difficult but I will try as follows: New England outdoor innovators, influence of the military on outdoor products, and innovative small companies with products worth noting.

In New England companies I was thrilled to see that 3 of 4 companies with "breakthroughs" on the cover of the March issue of Backpacker and 3 of the 6 true innovations according to the hardcore Backpackinglight were from New England. With the exception of the Bean pack I saw all of these at the show or have seen at retail.

The laureates included:

• the tent maker Nemo Equipment for their air supported easy to erect tents, now far lighter.
• Timberland ,my neighbors here on the Seacoast of NH, were recognized for their Delerion adventure racing shoe. It is an all purpose, high performance outdoor activity shoe which solves for the first time the problem of draining water and drying fast (non absorbent materials) vs. the conventional keeping water out approach. As a long time hiker and trail runner I can tell you that keeping water out is almost impossible so why not let it in and then out as fast as possible! Suspect these might also be great hot weather shoes. My only concern with these very breathable mesh type shoes is how much fine material sneaks through the upper. The included gaiters keep stuff from coming over the top but... Have to try to see.

• I am also trying a pair of Timberland Ed Veisters lightweight hiker the Cadion. I am very impressed by the dramatic weight reduction when compared to the usual hikers. The upper is made in part out of Schoeller's Kerpotec a very abrasison resistant fabric often used in motorcyle clothing. I will be hiking the Whites in NH with these. I think they will be ideal as I find trail runners of any kind just a bit light given the terrain. Timberland is getting traction in Outdoor Performance by focusing on solving real problems for power users. The solutions translate well to the general marketplace.

• Darntough is a Vermont performance sock company which is offering a lifetime warranty on... their socks. Talk about standing by the product.
• JetBoil is a NH company which has set the backpacking stove market "on fire" by applying heat exchanger technology, often found in cooling electronics to go the other way and direct the flame's heat into the pot, which in their first iteration was actually a large insulated and integral coffee type mug. Very compact and efficient solution for mostly 3 season light backpacking or just a hot cup on the trail.
• LL Bean of Maine was recognized by Backpacker for value and quality breakthrough in packs "The Ultimate Bargain", no surprise from this fine and thrifty company. Their full featured Bigelow TL is $59 and looks perfect for overnight hikes and day packs with plenty of features and durability.
• Bemis this fourth generation adhesives company in Shirley MA which started in furniture glue has revolutionized garment construction with heat sealable tape called SewFree which eliminates sewing. Currently in high end apparel they enable not only more durable seams without the risk of thread abrading but less bulky apparel with new geometries and patterns. So, not an outdoor product per se but a materials company was the big star of the Outdoor Retalier Show.
  

Update on Nemo Equipment-A Time Magazine Amazing Invention of 2005

Nemo Equipment, the NH makers of inflatable (less than a minute to set up) backpacking tents which I discussed in a May 7, 2005 post has been selected as one of Time Magazine's Amazing Inventions of 2005

Mapping a revolution with 'mashups' | CNET News.com

Previously I commented on Google Maps. This CNET article discusses the many neat applications and maps users are creating as overlays to Google Maps, with Google's complete agreement. The Google Maps Mania site gives a great overview of what people are creating.

Along with Yahoo Maps' similar mashups these applications are based on AJAX, a form of Java and XML which allows web based applications to be full featured, incredibly fast and may be even more dynamic than desktop applications as data and changes can flow in an out of pages without reloading. This technology will surely accelerate the trend to web based applications and away from traditional desktop applications and client server technologies. The portability of these applications to mobile devices, as the actual java script client is so light and the response is so fast, will also finally entice users to sign up for data plans on their mobiles in the US.

As an avid runner I particularly like gmap-pedometer (click to see one of my favorite routes on the NH Seacoast) which, for the first time, allowed me to easily measure my daily running routes. Try it out. gmap-pedometer offers the option of using www.tinyurl.com to generate and store what is surely a long URL with all the geographic coordinates and thus provide a shorter pointer for messages, blogs, etc...

Wireless Web Services and Nextel Direct Send-Commodity Pipeline and Niches

In my last post I commented on Yahoo Mail and Google Local Maps. Both of these web based services bypass the need to pay an extra monthly fee for the application to the wireless carrier beyond a data plan. In line with the recent Microsoft news of their increasing focus on web based applications which have the features of desktop based applications, the rapidly evolving movement of processing from desktops to central servers, is now coming to mobiles too. The implications are that wireless carriers' data services will increasingly become a commodity carrying and serving up web based applications chosen by customers and not the carrier.

Carriers will not long be able to keep the barriers up, and the tolls on, for individual applications downloaded to the phone or for users' access to web services enabled sites such as Google Local. In fact, this development, and the reliabilty of these new services now make me a happy Sprint Vision (their data plan for $10/mo.) customer. Sprint will likely see increasing numbers of customers opting for data and as wireless bandwidth increases people like me will be willing actually pay more for increased reliabilty and speed as long as the customer has the freedom to chose the wireless sites and applications which make the most sense for their needs. A commodity purchase.

While downloaded music is somewhat more complicated in terms of bandwidth, rights management, and playback capabilities its time will come too. Sprint's recent launch of a download music service, while in all respects seemingly a great product, will not fly far, at least in the US with songs at $2.50 each when the standard is iTunes $0.99. Tolls are on and an opportunity may be lost.

Over on the Nextel side of Sprint niches and focus on customer segments are the norm. The recent launch of Nextel Direct Send ,a service which allows pictures to be taken and sent while on a walkie-talkie call without interupting the call, will prove a boon to professionals such as real estate agents, contractors, and public safety folks. Who knows maybe teens too! The $0.25 per send is a steep price to pay, much like the Sprint music. Likely this will evolve into an all you can send for $5-$10 per month which many will be happy to pay. Nextel will maintain and increase its grasp on tradespeople and professionals through such careful examination of customer needs and innovative use of their IDEN platform.

Google Local Mobile and Yahoo Mobile

After much suffering using Sprint's email as the forwarding mechanism to my mobile I discovered Yahoo Mail for Mobile, directions, weather, etc... It's just Yahoo mail accessible from your mobile's browser. Incredibly easy set up to my Sprint phone. Clear excellence in user interface: very easy to set up, larger type, consistent easy access (unlike Sprint's own mobile mail), plenty of storage (Sprint had me emptying the inbox via my computer as frequently as weekly), and most importantly my forwarded mail is always accessible on the go.

Today, I downloaded Google Local Mobile to my Sprint phone.

Note that not all phones will work with Google Local Mobile as unlike Yahoo it is a downloaded application to the phone. You must have BREW but the easy set up at the Google web site will help you determine if your phone will accept the application. Note that you also need an Internet data plan as part of your service.

Very similar to the Yahoo Mobile with the added benefit of not only directions but the now almost ubiquitous Google maps and even satellite views. Again a very simple and easy to use interface.

You can locate yourself on the map by using your phone's joystick button. You can click through the turn points on the map with a bubble indicating the turns popping up on the phone screen. No more printing directions before a trip. And if your phone has GPS capabilities an MSNBC article states that according to Google the software will know where you are so you can find local addresses all that much easier. I guess it also means Google will know where you are...a bit scary but in my book a worthy tradeoff for the convenience of on the go maps and directions. They do promise they will not use this info to push ads at you.

Much as the iPod's success is due to elegantly focusing on the mission at hand both of these services finally make reading email and finding addresses and following directions a practical feasibility on mobile phones. Consumers will benefit from the battle between these two for the small screens on the go.

Apple iPod Nano and FedEx-Impossibly Fast

In December 2004 I ordered an iPod for my son. The engraved and free shipping marvel traveled from China to NH (click to see that post) in about 6 days from order

September 19th I ordered the new iPod Nano, again with free shipping and engraving. September 22nd at noon the Nano showed up, having been customized and shipped all the way from China in less than 3 days!

Clearly a truly amazing performance for a mass customized (engraved) product, enabled by a superb supply chain collaboration between Apple and Fed Ex and of course the Impossibly Small size of the product itself!

As a runner I think the easy to use stop watch feature on the Nano is a useful bonus and a first for iPods.

BACKPACKING LIGHT

BACKPACKING LIGHT - The Ultralight Backpacking Magazine and Lightweight Backpacking Gear Shop

While there is a subscription of $25 per year this specialized site on ultra lightweight outdoor gear combines insightful editorial with an active community of members who analyze, comment, modify, and weigh gear down to the fraction of an ounce. Great example of an authoritative, if somewhat obsessive niche resource, and online community on a specific subject. Larger manufacturers are well advised to linger and participate a while.

Emergency Alert System-Another Relic?

As I was taking a break at noon today I turned on the TV. From the kitchen I heard the squawk of the Emergency Alert System. Looking at the screen on a beautiful sunny day I saw a statewide alert was in progress. A voice came on, completely unintelligle and incomprehensible through the static of what must have been a cold war era connection. Of course usually these are weather alerts and text appears on the screen. Concerned, I flipped to my local TV station where I was informed by a newscaster that it was an Amber alert for 3 children kidnapped by their mother. As with Katrina, so much for the system..or the loose wire. Certainly a better voice or text overlay should be possible. Fortunately, the children were recovered unharmed.

Frog Design Mind - Gizmodo- Perception and Product Design

Frog Design Mind - Gizmodo

Very interesting article which explores the use of conventions in design to change how people perceive products. Among other things why do consumers almost universally perceive the iPod design as "clean" and what associations might consumers have made based on the design to arrive at that perception?

Katrina: Communications, Supply Chains, Hub and Spoke, and Leadership

I have been riveted by the horrors of the last week: the unspeakable destruction and loss of life, the breakdown of planning and response, and the slow to start but increasingly effective effort- voluntary and government.

Clearly our internet and technology enabled world is not what the inventors of the internet imagined when they conceived of a mesh of communications to survive a nuclear war. In fact, the web of communications in the disaster area and beyond completely broke down in my view because most every communication funnels through "hub and spokes" be they large telecom hubs or bureaucracies, a model the airlines functioned with and failed with. The wireless systems which provide us such mobility failed along with the rest, no power and they were tied into the hubs as well. And even if you could get a signal with no power to charge a cell or raido battery, communications went dead. I always carry a www.sidewindercharger.com charger to hand crank charge my cell if need be. Satellite phones, a business barely sustained by news organizations, NGO's and yachts proved invaluble- the few in the hands of the media from their travels to Iraq and the Third World. AM radio served as the only means of communications in New Orleans.

The centralized FEMA and LA state government were paralyzed by indecision and even paperwork! in the early going. They clearly didn't understand the geography. The playbook should have gone out the window earlier and bold initiative should have gone into action . Even watching TV and interfacing with the resourceful journalists would have brought help further and earlier to the stranded as the newspeople were on the scene and communicating.

Tragically, real long term plans to raise the levees as the land sank and the wetlands were filled in for development languished for decades with the most clearly at risk, the poorest, also those with the least politcal clout. There was a big picture of increasing risk which went largely answered for decades despite warnings.

Further, our reliance on "supply chains" timed to the second to maximize efficiencies when was combined with the geographical importance of New Orleans as the funnel for so many goods and so much energy sharply underlined the fragility of a chain vs. a mesh of mutiple sources. Now that the "supply chain" of relief is flowing efficiently, help is surely coming, but to late for how many?

Early initiative to help resided with the nimble and focused-the Coast Guard, other military and volunteers. The Coast Guard saves lives from water and storm and that is exactly what they did. Leadership came from General Honore who like a later day Patton (one with a heart) charged in with force and a clear mission. He "personally" brought help and visibly defused tensions by telling soldiers to lower the weapons-"You're not in Iraq" he told them. These situations demand organized leaders who function on initiative, seeing the big picture, flexibility, action, and passion- not exactly the conventional and current model of specialization so prevelant in business and FEMA? and also so sought after from a higher educational system focused on research and test scores.

The Bakeoff- Software, Cookie, and Product Development

Comments on a New Yorker Article 9/5/05 “The Bakeoff” by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite thinkers and writers; author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and many great articles bridging business, technology, science, and the complex ways humans act individually and in groups.

The Bakeoff concerns a top food industry development firm located in Silicon Valley testing three methodologies of invention to come up with a new cookie.

Fascinated by software development the principal decided to test 2 current approaches to software development vs. a traditional product development process.

The development processes were:

• The XP or extreme software model where 2 people partner and iterate multiple times- in this case a foodie and a food technologist pretty much doing everything from ideas to making the cookies. This approach is now quite popular in software development.

• The Linux or open source model where a large group of gurus attempt to collaborate- in this case the Dream Team was made up of an all-star cast of cookie technologists from multiple consumer companies.

• The traditional model- in this case led by the firm’s director of marketing who was not a food technologist but a brilliant, high energy idea person with broad knowledge. She was supported by one of the firm’s product development directors who would execute her ideas.

The teams were all given certain tough “health” parameters for the product: fat, carbs, etc.. but otherwise free to innovate. At the end of the process the 3 cookies were sent for taste testing to several hundred consumers.

The results:

The winner based on the consumer testing was the traditional model followed closely by the open source or multiple collaborating gurus approach.

The XP model was far behind in the taste test but actually had a decent product first. They went right to work, in a highly linear fashion but did not really think outside the box.

The Dream Team had plenty of expertise and came up with 34 possibilities but due to large group size, egos, and a deliberate lack of leadership and disconnected remote nature there was to much friction to get a really innovative product out the door despite all their talents. Yet, they were close to the winners.

The winner took a long time getting going due to “idea a minute” but in the end because of her broad knowledge she was able to connect laterally to another product, a tortilla chip of all things sitting on her desk which was part of another project, to come up with the idea of a tasty coating “an explosion of flavor” similar to a tortilla chip but on the sweet side of course. which her team executed on. She was well supported by her very experienced product development person and his team. She found the big idea.

To Net stores, it's all about personal touch | NYTimes CNET

To Net stores, it's all about personal touch | CNET News.com

The nuts and bolts of customization of physical products via the internet. One internet player cafepress claims it can produce from 8 million different designs onto products such as T-shirts, mugs, etc... all shipped within 24 hours. Millions of niche products.

The secret is to enable the direct transfer of the data of the internet order to the machinery of production.

Customers can upload their own artwork and create a complete online store for their creations. As the "substates" are limited to what cafepress has available in a way this can be thought of as a new form of low run custom printing on 3D shapes.

Trust thy Internet neighbor | CNET News.com

Trust thy Internet neighbor | CNET News.com

Interesting recap article about networks of trust on the internet

In 1999 I co-founded efavorites one of the earliest internet based systems for combining user generated content with most of the aspects and functionality of what is now known as social networking to create networks of trust. The content was called favorites (people, places, and things) and postings were to a structured taxonomy and seachable database.

Later we built systems which allowed reveiws, recommendations, and ratings to be"bolted on" to the existing online catalogs of our customers through a pioneering (at the time) real time publishing system based on XML, EJB, and J2EE. Content was not only associated with specific items but also specifc people whose collection of content associated with items became a profile. Thus, the user could easily navigate from the item review or recommendations to the author's other content to evaluate its relevance and trustworthiness to the user

In a nutshell we are most often known and can be evaluated by what we like and who we associate with-Are they like me and can their advice be trusted?

We found that an 80/20 rule applied to active contribution of new content. 80% of the content was written by less than 20% of the users. A smaller number were the active networkers connecting friends to each other and the content. This distribution is not suprising given the theories of Malcolm Gladwell and others in The Tipping Point who identified certain personality types as naturally sharing and passionate guru types, often with multiple areas of interest and others as having vast networks of often fairly superficial connections.

Blogs, reviews, recommendations, and social networking profiles can offer businesses wonderful tools to not only connect with customers, discover emerging niches (see my post on the Long Tail) but also serve as vehicles to present their own brands' in-house and customer gurus expertise in a near real time, personalized and trustworthy fashion for public or even internal (customer service and product development) purposes.

See also the articles from trendwatching.com on which covers in detail how consumers are seeking their own Twinsumer via the web to help them make decisions.