Mark Geller

KlickFu enables users to play doodles, games, and apps instantly with a single mouse click on the computer desktop. We started distributing private beta versions of KlickFu a few weeks ago.

Today, we are excited to announce a new app for KlickFu called QuadPics Facebook.

You can download a beta version of KlickFu including this new app here:  http://bit.ly/klickfu-quadpics-facebook

How it works:

• Download and install KlickFu (takes a few seconds) and run the application
• In the menu, choose “QuadPics Facebook”
• Authorize the KlickFu Facebook app to access the photos in your stream
• Once the app has downloaded the first set of photos, in a single motion, click your mouse on the computer desktop and drag in a clockwise circle around the click point
• You will see photos that have been uploaded by your friends to Facebook displayed automatically over your desktop, along with who uploaded the photo–the more you circle, the more photos you will see
• If you want to visit the photo on Facebook, release the mouse on top of that photo and the window will appear
• If you don’t want to view a photo in Facebook, move the mouse outside a photo and release

Here’s a sample of how it looks:

Once the app is running, it will check for new photos every 15 minutes. When it finds new photos, it will download them automatically and play a chime sound to let you know you have new stuff.

We think QuadPics Facebook is an interesting and fun new way to view content from Facebook. Also, it can be easily extended to view other web content and feeds, including social media, e-commerce, and entertainment content.

Try it out and see what you think.

Note: KlickFu runs on all flavors of Windows (7, XP, and Vista) today. This is a beta version, so you may see some dust and rough edges, but overall it should be fairly smooth.

Enjoy,

The KlickFu’ers

There has been a lot of discussion recently by several top startup investors about how the U.S. patent system is badly broken and calling for Congress to dismantle software patents altogether. In a nutshell, the main problem is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted many patents for inventions that seem like they would be obvious to anyone working on the Internet–and therefore should be unpatentable. A recent example is the Lodsys case, which seems to grant a patent for the “invention” of enabling users to provide feedback via a website.

Often, these patents, which seem silly to many in the industry, are bought by “non-practicing entity” companies also known as patent trolls, who purchase the patents solely to “license them” to other companies, i.e., threaten those companies with lawsuits if they refuse to pay royalties to utilitize the invention. Apparently, the problem has gotten bad enough now that any promising new startup can expect to be threatened with suits from numerous patent trolls just as they are starting to grow. These angel investors are seeing many or most of their portfolio companies threatened with suits and they are speaking out to fix the system.

This all makes perfect sense to me. There is no question the USPTO occasionally, maybe often, grants patents for inventions that are not novel or not non-obvious (the two criteria for patentability) or both. Nor is there any question that sometimes these patents are used by opportunistic investors in ways that clearly stifle innovation and are ultimately bad for consumers.

The part where I somewhat diverge with the recent discussions is how many of these investors, which also include some entrepreneurs, are pushing hard to do away with all software patents in the U.S. completely. They argue that software patents are fundamentally different from other types of patents, such as physical inventions, and the current system is harming innovation so they should simply be abolished.

I am not an attorney and I am far from an expert on patent matters. Also, for full disclosure, I have a personal bias toward patents now having recently filed the patent application for the technology in KlickFu. However, that said, I still believe software patents can be viable and valuable and the system would be better fixed than dismantled.

While it is true some concepts in software patents are blurry and subject to judgment, the same can probably be said of patents in other areas. (I recall hearing there are more than 5,000 different patents relating to mouse traps.) While some agents in the USPTO undoubtedly lack the necessary technical expertise to effectively consider patent applications, this could probably be fixed by increasing salaries by a government recognizing this would be money very well spent. Finally, while the patent litigation process is probably massively expensive and cumbersome, I would think Congress could rewrite the laws to establish a vastly streamlined mediation process adjudicated by true experts in the field with a simple up-or-down decision rendered in weeks rather than years.

It may be the case that entrepreneurs funded by these super-investors and venture capital firms can grow fast enough and have strong enough relationships with larger companies to avoid having their intellectual property infringed by dominant incumbents and do not need the protection patents can offer. However, for entrepreneurs who do not have millions in the bank and prefer to grow more slowly, it seems patents can serve a useful purpose and truly increase innovation that benefits consumers. There is no doubt the U.S. patent system has serious problems. Before we do away with the system entirely, we should consider if there are relatively simple, practical ways it can be fixed.

It is often said in the software development world you should launch your product early and often, get feedback from users and iterate on your functionality until you reach “product market fit.” As much as I agree with that practice, with KlickFu, for various reasons, we have not been able to launch as early as we wanted. However, all that changes today.

Today, we are making available the first real version of KlickFu. You can download it here today. In fact, for those of you who have been waiting for KlickFu, it would be great if you would download it now, play around with it and us know what you think. A few quick questions:

Q: What is KlickFu?

A: KlickFu is a simple (small) program you download to your computer that enables you to do fun/dumb stuff when you click-drag on your computer desktop.

Q: What can you do with KlickFu?

A: Today, in this version, you can use KlickFu to do some fun stuff when you click drag on the desktop–such as, show your own photos (in your My Pictures folder), see pics of dogs and cats, draw doodles with ninjas or flowers, make random drawings with colored boxes, and play a simple game.  You can also share stuff to Facebook so your friends can see your random doodles.

Q: Will you be adding more apps soon?

A: Yes, in fact we will be coming out with another app later this week to view photos from Facebook and then more apps after that. The KlickFu program will automatically update itself when the new apps are ready.

Q: Is there any cost for KlickFu?

A: No, KlickFu is totally free.

Q: What computers can run KlickFu?

A: Today, KlickFu will run on any machine running Windows (7, Vista, or XP). It does not run on Macs, although it will at some point down the road.

Q: How can you contact us to send feedback?

A: Feel free to email me at mark (at) klickfu [dot] com. You can also contact us on Facebook or Twitter.

Q: How do you make money with KlickFu?

A: Once more people are using KlickFu, we will add an appstore with pay and free apps, similar to iTunes, and also sell virtual products within the apps. (If enough people love playing with KlickFu, the money should take care of itself.)

Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

As I mentioned in my last post, building desktop software, which for the past few years has been considered maybe something less than cool, is now becoming fashionable again, maybe even hot. This past week it was reported Facebook is hiring a desktop software team in its Seattle office. Various experts have speculated on what Facebook is building. Some say it’s a browser, others say it is something related to connecting users’ consumption of media and the desktop experience in a social way. Or maybe it’s all of the above.

In any case, it is great to see Facebook recognizing the power of connecting to users directly on the desktop and providing experiences that cannot be achieved merely through a browser, or at least, the browsers available today. Also, it will be great for Facebook to bring a bit more attention to desktop software development and maybe increase the interest of some younger developers to get “closer to the metal” to provide new exciting experiences.

Quick update since my last post: for the past few months I have continued working as a consultant with HauteLook, the fashion flash sale site that was recently acquired by Nordstrom, managing their “off-website” experiences such as the iPhone app, mobile site, Facebook store, and some cool new stuff coming soon. (This has been an excellent experience, seeing how quickly users are adapting mobile and social commerce in a fast-growing new model.) Meanwhile, at KlickFu we have been working on refining the app while waiting to start an integration with an exciting new partner–adding some new features, fixing bugs, and making the in-app screens prettier. Hopefully I should have some interesting news and also a spiffy new version of the program for you all (with Windows) to play with soon.

This week, the bigs news in Internet/software is the announcement Microsoft is acquiring Skype for $8 billion. When I first started working on KlickFu, I met with several prominent angel investors to get their feedback on the project–what they thought of the idea and whether (and when) they would be interested to invest. Most of the responses went something like this: “Hey, this is a clever/interesting/kooky/dumb/irrelevant/maybe-not-so-dumb idea, however, I am concerned this is a desktop application the user has to download and install.”

I would usually reply users have shown many times if they find something compelling, they will download and install it no problem. This point was usually irrelevant, since most of these angels had invested in at least one startup that made downloadable software and had lost their entire investment due to the inability to convince users to install the app.

Since those initial conversations, several things have happened–the first is KlickFu found a partner who embraces downloadable software and we are working with them for our initial distribution; the second, maybe more interesting, is that downloadable software itself has evolved from being totally out of favor to being considerably more acceptable with users and even developers.

Like most things, downloadable software has its pluses and minuses relative to alternatives. Compared to a website, downloadable software takes longer for the user to get started, is more complicated to launch, has to be installed on different machines separately, has a harder time sync’ing data across different machines, and can involve fear for users they could be installing a virus. The upsides of downloadables are they often can do cooler things than websites, since they can access files and the operating system directly and operate with greater speed, they do not have cross-browser incompatibilities (or even require a browser to be running), and they can potentially offer greater privacy.

Even with those benefits for downloadables, in the past few years, users (and therefore investors) had started to focus more of their attention on web-based experiences, for everything from social networking to gaming to email. Then, a funny thing happened–smartphones–in particular the iPhone with its appstore. Although it’s transparent to most users, every app that’s installed through the Appstore–in fact, every app that runs on an iPhone or an Android device–is a downloadable. While many users access various experiences on their smartphones via websites in their mobile browser, the fact is, on smartphones, downloadable apps are far more popular than the websites, with several billion apps having been downloaded in the past two years.

Why are downloadables so popular on smartphones relative to desktop computers? Mainly because on smartphones, due to their more controlled environments, the negatives of downloadables are reduced–the apps tend to be small and download quickly, installation is automatic, the threat of viruses is essentially zero–while the positives are enhanced. As a result, users have fully embraced downloadables on smartphones as well as the appstores from which they come. In fact, users are so comfortable with appstores the concept has now translated back to the desktop environment. Google has launched the Chrome appstore for (downloadable) webapps; Apple has launched the Mac Appstore; Intel has launched an appstore for Windows and Microsoft has announced a similar store coming soon.

Interestingly, the desktop appstores retain the positive features from the mobile appstores: fast, clean, trusted installs; easy discovery of new apps; and simple, familiar interfaces that remind users of the mobile stores they know and like. In other words, what’s old–desktop downloadables–is new again.

I have to admit I have somewhat mixed feelings about the resurgence of downloadable apps on the desktop as it relates to KlickFu. On the one hand, I enjoyed the “retro” aspect of working on a project most developers (and investors) thought had become passe. On the other hand, it is gratifying to see the community start to embrace the benefits of downloadable software again, even if only for a while, and hopefully it will make it easier for folks to see the benefits of an application like KlickFu.

A few weeks ago, I made the switch from iPhone to Android. Initially I had been holding out for a second-gen 4G Android phone with excellent battery life, however, I am starting work on an Android app for a consulting project this week so I figured this was a good time to make the move.

Initially I had ordered an HTC EVO 4G, then when I saw the super positive reviews of the Samsung Nexus S, I returned the EVO in favor of the Nexus. Since I have been using the Nexus for a few weeks now, I thought I would post a brief review.

Overall, I like the Nexus S and Android a lot. All things considered, I prefer it to the iPhone. Keep in mind, I have been using an iPhone 3G–running iOS 4, which is slow enough on the 3G that it has apparently spawned a class action lawsuit against Apple, since there is no way to downgrade back to iOS3–although I have used an iPod Touch 4G fairly extensively as well as an iPhone 4 at work, so I have a decent basis to compare.

Pros:

• Physical design- Nice, sleek design. Feels very compact and light in the hand. Personally, I prefer the plastic case, although some reviewers say it feels cheap. The slight curve in the front face gives it a nice feel while talking on the phone.
• Phone calls – My iPhone consistently dropped at least 30% of my calls, regardless of where I made them, and in particular in my home, which was awful. T-Mobile coverage has been a bit spotty–I could not get signal in some fairly urban parts of SW Florida last week–but overall it is better than AT&T (on the iPhone) and I have not dropped a single call.
• Integration with Google Accounts – This is excellent, maybe the best feature of the phone/OS. All my contacts are instantly available in Gmail as well as text messaging. As you would expect with Google, searching for contacts is instant.
• Google Apps – The implementations of Gmail and Google Reader are outstanding. Archiving messages is actually faster on the phone than on my laptop, since it is easier to touch than click in the small boxes on the left side. Google Reader is highly readable and also quite fast.
• Speed - Once I got accustomed to the navigation buttons for Back and Options, navigating around the phone is quite fast. Bringing up web pages feels quite speedy too.
• Battery Life – A charge easily lasts all day, unless you spend over an hour playing an app like Angry Birds (not that I have done this, of course), which is a big power drain. I haven’t bought an extra battery yet, but I like the fact I can swap in a second battery if I need to, unlike the iPhone.
• Facebook App – The FB app on Android is outstanding. Super fast with extra features I had not seen on the 3G/iOS4 version.
• Openness - Personally, I like feeling free to access whatever apps I want in the Android market, without worrying whether they were approved by Steve Jobs. In general, I prefer the open/DIY quality of Android, similar to Windows vs. MacOS. Of course, I am biased on this now, since we could someday adapt KlickFu to Android, whereas Apple would likely block KF, which directly modifies the OS user experience.
• Tethering/Wifi – One of the great things about Android is the ability to use the phone to provide Internet service over the 3G network to a nearby laptop. This feature is sorely lacking on the iPhone, and once you gain “root” admin privileges on the Android device, it is free.

Cons:

• Keyboard - I find the software keyboard on the Android significantly harder to use than iPhone, although my performance has improved in the last two weeks, so maybe I will get to parity here. Also, I have not tried the Swype system on Nexus S–as far as I can tell, it is not available for this phone  yet (?), so that may help as well.
• Geo-Location - The Samsung Galaxy, on which the Nexus S is based, is known for having a major problem geo-locating while moving (e.g., driving) and the Nexus S shares this quality. This is frustrating for sure but not a deal breaker.
• Zoom – Seems inconsistent when you can use pinch to zoom in and out or not. When it works, it’s great.
• User-Interface Navigation – Android is not quite as slick as Apple for certain types of navigation. For example, it takes an extra gesture to see how *many* text/voice messages you have compared to iPhone, and then it is a bit harder to read. After using the phone for a few weeks, this is not a big deal and I am sure some of these will be improved.

As you can see, there are a lot more pros on my list than cons. While there are some ways in which Android is not quite as slick as iPhone, the Nexus S is an excellent device with a lot of great qualities. Personally, I am very happy with the switch.

There has been a lot of talk recently about social games like Farmville and Mafia Wars and their potential value to investors or acquirers. However, there is another social game that may be even larger in terms of its overall impact and value to partners–fantasy football.

For those who do not follow pro sports closely, in the past 10 years, the NFL has grown to become by far the most popular sport in the U.S. As a small example, earlier this year, an early regular season NFL game outdrew a World Series baseball game in TV ratings by a wide margin. Whereas numerous professional baseball and basketball teams complain they are losing money and the leagues are considering contracting to fewer markets, most NFL teams are wildly profitable, even though many of the top teams are in small markets like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. According to Forbes’ 2010 analysis of NFL franchise values, the net worths of individual NFL teams range from $700 million to $1.8 billion, making the total league valuation around $32 billion.

There are many reasons why the NFL has become so popular in recent years, such as the salary cap and free agency that enable smaller market teams to compete with bigger ones and also ensure that nearly any team can become a contender in a given year. However, I believe another major factor in the rise of the NFL has been the explosion of fans playing fantasy football as a way to extend the NFL experience.

Evidence of the impact of fantasy football is everywhere–national NFL commentators routinely refer to players’ fantasy stats, separate from the outcome of the actual games; the players themselves openly discuss their fantasy rosters and their own fantasy performance; ESPN now airs a weekly 90-minute TV show with detailed breakdowns of every fantasy position including reports from their entire staff of game reporters; and most importantly, every NFL TV broadcast features a non-stop display of fantasy stats and reports in real-time. Even NFL stadiums now show fantasy stats so fans can track their fantasy peformance while they are at the games. The F/X network broadcasts a popular half-hour TV sitcom, now in its second year, called The League, which follows a fictional group of 30-something buddies as they play fantasy football throughout the season.

The NFL has embraced fantasy football for two excellent reasons: 1) lots of people are playing it; and 2) the people who do play it are much more highly engaged with the NFL’s product, watching (many) more games and watching those games more intently. It is estimated 18 million people regularly play fantasy football. Unlike Major League Baseball, which famously shunned its fantasy players for years as “stats nerds,” the NFL realizes there is a highly symbiotic relationship between real football and the fantasy variety. It is probably not an exaggeration to say the high level of engagement (especially TV viewership) driven by fantasy football has increased the value of the NFL itself by 15-20%, which would equate to $4.8-$6.4 billion of additional value, making it by far the highest value of any social game.

Why is it that fantasy football has become so popular? Other forms of betting on NFL games have existed for decades, such as betting on teams to win outright or by point spread, forming office pools to pick every game against the spread, or “survivor pools” to pick a single winner each week. How is fantasy football different from these forms and why is it more popular now? I can’t say for sure, however, here are some factors I believe are important:

• In fantasy football, every player is an owner. The model of all fantasy sports, unlike other types of betting, is that each player is actually an “owner,” who drafts and manages a team throughout the year. Each owner names his team, usually with inside references to other owners and teams, and team names can (and do) change throughout the year. When you own something, you feel inherently more connected to it.
• The league draft is a(n awesome) ritual. In order to create a fantasy football league, you must have an annual draft. As most wives of fantasy players know, the draft is sacrosanct and often takes place in a specific location (commonly referred to as “Las Vegas”). As most fantasy players know, the draft is a hilarious good time and usually something fantasy owners look forward to months in advance.
• Every team is unique. Because each team is drafted, with modifications made through trades and waiver wire pickups made throughout the year, each team is the custom creation of each owner, again increasing the sense of ownership and connection. As one NFL broadcaster explained, “If you’re watching your favorite NFL team and they lose, it’s their fault. If your fantasy team loses, it’s your fault.”
• Players compete against their friends. As games like Farmville and Bejeweled Blitz have shown, competing against your friends is inherently more compelling than playing against random strangers.
• Each player competes directly against a single person (friend) each week. Unlike typical office pools and even other fantasy sports, in fantasy football, you compete against a single player (friend) each week. This 1-on-1 engagement creates a different and more personal dynamic than other forms of betting.
• There is a “season” with playoffs and a title game. In fantasy football, each players compiles a won-loss record over the span of weeks. Usually in week 14 or 15, the top 4 or 6 teams compete in the league playoffs and then the championship game. This creates a story arc to the season similar to the actual NFL playoffs, with a more intense and gratifying payoff, especially for the winners.
• It forces players to learn the game in more detail. Because each owner must choose and decide on individual players each week, competitive owners (and most owners become competitive when facing potential non-stop ribbing from their friends) must track not only the details of their own players, but also those of their direct competitors each week and also other players they could potentially trade for or sign off waivers. As a result, fantasy owners tend to learn many more details about players and also the game strategies than they would if they were simply betting in “pick against the spread” pools. Learning more about the players and the game in general makes fantasy owners feel more knowledgeable and increases interest in games where otherwise the owner may not know or care about most of the players.
• Weekly modifications matter. Due to the constant injuries and changes that arise throughout the real NFL season, fantasy owners must constantly juggle their lineups and keep an eye out for players that may increase in value–as nerdy as this sounds, even non-stats-nerds get a lot of gratification and bragging rights by making timely roster decisions or discovering new emerging “sleeper” players before their friends.
• Fantasy football provides the perfect level of engagement for adult friends in 2010. Most importantly, in an age where friends from school or otherwise often move across the country and have various demands at different times through the year and the week, fantasy football is a perfect blend of competition and comeraderie that can be played together in real-time or across the country asynchronously, and creates an ongoing narrative that friends can bond over from year to year.

Whether by luck or intention, or maybe both, the NFL has helped create a highly profitable symbiotic relationship with its meta-experience, fantasy football. The only question now, for the fantasy league companies like Yahoo and ESPN, as well as the fantasy owners themselves, is what are they/we going to do next year if there is a player lockout in the (real) NFL?

It’s been a while since I last posted. I did not intend to take a long break, although I have kept fairly busy in the meantime, working on KlickFu and doing some consulting for the L.A.-based flash sales fashion company, HauteLook–releasing an iPhone app and a mobile website and working on other projects. Also, I have built up a small backlog of topics I want to post on, of which this is the first.

Recently, I was asked to speak at an upcoming offsite for the Google Consumer Operations (ConOps) team on the subject of innovation. I had been intending to write on this subject already, especially as it relates to creating and refining products, so I wanted to post some ideas here to iterate and get feedback.

First, I do not consider myself an expert on innovation, per se, however, I have developed some practices and concepts I have found useful, so hopefully they will be helpful to some others as well.

1. Start with a specific target user–then zoom out.

Every great product starts with a user. If you don’t have users, you don’t need a product–and the best products are made better by the users themselves. When thinking of new products or features, I find it helpful to start with one specific user in mind, i.e. to “zoom in” on one particular person. This user should be someone you would picture as being especially passionate about this product, one who would use the product extensively, send comments and suggestions, contribute to the community of users, and recommend it highly to his friends.

In the best case, this initial user is you yourself. To build a great experience, you need to empathize as directly as possible with the feelings of the specific user–what does she love, what does she hate, what is she annoyed by, what does she wish would happen automatically, what is she thrilled by or concerned about? It is easiest to imagine these feelings if the user is you. If it happens the user is not you, for example, if you are developing a kids’ game or an enterprise purchasing system or a mobile phone for seniors, that’s fine, but make sure you do everything you can by way of interviews, research, background reading, etc. to understand the specific target user as much as possible.

Once you have zoomed in on one specific user, you will want to zoom out stepwise to identify other groups of users who ultimately will be interested in your product. You can do this formally, by actually writing down and naming the groups, or informally by simply forming mental pictures of these different groups, which you will refer back to as you create and define the product. The first zoom-out group would be people in the same general category of the initial user, but who have slightly different needs or usage patterns or attitudes. The next group may be users who have similar functional needs but who work in a different industry or comprise a different demographic group.

For example, with Facebook, the initial user was most likely Mark Zuckerberg. Zooming out, the next group of users may have been his immediate group of friends; the next may have been more overtly social college students, then all college students, then high school students, then business networkers, then twenty-somethings and so on. The point is not to make a detailed grid of everyone who will eventually use your product–instead, the idea is get a fairly clear picture of who some of the most important groups may be, so you can iterate back and forth in your mind as you consider the product and features to design something that is awesome for the initial user(s) and still highly useful for larger and larger groups of people.

2. Identify the atomic moments of delight in your product–then zoom out.

Now that you have a clear picture of who is going to use and value your product, the next step is to consider what it is about your product these users will love. In particular, it can be helpful to focus on very specific instants in using your product that will bring delight to users–especially, the instants your product will provide that no other product will.

For example, with Gmail, the atomic moments of delight may have been using a single hotkey (not a control-key) to open a message; archiving a message rather than dragging it to a folder or deleting it; viewing a threaded conversation in a single email; or seeing the huge amount of free storage relative to other web-based mail. For iPhone, they may have been seeing the sleek one-button design; sliding to activate the phone; using pinch-and-zoom to expand photos; navigating with Google Maps; or playing motion-based games like Super Monkey Ball. For KlickFu, they may be click-dragging on the desktop and seeing flowers or ninjas appear; or being able to create a doodle and share it on Facebook in only two clicks.

Just as you can zoom in and out thinking about your target users, you can do the same in considering how users will be delighted by your product. Once you have identified specific moments of delight, you can zoom out to think about larger, more conceptual ways users will love your new experience. For example, with Gmail, the more general delight may have come from users being impressed with the overall speed of the web-based email, feeling a sense of freedom by recalling items using instant search rather than folders, and generally loving the sleeker, more modern approach to email.

You can never be sure exactly what attributes of your product may delight users–this is why you will want to launch as soon as possible and iterate rapidly. However, considering what specific moments as well as larger experiences will be especially great for users may help you come up with new ideas for features or decide which features are most important and which should be changed or removed. (If you cannot name three specific moments of delight that are new and unique in your product’s version 1, you may not be ready to launch yet.)

3. Identify specific user problems you can obsess about–then zoom out.

For the most part, products exist to solve problems for users. Even games and entertainment solve the “problem” of not having enough fun or interesting stuff to do. Hopefully you have already identified one or more problems being experienced by your target users that are causing significant pain, even if those users are not explicitly aware of this pain. The goal of this next task is to create a list, either formal or informal, of the problems you are excited to solve. Again, this is an area where the zoom-in/zoom-out concept can be helpful.

For example, with Facebook, the user problems being solved, moving from specific to more general, may have been: there was no easy way to view profile photos of all the users’ fellow classmates; no easy way to view relationship status; no easy way to share party photos; no easy way to keep track of updates from friends; not enough fun ways to kill time during class or at work; and so on.

No product can solve all the problems users are having in a certain area, especially not in version 1. However, by thinking about all the problems users may be having, starting with very specific issues and then zooming out to identify the larger ones, you should be able to identify several key areas that are the most important to solve initially and longer term, to prepare for the next step.

4. Use everything you see to stimulate ideas for innovation.

Once you have identified your target users, have a clear idea of what problems may be most useful to solve, and are thinking in terms of creating moments and themes of delight, the next question is how do you come up with new ways to solve these problems. In other words, how do you innovate?

Obviously, there is no single “right” answer to this question. However, I believe there are some methods or best practices you can use that may help you generate more ideas, and hopefully more useful ideas, faster. In order, these practices are: a) review the competition; b) imagine something automatic; c) randomly apply other models; and d) free-associate based on your surroundings.

• Review the competition. No rocket science here, but before you start to innovate on your solution it can be helpful to review what has come before, if only so you can identify and remind yourself the pain points. As Picasso (may have) said, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” It’s okay to use certain elements of the competitors if you know specifically how you are improving them or innovating in the most important areas.
• Imagine something automatic. One of the most powerful ways to innovate is to ask yourself, “What if this process happened automatically and required zero work by the user?” A great example is the Facebook newsfeed. In answering the question, “how could users see what’s new on their friends’ pages automatically (i.e., with no work)?”–collecting all the new changes from a user’s friends and aggregating them on the user’s homepage was a major innovation and transformed the value of Facebook. Anther version of this question could be: “If the user could snap his fingers and have this process work magically in any way possible, what would that look like–now what is the closest we can come to that with real technology?”
• Randomly apply other models. Many innovations are simply new combinations of existing ideas or models. Another way to generate new ideas for your product is to randomly “try on” different existing (highly successful) models in your mind to see if any of the combinations is interesting. For example, say you were generating ideas for a new dating site, you might ask yourself questions like, “What if this site had a newsfeed (like Facebook), or a Q&A section (Quora), or an auction function (Ebay), or a limited time availability (HauteLook), or a daily group adventure (Groupon)?” You could even consider more far-flung ideas that seemingly have no connection to a dating site, such as, “What if this site published all my activity (Blippy), showed me random videos (Chatroulette), had me run a virtual bar (CafeWorld), or had a penny auction with multiple bids (QuiBids)? The more models you have read about and used at least a few times yourself, the larger your “vocabulary” of models will be, and the greater potential for innovation. So read about and use as many sites and products and services as possible.
• Free associate with everything you see. Another method for generating product ideas is to ruminate on it throughout the day (preferably several days) and free associate with everything you see to create new random possibilities. This can be particularly useful in generating naming ideas, but also helpful in creating features. For example, say you were working on new methods for users to provide expertise to each other on Google Apps, you could use the following to generate a list of (mostly bad) ideas, that could eventually lead to something productive: watching TV (users could create videos describing app features); seeing a political debate (users could debate each other on the best ways to perform certain tasks and other users could vote); drinking a glass of wine (users could list a few of their hobbies or preferences, or create a short descriptive title for themselves); or looking at a coffee table with items on it (organize helpful tips with the “foundational” concepts first, followed by more specialized topics after that).

While you are using each of these methods, the idea is to constantly refer back to your users, their problems or issues, and the moments that may delight them–and to constantly zoom in and out of each while you are doing this. For example, as you think, “Could it be useful for users to write brief descriptions of themselves, or list what super-power they would possess if they could choose only one?” consider how you would feel about creating this description yourself, or seeing it next to someone else’s help suggestions. Then think about the larger groups of users and how they would feel. When you think about whether it would be useful for users to create debate videos about the best way to create a collage in Picasa, consider what it would be like to make such a video–would it be fun, illuminating, and empowering–or tedious, technically challenging, or annoying? Would it create moments of delights for creators and viewers that tie powerfully back to the central problems users are trying to solve or be more of a distraction. Many if not most of the ideas you will have will be unproductive, if not downright uncomfortable or ridiculous. That’s okay, the more ideas you have, especially ideas that are a bit different from the ideas others have had–and especially, the more open you are to at least considering those ideas–the more likely you are to come up with a product or service that contains some true innovation.

Yesterday, after returning from my trip to the Bay Area this weekend, I qualified for a free Rapid Rewards trip on Southwest airlines and received a confirmation email with the award codes. Yet the email did not include a link to post an announcement to Facebook or any other element of social interaction or social gaming–for example, to see which of my Facebook friends had qualified for trips or who had earned the most credits in the past year.

In many ways, frequent flyer programs are the original social games. Users receive points for activity, they can level up based on combined actions over time, many consider achieving high mileage levels a status symbol, and some go to great lengths to get there. Yet, for some reason, while Zynga, Foursquare, and others have demonstrated the power of enabling users to compete with their friends for points-based activity, for some reason, Southwest and the other airlines seem to have missed this wave.

As far as I know, I have never seen an update on Facebook when a friend has received a new travel award or reached a new level of frequent traveler status. For that matter, I have never been asked to post to Facebook when I booked a new flight or completed a trip, nor have I been asked if I would like to share my point status with friends as a game or competition (I probably would have no privacy issue with this).

Frequent flyer programs are already hugely successful points-based activity systems. The problem is, right now they seem to be games of solitaire. Hopefully, the airlines and other travel companies soon will take them to the next level.

It has been over 40 days since the BP oil rig explosion and blow-out that has been spewing 15K-20K barrels per day into the Gulf and there is still no end in sight. Aside from the media coverage of the potential devastating impact on the environment and way of life of the people in the affected areas, there is now a lot of discussion about the events that led up to the explosion and how the government and the energy industry can prevent similar events in the future.

All that is good and necessary. There are certainly steps the government should take to ensure better enforcement of regulations in the future, such as separating revenue-collection from policing to reduce conflicts of interest. However, these discussions and the coverage of the attempt to cap the well are missing the larger point–why is it that neither BP nor the government had taken any steps to develop the expertise necessary to fix catastrophic problems with deep-water wells before allowing drilling to take place?

BP is now on its fourth and apparently final attempt to minimize oil flow from the damaged well before the relief wells they claim will permanently fix the problem in August. As with the other three attempts, BP has warned the odds of this fix working are low due to the difficulty of the fix and the fact “it has never been attempted before at this depth.”

This is the problem. Analysts now estimate the spill will cost BP $40 billion, which is roughly 25% of the value of the company. Some investors believe BP will be placed into receivership or could be broken up and sold as a result of the crisis. (Never mind that current legislation limits BP’s civil liability to $75 million or the government is discussing raising this limit to $10 billion–Congress can and probably will retroactively remove any limit on the liability.)

Accidents happen. Always. Corruption happens. Bending the rules happens. Given the massive cost for BP, the environment, and the local population, it should have been a no-brainer for BP and regulators to spend whatever budget was necessary to be able to confidently manage this type of situation and dozens of other possible scenarios. I do not claim to know any details of oil drilling, however, I have to believe with a budget of $1-$2 billion, BP and the government could have developed–and fully tested at similar depth–the types of techniques they are attempting to use now. They could have and should have staffed a team of scientists and engineers full-time to do nothing but simulate catastrophic failures and practice containing them.

Yesterday it was reported that for the full size of the spill since the start of the crisis, the U.S. as a nation burns through this amount of oil every 5 minutes. With that type of massive energy need, it is inevitable we will have accidents that, while they are small relative to our energy need, are huge in terms of real environment and economic impact for millions of Americans. Preventing accidents is important. Developing the ability to successfully contain them is critical and this should be part of the plan for the future.

Full disclosure: I have been a BP shareholder for several months as a hedge against a major global political crisis. I am certainly paying the price now.