My Internet Notebook

Ken Norton talks about how to hire a great product manager. In the process, he pointed to a number of important issues in shipping great products, with or without a Product Manager:-)

Personally I think the role of Product Manager is too essential to not have in a product organization. But if you happen to be in a company that does not currently have such a person, you should definitely step up to the challenge and play the role of Product Manager.

Just downloaded and played with Microsoft PocketPC 2003 Device Emulator technology preview. Overall first impression is pretty good. Easyto install and setup. I loaded AvantGo MBA client and salesforce.com Offline Edition onto the emulator, and it works without a glitch. The emulation speed and screen resolution seem to be two areas that could use some improvement.

If you want to use it, here is a simple five step process I went through:

1. Download and install ‘PocketPC 2003 Device Emulator’
2. Register device emulator (either from Programs shortcut or command line)
3. Start device emulator manager
4. Start one of the device emulators
5. Start ActiveSync (3.7.1 or above) and use “Get Connected” to establish a partnership between emulator and ActiveSync.

It is official: a reduced price Windows XP becomes available in developing countries!

My personal belief is that the special Windows XP edition is going to do more harm to Microsoft than good. Now they have two different products to develop, support and maintain. You can bet that the users of reduced XP would ask for more features. And MSFT is going to get different feature requests from the two groups …

Eventually I think MSFT would have to reduce the price of the OS across the board and have a unified product instead. Lost revenue can come from higher end value added services or products.

Peoplesoft founder David Duffield is working on “building the next generation of enterprise applications to address a fundamental paradigm shift in how enterprise applications serve the extended enterprise”. Details on the new company’s products are still elusive. But a glance at one of their job posting could give us some hints:

Application Developer: Responsible for working with state-of-the-art definitional OO development tools to build the next generation of web-based business applications. Requires a familiarity with and/or a commitment to object-oriented applications design and business application development experience.

http://www.davesnextmove.com

Installing Lotus Domino isn’t easy but it is not that hard either. I recently had to install Domino server 6.5 and found this document very concise and helpful.

Installing Lotus Domino Server on Windows

Lotus Domino Administrator 6 Help – The Domino Server Setup program