"Should I buy Notion Ink Adam" My recommendation for PO3

Alright people, some are asking this question and landing on my blog. I've commented on it before.

What I have to say is clear from all my other posts, read them.

My recommendation?

- If you are a hardcore techie with lots of time in your basement to tinker, ROM, root, flash, wipe, tweak, mod and what not, then do whatever you want. Buy 10 of them.

- If $400 is loose change for you then sure, buy it

If you're anyone else - Don't buy. But here's what you can do - let the ardent followers buy PO3 - wait for their responses and how NI support deals with issues.

Keep in mind that there has not been a single post from Notion Ink explaining how they will ensure that the problems of PO1 and 2 will not happen again - in fact, not even a acknowledgement of the problem for 4 months until they released an update. That means you buy PO3 purely on your 'I love NI' faith and little else.

2. Make an objective assessment of what you need from your tablet ("I want a dual purpose e-reader+tablet" / "I want a great easy to use tablet" / "I want to multiple USB ports" / etc.) and then see if Adam, in its current state (a few months from now), satisfies it. By then they should be out with Honeycomb (June 27th is the promised date) and you would also know more about iOS5, maybe next gen iPad, Asus etc. to see how Adam is keeping up.

3. My views are clear on all this - so if you consider me biased, do spend time on the official forum (http://conclave.notionink.com), the official blog (http://notionink.wordpress.com) and 2 other useful forums (http://www.notionaddicts.com and http://www.tabletroms.com) and make up your mind. After objectively considering all the opinions, views and gut feel, make a decision and don't buy it. /snigger

group hug...sniff...I love NI's Beta Testing Strategy

So a new update is out and faithful followers are so happy. There's much talk of amazing feat by NI, appreciation due, yay PO3 is out and so on.

I don't know, it must feel great to be part of a beta test project for which you pay the company.

What do you stand for, Notion Ink?

Ever heard of cartoonists saying they love politicians because of all the material they (politicians) give them? I feel  like that about NI. I can write about so many things that I don't know where to start. Do I talk about their financial projections? Do I talk about their leadership style or the support style of its ardent fans? Do I point out to people who pointed out, months ago, that this wasn't going well? Do I quote gems from their interviews? Or nuggets from the blog? Or do I list 3 things I think they should do now to salvage what's left? Oh the sweet pleasure of infinite sources of material.

Instead, I'll talk about what Notion Ink stands for. Or let's make it simple - what do they do? Let's see...hmm... I'll pick a few examples of companies that are doing pretty well / are on path to, and started out small, and write their tagline (from their website). 2 hardware, 2 software.

Roku - "Roku is a little box that allows you to instantly stream tons of entertainment on your TV. Watch movies and TV shows from Netflix,Hulu Plus or Amazon Instant Video, listen to music on Pandora, catch the latest ballgame, and more — it's all available whenever you want it."

Boxee - "A lot of your favorite shows and movies are already available on the Internet. Boxee is a device that finds them and puts them on your TV. It’s easy to use and even better, there’s no monthly fee"

Zendesk - "Web based help desk software with an elegant support ticket system and a self service customer support platform"

Tripit - "tripit turns all your hotel, flight and rental car confirmation emails into simple, mobile travel itineraries just by hitting forward"

When you read the tagline, you kind of already know what they do.

These taglines are focused - and there's a good reason. Small companies cannot do everything. Notion Ink cannot be a hardware, firmware, software, research lab, social collaboration expert, trainer (yes, I read an article where Rohan Shravan mentioned they got 50 students from a local engineering school and trained them in 2 months to create 'professional' applications!) company. Let's visit their website - OK, I can't go through minutes of flash to figure out what they do, so let's head out to 'About', you know - what does this company do?!

So here's what we have: (bold emphasis mine) source: http://www.notionink.com/about.php

Notion Ink is a firm dedicated to pushing computing devices towards singularity; Adam is just the beginning of that dream set in motion. We're out to challenge the norm, question existing ideologies of function and form, tochange the curve of our conversation with technology, be it by redefining the species or creating a new breed of intelligent, intuitive devices to reckon with.

Let's take a deep breath. What the fuck does that even mean? WHAT DO THEY DO?! 

I WANT TO PUT MONEY IN THE COMPANY BUT WHAT THE **** DO THEY DO? 

I WANT TO WORK FOR THEM BUT WHAT THE **** DO THEY DO? 

I WORK THERE WHAT THE **** ARE WE TRYING TO DO?! 

Push computing devices to singularity? change curve of conversation with technology?Redefine species (what species?). I mean, I'm an MBA and I don't write stuff like this. Who came up with this priceless junk?

Simple messaging is powerful because it tells the customers what they can expect to get, it tells investors what space the company plays in, it tells potential employees what kind of company domain they can work in, and it keeps current employees focused on doing a great job to fulfill that promise.

It also makes it easy to keep a consistent message wherever the company speaks, presents, discusses or advertises. As a small company it's important to be focused and know what not to do. Notion Ink is all over the place. Read the CEO's blog. They're talking about some major project in Bangalore. So here is the text from the blog post

source:

http://notionink.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/closer-to-the-blue/ - see the last paragraph.

"This summer Notion Ink is starting a unique (but mostly concealed, though we will open it for a small number of people in different domains who match the criterion set forth by the team) project which will run in-n-around Bangalore area for next 5-6 months. We’re hiring a very large number of contributors from colleges, clubs, various groups and, from diverse fields. The aim of this project is to create a mature “front and back end” system before we open it for the world. Design and develop a scalable model which is optimized for the goal and comprehensive enough to cover a majority of creative domains. We’re be working on the fascinating fields of the natural language processing, relationship extractions, algorithms like YAGO and snow-ball, and the dream behind all our efforts, the BLISS system.

It’s time OS’s move away from static content and embrace the dynamic, ever evolving state"

Holy crap. Tablet design. hardware, supply chain, mumbo jumbo BLISS system, OS design, natural language, relationship extractions blah blah wah wah dah dah. WHAT DOES NOTION INK ACTUALLY DO?

NI -  go back to your drawing board, and try to write a single sentence to explain what your little company does. I'm not joking. Seriously. It is a powerful way to focus the management (because the investors are clueless, going by lack of any progress in changing perception).

Write down one sentence that explains to casual observers what you do. For e.g. "We make great Android tablets that cost less" OR "We design beautiful interfaces for Android" OR "We are a research lab that provides manufacturers with great tablet designs" OR "We are an education company creating intuitive applications for the tablet market" You know,  whatever it is. Write it. Fight over it. Decide where you want to play and what your audience is.

In the end, decide what you want to be to the world. Then organize your company - budgets, operating structures, marketing, hiring practices, supply chain around it. Do one thing. If it means killing off Adam, do it. Do well what you do, even if you do little. Just head over to your latest blog post today, Rohan, even your die-hardest fans are beginning to give up. Your customer base is reducing to all of ... maybe 20 people.

Yes we know you're all young and super bright but don't let your hubris and arrogance run you over.
Unless, of course, you have a super duper secret mega million deal cooking somewhere you're not telling us.

[rah rah edited]

I moved. Latest post's out there

(I just prefer blogger, that's all)

Just fickle minded. WordPress simple layout is nicer, so sticking back to this.

An exciting new update?

Out there at the Notion Ink Conclave, 'King' tells the subjects to wait for an exciting new update. Don't know what's in it, or when it will come out, but he promises it will be exciting.

I don't mind when companies say that something is coming soon without giving firm dates, as long as they show life once a while and say it's being worked on.

How revolutionary will this update be? Who knows. I'll give it the benefit of doubt. And wait.

(Those of you who haven't seen this user comment (see the first one), left by someone who appears to be an experienced tech. journalist, should read it. Very informative.)

"... not rushing by releasing sub-standard products"

Look at the last paragraph in this Nov 2010 blog post

http://notionink.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/week-end-special-x/

"Notion Ink is about bringing that ‘future’ faster towards us (but not rushing by releasing sub-standard products, we are here to stay for centuries)."

(bold emphasis mine)

I did not say that. He did. The CEO of Notion Ink said that Notion Ink would not rush to release sub-standard products. You tell me, did he? Unless of course you have a whole new definition of what sub-standard means.

He did not say that Pre-Orders would be rushed and would be buggy but post Pre-Order would be high quality. He did not say that early buyers would get sub-standard products. He did say Notion Ink would not rush and release sub-standard products.

If one of could point a post to me stating he said the contrary, or even a post where he came and up and explained why the software is so buggy, I'm willing to give this a rest.

Please don't tell me why we should 'overlook this', 'ignore that',' let it go','give it a rest'.

This brings to my mind an interesting leadership philosophy... that's for another post. Enough for now.

(oh, he said this too...)

Should Notion Ink Adam sell on Amazon?

When Notion Ink announced in their blog their Kindle pact with Amazon, many got quite excited. Some went as far as wondering if something was afoot between Amazon and NI and if Notion Ink could sell Adam on Amazon.

Calm down people. Amazon's prime interest is to put Kindle on as many devices as possible so people buy books from them. My grandmother could design a Tablet and Amazon will probably let me put Kindle on it.

Anyway, let's move on. Would it be possible that NI could sell Adam on Amazon? Should it?

Let's assume that NI will sell on Amazon, indulge me here. For a moment, forget about NI. Look at it from Amazon's perspective and what happens in a large retail organization that's looking to sell new products as part of its range.

First, some range/products/category manager (different titles) has to say 'hey, I think Adam is a great product to sell on our website because it will sell gazillions/will make us good margins/will bring us brand/etc' and then they decide to range it in their product line.

These managers are typically measured against several metrics - revenues, profitability, quality of products etc. so they need to make sure that what they range will sell, sell with good profits, sell with less returns or problems, be available, be supplied on time, or not create a negative image of the retailer, and so on.

Big retailers are also usually ball-breakers with small suppliers. They try to extract as many concessions as possible (plenty of instances of retailers driving their suppliers to bankruptcy) and will usually be tough on quality issues. Go down a relative benchmark more than a couple of times, boom - they pull the product off the 'shelves' and the supplier sits on unused inventory. It could get worse - supplier may have to pay penalty fines.

You see, it isn't all peaches and rainbows if NI could get listed on Amazon. If NI makes a loss per unit sold, then the more Amazon sells, the deeper they drive NI to loss! Not only that, it makes no sense for a small company to get onto a big retailer without first sorting its own serious quality and supply chain issues. Not only will Amazon punish NI if there are quality issues, the buyers will bury them with 1-star reviews, which is a surefire way of killing the brand forever. Selling on Amazon means NI acknowledges that it is now mass market and most buyers there are not l337 hack0rs and the tablet must need no tinkering.

Long way to go. Don't wish for something you can't handle, not yet.

Public interest in Notion Ink Adam is dying

Here's a few developments.

See the image below? It's a simple line graph of the last 1 year of Notion Ink's blog comments. Each month is represented by a point that denotes the maximum comments on a blog post in that month, so in a sense it's the 'best of the month response'

The spikes you see? that's around product launch and around. The last 2 months? Steep fall.

For any startup company in new product development, garnering and keeping consumer interest is key. It's super important as that's how you get to critical mass. In the 'better situation', the graph would be on a continuous upward curve signaling greater acceptance and visibility.

Word of mouth, press, advertisements, viral marketing - all of it contributes. NI's key viral marketing strategy was - well, it's blog. And it's going downhill as a result of the happenings in the last few months. Not a good sign at all. Public interest in the Notion Ink Adam tablet is waning, dying. It's in trouble.

Now, examine the fan following via sites and other interest groups.

NotionInkHacks - originally focused on NI. Now moved on as TabletRoms so they can 'expand'

NotionAddicts - the only vibrant viable alternative around. And some members there are talking about keeping the 'negativity' out. Too bad. We'd all be positive if we could. The number of active members on it?Actually quite small.

NotionInkFan - fan no more. Stopped all updates since March

NotionInkSpot - another fan site. Much advertising of it was done on the blog and on NI conclave. Now appears to be dead.

NotionInkIng - well, they say on their site that "Unfortunately, Notion Ink is not doing so great so we moved on to another project. We moved to AppEngineer.net and making Android apps. See you there!"

Any other? Nope. Not that I know of. All of it above is fact - not some magical fluff and definition wrangling. It's a sign that people who care about NI are beginning to move on and there is no fresh inflow of interest. New updates? They'll make a few hundred happy (maybe, hopefully) but will it bring in fresh customers? Nope. Don't think so. That process should have started in Jan if NI did not do a mockery of it's initial release.

Positive or negative reinforcement? I don't know - but at least there's someone out there in NI's official forum now answering questions. That's a good sign, and I will recognize it where it's due. But they have a huge problem in reverse logistics and a few forum responses is too little, too late.

I would love to have some of NI's customers!

No, really. I would love to have some of NI's customers. Just take a look at some of the forum posts and articles. I have rarely met such a patient group of customers who will not only give up their money but staunchly stand behind a company and find excuses for its performance.

Is Adam a poor quality tablet? Nah. It's all your fault for buying it. They never said they'd give you a good quality product, I mean how dare you even expect something that's good quality or well supported? Didn't you read between the lines in the blog and assume it would be beta quality at best, you moron?

Wouldn't it be great if I could build such a fan following? I could use lots of words, give you a product that 'kind of works', take your money, ignore your support needs, and then have you defend me against those whiny bastards who dare to criticize me.

Wouldn't I LOVE that! The cool thing is many of them will blame the customers for buying my wares instead of asking me to mend my ways, that's even sweeter.

"My next goal is to make Notion Ink best in its customer relations" Not.

On Dec 11 2010, in a blog post, Rohan said this:

"My next goal is to make Notion Ink best in its customer relations and whole of my energy will go into making this happen. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions on this topic."

The blog post generated over 3,000 comments. People cared about this issue. They said so too. And here we are, 5 months later. What does this tell you?

The CEO makes statements he has no intention of following through

or

The CEO makes statements without thinking through

or

The CEO makes statements but has no ability to make it happen

or

The CEO makes statements that his team cannot carry through

or

This is a really weak CEO with no energy at all, because clearly 'all his energy' amounts to .... nothing.

Don't hate me. Just go through  his blog with a little more critical eye, please. And find me another CEO blog where the executive makes these many empty statements and does not follow through at all.

So let me reiterate. Do I complain because I can't stand a start-up making mistakes? No. I complain because this start-up couldn't care less about the difficulties of its customers or their feedback.

Now that is unacceptable.

Irresponsible Journalism - A.K.A Garbage masquerading as an article

Recently I read this article quoted on a forum. It's from someone who was 'inspired' by his Adam tablet and wrote the article in a moment of inspiration and posted it on the first draft (I did not make it up. The author himself posted so on the Notion Ink blog comments on May 6th "I wrote this article in exactly 30 mins, in one draft. That’s what inspiration does to a writer")

That's why it's garbage and it's embarrassing. Let's dissect it a bit, shall we? And then you decide if I am allowed to be pissed about this article and I'll end the post with why I'm upset.

1. Sensationalist title -  "Tablet wars: India’s Adam takes a bite of Apple’s iPad"

For most of us regular folk, this would mean that Adam is stealing market share from iPad - i.e. Apple is selling less of iPads because people are buying Adam. Let's put that to perspective - Apple sold nearly 15 million tablets in 2010 and it's been a few million this year too. If I take the pre-orders as part of 2010 just to be conservative (the overall market will be much bigger in 2011 anyway), then Adam's market share was, somewhere around, say 0.0125%. Apple? 75%.

Let me repeat that.

Apple: 75%

Adam: 0.0125%, in other words Apple sold  about 6000 times more Tablets than Adam did. Therefore, Adam took no 'bite' of Apple.

Stop calling it the iPad killer even before the damn Tablet is available for the broader market.

Let's continue for a few more gems.

2. Poor & pure speculation - "But now comes the hardware hunt led by Indian tablet computer maker Notion Ink and suddenly the likes of Apple are getting nervous."

Apple's getting nervous of Adam and the hardware hunt is led my Adam?! It's OK to speculate, but it needs to have some sense or logic to it.

3. Oh, the irony - "The Adam also suffered at the hands of amateurish tech writer" guess it needed the most amateur one to make amends...

4.  Mountain out of a molehill - "who managed a coup of sorts by poaching people from iTunes" Wait! Wait! All Rohan mentioned on the blog was that they hired the support team from iTunes. That's it. And all you need to do is spend time to do some research to see how good NI's "support" is. Looks like they hired the wrong bunch. There was no 'coup' here, sheesh.

5. Then, the total WTF moment -  "Bangalore is not yet the technological epicentre of the known universe, but after the Adam it can legitimately aspire to that title" What?! The Tablet isn't really available, it's plagued with problems, disastrous public release, terrible support, and it's put Bangalore at the technological epicenter of the known universe! I don't know whether to feel insulted or elated. I'd like a country and a city recognized for something achieved, not for hot air and empty back thumping. At least limit the praise to what has been achieved so far, you know, before the pre-orders (!) and wait before you gorilla beat your chest. Action first, talk later.

My problem isn't giving praise where it's due, but it is when such sensationalism clouds judgment and reality and it's plain insulting. Of course, there's the lack of fact and wrong data too (cheapest iPad is $800? Huh? I got my iPad2 16GB with 3G for 700..)

I am willing to recognize that Notion Ink did try something new, in a market that isn't known much for innovation. The young team did capture imagination and showed promise. Let us recognize them for that. But don't try to project that to something that isn't true. Adam hasn't "arrived" except in the minds of some fervent fans. It has many problems to resolve and so far has shown no maturity or inclination to learn from the problems its initial customer faced.

Please, stop calling it iPad killer. Please. You just sound stupid.

Notion Ink Adam PO3 Pre-Order : Should you buy?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Read on.

So, the CEO or 'Chief' or whoever it is just announced that Notion Ink's Adam Tablet PO3 (Purchase Order 3 - this is the third set of orders) is now available for 'intent to pre-order'. That means you can go to their site, register your email address, and be told if you can order it.  It says 'next round starting soon' and in Notion Ink lingo that mean could anywhere from weeks to months.

The question is - should you buy it?

Here's what I think - and I don't like to sit on the fence on it.

If you have extra money lying around and if you like to root/flash/whatever your Tablet to get it to work reliably and if you are satisfied with non-existent support and if you are thrilled that the most basic functionality actually works and if you are one of those who thinks that people who expect their purchases to work out of the box are retards. Then yes.

On the other hard, if you want to put your cold cash into something that just works. Then No.

After profound silence on and utterly lousy support for existing issues (software and hardware), they're ready to send a new batch...

I'm skeptical that this tone deaf company has actually actively resolved all outstanding issues and will ensure a quality product (and service) this time around.  If I'm proven wrong I will come here and say so.

Do your due diligence, read the forums, articles, blog responses and make your decision. If someone is raving about it, ask them this simple question

"Would you recommend it to me if I just want it to work because I have neither [the time / technical skills] nor the inclination to make it work"

If they tell you 'yes', then decide if you want to ignore all the signs and buy it instead.

So, I went to this restaurant called Notion Ink...

I was really waiting for them to open near my house. They were going to be a cool place and promised to revolutionize cuisine. Their flagship entree would be the best in the market - cheapest and most awesome. The chef kept us updated about the mouth watering dish called Adam and we waited in anticipation.

So, after a lot of delay, they opened and there were a bunch of expectant fans who rushed in. Very quickly most of them found that the food was kind of uncooked. If you wanted to eat it, you had to get your own pepper and salt. In a lot of cases it was frankly rotten so you had to throw most of the dressing away and put your own, sometimes with help from some free awesome external cooks. Many patrons yelled and screamed for the chef and his cooks to come fix the thing, but they pretty much ignored all the screams. They were busy in the kitchen - err, in the chef's office - posting messages on facebook about how awesome their cuisine would be and what was in store and how it would change the landscape. Meanwhile, lot of them could eat no more.

There were some patrons who did indeed get their pepper, salt, dressings and what not and spent hours cooking most of their food. Some of those got upset that the others actually wanted to sit at the table and eat their food! Many of those patient patrons were willing to wait if the chef got a new plate with "un-rotten" food.

A leading local newspaper sent a taster. He ate the food and wrote a pretty scathing review on the daily. Many objected to that the reviewer dared to comment on the quality of the food that was on his plate. Apparently he had to recook it and give better marks.

You know, unfortunately most of us either want to just sit and eat, or in the worst case, wait until we get the food we ordered. Not many of us want to cook our food and change its flavor in the restaurant.

So I, for example, then went to next restaurant called Apple. It's a little more expensive, they don't give you too much choice in the matter of what's in the dish. But I tell you - the dish tastes good, and I can sit down, pull up my knife and fork, and eat it quietly and enjoy it.

I'm not cooking my own darned food and be ignored by the chef when I go to a restaurant.

Flame on.