Innovation Incubator: First Blood, Part Deux

Hello all.

In an effort to try to get the incubation engines up and running again, I'll pose a few questions here that I feel probably need to be answered before we move forward.

1. What about the Better Letter idea, as presented in Ithaca, do you think needs to be changed or removed? (We're also waiting to get detailed confirmation on how the idea falls short of the project parameters. Once we have that information, we will be in a better position to answer this question.

2. What features/improvements do you feel need to be added to or made to Better Letter?

Heather provided some good ideas in her email. Here's my quick rundown on those, as well as some other ideas we should consider.

I don't know a lot about Skype, and as such have no idea how it would or could be integrated into Better Letter.

As for integrating disability support features into Better Letter, I think it's a fine idea, but I'm not sure whether it improves the product at all. Before you think I'm an unfeeling bastard that hates disabled people, my reasoning behind this is such: Our idea primarily targets people that are already reading news websites. (We're hoping that by improving the news website with the BL application, that could bring in new readers.) If a disabled person is already able to access and read the news website, isn't it fair to presume they already have the capability to use the Better Letter app, which requires no special web or computer skills whatsoever? I'm not against incorporating a disability function to the app in any way, but am simply curious if it would be necessary, given the context under which we are working.

That said, I'm still very open and interested in hearing more development on this idea. (As I told Heather earlier, I think this could even have the potential to be an idea in and of itself. In fact, if we were able to develop a program that makes news websites easily and efficiently accessible to disabled people, I think we might just have a better idea than BL.)

The video/picture feature could be a useful one. While I still feel its effectiveness in contacting politicians would be limited, it could prove very useful in contacting other public figures, such as editors, reporters, and possibly business leaders. As we discussed in our Ithaca meeting, you can write a letter to the editor about a pothole on your street, but words are unlikely to be as powerful as a picture of the gaping asphalt monster trying to swallow the bicycle-riding neighborhood kids. (Ok, that was fairly powerful, but I digress.)

This would be a feature that would not be terribly difficult to incorporate, either. The pictures would be easy; the video would be much more feasible by using an outside video hosting service (like Youtube) and embedding the link in the email to the public figure. This would work around the problem of crashing their email server.

Nate's idea of incorporating a "speak back" feature (also known as a reply button on an email) seems like an easy thing to incorporate.

During our Ithaca meeting we also discussed incorporating the comments section into BL, or vice versa. This is something worth exploring.

As for the presentation, we need to mention that the news service's corporate logo will appear at the top of the pop-up, not the Better Letter logo.

The "problem" I see (I'm not entirely sure it's a problem) is that these features, to me, seem awfully close to bells and whistles, as bells and whistles are being defined in this context. Again, I encourage anyone who disagrees to explain why, and I'm very open to being convinced otherwise.

Also, once we get answers to question 1, we can better tackle question 2.

I anxiously await your responses.