Writing a paper on Google and Innovation (I know, what a strange combination, right?) I find myself continuously amazed by how the company lives by the following 2 rules when it comes to product design and development and how positive it turns out every time:

1. “Ubiquity first, revenues later”
2. “Usefulness first, usability later”

Love it.

A couple of minutes ago, my colleague and I finally finished coding the alpha site of GroupGuess, the early-stage venture we have created while at Babson.
We came up with a simple site that will let people guess Oscar 2009 winners in 5 categories: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor.
This exercise will let us gather our first set of collective data and analyze how effective “groupguessing” is and how it can be applied to real business problems. In this first open guess we introduced the incentive to answer guesses outlined in our business plan as a revenue source: there’s a $100 USD prize for the best guesser(s). So, if you’re reading this, what are you waiting for? Go to GroupGuess.com and participate! (you’ll need a Google Account to log in the system).
I must also say that it has been a great experience learning to deploy to Google App Engine. It’s fast, functional and, best of all, free.