I am addicted to beta testing. I saw an article about Google allowing Android N beta testing to anyone who wanted it. It warned that there are tons of bugs and that you should never try to use it on your everyday phone. I literally clicked the button to install it within 10 seconds of…
I don’t think I have ever seen this. I heard a story about Amazon building something called a Gremlin which would randomly take down a particular service in the Amazon stack. This would force the engineers to build redundancy into every layer of the system. Seems smart, doesn’t it? So what happened? They are down.…
One thing I am really obsessed with right now is the use of animation in an enterprise SaaS product. I think, done well, it can dramatically enhance the experience. Some places it can be used: Loading images Page transitions Empty states (like when search yields 0 results) New objects that haven’t been set up yet Marketing…
I imagine myself holding a basketball while in a space suit orbiting the earth. I’m floating in some particular direction. Off to the right is the hoop, traveling in a completely different direction. Our paths are orbital and curved. The good news is that our paths will get near each other soon. So I start…
I don’t work at a startup to make money for the company. I try to make money for the company so I can work at a startup. The opportunity to make something new, solve a problem in a new way, change how people do their jobs is what I work for. Innovation is a word that…
First, Trump is going to get the GOP nomination. Hillary Clinton will get the Democratic nod. Trump is going to try to paint Hillary as: Out of touch Elitist 1% with a giant Super PAC War Hawk getting us into trillion dollar interventionist wars Entitled Shrill Living with an abusive misogynist husband He is going to…
I wear clothes. The materials are not found naturally like a bear pelt. They are combinations of many things using modern (and ancient) technologies. I used to wear glasses to correct what nature gave me for eyesight. I then had Lasik, literally lasers in my eyeballs to fix my vision permanently. I had braces to…
In general, people don’t like new ideas. What I mean by this is that the first reaction “most” people have to a new idea is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.) It’s natural based on how our brains work. We love patterns. Things in motion stay in motion, things at rest stat at rest. A new…
Take two brands: Apple and Microsoft. The word “Apple” is an abstraction. It doesn’t mean anything related to computers or phones. Microsoft, on the other hand, is named for the fact that the company started by making micro-computer software. Although Microsoft has been incredibly successful, their branding has always been less than they deserve. Contrarily, Apple’s…
Designing a logo is never easy. After a while every single logo looks the same. You start playing that game where you are trying to tell the difference between 18 different kinds of the letter g. Serif, sans, friendly, edges, the options are endless. Finding a logo is like searching for a black cat in…
Presidential Elections Rule #1: The one with more charisma will win. Since presidents have been using television to communicate with the people, the one with the most charisma has won. I’ll start conservatively with 1952, but it really was 1960 when television really took off. 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) – 442 Adlai Stevenson (D)…
Open a new GotoMeeting meeting. Now, dial in with your phone. After you put in the meeting number you should hear the following sentence. You will no longer hear beeps until someone else joins the conference. What does that mean? Did people used to hear beeps until someone joined the conference and now they don’t?…
The news today about Apple is very interesting. They were ordered by a federal judge to give prosecutors backdoor access to the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone. Many privacy advocates are aghast. Apple has refused to comply. This is likely to go to the Supreme Court in the future. It raises a larger issue when weighing…
I saw a rockumentary about the band Kansas. They told the story of how Carry on My Wayward Son was written by Kerry Livgren. From Wikipedia: On the last day of rehearsal for the new album, Livgren brought the band one more song, which they performed once before heading to the studio. The song, “Carry On Wayward Son“,…