We are tantalizingly close to having a car experience that is more akin to a train, bus or plane. We get in, we sit and read and when we arrive we get out. All we need is self-driving cars. I really want this world to exist, but there are many hurdles to work through. For…
I just finished reading Practical Wisdom by Barry Schwartz. (Author of the great book The Paradox of Choice. – not to be confused with The Wisdom of Crowds, also a great book.) Practical Wisdom is a decent book, but more importantly, it points the way to design our ideal civilization. The book points out how incentives are…
I need my phone to do about 2 things: Call Katie and Google Maps. I have a terrible sense of direction. When I was younger I would drive with paper maps. I would need to pull over every mile or so to make sure I was where I was supposed to be. The navigation feature…
Yesterday, I showed my kids the meme of “planking”. Admittedly, this is a fairly dated meme, but they are young, so it’s new to them. Planking is a photo fad which involves lying face down with arms to the sides in unusual public spaces, photographing the scene and sharing the image online. In form, it bears striking resemblance…
My kid just broke his arm. He was on a skateboard for the first time. What could possibly go wrong? Well, he smacked onto the pavement and broke both big bones in his forearm. Luckily, he was only a block away and his brothers came and got me. I could see from 40 feet away.…
I’ve got alot of different kinds of computers in my house. A desktop from dell, a little Intel NUC, a Mac Mini, iPads, xBoxes, etc etc. I am not generally a Mac user, but I help my kid with his Mac Mini. He (11 yrs old) is a musician and plays drums and base guitar.…
For the old folks…remember Windows 95. It used a FAT file system, not the more modern NTFS (for Windows). It needed to be defragged to run at optimal speeds. I loved the entire idea of a defrag. It was like cleaning up a room, putting each thing in it’s place. I would watch it work…
When I’m down or frustrated… When things aren’t going my way… When I just want to give up… A good joke makes it all better. Here are a quick set of 10 good ones: (My Favorite of the day) What did Jay-Z call his girlfriend before they got married? Feyoncé. (2nd favorite) Two fish are in…
I was walking in the parking lot at work and a car alarm went off. The car was about 50 feet away. I could see someone with the door open, leaning into the driver’s side. I looked around me and saw about 6 other people. Each one walking nonchalantly towards the building. Not one of…
I broke the Tortoise table this morning because I was impatient. I tried to move it without someone helping me. I leaned a little hard on the plexiglass and it cracked. I should have waited until tonight and had help carrying it. I hope it’s not totally ruined. One part of my personality is that…
Recently, we bought a red foot tortoise. We bought it without realizing how much space the thing really needs. Subsequently, we bought a habitat that is too small for him. I was determined to figure out a solution to the problem. There was a spot in our house that would make a good home for the…
I had been testing for a couple of weeks and the winner seems to be ASmallOrange.com. Performance I used some ping services as well as anecdotal evidence from colleagues around the world. Orange performed consistently better. Price Orange is half the price of MediaTemple. It’s not THAT much money, but it’s enough to make a…
The art of making great APIs has become a key skill in a technology organization. Whether it’s the protocol or the naming scheme or the functions or even the error logging, the API has a UX of it’s own. Make a bad developer UX and you will have fewer technology partners. You can see great…
The Marketo 2014 Summit has grown to enormous proportions. It’s doubled and doubled so many times that over 5,000 people packed into the Moscone Center this week. It funny how much work goes into it and exhausts us, while at the same time fills us with enthusiasm and energy. Our customers really are something special and…