Gasoline Chipper Shredder

http://gardening.yardener.com/GasolineChipperShredder

Gasoline Chipper Shredder

Choosing a gas shredder

When should you consider buying a gasoline-driven shredding machine? If over the season you collect a significant amount of sticks and branches that fall or are pruned from your many trees or shrubs, you might consider buying a chipper/shredder machine. While not cheap, they last for decades and might help keep your organic waste on the property instead of sending it out to the trash. It makes wonderful mulch.

Shredders come in all sizes and shapes. Since this is not a low-cost item, it is wise to get a feel of your options.

• Electric chipper/shredders: I do not recommend the little electric chipper/shredders. I've tested a half dozen over the years and because they are under-powered they clog up too easily no matter how careful you might be in feeding material into the machine's hopper.

• Gas chipper/shredders: I have had good experience with gasoline-driven chipper/shredders over the years. All kinds of organic yard waste can be shredded into particles the size of a nickel. In most cases, the leaves, weeds, and twigs will be reduced at a 10-to-1 ratio. In other words, 10 bags of leaves when shredded produce one bag of shredded leaves. In the best machines, the shredding function is joined by a chipper attachment, allowing larger branches to be chipped into more mulch. Depending on the model, homeowner units can accept branches up to 3 inches in diameter.

The two variables to consider when making a selection are: horsepower and size of the chipping hopper.

A 5-horsepower machine will handle the load for an average property that is less than an acre (Yard Machines, $550). It can chip branches up to 2 inches in diameter. If you have a large number of trees to maintain, you should look at machines with 8.5 horsepower (Craftsman, $800) or even 10 horsepower (Troy-Bilt, $900). These machines will chip branches up to 3 inches in diameter. Shredding and chipping requires significant power to be done effectively. The higher the horsepower, the easier it is to handle larger volumes of material, especially if it is wet, which is often the case.

To get an idea of all the sizes of shredders available, check out the shredder section of Amazon.com. Most tool rental outlets will have one or two gas shredders for the home landscape. I used to go in with a neighbor and rent one for a day and cover both properties.

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iPhone Rumors? Finally! - Technology News - redOrbit

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112546402/iphone-rumors-finally/

Excerpt:

It’s this “finally” that makes Apple such a great company, misunderstood as they may be. Apple isn’t ashamed or scared of Finally. At times it even feels as if they revel in Finally, taking great pride not in being the first to market, but the best in the market.

Apple is willing to take their time to make sure they get it right. It’s quite cunning, really, and extremely simplistic. Apple has no problem letting other companies make mistakes in being the first to market. Apple will patiently sit and watch, learning from the other guys’ mistakes. While Apple customers are always the benefit for this patience, it can often be frustrating, especially as we wait for new features or new products. Our crying out for new features and functionality normally has no effect on Apple. They’ll make the changes when they feel good and ready, making adjustments and implementations only when they believe it will improve the product on the whole. It is in this way and only this way that Apple tries to make their customers happy. They believe they know how to make a great product, and the customers will not be happy until they get the product in their hands. 

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Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman Has A Lot To Say - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

http://allthingsd.com/20120605/hewlett-packard-ceo-meg-whitman-has-a-lot-to-s...

Excerpt:

And I think the other thing about HP is that this is not about the network or the database. It’s about our customer. This is something that I bring to HP, because I’m not an enterprise salesperson. At eBay I was a customer, and so, I think we can be completely differentiated by saying it’s not our agenda, but your agenda. And I think that’s very authentic to HP.

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Stop asking “But how will they make money?” | Andrew Chen (@andrewchen)

http://andrewchenblog.com/2012/05/30/stop-asking-but-how-will-they-make-money/

Excerpt:

Business models are important, but today they’re commoditized
Let me first state: Business models are important. Of course businesses have to make money, that’s a given. But that’s not my point – my point is:

Business models are a commodity now, so “how will they make money?” isn’t an interesting question. The answers are all obvious.

So when you see the next consumer mobile/internet product with millions of engaged users, let’s stop asking about their business model expecting a clever answer – they’ll have dozens of off-the-shelf solutions to choose from – and instead, let’s start asking about the parts of their business that aren’t commoditized yet. (More on this later)

Outsource your monetization
Between the original dotcom bubble versus now, a lot has changed for consumer internet companies. Thankfully, monetization is now a boring problem to solve because there’s a ton of different options to collect revenue that didn’t exist before:

• There’s 200+ ad networks to plug into
• Payment providers like Paypal, Amazon, Stripe
• “Offer walls” like Trialpay
• Mobile payment solutions like Boku
• … and new services coming out all the time (Kickstarter)

Not only that, consumers know and expect to pay for services, something that was novel back in the late 90s. If you offer some sort of marketplace like Airbnb, they’ll expect a listing fee. If you are making a social game on Facebook, they’ll expect to be able to buy more virtual stuff. They’ll expect to pay $0.99 for an iPhone app.

Contrast this with the dotcom bubble, in which you were creating brand new user behavior as well as building these monetization services in-house. In eBay’s case, people just mailed each other (and eBay) money for their listings. Small websites had to build up ad sales teams in order to get advertising revenue, instead of plugging into ad networks. Building apps for phones involved months of negotiation with carriers to get “on deck.” At my last startup, an ad targeting technology company, we encountered companies like ESPN which had written their own ad servers because they didn’t have off-the-shelf solutions when they first started their website back in the late 1990s.

Let me repeat that: They wrote their own ad server as part of building their news site. And that means they had engineers writing lots of code to support their business model rather than making their product better.

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The Internet: A Series Of 'Tubes' (And Then Some)

Great story on the physical Internet!

The Internet: A Series Of 'Tubes' (And Then Some)

NPR - May 31, 2012

Increasingly, Internet users are working "in the cloud" — creating and sending data that isn't stored on local hard drives. It's easy to imagine our emails and photos swirling around in cyberspace without a physical home — but that's not really how it works. Those files are still stored somewhere, but you can only find them if you know where to look....

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/31/153701673/the-internet-a-series-of-tubes-and-then-some?sc=17&f=13

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Where to Draw the Line

http://blog.intercom.io/where-to-draw-the-line/

The most important thing a product manager does is decide where their product stops and someone else’s product takes over.

If an app does too little then it isn’t be worth the cost of installation, or registration let alone the actual purchase price. Similarly if it does do too much, then it will clash with some other pre-existing software or workflow that users are already happy with. It’s a Goldilocks problem, you need to find the product that’s just right.

EXAMPLE: TIME TRACKING

At an absolute minimum time tracking is just totaling a list of numbers. Now, if that was all a web app had to offer, it would be useless. Excel or Google docs does that job already. It’s at this point we realise simplicity is overrated. No amount of web fonts, HTML5 transitions, or sound effects can help a product that simply isn’t earning its keep.

At a maximum, time tracking can involve project management, budgets, contractors, invoicing, receipt tracking and employee monitoring. Applications that incorporate so many surrounding tasks tread on the toes of products already in place, in this case, Xero, Ballpark, Basecamp, etc.

Products exist to solve problems that occur in a workflow. They have a start and end point within that workflow. To understand where these points should be, you must understand the entire workflow. Let’s look at the workflow for a team ordering lunch every day…

If you’re building an app that helps teams order lunch every day, the workflow might look like this…

1. Someone gets hungry.
2. He or she communicates this to the rest of the team.
3. Debate ensures about whether to go out or order in.
4. Second debate about where to order in from.
5. Menus for different places are passed around.
6. A decision is arrived at quickly
7. One person is appointed to gather everyone’s orders.
8. That person then places order.
9. That person communicates delivery team & cost to everyone
10. Time passes.
11. Food arrives, and is eaten.
12. Orderer checks if everyone paid enough & who still owes money.
13. Finances are settled, or the settlement is postponed until tomorrow.
14. Some will talk about the food on Twitter or Facebook. Some will post pictures on Instagram. Others will review on Yelp.
15. Everyone returns to work.

When you understand the full workflow, you can focus on the most concise painful subset your product solves, or alternatively the piece you can make more fun or interesting. Don Dodge has a great article titled “Is your product a vitamin or a painkiller” that discusses the difference here.

WHERE SHOULD YOU START?

Start your product at the first step where you can add value. For our lunch example, this is probably step four. Starting any earlier would mean taking on chat products or email, rarely a good idea. (Side-note: Unstructured communication always falls back to email or chat. You can count on no fingers the amount of products who have changed this over the years.)

A real world example would be TripIt. TripIt solves travel management. Their app could start with flight search, but TripIt couldn’t add value there. The first point they can add value is right after a booking is made. By understanding the entire workflow, Tripit designed a great solution. The last thing that happens before TripIt can add value is “User opens booking confirmation”. This is the first point TripIt can add value, so they start with that email and import from there. Similarly, Instragram starts with importing your social network, or time tracking can start by importing projects from Basecamp. Good APIs and import features help your users get off to an easy running start.

WHERE SHOULD YOU STOP?

Your budget, whether time or money, should restrict but never define your scope. A large budget should define how well a problem is solved, never how many problems are tackled. Attempting to tackle an entire workflow from start to finish for all types of users is near impossible.

Your product should stop when the next step…

• - has well defined market leaders looking after it (e.g. PayPal, IMDB, Expedia), and you don’t intend to compete.
• - is done in lots of different ways by lots of different types of users (e.g. trying to process salaries in a time tracking app would be tricky)
• involves different end-users than the previous steps (e.g. managers, accountants etc.)

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Where to Draw the Line | The Intercom Blog

http://blog.intercom.io/where-to-draw-the-line/

So much is written about the pursuit of simplicity these days but often there is a confusion.There is a fundamental difference between making a product simple, and making a simple product.

Making a product simple emphasizes removing all unnecessary complexity so that every users can solve their problems as efficiently as possible. Making a simple product, however, is about scoping down and choosing the smallest subset of the workflow where your product delivers value. This MVP approach runs the risk of being labelled a point solution, or worse, ‘a feature but not a product‘.

When shooting for a “simple product”, be careful where you draw the line.

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What Do Consumers Really Want? Simplicity - Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird - Harvard Business Review

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/what_do_consumer_really_want_s.html?awid=6802736500109154693-3271

Excerpt:

 In fact, we found that the single biggest driver of "stickiness" — customers' likelihood of following through on a purchase, buying the product again, and recommending it — was, by far, "decision simplicity," the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently navigate their purchase options.

The bottom line: These days making a purchase decision easy is what makes customers choose your brand.

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Sherwin-Williams Paint Color Visualizer

https://www.sherwin-williams.com/visualizer/

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9 Principles For Great Branding By Design | Fast Company

http://www.fastcompany.com/1830073/9-principles-for-great-branding-by-design

1. Branding and design are, to a large extent, inseparable. "A brand is not your logo or ID system," says Brunner. "It's a gut feeling people have about you. When two or more people have the same feeling, you have a brand. You get that feeling via smart design, which creates the experiences people have with the brand. Everything you do creates the brand experience, ergo design IS your brand."
2. If design is the brand, stop thinking of branding and design as distinct disciplines. "It's all about integrating design and brand," says Doucet. "We need to cease thinking of them as different disciplines. The essence of the Apple brand comes through its design. Take the logo off a BMW and you still know it's a BMW."
3. Don't overdesign. "With the increasing emphasis on design in the world today, it's important to avoid the 'over-designed syndrome,'" says Hill. "A simple, well-thought-through, authentic design is often the best. Everything doesn't need to be redesigned; sometimes what we have in hand is better than what we seek. It's not all about being different; it's about being better. ."

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Gartner: BYOD tablets in enterprise

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/can-you-guess-which-tablet-will-dominate-apples-ipad-in-the-workplace.html/

Excerpt:

Gartner analysts predict that enterprise sales of media tablets will account for about 35 percent of total tablet sales in 2015. However, these sales will not be defined as enterprise purchases, since many enterprises follow a buy-your-own-device program. Many tablets will be owned by consumers who use them at work.

This phenomena poses a threat to vendors, which is similar to the threat Research in Motion(NASDAQ:RIMM) faced in the smartphone market. Vendors will have to focus on the IT enterprise and on consumer support to launch devices successfully. Tablets will have to be created for consumers first and then rely on an ecosystem of apps and services to make them more manageable in a business environment.

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Why Apple Won’t Turn You Into ... (cultofmac.com)

http://www.cultofmac.com/159453/why-apple-wont-turn-you-into-a-cyborg/

Excerpt:

The reason you love your iPad isn’t because the iPad is “good” in some abstract way, but because it’s “right” for human nature. We love the interface because we love touching things, and having those things react the way physical objects might react to touch. The iOS user interface is based on a profound understanding of the human mind.

Our Paleolithic brains have no trouble “believing” that icons and screens and pictures and “albums” are really there. Looking at objects, touching them and having them respond to our touch makes us feel good.

Apple understands this deeply, which is why it has become the world’s most valuable company. Apple bases everything on human nature, and discounts technology for its own sake.

Google, not so much.

Google is founded on and obsessed by engineering and the power of algorithms to the same degreeas Apple is with design.

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BYOD is unstoppable. Smart companies must build apps

http://gigaom.com/2012/04/08/byod-is-unstoppable-smart-companies-must-build-apps/

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Classic 4 in. 1-handle Bath Faucet in Stainless Steel

Your friend has shared a link to a Home Depot product they think you would be interested in seeing.

$72

Classic 4 in. 1-handle Bath Faucet in Stainless Steel

http://bit.ly/HpGG3G

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How to Negotiate Your Next Salary - Amy Gallo - Best Practices - Harvard Business Review

http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2012/04/how-to-negotiate-your-next-sal.html

Excerpt:

Focus on "we"
Throughout the discussions, be aware of how you are coming off to the hiring manager or recruiter. Ertel says you don't want to appear like you're giving a list of demands. Instead, show that you're trying to come up with solutions that meet your needs and those of the employer. Use positive language. Demonstrate that you are open to other proposals aside from your own. It's a tricky balance; you want to push just enough. "You don't want to negotiate so hard that people are sick of you before your first day," says McGinn. The key is to know what you care most about — whether it be money or other aspects of the job offer — and stick to those points.

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Apple's Highest Priority Is Obviousness

http://daringfireball.net/2012/04/obviousness

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The of course principle of design

http://om.co/2012/04/05/the-of-course-principle-of-design/

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Phil Libin of Evernote, on Its Unusual Corporate Culture

Phil Libin of Evernote, on Its Unusual Corporate Culture
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/business/phil-libin-of-evernote-on-its-unusual-corporate-culture.html

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The Catastrophic Potential of Google’s New Glasses

http://blog.inner-active.com/2012/04/the-catastrophic-potential-of-googles-new-glasses/

Excerpt:

As soon as Google released this ridiculous and somewhat futuristic video of their new “Project Glass”, the company had to have known that the parodies would come pouring it. And they did, right away!

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Beer game: Why can't Apple build iPads in the US?

http://blog.marksweep.com/post/20469283331/the-beer-game-or-why-apple-cant-build-ipads-in-the

Excerpt:

When President Obama asked Steve Jobs what it would take to make iPhones in the United States, the late Apple co-founder supposedly quipped: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” 

When I read this, it reminded me of something my dad presented to us as kids a long time ago- The Beer Game.

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Don’t believe the rumors: User Experience Design is alive and well

http://www.elezea.com/2012/04/definition-user-experience-design/

Excerpt:

Once we understand the basic concepts of User Experience Design, the journey can start. True User Experience is more than the sum of these parts. It’s a “seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design” (from the NN Group definition) to provide efficient and enjoyable experiences to users. This takes time, continuous practice, and an understanding that we’ll never know everything there is to know about Design. But keeping these basic elements in mind ensures that we never think of Design as just eye-candy, or something we tack on to the end of a development process. Without these building blocks, the house collapses.

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How Facebook Finds The Best Design Talent, And Keeps Them Happy

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669445/how-facebook-finds-the-best-design-talent-and-keeps-them-happy

Excerpt:

If you take a close look at Facebook’s S-1 registration statement, you’ll notice something striking: Designers are called out as key to the company’s long-term strategic success.

EDITOR’S NOTE

See Facebook’s biggest design hires, in the slide show above.

Tech company filings often call out certain job functions--like engineering--and the organization’s ability to fill those positions as crucial to its success. But designers? That’s almost unheard of. And yet, there they are. In the section titled “Factors Affecting Our Performance,” Facebook’s filing reads: “We have also made and intend to make acquisitions with the primary objective of adding software engineers,product designers, and other personnel with certain technology expertise.” And in the section titled “Competition,” it says, “We compete to attract and retain highly talented individuals, especially software engineers, designers, and product managers.” (Emphasis added in both cases.)

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Forget Google Instant: In the Future, Search Engines Will Read Your Habits

Forget Google Instant: In the Future, Search Engines Will Read Your Habits
http://mashable.com/2012/03/31/wolfram-alpha-future-search/

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Apple's iPhone Has Staged A Monster Comeback, Android Is Now Dead In The Water

Apple's iPhone Has Staged A Monster Comeback, Android Is Now Dead In The Water
http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-iphone-market-share-versus-android-2012-3

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The shocking toll of hardware and software fragmentation on Android development

The shocking toll of hardware and software fragmentation on Android development
http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/03/30/the-shocking-toll-of-hardware-and-software-fragmentation-on-android-development/?awesm=tnw.to_1DrfD

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This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy [Update]

Check out this article: http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-with...

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Box Slams Microsoft While Introducing New iPad Cloud Service - Yahoo! Finance

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/box-slams-microsoft-while-introducing-163803650.html

Excerpt:

Essentially, the new service, called Box OneCloud, gives iPad and iPhone users an app store of business productivity apps where all the files created by those apps are stored in the Box cloud. Microsoft-bashing aside, this is a pretty good idea.

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Pinterest Is Scared Of Having A 'Twitter Problem' - Yahoo! Finance

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pinterest-scared-having-twitter-problem-140712764.html

Excerpt:

Pinterest has an API done and ready for developers, but it hasn't released it to the public yet.

And it might not release it for a while, says an industry source familiar with Pinterest's plans. This source says that Pinterest fears having a "Twitter problem."

An API, or application programming interface, allows developers to build apps using Pinterest data. 

Twitter released its API when it was still an immature company, allowing developers to build applications with features that it was missing. When Twitter matured, and it wanted to control its platform, it began adding those features, thus damaging those developers.

For instance, Twitpic, which built a way to share photos is now threatened because Twitter added native photo sharing. HootSuite, and Twitterrific, which build greatmobile apps were crushed when Twitter started putting more effort into its own mobile apps.

As Twitter began competing with its developers, the developer community turned against Twitter. It didn't really trust Twitter.

Pinterest doesn't want that to happen. It's a very young company and it's just getting started, says our source. It doesn't want developers to build features/applications that it plans on building, and then alienate those developers by building similar features.

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[INFOGRAPHIC] How Much Does A One-Second Page Load Delay Cost?

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/infographic_how_much_does_a_one-second_page_load_d.php

excerpt:

Google has long been telling us how long it took to perform whatever search we sent its way. That little note may seem self-congratulatory to the average Internet user, but it's vitally important.

Slowing that number by just 4/10ths of a second, for example, would cut 8 million searches from Google's daily total of 3 billion. If its pages took one second longer to load, Amazon, for example, could lose as much as $1.6 billion in annual revenue.

These and other findings are included in a smart new infographic (see below) from OnlineGraduatePrograms that sheds light on the need for speed when it comes to Web page design. All of this emphasis on instant gratification comes at a time when the Internet is trending towards being more visual, meaning Web designers need to find ways to create image-heavy sites that still load quickly.

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Don't Let 'Corporate Antibodies' Kill Your Best Ideas, Warns Ex-HP Exec - Business Insider

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-19/news/31209619_1_idea-antibodies-pitch

Excerpt:

The outspoken McKinney is a cult figure at HP between IPO and his Killer Innovations podcast, which attracts 30,000 listeners. He also just published the book Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions that Spark Game-Changing Innovation. 

Business Insider spoke to McKinney to find out how employees at large companies can get their ideas into action and grow their careers.

1. Beware the corporate antibodies: "The frustration employees feel is because they run headlong into the corporate antibodies," he quips. "Corporate antibodies aren't just obstructionists (though some are). You need to understand why they are pushing back." For instance, some of them are "ego antibodies" which means "they view themselves as the idea person. You pitching an idea is threatening to them," McKinney says.

Deal with an ego antibody by coming to that person with a rough draft and taking whatever feedback the person gives you -- verbatim -- and adding it to your presentation. Credit the person generously. This makes the person feel ownership of the idea.

McKinney names several other types of antibodies in his book, such as the naysayers who automatically veto everything. These folks are afraid of change and you work with them by making them more afraid of not-changing. You point out why your idea will beat your competitors.

2. Perform "the bar room test" on your idea. "Go to your local pub. Go to the bar and order a drink. Then pick three random people, introduce yourself and, assuming the person is not blotto drunk, give them the three-minute pitch. Tell them the problem you want to solve."

If your bar buddies are interested, you've got a good idea. If not, either your idea isn't great, your presentations isn't -- or both.

3. Practice "strategic story telling." Most people's biggest problem is that "they don't know how to do the pitch. They are enthralled with speeds and deeds," he says. A good pitch tells an emotional story. Think of it like pitching a "Hollywood movie" where the business problem is the villain and your idea is the hero.

4. Don't fight the "rule of 18": "Any senior executive inside an organization can suffer 18 months of pain. But if that idea isn't a booming success within 18 months, it gets killed," he warns. It is best to pitch ideas  that should work within 18 months so you can build some cred. But if your idea will take longer than 18 months to mature, you'll need to teach your executives to be patient. For that you will need a mentor and a champion.

5. Don't expect your boss to be your idea mentor. When finding a mentor, you probably need to look outside your direct chain of command. "If you find an executive who's passionate about the area you are working on they tend to be very receptive -- unless the guy's a jerk," he says. These folks will be willing to have coffee with you. If they like your idea, they'll advise you and give "air cover" he says. "In some cases I actually gave budget dollars."

Find these folks by looking for execs talking about the idea your area covers -- maybe they are blogging about it or chatting on LinkedIn groups. Maybe they are working on other, similar projects.

6. Be prepared to work, fail, and work some more. "The challenge for a lot of people is that they think the idea is fully formed," he says. But chances are some at least some of it will need work. "So fix it and stick it out again. Most people want the fun, the glory and the press coverage," he says. But if the first time you run into a roadblock you walk away, you'll never succeed. "Innovation is a skill you can learn. It's not magic. It's not a special gift from God. It's just plain hard work."

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Study Finds Developer Interest In Android Is Slowly ‘Eroding’

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-finds-developer-interest-in-android-is-slowly-eroding-2012-3?utm_source=readme&utm_medium=rightrail&utm_term=&utm_content=2&utm_campaign=recirc

Excerpt:

Late last year, Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced that he firmly believed Android would overtake iOS as the first choice for mobile application developers within six months. But according to a new study conducted by IDC and Appcelerator, that’s not going to happen any time soon, as Android developers are slowly beginning to lose interest in the platform.

The companies surveyed over 2,000 of the 280,000 developers on Appcelerator’s mobile development platform this year, and found that there has been “a steady erosion of interest” in Google’s Android operating system.

Interest in Android development for smartphone has dropped from 86% to just 78%, while interest in Android development for tablets has dropped from 75% to 67%. In comparison, interest in developing for Apple’s iOS operating system has remained stable.

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And Here's The Secret Reason Apple Is Crushing Google...

http://www.businessinsider.com/and-heres-the-secret-reason-apple-is-crushing-google-2012-3

Excerpt:

It's no secret that Google's products often fail to win the hearts and minds of mass-market consumers the way Apple's do.

Importantly, this failure generally has nothing to do with the technology that powers Google's products, which is often amazing.

Rather, it's the result of weaker product design.

Google TV, for example, was an absurdly complex flop that was apparently designed for consumers who have been dying to buy a TV that is as complicated as a computer (all four of them).

Google's email system, Gmail, for years forced consumers to use a "conversations" format that geeks raved about but that confused normal people who liked good old email.

Google's Android operating system, meanwhile, despite having many technological advantages over Apple's iOS, is still harder and more complicated to use that Apple's offering.

The common thread of these anecdotes is that Google designs its products for geeky technologists, while Apple designs for normal humans.

And it turns out that geeky technologists are a small, weird niche of the broader consumer market, which is making it harder for Google to become a beloved mass-market brand.

The difference between Google's product design and Apple's product design starts with the difference between the types of people each company places the highest value on.

Google has an engineering culture, in which brilliant technologists are the rock stars.

Apple, meanwhile, has a product-design and marketing culture, in which "technology" merely serves to support a product's function and form.

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Mobile and the news media's imploding business model

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/27/mobile-news-media-imploding

Excerpt:

Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years.

Makes sense: just as radio became one of the big purveyors of news because it was the medium that traveled with you, so should mobile.

But it is also a depressing development, portending, once again, the end of the world as we know it: the news business has been plunged into a crisis because web advertising dollars are a fraction of old media money. And mobile is now a fraction of web: the approximate conversion rate is $100 offline = $10 on the web = $1 in mobile.

In part, the reasons are purely mechanical: you can cram three or four ads on a web page, meaning an average web CPM (cost per thousand views) of $1.00 (if you're lucky) can become a rate-per-page per thousand (RPM) of $4.00 (versus $20-$40 CPMs in traditional media). Mobile CPMs are running at something closer to $0.25 – and we're only able to fit one ad on those miniature pages.

And to some extent, the problem defines the medium: who wants to pay for inattention and a cursory scrawl? (How much of mobile news is consumed by people behind the wheel, even?)

And yet, this resistance, or lack of interest, on the part of advertisers challenges the bedrock logic of marketing: follow your customers.

Brands and big agencies continue to announce their commitment to and excitement about the revolution at hand. They surely want to be seen as players and cool people. I don't know anybody in consumer marketing who isn't gaga about digital and mobile. But these are the same people and big brands who have doubled down on television, your dad's medium, making 2011 a golden TV advertising year.

Now, there's an optimistic and stubborn view that this must change, that agencies and brands can't hold on to the past for ever. Almost every digital executive and booster will, at this point in the conversation, outline his or her children's media consumption habits as anecdotal evidence in support of the coming digital ad boom. But, as it happens, the patterns seem to get only worse. According to a recent report by Kanter Media, broadcast TV was up was 7.7% in the fourth quarter of 2011 (up 2.4% for the year), while internet search advertising was down 6.4% (down 2.8% for the year); and internet display advertising was down 5.9% in the fourth quarter (and down 5.5% for the year). Mobile does not even get its own break-out category.

There is another bleak element here: a basic shift in how advertising is bought and sold. More and more digital space, both web and mobile, is moved through a real-time auction process: audiences (or demographic segments) are sold like soy beans. Curiously, for all other commodities, the auction process raises prices. In a virtually unlimited world of digital advertising space, it lowers them.

If the news business on the web is depressing, contributing to the existential angst that has gripped every established news organization, mobile turns the story apocalyptic: there is no foreseeable basis on which the news establishment can support itself. There is no way even a stripped-down, aggregation-based, unpaid citizen-journalist staffed newsroom can support itself in a mobile world.

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The Idea Factory: Insights on Creativity from Bell Labs and the Golden Age of Innovation

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/28/the-idea-factory-bell-labs/

Excerpt:

At the turn of the twentieth century, Thomas Edison was the most famous inventor in the world. He hoarded useful materials, from rare metals to animal bones, and through careful, methodical testing, he made his new inventions work, and previous inventions work better. Churning out patent after patent, Edison’s particular form of innovation was about the what, and not about the how — the latter he could outsource and hire for.

“In 1910, few Americans knew the difference between a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor” explains Jon Gertner at the beginning of his lively book about a place that fostered a home for all three, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. The difference was clear to Edison, who was generally disinterested in the theory behind his inventions, filling his Menlo Park complex with specialists to do the work he’d rather not. “I can always hire mathematicians,” he said, “but they can’t hire me.”

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Why Would Anyone Ever Use Siri...

http://mashable.com/2012/03/28/why-use-siri/

Excerpt:

To try and understand a bit more about how people decide whether they want to use a voice-activated or touch-screen activated interface, I spoke with Alex Rudnicky, an expert in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. The process he described is something like a marketplace, with voice and touchscreen interfaces competing for a user’s attention: The user weighs a host of factors, some circumstantial (am I in a crowded bar that will make it hard for Siri to hear me?) and others about the inherent nature of the task (Siri may prove better at “find a cheap Chinese restaurant within a mile” than Yelp’s interface, which requires you to sort through many options to nail that request).

This description fits in well with some of the Parks Associates qualitative findings, in which many people told them they use Siri when driving or otherwise have their hands full, John Barrett of the Parks Associates told me. Calculating the costs and benefits of each, a user will go with whatever’s easier, even if, Rudnicky says, they find the AI “annoying.” (Of course, this raises the question of just what it means for AI to be “annoying.” It seems that the robotic qualities people find annoying might cease to be so, if the AI were to just do it’s job effectively and quickly.)

Beyond these sorts of functional concerns, users may also weigh cultural norms. A study done by some human-computer interaction experts and Carnegie Mellon and SUNY Buffalo found that people preferred to give feedback via text than vocally to a robot (pdf), perhaps because they became sheepish talking to a robot around strangers. But if you’ve ever taken a public bus or subway in recent years, you know how fragile such inhibitions are. Rudnicky said we can expect self-consciousness about talking to robots to melt away over the next few years, much as it has for talking on a cellphone.

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For Google, to Play Is to Fight the Commoditization of Android

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/s28-AhhiaTE/for-google-to-play-is-to-fight.php

Excerpt:

The most profound thing I've heard lately was from a guy standing behind the counter of an empty RadioShack on St. Patrick's Day in Boston. Smartphones are like the cereal aisle in the grocery store, he said. There are a thousand options but really, there are only a couple varieties. Applied to Google's relationship with Android, what we see is an ecosystem that has become increasingly commoditized. The Android brand has been diluted and while its core features come from Google, the search giant is not the first company that people think of when the platform is mentioned.

Sent from my iPad

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Lenders' frozen bagels: Easier is better than better

http://mobile.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/03/murray_lender_and_...

Excerpt:

Innovation is often thought of as coming with better products. But sometimes the most successful innovations involve coming up with inferior products, but making them cheaper and more convenient.

Sent from iPhone

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Codecademy Challenge

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabrown/2012/01/10/learning-how-to-code-is-a-wa...

Sent from iPhone

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Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please Go Away - Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabrown/2012/03/26/dear-fake-geek-girls-please-go-away/

Excerpt:

The venn diagram made by Matthew Mason depicts geek as the intersection between intelligence and obsession.

From Great White Snark

As someone who is married to an obsessive deep-diver, those definitions ring true. My husband Sean Bonner is a coffee geek, an art geek, a meme geek, and a  punk-rock geek. He is super passionate and obsessive about the things that he is interested in. He has been that way his entire life and it’s unreal watching him get hooked on something new and watching his knowledge about it grow each and every day non-stop. It’s also why he has such a strong following: people count on him to share his deep knowledge on their favorite subject-matter. He does all the heavy lifting and they get the CliffsNotes.

Sent from iPhone 

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News Desk: Do Chinese Factory Workers Dream of iPads?

A counter view on low wage factory workers in China.  

I recall my Dad, himself an immigrant, telling me something vaguely similar years ago.  Different context, different time -- but remarkably resonant insight.

http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/03/iphone-factories-chinese-dreams.html

Excerpt:

The simple narrative equating American demand and Chinese suffering is appealing, especially at a time when many Americans feel guilty about their impact on the world. It’s also inaccurate and disrespectful. We must be peculiarly self-obsessed to imagine we have the power to drive tens of millions of people on the other side of the world to migrate and suffer in terrible ways. China produces goods for markets all over the world, including for its own consumers, thanks to low costs, a large and educated workforce, and a flexible manufacturing system that responds rapidly to market demands. To imagine that we have willed this universe into being is simply solipsistic. It is also demeaning to the workers. We are not at the center of this story—we are minor players in theirs. By focussing on ourselves and our gadgets, we have reduced the human beings at the other end to invisibility, as tiny and interchangeable as the parts of a mobile phone.

Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. They choose to leave their farming villages for the city in order to earn money, to learn new skills, to improve themselves, and to see the world.  

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Are Walmart's Chinese Factories as Bad as Apple's? | Mother Jones

http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2012/03/walmart-china-sustainability-shadow-factories-greenwash

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Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue Productively

Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue Productively
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669329/if-brainstorming-doesnt-work-what-does-arguing

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