I got challenged by my brother today to be more consistent in blog posts. It also coincided with a video I was watching by Gary Vee:
I really like him because I think he’s ADD like me. Rather than putting together a plan, I’ll just take his ideas and use it as my own. I need to evaluate where I am and how to take this blog to the next level. First step as David recommended is to just write. It may seem a little unfocused but in order to build a masterpiece, you first have to gather material. Overtime, I will focus and refine.
This is yet just another obligatory review of the iPad. I’m sure there are thousands of unboxing videos, app reviews, and fanboy videos out there. So why bother with yet another review? This is about how one Apple, or rather technology fanatic has completely drank the kool-aid and joined the consumerism bandwagon.
My home has an Apple Airport Extreme wifi base station networking several devices:
Lexmark Wireless printer/copier/scanner
Work computer with second monitor
MacBook Air
MacBook Pro
iPhone
iPad
Tivo
Two external hard drives
Steve Jobs sold us the laptop and then a mobile phone. That wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted to manufacture demand for a third product, the iPad.
Wouldn’t we all be better off if we learned how to invest our money instead of mindlessly spending it on overpriced consumer gadgets?
That really hit the spot. She is right, we’ve all gotten on this bandwagon to buy, buy, buy. We all would have been wealthier had we instead in Apple instead of buying Apple products.
John from One Man’s Blog posted a very scary article on how he’d hack your weak passwords. Using sniffers and other brute force tools, he’d hack into low priority sites. Rather than hacking a bank account, which has greater tracking and security, he’d start with these low priority accounts, like Flickr. If you’re like most people, you might use that same password for your important accounts: banks, credit cards, medical records.
Pay particular attention to the difference between using only lowercase characters and using all possible characters (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the processing time for an 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries.
Below is just a fun illustration of some of the worst passwords. Please don’t use something like this below. Take a moment now and update and change your passwords. Next post will be on optimal password strategies.
The Apple tablet, officially named the iPad, was announced with mixed reactions. Unlike the iPhone announcement, this product was something that people didn’t really need. Steve Jobs asked the audience if there was room for a third category of mobile devices, in between the iPhone and Macbook laptops. Visionary Jobs believes so. He believes that there is room in the consumer and business marketplace for a tablet computer that handles functionality better than a mobile phone and a laptop. Specifically, the iPad is better a browsing the web, reading email, watching movies, viewing photos, and reading books.
“Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it” -Wall Street Journal
Most of the naysayers attacked the iPad for lack of a camera, being on the AT&T network, and most commonly, “I don’t need this.” It’s difficult to imagine using a product that has yet to truly exist in the market place. The iPad is a mix between an iPhone and a full MacBook. Can it function as a complete desktop replacement? Maybe not immediately, but possible in the next few versions. Remember that Apple is a for profit company and uses features to differentiate its product line and force its consumers to upgrade almost every year. Sure, the iPad could have all these features and yes the technology exists, but from a business perspective, it makes more sense to roll out functionality with each new version to maximize sales.
So how will the iPad change the world. I’m going to take a big leap of faith and call it out right now. The iPad will revolutionize the way to manage and process information.
Way before the iPhone made it out, a fellow by the name of Jef Raskin, came up with the idea of an information appliance that has just one function. The gadget would be so easy to use that it would require no user manual and so intuitive that a user can pick it up and perform the function. Of course, carrying around a device for every function wouldn’t be practical. Traditional devices like a BlackBerry has a fixed keyboard that doesn’t change. The iPhone’s touch interface changes depending on the application or function desired. It can be a keyboard, a number pad, or just a single button. By using a soft interface, the software changes to adapt to the user’s needs.
Computer users say that the iPad can’t accomplish the tasks that a desktop or laptop can perform, such as complex word processing, spreadsheets, or presentations. The traditional computer operating system relies on a menu system and task bar to access fixed functions. File -> Save As. Edit -> Copy -> Edit -> Paste. To learn the software requires memorizing where functions are and what order to process. It’s not intuitive. As the software deviates away from the traditional office applications and into applications such as Photoshop, video editing, sound editing, the menu system becomes more complex.
The iPad begins, but has not yet, addressed this issue. As Raskin envisioned, the software is so simple that you instantly know what to do. The future of software is not more functionality and features, but a smarter human interface, eliminating the tech geeks. Want to insert a picture into a document, just drag it and place it exactly where you want it. Want to make it bigger, just use your fingers to stretch it and position it.
My first reactions of the iPad software says it’s just an enhanced version of iPhone software. Sure, there’s plenty of room to go. However, how many iPhone applications require a manual to operate? Very few. This is a first step into a future where application experts are obsolete and the democratization of computing. How do we achieve this? We find the best and brightest interface engineers and ask them to build software from scratch, throwing away how software has been done in the past.
What do you think? Should software really be simple and easy to use? Or do we need all the functionality and features that currently exist?
Every few years, a new product or idea comes out that revolutionizes the industry. The word processor came out and made the typewriter obsolete. The telephone changed communications. The airplane made the world much smaller. The Internet made newspapers a thing of the past. With the anticipation of the next iPhone coming out, and all the news of other competing devices like the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One, and so one, let’s take a moment to remember when the iPhone first came out.
This device changed the playing field. Phones were no longer considered simply a tool for making voice calls. It brought the Internet into a small handheld device, hundreds of thousands of applications available with a flick of a finger, integrate email, calendar, contacts, and so on. It also played music, movies, and television shows.
Several generations later, this phone continues to evolve. Soon, it will not be known as a phone but a truly integrated device that handles everything.
I’ll simply end this with a simple question that I have not yet been able to answer: why do we still have fax machines?
In my journey to become a better consultant, I’m reading “Now you see it: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis,” by Stephen Few. Below are a few traits he listed for a good analyst:
My friend Jun Loayza pushed his girlfriend to be an entrepreneur and came up against resistance. Not everyone is cut out to go solo, nor should they. In the tight knit blogging and Brazen Careerist community, you see quite a few that have gone out on their own. The appeal is very tempting at first: work your own hours, blur work/life, be your own boss, travel the world, create a 4 hour work week, ditch the cubical, etc. However, when reality kicks in, here are a few things that don’t sound so appealing:
Setting up corporation paperwork, filing company officers, creating shares, board of directors, registration.
Building an accounting system to track transactions, and hiring an accounting or CPA to validate the system for tax reporting or to seek funding from venture capitalists.
Payroll, if you plan on hiring people, doing payroll (the boss gets paid last), COBRA, unemployment insurance, benefits.
Personal liability if you’re not incorporated, and professional liability if the company gets sued.
Professional insurance, the company may get sued.
Personal insurance, no more health benefits, and ouch, it’s expensive to get your own.
If you take a base salary of say $50,000, add in all the benefits assuming 30% gives you a total of $65,000. Then add in 20% overhead giving you $78,000. Unless you can make well above that amount as an independent business owner, you’ve basically bought yourself a job, with all the risk.
Early, I posted 10 essential business apps for a traveling consultant. Since then, I’ve gotten my hands on several new apps that have enhanced my productivity while mobile.
CardSnap Business Card Scanner ($14.99)
Most of the business card readers on the app store do the OCR (optical character recognition) using the phone’s relatively slow processor. For something as intense as reading and interpreting text from a business card to the iPhone’s contacts, the hardware just isn’t equipped to handle that. To use CardSnap, you take a picture of the business card (must have 3GS or phone with focusing case) and upload it to CardSnap’s servers. Their servers do the work and humans validate the data when the system doesn’t work. Think Amazon’s mechanical turk. I found the accuracy to be acceptable, however, requiring me to manually intervene on some cards.
DropBox (Free)
While many online data storage and syncing systems are available, DropBox continues to be my go to service for its ease of use. I have the software installed on my different laptops which syncs my files to the cloud. Using the iPhone app, I can pull up the files and review them just before a meeting. This is especially useful on a short haul flight where I don’t want to pull out the laptop and only want to do a practice run prior to the presentation. DropBox works with most file types and can open almost anything on the iPhone.
Travel Tracker Pro ($8.99)
This is the all in one tool, better known for their Palm app, but been available for the iPhone. A bit “expensive” but my go to travel tool. It integrates with tripit.com to keep me updated on my flights, flight status, and tracking expenses. There’s a lot of other functionality that I haven’t had a chance to use yet, such as travel lists. I just created a pre-flight packing check list for things like toiletries, ticket, clothes, laptop, etc.
WordPress 2 (Free)
Most of my blogs are on the WordPress platform and this free app allows me to write/update posts, but more importantly, respond to comments. While it’s possible to update a blog (I do for my cat at mochicutie.com), it’s not very practical to write full posts while mobile. Instead, it’s very useful to read new comments and respond back.
GPS
There’s no recommendation here because I have yet to find anything that works better than the standard Google Maps. Hoping and waiting for Apple to approve the Google Navigation app.
Daniel Hoang advises governmental agencies, business, and individuals on performance management, business processes, and strategic planning to improve organizational development and long-term growth. He is an experienced consultant, auditor, and strategic planner, and has over 10 years of online social media and social networking experience.
The posts on this site, including but not limited to images, links, and comments by left by readers, are my own and don't necessarily represent my employers positions, strategies or opinions.
