Juixe Techknow

A family member has over 20,000 unopened emails in her inbox. I get just as many emails and I average somewhere between 5-10, depending on the day/time of the week. I don’t claim to subscribe to the Inbox Zero movement but I try to keep my inbox clean and manageable. I have a complicated email system that I have setup for myself. I use Google Apps for Domain to host the email address for my websites. I commonly use in about 5 email addresses, most of these are tied to one inbox in GMail so that I can send and receive email from all these accounts by logging in once. I also use folders, priority mail, and star important email to try to manage all incoming messages. I am quick to remove myself from mailing lists that I am no longer interested in, I am quick to spam unsolicited emails, and I am quick to delete emails. In addition to all these technology tools and tricks, I’ve started following the Three Sentences discipline.

Three Sentences devotees claim to threat email responses like text messages, so instead of long verbose letters each email response is simply three sentences. I think of it like Twitter for email. There is also a Four Sentence and Five Sentence variation of this, the key is to stick to a disciple of writing short concise emails that get to the point at hand.

One of my favorite podcasts is Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders put out by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders is a lecture series with guest speakers from across different fields and industries. David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals, Mark Pincus of Zynga, Robing Li or Baidu, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, and a great many of other founders, entrepreneurs have spoken at Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders. So when Tina Seelig, the person that runs the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, came out with a book I knew to put it on my Amazon wishlist. Sadly no one bought me anything off my wishlist so I bought it myself to read over the winter break.

A lot of the stories and lessons Tina dives into in What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 she talks about lectures she gave back in May 2009 and in April 2006 at Standford’s Entrepreneurship Corner.

In What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, Tina gives some important lesson on creativity, opportunity, and having the right attitude to invite both creativity and opportunity in what you are doing. For example, she speaks of having her students develop failure resumes and to highlight lessons learned from making mistakes. Her reasoning behind failure resume can best be summarized by the following quote from her book.

It’s a quick way to demonstrate that failure is an important part of our learning process, especially when you’re stretching your abilities, doing things the first time, or taking risks. We hire people who have experience not just because of their success but also because of their failures.

Aside from taking risks, and not being afraid of failure, she speak a lot of about having the right attitude to invite the correct atmosphere for success. A persons perspective is important to success, in one because each person defines what they consider a successful venture. Like in the movie The Social Network, where the Sean Parker character says “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars is cool.” For some people success is defined by having 500 million obsessive-compulsive users, and for others it’s about having 1000 paying customers. It is often the case that people let others define their success, but the truly successful are those that define their own success. And defining success has a lot to do with a person’s values and attitudes.

I took a lot of value away from What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20. For example, create a failure resume in Google Docs. I’ve also learning to try to negate the effects of negative thoughts, especially when trying or learning something new.

Here are some choice quotes from What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20:

• Problems are abundant, just waiting for those willing to find inventive solutions.
• Steve Jurvetson, a partner at the venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, describes failures as the secret sauce of Silicon Valley.
• Students are told that it is much better to have a flaming failure than a so-so success.
• On reflection, there appear to be five primary types of risks; physical, social, emotional, financial, and intellectual
• Experts in risk management believe you should make decisions based upon the probability of all outcomes, including the best- and worst-case scenarios, and be willing to take big risks when you are fully prepared for all eventualities.
• Being too set on your path too early will likely lead you in the wrong direction.
• Planning a career should be like traveling in a foreign country. Even if you prepare carefully, have an itinerary and s place to stay at night, the most interesting experiences usually aren’t planned.
• The harder you work, the luckier you get.
• Even when we think we’re paying full attention, there’s usually so much more to see.
• I realized afterward that thinking about how you want to tell the story in the future is a great way to assess your response to dilemmas in general. Craft your story now so you’ll be proud to tell it later.
• A few years ago I took a creative writing class in which the professor asked us to describe the same scene twice, the first time from the perspective of someone who has just fallen in love, the second from the point of view of someone who has just lost child at war.
  You shouldn’t take yourself too seriously nor judge others too harshly.

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

• I wish I could Ctrl+Alt+Delete out of everything.
• The recommendation engine is the new search engine.
• Loop. Break. Null. Exception.
• How do you explain a feature is often as important as how you implement it.
• The implications of a code change are often much larger than the code change itself.
• There Will Be Bugs
• Don’t trust the cloud.
• This is my debugger. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My debugger is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I …
• Code fist and test later is like shooting first and asking questions later.
• I program with pen and paper.
• The debugger is my best friend.

Team Leadership

• Whining is not trying.
• Doing nothing is doing something.
• Don’t compound your problems by manifesting new problem.
• A great team chooses a great leader and great leaders builds a great team.
• Making good choices leads to better choices.
• The most narrow minded perspective is that “We Versus Them” attitude. There is no them, only we.
• If you have it, bring it, and if you brought it, don’t hide it!
• You are not who you used to be or who you will become.
• I am an idea artist, making you think is my master piece.
• Productize your expertise.
• Cheat off your own hard work.
• Instead of making the effort, sometimes people make excuses.
• If you can’t find reception don’t CALL ME.
• In search of a triple rainbow.

Product Placement

• Steve Jobs is one third innovator, one third imitator, and one third black shirt and jeans.
• If Yahoo were to close down Flickr, there would be blood in the streets.
• I got my hands on a Google CR-48 yesterday. It’s just a laptop with one single app, a browser. It’s a thin client for cloud computing.
• I CAN HAZ CR-48!
• I wouldn’t mind testing a Google CAR-48, their self driving car, for free.
• Atlassian should buy corporate twitter clone Yammer.
• I would like the hotel check-in process to be as easy as Foursquare check-in.
• Taco Bell is Moctezuma’s Revenge.
• I just had the yuckiest drink, Gatorade Recover Strawberry Kiwi. Claims to be a post game protein recovery beverage. Tastes like recovered gym shorts.
• This day will go down in history as the Great Skype Fail Whale of 2010, when people had to remember how to use a phone to call someone…

Quote

• It’s easier to invent the future than to predict it. – Alan Kay
• I aspire to inspire before I expire – Alina Morelli
• It is fun to do things others call impossible. – Emile Baudot
• I’m a hope fiend. – Frankie/Celebrity Rehab
• We now know that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are instruments of US foreign policy. It’s not something we knew before. – Julian Assange
• Guantanamo is used for laundering people to an offshore haven that does not follow the rule of law. – Julian Assagne
• Assange had a lot of help making Sweden look like the last place on Earth that you would want to take your penis. – Scott Adams

Holiday

• Happy Shopmas Season!!!
• Jingle bells, cashiers ring, websites clicked.
• Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow… cash.
• Finishing up with xmas shopping.
• Santa is welcomed in my house any time.
• I think I developed carpal tunnel from opening all those gifts. Thank you santa.
• My new year’s resolution is to double surface area of my comfort zone.
• I’m gonna party like it’s 3999!
• We are going to one up 2010 in 2011.
• Getting ready for 2010++!
• 2011 > 2010!

Google publicly announced Chrome OS in back in July 2007. They’ve been busy building a lightweight browser-powered and cloud computing-enabled Operating System. Recently in, December 2010 Google announced a test pilot program for a Chrome OS notebook dubbed Google CR-48. On the day of the announcement, some insiders already had the CR-48 in hand but Google also opened up the test pilot program to the general public via a signup form. The signup was targeted to developers, educators, and individuals alike. By way of a Christmas miracle, I was able to land a Google CR-48 and have been using it for days now.

As soon as the details of the Google Chrome Notebook were made available I was immediately in love with the Google CR-48. It’s basically an ultra light weight cloud computing client running a slimmed down web enabled Operating System. The CR-48 is as portable as an iPad but with a full keyboard. The CR-48 has a smart track pad that supports iPad-like touch gestures. The CR-48 is always on, just like an iPad or Mac Air, so there is no boot up time when all you want is just check your email or post a tweet. That said, the CR-48 is not a official product and that is evident by the simple black frame, it’s even without a trace of corporate logo or Intel inside sticker. Because the CR-48 is not a official product, I won’t say much about the industrial design and finish of the hardware other than to say that unlike the iPad, it has a USB port and a SD slot.

Google Chrome CR-48 Notebook

As soon as you open the CR-48 it turned on magically and prompted me to sign in. Unlike the iPhone or iPad, the CR-48 doesn’t require you to connect to a computer before you can use it. After some setup steps, you can sign in and take it for a run. As soon as you log into the device, you will see a Chrome browser taking up the whole screen with a single tab. It does take some time to realize that the CR-48 is a laptop with just one application, a browser. That is all it is, a browser. There is nothing to see, move along, it’s only a browser. Your desktop is your default page as shown in a Chrome browser. It merits repeating, the Chrome CR-48 only has one installed application, a Chrome browser.

As soon as you log into the CR-48 you find a browser in full window mode and if configured correctly with your home’s WiFi, you can start surfing the net. I’ve been using the CR-48 for reading blogs, checking email, liking status updates on Facebook, and accessing the web applications I use on a daily basis. Google does have a Chrome specific Web Store where you can install free and paid applications but I’ve not found anything of interest.

Aside from the technical specification of the Google Chrome CR-48 notebook, what is more interesting for me is that this is the first cloud computing client, a sort of Web 2.0 Thin Client. I am a avid user of Google Docs, GMail, WordPress, and other online services that have a large amount of my data in their respective ‘cloud.’

Realizing that this is a cloud client, privacy issues and data mining concerns immediately become apparent. It is already known that Google saves user searches and that with this and other identifying data they modify search results. It is already known that Google Adsense ads are targeted to the sites you visit. Can you imagine how valuable your browser history and usage statistics is to a company like Google? Google has a large amount of identifying information with from all angles of your browsing experience, from Google Search, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and now Chrome and it’s Chrome notebook. I can see a future where Google would be giving away Chrome and Android-based devises for free because they can collect so much valuable information and up sell users with highly targeted ads.

The CR-48 is a great little notebook but a machine like that would never replace my laptop. At this time and with it’s current specifications, it can’t handle the hundreds of pictures I am known to take over a weekend, it can’t handle the gigabytes of video I take on a trip, and as great as Google Docs is it’s still not Microsoft Office. I see the CR-48 as a great web surfing machine while TV surfing.

I just caught up for the first time since Christmas with my next door neighbor. They know I “work with computers” so they stopped by to see if I could help them with a small technical issue. One of their kids scored an Apple iPad from Santa but they haven’t been able to play with it. Apple requires you to connect your new iOS device, iPhone and iPad, with a computer and sync with your iTunes account before you can use it. You can’t even write a new text memo, watch videos on YouTube, surf online, send an email, much less purchase, download, and play games and music from the iTunes store before you connect your new iOS device with a computer. For five days now, their new iPad has been the best gift and the worst gift they received this Christmas.

I prefer the iPhone over any of the available Android phones, but the one thing I love about the Google Nexus One is that you don’t even need to plug to play. Just turn it on and you are on your way. Even updates are done Over The Air (OTA) so you don’t ever have to connect your Nexus One to a computer. The whole premise of Cloud Computing is that you don’t have to be shackled to a desktop.

I just had to walk through what my neighbor needed to do to set up their new iPad and you should have seen the confusion and disappointment in the parent’s and kid’s faces, respectively. In a nutshell, they have to download and install iTunes, create an iTunes account, connect the iPad with their computer, and then they can play a song or surf the web.

I can’t believe that Apple can revolutionize the user interface of the iPhone to have one button and yet have a complicated user experience of setting up their new iOS device.

I recently received the Threadless: Ten Years of T-shirts from the World’s Most Inspiring Online Design Community book. I’ve never submitted a design or voted for a design on Threadless but I wear shirts and I’ve always been a fan of their products. The book was in my wishlist and someone in my family bought the book for me as a gift. The book is full of great designs which have been used on Threadless shirts over the past ten years. While reading about how Threadless started and the company culture one thread, pun intended, stood out. The community is the key to the success at Threadless. Threadless started out in a thread post in an online design forum where designers submitted designs for review and the best one was printed. As a business model, it seems very straight forward, but you can’t stress enough how important the community is to the company. As a classically trained software engineer, I approach everything from the aspect of technical specifications and software requirements so when I see a site like Threadless I think of the software features, like voting, commenting, etc. But reading this book I realized that Threadless is not a technology solution, but a living community. Fostering communities trumps technology. As engineers, we often quote and misunderstand the saying, “If you build it they will come” to mean technology focused website. At least, this was Google’s mistake with Google Wave, they built a great technology but no one came. I now believe that what the saying is referring to is not technology, but community.

Here are some other things I learned from the book. Threadless included free stickers with every order. Stickers have been used for years to spread word of mouth, and it pre-dates viral marketing. Stickers are a physical real world viral marketing vehicle. Everyone that has been to a developer conference has seen a conference speakers’ Mac Book Pro full of web 2.0 logos and stickers.

Networking is really important. For Threadless, this meant sharing office space with fellow designers and developers. Creating shared experiences builds community. Participating in events is fostering community. Provide the tools and means for the community to spread the company message and brand. Jeff Howe, who is credited with coining the term crowdsourcing, said the following in an essay in the book. “It takes a special company to understand that their ego – their creativity, their brilliance, their ideas- are welcome, but not necessary.  What’s necessary is the room in which the party takes place.”

Threadless Designs

Here is my favorite quote from the book. “Jacob and I also began teaching a course at the Art Institute of Chicago.  That made us feel a little better about dropping out of school.”