Month: February 2012

What do 1250 Horses feel like?

Well, when they are supercharged and upgraded from a turbo Lamborugini the answer is  – obviously amazing!

The experience was so cool that I felt like it was worth more than just a Facebook post to describe it all. It was nighttime so the video I got below doesn’t show much, but the sounds you hear are all 100% genuine. And I swear I got into the car trying to be as unbiased as I could be. How much of a difference could it REALLY feel like? Right? I figured it would be fun, fast, and exciting, but nothing too jarring.

Well, I immediately realized how wrong that presumption was. Almost all of my body’s senses were involved. As we pointed the car toward the straight and empty road you could feel the car tense up. It didn’t necessarily rumble like a muscle car, but you could feel the power simmering up behind you. The sound was tough to describe. It was as if all the air around us began to be sucked into the car with a “just switched the jet engines on”-esaqe sound. Actually you know what it sounded like? It sounded like the proton packs did when the Ghostbusters switched them on.

So the car tenses up, the jet engine sound spins up, and the pedal drops. Boom! I’m not sure if it was just from the overload of all my senses going off, as the jaring impact of the car lifted me from the back of my seat, as I felt the front of the car lifting of the ground, but the lights in the road started to blur. It sort of blurred like the way the movies depict the Star Trek Enterprise jumping into warp speed. You could hear the popping of the transmission, and the switching on and off of the turbo charges. It was a large thudding sound.

The funny thing was the whole experience didn’t even leave 2nd gear, and you could tell that there was so much of the car left tucked away.

 

 

 

 



Oh, and one more thing…The exhaust did this!

Use Case: Searching for PMF

Scan.me is great use case for focusing on the right customer, not just the right product.

AND that the product doesn’t *have to* be complicated or new to be wanted.

It just has to be easier to use, and packaged up better then the alternative.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/scan-gets-1-7m-from-google-ventures-and-shervin-pishevar-to-make-qr-codes-actually-useful/

 

Apple stores put their money where their mouth is

Ahhh the checkout line.

I know what I want, I found what I want in your store, AND I want to pay for it. So what do you do? You make me wait in line to give you my money! Man, that system is so archaic. Talk of “self checkout” has been around for a while, but I have seen very few instances of it in practice. Aside from the self checkout in the grocery store, that is still just a line in the end, checking out while picking up items in the store is not a part of our daily lives – yet.

So with all the rumors of our devices one day helping us checkout in our favorite stores, Apple finally made the decision to take the first step and offer self checkout on your iOS device at all Apple stores. Just download the newest version of the Apple Store App and buy til’ your hearts content, or your bank account runs dry, whichever comes first.

I have yet to use it myself, but am anxious to see how the company that is known for defining best practices around new concepts will implement their self checkout. I am also curious to see how they handle a jam packed store, with hundreds of very valuable items, mostly ranging in the $+1K range.

 

        

7-7 and the cure for hiccups. You will thanks me later.

There is sort of a funny story around this… My friend recently had hiccups that just wouldn’t go away. The funny thing is, this moment shot me back 20 years, reminding me of when I was in 6th grade and thought I had invented the cure for hiccups. I distinctly remember that my cure became popular when a kid who had hiccups in my school would tell them everyone to come talk to me becuase I was the man, or more like the kid, that can help get rid of them.

Fast forward a couple decades, and I am sitting in this situation with my friend. To be honest, I was actually too embarresed to tell her that “I have the cure; try this!” I thought it would sound dorky and cliche. So, doubting the legitimacy of my 6th grade nostalgic memory, I instead turned to the internet.

I found tons of hits on google, and me and my friend proceeded to try each one. From plugging her ears with her fingers, to holding her breath, to rubbing her throat with my fingers, we tried them all, and every time, after a few seconds of silence <hiccup!> – they were back.

So screw it I said, and I told her the story from my child hood, recalling my days as the defacto hiccup shaman of my 6th grade class. I swear to you, after she followed the exercise, the hiccups never returned.

With my new found blogger mentality, I went to my computer and decided to share my cure with the world. Here it is. Although simple, it is effective, and the combination and adherence to the formula is a necessity. Like the line “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” any variation, no matter how similar, would do it unjustice.

Without further ado, here it is – the 7-7 cure for hiccups :

  1. Fill up a glass of water
  2. Breath in until you can’t breathe in anymore
  3. while your lungs are full, pretend as if you were forcing out air from your lungs but prevent doing so and do it for for 7 seconds. If done right your abs will feel tight and a slight pressure will form in your throat.
  4. (If you hiccup in the middle of this or at any time start over, it is necesary that you do not hiccup while practicing these steps, tell your mind “if I hiccup, I will do it the second i am done, but def not during the exercise.)
  5. Now, while your lungs are full and after you have completed counting the seven seconds take seven large gulps of water. While gulping the water feel the gulps massage your throat. This may cause a burp, but again if it stops you from doing the exercise,  you must start over.
  6. That’s its. Once completed wait and see if it works.

 

To recap:

Full your lngs with air, hold it for seven seconds and then take seven gulps of water.

Steve Jobs in the beginning

Here are a couple videos that show Steve Jobs growing his philosphy, company vision, and product. One comes with a nice narration around his time building Next Computers. It’s a great glimpse into his fundemental beleifs that guided hmthroughthe years. The other is hi giving a lecture of where Apple came from and where it is going.

 

This video narrates Jobs creating Next Computers with the first group of employees at their company retreats.

This video is an early presentation by Jobs from 1980 describing how Apple started, what he sees its affects being, and some interesting insight into what he sees in tech startup potential and the growth of the human race.