Category: Technology

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.

3 iOS Tricks That Are Amazingly Unknown

It sucks not being able to search a web page for a specific word on a webpage in your iPhone and iPad.

I – Find on page

iPhone & iPads

  1. Click on google search box
  2. enter the word you want to search
  3. At the bottom of search results for the web, the search results for whether the word appears on the current web page your on is listed.
  4. Scroll down to reveal the words found on the page

Just iPad

iPad recently added a new search web page fiend to the keyboard when eacrhing on the google input box

Have you used four fingers on your iPad lately?

iPad only.

II – Swipe between app

When having more than one app in your background place four fingers on your screen and swipe to the right or left to alternate betwen apps in your background wthout needing to double click or opening and clssing apps

III – Open app in background with swipe

You can access your background apps without doubleclicking your home button on Ipad.

Simply use four fingers on your screen swiping upwards and you will get the listing of all your background apps.

Hope you have fun rediscovering the fun you can have with your iOS devices!

Google TV is finally a google TV

Got home tonight and notcied my google tv wasnt responding to my harmonay iphone remote…..after some fiddling around a simple update ended up being all that was required. To my surprise it wasn’t just a minor release, like it usual ends up beeing. My google TV has changed considerably! (along with my iphone remote,) and the my Google TV finally has the Adnroid market, ergot finally a real Google TV! Yay!

I downloaded some apps, checked out the new user interface and workflow. I know have a 50 inch non-touch tablet 🙂

There is also the “allow unkown sources” option in the settings, along with enable debugging, so I guess developing for my TV is now piled onto my list of things to do.

 

After some googling, I found some info on the update. You can check it out here: http://www.google.com/tv/

Deciding on a new feature: An Insta-Test-market. (AKA: Ghetto Testing)

I love making a decisions tree as efficnet as possible, especial around discussion that steer the business or the product within a business. Or in another words, I HATE “tough decisions.”

Here is another addition to the decision tree to make life easier, it is called “Ghetto Testing” and coined by the founder of Zenga.

How do you figure out if you should go with a feature with minmal disruption to the company or its engineers, and how can you invest in it with the highest posible certainty of success? Ghetto Testing a feature. The concept is there are a wide range of data points you can aquire to guage interest on an idea before the idea is fleshed out. At the “Ghetto” stage, it sint so much a test of the product value or feature set itself, as much of a servey to see if the concept will get clicks or interest by the public. It’s basically an adhoc test market. If you think people will love feature x for instance, create a google adword promoting the vapor-ware concept and run it for 5,10,30 mins.  The resulting page of the ad could technically go to a 404 page, and although that would be a horrible experience it still wouldbe a valid ghetto test.

From there you can invest incrementally into how deep of a gauge you want to testing of the idea i.e. a pretty landing page with feature highlights, a download, or a purchase wall.

http://grattisfaction.com/2010/01/how-zynga-does-customer-development-minimum-viable-product/

 

"Should I add x to my product line?" litmus test

For small startups it is essential to decide what not to do as much as what you decide *to* do. As new technologies come and go, ideas for change could cripple a companies productivity or ability to reach any single objective (AKA Distractions.)

If your objective is to build an awesome product, and work hard at solving a problem that others may not have been able to solve yet, then here is a “is this a distraction right now, or a need for change?”  litmus test for small startups.

Test:

Do I believe we should *only* do [new idea] and grow the company out from from there?

(i.e. stop focusing on the other thing you had previsouly decided was *the* way to grow the company from.)

If you find yourself getting to a strong yes, then the convo to get into the new idea may be ripe for discussion, and it may be time to focus energy on a new strategy and to pool your resources to build a world class product. I’ll go into what you can do to break the new idea down further from there, to see if it makes sense in your business in other ways, in later blogs.

Side notes as to why this problem may often come about:

For one, the grass is always greener. So you need to be carefull when shifting towards an idea that is not on your mind every hour of every day…There will often be different problems, not less, to overcome when you switch.

Second is brain time. The amount you spend on solving a problem has some (not sure yet what amount yet) relation on the lack of time you have spent thinking about the new thing. All the litte details that are reflex knowladge for you for is lost with a new idea and direction.

Analogous Exmaples in life:

For a simplified abstract example, you spend a few hours packing the night before a trip. Last minute the morning of the flight you realize, “Hey, I can just take the smaller bag! How much smarter of me, I can save much space!” So you do.

At the airport you realize that one of the side reasons you wanted the bigger bag was not just to carry more, but to so your friend could but his shoes in it. Damn! You over looked ne of the many small details that led to the dscisoin to pack the big bag in the first place, but the new idea that came to mind, that you took action on in a shorter amount of time, did not allow you to consider all the many reasons why you made the decisions you did the night before.

A more common example: “Ughhh, I left my wallet in my other pants pocket!” You look better, and it’s a good thing too because now you need to find someone to pay for your dinner :p

Closing

You may not be able to avoid these smaller mishaps, but you definitely have the power to minimize disrupting a company by paying attention to these business distractions vs changing directions type decision points.

Remember: A small comapany needsto solve *a* problem, focus on it, and when they get their fit and a few wins the grow into more spaces. Here is a great article on focus as it pertains to Product Market Fit and MVP:

http://www.svproduct.com/mvp-vs-product-vision/

“…But of course that was just the beginning of the product line and not the end.”

 

“Should I add x to my product line?” litmus test

For small startups it is essential to decide what not to do as much as what you decide *to* do. As new technologies come and go, ideas for change could cripple a companies productivity or ability to reach any single objective (AKA Distractions.)

If your objective is to build an awesome product, and work hard at solving a problem that others may not have been able to solve yet, then here is a “is this a distraction right now, or a need for change?”  litmus test for small startups.

Test:

Do I believe we should *only* do [new idea] and grow the company out from from there?

(i.e. stop focusing on the other thing you had previsouly decided was *the* way to grow the company from.)

If you find yourself getting to a strong yes, then the convo to get into the new idea may be ripe for discussion, and it may be time to focus energy on a new strategy and to pool your resources to build a world class product. I’ll go into what you can do to break the new idea down further from there, to see if it makes sense in your business in other ways, in later blogs.

Side notes as to why this problem may often come about:

For one, the grass is always greener. So you need to be carefull when shifting towards an idea that is not on your mind every hour of every day…There will often be different problems, not less, to overcome when you switch.

Second is brain time. The amount you spend on solving a problem has some (not sure yet what amount yet) relation on the lack of time you have spent thinking about the new thing. All the litte details that are reflex knowladge for you for is lost with a new idea and direction.

Analogous Exmaples in life:

For a simplified abstract example, you spend a few hours packing the night before a trip. Last minute the morning of the flight you realize, “Hey, I can just take the smaller bag! How much smarter of me, I can save much space!” So you do.

At the airport you realize that one of the side reasons you wanted the bigger bag was not just to carry more, but to so your friend could but his shoes in it. Damn! You over looked ne of the many small details that led to the dscisoin to pack the big bag in the first place, but the new idea that came to mind, that you took action on in a shorter amount of time, did not allow you to consider all the many reasons why you made the decisions you did the night before.

A more common example: “Ughhh, I left my wallet in my other pants pocket!” You look better, and it’s a good thing too because now you need to find someone to pay for your dinner :p

Closing

You may not be able to avoid these smaller mishaps, but you definitely have the power to minimize disrupting a company by paying attention to these business distractions vs changing directions type decision points.

Remember: A small comapany needsto solve *a* problem, focus on it, and when they get their fit and a few wins the grow into more spaces. Here is a great article on focus as it pertains to Product Market Fit and MVP:

http://www.svproduct.com/mvp-vs-product-vision/

“…But of course that was just the beginning of the product line and not the end.”

 

Smart Car Makes Clever Website

I was oddly propelled to click on an ad today, brought to me by the makers of the Smart Car. It was a pretty, clean, well made site. I scrolled up and down to see if anything would catch my eye, and strangely enough something did.

Some time ago I made a post about the coolness of sites I see that take advantage of telling their story, not through pages navigated to by the standard point-and-click, but by animating the home page based on the amount of scroll a user applys to the site. (You can find the post on cool scrolling animated sites here )

Some people have done a poor job of creating well balanced sitethat not only tells a good story, but does in a animated way that tells the story better than it otherwise could be told. And done smooth enough that the coolness, or story, isn’t hindered by the latency and choppyness of the meium.

Well This smart car ad page did just that. And without futher adu, here are some screeen shots and the link to the smart car ad site (2011-12-4).

It begins with a simple page, that focuses all the users attention to the car, and its size.

As you begin scrolling the colors of the sites changes and the a different smart car is presented.

Notice the menu on the right site, letting you know where you are in the story. The white cricle tells you what part of the story you are currently in, and what is coming up next. Notice the blending from one “page” to the next as you scroll. Notice how you find you self scrolling more and more, and digest a few tid bits of knowladge thatyou would ohter wise not have gained behidn a barier of clicks. Well done. 🙂

 

 


The hardware won’t stop changing

When the iPhone first came about there were plenty of neh-sayers that rebeled against the native functionality on the phone and how it was destined to be doomed by more standard tech already in place on the web.

The problem when attempting to prophesize the future of new technologies is that many people forget that the technology they are predicting against is not a controlled variable. Not only will the technolgy advance that they forsee, but the technology they are basing their predictions on will change as well. That every changing system means you can never be too sure what the life time of a new product will be and how it will develop. The only good bet is: all parts of technology are ever advancing.

The mobie device epitomizes that fact. A fragmented distribution of lightweight, fairly inexpensive, devices that are constantly in use by its users and is getting completely revamped and bought up every year and by eager customers ready to upgrade. The manufactures will keep pumping more features into the device that go beyond  weight, and better screen resolution. And with form factor constraints relativley out the door, compared to their laptop and PC predecessors, native device functionality will always trump what the generic standard products will pump out. Of course RF functionalities ar making their way into our everyday life, and now Andoroids may be getting a barometer: http://gizmodo.com/5851288/why-the-barometer-is-androids-new-trump-card.

As these products evolve native apps will keep going strong.