Tips – Page 4 – Sean Shadmand

Wolfram Alpha: Product Spotlight

Wolfram Alpha calls itself a “computational knowledge engine” and was spun out of “Mathematica,” a mathematically intensive formula and graphing calculator on steroids.

Although amazingly powerful, Wolfram Alpha is not widely known, though you may already be using it. Its one of the data engines behind Siri – and one of the few Siri systems you can actually count on. It responds on Siri’s behalf for computationally based queries. For example, when you ask Siri “How many inches in 10 meters” she replies with:

Notice the logo beneath the answer.

You can access Wolfram Alpha directly on the web and get some surprisingly robust answers from it. Just for kicks, while showing Wolfram Alpha to a friend (completely unrehearsed), I asked it, “How many cars are on the road?” ( Purposefully leaving it a bit vague.) Surprisingly, this is what it responded with:

It helps that Wolfram Alpha is scoped. It focuses on statistical and computational questions. Therefore, it doesn’t search the web for trends and rankings since it’s primarily driven by data and math. So, to get the most out of it I suggest focusing your questions on ones that possess those qualities. It can be, for example, a good place to gather preliminary data for your research. Like this one, “number of families in the united states with an average income above $100,000 per year.”

To be honest, it’s been years since I last played with it; it’s kind of one of those products that its usefulness ebbs and flows. Recently, however, while researching a “social product” idea, I stumbled upon this nifty feature advertising a Facebook Report from Wolfram and decided to give it a go.

Wolfram Alphas Facebook Report

Not only was the data of the report interesting but the speed at which it gathered, computed and graphed it all was a bit stunning. It’s able to give you just about everything about you on Facebook.

You can view charts of your post history over time, as a ratio between posting images vs. text, most active times of day by media types or a word-cloud of your most often used vocabulary. You can find out what post garnered you the most likes or comments, who’s commented on your posts the most and how often you use the FB app.

This little graph shows me the ratio of female friends I have to male ones and what their relationships status’ are – broken down into a pie chart. You can see the average age of my friends and where in the world my friends live.

This graph I don’t really even understand, but it looks hella informative!

All in all Wolfram Alpha is a fun product to play with and may even help you get some of your research started and difficult questions answered quickly.

Here are some other fun questions to ask it:

Facebook V. Twitter

How far is Saturn (Remember, distances are not static)

First cousins once removed

35,000 Words in Finish

More examples

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is deeply integrated with western culture. Although its foundation began with China, it became more influenced by British colonialism and, as such, has developed an identity all its own.

You’ll notice this unique mixture immediately when you arrive. Street signs that line the city are printed in plain English with names like “Queen’s Road” or “Russel Street”. We quickly learned, however, that you can’t count on the English versions of the roads to get around.

None of the cabs we took spoke a lick of English, nor did they understand the English version of our destination’s cross-streets. Even more complex, as we learned from some locals, is the Chinese version of the streets don’t directly translations to the English ones. In essence, many streets have two distinct names.

Tip #1: Always take a picture of the local Chinese text of the destination you want to go (or write it down) so you can show it to the cab driver. Learning a nearby landmark’s local name won’t hurt either.

Other than that, getting around town was fairly easy with Google Maps and English (remembering, of course, that it is always a good idea to learn a few local phrases out of respect for your host country.)

There is a constant sense of old and new while walking through Hong Kong. A trendy bar filled with young business people dressed to the 9s is placed directly next to a tiny old-style market with burlap bags of dried foods displayed on its stoop. You’ll see bamboo scaffolding next to an ancient temple with rising incense smoke flowing into the neon lights of a brand new bar, only a block away from a two story aluminum-plated Apple store. The city is somehow both completely foreign yet comfortable and familiar.

Tip #2: You’ll notice symbols such as “11/F” on some signs. The pattern refers to the floor an establishment is on. In this case the “11th floor.”

On our first night, we stumbled through a neighborhood filled with expats. It took a moment for it to register, but rows of restaurants and bars were completely filled with non-Chinese locals. In a way, it was like Hong Kong’s American-town, nicely balancing out our China-town back home.

The concept of culture fusion continues into the world of food. There’s a continuum of tastes ranging from the very pure and authentic Chinese dishes, to its modern interpretations, all the way to an east-meets-west blend. The first restaurant we stopped into was brand new and, sadly, we were drawn to mostly on name alone. It was called “Ho Lee Fook” and it had a 1-hour waiting list. We used the time to visit some local bars and grab a drink before dinner.

Jackie has an amazing sense of finding “good spots” when we travel. She is an instinctual Yelp database. On our kill-time-before-we-eat bar-cruise her spidey-sense drove us into a small bar called the Three Monkeys. No exaggeration, we had the best drinks we’ve ever had in our lives. Perfectly blended and absolutely delicious. At this point we also began to realize that Hong Kong was not cheap by any means – each drink was around $15+ USD.

We finished up and headed back to Ho Lee Fook. The hostess led us down into the basement; Jay-Z and Jimi Hendrix’s music filled the rooms. Once we sat down and got comfortable we realized the restaurant was filled with Americans and Brits. We stumbled into another ex-pat bunker.

Tip #3: When you are visiting other countries and time is limited you can sometimes get a slight feeling that you’re getting cheated out of your adventure when you get surrounded by tons of your own people. But, in this instance, we recognized that these ex-pat areas were very much part of the local culture and we embraced it. It helped that the food was amazing. The final bill came in around $80-$100.

We hit the must-do list.

We took The Peak Tram up the famously steep climb to the top of The Peak Tower. There you get a 360-degree view of the city, 396 meters above sea level. Walking around the small town at the top of the hill finally gave us a sense of the beautifully lush, island-rich landscape that is Hong Kong.

Tip #4: Don’t waste your money on The Peak Tower’s 360-Degree View entrance fee. Wrap around to a nearby building’s rooftops and get pretty much the same view for free. Also, sometimes it’s foggy and you can’t see anything up top anyway. Try to go on a clear morning.

We also headed to see the “big buddha” by the way of gondola and got even more breathtaking views of the country.

But mostly we ate.

I’m not sure, but I imagine it’s quite rare to visit two of the least expensive Michelin star rated restaurants in the world back to back. We had dim sum at Din Tai Fung, which was good but not mind-blowing – and a bit pretentious. Even more memorable was the savory gravy biscuits we had at Tim Ho Wan on the bottom floor of a mall for about $1 each. They close early so make sure you check the hours before you go. We got there a bit late, but they were nice enough to make a few to go boxes for us take out. We shared one biscuit from the bag as we walked away and they were so good I ran back to the restaurant to get six more.

My biggest food fumble was made by my weakness to marketing propaganda. Everywhere we went we saw a McDonalds promoting “the prosperity burger.” I had to know what it was so I finally gave in and ordered it on our last day. All it was was a McRib with onions. Yuck.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to the awesome stay we had at Hotel LBP. They staff was friendly, the rooms were super nice and we got it at a great price (possible from a promotion.)

3 reasons why I’m bullish on extensions, plus a better scheduling app.

Scheduling time to meet with someone is one of those things that’s just hard enough to be annoying, but probably not complex enough to need a whole new tool to simplify it. It’s one of those problems that makes for a perfect example of how-to, or how-not-to, create a great product.

Often in the product world we find a problem we want to solve and end up creating a far more complex system to solve it; one in which the user has to change usage patterns or require ramp up time. As a result, minor problems and annoyances (like scheduling meetings) don’t get dramatic improvements because the cost v. benefit v. ramp-up never quite get to a point in which the user is willing to change their habits to gain the benefits from a new tool. “I’ll just send an email” or “I’ll just use a spreadsheet” can kill the potential for “robust” products. And rightly so, email and spreadsheets are comfortable, versatile and already understood between groups.

That’s why I have been bullish on extensions, especially the Google Chrome ones.

The good ones are able to find a balance between:

A lack of ramp-up time.
An integration into the tools and workflows I already use.
No requirement for other parties to have the platform in order to use it.

An example of a great extension I was introduced to recently is Assistant.to. Assistant.to is a Chrome extension that links to your Google Calendar and extends your Google Email composer so you can easily drop-in potential appointment/meeting times as text and links in your email. There was no setup, all the interaction happens within the GMail composer, and the form factor works in a way that needs no additional explanation or signups for the receiver.

It is a must have tool for sure! Here are some screenshots of the workflow:

Checking_in____-_sean_shadmand_gmail_com_-_Gmail — Extension overlay

Checking_in____-_sean_shadmand_gmail_com_-_Gmail 2 — Expanded overlay

Checking_in____-_sean_shadmand_gmail_com_-_Gmail 3 — Select availability

Checking_in____-_sean_shadmand_gmail_com_-_Gmail 4 — Available times copy and pasted

Assistant_to_-_Your_Personal_Scheduling_Assistant — Meeting confirmed

As a note, another great extensions I’ve been using lately is the one Grammerly.com that allows great inline writting corrections and tools.

Product Review: A great new way to write better emails, blogs and more

It’s no secret, out of all the talents I may have, the acuity for perfect grammar is not one of them. As a child, my poor spelling was covered up only by my even worse handwriting. As hard as I try, remembering to use “then” instead of “than” seems to find a way to slip by me!

Spellcheck and other technology gave me the confidence I needed to write more often, and a 140 character limit on Twitter helps force you to find more value in fewer words. However, those technologies are limited in scope and miss simple word confusion like “then” and “than” that slip by now and again.

If there are others out there like me, and it sounds like there are THEN I need you to check out this great new tool! It will help you push out more consistently proofed and well-manicured copies of writing THAN you’ve ever had before!

The tool is called Grammerly.com. I’ve only been using it for less than 24 hours, but I’m already impressed. The basic plan is free, and it comes with this neat little Chrome extension that super-charges your browser-based text. Here are a few of examples:

Unfortunately, it still missed some “then” and “than” mix-ups, as well as a few situations where two words should be one (e.g. proofreading). These are mistakes that only a person would catch. That’s where the fun part comes in.

They have this neat feature called “Professional Proofreading,” and for $0.02 per word, you can request a real live human to read over your material. Below is my experience and what provoked me to write up this blog!

ready — “proof complete” notification and email

corrected — download red-lined copy in only a few minutes.

Of course, you wouldn’t use a professional proofreader all the time, but for important emails to the public or to double-check each blog post, it may be money, and time, well spent. Enjoy!

I invested 50/50 in Betterment and Wealthfront and this is what happened

I’ve been hearing a lot of debate between financial “experts” and casual investors around the pros and cons of ETFs and managed VS. unmanaged accounts. As I mentioned in this posts about “when experts disagree do your own thing” I figured the only way to get a non-bias answer is to spread my investments in them all and see what happens in 30 years. Sure, anything could happen but if nothing else I’ll learn a lot.

I recently invested 50/50 in Betterment and Wealthfront for my unmanaged ETF test (based on my good friends Daniel Odio’s post) to see how they perform overtime and to compare the results to my fully managed investment account. This won’t be as much of an investigation and extension of any debate but rather a summary of my personal experience with products and services across the board. For this post I will focus on what my initial experience has been between Betterment and Wealthfront so far.

I thought it would take a while to start spooling up some experiences but in the first inning (as a new depositor into both Betterment and Wealthfront accounts. Same amounts, risk settings etc ) Betterment is definitely ahead, here’s why: the stock market took a plunge these last few weeks and I wanted to invest in the possible fire sale. Now whether or not that tactic is sound is another story. What matters to me personally is that I was able to invest directly from my bank account into Betterment within 24 hours seamlessly. In addition the site and my app showed me the money was deployed and begun to display gains/loses immediately. Wealthfront took over a week to transfer and although the money shows as being pulled from my bank account there is still no sign of it in the Wealth front app or dashboard. The app has no insight into anything and just shows a list of recently posted blogs by the company.

That lag has already cost me 3% and If the market continues to recover it who knows how much that will mean long term. Of course if the market continues to dip the lag in wealth front will be a lucky break but I don’t use a service hoping it will work poorly so that sways in the market will work in my favor.

Regarding the apps, Betterment is the winner so far as well. Welathfront may have no more information and graphs once the funds display correctly, but who knows at this point as a new investor – current there is just a 0 on the screen that is not clickable. Betterment lists my pending transaction, as well as current deployed capital broken down by earnings to date. And it’s the same story for the website. From a user experience point of view Welathfront just shows me the same form it showed me when I initiated the bank transfer – no updates or info is accessible for this account with any useful information.

The lack of “warm and fuzzy” information I am getting as a new customer leaves me concerned for what my future experiences will be like with Wealthfront. It’s far to early to count them out since, if after the funds are deployed, I may get great graphs, information, tax benefits, and more but as a new user the cold hard fact it I am more satisfied with the way Betterment is taking care of me than Wealthfront.

In closing, at this stage of the experiment I:

a) hope that the post-funding user experience at Wealthfront is way better than the ramp up experience.

b) suggest that WealthFront improve upon the points listed above.

I know there may be many features and options that I am missing that both can do but in the initial experience where features are limited as is my expertise with using the systems I can only comment on what I know as a new customer and that is what I have done. Honestly, I win if both do well so I mean it when I say: best of luck to the challengers!

Fastest, cleanest, and easiest way to deseed a pomegranate.

Don’t be intimidated by this delicious anti-oxident rich fruit now in season. Checkout the video below and you’ll find yourself looking forward to the chance to break one open!

My greatest life lessons from Computer Science

I really appreciate my education in Computer Science. The most valuable mental shift I gained was the understanding that there are no “hard problems.” To recognize that even extremely difficult problems were easily solved once you were able to deconstruct them into smaller more simple ones. Problem-solving is about figuring out how to simplify, dismantle, and rebuild toward solutions. Simplifying is all about getting good and asking the right questions.

For instance, playing the guitar is hard, playing chords with rhythm is easier, playing chords is even easier, playing a note is more easy – and so on and so forth.

Just breakdown what you want to accomplish and get great at each little piece of it. Then, get great at putting each individual piece together and your problem isn’t all that bad.

Just get up and travel the world already!

Chris Guillebeau, blogger for chrisguillebeau.com, confronts those asked why they don’t just quit their job and travel around the world. It’s blunt, frank and fun. Sure it may sound crazy, but maybe – just maybe – it isn’t. I sure hope one day I have the balls or tenacity to just get up and go!

Here are some rebutels he addresses:

“I don’t have money to travel.”
“The rest of the world is dangerous.”
“I like staying at home.”
I’ll do this kind of stuff when I retire (or at some other distant point in the future).

And some question you may have to ask yourself:

1) Am I satisfied with my work? Does it meet my needs and fulfill my desires?
2) Think back to the times you have left your home country. What did you learn on those trips? Do you think you have more to learn?
3) If you could go anywhere in the world, where would that be? (Don’t think about reasons why you can’t go there.)
4) What are your financial priorities?

You can read the full break down here:
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/why-you-should-quit-your-job-and-travel-around-the-world/

The Bill of Nights

No Goals

What we are talking about here is the grasping of some greater force, call it fate or kismet, that can be harnessed if one is willing to give themselves up to natures will and allow this ‘force’ to guide them through their day. I have done my research my friends and can safely say that if you live in a city such as DC, NY, LA, SF or even Huntington Beach, CA you have an amazing story awaiting your discover right outside your door any day of the week. There is no need to plan, no need to find a buddy, no need to check the news paper for events. Nope, you and the city can work together to create an amazing night. It all lives within the faith and trust you give your cement filled provider.

Pursue the unexpected

You must give in and recognize the unexpected pleasures that can only be found when walking aimlessly through a bustling city. Is it a pleasure that can only be understood while doing so. Much like Martin Buber wrote in “I and Thou”,:
it is within the moment that understanding is achieved. The moments after a moment is realized the human mind begins to analyze it, it begins to process the moment thrusting it away from the experience you’re having and into your memory, or it will begin trying anticipate what should be expected to happen next; the experience itself is short lived and is felt – not understood.

Every time you leave your house and you give your fine city a chance to express itself it will return the favor with a parade you didn’t know about, a race that wasn’t on your calendar, a must see sculpture to see thats not on your to-do’s, an unfortunate accident that will be seen on the news to your suburban counterparts only hours after you have taken it in, or a simple interaction with a new or old friend that you didn’t expect in a part of town neither of you have any good reason being in. Adventure must be your middle name and patience must be your side kick.

The rules are fair and must be followed to a T and with complete acceptance both of the mind, the body and the spirit. They are as follows:

Simple Version (Bill of Nights Lite):

1) Go out early on a beautiful day
2) Don’t expect anything more then getting the chance to experience your city
3) Don’t make plans or make phone calls to see what your friends are up to
4) Push your self to stay out all day and night, do not go home till after midnight

Full Body Version (mmmm…..Sooooo meaty):
1) You must pick a beautiful day. Good weather and good sun is key

2) You must leave the house early, no later then 11 AM

3) You cannot have any expectations or plans set up for the day.

4) You must be prepared to enjoy the day and nature for what it is, do not expect to drink, or have “fun”. Focus more on getting to know your city, enjoying the day and being alone with your thoughts

5) You can not call a friend, you can answer calls but you can not make calls at any point of the night to see what going on with others. Doing so will derail the fate that nature has worked so hard to prepare that you have no chance of foreseeing.

6) You must go into any bar, restaurant or diner that catches your eye. If you have even the slightest of curiosity – follow it. Even if it’s to just go inside the establishment and walk around to get a feel for it and leave.

7) You must force your self to have a beer, snack or coffee at some of these places. Try your best not to convince yourself otherwise, walk in!

8) Make small talk with strangers. I know this is tough for many of you, especially the shy ones, but as a recovering shy-aholic I must tell you every chat has possible outcomes that grow exponentially greater when you and your world are combined to help permiutate the possible outcomes; onother words its necessary to shake your destiny up a bit. Small talk with strangers when you’re by yourself is like a brilliant chef throwing spices into a soup that allows for an unexpected taste to dazzle his customers. I learned from traveling throughout Europe that it was the necessity to experience my surrounding on a budget that forced me to asked questions about where to go, how they like their town etc. As Blanche DuBois put it , Always depend on the kindness of strangers

9) Wear sneakers

10) If you get tired sit on a bench but don’t get too comfortable, keep walking and exploring new neighborhoods. There is always a dip of excitement a few hours into the adventure. It’s normal and is a hump that needs to be passed much like a cramp you would get in a race.

11) Observe your surrounding do not stare at the ground

12) Do not have head phones on. The city is bustling with activity and you may just find, as I always have, someone you know in a random part of town bump into you. It’s amazing how bloody often this happens!

13) You must stay out till after midnight and not in any single place….once again keep moving

14) say yes. If you do see someone you know and they ask you to come with them for lunch or a beer etc….go!

15) Always leave one opportunity experienced for another new presented opportunity. Allot of people go wrong here. The night turns out great early, they get excited that The Bill of Nights worked and get too comfortable in that experience to entertain the possibility of a different one. A new request comes in and is turned down, the person thinking that the night was already success…it is not a success until you are out after midnight and interacting with all possible out comes. See 3+4

——————-

Remember it is not a single event your are perusing rather it is the night as a whole. Experience new things, new neighborhoods, all new adventures every chance you get. I know it snot easy. I catch myself making mistakes now and again but stick to the mantra and correct myself as soon as I can. I have had an amazing night implementing The Bill of Nights 100% out of the 10-12 times I’ve done it. Not only that, but close friends that implemented it correctly have also succeeded in an amazing story about unexpected encounteres and memorable experiences.

If you believe in your city, your city will believe in you!

…

P.S. If you have a good or bad experience from your Implementation of “The Bill of Nights” leave it. Share your experience and comments 😀