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.
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 :
- Fill up a glass of water
- Breath in until you can’t breathe in anymore
- 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.
- (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.)
- 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.
- 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.
The Know Nothing Party. The past finds a home when you aren’t looking.
I was watching Gangs of New York and some of the anti-equality debate in the movie sounded familiar. So, I started looking things up – as I love to do.
It’s funny how every generation has a group composed of those that are sure others are less equal to them, and believe their way of life is threatened, in this case occurring over 100 years ago.
The “Know Nothing” party was a political group created for the those that feared change. The differences they found to mark their divide were the “native” vs. the “non native” (AKA fresh of the boat irish vs. those born here) and the divisions of Christianity each gang chose as their own.
Check out the write up on the Know-Nothing party here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing, http://history1800s.about.com/od/immigration/a/knownothing01.htm), or on your own. Utterly amazing how little somethings change.
Hate and inequality seems to always find a way to influence those who think they are protecting tradition.
I guess a question to ask is, will your party, group, or even your name make its way onto that page for your kid’s kids to read 50 years from now so they can say, “wow, how stupid were they?!”
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
- Click on google search box
- enter the word you want to search
- 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.
- 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!
Let’s have cleaner debates with our neighbors: Not the facts, just the data.
I am not trying to get entrenched in the political back-and-forth going on. I actually do understand all of the he-said she-said going back-and-forth when it comes to peoples opinions. Opinions are each persons right to have, especially when it comes to social philosophy. Additionally, opinions are hard to “verify”; your beleifs are your prerogative.
However, it is amazing to me how non-opinion based information gets thrown AS opinion. It is even more distressing because it is so easy to find many statistic directly from the source, before they are muddied by political agenda, or distributed in off-the-cuff comments and hearsay.
So, I figured I could help…
The following are just the data & graphs of screen-shots taken from real census data (and yes the URL of where I got the data from is also noted next to each graph.) Feel free to browse the data yourself and make your own observations.
Debate the implications all your want – but below are not news reports or debate notes, they are charts taken from the actual data sources. All I ask, and hope to acheive, is that no matter what side your on, just remember not to include non-sensicle bullet points that just aren’t true and instead try to argue around your beliefs. Do not get caught up in baseless, inflated, skewed, or inaccurate depictions of history as it relates to hard cold metrics.
Important notes on data around first day of office dates
The first day in office for elected presidents is in late January following the election results, coming two months before in November.
| George W’s First Day | Obama’s First Day |
| January 20, 2001 | January 20, 2009 |
The stock market
The stock market shows the amount of money distributed in US corporation. The rich, and anyone investing in the rich wins when this graph goes up. Note 2007 and 2008 were shockingly bad, the worst downswing since the mid 80s. The good news everyone is it has only taken four years to get back from our bubble burst of 2001 which took eight.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI (You want this going up)
Unemployment Rate
This one is a often heavy argument point, but the data is all very easy to lookup. When a single percentage is called out it is hard to know its context. Those that scream and point fingers from he top of a mountain often end up implicating everyone – if those at the bottom of the mountain did a little research…. Again 2007 was the beginning of the frenzy. And if you remember there were many sad days and foreclosures making an “america is shutting down” environment. It was the intense swing from just a year before in 2006 that scared people the most.
http://goo.gl/2O2zl (You want this going down)
2007-2009 was the sharpest upswing of unemployment we have seen over 30 years.
Debt
Here is another amazing story of how politicians program you to just repeat what they shout, programming you to have their debate. Again, the data is there to have your own debates and ones that aren’ skewed by anyone. Debt sucks, and gus, we have had it growing for a long time. And this rate back-and-forth argument is again a graph away. You can see the linear growth of date below.
http://goo.gl/d9Wvz (You want this going down)
Personal Income
This is one that people don’t talk much about, because we like focusing on the negatives. BUT your incomes have been growing fairly steadily for a long time. We had a short blip of our first downward trajectory in 2008, actually the only one in recorded history of the US, but it corrected itself pretty quickly after 2009.
http://goo.gl/2CaIc (You want this going up)
I also found interesting that the following census data shows a steady increase in revenue and income in the US for decades.
Disposable Income per capita
This is also a great graph to be going up. Like the income graph we saw our first real blip ever in 2008, but for the most part we have consistently been getting a linear growth.
http://goo.gl/QQOlG
Revenue
This one is a bit less cheerful, but t’s the reality. We had some great years as a country with revenue, but unfortunately the money stopped coming in in 2007 and we have all felt this graph at home.
http://goo.gl/DFMK8
Facebook gets into the continuous scroll promo page game
Facebook has embraced the continuous scrolling, animated-esque homepage style. Like I mentioned in my other posts about this style of website (animated scroll sites), the format reduced the closing doors effect that clicking around a site can create. You bring the user into a story and prevents the message from being broken up. The single stream of consciousness keep a user curious to see what comes next. Combine the scroll with the hit-the-bottom-to-load-more-content system the potential for great workflows is there. Im really liking these design patterns, and they keep getting better. I wouldn’t be surprised if this style of website becomes the standard in the next year.
https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline (2011-12-15)
You are introduced to the homepage with a video. A pretty good one at that.
Clicking a button on the bottom quickly scrolls to a new section, so whether you start by scrolling or you are more of a clickster you are taken cre of. And both actions quickly teach you how to interact with ethe site.
As you scroll, the section headers rise to the top and stay there. (much like the other sites I have blogged about, and possibly started form the ios table header design pattern). ALso becoming a standard is the button navigation animates to sync up with where you are scrolled to in the website.
Long Lost Bucket List
I was going through some old Google docs of mine and came across a bucket list a wrote in 2008. Haha, I can even remember writing it. It was after I saw Ted Leonsis speak about what he has learned and accomplished in his life, and how his bucket list helped in decide to do the things he did. In his words [paraphrased]:
“[when the oppertuity came to produce a movie at first it was a hard descision, but looking back at my bucket list, and seeing it on their, reminded me to take the oppertunity I was given before I die]”
It felt much like finding a time capsule, and one that I forgot I even placed. With so much having happened in the last 4 years, and so much happening in the last week, it offered a pretty perspective on things. As I read through the message in a bottle sent to me by my former self, I was excited to be able to cross of a couple items on the list, and dissapointed at the vast majority of things I could not.
I really encourage those out there to mak a bucket list. It offers perspective into you life as yo find yourself focusing on so manythings over the years. It helps bring you back to a core goal, or reminds you of one you may have forgotten.
From a more technological perspective (I can’t help it, I am a technologist after all,) I encourage you to write it in google docs. I was not obly able to easily find this old list, but since Google Docs are live docs I can see the revision history of the document over time. I can imagine how interesting it will be to check out the changes, and additions I make to this list over the next 20 years.
…
While looking for bucket list-esque pictures for this post on the web I stumbled onto this site (http://bucketlist.org/) that helps people share their bucket list publicly.
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/
Sean Shadmand 