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Business, Marketing, Time And Microsoft

Posted on February 10, 2010 by admin

Business

I am badly out of touch with potentially profitable product ideas. Several weeks ago there was a Shark Tank episode in which an inventor demonstrated seat belt safety product that alerts the driver if the seat belt is not in use. After turning down all of the sharks’ offers, a recent episode revealed that he was able to find distribution through some car dealerships and was making a healthy profit.

During the initial presentation of the product, I immediately thought it was not particularly useful for several reasons.

I assumed that everyone uses their seat belts. A car is a massive hulk of metal moving at high speeds. There is a risk of injury and even death in the event of an accident. A seat belt has a decent chance of decreasing the risk of harm, therefore putting on a seat belt before hitting the roads would be reflexive.
It is excessive and prevents the driver from having control over the vehicle. A seat belt is already a safety feature, and this product tacks on another level of safety over the first level. If this was the ignition for an ICBM a few extra precautionary measures would be great, but it just seems silly for something as mundane as a seat belt.

Marketing

There’s nothing quite as horrifying as seeing a $200 loss within a day, especially when that money was eked out at near minimum wage. Once you see that level of spending for the first time, logic flies out the window and emotions take over. I have a bit more experience now, but it’s uninspiring. After so much effort, at the end of a good day you will be left with profit, but not much else to show for your efforts aside from a good campaign. Obviously the next step would be to diversify to leave the field, but when looking at just internet marketing, it’s the kind of pursuit that can be called dull. It’s the kind of pursuit that, if I were on my deathbed, I would look back and think, “I wasted all that effort with nothing to show for it but money. No real knowledge gained. No inspiring product created. I wasted so much time pushing leads for dating websites, insurance companies, and toolbar downloads.” The optimizing aspect is interesting, but aside from that there is not much else that is interesting.

Time

The passing of time seems to be accelerating. Years ago, the minutes would pass so slowly. Now time has slapped me across the face since it’s already February 2010. So cruel and unusual.

Microsoft

Windows Mobile will likely be dead soon. I can’t imagine what Windows Mobile 7 could possibly offer to regain lost market share. Internet Explorer is also as good as dead. It’s painfully slow, has security problems and I can’t think of any redeeming features. The Zune HD is actually an impressive offering, but an app store is pretty much critical with that kind of hardware, because without one it’s just a glorified MP3 player. Bing is innovative, but in the end it still comes down to the quality of search results, a front on which Bing fails to deliver. Its only real uses are the interesting homepage photos and its cache, which is around longer than those of other search engines due to its slow crawler. Windows 7 and Office 14 are the only bright spots.

Posted in Money | Leave a comment

Apple iPad

Posted on January 27, 2010 by admin

The iPad has been unveiled, but I’m not as impressed as I expected to be due to excessive hype and speculation prior to today’s event. Many of the comments regarding the iPad also hinted at disappointment, which is not typical at Apple product launches.

Prior to the unveiling, I was anticipating a revolutionary device such as the iPhone rather than the evolutionary device shown today. Despite this letdown, many of the criticisms about the device are without merit as they completely disregard what the iPad is meant to be, a casual use, portable media center rather than a full featured tablet PC. Some have cited lack of features such as keyboards, a full OS, a phone and USB ports as, but none of these features would improve the device when considering that touch screens are not especially conducive to work. If you need that level of functionality, buy a MacBook Air. The iPad leans more toward iPod rather than MacBook, and it strikes a good balance between portability and function.

Lack of Adobe Flash, multitasking and camera were also mentioned. If there’s anything the iPad isn’t missing, it’s Flash support. It runs slowly and is mostly used for advertisements and video players, the latter of which won’t be needed with HTML5. The only flaw with the iPad is its lack of multitasking. For a product with more emphasis on actual computing, it seems that multitasking would be important enough to include in the first release.

Also, why complain about missing features on an Apple product at all? The first iteration of all Apple products are invariably short on features so that they can be added in as hot new selling points in later models. It would seem that this would be obvious by now.

In other news, Microsoft is working on its Courier device, but as usual there’s no word on its status.

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

iPhones: Post Purchase Rationalization

Posted on January 20, 2010 by admin

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

Symphony Of Science

Posted on January 16, 2010 by admin

Usually YouTube has zero original content, but this is some cool stuff by melodysheep.

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Cadmium In Jewelry

Posted on January 12, 2010 by admin

Today, this article was featured on Yahoo!’s homepage. It documents how American consumers desire toys that are cheap yet made of the finest materials the earth has to offer, even though such trinkets are likely to wind up in a landfill within weeks.

It reads like a joke, and at the end the author suggests that readers could purchase cadmium testing kits if they are worried about cadmium contaminating their ten cent tchotchkes. Did you just spend money on garbage? Why not spend more money on even more garbage to fix the problem! This could be the topic of a comic strip. Buy, buy, buy!

If it were not for consumerism, would this even be a problem? Consumerism is the source of many problems in society. While I do believe that money buys happiness, the happiness is not derived from such junk, but time. Time means freedom to do what you want other than shop.

Aside from the laughable irony, the article is typical media fear mongering. But that’s to be expected from the media in general, and I shouldn’t expect any better from Yahoo!. What typically qualifies as news these days consists of murders, feel good stories (Local Woman Finds Lost Dog!) and fear mongering.

Thankfully, the original article written by the AP actually provided some useful background information regarding what cadmium is, what’s being done about the problem and relevant details, but it is the shoddy summarized version that makes it to the front page.

The original article by the AP states, “Children can be exposed by sucking or biting such jewelry. But without direct exposure, most people do not experience its worst effects: cancer, kidneys that leak vital protein and bones that spontaneously snap.” The summarized article featured by Yahoo! was devoid of context, and simply spit out these worst case side effects, with the implication that even touching cadmium could put a child at risk of snapping bones and dripping kidneys, with no details regarding the various effects caused by the degree of exposure. Wouldn’t recommendation to dispose of all jewelry deliver the message just as well without inciting unnecessary alarm?

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Conscious Robots

Posted on January 7, 2010 by admin

While Wikipedia I stumbled upon a book called Conscious Robots. My old post, A Conjecture On Consciousness, seems to be similar to this book, which I found interesting. Now that I read the original post, I realize the writing is terrible, rambling, disjointed and does not use the words I necessarily intended, nor does it accurately capture what I had in mind, which was not consciousness but free will.

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.”

- John Watson

But in reality I hope all of this is wrong and there is free will, whatever that is.

Posted in Musings | Leave a comment

White Christmas, Snowboarding, Colorado

Posted on December 28, 2009 by admin

I just returned from a skiing trip at Wolf Creek Ski near Pagosa Springs, Colorado, with friends and family. It was a cold, exhausting and unforgettable experience. We also stopped by Great Sand Dunes National Park on the way back. Colorado is a beautiful state with its snowcapped mountains, plains, rivers and quaint, small towns. Maybe I’ll move there someday instead of California.

After this trip I’ve felt much saner; the wilderness distracted me from civilization, which is filled with things that are damaging but superficially pleasing. The trip reminded me of more important things.

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Pizza Hut Blows

Posted on December 18, 2009 by admin

Once again I’ve been jipped by Pizza Hut’s slick advertising. The first time was when I purchased their pastas. They looked edible in the ads, especially when printed on that glossy ad paper, so decided to try some. I bought a chicken alfredo and lasagna.

The chicken alfredo was flavorless, not to mention lukewarm. It was the most awful chicken alfredo I had ever tasted. It had the consistency and flavor of pasta doused with Elmer’s glue. The chicken was few and far between and exceptionally stringy like bunches of floss. The lasagna was equally flavorless, with a crusty top that suggested it might have been sitting on the counter for far too long. Both the sauce and ricotta cheese had the texture of spackle.

Today at a different Pizza Hut I purchased a supreme because I had not learned my lesson. Upon opening the box at home I realized they had somehow managed to completely forget all the meat toppings, which was partially my fault for not checking. This was all terrible enough, especially with the memory of the nasty pastas lingering on my mind, but after a few bites I realized that I was the lucky recipient of an exceptionally long hair. At this point I lost all appetite and started plotting this here blog post to vent my displeasure.

The moral of the story is to pay the premium and order Papa John’s for peace of mind and a quality pizza.

Posted in Food | 2 Comments

Concept For Recipe Generation

Posted on December 1, 2009 by admin

I was eating at a Japanese restaurant which had some great recipes. The first was an Asian fruit salad made of boiled seaweed, apricot and Granny Smith apples. It was an unexpected blend of textures with its crunchy apple, slick, chewy seaweed and soft apricot. I also tried tomatoes stewed in plum wine, a mildly sweet mango cake and a seafood soup with stewed crab, chicken, shiitake mushroom and clams.

Generally there is an anticipation of what a dish will taste like, but these dishes were unexpected in flavor and texture. That is what the experience of all food should be. Anything less and food is mundane. After eating at the restaurant, I felt the urge to concoct some recipes of my own. I broke down recipes into a template from which new recipes can be generated.

Many foods use the same template. The resulting range of flavors and textures is limited. The flour is used as the neutral base other flavors build on, but there are many other neutral food bases that can be used in desserts as well.

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My Friend

Posted on November 8, 2009 by admin

Earlier this week one of my best friends passed away. I hadn’t spoken with him in ages since he attended a different college. I checked his Facebook to see what he was up to, and I learned he had passed away. It’s unbelievable, surreal. Same age as me, still young, had a whole life to live, and then he was gone. I had only met him two years back. He was a great guy. Someone you’d rarely get the opportunity to know. It’s not often I can meet someone with his character. There are so many people with pretenses, fake people. He was the most real, the most down to earth. I remember meeting him for the first time, going to his dorm room, shaking hands and everything. I can remember what he looked like, his mannerisms, his voice. He was generous, talented, intelligent and had the greatest sense of humor. He was always smiling and upbeat, and he would always lift your spirits. We’d always be in his room, joking around, talking about random things. I went to a baseball game with him, I was hoping that I’d get a chance to play golf with him. It’s saddening and frightening to realize that somebody I had known so well is gone. I’m left with vague feelings of dread and unhappiness I can’t seem to shake.

Posted in Life | 2 Comments