Yesterday I visited the newly reopened Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. While many of the exhibits were very enjoyable and illuminating, the two shows I've seen were the most exciting by far. 3D Sun was a short 3D movie featuring the latest images from NASA's STEREO mission - a mission that for the first time in history provided us with two simultaneous points of view of the sun, giving us the ability to see it in 3D for the very first time. What they discovered is both scary and breathtaking.
The second one was Disney's Roving Mars movie, which was shown on a the biggest and most advanced IMAX equipment in the world. It was the story of SPIRIT and OPPORTUNITY, the two rovers designed and launched by NASA to explore mars and discover crucial geological facts, including whether or not there were ever water there.
Roving Mars is a short masterpiece of documentary film. Both in production value, and pure inspiration I have seen none like it. It made the complexity and difficulty of the mission evident, the excitement in the control room palpable, the extent of human ingenuity involved fully real. In addition, it was one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen. This is a a film worth owning.
I just caught myself typing the phrase "In a world where many people use multiple computers..." and then I stopped. The phrase "in a world where" has become a common synonym for the word "since," in the same way that the pompous phrase "at this point in time," has become an acceptable alternative for the word "now."
There is something to be said for simplicity, and since I use multiple computers, sometimes with multiple operating systems - I often wished I could simply take all my files, apps, and configurations with me wherever I went.
Then I got a SanDisk Cruzer Titanium USB Drive, and then I discovered PortableApps.com. The site offers lean, portable versions of the most common open source apps, including Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and many others.
What makes an app "portable"?
Well, small size is great if you're going to put it on a tiny USB drive. Also - the application needs to run from a single folder, with no registry changes - so that you can take it with you and run it from anywhere without having to reinstall.
I've been using this combination for a couple of weeks now, to take my GAIM messenger, personal documents, and some critical tools with me wherever I go, and it has been working surprisingly well. Today I'm downloading Portable GIMP, so that I can do my graphic design from anywhere as well, and I'm seriously considering using only my Portable Firefox, so that I can take my history, bookmarks, and settings too.
Science tells us that only the tinniest fraction of every atom is in fact matter, and the rest is empty space. Thus, even the most crowded rooms you've been in are in fact more than 99.9999% empty.
No wonder that organization matters as much as it does. And no wonder that after taking my stuff out of boxes that filled half the room, it all disappeared into two tiny closets with room to spare! I simply freed some of that empty space...
And for those who still need some help organizing, The Container Store has this fine resource.
UHaul is in trouble. And no, I'm not talking about how it's doing financially, which is also not so great. I'm talking about its low customer satisfaction rates, and I'll start with my personal experience, then move on to some numbers.
On June 30th I moved to my new place in Manhattan. I was thrilled, but what should have been a very pleasant experience turned into a grueling nightmare, in great part because of what seem to be some shady but routine practices at UHaul:
My reservation was for 10am, but when I got there at 9:45, there was a huge line of maybe a hundred people going all the way from the store, out to the parking lot in front, and all the way to the main road.
"Huh," I thought to myself as I passed through, "all the poor people who didn't get a reservation." Alas, when I reached the front of the line I was told that that was indeed the line for the people who in fact did have a reservation. The woman at the front of the line outside the store had one for 7:30am, and indeed was waiting ever since then. She still had about an hour to go before she would be able to get a truck.
So, I went back to the end of the line, and after about 3.5 hours in the sun, I finally reached the entrance - only to discover about an hour's worth of waiting inside. Like many who move at the end of the month, I had no choice: I had to get a truck, and it was too late to get it anywhere else. UHaul did it fact provide the truck, which I was supposed to get at 10:00am, but it provided it at about 2:15pm. Over 4 hours later. I had to reschedule with my friends who helped me move, and with the old landlord who was supposed to pick up the keys before I even managed to get a truck.
The worst about this whole thing, is that UHaul employees admitted to me that this regularly happened every end of the month. As far as I can tell, this could only mean that the company routinely misleads its own customers: promising to deliver at a certain time, knowing full well that they will not actually see a truck until hours later.
The UHaul staff seemed unapologetic in the least. In fact they seemed bored. And when those of us standing in the sun looked for ways to keep hydrated, they completely ignored the highly uncomfortable situation that they created themselves! People might have forgiven an unintentional mishap, had the company, through its actions, shown some slight discomfort, or acted to make the situation less unbearable - but that was not the case.
An old Spanish woman came by and sold us bottles of water and pastadillas. She seemed more worried about the situation than the people who caused it.
The long-term effects? After telling the story of my personal experience to a friend, he changed his mind about UHaul and canceled a reservation already placed, only to rent a Penske Truck instead. He also knows some other friends who will be moving soon, and made a point to let them NOT to rent a UHaul. Other outraged consumers post their stories in consumer forums, blogs, and other media.
How does it translate to numbers? Google shows 93,700 results for the expression "uhaul sucks." Compare that to only 90,100 results for "microsoft sucks" for Microsoft, which is one of the most vilified companies of our age (and for reasons not half as good), 122 results for "avis sucks,"150 for "hertz sucks," and only 3 for "budget truck sucks". I also found 23 recent blog posts with the quote "uhaul sucks," on Technorati, and that is only one possible formulation of customer frustration.
How does a company get such a bad reputation? By not paying attention to detail. While investing in the biggest fleet of trucks, the infrastructure, and the pricing schemes, UHaul seems to have forgotten the importance of experience. After all - how much would it have cost to invest in a reservation system that actually reserves a truck for the right time? Or to at least be honest about expected delays? Or to put up some shades in the driveway for people who are forced to wait outside?
After all, it's much easier to buy these things than to buy back lost reputation.
A fascinating interview with David Allen, creator of GTD:
David Allen sits in his small office in a cottage behind his house in Ojai, Calif., talking business with a visitor. Suddenly he stops. "That reminds me," he says. He scribbles the words "bird feed" on a piece of blank notebook paper and tosses it into his inbox.
It's an ordinary moment in an ordinary day. But for Allen and his legion of followers, it holds the key to salvation. He has emptied his mind of a nagging task, placed it into a trusted system for processing, and casually returned to his conversation. That's GTD, short for "Getting Things Done," the prosaic title of his best-selling book.
But GTD is not really a book. Nor is it a subscription website ($48 per month), a one-day public seminar ($595), a corporate training session ($20,000 per day), a growing accessory line of wallets ($99) and plastic folders ($19), an add-on for Microsoft Outlook ($70), or any of the dozens of unauthorized websites where geeks and high-tech execs gather to proclaim Allen the new messiah and debate the finer points of his teachings.
This hilarious clip teaches us something not only about the human race and how conspiracy theories develop, but also about the fabric of reality itself:
For the first time in a very long time, today I am truly happy with my GTD management system.
It's affordable, accessible from anywhere, works with all my programs. I can put Next Actions in any context, any order, even multiple ones. I can connect them to any project, and when one context becomes more important, or one action or project more urgent - I can simply drag and drop it in the right place; or rather - reshuffle it.
You got it. I'm not using a digital system at all. After trying the Outlook Plug-In, Vitalist, HiTask, TadaList, ThinkingRock, Backpack, ProjectEngine, and GTD implementations on Palm, Gmail, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and the Windows file system - It turns out that what's been keeping me back is my obsession with technology. (Who knew?!) Now I found that I am most happy with what many now call the "Hipster PDA."
I use a bunch of index cards in 6 different colors, fastened with a clip. A complete implementation of all the GTD lists. Light. Fast. Easy to use. I can always add more cards (I have about a thousand blank ones here anyway), and it fits in my pocket easily.
The one popular solution that I haven't tried yet is iGTD for the Mac, which sounds great. But since I don't (yet) have a Mac, and since even if I had a Mac it is unlikely to fit in my pocket, I am very happy with this solution.
And let me tell you, it's true what they say: checking off a task is so much more satisfying when you get to actually cross it out!
The 33rd New York Tech Meetup, which I attended yesterday, was said to be the biggest one yet. Almost 500 people attended, and 6 companies have presented their unique solutions. I liked the fact that everybody wore name tags this time. It allowed me to recognize people I knew only by name, and made it easier to start conversations.
The solutions presented this time were of a higher quality than usual as well, I think. Those were:
HitTail - a blog/web site promotion tool that tracks the search keywords leading people to your site, and offers expressions that may generate more traffic to your blog/content site. This is a great tool for marketing bloggers who want to generate traffic and create buzz around their blog. In a personal blog, however, I think it matters more that the author be passionate about the topic, than simply having the right keywords in place. Still, this is cool.
Confabb - this website arose to address a real need of organizers/presenters at professional conferences. The need to be able to connect to attendees and keep the community alive even after the physical event is over. This online site not only features a huge database of conferences all around the world, but includes tools for attendees and organizers to keep in touch, in a social networking style, and even organize unofficial internal conferences inside the conference. Very cool, and I see myself using it soon, as a marketer.
DietTelevision - despite the unfortunate name, as some suggested, the site has little to do with television. It is in fact a great resource for people looking to compare different diets, improve their eating habits, and confer with others who have "been there" in order to lose weight, keep it off, and improve overall health. The web site's interface is very appealing, and it seems rich in useful information.
ParkWhiz - another great little idea that could have a great effect. "Parking is not a resource problem, it's an information problem," said Jon - one of the founders. So this web site allows you to locate parking spots wherever you're going, and in some cases even make a reservation and pay online for a specific slot.
UpNext - Watch out Google Maps, UpNext is behind you! Upnext has a really responsive and great looking 3D model of Manhattan. You can turn it every which way, and float up layers of information including restaurants, bars, and subway stops. This presentation was especially exciting, since it was literally 3 hours after the service went online. I tried to log in right from the meetup, but unfortunately the web site unique 3D environment did not recognize my laptop's graphics card. Today I tried it on my desktop and it worked fabulously. New Yorkers - go play!
Amazon EC2 - A guy from Amazon presented EC2, an on demand computation service designed to complement S3, Amazon's on demand "storage cloud" service. I won't pronounce any judgment, since this is not my expertise - but many people seemed to be excited about it.
You might say I've been obsessed with freedom of speech throughout much of my life. I've researched free speech during the French revolution, the ways Iranians are fighting censorship with technology, and the false facades of pretense erected by the USSR. One of the most poignant summaries of what censorship is comes from Salman Rushdie:
"What are the effects of total censorship?" he asks in his book They Shoot Writers, Don't They, "Obviously, the absence of information and the presence of lies."
Our society is rightly obsessed with fixing things: from curing disease to fighting corruption, from improving life conditions, to making sure our planet remains inhabitable for centuries to come. But the prerequisite for all those projects is the availability of independent, unfiltered information. Yet, as the talk below reveals, 83% of the world's population still lives in countries where there is no independent media. That means that for 83% of us, truth is an unaffordable or inaccessible luxury.
Tyrannical governments either control the media completely, censor it outright, or use various economic ways of extortion to make the life of an independent journalist unbearable. In some situations, foreign donations can make a world of difference - and no donation can have greater social impact than bringing truth to those who have none.
But what if you could use your investment money, and not donations, to promote the world's free press - and still get a small interest in return?
Bill Stone, founder of StoneAerospace is an explorer and an inventor who's explored some of the deepest places on earth. Collaborating with NASA he had developed robots designed to probe and test for the existence of life in the underground seas of Europa. In this talk he reflects on the need for boldness in opening new frontiers, and takes an amazingly bold step forward with his final declaration.
All I can say is: Bill, I wish you success in securing funding, and in coming back safely after a successful mission. May your name be remembered along with Shackleton's forever. If your venture ever went public I would buy all the shares I can afford.
I have a degree in History, fiction writing aspirations, and a really cool job at a software startup in NYC.
Before coming to the city in 2004, I was the editor of a leading IT magazine in Israel, and helped conceptualize and launch one of Israel's 100 most popular web sites.
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Blog Mission
True enjoyment comes from challenge, and intellectual challenge (mostly mine) is the purpose of this blog. I will blog about ideas that I find fascinating, technology and where it's heading, and strategies for life and business.
The second one was Disney's Roving Mars movie, which was shown on a the biggest and most advanced IMAX equipment in the world. It was the story of SPIRIT and OPPORTUNITY, the two rovers designed and launched by NASA to explore mars and discover crucial geological facts, including whether or not there were ever water there.
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