Shhh.

You know how exciting it is to tell a friend about your new idea for a product/business/invention?
Turns out, it’s better to keep your mouth shut:

Unfortunately the mind sometimes has a nasty habit of sabotaging our best attempts to control ourselves. Recent research by Gollwitzer et al. (2010) suggests that, in fact, making our goals public can have precisely the opposite effect from what we intend.
Across three experiments the link between making goals public and actually working towards them was tested. What they found in every study was that when participants had shared their goal with someone else, instead of increasing their commitment, it reduced it.

Seems the best way to approach your goals is to just do them.

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Pyschology

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Yikes

This is great. I follow a site called Modern Mechanix, which features old advertisements and articles in the fields of engineering, technology and science. Some of them go way back to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
My father started his career off in the 60’s at Bell Telephone so I decided to send him the link to a recent post on Modern Mechanix which featured an ad for Bell.
I asked him if he remembered the ad. Here was his reply:

Yikes, not only do I remember it, in 1965 I was one of the few AT&T “data” technicians who worked on diagnosing and resolving problems on the “Dataphone” pictured in the Ad. Actually, it was a real fun job (to me anyway). These phones operated at 2400 bps (bits per second). Among other things, you usually had to “condition” the copper wires in order to pass error free data. This involved inserting customized equalizers in the signal path to compensate for the specific frequency attenuation characteristics of the assigned copper line. Soon after I advanced to supporting high speed/wideband data customers which introduced the then incredible transmission rate of 50kbps (50,000 bits per second). No one could imagine how there could possibly be a need or use for any higher data rates.

I think I understood a sentence in there somewhere.

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Advertising

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Earning The Title

It’s be a year since you launched Windows Phone. Where we at, Microsoft?
Horace Dediu tells us:

Windows Phone is in limbo. The company acknowledged that it has performed below expectations. During the last quarter for which we have data (ending June) I have an estimate that Windows Phone sold only 1.4 million units (Gartner’s sell-through analysis suggests 1.7 million). That gives Microsoft a 1.3% share of units sold (Gartner 1.6%), a new low.

John Gruber gives us a nice translation of these numbers:

In other words, for that entire quarter, they sold about as many total Windows Phones in that quarter as Apple sold iPhone 4S preorders last weekend.

My first thought when reading this was how Microsoft has never been in this position before. They’ve never had to fight for the title of “Most Popular Operating System”. This is a company still making most it’s profits from Windows and their Office suite of applications. This is software they created decades ago and they’ve managed to ride the wave into the 21st century.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s it didn’t matter if their software was shitty or great, they had a monopoly on it and because of this, had the muscle to squeeze out any scrappy, innovative underdogs.
Now Microsoft has to prove it’s worth. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android continue to gain momentum in the marketplace. People are voting with their wallets and so far, not many are voting for Windows Phone. On the other side of the OS, developers aren’t voting for it either, unless of course Microsoft offers to pay them to develop.
Microsoft has never had to sell their products to people.
Remember, Windows was designed for businesses, not people.
For the first time in their history, they have to step into the ring and fight.

Categories:

Technology

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It’s poetic, really.

RIM has worldwide outages the days leading up to and on the day Apple launches it’s new mobile operating system and cloud-based backup service.
It’s poetic, really.
Remember though, RIM has two, count them, TWO CEOs. I’m sure they have this under control.

Categories:

Technology

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Black-eyed Berry

BlackBerry users revolt against RIM as disruption spreads

Smartphone maker Research In Motion (RIM) is facing a user revolt after tens of millions of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa suffered a second day without services such as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), as the company struggled with problems at its hub in Slough, Berkshire.

The company also revealed that the areas affected now include South America, with users in Brazil, Chile and Argentina suffering loss of service.

Horace Dediu points out RIM is currently losing half a million users per month, and with only 16 million left in the US, they could all be gone by the end of the year.
While this outage didn’t specifically affect the US, it’s not going to help stop this downward spiral either.
UPDATE: Scratch that last sentence.

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Technology

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Signage

So Josh Luke and Steve Lambert are lending their typography skills to Occupy Wall Street (via PSFK).
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While I think their actions are commendable, I wonder if there’s not some emotion lost in these ‘professional’ signs.
I wonder if a more James Victore-ish approach would be better suited to the urgency and emotion in the protests.
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This is not to say many of the protest signs I’ve seen couldn’t stand for an upgrade.

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Advertising

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Occupied

I work right across the street from where the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been setting up shop (spoiler: they’re not occupying Wall Street, but Zucotti Park).
While I haven’ been observing much of what’s been happening on the street (I’ve been busy working 45 floors up), they seem to be a fairly chill group, although I’m sure things get fired up and emotions run high at times.
I’m amazed at just how many more people are occupying Zucotti Park now, then when it started.
Here’s a few shots I took before work today:
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That is a lot of sleeping bags.

Categories:

Finance

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