Pain Checklist via @Pitch_Doctor

Pain Checklist

Before you quit your day job and put all efforts in to making your idea a reality, make sure that what you have come up with, is not in fact a solution looking for a problem or cure looking for pain. The following checklist will help you determine if you are on the right track:

1. What segment of the market experience the problem?

2. Is the problem widespread or isolated?

3. What evidence is there for the problem that is independent of your own belief? Are there respected market research reports or credible customer surveys available that support your belief? 

4. What level of pain does the customer experience? Is it sufficient to cause them to pay for your solution?

5. Is your solution a ‘must have’ or ‘nice to have’?

6. How are customers currently solving their problem? If there are no ‘competitors’ providing alternative solutions, then you have to very think carefully as to whether there really is a problem.  Multiple solutions tend to appear wherever there are problems.

7. Does your product solve the customer’s problem better than your competitor’s solution?

8. Is your product sufficiently better than your competitor’s solution, to cause their customers to switch?

via investorpitchclinic.com

Excellent, succinct summary.

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The Tyee – Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers - #UBB

So what's this really about? Bear in mind that Bell Canada and other big telecoms also are invested heavily in an old-fashioned media-delivery model called television. If you now have to pay by the byte to live your version of a rich digital life on the Internet, maybe the hits to your bank account will push you back in front of the television set.

via thetyee.ca

Bell owns a Television distribution thru FibeTV. The current version of Usage-based billing would stop people from using Neflix-type services as an alternative.

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What is #UBB ? via @TekSavvy #CRTC

via teksavvynews.com

Read more about it here:

http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/

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Confirmed: @Netflix say @Rogerbuzz is the fastest ISP in Canada

Charter is in the lead for US streams with an impressive 2667 kilobits per second average over the period. Rogers leads in Canada with a whopping 3020 kbps average.

via techblog.netflix.com

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What Money Can’t Fix - @ericabiz -

So I used money to try to solve the problem again. Only this time, I hired a therapist.

In my first therapy session, my therapist warned me that he would say what Richard couldn’t or wouldn’t say–that I might get mad at him at first, and even be tempted to quit therapy. I told him I was pretty strong and willing to listen.

He then said something that was eye-opening. He said, “Pretend the time you have in a day is made up of 10 units. How many of those units do you devote to work?”

I said, “Eight.”

He nodded. Then, “How many on your relationship?”

I said, after a long (and humbling) pause, “One.”

He said, “I don’t think so.”

And that’s when I broke down in tears.

via erica.biz

Wow, I felt so bad when I read this.

:-(

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PC Mobile uses SIM cards now

Just took this at Fortinos.
Cool.

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Quote - On Complexity from @MarcoArment

The biggest design decision I’ve made is more of a continuous philosophy: do as few extremely time-consuming features as possible. As a result, Instapaper is a collection of a bunch of very easy things and only a handful of semi-hard things.

This philosophy sounds simple, but it isn’t: geeks like us are always tempted to implement very complex, never-ending features because they’re academically or algorithmically interesting, or because they can add massive value if done well, such as speech or handwriting recognition, recommendation engines, or natural-language processing.

These features — often very easy for people but very hard for computers — often produce mediocre-at-best results, are never truly finished, and usually require massive time investments to achieve incremental progress with diminishing returns.

If a one-person company is going to build a product, it can’t have any of those huge time-sink features. At most, I can afford to have one or two components of moderate complexity, such as the HTML-to-body-text parser and the Kindle-format writer. But even those are barely worth the time that I put into them.

via randsinrepose.com

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Bye bye #OpenID sez @37signals

We're sad to see OpenID go. The promise was grand. Life would be simpler if we only had one login, but in this case, the cure was worse than the disease.

via productblog.37signals.com

I used OpenID on other sites before. Yeah. Cool concept. But the execution was crap for everybody. Especially Yahoo.

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Documentation. Why it is important. #techcomm

Documentation is hard. It's ugly. It's boring. It's not the kind of job that hotshot engineers want to do to further their careers. But if you're trying to help customers -- especially business customers -- solve complicated problems like printing over the Internet, it's totally essential.

Microsoft has been doing this ugly work for more than two decades. Google is just getting started.

via businessinsider.com

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Documentation. Why it is important. #techcomm

Documentation is hard. It's ugly. It's boring. It's not the kind of job that hotshot engineers want to do to further their careers. But if you're trying to help customers -- especially business customers -- solve complicated problems like printing over the Internet, it's totally essential.

Microsoft has been doing this ugly work for more than two decades. Google is just getting started.

via businessinsider.com

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To Err Is Human, To Arr Is Pirate - Court Forces Major Labels To Pay $45M In Copyright Violation Claims - hypebot

The big four major labels - EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner - are being required to pay upwards of $45 million to a group of artists and composers to close a class action lawsuit filed against them in Canada. This agreement will resolve the copyright infringement claims that were brought against them for selling CDs containing songs that the record labels had not secured the rights for.

via hypebot.com

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Tweeting from QuickSliver

A few months ago, I modified a small script from Graham English to tweet from Quicksilver.

Graham's script had stopped working after Twitter adapted Oauth. I managed to get around by using Ttytter -- which was a console based Twitter client.

This script has now been superseded for Mac users with the new Twitter for Mac -- as long as you install the Services Menu module for Quicksilver.

I am including the script here for archival purposes. Please remember to install TTYtter before using it. Thanks!

using terms from application "Quicksilver"

on process text QStweet

-- See if message is longer than 140 characters

-- If it is longer than 140, Send Growl msg to user

set wordcount to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of QStweet & " | wc -c"

set wordcount to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of wordcount & " | sed 's/^[ ]*//'"

if wordcount as integer > 140 then

my growlRegister()

growlNotify("Tweet too long", "(" & wordcount & ") characters")

return nothing

end if

-- Send tweet using TTytter

set results to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/ttytter -status=" & quoted form of QStweet

-- Inform User if QStweet is sent or if it failed.

my growlRegister()

if results contains "post attempt SUCCEEDED!" then

growlNotify("Tweet Sent", QStweet)

else

growlNotify("Error Sending Tweet", results)

return nothing

end if

-- Sets iChat status message to QStweet

tell application "System Events"

if exists process "iChat" then

tell application "iChat"

set the status message to QStweet

end tell

end if

end tell

-- Sets Skype Mood Text to QSTweet

tell application "System Events"

if exists process "Skype" then

set commandText to "SET PROFILE MOOD_TEXT " & QStweet

tell application "Skype"

send command commandText script name "QSTweet"

end tell

end if

end tell

end process text

end using terms from

using terms from application "GrowlHelperApp"

-- Register Growl

on growlRegister()

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"

register as application "QSTweet" all notifications {"Alert"} default notifications {"Alert"} icon of application "Twitterrific.app"

end tell

end growlRegister

-- Notify using Growl

-- Example: growlNotify("This is an Alert","This is a test of the Growl Alert System")

on growlNotify(grrTitle, grrDescription)

tell application "GrowlHelperApp"

notify with name "Alert" title grrTitle description grrDescription application name "QSTweet"

end tell

end growlNotify

end using terms from

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Mom, dad, answer the phone. Answer the phone. Just answer the phone already! @brianshall

The phone at my parents' house, a landline, cordless, rings 20 times a day, minimum.  And each time it's like some momentous event.  Every freaking time.

via brianshall.com

This is easily the best post Brian S. Hall has ever written. And he writes a lot of good posts.

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Nokia N8 Review: Nokia's New Flagship

Nokia N8 Review: Nokia's New Flagship: "In many ways, with the Nokia N8-00 (referred to as the N8 from here on) it seems as though Nokia let its hardware and industrial design teams have a field day; this phone feels almost over engineered when held in your hands. While the current flagship demonstrates Nokia’s engineering prowess quite well, previous models seemed to epitomize what I felt was the company’s philosophy; build the software around the hardware. This worked just perfectly for as long as mobile phones were just that, devices used to make and receive calls and/or texts. Sometime in the last decade, Apple, Google, Palm and Microsoft redefined mobile experiences, and as a result old flaws have slowly become gaping holes in the Finnish device manufacturer’s proverbial armor."

(Via AnandTech Article Channel.)

Probably the fairest, and most technically-driven, assessment of the Nokia N8 I have seen so far.

Tiger Mothers now, Therapy in 20 years.

I'd call the piano "lesson" child abuse. Telling her daughter that her doll house was going to be given away piece by piece? Emotional abuse. Telling her she couldn't get up and go to the bathroom or get a drink of water? Physical abuse. Doing it out of "love"; I shudder to think how much therapy it'll take to unravel that.

It's taken me 30-some years and more than 2 decades of therapy starting in my teens to get over some of the parenting techniques described. I know my parents love me, I know all the crazy controlling behavior was because they cared and wanted the best for me. I can't begin to explain how TWISTED it made my views on relating to other people, love, and what is acceptable behavior in an interpersonal relationship. Equating love with controlling behavior has resulted in unstable relationships professionally and personally.

via quora.com

I think this whole "Chinese Mother" debate has really hit a raw nerve in the pan Chinese-American/Canadian community because a lot of people were really affected by it. A lot of people were really traumatized growing up by high-pressure parents who did what they did because they think it was the right thing to do.

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Quote of the Day: @Al3x — Shortchanging Your Business with User-Hostile Platforms

AIR, like the cross-platform widget toolkits and application frameworks that came before it, is the gray mystery meat of client-side software.

via al3x.net

Nothing but total agreement with everything said here. This is why I don't use Tweetdeck.

Personally, I find the Tweetdeck HTML5 site much much more usable.

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The Block Album - @stevegillmor

What RSS did was create and nurture an information landscape based on the authority of the author. It allowed those authors to gain such authority both within and outside the media infrastructure of that time. But it also gave rise to a separate wave of authority, that of the reader, the analyst, the commentator, and so on. The blog post maintained its central role even as it absorbed every other document and media type, and it was joined with a seat at the table by a metadata stream of attention and gestures. Suddenly the root object was the @mention, whether a Tweet by the author, a retweet by a reader, an @mention of other such authorities, the implicit clouds of such signals.

via techcrunch.com

I really liked this paragraph!
Application of media theory to twitter vs RSS

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Surviving the Smartphone Wars from @brianshall

• The smartphone is the computer.
• The mobile web is the web.
• The future is evenly distributed.
• People want what they want when they want it where they want it.
• Information wants to be monetized.
• Want your business to go global? Think: Young. Brown. Woman. Child. That is your market.
• People should not have to -- and very soon never again will -- pay for content they do not want.
• Hyperlocal is hyperglobal. Master one highly targeted niche anywhere. If successful, the infrastructure exists, at virtually no cost, to replicate your service everywhere, hyper-rapidly.
• Boring is Death. No adult will allow themselves moments of quiet, or dis-connection. Neither should they force children to go off-grid.
• There is only one time. Now.
• There is only one place. Here

via brianshall.com

Yes.

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Was the Turkish language reform a success or a catastrophe?

But the changes that Turkish underwent in the 20th century were not the result of natural evolution -- as words gradually took on new shades of meaning, and people dropped some in favor of others as fashions changed. Turkish was subject to a deliberate re-engineering.

via todayszaman.com

It always surprise me how many nations did stuff like this in the 20th century.

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Reflections of a Newsosaur: ‘Objective’ journalism is over. Let’s move on.

It’s time to retire the difficult-to-achieve and impossible-to-defend conceit that journalists are now, or ever were, objective.

via newsosaur.blogspot.com

That's right!
Been sayin' that fer yeers!

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The Democrats' White Flight - @TheAtlantic

The new data show that white voters not only strongly preferred Republican House and Senate candidates but also registered deep disappointment with President Obama's performance, hostility toward the cornerstones of the current Democratic agenda, and widespread skepticism about the expansive role for Washington embedded in the party's priorities. On each of those questions, minority voters expressed almost exactly the opposite view from whites.

via theatlantic.com

Not surprising. But worth noting.

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Did the US Government Have an American Teenager Beaten In Kuwait?

Mohamed, a 19-year-old from Alexandria, Virginia, called the New York Times' Mark Mazzetti and Salon's Glenn Greenwald this week via a cell phone another inmate smuggled into the prison where he is being held. In the interviews, Mohamed recounted being severely beaten. He said he was forced to stand for hours, and that interrogators threatened to torture him with electricity and imprison his mother.

via motherjones.com

He is also effectly barred from the United States since he is on the American No-Fly List.

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Property taxes in Calgary are stupid

Wow....

I didn't know this about Calgary. So this means that as the city experiences growth, real revenue per capita will likely shrink? Insane.

------------------

Property taxes the Calgary way

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

But here in Calgary, when housing prices rise, mill rates automatically fall - the assessment system is revenue neutral. So, for example, this past year the assessed value of Calgary homes increased, on average, by eight percent. A person whose property value increased by exactly 8 percent had unchanged property taxes. A person whose property value increased by less than 8 percent paid less taxes; a person whose property value increased by more than 8 percent paid more taxes.

There's a disadvantage to the Calgary system. If there's wide-spread inflation that increases both the costs of providing city services and property prices by five percent, holding the mill rate constant is a way of protecting city revenues against inflation. A "revenue-neutral" property tax system would actually cause tax revenues to fall in real terms.

But after hearing so many confused discussions of property taxes ("Are we talking about the mill rate here, or about the taxes I'll have to pay?") Calgary's revenue neutral policy seemed very appealing for a while.

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Gould Street Fire on Yonge (or -- HMV is OK!)

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100 things to watch in 2011 | JWT Intelligence

Many of our Things to Watch are technology-centric, with smart infrastructure ramping up, the rise of tablets for tots and some truly futuristic-seeming developments (3D printing, virtual mirrors, electronic profiling). Web-wise, Things to Watch will include a growth in Facebook commerce, apps beyond mobile and more social browsers. The people on the list—from pop culture, sports, architecture, fashion and other sectors—have the potential to drive or shape trends in the near future.

via jwtintelligence.com

Was actually worthwhile to spend 20 minutes to go thru and read each of the slides.

Big up to mobile blogging, QR codes, and Next-Gen Documentarians. Maybe finally going mainstream in 2011?

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