Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Wii Fit is here!

WOW!

That's all I can say about this exciting "game" we just received today! Oscar, Virgile and Elina played with it and spent a bunch of time with yoga, ski jumping, skiing and soccer... great fun, great exercise - the boys even did running (on the spot with wiimotes in hand). Unbelievable how they have done such a fabulous job in turning already a cool game console so much better and more activating.

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Outcomes or Activities

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Michel (original founder of Military.com then Monster.com and now with Affinitylabs - part of Monster). He wrote this blog (http://gigaom.com/2007/06/06/outcomes-vs-activity/) last year and I think the content is still incredibly relevant.

It's very easy to bury oneself in "busy" work - we run from meetings to meetings with the thought that high levels of activity will eventually lead to outcomes. But we rarely stop to assess the connection between the activities and results. What I like to do is to map my projects and initiatives on a 2x2 matrix with effort on one axis and impact on the other. The activities that result in high impact with low effort are obvious priorities... and then triage the rest to assess if they are really needed or if they can be delegated.

Thoughts anyone?
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Monday, May 19, 2008

Outcomes or Activities

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Michel (original founder of Military.com then Monster.com and now with Affinitylabs - part of Monster). He wrote this blog (http://gigaom.com/2007/06/06/outcomes-vs-activity/) last year and I think the content is still incredibly relevant.

It's very easy to bury oneself in "busy" work - we run from meetings to meetings with the thought that high levels of activity will eventually lead to outcomes. But we rarely stop to assess the connection between the activities and results. What I like to do is to map my projects and initiatives on a 2x2 matrix with effort on one axis and impact on the other. The activities that result in high impact with low effort are obvious priorities... and then triage the rest to assess if they are really needed or if they can be delegated.

Thoughts anyone?
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Monday, March 10, 2008

Only in Germany

Check out this practical joke from German furniture store...

Embedded Video

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Saturday, March 08, 2008

awesome gadget

if you haven't tried it yet, you should look for a wacom Bamboo - it's a drawing pad that connects with USB to your computer and comes with bunch of nifty software.

Couple of fabulous uses
  • Use it with Microsoft OneNote and you can write your notes and get them converted to text
  • Use it with Adobe Photoshop... beats the mouse anytime especially trying to lasso weird objects
  • Use it to draw stuff with any app
  • Use it to write emails and manage your computer like a mouse
  • Get your 3rd grader to do his homework writing...
Wacom has done an incredible job in creating a pad with wireless stylus that is precise, easy and comfortable to use.

Check it out at www.wacom.com and you can get it at microcenter for instance for less than $200 (and it comes in bunch of cool colors).
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Thursday, March 06, 2008

e-business & online commerce

As I am working on building a global platform for my employer on this particular area, I was hoping that I could inspire some comments (and it would be cool to finally have some comments on my blog).

What I am really looking for is to get your experience on great ecommerce sites and what you like most about them. Essentially I would like feedback from your personal and professional experience around

  • Merchandising / Searchandising - how do you feel about sites recommending and "pushing" stuff to you
  • Client reviews - are you more likely to buy something if there is a client review on a product? Does it matter if its positive or negative
  • Communicating along the fulfillment - what's the right level of detail and timing?
  • What sites do you think provide best user experience?
I'll keep you posted on what I'm working on - for now, I'd like to share one of my personal shopping sites (other than Amazon and their Prime service). I really like to shop with tigerdirect.com... the only thing they could improve the way you access your past orders but the site is snappy, easy to navigate, relevant content and their fulfillment is really good. Costco.com is probably at the other end of the spectrum... easy to shop but from tracking fulfillment it's a nightmare...
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Friday, February 22, 2008

Travel Fun

Well... don't we love winter time travel. Last week I was in Dayton for meetings and was scheduled to leave on the 13th at 7:35PM with CO... Well they canceled that and the only way I knew, was that they offered to check me in online for my flight NEXT MORNING! I promptly called my office travel agent who found out that most flights to Dayton or Cincinnati were canceled but I could rush to the airport for 3:40PM to Cincinnati.

Well, I took my car and raced to the airport just to find out at 3PM around boarding time that the crew was not there (although the plane was). They told us to check back after 6PM when the crew arrives.

I think you guessed it right - the crew showed up but the plane was gone by then. And finally we were supposed to go around 7PM but they couldn't get the plane to the jetway as another one was blocking it - finally we took off at 8PM or so. Interesting afternoon working at the Continental lounge.

On my way back - CO was going to be at least 2 hours late and I needed to make it in time to NY for Friday night event. Delta was kind enough to offer a seat for $700 (yes, can you believe it? One way CinCi to NY - it's under 2 hour flight!). I managed to befriend a CO agent and explained my dilemma and she was kind enough to push me to the delta flight for FREE! Talk about great service there! Finally, the DL flight was just 1 hour late and I made my commitment only about 45 minutes late so life was saved for now.

This week I've been to Seattle (and writing this sitting on the floor at the Seattle airport). I was supposed to fly back yesterday with CO... well, they canceled it. And all the flights east coast were full. So they gave me a $12 meal voucher and a hotel night in the middle of nowhere and re-scheduled to next morning Alaska Air... yep, you got it - my Alaska was canceled this morning too! What's wrong with these travel agents and airlines - they have my email and cell phone - can't they text, call or email when these things happen? Why is it always client's problem to fix their issues?

Anyway, I was stranded with a fellow traveler who called his agency from the shuttle bus and found out that AA was likely to take off and had seats. So I called my travel service and got a one way far for $400 to JFK and it seems that we're only about 1 hour delayed at this point in time... wish me luck.
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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Windows XP and Windows Vista

S**t happened around holidays - My wife's monster PC was shut down in one evening with the usual Window$ manner - start - shutdown. Next morning the "themes" where gone/corrupted. You might ask why the themes matter... well, the themes service drives the look and feel of Windows , application and specifically the web browser.

I spent a good while reading on the web about the corrupt themes (and trust me, it happens a lot) but none of the solutions offered would work. I spent countless hours trying to fix it, including booting from XP CD and run the "repair my windows" function without success.

I then asked my wife to run to Costco and buy me a retail upgrade to Vista Ultimate (stupidly, I thought that I'll just bite the bullet and install the new Windows). I got it new year's eve and decided to launch the upgrade... I should have known better...

Vista identified few drivers and apps as not working with it... OK no biggie... I uninstalled them. After that we started the install. Once the first reboot came, I got the dreaded blue screen of death with no meaningful explanation... nice... OK. I thought, let's just boot back to the XP... WRONG! Vista upgrade had already screwed up the boot block making it impossible to go back to the original XP which was slightly broken...

So after a while of pulling all non-essential hardware (and some essential like memory) out of the box, I tried to boot again. Nope, wouldn't work. I even ended up putting the drive in my sons computer and long and behold, the machine would boot but not without.... LOOOOOOONNNNNGGG wait without any results.

Finally, I got upset, formatted the drive and installed WinXP instead. Once I got the XP going, I smartened up and took a backup of the boot drive for future use... But since I am stubborn, I tried to install Vista now on a IDE drive that is separate from XP and had plenty of space...

20 hours later, Vista had "expanded" 35% of the files and it was going to take longer than building the great wall of China to get this going... I cancelled the install (and thank god, Vista hadn't screwed up my XP). Since I am still stubborn, I read a bunch of stuff online and found out that Vista can be slow (i.e. impossible) to install on IDE drive and it also cannot be installed on dynamic partition on SATA disk (which I have), I decided to buy another SATA disk for Vista... Formatting and installing that with WD tools screwed up the XP this time around... NICE... and now I was left to NO WINDOWS in the box.

No worries, I booted off the Vista DVD and promised that I will put the key into it later... promised that I had bought the ultimate (what a joke) edition and that I could install it... It took DAMN 20 minutes to install it. Then I put some of the software like office 2003 on it because after several days, my wife wanted her files and emails...

Now comes the cool part - M$FT guys didn't think about this upgrade scenario, so my LEGALLY bought key DIDN'T work! Come on guys, I have all legal Windows versions from 98 to me to XP! At least XP knows to look at the original CD of the previous release to know that you can upgrade.

I was incredibly frustrated and was looking for a way to communicate with M$FT - although they wanted $49 to chat with me online... I guess spending $259 with them isn't enough to be able to get support... I almost called my friends who work at M$FT to get them to give me a key that works... Luckily, I read a blog that explained that you can upgrade Vista from - you guessed it - Vista. So I launched Vista upgrade with my key from Vista and less than 1 hour later, I had a fully functioning system which was activated...

Now was it worth it - definitely not from the time perspective - but I really do like the way it works and the little things like security, translucent windows etc. And I really like the fact that Roxio EMC 10 works better on Vista than on XP!

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