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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs
TC Makers: Centeye Creates Insect-Like Flying Robots In A DC Basement
Hey, Guys, Remember When You Used To Care About Flash?
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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs

Posted: 19 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Mediocrity Green Road Sign with Dramatic Clouds, Sun Rays and Sky.

[Editor's note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written ten books. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. You can follow him on Twitter @jaltucher.]

I’m pretty mediocre. Particularly as an entrepreneur. I’m ashamed to admit it. Many of the readers here are great visionaries. I’m not even being sarcastic. I have reason to believe Larry Page reads all of my articles. Elon Musk prints out my articles and tapes them to his bathroom wall just in case he forgets to bring a book in there. Jerry Yang and his wife discuss over breakfast the merits of the points I bring up. You can say, “Hey, Jerry Yang should’ve accepted Microsoft’s buyout offer.” Ok, but Jerry Yang has made a few billion dollars just by getting a bunch of links together and assembling them by what category they are in. That was pretty cool back in the day. You and I should’ve thought of that.

I’ve started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. I’ve invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others. I can tell you overall, though, everything I have done has been distinguished by its mediocrity, its lack of a grand vision, and any success I’ve had can be just as much put in the luck basket as the effort basket.

That said, all entrepreneurs should be so lucky. We can’t all be grand visionaries. We want to make our business, sell it, make some money, raise a family, and try to be happy. My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure. For every Mark Zuckerberg there are 1000 Jack Zuckermans. Who is Jack Zuckerman? I have no idea. That’s my point. If you are Jack Zuckerman and are reading this, I apologize. You aimed for the stars and missed. Your re-entry into the atmosphere involved a broken heat shield and you burned to a crisp by the time you hit the ocean. Now we have no idea who you are.

If you want to get rich, sell your company, have time for your hobbies, raise a halfway decent family (with mediocre children, etc), and enjoy the sunset with your wife on occasion, here are some of my highly effective recommendations.

- Procrastination – In between the time I wrote the last sentence and the time I wrote this one I played (and lost) a game of chess. My king and my queen got forked by a knight. But hey, that happens. Fork me once, shame on me. Etc.

Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing. When you procrastinate as an entrepreneur it could mean that you need a bit more time to think about what you are pitching a client. It could also mean you are doing work that is not your forte and that you are better off delegating. I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that. In my first business, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head the first time I delegated a programming job to someone other than me. At that time, I went out on a date. Which was infinitely better than me sweating all night on some stupid programming bug (thank you, Chet, for solving that issue).

Try to figure out why you are procrastinating. Maybe you need to brainstorm more to improve an idea. Maybe the idea is no good as is. Maybe you need to delegate. Maybe you need to learn more. Maybe you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Maybe you don’t like the client whose project you were just working on. Maybe you need to take a break. There’s only so many seconds in a row you can think about something before you need to take time off and rejuvenate the creative muscles. This is not for everyone. Great people can storm right through. Steve Jobs never needed to take a break. But I do.

Procrastination could also be a strong sign that you are a perfectionist. That you are filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling your business. Examine your procrastination from every side. It’s your body trying to tell you something. Listen to it.

(phallic greatness: Elon Musk’s space rocket)

- Zero-tasking – there’s a common myth that great people can multitask efficiently. This might be true but I can’t do it. I have statistical proof. I have a serious addiction. If you ever talk on the phone with me there’s almost 100% chance I am simultaneously playing chess online. The phone rings and one hand reaches for the phone and the other hand reaches for the computer to initiate a one minute game. Chess rankings are based on a statistically generated rating system. So I can compare easily how well I do when I’m the phone compared with when I’m not on the phone. There is a three standard deviation difference. Imagine if I were talking on the phone and driving. Or responding to emails. It’s the same thing I’m assuming: phone calls cause a three standard deviation subtraction in intelligence. And that’s the basic multi-tasking we all do at some point or other.

So great people can multitask but since, by definition, most of us are not great (99% of us are not in the top 1%), its much better to single-task. Just do one thing at a time. When you wash your hands, hear the sound of the water, feel the water on your hands, scrub every part. Be clean. Focus on what you are doing.

Often, the successful mediocre entrepreneur should strive for excellence in ZERO-tasking. Do nothing. We always feel like we have to be “doing something” or we (or, I should say “I”) feel ashamed. Sometimes it’s better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all.

Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

Not when we are rushing and panicking.

- Failure: As far as I can tell, Larry Page has never failed. He went straight from graduate school to billions. Ditto for Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and a few others. But again, by definition, most of us are pretty mediocre. We can strive for greatness but we will never hit it. So it means we will often fail. Not ALWAYS fail. But often.

My last 16 out of 17 business attempts were failures. I made so many mistakes in my first successful business I’m almost embarassed to recount them. I remember one time I was trying to pitch Tupac’s mom that I should do the website for her dead son. I had a “CD” (what’s that?) of all my work. I went to Tupac’s manager’s office and he said, “ok, show me what you got”. The only problem was: I had never used a Windows-based machine. Only Macs and Unix machines. So I honestly had no idea how to put my CD into the computer and then view its contents. And I had gone to graduate school in computer science. He said, “you have got to be kidding me”.

It was a $90,000 gig. It would’ve met my payroll for at least two months. It was a done deal until I walked into his office. I left his office crying while he was laughing. When I came back to my office everyone asked, “How did the meeting go?” I said, “I think it went pretty well.” And then I went home and cried some more. I roll that way.

Then I bought a Windows-based PC for myself and learned how to use it. I don’t think I ever bought a Mac again actually. It’s possible to learn from successes. But it’s much easier to learn from failures. Ultimately, life is a sentence of failures, punctuated only by the briefest of successes. So the mediocre entrepreneur learns two things from failure: First he learns directly how to overcome that particular failure. He’s highly motivated to not repeat the same mistakes. Second, he learns how to deal with the psychology of failure. Mediocre entrepreneurs fail A LOT. So they get this incredible skill of getting really good at dealing with failure. This translates to monetary success.

The mediocre entrepreneur understands that persistence is not the self-help cliche “Keep going until you hit the finish line!”. The key slogan is, “Keep failing until you accidentally no longer fail.” That’s persistence.

(has never failed)

- Not original – I’ve never come up with an original idea in my life. My first successful business was making web software, strategies, websites for Fortune 500 companies. Not an original idea but at the time, in the 90s, people were paying exorbitant multiples for such businesses. My successful investments all involved situations where I made sure the CEOs and other investors were smarter than me. I wrote a TechCrunch article on this titled “My Angel Investor Checklist”. 100% of my zeros as an angel investor were situations where I thought I was smart. I wasn’t. I’m mediocre.

The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results. The child that was so ugly nobody else wanted to touch it. Look at Facebook: combine the internet with stalking. Amazing!

And, by the way, it was about the fifth attempt at such a social network. Twitter: combine internet with antiquated SMS protocols. Ugly! But it works. Ebay, combine ecommerce with auctions. The song, “I’ll Be There”. Combine Mariah Carey with Michael Jackson. If Justin Bieber sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” it would be a huge hit. I might even listen to it.

- Poor networking - I’m that guy. You know the one at the party that doesn’t talk to anyone and stands in the corner. I never go to tech meetups. I usually say no to very nice networking dinner invitations. I like to stay home and read. When I was running businesses I was often too shy to talk to my employees. I would call my secretary from downstairs and ask if the hallway was clear, then ask her to unlock my door and I’d hurry upstairs and lock the door behind me. That particular company failed disastrously.

But many people network too much. Entrepreneurship is hard enough. It’s 20 hours a day of managing employees, customers, meetings, and product development. And the buck stops here sort of thing. And then what are you going to do? Network all night? Save that for the great entrepreneurs. Or the ones who are about to fail. The mediocre entrepreneur works his 20 hours, then relaxes when he can. It’s tough to make money. Not a party.

- Do anything to get a “yes” - Here’s a negotiation I did. I was starting stockpickr.com and meeting with the CEO of thestreet.com. He wanted his company to have a percentage of stockpickr.com and in exchange he would fill up all of our ad inventory. I was excited to do the deal. I said, “Ok, I was thinking you would get 10% of the company.” He laughed and said, “No. 50%”. He didn’t even say “We would like 50%”. He just said, “50%”. I then used all my negotiating skills and came up with a reply. “Okay. Deal.”

I’m a salesman. I like people to say yes to me. I feel insecure when they so “No” or, even worse, if they don’t like me. When I started a company doing websites we were pitching to do “miramax.com”. I said, “$50,000″. They said, “No more than $1,000 and that’s a stretch.” I used my usual technique: “Deal!”

But the end results: in one case thestreet.com had a significant stake so that gave them more psychological stake. And for my first business miramax.com was now on my client list. So Con Edison had to pay a lot more. I’m a mediocre salesman and probably a poor negotiator although I try to learn from the best. But consequently, I get more deals done, I get the occasional loss leader, and then ultimately the big fish gets reeled in if I get enough people to say “yes”. It’s like asking every girl on the street to have sex with you. One out of 100 will say “yes”. In my case it might be one out of a million but you get the idea.

- Poor judge of people. The mediocre entrepreneur doesn’t “Blink” in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. In Gladwell’s book he often talks about people who can form snap correct judgements in two or three seconds.

My initial judgement when I meet or even see people is this: I hate you.

And then I veer from that to too trusting. Finally, after I bounce back and forth, and through much trial and error, I end up somewhere in the middle. I also tend to drop people I can’t trust very quickly. I think the great entrepreneur can make snap judgements and be very successful with it. But that doesn’t work for most people.

At this point, when I meet someone, I make sure I specifically don’t trust my first instincts. I get to know people more. I get to understand what their motivations are. I try to sympathize with whatever their position is. I listen to them. I try not to argue or gossip about them before I know anything. I spend a lot more time getting to know the people who I want to bring closer. I have to do this because I’m mediocre and I’m a lot more at risk of bringing the wrong people into my circle.

So by the time I’ve decided to be close to someone: a client, an employee, an acquirer, an acquiree, a wife, etc I’ve done a lot of work into thinking about them. This means I can’t waste time thinking about other things, like how to put a rocketship on Jupiter. But overall it’s worked.

–

“I thought being mediocre is supposed to be bad?” one might think. Shouldn’t we strive for greatness. And the answer is: “Of course we should! But let’s not forget that 9 out of 10 drivers think they are ‘above the median in driving skill.’” People overestimate themselves. Don’t let overestimation get in the way of becoming fabulously rich, or at least successful enough that you can have your freedom, feed your family, and enjoy other things in life.

Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.

TC Makers: Centeye Creates Insect-Like Flying Robots In A DC Basement

Posted: 19 Aug 2012 02:00 AM PDT

When we first wandered up to the suburban split-level that houses Centeye Inc., we were a bit confused. Could this be the place where a mad roboticist was building tiny robots with insect eyes and brains that could interact with their environment? We rang the doorbell and weren’t disappointed.

Founded by Geoffrey Barrows, Centeye is dedicated to computer vision. They make little electronic eyes that are cheap to reproduce and “see” only a few thousand pixels. He has a staff of two engineers who work with him on designing and building chips and has just released the open source Arudeye board, a tiny Arduino board with camera built-in.

Barrows does everything from his basement. Recent advances in fabrication allow him and his staff to design chips on a computer at home and then send the plans to manufacturers in Asia. They can then mass produce their eyes, driving down the cost per unit to a few dollars. They don’t need a big lab because everything is done remotely.

Their robots are actually proofs-of-concept but they’re really cool. The little helicopters use Centeye eyes to remain stationary in space and other models can avoid objects as they move. Because each eye takes in a small part of the scene, not much computing power is needed to process each bit of input. Like insects, the brain doesn’t have to work very hard to get a lot done.

Centeye has contracts with DARPA but is trying to commercialize their hardware with the Arduino offerings. It’s fascinating to see makers in their own habitat and even more exciting to see them make cool stuff in the oddest of places. Check out the video for more information and you can watch all of our TC Makers episodes here

If you’d like to chat about your project, drop me a line at john@techcrunch.com with the subject line MAKERS.

Hey, Guys, Remember When You Used To Care About Flash?

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 10:23 PM PDT

I wanted to take a moment to pour out a little Club Mate in honor of Flash on mobile and to point out that it wasn’t two years ago that the Flash/iPhone wars were top of mind for most people. Heck, even Steve Jobs chimed in when it looked bleakest.

But, as we learned last year, mobile Flash was dead. Kaput. Deceased. No longer. Ex.

And now it’s gone forever. You can’t download it, you can’t run it on many mobile devices, and Adobe has set its sights on Air as a capable replacement for whatever Flash was good for.

And you guys are quiet?

I only bring this up because I want you guys to remember the anger we all expressed in regards to Flash and the iPhone. The results for “iPhone flash sucks” brings up countless top ten lists talking about why Flash on the iPhone would be totally amazing and why Android is much better because it supports Flash. And now, suddenly, it doesn’t matter.

Where is the outrage? Where are the flame wars? Why are there no open letters to Adobe? It’s because people have moved on and it’s actually kind of appalling to see. All that energy wasted. All that ill-placed anger. We see hundreds of comments almost daily accusing us of some sort of fanboism. We write a pro-Google post and we hate Apple. We write a pro-Apple post and we get nailed for being against Google. But you guys are going to let Flash go without a fight? Show some anger, because as I recall this used to be a big deal for you guys.

Or maybe it isn’t a big deal (and maybe it wasn’t such a big deal, then?) And maybe the tribalism you guys exhibit really isn’t that important to you, really? Maybe you really don’t care?

All I’m trying to say here is that the Internet is a big and wonderful place. Today’s heated argument is tomorrow’s burnt squib. Maybe we can all just look at technology for what it is – a continuum that aims to bring us to a bigger place – and less like a schoolyard filled with squabbling cliques.

Not to get all Beatles on you here, but the concordance you make is the concordance you take. Arguments are fine on points that matter, but in the end everything fades away.

Motorola’s Patent Lawsuit Against Apple Goes After Siri, Location Reminders, Email Notifications & More

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 05:28 PM PDT

On Friday, Google’s Motorola Mobility unit filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington. So far, Motorola has only confirmed that this lawsuit has indeed been filed. The details of the lawsuit remain elusive, as the actual documents won’t be available on the ITC’s website until Monday and Motorola hasn’t released any concrete information about its allegations, yet. We have now learned, however, that the lawsuit, which seeks to ban imports of Apple’s hardware into the U.S., accuses Apple of infringing on seven of Motorola’s patents.

These patents involve location reminders, email notifications, video playback and Siri, the flagship feature of Apple’s current iOS lineup. According to this information, Motorola’s lawsuit argues that virtually every single hardware product Apple currently sells in the U.S. (with the exception of the classic iPod and iPod nano) infringes upon these seven patents. Sadly, that’s the extend of the information we have so far, but we will update this post once we learn more or once the full text of the lawsuit is available online on Monday.

When Google bought Motorola, it also acquired the company’s 17,000 patents (and 7,000 pending ones). At the time, many pundits assumed that one of the reasons for the acquisition was this trove of patents. Google itself, by virtue of being a relatively young company, does not have enough patents to defend its Android OS and other mobile projects from potential lawsuits by more established players in today’s litigious environment. Now, as the patent wars continue to escalate, it looks as if the company is ready to use Motorola and its patents to go on the offensive.

What Makes A City A City? New Visual System Identifies City Characteristics

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 05:11 PM PDT

If you’ve been to cities and you’ve had enough, have you been to Paris, France? Paris is defined by a few magical characteristics – the street signs, the architecture, the street features – and a new system at Carnegie Mellon identifies cities based on their special traits.

The project describes a fairly complex algorithm that is able to find aspects from Google Street view.

Given a large repository of geotagged imagery, we seek to automatically find visual elements, e.g. windows, balconies, and street signs, that are most distinctive for a certain geo-spatial area, for example the city of Paris. This is a tremendously difficult task as the visual features distinguishing architectural elements of different places can be very subtle. In addition, we face a hard search problem: given all possible patches in all images, which of them are both frequently occurring and geographically informative? To address these issues, we propose to use a discriminative clustering approach able to take into account the weak geographic supervision. We show that geographically representative image elements can be discovered automatically from Google Street View imagery in a discriminative manner.

The system currently works in multiple city using large samples of images from cities around the world. Using these, the system can identify where a random photo was taken with some degree of accuracy. Interestingly, the system can also be used on everyday objects, including “discovering stylistic elements in other weakly supervised settings, e.g. “What makes an Apple product?’”

You can download the study PDF here.

via VisualNews

Oracle Makes More Moves To Kill Open Source MySQL

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 04:38 PM PDT

Oracle is holding back test cases in the latest release of MySQL. It’s a move that has all the markings of the company’s continued efforts to further close up the open source software and alienate the MySQL developer community.

The issue stems back to a recent discovery that the latest MySQL release has bug fixes but without a single one having any test cases associated with it. That creates all sorts of problems for developers who have no assurance that the problem is actually fixed.

It’s pretty clear that Oracle is trying to make it as difficult as possible to use MySQL. The result is a wave of unsettlement in the developer community about what Oracle considers open and what it sees as closed. The move is causing problems for developers in all manner of ways as expressed here and here.

MySQL is the popular database used by developers throughout the world. Oracle gained control of the software distribution when it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010.

According to a post on MariaDB, MySQL has used a testing framework called mysql-test since 1999. Over the years tests have been built for new features and regression tests that guarantee that a bug fix is permanent. Developers such as those from Facebook and Twitter rely on the testing framework. At Twitter, MySQL serves as the “persistent storage technology behind most Twitter data: the interest graph, timelines, user data and the Tweets themselves.”

It also appears that Oracle pulled the revision history for MySQL. The revision history groups changes to the millions of lines of source code into what are known as change sets. A change set shows the changes for a particular feature. It shows who made the bug fix, when and why. By removing the revision history, Oracle will keep developers guessing about what is fixed and what is not.

For observers, these moves do not look like simple oversights. More so, it appears that Oracle is making its revision tests and histories closed source. It’s not so surprising knowing Oracle and its history.

But it does raise questions for the open source community about what to do as seen in the comments on Hacker News.

I like what one commenter said about the issue. Forget Oracle. It really is time to move on.

Thoughts On Apple’s Latest TV Efforts

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Earlier this week, a few reports emerged about Apple’s upcoming plans to disrupt the TV market. The first mentioned that Apple was trying to work with cable providers on finding new ways to distribute TV through its hardware, rather than trying to license content itself. The second report gave a few more details about what that hardware would be capable of. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days, and this is what I think we can expect from any Apple TV efforts being announced over the next few months, possibly even next month at its rumored September 12 event.

New box, same as the old box

The new set-top box hardware that Apple is talking to cable operators about using is none other than an updated version of its Apple TV product. Which is to say: Apple probably isn’t creating new hardware to suit the needs of cable operators, or to try to replicate their existing set-top boxes. Instead, Apple is trying to convince them to build new apps for its existing device.

No doubt, the new Apple TV will have some interesting new features under the hood — likely a faster processor, better graphics capabilities, and the like, but the form factor and underlying hardware will probably remain the same. Also, Apple will likely keep the same $99 price point and just make the product more useful. The WSJ’s report pegged the hardware at sub-$200, but anything over $100 is a tough sell, as Boxee, Logitech, and anyone building streaming boxes (other than Apple and Roku) can attest.

New software, new UI, new apps

Along with maybe a better processor and support for improved video playback, I expect the Apple TV to get a UI refresh, one which will allow users to customize the apps on their home screen, in the same way that they would an iPhone or iPad. It’s also aiming to help content owners appify the way that users discover content, according to the WSJ report: “Another significant feature of the Apple set-top device is likely to be its user interface, which could resemble the navigation icons on Apple’s iPad.”

That will be a welcome improvement over existing electronic program guides, which provide little more than a grid view of whatever is on and upcoming, and are generally a pain in the ass to navigate and impossible to find anything on. But that doesn’t mean that just anyone will be able to create apps for the device.

A curated list of partners

To date, the number of apps available through Apple TV have been fairly limited, and I think they’ll probably remain that way. While it clearly needs to find a better way to search and navigate through them, it’s doubtful that the company will open up its Apple TV SDK to all comers in the same way that it did for the iPhone or iPad. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that there are few really good TV apps out there right now.

Just ask Samsung, which spent the last several years trying to build up a robust app ecosystem from third-party developers, only to find that there’s only five or six apps that users genuinely care about. Sources have told me that internally, the consumer electronics manufacturer has been trying to scale back its openness, with reagards to third-party apps. While having a long tail of apps can be a benefit in the mobile world, app discovery and quality control can be a real problem. Apple will likely keep its walled garden closed, in the same way that Microsoft has, when it begins accepting more third-party apps.

Control and navigation on the 2nd screen

Let’s face it: the up-down-left-right-click control of the current generation Apple TV sucks. While there’s the Apple Remote app, which makes the experience slightly better, especially from a search perspective, anyone building an app for the next-gen Apple TV will want a lot more control. In the next version, I expect Apple will tie in more robust second-screen capabilities, rather than introducing a new touch control just for the Apple TV.

And what happens if you’re not one of Apple’s chosen partners, asked to participate in building apps for the Apple TV? Well then, you can just go around that restriction and build apps that use the iPad or iPhone for search and navigation but leverage Apple’s AirPlay technology for video display on the TV. We’re already starting to see some of these dual-screen apps emerge, like the recently released ShowYou iPad app.

Regardless of whether or not they actually build Apple TV apps, I’d love to see more apps like HBO GO or Comcast’s Xfinity app take advantage of this magical technology to fling videos they’re watching to the Apple TV, and use the iPad for interactive features or navigation.

Don’t expect too much disruption

The general response to this latest round of news around its TV efforts is that Apple has adopted a sort of, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” philosophy toward the industry. And that’s mostly true. But it’s also reportedly pushing technology which could still be considered a little too disruptive. Take, for instance, its network DVR idea, which would let users start a show from the beginning, even if they turned up late. It’s a great idea, but frankly, it’s also one that is tied up in all sorts of rights issues and unlikely to be adopted right away by distributors.

As for the display aspect — the whole channels- or shows-as-apps idea that it appears to be pursuing — there are plenty of companies that are already doing this on their own. Comcast’s new X1 set-top box and cloud-based user interface emphasize individual programs and recommendations over the legacy grid interface, at least at the home screen. And others are learning that, in a world of Netflix and Hulu, which emphasize content over programming time, that’s the way consumers are learning to discover content.

One other thought about this whole “too much disruption” thing. I don’t think anyone — not Apple, not the cable companies, not the content owners — see this new hardware as a set-top box replacement. You’ll still have at least one big, ugly, shitty box sitting in your living room. But the Apple TV will work great as a complement to that, or as a way to extend content into rooms where leasing an HD DVR set-top box made no sense. Like in a child’s bedroom, for instance. Even so, that could help cablecos and consumers alike reduce their reliance on crappy set-top boxes throughout the home.

Still no actual “Apple TV”

And finally, the big underlying theme here is that the actual TV that Apple has been rumored to be building for damn near forever, will remain unbuilt, at least for now. And why not? Apple is selling more Apple TV units than ever, and pretty soon it could be partnering with cable TV operators to get their content on the device. But it’s far from fully baked. Before Apple gets serious about building a high-profile device like a TV set, it’s probably going to want to get the kinks out first.

WickedLasers Releases 1.25W Spyder Super Laser

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 03:35 PM PDT

This being Shark Week and all, budding super villains may be interested in this 1.25W laser from WickedLasers. This monstrous slab of electronics sends out a beam powerful enough to pop multiple balloons and looks like a light saber. It would look great on your shark’s head.

The 1.25W version of the WickedLasers Spyder S3 costs $399.95 and require eye protection to operate.

It’s chassis is crafted from aircraft-grade aluminum which makes it virtually indestructible and allows for an unlimited duty cycle. A “Morse code” cipher lock is built in so unauthorized users cannot enable your laser.

If you’re tempted, please remember that these are not toys. We’ve reviewed a few of these things over the years and they’re some serious ordnance. I very nearly burned my cornea once because I was being a doofus. Practice safe lasing, kids.

Infinite Scroll: The Web’s Slot Machine

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 03:00 PM PDT

Nir Eyal writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Hooked: How to Drive Engagement by Creating User Habits". Follow him on Twitter @nireyal.

A few years ago, everyone was clicking. Today, we're all scrolling. Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, and as of this week, Instagram and Medium – it seems everyone is getting on the infinite scroll bus. What is it about this magical design pattern that has so many consumer web companies using it?

Not too long ago, users were forced to reload pages to progress from one piece of content to the next. Web designers were advised against creating websites with information appearing "below the fold", the portion of the page underneath what is displayed on the screen. As mobile phones and tablets gained wider adoption, it looked like the swipe might become standard fare. But that's all changed now. Today, designers are dumping the click and flick and opting for the scroll for one simple reason – it works.

The Endless Search

The infinite scroll is interaction design's answer to our penchant for endlessly searching for novelty. Certainly, there are technical reasons for the scroll's increasing ubiquity. The rise of dynamic content, like a new comment entering the feed, necessitated a better solution than pagination built for static content. But to really understand why the scroll works so well requires a brief trip inside the mind and back in time.

Our brains evolved through the millennia into incredible prediction machines, designed to help us make sense of our environment. Our species benefited from our ability to make good decisions based on what we know is likely to happen in the future, thus, keeping us alive long enough to make babies and spread our genes.

To make correct predictions, the brain accesses memories, which allow us to deduce what's coming next in an nearly instantaneous process of pattern recognition. The ability to learn is simply the conditioning of the brain to recognize cause and (blank).

You were expecting "effect" weren't you? Of course you were. That's because your brain has learned that these two words, "cause" and "effect", tend to go together.

It's this conditioning that creates cognitive shortcuts and habits, allowing us to process tremendous amounts of information all at once. Our brains move known causal patterns to long-term storage so that our attention can be devoted to learning new things.

And nothing holds our attention better than the unknown. The things that captivate, engross, and entertain us, all have an element of surprise. Our brains can't get enough of trying to predict what's next and our dopamine system kicks into high-gear when we're waiting to know if our team will make the field goal, how the dice will land, or how the movie plot ends. Like a loose slot machine, the infinite scroll gives users fast access to variable rewards.

Interestingly, our brain isn't wired to seek pleasure alone. In fact, much of our motivation comes from alleviating the pain of desire. Dopamine levels spike when we're just about to find reward and plummet after we receive it. To get us to do just about anything, evolution uses this chemical cascade to induce anticipation, motivation, and finally pain alleviation. Somehow we call this endless merry-go-round "fun."

Once You Pop

Few other methods for displaying information produce the curiosity to see what's next like the infinite scroll. Like coffee and chocolate, the infinite scroll pairs particularly well with another increasingly-used design pattern, the masonry grid layout made famous by Pinterest. Cliff Kuang, editor of Co.Design, wrote, "… the Pinterest-style grid forces the eye to zig-zag through content, slowing down your scrolling but packing more images onto the screen at any given point."

The barrage of enticing content speeds users up, enticing them to scroll, while the grid slows them down, retaining their attention and moderating their thirst for more and more stimulation. The visual tension is mesmerizing and addictive. Don't believe me? I dare you to go to the Pinterest homepage and not feel tempted to scroll just once. It's like opening a can of digital Pringles.

To Mobile and Back

The infinite scroll has benefited both mobile and web interfaces as designers seize the opportunity to make consistent experiences across both versions of their products. Once users learn how to use a product, they form habits related to their expectations of how the service works. It is here that design becomes a competitive advantage as users find it difficult to switch to a competitor's product because it "feels weird" even if its functionally works just as well.

Recently, the tail wags the dog as the constraints of the mobile experience influence the design of websites accessed on large screens. Creating an interface optimized for mobile and porting these interface decisions to the web, makes good sense given the projections that mobile is becoming the primary way people access the Internet. While certainly not perfect for every scenario, its efficient use of the mobile screen, ability to load dynamic content, and addictive characteristics, means we'll all be doing a lot more scrolling.

Photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

Hands On With Romain Jerome’s Octopus Steampunk Dive Watch

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 02:55 PM PDT

Here is a high-end dive watch to consider if you like that Captain Nemo look. It is called the Octopus, and is from avant garde Swiss watch brand Romain Jerome (RJ). Those familiar with the Romain Jerome Titanic DNA collection of watches will recognize the styling of this new Octopus diver.

The number 8 plays throughout the piece. There’s a unique octopus engraving on the back of the case, 888 feet of water resistance, and they’ll sell only 888 pieces in the limited edition. There are even eight special screws. One feature we love is the “suction cup” style inner part of the rubber strap. Decidedly strange looking, Romain Jerome knows that they are designing and producing polarizing products. People with a strong sense that their watch needs to say something about themselves tend to find watches like this appealing. The RJ Octopus will come in a few styles and each contains a Swiss automatic mechanical movement. You can check out my deeper look over here or just save up your pennies to buy this $10K piece.

Feast Your Ears On Fresh Jams From Musicians You Love At Hipset Via YC’s Tracks.by

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 01:26 PM PDT

Hipset is a music discovery site launching today from Y Combinator’s Tracks.by that makes sure you never miss the hot new songs, videos, and other content from the artists you Like on Facebook — updates which the social network might not show in your feed.

If launched on its own, Hipset would just be a fun site for listeners. But while disarmingly simple, it’s the culmination of Tracks.by’s year-long master plan to shake up the music marketing industry. Here’s how Hipset is going to rock you.

The site launched this morning so you can go check it out Hipset now. Once you auth in with Facebook, you’ll find a single Pinterest-style grid view of all the recent posts by all the musicians you Like. That’s something you can’t get on Facebook, which deems most updates from musicians less critical than those by your friends so they’re filtered out of the feed.

In case you’re looking for a laid-back reel of concert clips and studio performances you can sort Hipset by content type, plus you can view dedicated pages for any artist. There’s also a popular feed where you can see algorithmic and human-curated picks for the best new music. With Spotify putting history’s music catalogue at your fingertips, there’s a big opportunity for Hipset to tell us what we should be listening to.

Yeah, it’s cool, but here’s how it fits into Tracks.by’s grand scheme. For the last year, its ex-Ustream founders Mazy Kazerooni and Matt Schlicht have been signing digital marketing deals to build apps and run the Facebook Pages of top artists like Lil Wayne and Drake. It also scored a seed round from investors like Dave Morin, Greylock’s Josh Elman, Menlo Ventures, and Wayne’s manager Cortez Bryant. But all the while they wanted to launch a destination site.

That’s fortunate, because the Facebook Timeline redesign cutting traffic to tab applications by up to 90%, forcing fellow developers like Bandpage to diversify beyond Facebook. If not for repping big celebrities, getting the standalone site Hipset off the ground might be tough. But Matt and Mazy are friends with all these artists and management companies, and can call in favors. So Tracks.by artists including Wayne (aka Weezy F Baby who has 40 million Facebook Likes) are going to promote their Hipset pages.

Why? Because Hipset is deeply tied into Facebook’s Open Graph. It might be a bit aggressive, but it shares to your friends every time you open a post or view a video. That means it makes artists go viral better than if people watched those same videos on YouTube.com, so thats where they want their fans going. Tracks.by will also help artists send email alerts to their fans when the have big announcements like a new single.

Hipset lets Tracks.by own the marketing channel, sucking up huge data sets and filling in where record labels are failing. With the added email marketing features and the power to massage the Popular feed, Tracks.by has the leverage attract more top-tier artists to its service arm.

And then come the ads. Tracks.by controls the feed and knows what artists you Like, so it could easily inject sponsored blocks into the grid view. If a label wants to promote the new Jay-Z single, it could inject a sponsored block featuring his music video into the feed of anyone who Likes Lil Wayne. And Hipset will let brands sponsor downloads of songs, so you could get the Drake single before its released by Liking Pepsi or watching one of its commercials.

So essentially, Tracks.by uses its connections to promote Hipset that seduces clients to its marketing service that sells ads on Hipset. That’s some evil genius-level business.

In the end, it still comes down to product quality, and the design of Hipset is still v1. If it isn’t sticky and sharable, none of this will pan out. Hipset needs to be more than just a better way to browse Facebook music updates. It needs great discovery of new artists, deals to pull in exclusive content, and viral hooks like stats you can publish about what favorite bands you and your best friends have in common.

Whether you want to be the first person on you block to hear that killer new song, or you want a more intimate connection with the artist who made up, Hipset’s got the hook up.

How Instacart Hacked YC

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Editor's note: Apoorva Mehta is the founder of YC-backed Instacart, a startup that’s taking on 1-hour grocery delivery. He previously worked on supply chain infrastructure at Amazon.com.

Getting into Y-Combinator is hard enough; but getting in two months late and as a single founder is almost impossible. This is how I hacked my way in.

It was June, and I decided to apply to Y-Combinator. I always wanted to go through the intense program, and I knew that getting in would dramatically improve the chances that Instacart would succeed. But there was a problem: I missed the application deadline. By over two months.

The Plan

I knew that if the Y-Combinator partners experienced my product first hand, they’d have to let me join. So I hatched a plan to get in touch with them. I pinged every YC alumni in my network looking for introductions to the YC partners for a meeting.

Within 24 hours I had several introductions to YC partners and things were looking pretty good. All I had to do now was wait for at least one of them to be interested enough to meet with me.

Then the responses started to arrive. One by one, each of Y-Combinator’s partners told me the same thing. “No way.” It was too late to enter the current batch, and I would have to apply again in the next batch.

In the final rejection email from Garry Tan, one of the YC partners, I found a glimmer of hope. “You could submit a late application, but it will be nearly impossible to get you in now.”

That meant it was possible!

I put together an application, and made a video describing my product. I waited for a response, and several days later I got one: another “No.”

The Hack

As I thought about this final rejection, I realized that so far, no one had seen my product in action. Did they even know what I was doing, and why it was different? I was determined to make one last effort to convince YC that I was worthy.

I opened my app and placed an order for one six pack of beer. I addressed it to Garry Tan at Y-Combinator’s headquarters. John, one of my drivers, handled the order and sent me a text letting me know when he was done.

Half an hour later I got a call from Garry. “What is this?” Garry asked. “This is Instacart!” I exclaimed. Garry asked me to come to Y-Combinator the next day to explain my company in more detail. I was so excited, I barely slept that night.

The Meeting

The next day, I arrived at the meeting location. I faced four YC partners and a barrage of questions about how my business worked and why it would succeed. We talked for almost an hour, but it felt like just a few minutes. I answered questions non-stop.

When our chat was over, I was asked to leave, and told that if they chose to fund me, I’d receive a call. This is standard practice for Y-Combinator, but at the time it felt cold, like there was no chance I would be accepted. It felt like the string of “no’s” would only continue.

Ten minutes passed. My phone rang. “Hello, this is Harj from Y-Combinator. I can’t believe we’re doing this. We haven’t let anyone in this late. Ever. But if you’re interested, we would love to have you. Call me back.”

Wow! I had done it! I reflected for a few minutes, and then called Harj back. Of course I would accept.

Fast Forward

It’s now two months later, and demo day is fast approaching. Thanks to YC, I'm working with the most impressive entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley.

I learned a lot during Y-Combinator, but most importantly I learned that I’ll never take “No” for an answer again.

Gillmor Gang: Please Stand By

Posted: 18 Aug 2012 10:00 AM PDT

The Gillmor Gang — Keith Teare, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — huffed and puffed but could not blow Twitter’s house down. The social startup is betting we’ll still keep tweeting no matter how gated the community becomes, and with Facebook only worth some 40 billion, Jack and Dick may be right. Besides, push notifications make the clients irrelevant anyway.

Three weeks in, @scobleizer has given away his Nexus 7, with @kteare the only holdout. I can’t believe how much time I’ve switched over to the pocket tablet, but soon enough we’ll learn Apple’s response with iPhone the next. With our director on vacation I’ll have to watch the show to catch the rest of the conversation, as I found it impossible to talk and switch at the same time. And thanks, NBC, for pushing The Who out of prime time. Meet the new boss…

@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @kteare, @jtaschek

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor