Vista's performance

Here is validation I'm not crazy. Vista is soooo slow, look at those numbers, it's almost or over 2x as slow as XP depending on the software one uses.

planes+line-ups

Have you ever been in a plane where the minute we touch the gate upon landing, everybody rushes for the aisle and get their stuff out of the overhead bin? The door to exit the plane is not even open, and everyone is inline in the aisle waiting to get out. Now why am I writing about this, it bugs me. The sooner one gets in the aisle doesn't mean one will get out of the plane sooner. People do let you in the line when it starts moving. so why does it bug me? well when you have an aisle seat and the people next to you toward the window pushes on to you to get up and in aisle jungle it bugs me that I have to explain they won't get out quicker if they are in the aisle now versus 3min from now.

Kindle

Kindle was released today, the e-book reader from Amazon. It has nice features, like wi-fi connectivity so that you can instant buy from amazon. It's slim, it's light, and from what I have seen looks nice. It looks like something you can hold as easily as a book. I look forward handling one for real. I've watched a few videos of the thingy, but no where I see features like underline, or capabilities to insert notes - are those features just a given, so this is why they are not talked about? I'm assuming the keyboard is for more than typing urls.

Update: So yes you can have annotations, and underlines and the ability to export them. This is extremely useful, as right now I need to go through the books and the underlines and write them on paper as book summary, which I only rarely do, which means I don't get as much value out of the book itself. So I want one!

From Amazon's

Bookmarks and Annotation

By using the keyboard, you can add annotations to text, just like you might write in the margins of a book. And because it is digital, you can edit, delete, and export your notes, highlight and clip key passages, and bookmark pages for future use. You'll never need to bookmark your last place in the book, because Kindle remembers for you and always opens to the last page you read.

Hands on High School science

I have been talking about this for a while, we're doing some pilots here in the Ottawa area about it, but check out the following article - hands on is the way to go, great validation. This from the NY Times article is pushing the concept that the fact High School population may not be interested in sciences(bio, physics) - as much we need them to - is for lack of hands on experiments. They continue saying that which we have been "wrongfully" thinking that hands on science could be simulated through a computer. An interesting fact I was one of those people a long time ago who thought the computer could be the solutions to it all -  at Corel, we had a product called Corel chemlab.

 

An interesting tid bit - I have tried to check out for more info, but nothing just yet

"Secondary science and mathematics education is on the rise, with growing numbers of students in more challenging classes. Enrollment in advanced biology and physics courses doubled from 1997 to 2004, nearly doubled for advanced math and rose 50 percent for advanced chemistry, according to the National Science Foundation"

Vegetables and Fruits Stands

In Yerevan again - things are different, but it's not just language, how people look, dress, or the way buildings are constructed. Every where in the city one can find those little vegetables and fruits stands. For one stands it will be a truck full of cabbages, I've never seen cabbages that big, for another one it's going to be pomegranates, bananas and tomatoes on a table. Another one was a table with various vegetables, and then an open car trunk full of apples.

The super markets "à la Canada" they don't exist, or I should say are not nearly as common and much smaller. The fruits and vegetables I'm talking about are the equivalent of small neighbourhood boutiques, it's neat. The customer experience is very personalized, you're likely to live in the same building or neighbourhood as your customers, it's more personal, people talk around the stands while they buy. My armenian is non existent, so people there may just be trading punches about the quality of the products, but somehow I don't think that is what is going on - it's probably more like "how is so-and-so kiddo and his cold, getting any better?"

Do You Speak Russian?

Hey I never thought I looked Russian. So here I am in Yerevan being ask if I speak Russian, is it my accent, my look, hey maybe both. Hi my name is Boris. ;-)

Innovation what is it?

I was at a conference on Product Innovation metrics last week. My goal was to go there an learn what my customers or prospective customers are wrestling with regarding innovation - how to measure there success and if they are on track. I heard plenty of good stuff it was well worth it, but as with all things we always kind of expect it's going to be one thing, and as you guessed it turns out to be many things that makes an organization successful at innovating. The take-aways for me:

• Innovation is about people: to use a basket ball analogy - think of your starting five - now ask yourself what are they doing right now - this will tell you right away if you're putting your money where your mouth is regarding innovation. The answer is simple they should be talking with customers,part of your advanced concept team. If they are stuck putting fires out - it won't be long that you will be out!
• Innovation doesn't all come from within - too often we resort back to the not invented here syndrome. Nimble organizations must be able to tap the ideas from outside. Think of it this way - do you believe your organization has all of the smartest people in the world on the payroll - The answer is no - so figure ways to tap the brain power outside your organization
• The only thing that counts regarding innovation is your payback. If you're not making measurable new $ because of your innovation - you aren't investing your money right.
• Innovation is not necessarily about inventing new things - the biggest pay backs out there are in New business models. Business Model really means assembling existing techniques, services, technologies in new and genuine ways. Too often we think Innovation as putting someone on the moon.
Technorati Tags: innovation,people,process

Project Better Place - Home

Project Better Place - Home (from the longtail) This guy is making the case that soon enough, the price of fueling up for 12months will be more than the price of the avg care itself. His plan - give you an electric car, and you pay him for the electricity you put in, pay per use kind of thing.

IBM acquires Cognos

IBM has acquired Cognos - News Releases Every body knew this was coming now that SAP had made its move on Business Object. I don't know how much of a premium it is, I don't want to bother checking. It's probably a good return for the shareholders. I can tell you everybody in Ottawa even if we knew it was coming, but didn't want to see it happen. Cognos is a huge success story here in town, IBM has been gobbling up companies here at furious pace. There aren't that many 1b/yr software company in Canada, even less with their HQ in Ottawa. I know this is what they had to do, but I can't help but feel bummed by the news.

Luxoft Issues Annual Industry Predictions for 2008

Annual Industry Predictions for 2008 - Luxsoft sees Canada in its soup. Actually many companies do these days. MS has setup up shop in vancouver, and shortly in Ottawa. You have Google in Waterloo, and even according to some - the search engine gorilla, was looking to buy the abandoned Mirabel airport near MTL. Canada really has a great innovation track record, and as such is a great place for the new wave of outsourcing going on stronger every day for Product companies.

great customer experience

An interesting story? well it starts with the fact I needed an haircut a few weeks ago. Ha ha ha! I hear you laugh, Fred you don't need a hair cut you say. While this is mostly true, it will only my point more obvious! So I'm between two meetings, I got the next meeting moved closer to where I was, so I had time for this long overdue haircut of mine. I'm at 555 Legget Drive, the Terry Matthew complex, I walk in front of this hair salon, I go in do you take walk-ins, "we sure do sir, it will be five minutes". It hasn't been 2minutes that I'm invited to take place in the chair. (First thought - Hey good stuff I think, under sell over deliver). For me a hair cut is like take the clipper and five minutes later I'm out. Well it turns I didn't know a whole lot about hair cut in a real hair cutting place. So the guy who is clipping my hair starts with the clipper, I learn later he is the owner(Second thought - the guy is still hands on in the business, good he cares) So we go on I learn he is from Serbia, and got out when the war started, lived several years in Switzerland, where he learned French, and then moved to Canada where he learned English, to be with the rest of his family. (third thought - a guy from a country in very bad shape, and starts a business of his own - good stuff, forth thought - his English is bang on sharp guy). So anyhow the clipping is done now, and then he manually cut with scissors the hair around my ears, to make a nice "tour d'oreilles" it made a HUGE difference to me that no one noticed, but hey I was happy. Then he used those products for my skin so that it would not dry up after a clipping to the scalp. Hence my point usually a hair cut for me is five minutes, this one was maybe 7minutes - but here I am after a few weeks still thinking this was the best haircut I've had in a long time. So for a guy with literally no hair to feel so passionate about a salon, the customer experience has to be compelling otherwise there is little value in it for me. It's a two minutes well invested on the part of the salon owner. I now understand why my dad or people I know always go to the same place over and over, every other week. So if you're in the neighborhood drop by, the place is called The Salon

jottt

Well, Jott is not that good for blogging as you can see from the post below, words are not in the right order and although I know what I said, you the reader will not. It may be my French accent getting in the way for the translators over at Jott. The service is efficient, and fast, but you pay for accuracy, actually you don't pay, it's free, but you know what I mean. Still I'm a convert, not for blogging, but for to-do's and other ideas when on the road to send myself reminder in my-inbox, as opposed to texting while on a red-light.

As it turns out, I am...

As it turns out, I am new to Jott and I didn't realize that a push option to send the audio right to my blog and I am gonna try to watch the how the text do this voice to text translation or adaptation and seems that this thing is very useful to me especially for sending myself reminders and to do's while on the road, while driving instead of texting. Okay, cheers. listen Powered by Jott

Instant Jott

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