Skin of a Living Thought

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Mac Law Students Reborn

When I started law school in the fall of 2005, there were no websites devoted to helping Mac users make it through the Windows-centric world of law school. So I started Mac Law Students. The blog caught on, and after a while other Mac-using law students were writing for the blog. I obtained my J.D. in 2008, and since then I've been trying to figure out how to keep the site going.

I'm happy to report that it's rolling again, under the astute guidance of Dennis Bishop, who runs IT at the University of Oregon School of Law. He's running MLS as a side project, but he brings up-to-the-minute expertise to the blog. If you're a Mac-using graduate student (or even undgrad) of any kind, you'll probably find something useful in the revived Mac Law Students.

Check out the welcome post from Dennis.

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iTunes is Punishing Me

Earlier today I made a comment about iTunes being bloated.

The very next time I fired up iTunes, it vanished from my Dock. Coincidence? I think not.

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Review of Rework: Be a curator

I'm posting observations and questions as I read Rework. 

Be a curator

The authors point out the benefits of selectivity. If you provide a vast, undifferentiated menu of choices for your customers, are you really serving their needs? The premise here is that customers look to you, the subject matter expert, to select from all the available choices only those that are truly worthy. This applies to a deli's selection of olive oils or a the paintings a museum displays.

Observation: Curation is a hot meme. Wired, famous for promoting the latest tech Age of the moment (but never epoch – what's that about?), has declared that we now live in the Age of Curation. Though I love poking fun at Wired for their breathless trend-labeling, I think they have it right with this one. The act of intelligently and intentionally minimizing selections can show customers that you have a vested interest not just in selling something, but in selling something useful.

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Review of Rework: Making the call is making progress

I'm posting observations and questions as I read Rework. 

Making the call is making progress

Make decisions. Choose to do something rather than continue to search for the perfect solution. Sure, you'll make some bad decisions, but your projects will move faster, and most mistakes can be corrected. Get in the habit of making decisions daily.

Observation: This one is so important. Anyone who has served in the military can recite the mantra, "A poor plan executed vigorously beats a great plan that never gets executed." The point is that you never have enough time or information. There is no such thing as 100% certainty. This doesn't mean you make snap decisions about complex issues based solely on your gut feeling. But waiting in vain for some sort of magical green light to tell you that it is finally safe to make a decision is an invitation to disappointment and frustration.

Taking too long to make decisions also has the effect of magnifying their import. Undecided issues tend to grow, consuming your mental overhead, making you nervous, filling your head with what-if scenarios. It can be crippling, particularly when your inability to decide affects other people in your organization.

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SugarSync: A Secret Weapon for iPad in the Enterprise

My friend Marke has written a detailed post on how he uses SugarSync to keep files synched between his iPad, Windows laptop, and home Mac. This isn't just an exercise in random geekery for Marke. He is a road warrior, and it's vital that he has all of his files within easy reach while traveling. He's tried several different approaches, so when he says SugarSync works great, I'm inclined to believe him. I'm a big fan of Dropbox, but after reading Marke's review I'm definitely going to give SugarSync a spin.

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Review of Rework: Ignore the details early on

I'm posting observations and questions as I read Rework. 

Ignore the details early on

Think about the big picture first. What is it you want to do, and what are the basics of how you'll get it done? Answer those questions in broad strokes before you get down to the details. 

Observation: Yes, emphatically, yes! The best way to stifle momentum is to get bogged down in the details before the foundation is solid. Focus on the structure of your product first, and the fit and polish decisions will actually be easier to make. If you (or someone working with you) is an idea person, it might be difficult for you to avoid coming up with all kinds of exciting details. The signage should be purple! The text on the website should all be in italics! Go ahead and create a list of these detail ideas, but keep it off to the side as you work on the structural underpinnings. Then you can come back to the list and use it as the starting point for refining the concept.

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Review of Rework: Start at the epicenter

I'm posting observations and questions as I read Rework. 

Start at the epicenter

Creating something new is never easy, in part because it can be difficult to figure out what to tackle first. The authors suggest asking this question: "If I took this away, would what I'm selling still exist?" 

Observation: This is an easier exercise in theory than in practice. Take a house, for example. Is the epicenter of a new house the foundation, or the floor? There are plenty of houses around the world that have no foundations, but in the United States you can't build a house without a foundation. So it could be said that the foundation is the epicenter. Is that really true, though?

To build anything beyond a one room hut you'll need a plan for your house, a blueprint, a CAD file, sketches on napkins, something that describes the dimensions and use of space for the house. You can't build a real house without a plan. So that would be the epicenter. Ah, but what about the land? You can't build a house if you don't have property to put it on, and you can't build on it if you don't have a permit.

Perhaps the question to ask in this scenario is, "Am I going to find a great piece of property and build a house on it, or am I going to find a piece of property that will allow me to build an awesome house?" Intelligent minds often differ on how to answer questions of priority. Maybe that's why so many custom home projects (not to mention software projects) are such painful endeavors. When the participants can't come to a common understanding of what the epicenter really is, maintaining focus will be a constant struggle.

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Review of Rework: Build half a product, not a half-assed product

I'm posting observations and questions as I read Rework. 

Build half a product, not a half-assed product

Attempting to build everything into your product will doom it to failure. Trim your sails, focus on what is most important. Movie directors cut scenes. Writers remove extraneous words. Follow their lead and your product will be better for it.

Observation: Amen! The authors don't explicitly tie the two together, but this is the flip side of embracing constraints. Sometimes you have to create your own constraints, because having too many ideas and enough time and money to consider them all can torpedo your product. This is a particularly important threat to externally-funded startups, because a focused, narrowly-defined product is anathema to the funding process. VCs and other investors want the broadest possible market appeal, which is at best unrelated to what your customers want. 

I might even take this one step further and suggest that you define the product as narrowly as possible. You may have an audience of 1,000 customers instead of 10,000, but if you create a polished, tightly-defined product that fills a need for those customers, they will become rabid evangelists. They will tell their friends and colleagues about you. They will tell you what they'd like to see added to the product. They'll tell you what bothers them about your product, because they will care about it. It's always easier to grow with a core of truly satisfied customers watching your back.

If I seem particularly passionate about this subject, it's because I've been involved in projects that have flamed out because of a combination of too many ideas and not enough focus. The best projects are always the ones where the scope is clearly defined and coherent. As obvious as this advice may seem, it can be challenging even for small companies. But here's your secret weapon: As a small company you have an advantage over the big players. It becomes exponentially more difficult to keep the product lean as you add execs, marketers, and developers to the mix.

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My First Faux iPhone Sighting [w/photos]

I was at the park with my boy this morning when I spied what looked like an iPhone, face down on a bench. I asked a couple of people nearby if they were the owners, with no luck. So I picked it up to see if I could find out who owned it.

Lo and behold, it was a fake. Unfortunately the sun was rather bright, so you can't see the interface under the screen. The device was about to come apart. The seam separating the chrome bezel from the black plastic back had come undone, so I had to hold the phone firmly so it wouldn't pop open, exposing its innards.

All I had time for were these quick shots, though I would have enjoyed poking around with the software a bit. Notice the lack of an on/off button or audio jack at the top of the device.

I confess I'm a bit baffled as to why anyone would buy a knock-off iPhone. It seems like buying an inexpensive but reliable mobile phone would be better than hauling around a cheap, poorly-made smartphone look-alike. I suppose it says a lot about the cachet of the iPhone that people would pay for a knockoff.

   
Click here to download:
My_First_Faux_iPhone_Sighting_.zip (222 KB)

Posted from Soquel, CA

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Tour of California - Stage 3 - Santa Cruz

Unfortunately I'm not yet the photographer I'd like to be. I took these shots on West Cliff Drive as the riders hauled in toward the Boardwalk and the finish line.

Zabriskie, Rogers, and Leipheimer well in front of the first chase group.

The guy with the yellow sunglasses and red and black jersey may look familiar.

They make it look easy.