Foot in the Mouth - Sorry Apple...

So - a week has gone by and I have been wondering how to come to terms with the post I'm about to write. Especially after my tirade at Apple and AT&T last week. Why? Because I'm in love with the iPhone. Well, here goes:

I dropped my roommate off at the airport last Tuesday. On the way home, I did a drive by in Burlingame, just to see if maybe the Apple store had an iPhone. Yea, I know, I said I may not get one, but now I was determined. There was no line which wasn't good, but I did notice some people walking out with iPhone bags. I stopped. Low and behold, they had the phones. This was going to be easy. It wasn't. The Apple employees were incredibly helpful. Unfortunately, AT&T had convinced me to buy a phone and get a contract started with them when I first tried to get an iPhone last week. This proved to be a huge mistake. Now Apple couldn't sell me an iPhone at the new user rate because they already had me as a subscriber in their system. Man, what am I going to do? Well - the short version. I was on the phone with AT&T for several hours. I had to leave the Apple store to go back to an AT&T store to return my phone. I had to reverse my contract. I then had to go back to the Apple store - where they had surprisingly said they'd hold my phone. Still no luck. More phone calls to AT&T because my upgrade eligibility was still on hold. Final resolution? I had to get a new AT&T line, with a different phone number from the Apple store. I then had to take my phone back to the AT&T store where they had to switch serial numbers so I could maintain the phone number I've had for years. 5 hours later I had an iPhone with my original number at the $199 price. What a shit show.

But boy was it worth it. The iPhone is absolutely amazing. I wrote an email to my friends last week that said this is probably one of the single greatest voice communication technologies of our time. And I assure you, this is no bandwagon I'm jumping on - this is coming from an Apple hater. From a hater in general. From someone who doesn't see the value of Facebook on a Google like scale or a Twitter business model. What I do see with the iPhone is an incredible platform. The Apps Store is really what makes this amazing. But for now, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy my love affair with my new toy.

From Java to Rails

For the past few months, I've been ramping up my Ruby skills to play a larger role in the development of our site. I've been a Java coder most of my life and was a bit hesitant to jump back into the coding game (after business school, after a 4 year absence from coding, and compounded with the move to a new development language). But it's where we need the most help, so alas, I decided to give it a whirl.

I'd been hearing a great deal about Ruby and people professing it's advantages. I've also heard the downside. The troubles that sites like Twitter have with scaling. Though most of the Twitter issues seem to deal with their architecture and not with the Ruby language itself. In the end, I was excited we were developing in Ruby because I was one of its supporters (from the little I knew). From all I heard about how easy it is to develop web applications - I was a bit surprised when it took me a while to understand its syntax. Even the ruby site claims it's easy - though obviously they would:

"It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write"

I'd assumed it would look a bit like java, which itself is written like C. I mean, most languages use similar conventions.

Well, I was wrong. For me, the ramp up time learning Ruby was steep. It was certainly NOT natural. The syntax looks nothing like any C based language. While it was very difficult for me to pickup the intricacies of the Ruby language at first - it's become a heck of a lot easier to code as you learn it. Why? Because Ruby doesn't require you to do too much. Lots of its syntax makes things much easier to write than any other language I've used. You can get a prototype of a website up in no time (though making it do what you want is another story).

The main differences I've seen between Ruby and Java:

Ruby: parentheses optional, everything is an object, no type declarations, nil not null (that one was easy), no compilation, no interfaces, no type casting, etc. But the single most important thing that was difficult for me when looking at example code - Ruby allows a lot of things to be left out. It can make an incredible amount of assumptions based on what you've written. While quite efficient, it made learning for me a bit challenging. I just read a great simile. A term paper is to txt messaging as Java is to Ruby. Once you learn to txt it's a helluva lot quicker. But before that, it can be confusing.

iPhone, AT&T, and Verizon

When the new iPhone was announced, I was actually kind of excited. I don't particularly enjoy jumping on bandwagons and more importantly, I've never been a big fan of Apple. I grew up with a PC. I've never had or wanted an iPod or a Mac. And I think Steve Jobs is a dick. But man, they seemingly make a great phone.

I've been a Verizon subscriber for about 7 years. I've hated them for most of that time. Their customer service is crap. And their pricing policies seem to be arbitrary, at best - whatever they can do to squeak a few more bucks from their customers. I'm not sure a good cell phone provider even exists, but it's surely not Verizon. After giving them thousands and thousands of dollars over the years, you'd think they'd have a little more interest in pleasing me. Nope. Well, my contract finally ran out a few months ago and boy was I happy to cancel. They had continually roped me into contract after contract. What a pain in the ass. This time, I was holding out... waiting for a phone I really liked. And then, I thought I found it, the iPhone 2.0.

I read online that it made sense to go into AT&T early if you weren't already a customer in order to get a credit check and to convert your number. I went in last Wednesday and they offered me a phone to take until I got my iPhone (I had to buy it, of course, but I could return it a few days later). I figured Friday would be a mob scene, so I opted not to go wait in line. On Saturday, they were sold out. I went again this morning before they opened. They had told me yesterday they were getting a shipment last night. I wondered how they knew...but I guess they did.

After waiting in line for about an hour, the store manager came out an told us they didn't receive any phpnes yesterday and didn't have any to sell. Well, that would have been all good and well except for a few things. Why the hell did they have us sit out there waiting when they knew they didn't have any? Why wasn't there a sign on the door to dissuade us from wasting our time? How about when the employees were working an hour before the store opened - couldn't they say anything? And what the hell has Apple been doing the last few months with their manufacturing? They couldn't make enough? That seems pretty unlikely. Especially because there were only 10 of us in line today. As many people have pointed out online, there appears to be a manufactured supply shortage. Marketing or not, this is annoying, and I've suddenly lost most of my interest in the iPhone. Will I get one? Maybe. Am I going to wait in line anymore? Nope. I don't blame AT&T for this, they're strictly bound by Apple's policies... and I'm sure they're happy to have all of these conversions.

And I didn't even talk about the rest of the problems this release had... (here)

A New Business Model - Are We in a Bubble in the Valley?

I've been noticing a common theme in the Valley the past few weeks and it got me to thinking. We finally have some proof that things are changing here in the Valley. In fact, we may be at the end of our nice little bubble. Sure, lots of people don't think we're in a bubble, but I do, and I have for quite a while. At least now I have some proof.

So what's been happening lately that makes me think this? It's all of the startups who are "changing their business model". Company after company has been singing this tune of late. Why? Well, for one, just having tons of users isn't going to bring in the cash like they thought it would. Monetizing these users has been a challenge. See my post on Facebook - and you'll see why. If there weren't underlying problems with the current spate of web 2.0 companies, there wouldn't be this massive push to change business models. It sounds like investors are finally pushing for some returns or at least prospects for a return. This is the same issue lots of companies deal with in the face of tough times and increased competition. I have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot of these web companies fall by the wayside. After all, while it may not take a lot of money to create a website these days, it takes a lot of money to keep a popular one running (server space, bandwidth, employees, time, etc)

Made to Stick - A Summary Lesson

This is from the Easy Reference Guide in Made to Stick to give you a bit more of an idea of what the book covers. And how to make messages stick in the minds of your audience.

What Sticks?

What is sticky anyway? Understandable, memorable, and effective in changing behavior.

The Six Principles to a successful sticky message: SUCCESs - Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.

What's the biggest villain in terms of complicating the creation and delivery of your message? The Curse of Knowledge. Knowing too much about what you're talking about will undoubtedly hamper your effectiveness at creating a lasting, simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional message.

Here are the 6 tenets of a sticky message broken down:

1. Simple
Find the Core, Share the Core

2. Unexpected
Get Attention: Surprise
Hold Attention: Interest

3 Concrete
Help people understand AND remember

Help people coordinate (make it tangible)

4. Credible
Help people believe
Offer external or internal credibility
Use convincing details, make statistics accessible and understandable

5. Emotional
Make people care
Use the power of Association
Appeal to self interest
Appeal to identity

6. Stories
Get people to act
Use stories as simulation (tell people how to act)


Some of the messages that the authors have broken down to understand why they have persevered: Nice guys finish last, Elementary, my dear Watson, It's the economy, stupid...

Made to Stick - Book of the Year

Ok, so now that Amazon decided to bring itself back up, I can finally give you the review of the latest business book I made myself read. Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath, was recommended as a must read by my good friend, Tuyen Truong of TeamWorkLive. As usual, when I hear must read and business book in the same sentence, I cringe, because I know it's most likely some BS. He even told me he'd buy me the book if I didn't like it, so I figured I had nothing to lose.

I picked up the book in Barnes and Noble while I was there doing some work. I leafed through the first few pages because I wasn't about to waste my money on another crappy book. Low and behold, I was sold the first page in. I'm not sure if it was awesome and catchy story that I was introduced to in that first page or whether it was the fact that this book covered a problem I was currently having - getting our idea to resonate with people. Whatever the case, I practically read the whole thing that day, and have been raving about it ever since.

The book was incredibly insightful about what makes stories endure - why some stories can be recounted by those that hear them and others are forgotten the minute they're told. As they step you through stories that stick and those that don't, they dissect why this is the case, with astounding simplicity. It's short, to the point, and an easy read. I won't lie... I didn't finish the Epilogue in those two days. I put that off for a week or so. But the rest of it I could barely put down.

The end of the book also has a great wrap-up of everything that was taught in the book, which makes it an easy reference. So go buy it. And use the link above. You'll be supporting me.

Amazon

Sorry that I've been MIA. A little time off never hurt anybody.

I wanted to review a book for you guys today. And you'll be surprised. I thought it was an excellent business book. Unfortunately, when I went to look up the book on Amazon so I could pilfer some comments, I was greeted with this: Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

I'm not even getting an error page...it's like their servers just disappeared from the planet.

Update: Amazon was, in fact, down for several hours (here)