The Red Swingline Stapler, a blog by Craig Hamar, founder and CTO of Helix Innovative Inc., talks about technology, the Internet and the latest goings on around Helix Innovative.
Quite an interesting article on the length of time it took to grow many of the major firms in technology. This shoots a lot of holes in the glory myths of overnight success where in two months you are worth a billion five, PDiddy is inviting you to his house, and your enormous mansion has a 30 million dollar toilet so you don’t even have to wipe your own butt anymore.
Gold fever and hubris is a huge danger in life and in business. It is just like basketball. Don’t worry about winning, worry about each play and build on it, success takes care of itself.
Although very cool I can’t help thinking to myself, except for the advanced lighting, drinks and bars have been pretty much stayed the same for thousands of years.
Who can ever forget the life story of Dan E. “Rudy” Ruettiger portrayed by Sean Astin in the film appropriately titled “Rudy.” That film has been and will be a huge inspiration to any and all of us who ever faced adversary and nearly insurmountable odds and showed that with hard work, dedication and perseverance that even the most far off dreams can be achieved. Kobe as this article talks about is also a huge fan and says the film changed his life and he has watched it over 100 times.
Here is a movie quote when one of Rudy’s mentor’s Fortune is talking to Rudy as he is thinking about quitting everything:
“You’re 5 foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’, and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years. And you’re gonna walk outta here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don’t have to prove nothin’ to nobody but yourself. And after what you’ve gone through, if you haven’t done that by now, it ain’t gonna never happen. Now go on back.”
Anyone who has ever been sailing, or took to the open seas in any type of marine craft knows mother nature often has plans of her own when you are out there. This video is a testimonial to that.
So in the final end the supercomputer dubbed Watson lost in Jeopardy to humankind, but demonstrating the underpinnings of what the future might hold with machines and man. Maybe it is time to dust off and reread that Bill Joy article in Wired again.
A Dell exec Bryan Chester ran around the Dell Campus dressed as a biker in a face covering skull bandanna yelling for people to “go to the Lobby” carrying metal objects(Probably the new Streak) Unfortunately instead of a morale boosting product announcement it caused mayhem and 911 calls and ultimately the arrival of the police. It is hard though to criticize someone since ideas often look great on paper. For example I knew another company that came up with what seemed to be on the surface a great marketing idea. Summer sale with packs of suntan lotion sent out to clients. All was well until the packs ruptured inside the envelopes and leaked gobs of sun tan oil all over the clients mail. Basically it went down like this, Post-person shows up, “Here’s your box of oily mail,” followed by lots of pissed off people on the phone. Moral of the story: Just because it seems like a great marketing idea, doesn’t mean it is.
Ok. Believe it or not, McDonald’s restaurants in Hong Kong will give you an out the door wedding package so you can tie the knot with your sweetheart and get a Big Mac at the same time. Of course I can see the inevitable…Burger King, not to be outdone will have to quickly announce its all inclusive divorce package. “Divorce, the King says have it your way.”
In software having great tools is the key to a good workflow. A while back we realized our previous systems of managing software projects weren’t cutting it. We have always been junkies for exploring solutions and tried many Open Source applications, and even down to the god awful spreadsheet method way back in the day. Nothing really quite cut it. One day though we stumbled into Rally Dev, a snazzy piece of Agile Development Project Management Software. Quite simple to setup and deploy and coupled with a sales and support staff at Rally Dev that actually cares about their clients successes. It has powerful reports and many features that make us feel like Lord Vader walking around on a Super Star Destroyer. We had heard someone actually planned his wedding in Rally Dev. Sounds insane, but if you see the software it actually makes sense.
Originally published by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975 this deck contains 100 cards which are sort of a set of working thoughts designed to refocus or open up creativity which is often squashed by a variety of factors like time deadlines, being to close to the problem, etc. The idea is fairly simple, shuffle the deck, pick up card, read it, and act on the idea it presents. There are also numerous computer versions out as well. Hey Cold Play used it on La Vida La Viva and look what they did. Ooo rah!
Here is a small sampling of some cards:
Steal a solution.
Describe the landscape in which this belongs.
What else is this like?
List the qualities it has. List those you’d like.
Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it.
