College Humor hits the nail on the head in their parody, Every Tech Commercial, which features the tropes and cliches of…every tech commercial. It also says what I’ve been saying — and demonstrating — for years: you can’t properly promote technology without an accordion.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
While Bioshock Infinite will likely claim the “game of the year” crown for 2013 (and rightfully so), a lot of us are still looking forward to the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V, featuring the voice of Ray Liotta. The official trailer hit the ‘net today:
Here are all the Grand Theft Auto IV trailers in one video:
Here’s the trailer for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas…
Here’s one of the original trailers for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City…
…and here’s the trailer for Vice City’s 10th Anniversary edition:
And for you Grand Theft Auto fans that have about 50 minutes to kill, here’s GamerSpawn’s documentary on the history of Grand Theft Auto:
A few years back, Daniel “A Whole New Mind” Pink wrote and Rob Ten Pas illustrated a manga career guide titled Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. The trailer — that’s right, this book has a trailer — gives a quick overview:
One of the key pieces of advice that book gives is “Think strengths, not weaknesses”. It’s covered in this excerpt, in which Johnny, who’s trapped in a dead-end job, gets an important lesson from Diana, the magical career advisor who appears whenever he breaks apart a pair of special chopsticks:
The names on those two bobbleheads are:
Buckingham, with Donald O. Clifton, wrote a book titled Now, Discover Your Strengths, which is tied to a Gallup personal assessment system called StrengthsFinder. It features a test that measures you along 34 dimensions called “talent themes” that everyone has to varying degrees. The goal of the test is to find your “top five” themes — the things that have the greatest impact on your behaviour and performance — so that you can focus on them.
The themes fall into four different domains of leadership strength…
…and the themes themselves are:
The accented themes — Activator, Woo, Positivity, Ideation, and Strategic — are special, at least to me. They’re my strengths.
Here’s a brief description of each of the themes, and this PDF (221k) provides a more detailed description of each one.
As I wrote in an earlier post, there were a number of things I enjoyed about my tenure at Microsoft. One of those things were the many perks that they provided for their employees, which included some personal health and development goodies, and one of them was the Gallup StrengthsFinder test. As part of the annual team-building exercise for the Developer and Platform Evangelism group in Canada have taken it, I’ve taken it twice (on Microsoft’s dime, of course), and the results have been consistent. If you get the opportunity, you should take the StrengthsFinder test. There isn’t much better advice than “know thyself”, and having seen my own results, as well as those of my former teammates, I’d have to say it’s pretty accurate.
While going through some paper files in my home office, I found my last StrengthsFinder evaluation and thought, “Hey, why not post this for kicks?” A quick scan and an OCR later, I had something ready to copy and paste into a blog entry, and here it is for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
My “top 5” strengths are, in order, with the first one being my strongest:
I think that sums me up rather nicely. The detailed report appears below.
You are generous with praise, quick to smile, and always on the lookout for the positive in the situation. Some call you lighthearted. Others just wish that their glass were as full as yours seems to be. But either way, people want to be around you. Their world looks better around you because your enthusiasm is contagious. Lacking your energy and optimism, some find their world drab with repetition or, worse, heavy with pressure. You seem to find a way to lighten their spirit. You inject drama into every project. You celebrate every achievement. You find ways to make everything more exciting and more vital. Some cynics may reject your energy, but you are rarely dragged down. Your Positivity won’t allow it. Somehow you can’t quite escape your conviction that it is good to be alive, that work can be fun, and that no matter what the setbacks, one must never lose one’s sense of humor.
Action items for the Positivity theme:
The Strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large. This perspective allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity. Mindful of these patterns, you play out alternative scenarios, always asking, “What if this happened? Okay, well what if this happened?” This recurring question helps you see around the next corner. There you can evaluate accurately the potential obstacles. Guided by where you see each path leading, you start to make selections. You discard the paths that lead nowhere. You discard the paths that lead straight into resistance. You discard the paths that lead into a fog of confusion. You cull and make selections until you arrive at the chosen path—your strategy. Armed with your strategy, you strike forward. This is your Strategic theme at work: “What if?” Select. Strike.
Action items for the Strategic theme:
Yours Truly with Robert Scoble at South by Southwest 2008.
Woo stands for winning others over. You enjoy the challenge of meeting new people and getting them to like you. Strangers are rarely intimidating to you. On the contrary, strangers can be energizing. You are drawn to them. You want to learn their names, ask them questions, and find some area of common interest so that you can strike up a conversation and build rapport. Some people shy away from starting up conversations because they worry about running out of things to say. You don’t. Not only are you rarely at a loss for words; you actually enjoy initiating with strangers because you derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection. Once that connection is made, you are quite happy to wrap it up and move on. There are new people to meet, new rooms to work, new crowds to mingle in. In your world there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet—lots of them.
Action items for the Woo theme:
You are fascinated by ideas. What is an idea? An idea is a concept, the best explanation of the most events. You are delighted when you discover beneath the complex surface an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. An idea is a connection. Yours is the kind of mind that is always looking for connections, and so you are intrigued when seemingly disparate phenomena can be linked by an obscure connection. An idea is a new perspective on familiar challenges. You revel in taking the world we all know and turning it around so we can view it from a strange but strangely enlightening angle. You love all these ideas because they are profound, because they are novel, because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, because they are bizarre. For all these reasons you derive a jolt of energy whenever a new idea occurs to you. Others may label you creative or original or conceptual or even smart. Perhaps you are all of these. Who can be sure? What you are sure of is that ideas are thrilling. And on most days this is enough.
Action items for the Ideation theme:
“When can we start?” This is a recurring question in your life. You are impatient for action. You may concede that analysis has its uses or that debate and discussion can occasionally yield some valuable insights, but deep down you know that only action is real. Only action can make things happen. Only action leads to performance. Once a decision is made, you cannot not act. Others may worry that “there are still some things we don’t know,” but this doesn’t seem to slow you. If the decision has been made to go across town, you know that the fastest way to get there is to go stoplight to stoplight. You are not going to sit around waiting until all the lights have turned green. Besides, in your view, action and thinking are not opposites. In fact, guided by your Activator theme, you believe that action is the best device for learning. You make a decision, you take action, you look at the result, and you learn. This learning informs your next action and your next. How can you grow if you have nothing to react to? Well, you believe you can’t. You must put yourself out there. You must take the next step. It is the only way to keep your thinking fresh and informed. The bottom line is this: You know you will be judged not by what you say, not by what you think, but by what you get done. This does not frighten you. It pleases you.
Action items for the Activator theme:
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
Shopify and BlackBerry are Canadian companies, tech pioneers, and led by CEOs with German accents, but that’s where the similarities end…
With nearly a third of Shopify shopowners owning a brick-and-mortar shop in addition to their online one, it only made sense that they’d put out their own POS (point of sale, a.k.a. cash register) system. It’s an iPad-based system, and it’s the kind of thing that only Shopify could pull off, as it looks like the joint effort of several of its teams, all of whom do what they do like no other:
You can read more here:
Nicely done, guys!
Image taken from BuzzFeed.
John Herrman’s article in BuzzFeed, BlackBerry is a Failed State, is an article I wished I’d written. A failed state is the perfect metaphor for the one-time ruler of the smartphone world and the jewel in the Canadian tech industry’s crown. As Herrman puts it:
But BlackBerry isn’t quite DEC, nor is it Gateway or Palm. It’s a company that even today has millions of active a loyal users, who don’t just purchase BlackBerry products but use them every hour of every day — who live in them, and will soon have to live in something else. BlackBerry is less like a company than a country. A failed state: BlackBerria.
BlackBerria exhibits all the classic signs of a collapsing country. Today, it’s the kind of place that might compel the State Department to issue a travel advisory. It’s a land where crime goes unpunished, where fires burn unextinguished, where citizens wander the streets alive but dazed, where the future is too foggy to inspire any feeling but despondency.
According to Wikipedia, the Fund for Peace has four conditions that it requires to classify a country as a failed state:
With leadership that stands to walk away with a nice big nest egg (and even job opportunities) if the place completely collapses, grand projects in which they attempt to mimic the amenities of more advanced zones, an app economy that’s one-third owned by a single entity that produces crap and a marketplace that’s mostly knock-offs, a mass exodus of its own citizenry to greener pastures, and no one on the outside wanting to do business with them, BlackBerry certainly has all the earmarks of a banana republic about to go belly-up.
If I heaped scorn on Microsoft’s stack ranking or 70-20-10 system and the toxic management culture it engendered, it’s only fair that I heap praise on those aspects of being a Microsoftie that I really liked.
I loved the developer evangelist role. I also loved the fact that Microsoft not only had an evangelism team, but evangelism opportunities aplenty. I enjoyed what I did immensely and in spite of my happy-go-lucky demeanor, I took the job very seriously. Most of the time, I lived in the “hooray!” zone in the Venn diagram shown above.
(If you’re curious about what my job was like, I think that this article that I wrote back in 2010 does a pretty good job of explaining it. You might also want to check out my Evangelist, Immigrant, and Shaman article.)
I may have butted heads with some higher-ups (and in a couple of cases, some waaaay higher-ups), but the people who’ll always have my love, friendship, and respect are my former teammates on the Developer and Platform Evangelism Canadian “breadth team”, including Damir Bersinic:
…and he’s even more loveable in cartoon form:
There’s also Qixing Xeng, who’s since gone on to her dream job on the Windows user experience team:
And two of the best damned tech presenters in the entire organization, Christian Beauclair and Rick Claus:
Here’s Rick, me, and Rodney Buike striking a “Charlie’s Angels” pose with our netbooks:
Ruth Morton was the very first person (after my manager) to welcome me onto the team — she left a comment on this blog.
Paul Laberge was my fellow Windows Phone Champ on the Canadian team, and together we gave the greatest mobile phone presentation ever. So great that it can’t ever be repeated again:
As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a TechDays conference without Pierre Roman (he’s on the right):
I’m glad I had the chance to work with Fred Harper — he joined near the end of my tenure and is with Mozilla now:
And while Susan Ibach came aboard shortly after I left, we had a couple of chances to chat, and she gave me a grand tour of the server room at the TechReady 12 conference:
I’m also glad to have had a chance to work with Jonathan Rozenblit (below, left):
Poor John Bristowe — he had one of the toughest jobs: to be my “onboarding buddy” when I first joined The Empire. He probably still has a mark from all the facepalming he had to do during that process:
And of course, I can’t not mention David Crow, who was Butt-Head to my Beavis…or was that Beavis to my Butt-Head?
While not on my team, I worked cross-functionally with Arun Kirupananthan and Nik Garkusha on Make Web Not War:
…and with Anthony “Situation” Bartolo on all sorts of Windows Phone-related thingies:
Mark Relph (pictured below on the right), who was my skip-level — that’s Microsoftese for “my manager’s manager” — who said something I’ll always remember when I was hired: “We enter as friends, we leave as friends”…
And last, but not least, I have to mention my long-suffering manager, John Oxley, who always had my back. He was an endless wellspring of good advice, ideas, stories, and some much-needed booze on his expense account. He also let me expense the rental of a pair of assless chaps, which I’m sure that no one else at Microsoft would ever do (okay, Adam Carter and Scott Hanselman probably would, too):
At Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism group, we got assigned a lot of gear — more than one laptop per limb, all brand new.
My favourite has to be the “Dellasaurus”: the Precision M6500, a 17″ powerhouse that was essentially a server shoved into a laptop-shaped chassis:
As a Windows Phone Champ, I got to work with the early test phones months before Windows Phone 7 hit the market:
And of course, I got my own production phone once they hit the shelves:
Damir even saw fit to make sure I left with some fabulous parting gifts when I left:
I get a kick out of working with lots of other people; that’s my nature. I really loved that aspect of the job, and what made it even better was the fact that the community with whom I worked — developers and IT pros who used Microsoft tools and technology were such great people.
If you look through the archives of this blog, you find dozens — perhaps hundreds — of photos that I took at various developer gatherings, from the TechDays series of conferences…
…to “Coffee and Code” gatherings…
and everything in between.
I feel that some really active participants in the community deserve special mention, including Atley Hunter:
Mark Arteaga:
Cory Fowler, who’s since gone on to join the company:
Bruce Johnson, Barry Gervin, and the rest of the ObjectSharp folks:
Steve Syfuhs, Todd Lamothe and Colin Melia:
Sean Kearney, Steve Syfuhs again, and Mitch Garvis. Special credit to Mitch for trying to set me up when he found out The Missus left me; the thought is appreciated:
Alexey Adamsky and Barranger Ridler:
D’Arcy Lussier:
Miguel Carrasco:
…as well as Kate Gregory, Alex Yakobovich, and so many other people whose photos I need to dig up.
Let me just say this: the pay and perks were sweeeeeeeet.
I often joked that Windows Mobile (Microsoft’s Mobile OS before the revamped Windows Phone and the User Interface Formerly Known as Metro) made me feel like this:
Photo courtesy of Alex Brown Photography.
A couple of months before Windows Phone was announced, I got assigned the role of Windows Phone Champ, which was the assignment I loved the most.
It was a challenge, starting from zero with a brand-new operating mobile operating system in 2010, three years after the debut of the iPhone, when the company was still stinging from Steve Ballmer’s underestimation of the effect that Apple would have on the mobile phone industry. In spite of all that, Windows Phone had an interesting user interface with a lot of possibilities, a great set of developer tools, and a whole lot of developers who were interested in building apps for it:
Even today, I keep the “I love Windows Phone” sticker that Charlie Kindel gave me, back when he ran the Windows Phone Champs:
Last, but certainly not least, for two brief shining episodes, Microsoft gave me a children’s show, where I got to teach kids about technology, complete with little puppet friend! Unfortunately, Microsoft Canada didn’t have much of a budget for outreach to grade school kids, but for fulfilling my fantasy to be on Sesame Street or something like it, I will be forever grateful.
…is that they seem to make people really determined to capture the moment in a photo:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
If you have kids or know someone who does, you probably know that a great way to keep them occupied and out of trouble is to let them play with your smartphone or tablet. Murphy’s Law dictates that parents and kids will often want to use the tablet at the same time, which usually drives people to buy one or more just for the kids. It seems that Samsung have been doing their market research homework, since they’ve just announced a special version of their upcoming 7″ Galaxy Tab 3 tablet just for kids.
Here’s a quick rundown of its specs:
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Processor | 1.2 GHz dual-core processor |
| Operating System | Android 4.1, with TouchWiz or similar “skin” |
| Memory | 1GB RAM 8GB Program/data storage MicroSD slot supports up to 32GB |
| Display | 7.0 inch WSVGA TFT 1024 * 600 resolution @ 170ppi |
| Cameras | 3-megapixel rear-facing camera 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera |
| Connectivity | WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz), WiFi Channel Bonding, WiFi Direct Bluetooth 3.0 USB 2.0 |
| Battery | 4,000mAh Li-ion |
| Dimensions | 111.1mm x 188mm x 9.9mm 302g (10.7 ounces) |
The specs that Samsung has posted for the Galaxy Tab 3 Kids are missing mention of the sensors. Since it’s based on the 7-inch wifi-only Galaxy Tab 3, it can be safely assumed that it has an accelerometer, geo-magnetic, and light sensors.
The following features make this tablet one that’s specifically aimed at kids:
The announcement in Samsung’s English blog says that the Galaxy Tab 3 Kids will hit the stores in Korea in early September, with releases in China, Europe, the U.S., Africa, South America and southeast Asia to follow. GigaOm says that they expect it to sell at around the $200 price point, “and possibly even a bit lower”.
One of the “artist’s conception” drawing of the Galaxy Gear that’s been floating about the ‘net.
Samsung is expected to unveil its smartwatch — believed to be named the Galaxy Gear — at a New York launch event next week on September 4th. Here are what are believed to be its specs:
| Feature | Purported Details |
|---|---|
| Processor | Exynos 4212 dual-core processor Mali-400 MP4 GPU |
| Operating System | Android 4.1 or 4.2 |
| Memory | Unknown |
| Display | 320 * 320 resolution |
| Cameras | Camera integrated into strap, resolution unknown |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 4.0 LE NFC |
| Battery | Unknown |
| Dimensions | Unknown |
Samsung’s launch event has been given the name Unpacked 2 (“The Re-unpacking!”), suggesting that it’s the sequel to their Galaxy S4 launch earlier this year. There’s no word if they’re going to make use of more painful Broadway skits to demonstrate their new devices’ features.
In case you’d forgotten about the original Unpacked event, here’s the video of the whole cheese-tastic thing:
Windows 8.1 — originally codenamed “Blue” — hit the “Release to Manufacturing” (RTM) stage today, and it will be available on October 18th. Unfortunately, even MSDN and TechNet subscribers will not get it earlier and will have to wait like everyone else, presumably so that Microsoft will have time to put on any necessary “finishing touches”.
Among the new features in Windows 8.1 are:
Dan Frommer, the guy behind Splat-F, writes in an article titled 300 Days with the iPad Mini:
The major difference between the iPad mini and my original iPad, purchased in 2010: I’m still actually using this one every day, almost a year after I bought it.
His observations:
On his wish list:
The Verge published a report about the upcoming Nokia Sirius, a 10.1-inch Windows RT tablet that looks like a tablet-ized version of their Lumia series of phones and is believed to be priced similarly to the iPad. Expected to be unveiled at a launch event in New York on September 26th, the Sirius is reported to have these specs:
| Feature | Purported Details |
|---|---|
| Processor | Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor |
| Operating System | Windows RT |
| Memory | 2GB RAM 32GB Program/data storage MicroSD slot |
| Display | 1920 * 1080 resolution “Improved for outdoor readability thanks to a high amount of bright output.” |
| Cameras | 6-megapixel rear-facing camera 2-megapixel front-facing camera |
| Connectivity | Micro HDMI connector Micro USB port |
| Battery | “10-hour battery life with LTE connectivity” |
| Dimensions | 10.1 tablet, “thinner than the current iPad” Weighs “just over a pound” |
VentureBeat points to this video purporting to show the cases for the upcoming low-cost iPhone 5C. It was made by Tanner Marsh, iPhone jailbreaker and source-of-info whom VentureBeat describes as “reliable in the past at sniffing out soon-to-arrive Apple components”. As with any tech rumour, take it with a grain of salt.
