mount obvious

Sennheiser S1 vs. Lightspeed Zulu 2

2011-09-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I met my friend Steve at Brainard Airport [KHFD] for the AOPA conference. We took the bus to the Hartford convention center to see what is out there. For me it was a perfect opportunity to decide who gets my next thousand dollars for an aviation headset.

Lucky for us, we found both booths in the same aisle. In one corner: Sennheiser gang wearing black T-shirts. In the other corner, the Zulu gang wearing black T-shirts.

First we went to the Lightspeed booth. Found out that they have really good upgrade options. If you own older lightspeed headsets, they will pay you up to 250 for a trade in. To me this appeared as a marketing tactic and I decided not to consider it seriously. Anyway I tried the headset on. It was kind of OK but I could still hear some humming from the convention floor. Then I realized that the unit was OFF. I turned it on. All of a sudden, the silence was deafening.

The best way to describe the Lightspeed headset is to say that it has invisible design. For some reason, you don't feel you are wearing the headset. The invisible-ness of its design is also obvious even when you are holding the unit in your hands. There is something about it and I just cant describe it.

After we checked out the Zulu 2, and got a free business card from the nice lady giving the demo, we walked on over to the Sennheiser booth. Steve has been raving about the S1's new adaptive magic double piston artificial intelligence black box technology. There was a line of people who wanted to check out the new S1. This excited me even more about the magic I was about to experience.

When we got to the front of the line and got our headsets, my first impression was underwhelming. The headset is ugly and I got an instant conviction that when I put it on, I would look uglier than I really am.

I put it on anyway and turned the unit on. Yes it was silent allright. Actually the silence was as deafening as the Zulu silence. Then the nice lady at the booth told us about the features of the headset and one of them being that you can slip in reading glasses or sunglasses while wearing the headset. Steve tried putting on his reading glasses and it was pretty easy for him. I just turned my head left to right and noticed that outside sound slips in at various angles of head turn. That was not good and not comfortable to feel an expensive headset let outside noise leak in like this.

The nice folks at the Sennheiser booth not only gave us a nice business card, but also sent us away with a dead sexy S1 hat. Comfy.

It was time to put all doubts to rest. So I convinced Steve to walk back with me to the Lightspeed booth. We just had to try it one more time.

We asked the nice lady to turn on the aircraft noise speakers again. We put on the headsets and it was invisible magic again.

In lieu of the dead sexy baseball hat, my loyalty remains with Sennheiser. But my money is going to Zulu. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

If a headset looks ugly, it will sound ugly. That's just the nature of human beings who buy headsets.

Find a good copywriter

2010-05-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

Tell me if this has happened to you: You are on the lookout for a copywriter and end up reading the sales pitches of many potential candidates. Usually on their own websites. One of them looks and sounds particularly impressive. You go ahead and hire this copywriter.

A few weeks later, you have --in front of you-- the copy written by this writer. You are not impressed. You find yourself trying to figure out what went wrong and what made you hire him instead of someone else.

If this has happened to you, then I bet 25 Turkish Liras that it has happened more than once. And that you have a tendency to repeat this cycle.

Here are some ideas to help you break out of this loop:

1. Don't hire the first guy you talk to:

Even if the first guy you call has good chemistry with you, don't hire him. Talk to at least 5 different copywriters. More often than not, you will end up hiring anyone but the first candidate.

2. State your problems in their pure form:

Do not seed the discussion with potential solutions you have already found. For example if you are selling a widget and you think the sales would increase if you wrote your sales page in a certain way, keep that though to yourself. Start with a clean slate and only with the problem you are trying to solve.

3. The right copywriter will ask the right questions:

There is a penetrating quality in questions. Some question will stay in the periphery. Some will touch you in a certain way. And some will penetrate deep into the heart of the problems you are facing. You want the guy who asks these penetrating questions.

4. Spread it thin:

You will have to finesse this with your potential writer. Break the job into pieces. Hire 3 writers on smaller pieces and see their results. Even if you need just one sales page, negotiate a deal where the copywriter will charge you 1/3rd of his rate but put in only 1/3 effort. In other words, ask for a quick and dirty letter. Usually new entrants in the game will agree to something like this. Your goal is not to get the job done as cheap as possible. Your goal is to see who produces good results even at idling speed.

5. Test the results:

When you have the copy written, do not judge it. There is the likely hood that your customers are different from you and they respond differently than you. Test the pages.

6. Repeat:

Make this a routine. Go back to your best writers, start version 2. Then version three. On and on. Find some more writers. Keep expanding your virtual team of copywriters. After a while it will become fun. Every cycle will increase your confidence in what you can get done.

Step 3 above is the most important. For every job, there is a copywriter out there who can do magic. You can easily find the right guy if you spread the jobs thin and hire many writers.

If you are trying to do something amazing with your copy, remember what good copy is not, and what it is.

In the photoshop parlance, good copy is not a bucket full of special effects. Its a combination of boring vectors, bland pixels, fills, and the arrangement of these elements. And finally a special effect or two. In other words good copy is the combination of every part, how its put together and how it flows.

Lahore Bomb blast

2010-03-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning with a jolt. It sounded as if someone had kicked open my door and broke my window at the same time. Later it turned out that there was a bomb blast in Model Town Lahore.

I was more than 7 Km. away but still felt it.

Rest of the day was pretty depressing.

Saving OO Documents to Google Apps

2010-03-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

What if Open Office documents could save native versions of Google Docs? And what if you could save OO documents directly into the google cloud? This could solve the problem of working when not connected.

If Google or someone else were to develop this feature, it would be nice to have check-in and check-out and locked-for-writing features.

What if the native file format of Google Docs and Open Office documents is combined into one standard?

Worth the thought.

Something about Chrome

2010-03-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

I admire Safari. I absolutely love FireFox. But find myself using Chrome and nothing but Chrome. Can't figure out why.

28th Amendment. Anyone on board?

2010-02-21T01:59:00.000-08:00

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States .

I got this from my CPA Don Brooks (who is a pretty cool guy.)

Perils of 65% market share

2010-02-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

We tend to see market leaders in two dimensions. We see how much ahead they are, and we see how high they have climbed. Its hard to see the third dimension behind this facade. What is that little object in their mirror?

Today I am trying to find that little object. Right now its in the rearview mirror of my favorite search engine.

According to BBC news, the market-leader-du-jour: Google has consolidated its position and now enjoys a safe 65% market share.

The number 65 has magical powers. It repeats.

Back in the early nineties when Novell was king, they enjoyed 65% market share. Back then, their hold on it seemed infinite. I remember driving to Provo Utah to meet some engineers at Novell. It was like a pilgrimage of the NLM developers.

And while they were at the top of their game, Microsoft --at the time a puny DOS company-- launched a thumb pin into the heart of Novell's business. And kept pressing. The rest is history.

Anyway, now that google has hit the magic number, I wonder whose next. It can be Microsoft. Cannot be Yahoo. Cannot be Facebook. Cannot be Ask. What if its a non search company?

Commodity Services: Does size matter?

2010-02-04T01:47:00.000-08:00

The mundane matter of selling commodity services is usually on my mind these days. It has almost become a favorite pastime. Partly because of the challenge and partly because I myself own a few companies who sell commodity services every day.

Today's question: Does size make a difference in the way you sell commodity services? I do realize that ADP uses different tactics to sell vs. my local accountant/payroll service. But is size itself a sell-able feature? Does it work both ways? --Is being small also an advantage as being big?

Here is a list of personal and professional services I personally use. And my preference for size of business:

Haircut - Small, local, somewhere i have had a good experience.
Personal Taxes - Small, local, somewhere i have had a good experience.
Coffee - If its as good as Starbucks, I prefer a small non franchise store. Otherwise Starbucks.
Food - Small, local, non-franchise.
Legal - I wouldn't buy commodity legal services if possible.

Here are some business services:

Payroll - I am with a big name payroll company but I shouldn't be. Competence issues.
Accounting - I am with a local CPA.
Temp Agency: I am with Robert Half / Accountemps. But only because I saw their billboard. And because I believe their pricing is standard and constant regardless of the customer.

Anyway, back to the size issue. Here is a trial recipe:

Local Presence in a non franchise way. (IBM of New Haven vs. IBM Global)

Known names and faces (locally)

The image and personality of a small boutique shop.

The stability and performance of a big enterprise.

Conclusion: If size of a service company is to be used as a feature, smaller is better.

I need to experiment with this.

Is there a cloud for my software?

2010-02-01T17:30:00.000-08:00

Our new SAAS product Hyperconversion is going into beta soon. It helps people to Create, Manage and Host Landing pages. We've been at it for a while now and its a beautiful implementation of the point-and-click school of thought.

I have an interesting dilemma. Was wondering if someone reading this can give me an idea or two.

The system is developed in ROR and designed with a share-nothing architecture. Each client gets his own snapshot of the full application. We designed it this way so that we could run thousands of applications on Amazon AWS or Rackspace cloud.

Here is the problem: Amazon does not update the image of a running virtual machine. So if the image crashes, we lose everything. When we figured this out, we found RackspaceCloud.com which is a lot cheaper and solves the running image problem. But the problem with rackspace is that they don't have elastic IPs. If a server image goes down, and you end up creating a new one, you get a randomly assigned IP address. There is no way to get a block of IPs.

We need persistent IPs because our system depends on DNS to client's domain names to the correct landing pages.

Does anyone out there know of a cloud solution which leases IP blocks and also saves the running images?

Will appreciate your thoughts. We cannot run dedicated servers. It has to be a cloud based solution.

Richard Branson, Expedia, broken promise

2009-06-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

Last month I had to stop reading Business stripped bare by Richard Branson. I stopped when I got to the line, which said, "A brand is a promise." This was so profound that I had to digest it completely before reading the rest of the book.

In the meantime I had to travel to Toronto. I booked a hotel through Expedia, like I always do.

When I arrived in Toronto and checked in the Residence Inn, just out of curiosity I asked the counter girl what the "Rack Rate was." It turned out that the rack rate was cheaper than what I was paying Expedia.

Wait a minute, did I get ripped off by a brand I trusted the most?

If you don't know what a rack rate is, think of it as a maximum rate that hotel will charge to a customer who walks in without a reservation. Its not a rate, its a punishment.

Next day I called Expedia customer service. Deep down inside I was hoping that this "overcharge" was a misunderstanding and it would go away as soon as I called. The customer service person told me that indeed they were charging what they were charging. If I had a problem with this rate, I needed to bring it up to them before I made the reservation. (What the bleep?)

At this point, the whole thing clicked in my mind. This was a breach of trust and a broken promise. This is what Richard Branson was talking about in his book.

I had been trusting Expedia all along, thinking they could do anything, but they wouldn't overcharge me like this.

Before checking out of the hotel, I made sure to toss my Expedia "Elite" card in the trash.

5 stages of schadenfreude

2009-05-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received a telemarketing type call on my cell phone. Some company in India trying to sell me programming services.

Like you, I hate telemarketing. But this call helped me discover the 5 stages. Here they are:

1. Disbelief (that they called my cell phone)
2. Anger (even my cell phone is not safe anymore?)
3. Sense of belonging (hmm... this is my biggest competitor)
4. Curiosity (let me find out what they are up to.)
5. Joy (they are desparate, disoriented, and downright unprofessional)

I am a little bit ashamed of myself for feeling this way. Still woohoo !

Wordpress 2.7 Ubuntu Permalink Problem

2009-05-09T00:35:00.000-07:00

This short note goes out to he or she who has done everything under the sun to make pretty URLs work on WordPress --and still failed.

Here are my assumptions:

1. You are running an Ubuntu server (anything at or after 8.10)
2. You are running WordPress 2.7+
3. Your basic install is working. Only pretty URLs are not working.
4. You have tried everything under the sun. Still no results.
5. You have deleted and recreated your .htaccess at least three times. No results.
6. This is not the first blog entry you are reading. (If it is, please try others first.)

Is your server reading the files?
Make sure that your server is reading the .htaccess files. A good way to test this is to put some garbage in the .htaccess file and read the server log (usually error.log) If your server is reading .htaccess file, then you will definitely see a mention in the error log that there was a syntax problem in the .htaccess file. This trick comes straight from the online apache manual.

My guess is that even after you put some garbage lines in the htaccess file, the errors are still the same for same pages. In other words, the types and description of errors have not changed after changing the htaccess file. If this is true, then you can be sure that Apache is not reading your .htaccess files. Our goal is to make apache read it.

If you are using a standard apache2 install on Ubuntu, just make sure of two things.

First: Check your AllowOverride
Make sure that AllowOverride All is setup correctly for your document root directory. If you are setting up a virtual server, this directive will go in one of the config files under your sites-enabled/ directory. Just put the following inside the Virtual Server block:

Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
/Directory>

After adding this block, restart your server and try the wordpress pages. If .htaccess is still not being read, then you need to follow just more step.

Second: Check your mod_rewrite
Under /etc/apache2/mods-enabled, you are missing rewrite.conf. Stay within this directory and enable mod_rewrite like this:

sudo ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load ./rewrite.conf

Restart the server and you are all set. If it still doesn't work, try deleting the .htaccess one last time and try restarting your browser just to make sure you are not caching old pages.

Let me know if that works for you.

Quickbooks Online on MAC OS - Finally

2009-05-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Now that QBOE is available on the MAC, I guess I won't be needing VMWARE fusion and a copy of Vista on my MAC anymore.

Well I'll still need the Windows infrastructure for one more program, but I won't be needing it as often and not everywhere.

QBOE does not support firefox on the Mac. I had to use Safari. But the interface was nice and I was able to do everything I needed to do.

Two years ago I dropped 370 dollars into a copy of Vista Ultimate, which I haven't even installed on my wife's laptop. She deserves a mac now.

Detroit Bailout - Kill five birds with a small stone

2008-12-06T02:41:00.000-08:00

Bird 1: (Baghdad)
Lets setup an IED prize in Baghdad. If a local Baghdadi helps the US prevent one IED explosion, he wins a brand new GM Suburban. If he submits 50 automatic rifles, he wins a Chevy Impala. For 25 grenades, a Buick.

Bird 2: (Afghanistan)
Same concept but the possibilities are wider, deeper and much more interesting. Even prisoners can be exchanged for good vehicles. How about a Hummer for ........ Yup.

Bird 3: (Dealers and Local Economies)
Uncle Sam to buy these vehicles from individual dealers at MSRP. This will direct inject cash into local economies. I see no harm in Uncle Sam applying for credit at the local credit unions and paying monthly installments on these cars. This will get credit going. And my favorite uncle will even improve his credit score by taking on so much credit.

Bird 4: (Big Three)
When the sales come in, their balance sheets will be more balanced. They will have cash, credit, and good numbers for the next 18 months. By then there will be so many GM cars in Iraq that spare part business will boom. And if they don't come up with energy efficient cars after this.......well, what can I say.

Bird 5: (Human lives)
Imagine if someone puts this idea into motion. How many lives will this save? How many injuries will it prevent? The cost of prevention alone may pay for the cost of the cars. There is no doubt that this will work.

Small Stone:
The same bailout money, if applied differently, can provide a 5X leverage to our economy. Its easy to understand, easy to plan, easy to execute and easy to measure.

Any takers?

Times change. Even for Google.

2008-12-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

Less than six months ago, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google said this, when asked about the recession and general slowdown:

"What recession?"

Today, when the stock price is down more than half, and growth is shrinking, Google is "ratcheting back spending" and cutting new projects. Eric Schmidt said this in an interview:

"We have to behave as though we don't know what's going to happen."

I think he never did know what was happening or what was going to happen. I am glad he's caught up. He should use Google to look up more information on the economy.

Reminds me of the famous Orson Welles quote, "I started at the top, and worked my way down."

I am not the only one missing a copy of the New York Times

2008-11-06T03:11:00.000-08:00

The New York Times does not make daily deliveries where I live. So I get it only on weekends. But on the day after the election, I ran to the local Starbucks to get a souvenir copy of election results. The shelves were all empty.

Today I read that there is actually an aftermarket for the copies of NYT for Wednesday. Someone is selling them on eBay for 20 Dollars a pop.

Senator McCain made only one mistake

2008-11-06T02:41:00.000-08:00

He failed to realize that his real opponent was President Bush, not Senator Obama.

Can't sneeze can't cough. Can't laugh.

2008-11-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

The hernia repair surgery was done last Thursday. It was supposed to take one hour and they were supposed to let me go the same day.

The surgery took only 20 minutes. But they kept me in the hospital for two days. Today after one week, I am off the narcotic painkiller and trying Tylenol. I cannot cough, cannot sneeze and cannot laugh. If I do, I see glimpses of my ancestors.

During the two days at the Hospital, I walked around the ward for hours. Saw interesting ways of using technology. Now health care staff put all patient information into a software system through laptops. Good start I say. The laptops are fitted on tall moving trolleys and attached with external keyboards. When nurses do their rounds, they pickup any one of these laptop equipped trolleys, get your vitals and input the information.

I would be much more impressed when the thermometers and the blood pressure machines can logon to the central network and update patient information without requiring a human to key it in. Its possible and practical.

While doing my "rounds" around the ward, I saw more than a few laptops stuck with the Windows error dialog box.

There has to be an open source version of Linux, just for hospitals and healthcare givers. This will reduce the overall costs. I just checked MEDLINUX.COM. Someone is hosting a bogus advertisement landing page.

Someone needs to come up with a method of repairing ventrical hernias by laser welding. I have been thinking about it. The part I cannot figure out is, how can the surgeon externally pull torn muscle together? A laser beam doesn't have traction. I guess the thing to invent would be an external traction apparatus.

Today I was tempted to get back on the inversion table and see how many degrees I can recline without experiencing stretching in the abdominal wall. At the last minute I decided against it. Instead I am now writing this blog entry.

Chronicles of Hernia

2008-10-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

I guess I overdid my inversion training. I now proudly host a ventrical hernia. If you don't know what that is, think of it as a hole in the muscle around the solar plexus. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't do much, but its a hole and it needs to be patched up. Under severe conditions, "stuff" from inside the wall can squeeze out through this hole and .......I am not sure what will happen if this happens.

This is my second hernia in the same place.

First time I got it in 2007 ago probably in the Gym. I must have done one too many pull ups. This time, I was doing crunches while hanging upside down on the inversion table.

The thing with ventrical hernia is that it doesn't hurt when you get it. And many times, it can be there for years before you find out. In my case, I started feeling a soft bulge in my stomach but didn't pay attention to it for more than six months.

I love inversion but now I don't know if I can go inverted again. The surgery is scheduled for October 30. I was depressed for about a week. Had too many plans for October.

If you are thinking of buying an inversion table, don't let this scare you. Inversion is the next best thing after humans learned to walk upright. Just be careful if you are over 30 though.

I have a Teeter Hangup 5000. Its a rock solid product. Good design.

The media has it all figured out

2008-09-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

I just read Campbell Brown's: White House caught napping on financial crisis. Her piece is sprinkled with sunshine quotes (from earlier this year) from President Bush and Secretary Paulson.

My question to CNN is: What would you have preferred instead? Predictions of doom and gloom? Moreover, what were you (in the media) doing while the White House was napping?

You too were disinfecting the public with Sunshine. Weren't you?

But right now is not the time for the media to see what role they have played in this mess. Right now is the time to find the scapegoat, shampoo in the charges and rinse.

In her article, Ms Brown writes, "We need serious scrutiny and debate, and that should happen whether we are talking about a giant piece of legislation that is going to affect us all, or whether we are talking about presidential and vice presidential candidates."

Yeah right. I am glad you figured this part out.

Blaming around the Bush

2008-09-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

It is unfair to blame President Bush for the ills of our financial system. He did not invent them and he did not cause them. The root of the problem is "excess."

If you induct super intelligent MIT and Harvard graduates and ask them to fabricate instruments upon instruments of speculation, they will happily do so; and even believe in what they are doing. Eventually the reality catches up with you.

As for tomorrow, sun will still rise, trains will still run, people will still go to work, factories will still produce their goods, and this too shall pass.

But for today, lets commend President Bush and his team for swift action, taken at the right time.

mysql gem on leopard

2008-09-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

There are many posts on the subject, but this one works flawlessly:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

Here is a link to the post where I got this from.

If you try to use the gem, it might fail (which means you have been trying to install it before you read this post.) No problem, there is a short cut to fix it. Look for the gem files here:

/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7/lib/mysql.bundle
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7/mysql.bundle

Delete the first bundle. It got copied twice.

Don't ask me why it works but it does.

Inversion training has begun

2008-09-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

I am now one week into inversion training. Earlier I had bought an inversion table (Teeter Hangups) from Amazon. Last week Nosheen helped me assemble it and we could finally get on it.

Starting yesterday, I could feel my spine decompressing within 2 minutes of going vertical. This is unbelievable. I am not sure what kind of buildup time I need to be able to invert for up to 30 minutes at a time. That would be "yogi" grade inversion.

Its getting to become a bit addictive. Actually 2 minutes into it, the spine does relax and results in a general sense of well being. As for the proverbial buzz in the head, I do feel pressure build up but the buzz is not there.

I will post more on inversion once I have built up to 10 minutes.

Been counters get it. Rocket scientists don't.

2008-09-09T02:24:00.000-07:00

According to BusinessWeek magazine's "The best places to launch a career" this week, Ernst & Young is the number 1 employer with the "Right Stuff." Google is number 7 and Nasa is number 16.

Their ranking is based on three surveys: Employer survery (filled out by employers and lists salaries and benefits) Campus Career services survey, and Student survey. The surveys are weighted in this proportion: Employer survey 50%, Student survey 25%, Career services survey 25%.

I respect BW for their smarts, but I think their weightage is completely off the mark. According to student surveys alone, Google is number 1.

A great article about writing

2008-09-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

Just saw this come on. An article about article writing. The thing I find most interesting is the idea that you work on many articles in parallel. I think this is how all professionals do it.

The thing with ideas --any kind of ideas-- is that they don't come when you summon them. You could get one in Walmart, and the next one in a traffic jam. But when you take a long thinking vacation in San Diego, you remain blank.