Stop Waiting

The first thing that was said to me, in my first class, on the first day of school when I first started college was, "If there is something you want to learn or do, go and learn it or do it. Don't wait for us to teach you. Don't wait two years for that class to come."

Of the 5 years in college that it took me to complete my undergrad, that was the first thing I learned and definitely the most important thing. If I forget everything else I was taught and remember only that, I will live a successful life. Heck I have forgotten everything else. It's true. Ask me what I learned in Calculus and I'll say, "I dunno." Okay so it's part true, there's a lot I remember. Like that one time I met this stunningly beautiful waitress at a mexican restaurant and she asked me to meet her after work where we ended up..... Sorry I was getting a little off topic there. Anyway, here's the point I'm trying to get at:

STOP WAITING!!!!

Stop waiting.
For guaranteed success. If there is something you want, go out and get it. If you fail the first time, get up, dust yourself off, pause, look at what just happened, learn, and then turn and keep going after what you want.

Stop waiting.
For knowledge. You don't need to know everything to go after what you want. You just need to know what you want. Many of the most successful people in the world are people that never went to college or dropped out of it. Look at the richest man in the world, Bill Gates. He dropped out.

Stop waiting.
For experience. You don't need experience to go after what you want. Experience will come with going for what you want. Besides there are plenty of people with experience that are willing to help you. You just need to ask.

Stop waiting.
For permission. If that's what you are waiting for, I give you permission to go for it. Besides, its been said that it's always easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. You can always say you're sorry.

Stop waiting.
For your kids to grow up or to get off for the summer or to go back to school in the fall or whatever. Children are not an excuse, they are the reason. Teach your kids something that's actually useful for them to know. Teach them to not wait, take risks, and go after what they truly want. Teach them that it's not okay to put their dreams on hold "until...."

Stop waiting.
For the right time. Most of the time, this "right time" thing is just an excuse. There isn't really a "right time." There are just times to do things and times where you definitely should not do it now. Here's a tip, ask yourself if this is the right time. If your answer is an "I don't know", a maybe, or something like that and then you start to talk yourself out of it saying it's not the "right time". That's a moment that's a right time. Now if you ask yourself that question and you immediately say that it is a "bad time" to do whatever it is you want to do, wait. Oh and here's a tip, most of the time is not a "bad time."

Stop waiting.
For a green light.

Okay so that last one is a bad example. If you are driving a car and come up to an intersection and you have a red light, you should stop and wait for a green light. Oh, but if it's yellow....

Seriously though. Stop waiting for something to happen in your life for you to do something with your life. Only when you do something with your life will something happen in your life.

Just, STOP WAITING!!!!

-Colin

New sleep patterns log

Day 7 - 2007.03.04
So this whole new sleep pattern thing isn't working out so well yet. I haven’t been disciplined enough to get up when my alarm goes off, without hitting the snooze. I'm going to have to rethink this. More to come.

Day 3 - 2007.02.28
Another day down and exactly the same as day 2. No improvement over yesterday but better than normal.

Day 2 - 2007.02.27
Like day one, number 2 wasn't much better. I did get up earlier than I normall do however. So while today was a comlete and utter failure, there is progress. :)

Day 1 - 2007.02.26

So day one of my new program to be an early riser was a complete and utter failure. The alarm went off and my bed said to stay put, so I went back to sleep. To make it worse I didn't wake up until 9:30 AM, because my alarm was set to that earlier time. Luckily I didn't miss anything early at work. Oh well we live we learn. :)

-Colin

Body Language, Part 1: Dating Signals

Body Language is an interesting thing. It is said that over 60% of all communication is through body language. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that it definitely is a huge chunk of communication. I recently read a book by Leil Lowndes, on how to pick up on signals women use when they are interested in somebody. I studied it and learned the all the signals. Over the next few months, whenever I went to restaurants, bars, clubs, etc, I started watching for these signals. Now I don’t consider myself a ladies man in any way, so I wasn’t paying attention to these signals in relation to me. I was paying attention to the couples at each location. At first I didn’t see anything, then slow but surely they started to appear. The leans, the touches, and tugs, they were all there and they were right there just glaring at me. How could I have never seen them before? All these signals are so obvious.

I started thinking, and it made perfect sense. It’s like when you go and buy a new car. You noticed a few of them on the road every now and then, but now that you bought it, you start to see them all over the place.

Anyway, back to what I started to see. I took all the signals I was noticing at face value, because I couldn’t just get up and ask these couples, if she was really into him or if he was picking up on it at all. Then last week it all came together. I went on a first date with a woman that I met on one of those online dating sites. As the date went on, a few of the signals appeared here and there. As a result of what I learned in the book, I believed them to be true signals of what she was feeling and responded subtly to them. Whether she was specifically or consciously doing them, I don’t know. I do know they were signals that she liked me.

How do I know that? The date ended really well. I was walking her back to her car, when suddenly she turned and kissed me long, good, and hard. After which, she apologized saying she didn’t normally do that but she couldn’t help herself and she just had to kiss me.

Now you may be asking, what were these signals she was giving you and… Well based on Leil Lowndes there are 26 signals, just like the alphabet. I won’t get into all of them, but here’s a handful of them:

1. Girlfriend Gab. If you see two or more women talking, laughing, and looking at you (maybe even pointing). THIS IS A GOOD THING.
   
2. Jewelry Tug. She keeps playing with a necklace or earrings or something.
   
3. Shoe Dangle. She dangles her shoe off her foot.
   
4. Innocent Touch. She “innocently” touches you. Your shoulder, hand, something.
   
5. Space Invasion. She invades your space. We all have our comfort zone bubble and she enters it.
   
6. Lean to you. She leans in towards you.
   

The other thing to note is that any one signal doesn’t mean anything by itself. Her feet could hurt or you could be in a loud club where she can't hear you. It’s when these signals start to group together that they start to truly show what she’s feeling.

Now I must admit that this book was written for men in the dating scene, but I can see how this would be useful for women as well. If you are a single woman and you want to let a guy know you are interested, without him knowing you are telling him you are. Of course unless he has read this book.

If you want to know more, or learn all 26 signals, check out Leil’s book:
Undercover Sex Sectrets


-Colin

A Touching Technical Revolution

The mouse has been around in the computer industry for a lot longer than most people realize. It was invented in 1964 by Douglas Engalbart and for the past 43 years it has been the computer interface pointer tool of choice. Long live the computer mouse. The problem is...it's about to die. It's going to be replaced by something so simple, so easy to use, you've used it your entire life, even before you were born. It's something you always have with you. It's like an American Express Card, don't leave home without it.

It's your finger, or should I say fingers, or should I say hands. The touch interface is coming. There won't be a mouse. There won't be a stylus. There might not even be a keyboard. Just you and your screen. Now don't get me wrong, touch screens have been around for years. However, to date they have been single-touch interfaces (one finger). You see them used a lot in kiosks in the mall and the ATM machine down the street. Well, the technology being developed now is a multi-touch (MT) solution. Allowing you to use both your hands, all your fingers, and if the screen is big enough multiple people can use it at the same time.

In October, I had the opportunity to head out to New York and go to an invitation only technology forum. There, I was able to see and play with many different variations of MT technology. Many mainstream companies like 3M, Panasonic, Apple, etc. are clearly developing it. Students and large universities have created it in their labs. Of all the next generation technology being shown and demo'd at the forum, the MT demos were the most amazing and the most popular. Panasonic had us playing multi-user games where the system clearly knew which user was doing what no matter where you touched the screen, for proper scoring. Which when you think about it is very impressive.

A Touching Revolution is on it's way, and while it probably won't kill the mouse completely it is going to give it a severe limp. MT is going to be easier to use than anything you have used before, and it's going to be fun. I'm betting it will be here by the end of the year. Here's a few reasons why I think this is the year of the MT revolution:

1. Multi-Touch Interaction Research @ NYU
   - WATCH THE VIDEO!!!!
   
2. Jeff Han Demo'ing MT Tech
   - WARNING: Extremely cool, but some geek speak in it!!!!
   
3. Perceptive Pixel
   - Now that's a whiteboard I want in the office.
   
4. Apple's iPhone
   - Mainstream products are coming this June and it fits in your pocket.
   
5. Some interesting observations
   - It's probably in more than just the iPhone. It'll be in everything Apple does.
   
6. Multi-Touch Patents
   - The patents to back Apple up.
   

Got it? Good. Want it? Great. Now go MT yourself, or something.

-Colin

I Love My Sleep

I love my sleep. For most of my life to date, I’ve not been an early riser. I stay up well after midnight on most nights and “the morning” is something I see on TV. My bed is extremely comfortable and when I wake up in the morning it coxes me to stay there and fall back asleep. So I do. The funny thing is I’d rather get up early in the morning.

For years and years I have always thought about changing my sleeping pattern to be an early riser and I’ve made many attempts to do just that. Yet, I always fell back to my sleeping-in ways. On weekends, I like to sleep in 'till around noon. On top of that my job allows me to show up at pretty much any time. So I normally don't have to wake up until about 8:30, at the earliest.

Well I ran across an interesting article on a website I've never been to before called StevePavlina.com. Steve has written many articles about sleep. From the basics on how to be an early riser to something called Polyphasic sleep. In Polyphasic sleep you only sleep for a max of 30 minutes every 4 hours. Anyway, long story short, I've decided to give the early riser thing a go.

So begins the log of my change to becoming an early riser. My goal is to wake up at 5 AM every morning and be at work no later than 7 AM.

I don’t expect this to be an easy change for me, though the solution on how to do it is simple. All I’m going to do is set an alarm for 5 AM. I won’t set a specific time to go to sleep. As some have suggested. I’ll just go to sleep when I’m tired. Anyway, here it goes.

-Colin

Apple's Forced Hand

Apple is getting more and more popular. In my opinion, they are now bigger than Microsoft. Well they are at least more popular and covered more in the media. That is another story and yet very much the reason why Apple's hand has been forced lately. In January, Apple announce the much rumored iPhone. Heck even that name was forced. The iPhone was talked about so heavily, first on the Apple fanboy sites, and then in the main media, that Apple would have been stupid at that point to name it something else. Heck, they were forced to do a phone in my opinion.

Let's back it up a bit though. Apple has changed the music industry so greatly it has garnered millions of followers and I'm sure millions of haters. As a result of being so huge, being the top dog in an industry, all eyes are on them. They move an inch and it creates massive waves in the industry, and at the very least in the media. So enter Apples Fall 2006 release of their new iPod nano. Revolutionary? No. Yes it looks cool. Yes Steve has a magical quality to his presentations where everyone is awestruck. There wasn't much there. If Apple didn't deliver, their stock holders would get mad, stock price would drop, etc, etc. So they were forced to show something before it was ready. Out comes the iTV, now known as Apple TV. Steve gave a demo and the media was buzzing. The stock holders were happy and the price went up. Apples arms were twisted and hands were forced to show a product about 5 months before its release.

Jumping ahead to January of 2007. The second week of January is normally when MacWorld is held in San Francisco and Apple makes some cool product releases. The first week of January is CES, where the rest of the Consumer Electronics industry makes their new year announcements. However, this year was a little different, CES was held the second week of January, at the same time as MacWorld. Enter the media to twist an arm and force their hand. Apple was expected to perform, to deliver, and to overshadow CES. So what did they do? They showed a product that is 6 months out, the iPhone. Apple doesn't do that. Not normally. Apple is so big now they are being forced to deliver huge and great things.

They should they do great work and deliver great things. They shouldn't be forced to announce things when they aren't ready. Heck who knows if Apple would ever have done a phone if it weren't for the press talking about how great a phone from them would be. Thus creating expectations from their fans and stockholders.

Well it's been over a month since Apple announced their iPhone, and the more I look at it the less impressive it is to me. The magic of Apple's announcements is being diluted from time. More and more phones that have these features are entering the market. Making it look like any other smart phone. Time has allowed more and more comments and assumptions to be made, both good and bad. I think Apple messed up here. Big time. Apple did the same thing in the phone business as what Motorola does. They announced a product way too early. It makes noice at the announcement, the press loves it and does nothing but talk about it and then gets distorted. By the time it comes out the press is over it and on to the next thing. Thus so are the consumers. For Motorola, this has ended with lost momentum at the time of launch and lot's of time for competition to catch up. Which in the phone industry is amazingly fast. Heck, just look at all the MotoRAZR knockoff's from companies like Nokia, Samsung, LG, etc. They all have a RAZR phone. The phone industry isn't creative, they copy each other when one comes up with a new idea. The iPhone already has a knockoff, the LG Prada phone. Which really isn't a knockoff, it's just proof that the industry was going where anyway. I'm sure Apple caught wind of this movement and this gave them another reason to announce the iPhone early. By doing so they don't look like a "me too" product in the phone industry, but an innovator that everyone is following.

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple. I want them continue to create revolutionary products and change industries. The iPhone will do that and is doing that, but for other reasons than design in my opinion. My only hope is that they no longer let their hand be forced, by the industry, the media, the fanboys, and their stock holders. That they go back to what made them so big in the first place. That they take it inside, be secretive, and announce their products at launch. Take the world by surprise. The way Apple used to do it. Brilliant.

-Colin

What the DRM?

So I don’t know if you have been following all these Music DRM complaints over the last few months. I must say that while the current state of DRM does suck, I don’t see the difference between the song I just bought on iTunes for my iPod and the video game I just bought for my Playstation 3.

If you haven’t been following DRM news lately (or even know what DRM is), let me lay out a few of the facts to bring you up to speed. Ever since they started selling music online, the music labels have demanded that their music be protected. So companies, like Microsoft and Apple, came up with their own forms of digital protection. This protection is known as DRM, or Digital Rights Management. Microsoft has Windows Media Audio DRM and Apple has Fairplay. The two DRM systems are not compatible in any way with each other. Just like Blu-Ray and HD DVD not being compatible (but that's a whole other problem we won't get into). The Digital Audio Players (DAPs) on the market don’t support both. Apple won’t license their system to third parties and Microsoft’s, in my opinion, is inferior because it’s harder on the consumer. To make it worse Microsoft introduced a product known as Zune that uses yet another DRM system that isn’t compatible with their other system. Dumb. To make that even worse, they decided to have multiple versions of that too. So now there are four different systems that aren’t compatible with each other. When a consumer purchases a DAP they have two legal options:

1. Purchase their CD’s down the street at the CD Shop and then import the CD into their computer and transfer it onto their computer.


2. Purchase music through an online music store that is compatible with their DAP’s DRM system of choice.

Now the DAP world is controlled by a king DAP, that’s the iPod. It owns over 75% of the market, both in DAP sales and online music sales. So that means if you bought an iPod and you want to purchase your music online, you have to purchase from the iTunes Music Store and not the Napster store or even the Zune store. If you buy a Zune, you have to use the Zune store. If you buy a generic DAP, from say Creative or iRiver, you can use almost any Microsoft enabled store, like Napster or Rhapsody or Yahoo! Music. Just not the Microsoft Zune store.

So now that you somewhat see the compatibility issue. Let’s move forward a bit. In comes France, yes I referring to the country, in the Summer of 2006, they decide to form a bill that forces Apple to provide access to their Fairplay system to other vendors. They say that, "This is to protect the consumer." Supposedly so that consumers can choose their DAP and then any online music store. Now the French had a hard time getting this bill to pass, but Norway liked the idea and was able to pass a bill essentially making iTunes, and any system like it (Microsoft’s Zune), illegal.

I say all this is complete BS. Consumers are not forced to buy an iPod, or a Zune. They choose to buy it, because that’s the one they wanted. I wasn't forced to hand over my credit card when I went down to Best Buy. It’s not locked in if you chose to buy it. If they don’t want to be “locked” into an online music store, just buy CD’s instead. I do agree that DRM sucks, if you choose a Microsoft DAP that is. Apple’s solution is so seamless with the iPod you don’t even notice it is there. Except for when you set it up and had to create a user account. Microsoft has issues. They don't get it. I have plugged a compatible MS based device into a compatible music system (Windows Media Player) and tried to transfer compatible (and authorized) music onto that device. However, for some reason or another it tells me it’s not compatible. I’ve heard worse stories and it get’s much more complex. We won’t go there.

Are you a little more up to speed? Great, keep moving. I started to think about this and then I looked over just below my TV and I noticed my new Playstation 3. I started thinking to myself, that my iPod/iTunes system is no different than my PS3/PS3 games system. Think about it. The iTunes music I purchase only plays on my iPod just like how the PS3 games I purchase only plays on my PS3. I can’t go buy an Xbox 360 game or Wii game or even a PC game. They just won’t work on my PS3. I’m locked into my PS3 system. If I want to play those games for those other systems, I have to then also go and buy those systems. What a weird concept right?

The gaming market is HUGE, I mean really HUGE. Much bigger than the online music market. If these governments are out to protect the consumer, why haven’t they done anything about the gaming industry? Worse yet, there are no options with a gaming system. You buy a PS3 and thus you buy PS3 games. Where as, if you buy an iPod and you can buy iTunes music and/or you can also buy music via CD. You have options.

So I say to all you governments out there that say systems like the iTunes Music Store/iPod are illegal, you’re crazy and make no sense. Get off your high horses and pass some laws that actually matter.

Now I say to all you in the music, DAP, and online music store industries. Get off your high horses and create a DRM SIG (Special Interest Group). Create a DRM that isn’t owned by any one company for them to profit from. Create a DRM system that all are free to use. This isn’t a new concept, it’s similar to what we see in the mobile phone industry. They wanted wireless headsets so they created what is now known as the Bluetooth SIG. It’s the defacto standard. If I buy a Motorola headset I am not going to worry about whether it will work or not on my Nokia phone. If they both say they have the Bluetooth Headset/Handsfree profiles it will just work. Wow what a concept.

But like I said in the beginning. I don’t see a difference between the song I bought on iTunes for my iPod and the PS3 game I bought for my PS3. Why is one acceptable and the other so bad and in some countries illegal? Just because they are in different industries doesn’t change the fact that it’s the same concept.

-Colin