Tim de Jardine

Finally! How to decide whether to buy an iPad..

Paul Graham’s Checklist, Would You Make The Cut? [Video]

iPhone 4 reception issues finally fixed!

Star Wars Subway Car (via ImprovEverywhere)

16 minutes is the average time from waiting till resolution on the phone.  

>24hrs is the average time for an email resolution.

What is the average wait time in a physical shop?  

Yesterday I went to a flower shop in Newtown, this shop called Abso-Blooming-Lutely in Newtown Wellington, I was in a moment of need.

There was a customer service rep in the shop who was talking to her friends and I was in a rush.  

I politely asked whether I could buy a bouquet of flowers within 15 minutes.  ”No, I would have to wrap them” the customer service person said, “you will have to wait your turn”.  I explained that I was in a bit of a hurry I needed to buy some flowers within 15 minutes and did not need anything custom, just a pre-made bunch.  ”not possible” was the answer.   I pointed to a pre-made bunch of flowers on display.  ”can I buy these ones please”?  ”No” was the answer, “they are display flowers”.

We live in such a connected and global economy where almost everybody has a voice. Every customer interaction addresses their moment of need.  Today my moment was not met by this florist.  So I am posting here using my voice.  This is an example of what happens to you when you are shit to a potential customer. Somebody writes a negative review of you.  Its out there forever.

Long story short, I went to another florist in the same street and brought some flowers within a minute of entering the store.  The second store was not a full florist either it was a convenience store that sold flowers!  I spent 10 minutes of back and forward with the first florist and 1 minute of instant service from the second.  

The second florist has won my business as he gave me what I wanted instantly by addressing my moment of need.  The first florist has lost a customer for life, I will NEVER go back there and this review will be here forever.  In my moment of need you were not there Abso-Blooming-Lutely.  

Thanks to the owner of this place for the help, you’ve got a customer for life.

So that begs the question:

do you have any customers or potential customers you have turned down in their moment of need?

In the iPhone space choosing a marketplace is essential to business success.  For example in the iPhone space it would not make sense to place a bet on iPhone in a marketplace like New Zealand.  The reason being that there is a very low number of iPhones in New Zealand, estimates are <40,000.

The app needs to appeal to a market that makes sense for your business.  That means getting outside the bubble of technology people you are in and seeing what real people want.  Hanging around with technical people can give you the illusion that iPhones are really popular in New Zealand.  They are not. Rarely anyone owns one.  Here are some approximate numbers based on my experience:

To get to the top of a category in the New Zealand App Store you need about 60 downloads a day, a pitiful amount that brings a great illusion of ‘success’ for being #1. 

To get to the top of the Australian market you need about a thousand downloads per day, a still small amount but a better overall marketplace of about a million iPhones.

To get to the top of a category in USA it takes tens of thousands of downloads a day with a marketplace of 50 million iPhones.

If you are building a mobile app for only the New Zealand market place and that app targets consumers I suggest you not build an iPhone app if you want a profitable business.  

Expand your offering to include overseas marketplaces, local will not be sufficient in the current market conditions.

A mobile website would suit more or an html 5 website that customizes itself based on a consumers handset model would be more suitable in the New Zealand marketplace.

There is a difference.  The ideas person has ideas but never qualifies them or executes.  The entrepreneur has ideas, qualifies them, identifies a market opportunity and executes.

Here lies a great fallacy of logic for the ideas person.  Because they do no execute the idea seems valuable alone.  To an Entrepreneur, the idea seems meaningless, its the execution that really counts.  That long road of execution from the forming of an idea and validation of a marketplace is exponential.

One of the most valuable discliplines of an entrepreneur is to stick with an idea, see it through market validation and execution without executing on ‘other opportunities’.  The good entrepreneur only executes on their BEST idea. A fallacy of an ideas person is to be executing on ‘many different things’ at a time.  It rarely works.

Tony Hsieh says that choosing a market for you business is alot like playing poker.  You enter a casino and observe the players at each table, their cash and the stakes.  

The tables may have a varying degrees of skill and ability.  There are tables with experienced players who are betting large.  Or tables with amateurs that are betting small amounts.  The amateurs have little cash to spend.  The experienced players are betting serious money.  The key to winning at poker in a casino is to find a table with the right level of players, skill and the cash (risk).  This applies to business.  For example: to make a social network succeed you need millions as the other social networks tend to be big, serious and have plenty of cash.  

Does your market have ANY money or players in it?  Or is everyone losing out to the house?

One of the most interesting books I have read this year is The Black Swan.  A particular part that makes this book so interesting is the authors logic.  One of my favorite gems is the ‘Nerd Knowledge’ concept.

Nerd knowledge: the belief that what cannot be Platonized and studied does not exist at all, or is not worth considering. There even exists a form of skepticism practiced by the nerd.

Nerds or ‘experts’ in a field are so blinded by their experience that they cannot formulate something that may exist outside their understanding. They are essentially close minded into a belief.  This also relates to the expert problem:

Empty-suit problem (or “expert problem”): Some professionals have no

differential abilities from the rest of the population, but for some rea- son, and against their empirical records, are believed to be experts: clinical psychologists, academic economists, risk “experts,” statisti- cians, political analysts, financial “experts,” military analysts, CEOs, et cetera. They dress up their expertise in beautiful language, jargon, mathematics, and often wear expensive suits.

For example:

Combining these two concepts a common example today is the ‘Social Media’ guru. This person minces words, talks jargon but is essentially blind and useless.  They are blind because they cannot see any other way to act apart from following the hot trend of the day.  They refuse to explore other areas and re-iterate what every person around them is says: e.g “eyeballs” “innovation” “facebook” “engagement”.

Give them a problem outside their current area of ‘expertise’ and they won’t give you an answer.  They are skeptical about everything unknown and fanatical about the known.

What is so interesting about this book is it teaches you about the unknown, about your hidden assumptions, about situations and experiences that will cloud your judgement like narratives and experiences.

Burial - Forgive (птицы перед торнадо) (via shiqaqa)

Social Media “We Aren’t Addicted. We’re Monkeys.” (by Adam Daniel Mezei | ADMTV)

South Africa 2010 - USA-Algeria (1:0) - Reactions to the U.S. Win 

If anyone wants to see it for the 100th time!

Your New Favorite Venn Diagram | NextRound.net

via files.posterous.com

John Underkoffler points to the future of UI | Video on TED.com

Dizzee Rascal & James Corden HQ - “Shout For England” (via TerenceLFC)

Web 3.0 (by Kate Ray) A very insightful video

The problem with trends is that almost everybody can see them.  Trends are public, safe and seem easy.  

The reason that trends are so appealing is that a map is partially written for the entrepreneur.  When I say a map, I mean that the entrepreneur can clearly see a destination, somebody else has already paved a way, done all the hard work in your chosen area and it feels ‘safer.  For example take  ’localization’ one of the latest fads to strike tech startups.  Foursquare was in the game in 2008 when there was no map for localization check-in services. Dodgeball was even earlier.  Now that localization services have a map and a clear market hopeful entrepreneurs flock with yet more localization services.  Being an product creater means that you identify a gap in a market BEFORE it is a trend then innovate to CREATE YOUR OWN MAP.  

“If its a trend, its too late!”

Flash : a technology built for yesterday

IPAD UNBOXING (via stevenftube)

Watch Funny Baseball Rain Delay Dance-Off Video | Break.com

Watch Coolest Biker Ever Riding Sideways Video | Break.com

Derren Brown NLP Swish Pattern (via warfin2k)

Someones getting fired!

One of the first news reports about this thing called “Internet” [video]

Winscape

Michael Specter: The danger of science denial | Video on TED.com

Chinese version of Susan Boyle I will always love you (via hahawawalala)

If Old Spice made ads for Apple… (via NeoBen)

Infographic of the Day: Japan, the Strange Country | Design & Innovation | Fast Company

Just as I thought… Waiting for the Cigarette type lawsuits.

Philosopher: Why we should ditch religion - CNN.com

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world | Video on TED.com

The future of entertainment: Chatroulette Piano Ode to Merton.m4v with 2000 people live