Sometimes, Automatic Scripting Errs

One of the many problems plaguing crowdsourced traffic data are the errors. Part of this is due to Google partnering with Waze, a mobile app that crowdsources traffic data from users on the road. Sure, Interstate 5 is a very long freeway and it spans across the western US coast. Given the masses of regional data that Google has at its disposal, one would think that having a traffic incident related to the King County metro area wouldn't show up in the Portland/Clark County metro area, 170 miles away. Why this incident shows up at the Washington/Oregon border is anyone's guess.

In the Waze smartphone app, users can indicate the speed and flow of the route they are currently on. An incident happening on I-5, might not actually be in Seattle but be somewhere on the Portland portion of I-5. For example:

2015-01-20, a Seattle incident reported in Portland

Email Layouts

Don't treat your whitepapers like they're just something to read. Think of your audience. Think of how they'd react when they seem something like this:

It could just be that it's late at night and I'm tired. Doesn't this layout just scream "delete me"? And, you'd think that a publication whose audience is made up of CMOs that the little things like content layout and a thought-provoking headline would be used. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that this entire email was packaged and sent by a bot.

Battle of the Roasters

Who else would pay a premium on premium roasted coffee than the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. It's no surprise that Starbucks has chosen to setup their "one-of-a-kind shrine to coffee" here, as their email announcement suggests. Stumptown Coffee (a local-to-Portland coffee roaster and purveyor) also has a newly opened roasting operation in Seattle as well. No doubt, they've noticed that Portlanders and Seattlites alike gift their bags of coffee to other coffee aficionados.

It would be a sad day to see Stumptown Coffee in an establishment other than a coffee house or acquired by a Starbucks-like conglomerate (let's hope that never happens). Stumptown Coffee has shops in Portland, Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles; whereas Starbucks is just about on every street corner with a heartbeat.

My little inkdot of a city has a population of 160,000+ and still has no Stumptown Coffee shop. Alas, I don't think our city meets the demographic or market size specs for the audience that Stumptown is targeting. After all, what's the cost of short drive into Portland for coffee besides the expenditure of transportation for a tax-free purchase? There are other local coffee roasters here like Paper Tiger, Torque, Compass, and my favorite Brewed Awakenings.

What's amusing about technology is that almost 20 yrs ago I wrote a business plan for an entrepreneurship course where my business model was a cyber cafe. It is astonishing to see how WiFi and the ridiculously cheap price of high speed internet has transformed eateries and coffee shops to all become BYOD (bring your own device) cyber cafes. Anyhow. That's it for this post.

Disruptive Technology, 2014

Disruptive technology, to me, is software or hardware that upends, replaces, or disrupts an existing market, methodology or process. Here are 10 notable disruptions that caught my attention this year, in no particular order:

• 3D printed tissue engineering / bioprinting - Move over lab grown beef and incredibly long wait lists for human organ transplants, this tech allows scientists to potentially grow replacement body parts, organs, or bone. (e.g., heart valve tissue)
• Sensory Substitution Devices (enables the visually blind to see colors and shapes, e.g., EyeMusic)
• Volkswagon's XL1 fuel efficient car
• WiFi-enabled automobiles (this came out last year, but we didn't start seeing Internet ads for it until this summer)
• Circuit design without pre-fabricated circuit boards (e.g., Circuit Scribe fast drying liquid ink circuits)
• Commercial drones and minidrones for domestic surveillance (e.g., Parrot)
• IoT wearable tech for health (e.g., Microsoft Health Band)
• Organic LEDs / flexible display screens (e.g., Sony's 13-inch Digital Paper)
• Verizon's VGo Telepresence (video conferencing with robotic interface)
• Credit card and mobile payment processing for smartphones and tablets (e.g., Square)

And while not a technology, the most disruptive change to an established, traditional business model was CVS pharmacy. Read more about this unique ad campaign to change public perception about the role of the neighborhood pharmacy and the fight against big tobacco. While chain stores and pharmacies still sell chips, soda, and candy, banning tobacco products is still a big step towards a better tomorrow.

What didn't make the cut:

• the Hendo hoverboard - has promise, but the marketing/concept video is a #fail for consumer use. It would prove worthy if it could move dense items in human/robot unfriend and inhospitable surfaces, like on the moon or Mars for example.
• 3D printable prosthetics - this "industry" has been around for a while; there is a lot to still be done before it becomes a mainstream way of life

Bad Ad Copy, or Just Bad Proofing?

The Swash product has a decent offering; and the company's monopoly or revenue stream is likely to be from the cartridge refills for the "refreshed" scent. For the convenience it offers, it will probably save you a lot more over time versus sending clothes out to be professionally dry cleaned. Although, the ad doesn't say that the product actually cleans; so a consumer might think they're refreshing it and thousands of dead skin cells still clinging to it.

2014-10-03, Swash ad on NBC.com

Talk about ad copy #fail.  This is the first that I've seen in quite a while where the ad copy proofreaders failed to see this one. The product reviews feed looks like it is specific to that ad. Gotta love default text, except when it is shown like this to a national audience.

Best Features of iOS 8

This was a tough post to write. I really had to think about what the best features that came with iOS 8, even after shuttering many of the new functions. What can I say. I like the minimalist approach to what I allow the phone to do.

Podcasts App:  Under 'Settings', if you want to preserve the battery life, you'll want to refresh episodes manually. Podcasts are MP3s, so the more you have on your device, the more it'll take up in your native storage. Fortunately, you can also stream from the app without having to download any of the episodes. The "featured" and "top charts" shows the top subscribed to podcasts.

iCloud Family Sharing: Have not activated this yet; not sure it'll be all that useful at the moment.

Time-Lapse option for Camera - Maybe this will work better than the panoramic option that I can't get to work right. The concept videos look nice though.

Battery Usage by App - Shows a percentage used in the last 24 hours or last 7 days. I don't know what I'm doing other than checking the time, but the Home & Lock Screen shows that it eats 9% of the battery. Even with the cache cleared, I'm not sure why Bing hogs 747 mb of device storage. Compare that to Chrome which uses 162 mb or Safari with 130 mb. 

Hey Siri - only for the truly lazy. Siri still eats up battery power like candy; so, it's best to use her if you are connected to a wired power source.

Bold, Italics, Underline in Notes - I have not noticed this before the update. But now when I copy/paste from a website to Notes, some of the formatting stays.

There doesn't seem to be any way to disable the default view from showing up as 'Recently Taken' and 'Recently Deleted' folders for the Photos folders.

iOS 8 Update

It took quite some time to get around to updating to iOS 8 because I had more than 2,000 photos on my phone and the update says it needs at least 5 GB to download. I had to archive the photos off the phone (sadly, this means I have to use a second machine to do this instead of eating up 1/5th of cloud storage), and then individually select photos to delete them off the phone. I'm sure there is a better way, like a batch delete? I have not found it. After manually deleting 1200 photos, I had enough storage space on the iPhone 5 to download the update. Seriously, I have to tap onto each photo just to delete it? Double ugh.

I even let the download run overnight. WTF would add an "Install" prompt to the download. I mean, why would you want to just download the update and not install it? Anyhow. The actual update took a lot longer than I thought it would. 46% adoption rate from iOS 7 to iOS 8 isn't terrible. It would probably be higher if the update wasn't filled with bloatware.

I don't think I want to upgrade to the latest hardware version. The iPhone 5 is large enough, even with the rugged case I have it in. I think I'll wait until the 6's durability issues are resolved.