I always planned on releasing it as a service, but became dis-interested and open sourced it. So now I’m concentrating on bringing the service up again. The project is still open and located at http://code.google.com/p/hellaphone . Check it out, contribute, or just use it.

Have you ever been in this situation? Depending on the size of the project, it can sometimes be doable and advantageous. The trick of it is sneaking the work past your boss. They never see reducing future work, just that you’re stopping the forward progress to re-code something that was already done.

This is the coding equivalent of cutting your losses and re-investing.

I’m currently in the middle of a large project that would require so much re-tooling it would just not be possible to switch to a more suited framework or methodology. However, had someone six months ago said,  ”go ahead and scrap the current design and do what is right”, it would probably be done now.

In all fairness, it seemed as though the project would be done any day now. With that in mind, what manager would approve even a partial rewrite?

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have advertisements that play any kind of sound when the page loads. These are usually flash advertisements. This is very rude, this is like talking to someone while they are trying to read the newspaper. This gets even worse when the noise coming from the advertisement is some voice over speaking. Please, I did not come to the page to view all the ads, so only speak when asked to. Mute the damn thing by default. Let me un-mute it if I’m interested.
This is a new form of popup, and if your not careful, you’re advertisements, like pop-ups will be disabled with browser plugins or extensions that are already available but not widely used… yet. If such ads were to become annoying enough and numerous enough then you might see browsers including flash and/or ad blocking technology built in. Be cautious with the annoyingness factor of your ads. Be courteous of how you’re perceived or you may be shut off altogether. This goes beyond sound at startup, this advice should be taken for all annoying assuming aspects of the ads. Please don’t pop up floating divs, or expanded flash viewports that must be closed manually. These are other annoying aspects that may be turned off if it persists further. This would mean a shut down of valid browser features for webmasters that deliver wanted content.

In your face sales is annoying. No one likes it.

Webmasters - Demand that your ads adhere to a set of non-annoying guidelines to avoid people leaving your site or blocking your ads altogether.

Marketing guys behind the ads - Adhere to the same guidelines, else you may find yourselves getting blocked completely.

“Take shortcuts”, “Fix it later” seem to be their war cry. They fail to remember that they change their minds at least 10 times during the development process. Those shortcuts they made us take, the ones they insisted we take to save a half a days work, they just added 2 - 3 days work of going through dirty code that wasn’t cleaned up or refactored. Let’s go ahead and multiply the time it adds if another developer must be the one to work on it.

Is this the Client’s fault? Partially. We should take some blame here too. We should have an answer or rebuttal why they should not take these shortcuts. We need to be able to convincingly give an argument that supports proper code architecture and design. Why taking the time to create something right is beneficial in the long run.

This is easier said than done. A lot of programmers just aren’t confrontational people, especially with their boss. A lot of bosses are. The boss generally mows them down with phrases like, “it needs to be done yesterday”, and, “We’re losing money by not having this right now”. Unknowingly, they probably put the project behind by not having a plan and enforcing a rush from step to step in the project.

Should you stand up for yourself?

I say, “Absolutely!”. If the man (or woman) in charge is any kind of reasonable, then they will respect your opinions. After all, this is what they hired and continue to pay you for. You will have to sell the reason why you do something, especially when at first glance it seems to take longer than rushing through the project. If you don’t and the project takes too long from you caving in to the pressure of your client, they will only blame you. You will not have any excuses, because theirs will be, “I thought you knew what you were doing”, or, “Why didn’t you tell me that was the wrong way”.

How to avoid being misinterpreted and being looked at like a person who just thrives on arguments.

I don’t know if I can be much help here. I’m always being misinterpreted as I shoot from the hip, rather crudely sometimes. In my old age I’m starting to be a little more manipulative considerate and helping others understand me better. I’m starting to reflect more on what I can do to ultimately get the job done. This means being able to identify the feature and benefits of proper development procedures. Identify how it will either make life easier or make the person more money. This can be by cutting future development costs (future can be within the same project when the client changes his mind) or by creating a better product due to the extra time you’ll have not sorting through the undocumented spaghetti code you wrote just 3 weeks ago.

Unfortunately, sometimes standing up for yourself or telling the client no will ultimately lead to a dismissal of your services. Whether it be an employer or a client, these things can happen. You need to decide what your limit is, and whether it’s for the best. I’ve always felt that most clients must be saved from their ignorance.

Paying publishers based on CPM as a metric was flawed. Flawed for the ultimate task at hand… To get an online aquisition. Conversion rates were all over the place, barely any targeted placement was being done. Relevant data, what is that? We didn’t even know how many people were actually following the ads.

Along comes CPC. We start paying out by the actual clicks, it’s a little easier to track the conversions than CPM. Of course this was not perfect and seems to be on it’s way out as of this writing.

So where are we at right now? Well, everyone is sporting CPA as if it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread (why is this so great anyways?). Pretty easy equation to figure out. If the goal is to sell something directly through an online ad, then measuring the success directly through the sale seems the only way to go. Why in the world would we have done it any other way? Seems simple, right? The advertiser needs to acquire something in order to be successful, be it payment or an email address, or an opinion (survey). If this is the final goal, why would we measure it any other way?

I’ll tell you why, it’s not the way or manner in which the product is marketed that brings it a sale. A bad product will have a bad conversion rate. On the other hand, a good product will have a bad conversion rate if marketed in a poor manner. The current state of industry is this, we must rely on hard acquisition numbers for our payouts because no one knows how to value an certain spot at any certain time on any certain website with any certain product… yet!

I believe this metric can be found, and it’s worth being proven. We do this for television commercials already. Prime time commercials are worth more. Women’s products are worth even more to the hypnotized Oprah crowd. Men’s products are not advertised during Oprah. We seemed to have cracked the code for television. Television, like the web is always changing and so are the advertisements.

Granted, the web is more complicated, more fickle. The users are starting to expect more, but we have the ability to change the ads per user, and on the fly at the last minute. We have oodles of practically free computing power to inference products, services, or whatever to target the end user at that time. We have instant access to his web browsing history, or past purchases, we even have access to the services and content of the email at times. Think gmail is completely free? Those targeted ads don’t come from nowhere.

So why should we sit back and let someone else’s product tell us how much we should make for something that has an unknown conversion? We should know how much our advertising spots are worth. At that time, for that user’s demographic, based on past purchases and inquiries. We should be able to calculate the optimum product for purchase at that time and deliver a much higher conversion percentage. If you give us a crap product, guess what, you’ll get a crap conversion.

The other side of CPM. Why does an acquisition need to be made for the Ad to be successful? I’ve never once tried to click on the commercial in the TV to buy any product. Is branding completely dead? We need to offer to build ads just for branding purposes. Stop charging for the ad, start charging for the space. Radio stations do this already. Let’s catch up to radio for God’s sake!!!

The real problem here is that no one has come up with the formula for how much an ad should be. You can bet Google is throwing a shit ton of money at finding this solution. I will be right there trying to find out how to cash in on the CPM train.

I signed up for a Rich Dad Real Estate Investing 3 day Seminar which I had to postpone due to re-locating which had to happen that weekend. This is how they got my phone number. After I missed the seminar, a month later I receive a phone call from a Rich Dad employee. Now pay attention because this is what is good. The way they design the selling process makes it feel selective.

1. A Rich Dad employee calls me and asks me a few preliminary questions. Using phrases like, “very selective”, “not everyone qualifies”, “see if it’s the right time in your life”, “time is of the essense, limited availability”. She even asked me to write down some questions to help prepare for a coaching director’s interview. This was all smart because it makes me feel special should I be selected by them because I’m ready to be financially successful. I asked directly, “Is this another service that you would like to offer or sell to me?”. The response was, “No”.
2. The follow up interview. The rich dad coaching director calls and says that she needs to interview and verify it’s a good fit (as if). She asks about current financial well being. Asks about our current savings and investments. We (me and my wife) ignorantly answer these questions thinking the concern is actually our financial readiness. She asks about our credit cards and the limits on them and the debt on them. Again my wife and I think it’s about helping our financial well-being.
3. She asks about our area of interest for investing, real estate or paper. She asks about whether we would like to know more about leveraging credit to work for us. We answer yes. She touches on using credit cards to our advantage. At this moment I stopped her, and asked, “I was led to believe that it was unwise to use credit cards at such a high interest rate. Aren’t there better forms of leverage to use?”. The answer was, “credit cards are a fantastic way to leverage other people’s money. This is what Robert Kyosaki talks about. Using other people’s money”.
4. The saleswoman, I mean coaching director, starts asking sales questions like are you ready to commit. Would you be able to dedicate 7-10 hours per week? We in turn answer an un-enthusiastic, “yes”. At this point I’m waiting for a price and want to know.
5. She asks us to write down some commitments. Some they have for us, and some that we must make for them. One was the hours required. I forget two at the moment, because three is where we stopped. The third commitment required from us was the tuition. $5K. She asked if we could afford to pay, upfront, today, before we hung up. Without hesitation it we both replied, “No”. Of course we were met with, “why”, and she brought up repeating my own words, “Now Buck, when talking about your savings you said you had enough $x numbers of dollars. WHAM!!! It all came rushing toward me. This women was in no way interested in my financial ability to be compatible or my financial thinking to be successful for this program, but only feeling me out for the ability to pay. I made mention of this and immediately she went on the deffensive, and quickly the offensive. She started to passive-aggressively insult us. Saying things like, “You’re just procrastinating”. You’ll never be successful with that attitude.

I told her I would never pay $5k for something that I have only heard about for 15 minutes. “That wouldn’t be doing my due diligence”, I told her. My wife repeated that Robert Kyosaki wouldn’t make a deal like that. The saleswoman (she no longer needs the title of “coaching director” at this point) asks if the kind of help and teaching would be worth it, comparing tuition to college. I said of course, but like choosing a college, research is put in before dropping any cash. She asked, “You don’t trust Rich Dad”? My wife and I quickly replied, “NO!”. She asked, “Why not?”. I said,  “Trust is earned”.

She was starting to get insulting and I had enough. I told her It doesn’t matter, I would not invest that much cash without research from an unbiased party. She continued on and told us that we were not at the right place in our life for this commitment. This from a woman that had repeatedly told us that we were ready (until she found out we were unwilling to pay). She even tried a slight bit of pressure in the end when I said I would reconsider after some research. She told me the whole interview process would start over. Yea right, if I called and said I’m ready to sign up and here is my credit card number, that would be all that it takes.

This whole process was a bit annoying and could have been avoided had they not lied about my initial question, “Is this another service you are offering or selling?”. All in all very sneaky. Trying to convince me that credit cards were a good way to leverage credit. Finding our credit card limits to find out if we could pay. These were great ways to feel out a potential customer.

Some helpful links

• http://www.realestatecoursereviews.com/review/index2.php?item_id=18
• http://richdad.tribe.net/thread/ef29e444-27fc-4e10-9391-d42c94de9670

The mornings seem to be the toughest. I’m always in a hurry to get to work, but afterwards it’s not so bad. I found the station guide for my XM satellite radio and tuned into CNBC. It gave me time to listen to what I would normally watch as soon as I get home. I’ve been using cruise control to keep it dead at 70 MPH. Occasionally I have to slow it down because I can’t pass without going well over my target speed. That part is driving me a little nuts, but maybe I’ll get over that too.

My 30 day trial period

Luckily, Lifestyle Family Fitness offers a 30 day money back guarantee trial. I decided to use the gym and see if I liked it. To be honest, the gym has all the equipment needed. Which is to say the dumbbells go over 110lbs, they have a squat rack, and a bench press. The biggest drawback is they’re crowded, everyday. I decided to exercise my 30 day out. Mostly in hopes they would counter like every other gym I have ever belonged to. Most of the time they want to know the problem, and then offer a solution to fix it. When they asked me why I wanted to quit, and I responded with, “price and too crowded”. Here is where their in-ability to problem solve came in. They were looking for some loop hole to keep me from getting a refund, instead of fixing the problem. Most places would come down in price.

They have plenty of margin to work with…

I came from an area with higher cost of living, much higher taxes, much higher rent and real estate costs. The gym I to which I used to belong has a larger footprint and offers more locations, yet still manages to charge $21 less per month than Lifestyles. Either the gym manager is unable to sell or the business is run so badly that the margins are slim, even at the extremely high prices charged. I’m a little saddened that Lifestyles seemed to have a sales prevention team working the day I quit. Another person may have been able to save a sale by lowering the price to the same level that others are grandfathered in at.

I’m buying a more family oriented car, which makes it kind of a boring drive. I’m coming from a car that puts down 500 horsepower to the wheels with 540lbs of torque. Family cars just don’t compare, and thus makes it boring to shop for.

Anyways, back to the moron dealers I’ve been in contact with. I put out a request for quote on the official sites of each manufacturer. This was for about 15 different dealerships. All but one have called me back with the following information: “Please call me at your earliest convience”. They also took the time to email the same message.

Wait a minute, didn’t I request something?! Oh Yea! A quote. Guess how many sent me an actual quote without being asked a second time? ONE! One dealer, a Honda dealer, sent me a quote the first time I asked for it. The rest ignored my request, ignored the fact that I requested it online at my convience (my preferred method) and that my preferred contact method was email.

This is annoying! I received countless phone calls during the day disrupting me during work. The very reason I requested online quotes was to avoid the disruption.

Some dealers were even more annoying. When I asked about the new Pontiac G8 GT from dealers, one dealer returned a phone call, and only one. Again, no quote. Just a message about the first shipment had been spoken for and call me.

Why are dealers so secretive about their pricing? If I called any other business that had concrete numbers about the products they are selling, they would have zero problem giving me a quote. Hell, the selling process of the auto insurance business has been turned upside down because of the instant gratification of that progressive pioneered. And that’s not even hard numbers, they have to run the calculation of stats based on questions dumbed down enough for the non-underwriter layman.

The one place to offer me a quote will probably be the place I buy from. I say probably because I’m still debating the make/model of the car. I plan on posting all of the emails from the dealers that I have received and the names of the dealerships.

Yes, while the Apple TV was busy getting it’s update on, front row users are left with yesteryear’s interface. Of course it’s a computer and I can switch over to iTunes, but let’s face it. When you’re listening to music with friends and want to quickly browse and buy a song you’re all talking about. Breaking out a keyboard is the equivalent of the VISA check commercials when that person breaks out a check. It certainly doesn’t create a one click buying experience, putting more obstacles between me and the check-out lane. That’s the whole point of this, Apple wants to sell rentals and music. The easier they make it to buy, the more they’ll sell, period.

I hope this is on their to-do list. It would certainly encourage me to buy more from them.

1. 80GB iPod hard drive being used as a system drive. It’s 4200 RPM slow and after years of encouraging people to amass a horde of digital media, how can Apple really expect people to fit their iTunes library, digital videos and so on onto 80GB? With notebook hard drive capacities topping 500GB in a single 2.5″ drive, surely Apple’s customers would have preferred a slightly thicker form factor with a beefier drive?

Really, most people get by on less. Apple’s customers already have this sort of form factor, the MacBook and MacBook pro have been about 1 in thick for years and the lightest available. You want speed, get a SSD drive.

2. Non-expandable memory: 2GB of RAM soldered onto the motherboard… sure, that’s a lot of RAM today, but if I were buying a notebook worth between $2500 and $4300,

Hmmmmm, I looked at the Apple site, says starts from $1799.

(update) Whoops - I saw in the comments of his page that he was talking about Australian dollars.

I’d sure as hell want the ability to add some extra RAM in later to cater for future Mac OS X upgrades, virtualisation and memory hungry apps like the Adobe suite. (To be fair, other subnotebooks also have soldered RAM, and sometimes have only 1GB, but still… looking at this from the perspective of someone looking for a thinner, lighter MacBook Pro, this is a significant limitation.)

If you start with the wrong expectations you will be disappointed.

3. 64GB flash-memory as an option in place of the hard drive is nice, but for $1400 more, it seems unlikely many people will take it up. (Update: reader Jeff Singleton points out that the SSD drive is more than “just a flash drive” — SSD disks offer greatly enhanced reliability and much faster throughput than mechanical media can, which is a fair point.)

Apple fans are notorious early adopters, if they weren’t they would buy Dells with Windows for less.

4. One USB port: not only is the MacBook Air expansion-limited on the inside, it can’t connect to many things at once on the outside, unless, of course, you carry a USB hub with you, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an ultraportable notebook to begin with. And since it’s a recessed design (a flap on the side of the notebook has to pop open for you to access the port), quite a few USB accessories aren’t going to be able to plug in there without the use of a USB extension cord.

Carrying a USB hub would defeat the purchase of an ultra portable, but so would carrying the accessories that would connect to it.

5. No wireless broadband: if anyone’s going to buy this notebook, it’s the regular traveller who is tired of toting 3KG of extra cabin baggage everywhere. These people are also exactly the same people who find wireless broadband really, really useful. But despite the fact that HSDPA modules can be manufactured as small as a postage stamp, Apple didn’t include one. Guess what you’ll be using that one USB port for? A soap-on-a-rope style wireless broadband dongle, or a fat broadband stick. It’s not a very elegant accompaniment to the world’s thinnest notebook.

Guess what you’ll be connecting to your Bluetooth [phone] device for?

6. Underpowered, last-gen processor: despite Apple claiming the MacBook Air has the ‘latest’ processor in it, it’s actually a slow old 65nm version of the Core 2 Duo, topping out at 1.8GHz. Presumably Apple’s legal eagles would argue that since Intel made a special version of the processor that has a smaller chip casing than others, it is literally using the “latest” release from Intel. But in this case, “latest” certainly doesn’t mean “better”.

This is a small definition of better. Faster doesn’t necessarily mean better, but latest is defined by release date. In fact the whole chip industry is moving toward less power. Most individuals don’t need the kind of speed that even apple’s cheapest laptop puts out.

7. No microphone port: sure, it’s not the most essential feature given the proliferation of USB microphones, but again, I’ll point out: one … USB … port.

Bluetooth, bluetooth, bluetooth.

8. Non-replaceable battery: you have to send the entire notebook back to Apple for replacement of the battery. Which will have attrocious battery life within about two years. Note to Steve Jobs: this is not an iPod.

I actually agree, but when the time comes I’m sure there will be a plethora of services to replace/upgrade the battery. (update) The time is now $129 battery replacement includes install. That’s what a normal battery costs.

9. Thin but not that thin: Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is thinner at its thickest point than competing notebooks. But the Fujitsu Q2010 is only 19.9mm thick at its thickest point, and that’s 0.5mm — yes half a millimetre — thicker. However, in the Lifebook, you get integrated HSDPA/3G/GPRS, an ExpressCard slot (34/54), SD card slot, two USB ports, inbuilt VGA out, Ethernet, Firewire, fingerprint sensor. I’d say that functionality is worth an extra half millimetre.

I must take a look at the Q2010, but using Windows is not worth it. I have never missed Windows since the move.

10. Oh, and no Ethernet port: yeah, OK, you can order the optional USB Ethernet adaptor, but that one time your router stops working wirelessly and you really need to log in via Ethernet to fix the configuration… hope you’ve got that USB adaptor with you.

Spoken like a person who has owned many a faulty PC’s. I have never had an ethernet port stop working on any of my Macs. I have also found my 802.11 N faster than my old 10/100 ethernet. You can also login via bluetooth.

Post mortem: Yes, there are some really nice features of the MacBook Air: the multi-touch trackpad, the fact that it doesn’t have a tiny, cramped keyboard like many ultraportables, some clever workarounds for the fact that it doesn’t have an optical drive — the ability to comandeer another Mac’s drive over a network, and so on.
But the fact is, apart from the screen and keyboard size, everything else in the MacBook Air is a big compromise.
People who were looking for a viable “pro” upgrade path for their PowerBook G4 12″ will be disappointed, as will anyone who wanted a lighter version of the MacBook Pro.
Will it be a success? I’m willing to bet that there will be an initial rush of sales from people who want the hottest, latest, slimmest thing in the airport gate lounge, but for the rest of us, who are balancing the specs with the portability, the MacBook Air will ultimately turn out to be a sales dud.

I disagree with the sales dud comment. I do believe that sales will be lower than that of the other MacBook lines. But the entire ultra portable market is smaller - it’s to be expected. I do believe it will pave the way for the rest of the MacBook line. If Apple were to release a 17 inch ultra portable I would pick it up. I don’t use wires, and I don’t use the optical drive.

This is definitely an early adopter product, and Apple may be on the cutting edge, but that means they have more room to grow rather than to play catch up.

Most people (including me) have been waiting for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to win before making the HD Media plunge. No one wants to support a dying or dead medium and having to re-invest in the other. Everyone has been waiting for all of the Studios to support one.

It looked like Blu-Ray was going to win with the Warner Studios announcement of Blu only. I heard Warner’s announcement and thought the last two studios would surely cave toward the Blu camp, and I think they still will make the move to Blu.

Let me Tarantino a bit. I’ve been using a hacked XBox and XBox Media Center for a few years now. I rip all most of my DVD’s on a cheap linux server, soon to become a NAS. I can view  all of my movies without getting up from the couch and sorting through 600 or so Discs. As HD-DVD and Blu-Ray started closing in on release dates, I started to think about the possibility of using physical media again. I’ve gotta say,  I’m pretty opposed to it. The idea of not having all of my content at my finger tips sounds antiquated. Having to run through the house to find out which room I left a disc in is worse. I am a quality freak. I like the best stuff (at least what I can afford), so I was constantly waiting for a HD format to win. Which by the way is taking forever.

Here comes an announcement from Apple. They’re updating their Apple TV along with a price drop that brings the price lower than Blu-Ray and almost as low as the lowest priced HD-DVD unit. Not only that, but with their new rental service offering HD movies and content from all the major studios, they’re offering exactly what I wanted. All the studio’s content, not having to leave the couch to watch content, or the house to rent it.  All of this at a lower price than the current HD competitors.

Apple has it, they have the right combination of offerings to make it work. If they push it correctly it will be a major contender in the HD format. I do think that Blu-Ray will still do well after all the studios commit to the format. Mostly because people are creatures of habit, they will continue to go to blockbuster and rent; they understand - put some sort of media in a machine, press play and it works. Some people just want to do things the way they always have, touch physical media.

I plan on adding live monitoring for the downloads and queues of HellaNZB. That is my primary goal. At some point in the future I would like to be able to support all mobile devices, but I don’t have the time nor the equipment to test with at the moment.

If anyone has any suggestions or features they would like to see, please drop me a line and let me know.