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Being Solution Oriented

Jul 8

Posted by Editor in Business, Inspirational, Notebook, Quotes | No Comments

I love to be around people with ideas. It’s easy to find people who are experts at seeing the problem. It’s the rare and valuable person who always seems to have an idea for the solution.

When you examine the qualities of the people chosen most frequently for promotion and leadership, you discover that the vast majority are people who generate lots of new ideas —fresh ways of looking at a situation. Fear keeps most people from training their minds to think creatively and keeps them from putting forth a new idea when they happen to have one.

Being a solution-oriented person with lots of ideas will position you for promotion and increase on the job.

by Mac Hammond
Copyright © 2003 Mac Hammond

My Notebook- Behind the iPad, decades of clever technology

Mar 27

Posted by Editor in Notebook, Quotes | No Comments

Great Article-

Quoted from here.

updated 8:13 p.m. ET March 26, 2010
Apple’s iPad, a touch-screen computer that falls between a laptop and a smartphone, is almost here, due to go on sale April 3. But contrary to Cupertino mythology, the iPad didn’t sprout from Steve Jobs’ forehead fully formed. There were a number of critical events stretching back nearly 40 years that helped pave a path for the iPad:

ARPANet
Before there was Facebook, Twitter or the Internet in general, there was ARPANet, a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project initially conceived as a way to allow academic and military computers to communicate with one another.

ARPANet was the first computer network to employ a technology called “packet switching,” which the Internet uses today. Packet switching allows a message to be broken up into data chunks and sent through multiple routes to another computer. Once all the chunks arrive at their destination, they are reassembled into the original message.

The first ARPANet message was sent on Oct. 29, 1969 from a computer in Los Angeles to one at the Stanford Research Institute in northern California.

GUI
Apple’s introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 with its graphical user interface (GUI) puts a human face on computing.

Laptops
Computers users bridled at being tethered to the office. They were finally able to escape their bonds and get off the grid inbetween charges in 1989 when both Apple and Compaq introduced battery-powered notebook computers within a month of each other.

Earlier portable computers such as the Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable computer introduced in 1981, would not be recognized as laptops by contemporary users. The Osborne tipped the scales at 23.5 pounds.

Mobile chips
Any device that lives on batteries is at the mercy of its appetite for power. Its processor has the heartiest appetite. And as mobile computing devices get smaller and smaller, there’s less room for batteries to satisfy that appetite. The solution for matching supply and demand is to develop processor chips that require less juice.

Beginning in the 1990s, ARM, then known as Advanced RISC Machines, created a new generation of power-parsimonious chips. Intel introduced its own low-power chip architecture with the Atom chipset in 2008 and Qualcomm launched its ARM-based Snapdragon in 2009. The iPad will use Apple’s own custom CPU that incorporates ARM-based technology.

Newton/PDAs
Apple has always stubbornly sought to “think different,” but it decided to think small when it launched its first handheld device, the Newton MessagePad, in 1993. The Newton created a new category of device — the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

The touch-screen device had an address book, calendar and an e-mail function. It also carried a $700 price tag and flopped.

Palm took the same idea and hung a $300 price tag on its Palm Pilot, which it introduced in 1996. Palm saw sales — and the entire PDA market — soar.

Smartphones
What would happen if you combined a cell phone with a PDA? That’s what IBM did in 1992 with its Simon smartphone concept. Cell phone manufacturer Nokia brought that concept to life with its Nokia 9000 in 1996.

Tablets
Tablet computers started out as pen-based computing slabs without a keyboard. Users loved the form factor but balked at using a stylus as their interface with the computer

The GRiDPad, introduced in 1989, was the first commercially available tablet-style portable. Tablets never really caught on. The convertible laptop is a more popular hybrid that functions either as a conventional laptop with keyboard or as a pen-based computer in tablet mode.

iTunes
Downloading files and software has been with us a long time. But when Apple launched its iTunes store in 2003, it revolutionized how people get and consume digital information, entertainment and applications.

iTunes was also a major factor in the success of Apple’s portable music player, the iPod. Working together as a single “ecosystem,” iTunes and iPods created a seamless software and hardware solution for gathering music and playing it on the go.

Cloud computing
Cloud computing is a lot like the old client-server mainframe world. Computing power and storage are consolidated on powerful servers that are accessed through dedicated lines or over the Internet.

The cloud became much more visible in 2002 when Amazon began offering Amazon Web Services, a collection of remote computing services that could be accessed over the Internet. Devices such as netbooks, smartphones and the iPad don’t have removable storage drives. For them, the cloud is the most convenient way to get information in or out of their devices.

iPhone
Apple practices convergence with a vengeance in 2007 when it introduced the iPhone. It instantly became an object of desire for millions and introduced users to multi-touch touch-screen control.

Netbooks
Taiwanese computer manufacturer Asus created a new form-factor category, the netbook, when it introduced the Eee PC 700 in 2007. The best way to think of a netbook is as a lightweight, smaller-screen version of a laptop, which has a long battery life but no removable storage drive. Like the iPad, it lives and breathes though the cloud.

E-book readers
Amazon scored a major hit in 2007 with its Kindle, a dedicated e-book reader with 3G cellular connectivity that let users download books from Amazon’s vast inventory of books in seconds. Competitors such as Barnes & Noble’s Nook soon joined the party, staking out a new arena for digital consumption — books.

Apple swears iPad partners to secrecy
iPad may beat iPhone’s first three-month sales
Apple’s iPad is one of a slate of slates
The iPad
The iPad is a combination of all of the above, fitting into the space between smartphones and laptops but without the phone.

True believers are convinced it will do for mobile devices what opposable thumbs have done for humans.

© 2010 TechNewsDaily

Happiness On The Job- Exceed Expectations

Dec 30

Posted by Editor in Notebook, Quotes | No Comments

The world is filled with people who are prepared to do no more than the absolute minimum necessary to get by. Do you want to be happy in your work? Do you want to experience promotion and financial reward? If so, you’re going to have to consistently do more than is expected of you; get more done than is required; and bring more excellence to your work than the minimum standards demand.

It’s an important key to finding happiness on the job.

-Mac Hammond

Windows Mobile Vs. Blackberry

Jun 9

Posted by Editor in Notebook | No Comments

This is a very interesting review on the Windows Mobile device roll out that we can compare to our Blackberries.
FRI, JUN 6, 2008 16:46 EDT
Windows Mobile Shop for 3+ years
Posted by: MEK
Rating: 

We have been using Windows Mobile Devices connected to an Exchange 2003 Server for a little over 3 years now and are in the process of deploying that solution globally. This was a “greenfield” deployment with little or no prior smart-devices in the field, so all products were judged without legacy considerations.

To answer some of your questions:

I was involved in the decision making process to go with Windows Mobile and we ended up making the decision of WM over Blackberry for the following reasons:

• Cost: 4 years back, the deployment and maintenance of BES was a significant expense and it was no secret that at the time RIM was generating most of revenue on the servers sales and support vs. device sales and support. The WM layer was built-in to the Exchange 2003 system, which meant no additional licensing costs or server costs. It also meant less training and overhead from an HR standpoint in an area where FTE’s were still a significant concern.

• Device/Wireless Provider flexibility: Historically, separating the software from the hardware has led to faster innovation and product development. We were intrigued by the development model that Microsoft had chosen to use, which was to make the software available and customizable by the hardware vendors and felt that this would ultimately give is a broader range of product to choose from and easier way to switch Wireless Providers (or even use many different Wireless Providers) should we wish to.

• End-User comfort: While there was small and vocal group during testing and evaluation that preferred the simplicity of the Blackberry interface, most non-power users that we did our evaluations with preferred the “comfort” factor of the windows-like interface as well as the mini-Office applications. The WM version of Outlook was especially well-liked.

• Security/IP issues: There was a lot of discomfort (warranted or not) about the idea of email and discussions revolving around IP being moved through a centralized Blackberry network. Many of our CxO’s were more comfortable with the idea of the devices establishing a direct, SSL based connection to our mail servers and updating in that manner.

A little over 3 years after deploying the first of these devices on a fair-sized scale (about 1,000 Windows Mobile Devices in the field), it is possible to make a few broad observations here:

• Initial stability of the Windows Mobile O/S left a lot to be desired. Second-generation product (which was the first device we mass-deployed) typically had to be reset about once-a-week, battery life was poor, and all user settings got wiped if the battery was completely depleted.

• However, as frustrating as the First and Second-generation products were, the current generation of Windows Mobile devices are quite nice indeed, with very few issues overall. The range of design has also met expectations, with a WM design to fit almost every individual user need. The downside is that the quality of hardware and the implementation of the WM O/S on that hardware can vary widely. Testing new designs is therefore very important. (i.e. don’t assume that because all the devices are running WM 5.0, they will behave in same manner or have consistently reliability on different hardware designs).

• Wireless Provider support was (and still for the most part is) pitiful. An unanticipated side-effect of separating the O/S from the Hardware was the amount of interjections and interference that many of the major U.S. Wireless carriers inserted into the design and how often that they stifled innovation. In addition there was a complete lack of understanding of the Windows Mobile operating system, which has lead to tremendous amount of finger-pointing when design issues for a particular device are run into. The simplest way to solve this is to thoroughly test candidate WM devices and (complain) to the Wireless Carriers when you find features or capabilities that have been “turned off” or removed for one reason or another.

• Costs and support have been lower that what we have seen with similar sized locations running BES. We have found that after 3 years, the amount of support we have to provide for our Windows Mobile users has remained fairly low-level, with no FTE needed to support them. Basic support is provided through our help-desk and advanced support is provided through our Exchange Admin Team.

• The potential for broadening the types of devices and O/S’es beyond the Windows Mobile platform, while not fully realized yet, has great potential. Because of MS’s aggressive licensing of the ActiveSync layer to mobile device manufacturers, we are heading in a direction where it will be possible to deploy devices running on a non-MS platform that can still directly connect to the Exchange Server. This standardization of the communications layer brings us out of the locked communications system that is BES and will allow us to look at devices like the iPhone should we choose to do so.

If we could do all over again, I believe we would…

No Child Left Behind – Basketball Version

May 4

Posted by Editor in Insights, Notebook | No Comments

The basketball version of what is going on in education right now. (If
you’re not an educator, this may not make a lot of sense to you. But
send it to your friends who are in education.
They will love it!)

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the
championship.

If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until
they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after
two years they have not won the championship, their basketballs and
equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same basketball skills at the
same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities
to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of
interest in basketball, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic
abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents.

ALL KIDS WILL PLAY BASKETBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without
instruction.

This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time
with the athletes who aren’t interested in basketball, have limited
athletic ability or whose parents don’t like basketball!

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in
the 4th, 8th, and 11th games. This will create a New Age of Sports where
every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams
will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child
gets left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are
encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can
screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go
to school with bad basketball players.

Tags: ,

Anyone Tired of the US Election Campaigning?

May 2

Posted by Editor in Notebook | No Comments

Wow! Almost two years it seems…. I have been watching the Dems and the Republicans but finally got burned out when we got to McCain on the Republican side. Hillary and Obama are still duking it out.

Clearly, Hillary couldn’t beat McCain. I think we are all tired of Bushes and Clintons in the Whitehouse anyway. Let’s give someone else a chance with some new ideas.

At lunch today with a group of executives it was pretty clear that everyone realizes that most of the American people see Hillary as a two-faced person who will greet you with a smile and curse you in the same breath. Not exactly presidential material if we consider the President of the United States as someone who would represent all of us nationally, and internationally.

For me, I think America should

-shorten the cycle and the selection process maximum of six months from start to finish.
-not allow private funds for campaigning

-make candidates more accountable for what they are saying

It is so unfortunate that millions of dollars, so much media time, and repeated debates are burning through so much resource. It seems like we in the US should be focusing on selecting the candidates, running the election, and selecting them.

The victors should then get into office and dealing with issues of economy, figuring out a viable health care system, encouraging business to create more jobs , and doing a better job protecting our God-given environment.

This article below was very interesting about why Obama doesn’t level Hillary. Putting it in my online notebook Original post should be here.

Here’s The Speech Obama Should Give

 

Posted 5/2/2008 5:34 AM CDT

With all the Jeremiah Wright-induced controversy swirling around him lately, there is no question Barack Obama has been thrown off his game. His poll numbers are slipping and his once celebrated oratorical skills have turned halting and defensive. What does he need to right the ship? To use an old football cliche, the best defense is a good offense. He needs to stop letting Hillary Clinton decide the terms of battle and go on the offensive.

There is a great article in Politico today entitled “What Obama Wishes He Could Say.” If I were his campaign manager, I would change that from what he could say to what he should say. Excerpts from the article contain elements of the speech he would give if I were running the Obama campaign. Here is what Obama should say:

“Senator Clinton, do you really want to get in a contest with me over who has more unsavory personal associations?”

You want to talk hypocrisy? How about piously criticizing me for Jeremiah Wright when you have a trail of associations that includes golden oldies like Webb Hubbell. It also includes modern hits like Frank Giustra, the Canadian tycoon and major Bill Clinton benefactor who was using his ties to the ex-president to win business with a ruthless dictatorship in Khazakstan.

How about Marc Rich, the former fugitive financier who won a controversial pardon from Bill Clinton and gave money to Hillary’s first Senate campaign.

What about Hugh and Tony Rodham, who once defied Bill Clinton’s own top foreign policy advisers by entering into a strange investment in hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and Hugh Rodham, who took large cash payments for trying to broker presidential pardons.

Health care? Do you know the reason that national health care has progressed so little in the last 15 years? It’s because Mrs. Clinton botched it so badly in 1993 as head of the task force.

So Hillary think she’s a stronger candidate for the general election? How about these statistics:

When Bill Clinton came to town in 1993, Democrats were a congressional majority, with 258 seats in the House. When he left in 2001, they were a minority with 46 fewer seats. There were 30 Democratic governors when he arrived, 21 10 years later.

Honesty? A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found nearly 60 percent of voters think Mrs. Clinton is dishonest. Think about that: Only four in 10 voters do not think she lies when she needs to.

Will those numbers improve if she wins the nomination and Republicans resurrect the scandals, the Bill Clinton sexual affairs and her Bosnia fib with the same intensity they brought to the Wright uproar? Not likely.”

Should Obama say these things? Absolutely. Will he? Not likely. The theme of his campaign has been that he is a different kind of candidate who doesn’t indulge in the same-old, same-old type of politics. But, drastic times call for drastic measures, it’s time for Senator Obama to take off the gloves and hit Mrs. Clinton where she lives. Hillary is now seen as the fighter and Obama is perceived, real or not, as weak. If he wants to change this perception the only way to do it is to fight back. All’s fair in love, war, and politics.

Learned from Peter Drucker

Apr 24

Posted by Editor in Notebook | 1 Comment

April 23, 2008

William Cohen, the author of A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World’s Greatest Management Teacher, shares what he learned about leadership, management and strategy from working under this great teacher.
Leadership is the basis of everything we do. Nothing gets done without leadership. There are numerous incidences in history where organizations with inferior resources and manpower have succeeded against enormous obstacles, including much stronger competitors or adversaries. It all depended on the leader. That’s why there’s the old saying that it’s better to have an army of lambs led by a lion than an army of lions led by a lamb.

Drucker predicted nearly every change in management. Peter Drucker was a genius whose interests and contributions extended into economics and social endeavor as well as both business and nonprofit management. He ranks right up there with Freud, Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. Drucker invented management by objectives (MBO) and showed executives how to approach problems with their ignorance and problems rather than relying on their knowledge and experience. He also coined the term “knowledge worker” to define the new class of workers that would dominate the workforce of the future.

Every individual is different and cannot be treated the same. As a young manager I had a number of project managers reporting to me. They all had to be led in different ways. Project Manager A required every bit of information about everything. Project Manager B was the opposite. Project Manager C was so contrary that I almost transferred him to a staff position, but I soon discovered that he was an outstanding project manager despite his contrariness. A great leader knows how to bring these different personalities together, and, as Drucker said, “staff for their strengths and make their weaknesses irrelevant.”

Don’t be a “one-minute” manager. I once hired an individual I thought would work out well but he took longer than he should have with certain assignments. I would just do a “one-minute correction” and move on. But things didn’t improve. During his annual review I told him that I couldn’t give him a salary increase. That’s when he told me I was giving him projects with time conflicts. I told him I would give him more information on time priorities. He was right, and I had no more problems, so six months later I gave him a retroactive raise with back pay. This taught me that when things go awry, don’t be a “one-minute manager.” Instead, take the time to sit down and find out what is going on and take action to correct it.

Good leaders use creativity to maneuver tough spots. Consider CEO Ken Iverson of Nucor, a steel company in the 1980s-90s. When a recession hit, he insisted top managers take pay cuts and he took one himself. Then he went to a three-day work week for workers. At the end of a three-year recession he hadn’t laid off a single employee. If you need to lay people off, do everything possible to take care of them, including helping them in finding new employment.

Noted from here 

16 Rules To Live By- Bob Parsons

Apr 22

Posted by Editor in Notebook, Quotes | No Comments

Here are the 16 rules I try to live by:

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”

2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.

3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There’s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”

4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”

5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, “As you think, so shall you be.”

6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don’t look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

8. Be quick to decide. Remember what the Union Civil War general, Tecumseh Sherman said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.

12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.

13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn’t fair. You make your own breaks. You’ll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).

14. Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: “A wise man keeps his own counsel.”

15. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.

16. There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you’re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: “We’re not here for a long time; we’re here for a good time.

Original should be here.