Podcasts about palm pilot

Jim talks with Jeff Hawkins and Viviane Clay about the Thousand Brains Project and Jeff's book A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. They discuss Mountcastle's theory of the neocortex's universal algorithm, cortical columns & their structure, learning modules in AI sensory systems, reprogramming of the neocortex, the 6 layers of cortex, mini-columns & macro-columns, the visual cascade, reference frames as essential for knowledge representation, "voting" for perceptual consensus, how the project differs from deep learning & LLM approaches, William Gibson's concept of affordances, the "Jennifer Aniston neuron" idea, current state of the Monte project, solving fundamental problems vs making impressive demos, avoiding "old brain" traits in AI systems, and much more. Episode Transcript Perceptual Neuroscience: The Cerebral Cortex, Vernon B. Mountcastle On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee (2004) A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins Monte Project – Open-Source Implementation Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Nick Bostrom Jeff Hawkins is a scientist whose life-long interest in neuroscience led to the creation of Numenta and its focus on neocortical theory. His research focuses on how the cortex learns predictive models of the world through sensation and movement. In 2002, he founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, where he served as Director for three years. The institute is currently located at U.C. Berkeley. Previously, he co-founded two companies, Palm and Handspring, where he designed products such as the PalmPilot and Treo smartphone. Jeff has written two books, On Intelligence (2004 with Sandra Blakeslee) and A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (2021). Viviane Clay is the director of the Thousand Brains Project. She received her doctorate degree in Cognitive Computing and master's degree in Cognitive Science at University of Osnabrück in Germany, where she focused on sensorimotor learning as a key aspect in intelligence. She brings to Numenta fifteen years of coding experience, along with her background in neuroscience, psychology, and machine learning.

Pour conclure notre 6ᵉ saison podcast, nous plongeons dans l'histoire fascinante de Palm, précurseur de nos smartphones,Et si nous plongions dans une époque où les smartphones n'étaient qu'un rêve, et où des visionnaires posaient les premières pierres d'une révolution technologique ? Dans cet épisode, nous explorons l'histoire fascinante de Handspring, cette startup audacieuse qui a osé imaginer, bien avant Apple et l'iPhone, que nos téléphones deviendraient bien plus que des outils pour appeler. Nous vous racontons une aventure pleine de rebondissements : des débuts prometteurs avec le Palm Pilot, à l'expérimentation modulaire du slot Springboard, jusqu'aux défis titanesques face à un marché encore hésitant. Vous découvrirez comment une équipe soudée, presque comme une famille, a innové avec passion malgré des ressources limitées et une industrie parfois sceptique.Qu'est-ce qui distingue Handspring des géants comme Apple ? Pourquoi certaines idées révolutionnaires échouent-elles quand d'autres triomphent ? Ce podcast ne se contente pas de raconter une histoire : il vous invite à réfléchir aux enjeux de l'innovation, à l'importance du timing et au rôle de la culture d'entreprise dans la réussite (ou l'échec). Bien que Handspring ait disparu, ses concepts continuent de définir la manière dont nous interagissons avec la technologie aujourd'hui. Ce n'est pas seulement une histoire d'échecs ; c'est celle d'une vision trop en avance sur son temps, et d'un héritage qui inspire encore les leaders de l'industrie.Ce test rudimentaire a confirmé l'intérêt potentiel du produit, le motivant à investir dans un prototype réel, qui a finalement conduit au lancement du Palm Pilot. Ce PDA est devenu un produit révolutionnaire, non seulement pour son succès commercial mais aussi pour avoir inspiré la conception des smartphones modernes. L'approche visionnaire de Jeff Hawkins incarne les principes modernes d'innovation, notamment l'importance de valider un concept avant d'investir massivement. Le Palm Pilot a également marqué l'histoire en établissant un standard de conception et en prouvant l'importance d'adapter la technologie à des besoins simples et concrets. Pas d'abonnement payant chaque mois pour le podcast, mais une offre premium pour les entrepreneurs de passer un moment pendant l'enregistrement avec nous, puis d'échanger avec l'invitée en posant vos questions après l'enregistrement. Chaque personne reçoit un NFT unique du moment ! https://plus.acast.com/s/135-grammes. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Pour conclure notre 6ᵉ saison podcast, nous plongeons dans l'histoire fascinante de Palm, précurseur de nos smartphones,Et si nous plongions dans une époque où les smartphones n'étaient qu'un rêve, et où des visionnaires posaient les premières pierres d'une révolution technologique ? Dans cet épisode, nous explorons l'histoire fascinante de Handspring, cette startup audacieuse qui a osé imaginer, bien avant Apple et l'iPhone, que nos téléphones deviendraient bien plus que des outils pour appeler. Nous vous racontons une aventure pleine de rebondissements : des débuts prometteurs avec le Palm Pilot, à l'expérimentation modulaire du slot Springboard, jusqu'aux défis titanesques face à un marché encore hésitant. Vous découvrirez comment une équipe soudée, presque comme une famille, a innové avec passion malgré des ressources limitées et une industrie parfois sceptique.Qu'est-ce qui distingue Handspring des géants comme Apple ? Pourquoi certaines idées révolutionnaires échouent-elles quand d'autres triomphent ? Ce podcast ne se contente pas de raconter une histoire : il vous invite à réfléchir aux enjeux de l'innovation, à l'importance du timing et au rôle de la culture d'entreprise dans la réussite (ou l'échec). Bien que Handspring ait disparu, ses concepts continuent de définir la manière dont nous interagissons avec la technologie aujourd'hui. Ce n'est pas seulement une histoire d'échecs ; c'est celle d'une vision trop en avance sur son temps, et d'un héritage qui inspire encore les leaders de l'industrie.Ce test rudimentaire a confirmé l'intérêt potentiel du produit, le motivant à investir dans un prototype réel, qui a finalement conduit au lancement du Palm Pilot. Ce PDA est devenu un produit révolutionnaire, non seulement pour son succès commercial mais aussi pour avoir inspiré la conception des smartphones modernes. L'approche visionnaire de Jeff Hawkins incarne les principes modernes d'innovation, notamment l'importance de valider un concept avant d'investir massivement. Le Palm Pilot a également marqué l'histoire en établissant un standard de conception et en prouvant l'importance d'adapter la technologie à des besoins simples et concrets. Pas d'abonnement payant chaque mois pour le podcast, mais une offre premium pour les entrepreneurs de passer un moment pendant l'enregistrement avec nous, puis d'échanger avec l'invitée en posant vos questions après l'enregistrement. Chaque personne reçoit un NFT unique du moment ! https://plus.acast.com/s/135-grammes. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Jerry Kolber really knows his GTD. He began his journey with a paper system, then was an early adopter of the Palm Pilot and later Palm devices, using Life Balance. He has steadily upgraded his system with newer apps, most recently OmniFocus and Things. With each of these tools, he has maintained a deep commitment to refining his approach to productivity and mindfulness. That has helped with his busy career in media production, including work on groundbreaking shows like "Sex and the City," "Queer Eye," and as the Emmy-nominated creator of "Brain Games" and "Brainchild." You can read his bio and find out more about his projects on the Atomic Entertainment website. You can watch this entire conversation from August 2024 in its entirety over at GTD Connect. -- This audio is one of many available at GTD Connect, a learning space and community hub for all things GTD. Join GTD practitioners from around the world in learning, sharing, and developing the skills for stress-free productivity. Sign up for a free guest pass Learn about membership options Knowing how to get the right things done is a key to success. It's easy to get distracted and overwhelmed. Stay focused and increase productivity with GTD Connect—a subscription-based online learning center from the David Allen Company. GTD Connect gives you access to a wealth of multimedia content designed to help you stay on track and deepen your awareness of principles you can also learn in GTD courses, coaching, and by reading the Getting Things Done book. You'll also get the support and encouragement of a thriving global community of people you won't find anywhere else. If you already know you'd like to join, click here to choose from monthly or annual options. If you'd like to try GTD Connect free for 14 days, read on for what's included and how to get your free trial. During your 14-day free trial, you will have access to: Recorded webinars with David Allen & the certified coaches and trainers on a wide range of productivity topics GTD Getting Started & Refresher Series to reinforce the fundamentals you may have learned in a GTD course, coaching, or book Extensive audio, video, and document library Slice of GTD Life series to see how others are making GTD stick David Allen's exclusive interviews with people in his network all over the world Lively members-only discussion forums sharing ideas, tips, and tricks Note: GTD Connect is designed to reinforce your learning, and we also recommend that you take a course, get individual coaching, or read the Getting Things Done book. Ready to start your free trial?

Send us a textIn this episode, the (REDACTED) team are joined by Tim Perry, a veteran in the design and consulting world with over 25 years of experience. Having worked with brands like Nokia, Procter & Gamble, plus Logitech to name a few. Tim has made it his mission to teach designers commercial skills, how to set consultancy rates, how to manage client relationships and all the other hidden arts designers need to succeed.  Hosted by Lucy Bishop and Fraser Greenfield with guest, Tim Perry.—————————————————————-TP Consulting  Tim Perry - Innovation & Design Strategy | LinkedInFollow Tim on Instagram | @timperryconsulting Intro to UX: the Norman door Vancouver has banned the doorknob. Is the rest of Canada next? | National Post Farewell the Round doorknob: Is Vancouver's ban a sign of things to come for Australia? | Zanda Architectural Hardware What Happened to Palm Pilot? | illumy Ballmer Laughs at iPhone | YouTube Turning Losing Into Winning | TP Consulting —————————————————————- To follow the show, get in contact with us via email & more head to: https://linktr.ee/redactedpod

It's the Halloween edition of the Light Reading extra podcast, where our editors and an esteemed guest walk through the digital cemetery looking for gadget zombies and technologies that still haunt us. Palm Pilots, Secret Senders, weird Wi-Fi phones and Slacker music are some things that creep up in this freewheeling conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City are settling into their season and letting us get to know the new gals, one of which is married to a Palm Pilot legend, and the other is possibly instagram official after her Osmond boyfriend posted a pic of them together at a Costco. Over on Orange County Housewives, the drinks are flowing and accusations flying at Katie's dinner party. RHOC Recap: 44:16ishORDER DANNY'S NEW BOOK: https://linktr.ee/jolliestbunchDANNY'S (OTHER) BOOK: Smarturl.it/unrememberTwitter: @DannyPellegrinoInstagram: @DannyPellegrinoYouTube: www.YouTube.com/DannyPellegrino1TikTok: @DannyPellegrinoPatreon: www.Patreon.com/EverythingIconic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We got a look into Bronwyn's house and I'm so delighted by her fresh asthetic to the HW franchise! Emily Dorezas and I discuss Palm Pilots, Shakshuka, Bath Bomb Lab, Costco and Cosby. For more Drama, Darling, and tons of content, subscribe to my Patreon: http://Patreon.com/dramadarlingGet 15% off OUAI with the promo code DRAMA at: TheOuai.comGet 15% off OneSkin with promo code DRAMA at:https://www.oneskin.co/Get 15% off LolaVie with the Promo Code DRAMA at:https://www.lolavie.com/dramaDrama, Darling with Amy Phillips is sponsored by BetterHelp Get 10% off your first month at: Betterhelp.com/DD

In addition to the in-depth conversations with each guest on our show, we have a lightning round segment where we ask each guest to respond on the spot without seeing the questions in advance. This week, we welcome back Julie Channing, a seasoned marketing leader with an impressive portfolio spanning Levi's, Google Nest, and Allbirds, to hear her alternative career choices, next travel destinations, favorite food, and much more.A brand builder at heart with a digital backbone, Julie Channing has spent nearly 25 years building and nurturing beloved world-class brands and marketing teams. She spent the first half of her career on the agency side, predominantly working at AKQA where she led client relationships with Gap Inc., McDonald's and Palm Pilot. Her brand-side experience spans legacy businesses to early stage start-ups across a breadth of industries, including Levi's, Google Nest and Allbirds – where she was the first hire and responsible for building the brand and marketing organization from the ground up. Today, Julie has her own marketing consultancy and advisory practice, working with consumer-led, purpose-motivated brands looking to scale their business and elevate their team.Episode References:Julie Channing | LinkedInRei Inamoto | InstagramRei Inamoto | XI&CO | Corporate SiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What do lizards have to do with product growth? In this episode, Gojko Adzic reveals how unusual user behaviors can unlock massive opportunities for product innovation. Discover the four steps to mastering "Lizard Optimization" and learn how you can turn strange user actions into game-changing insights. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, host Brian Milner chats with Gojko Adzic about his new book, Lizard Optimization. Gojko explains the concept of finding product growth signals in strange user behaviors, sharing examples where unexpected user actions led to product breakthroughs. He outlines a four-step process for optimizing products by learning, zeroing in, removing obstacles, and double-checking. Gojko also discusses helpful tools like session recorders and observability tools that can enhance product development by uncovering and addressing unique user behaviors. References and resources mentioned in the show: Gojko Adzic 50% OFF Lizard Optimization by Gojko Adzic Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes Trustworthy Online Experiments by Ron Kohavi Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Gojko Adzic is an award-winning software consultant and author, specializing in agile and lean quality improvement, with expertise in impact mapping, agile testing, and behavior-driven development. A frequent speaker at global software conferences, Gojko is also a co-creator of MindMup and Narakeet, and has helped companies worldwide enhance their software delivery, from large financial institutions to innovative startups. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today, very special guest we have with us. have Mr. Goiko Atshich with us. I hope I said that correctly. Did I say it correctly? Close enough. Okay. Well, welcome in, Goiko. Glad to have you here. Gojko (00:15) Close enough, close enough. Brian (00:21) Very, very, very happy to have Goiko with us. If you're not familiar with Goiko's name, you probably are familiar with some of his work. One of the things I was telling him that we teach in our advanced product owner class every time is impact mapping, which is a tool that Goiko has written about and kind of come up with on his own as well. Gojko (00:21) Thank you very much for inviting me. Brian (00:47) But today we're having him on because he has a new book coming out called Lizard Optimization, Unlock Product Growth by Engaging Long Tail Users. And I really wanted to talk to him about that and help him explain, have him explain to us a little bit about this idea, this new concept that his new book is about. So, Goiko, let's talk about it. Lizard Optimization, in a nutshell, what do you mean by that? What is it? Gojko (01:14) We're going to jump into that, but I just need to correct one of the things you said. I think it's very, very important. You said I came up with impact mapping and I didn't. I just wrote a popular book about that. And it's very important to credit people who actually came up with that. It's kind of the in -use design agency in Sweden. And I think, you know, they should get the credit for it. I literally just wrote a popular book. Brian (01:19) Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha. Apologies for that incorrect. Thank you for making that correction. So lizard optimization. Gojko (01:44) So, lizard optimization. Good. So, lizard optimization is an idea to find signals for product ideas and product development ideas in strange user behaviors. When you meet somebody who does something you completely do not understand, why on earth somebody would do something like that? Brian (02:03) Okay. Gojko (02:11) and it looks like it's not done by humans, it looks like it's done by somebody who follows their own lizard logic, using stuff like that as signals to improve our products. Not just for lizards, but for everybody. So the idea came from a very explosive growth phase for one of the products I'm working on, where it... had lots of people doing crazy things I could never figure out why they were doing it. For example, one of the things the tool does is it helps people create videos from PowerPoints. You put some kind of your voiceover in the speaker notes, the tool creates a video by using text to speech engines to create voiceover from the speaker notes, aligns everything and it's all kind of for you. People kept creating blank videos and paying me for this. I was thinking about why on earth would somebody be creating blank videos and it must be a bug and if it's a bug then they want their money back and they'll complain. So I chased up a few of these people and I tried to kind of understand what's going on because I originally thought we have a bug in the development pipeline for the videos. So... I started asking like, you know, I'm using some, I don't know, Google slides or, you know, keynote or whatever to produce PowerPoints. Maybe there's a bug how we read that. And the person, no, no, we, know, official Microsoft PowerPoint. They said, well, can you please open the PowerPoint you uploaded? Do you see anything on the slides when you open it? And the person, no, it's blank. Right? Okay, so it's blank for you as well. I said, yeah. So. Brian (03:48) Yeah. Gojko (03:54) What's going on? so what I've done is through UX interviews and iterating with users and research, we've made it very, very easy to do advanced configuration on text -to -speech. And it was so much easier than the alternative things that people were creating blank PowerPoints just to use the text -to -speech engines so they can then extract the audio track from it. Brian (03:54) Yeah, why? Gojko (04:23) and then use that and it was this whole mess of obstacles I was putting in front of people to get the good audio. It wasn't the original intention of the tool. It wasn't the original value, but people were getting unintended value from it. And then I ended up building just a very simple screen for people to upload the Word document instead of PowerPoints. And it was much faster for users to do that. A month later, there was many audio files being built as videos. Two months later, audio... production overtook video production. then at the moment, people are building many, many more audio files than video files on the platform. So it was an incredible growth because of this kind of crazy insight of what people were doing. kind of usually, at least kind of in the products I worked on before, when you have somebody abusing the product, product management fight against it. There's a wonderful story about this in... Founders at work a book by Jessica Livingston and she talks about this kind of group of super smart people in late 90s who Came up with a very very efficient Cryptography algorithm and a way to compute the cryptography so they can run it on low -power devices like Paul pilots Paul pilots were you know like mobile phones, but in late 90s and Then they had to figure out, how do we monetize this? Why would anybody want to do this? So they came up with the idea to do money transfer pumping, Palm pilots, you know, why not? And kind of the built a website. This was the late nineties as a way of just demoing this software to people who didn't have a Palm pilot device next to them. The idea was that you'd kind of see it on the website, learn about it, then maybe download the Palm pilot app and use it in anger. People kept just using the website, they're not downloading the Palm Pilot app. So the product management really wasn't happy. And they were trying to push people from the website to the Palm Pilot app. were trying to, they were fighting against people using this for money transfer on the web and even prohibiting them from using the logo and advertising it. They had this whole thing where nobody could explain why users were using the website because it was a demo thing. It was not finished. It was not sexy. It was just silly. And Jessica kind of talks to one of these people who insists that it was totally inexplicable. Nobody could understand it. But then a bit later, they realized that the website had one and half million users and that the Pongpilot app had 12 ,000 users. So they kind of decided, well, that's where the product is really. And that's like today, people know them as PayPal. They're one of the biggest payment processes in the world because kind of, you know, they realized this is where the product is going. And I think in many, many companies, people Brian (07:03) Ha ha. Gojko (07:18) stumble upon these things as happy accidents. And I think there's a lot more to it. We can deliberately optimize products by looking for unintended usage and not fighting it, just not fighting it. just understand this is what people are getting as value. And I think for me as a solo product founder and developer and product manager on it, One of the really interesting things is when you have somebody engaging with your product in an unexpected way, most of the difficult work for that user is already done. That person knows about you, they're on your website or they're using your product, the marketing and acquisition work is done. But something's preventing them from achieving their goals or they're achieving some value that you did not really know that they're going to achieve. you know, that's something the product can do to help them and remove these obstacles to success. So that's kind of what lizard optimization is making this process more systematic rather than relying on happy accidents. And by making it more systematic, then we can help product management not fight it and skip this whole phase of trying to fight against our users and claim that users are stupid or non -technical or... They don't understand the product, but they're trying to figure out, well, that's what the real goals are. And then following that. Brian (08:47) That's awesome. So the pivot, right? The pivot from here's what we thought our problem was we were solving to now here's what we're actually solving and we should organize around this actual problem, right? Gojko (09:02) or here's what we're going to solve additionally. This is the problem we've solved, but hey, there's this problem as well. And then the product can grow by solving multiple problems for people and solving related problems and solving it for different groups of people, for example. And that's the really interesting thing because I think if you have a product that's already doing something well for your users and a subset of them are misusing it in some way, then kind of... Brian (09:04) Yeah. Gojko (09:30) The product might already be optimized for the majority of users, but there might be a new market somewhere else. So there might be a different market where we can help kind of a different group of users and then the product can grow. Brian (09:43) Yeah, I like to focus on the user. There's an exercise that we'll do in one of our product owner classes where we have a fake product that is a smart refrigerator. And one of the exercises we try to get them to brainstorm the different kinds of users that they might have for it. And one of the things that always comes out in that class is as they're going through and trying to describe the types of users, they inevitably hit to this crossroads where they start to decide Well, yes, we're thinking of this as a home product, something for people to use in their homes. But then the idea crosses their mind, well, what about commercial kitchens? What about people who might use this in another setting? And it's always an interesting conversation to say, well, now you've got a strategic choice to make, because you can target both. You can target one. You can say, we're ignoring the other and we're only going in this direction. So to me, I think that's kind of one of the interesting crossroad points is to say, how do I know when it's time to not just say, great, we have this other customer segment that we didn't know about, but actually we should start to pivot towards that customer segment and start to really target them. Gojko (11:03) Yeah, think that's a fundamental question of product development, isn't it? Do you keep true to your vision even if it's not coming out or if something else is there that's kind more important than I think? For me, there's a couple of aspects to that. One is, laser focus is really important to launch a product. You can't launch a product by targeting... the whole market and targeting a niche type, figuring out, you know, user personas, figuring out like really, really, this is the product who we think the product, this is the group who we think the product is for and giving them a hundred percent of what they need is much better than giving 2 % to everybody because then the product is irrelevant. But then to grow the product, we need to kind of grow the user base as well. And I think one of the things that... is interesting to look at and this comes from a book called Lean Analytics. It's one of my kind of favorite product management books is to look at the frequency and urgency of usage. If you have a group that's kind of using your product, a subgroup that's using your product very frequently compared to everybody else, that might be kind of the place where you want to go. The more frequently, the more urgently people reach for your product when they have this problem. the more likely they are going to be a good market for it. with kind of another product that I've launched in 2013, we originally thought it's going to be a product for professional users. And we aimed at the professional users. And then we found that a subcategory that we didn't really expect, were kind of teachers and children in schools. we're using it a lot more frequently than professional users. And then we started simplifying the user interface significantly so that it can be used by children. And it's a very, very popular tool in schools now. We are not fighting against other professional tools. We were kind of really one of the first in the education market there. And it's still a very popular tool in the education market because we figured a subgroup that's using it very frequently. Brian (13:14) Hmm. Yeah, that's awesome. How do you know when, you know, what kind of threshold do you look for to determine that, this is, because, you know, in your book, you're talking about, you know, behaviors that are not normal, right? People using your product in a way that you didn't anticipate. And what kind of threshold do you look for to that says, hey, it's worth investigating this? You know, I've got this percentage or this number of people who are using it in this strange way. At what point do you chase that down? Gojko (13:49) I think it's wrong to look at the percentages there. I think it's wrong to look at the percentages because then you get into the game of trying to justify economically helping 0 .1 % of the users. And that's never going to happen because what I like about this is an idea from Microsoft's Inclusive Design and the work of Kat Holmes who wrote a book called Mismatch on Brian (13:52) Okay. Gojko (14:17) assistive technologies and inclusive design for disabled people. And she talks about how it's never ever ever going to be economically justified to optimize a product to help certain disabilities because there's just not enough of them. And there's a lovely example from Microsoft where, Microsoft Inclusive Design Handbook where they talk about three types of, Brian (14:34) Yeah. Gojko (14:44) disabilities, one are permanent. So you have like people without an arm or something like that. And I'm going to kind of throw some numbers out now, order of magnitude stuff. I have these details in the book and there's kind of the micro -inclusive design handbook. Let's say at the moment, the 16 ,000 people in the U .S. without one arm or with a disabled arm. And then you have these kind of situational disabilities where because of an occupation like you have a bartender who needs to carry something all the time or a worker who does it, one arm is not available and they only have one arm to work on and this temporary like a mother carrying a child or something like that. So the other two groups are order of magnitude 20 -30 million. We're not, by making the software work well with one hand, we're not helping 16 ,000 people, we are helping 50 million people. But you don't know that you're helping 50 million people if you're just thinking about like 16 ,000. I think they have this kind of, one of the key ideas of inclusive design is solve for one, kind of help, design for one, but solve for many. So we are actually helping many, many people there. So think when you figure out that somebody is doing something really strange with your product, you're not helping just that one person. Brian (15:45) Right, right. Hmm. Gojko (16:13) you're helping a whole class of your users by making the software better, removing the obstacles to success. this is where I, you know, going back to the PowerPoint thing I mentioned, once we started removing obstacles for people to build the audios quickly, lots of other people started using the product and people started using the product in a different way. And I think this is a lovely example of what Bruce Torazzini talks about is the complexity paradox because He's a famous UX designer and he talks about how once you give people a product, their behavior changes as a result of having the product. So the UX research we've done before there is a product or there is a feature is not completely relevant, but it's a changed context because he talks about people have a certain amount of time to do a task. And then when they have a tool to complete the task faster, they can take on a more complicated task or they can take on an additional task or do something else. I think removing obstacles to use a success is really important. Not because we're helping 0 .1 % of people who we don't understand, but because we can then improve the product for everybody. And I think that's kind of the magic of lizard optimization in a sense, where if we find these things where somebody's really getting stuck. but if we help them not get stuck, then other people will use the product in a much better way. And I think this is, know, the name lizard optimization comes from this article by Scott Alexander, who talks about the lizard man's constant in research. And the article talks about his experiences with a survey that combined some demographic and psychological data. So they were looking at where you live and what your nationality is and what gender you are and then how you respond to certain psychological questions. he said, like there's about 4 % of the answers they could not account for. And one person wrote American is gender. Several people listed Martian as nationality and things like that. some of these, he says some of these things will be people who didn't really understand the question. they were distracted, they were doing something else, or they understood the question but they filled in the wrong box because, know, the thick thumbs and small screens, or they were kind of malicious and just, you know, wanted to see what happens. when you kind of add these people together, they're not an insignificant group. kind of, he says 4%. And if... we can help these people, at least some of these people, and say reduce churn by 1%. That can compound growth. Reducing churn, keeping people around for longer is an incredible way to kind of unlock growth. going back to what we were talking about, some people might be getting stuck because they don't understand the instructions. Some people might be getting stuck because they're using the product in a way you didn't expect. And some people might just like not have the mental capacity to use it the way you expected them to be used. But if we can help these people along, then normal users can use it much, easier. And you mentioned a smart fridge. I still remember there was this one wonderful bug report we had for my other product, which is a collaboration tool. we had a bug report a while ago. that the software doesn't work when it's loaded on a fridge. And it's like, well, it was never intended to be loaded on a fridge. I have no idea how you loaded it on a fridge. It's a mind mapping diagramming tool. It's intended to be used on large screens. Where does a fridge come in? And then we started talking to this person. This was before the whole kind of COVID and work from home disaster. The user was a busy mother and she was kind of trying to collaborate with her colleagues while making breakfast. breakfast for kids and kind of running around the kitchen she wasn't able to kind of pay attention to the laptop or a phone but her fridge had a screen so she loaded the software on the fridge and was able to kind of pay attention to collaboration there and you know we of course didn't optimize the software to run on fridges that's ridiculous but we realized that some people will be using it without a keyboard and without a mouse and then we kind of restructured the toolbar, we made it so that you can use it on devices that don't have a keyboard and then the whole tablet thing exploded and now you get completely different users that don't have keyboards and things like that. I think that's where I think is looking at percentages is a losing game because then you start saying, but 0 .1 % of people use this. But yeah, I think lizard optimization is about using these signals to improve the products for everybody. Brian (21:30) That's a great example. I love that example because you're absolutely right. You're not trying to necessarily solve that one problem because you don't anticipate there's going to be a lot of people who are going to want to run that software on a fridge. However, the takeaway you had from that of, we can do this for people who don't have a keyboard or a mouse. There's another way that they might operate this that could apply to lots of different devices and lots of different scenarios. Now we're talking about a much bigger audience. Now we're talking about opening this up to larger segments of the population. I love that. I think that's a great example. I know you talk about that there's kind of a process for this. Help us understand. You don't have to give away the whole candy story here from the book, but help us kind of understand in broad, terms what kind of process people follow to try to chase these things down. Gojko (22:26) So there's like a four step process that's crystallized for me. And the book is kind of more as a, like a proposal or a process. It's something that works for me and I'm hoping that other people will try it out like that. So it might not necessarily stay like that in a few years if we talk again. And I've narrowed it down to four steps and kind of the four steps start with letters L, Z, R and D. Lizard. And it's kind of so learn how people are misusing your products, zero in on one area, on one behavior change you want to improve, then remove obstacles to use a success and then double check that what you've done actually created the impact you expected to make. I think kind of when we look at people who follow their own logic or people who follow some lizard logic you don't really understand, by definition they're doing something strange. your idea of helping them might not necessarily be effective or it might not go all the way or it might. So double checking at the end that people are actually now doing what you expect them to do or doing something better is really, really, really important. And then using signals from that to improve the kind of feedback loop is critical. I had this one case where people were getting stuck on a payment format entering tax details and The form was reasonably well explained. There was an example in the forum how to enter your tax ID and people were constantly getting stuck. A small percentage of people was getting stuck on it. However, I don't want to lose a small percentage of people that want to pay me on the payment form. So I thought, well, how about if I remove that field from there? I speed it up for everybody and then I can guide them later into entering the tax details to generate an invoice. I thought that was a brilliant idea. tested it with a few users. Everybody loved it, so I released it. And then a week later, I realized that, yes, I've sold it for the people that were getting confused, but I've ended up confusing a totally different group of people that expects the tax fields there. So the net effect was negative. then I went back to the original form. so there's lots of these things where people don't necessarily behave the way you think they will. Brian (24:38) Hahaha. Gojko (24:48) Ron Kohavi has a wonderful book about that called Trustworthy Online Experiments. And he has data from Slack, from Microsoft, from Booking .com and... The numbers are depressive. on one hand, the numbers range from 10 to 30, 40 % success rate for people's ideas. And if leading companies like that do things that don't pan out two thirds of the time, then we have to be honest building our products and say, well, maybe this idea is going to work out, maybe not. Brian (25:03) Hahaha. Wow. Gojko (25:30) the more experimental the population is, the more risky that is. think monitoring and capturing weird user behaviors, capturing errors helps you understand that people are getting stuck. as you said, you don't want to follow everybody. There's going to be a lot of noise there. We need to extract signals from the noise. That's what the second step is about, focusing on one specific thing we want to improve. Then, try to remove obstacles and then double -checking that we've actually removed them. That's the four steps. And there's like a shorter version of all the four steps. It's easier to remember. It's listen alert, zooming, rescue them, and then double check at the end. that's again, LZRD. Brian (26:13) That's awesome. Yeah, I love the process and I love the kind of steps there. Are there tools that you recommend for this that are easier to try to determine these things or chase them down or are there tools that you find are more helpful? Gojko (26:32) So there's lots of tools today for things like A -B testing and looking at experiments and things that are very helpful to do this scale. And it's kind of especially useful for the last step. In terms of kind of focusing and things like that, the five stages of growth from the linear analytics are a good tool. Impact mapping is a good tool. Kind of any focusing product management technique that says, well, these are the business goals we're working on now, or these are the kind of user goals we're working on now. out of, know, 50 lizards we found last week, these three lizards seem to be kind of in that area. And for the first step, spotting when people are getting stuck, there's a bunch of tools that are interesting, like session recorders for web products. There's one from Microsoft called Clarity that's free. There's another called Full Story that's quite expensive. There's a couple of open source one, one is packaged within Matomo analytics application. There's a bunch of these other things. Any kind of observability or monitoring tool is also very useful for this because we can spot when people are getting stuck. One of the things I found particularly helpful is logging all user errors. When a user does something to cause an error condition in a product, the product of course tells them like, know, an error happened. But then... logging it and analyzing that information in the back is really critical. for something like that, people sometimes use web analytics tools or any kind of product analytics. I think what's going to be interesting in the next couple of years, and I think if people start doing this more, is we'll see. more like these technical exception analytics tracking tools mixed with this because most of the product analytics are showing people what they expect to see, not what they don't expect to see. And I'll just give you an example of this way. was really helpful. So I've mentioned the screen where people can upload the Word documents. Occasionally people would select weird file types. So they'll select images, they'll select, I don't know, what else. Brian (28:31) Yeah. Gojko (28:49) Sometimes I guess that's a result of, know, a fat finger press or somebody not selecting the right thing. I have a not insignificant percentage of users every day that try to upload Android package files into a text -to -speech reader. Android package files and application files, I don't know what the right way is to read out an Android application. My best guess is people are doing that. as a, you know, these things where you drop a USB in front of an office and somebody kind of mistakenly plugs it in. So maybe they're hoping that I'll know the Android application on my phone just because they've uploaded it. I don't know, but a small percentage of users was trying to upload files that had SRT and VTT extensions, which are subtitle files. And they were not supported, but Brian (29:31) Yeah. Gojko (29:45) I kept getting information that people are uploading those types of files. And then I said, well, this is interesting because it's a text to speech system. People are uploading subtitle files, there's text in, so why don't I just ignore the timestamps and read the text? I can do that. And I started supporting that. And then some people started complaining that, well, the voice is reading it slower than the subtitles. I said, well, yes, because... Brian (30:11) Ha Gojko (30:12) You know, you're uploading subtitles that were read by an actor in a movie. This is a voice that's reading it at their speed. And then we started talking and it turns out that these people were doing it for corporate educational videos where they have a video in English, they need it in French, German, Spanish and all the else, but they don't want to kind of re -edit the video. They just want an alternate audio track. Okay, I mean, I have the timestamps, we can speed up or slow down the audio, it's not a big deal. And we've done that and this was one of the most profitable features ever. Like a very small percentage of the users need it, but those that need it produce hundreds of thousands of audio files because they translate the corporate training videos. And now, you know, we're getting into that numbers game. If I said, you know, there's like 0 .1 % of people are uploading subtitle files. Brian (30:58) Yeah. Gojko (31:07) then it doesn't matter. if we start thinking about, this is potentially interesting use case, it creates growth on its own because then people find you. And I think my product was the first that was actually doing synchronous subtitles. Competitors are doing it now as well. But it opened the massive, massive market for us. And people, you know, I got there by monitoring user errors, by, you know, the fact that somebody uploaded a file that had an unsupported extension. That was our insight. Brian (31:38) Wow, that's really cool. That's a great story. This is fascinating stuff. And it makes me want to dive deeper into the book and read through it again. But I really appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us, Goiko. This is good stuff. Again, the book is called, Lizard Optimization, Unlock Product Growth by Engaging Long Tail Users. And if I'm right, we talked about this a little bit before. We're going to offer a discount to to the listeners, Gojko (32:07) Yes, we will give you a listen as a 50 % discount on the ebook. the ebook is available from Lean Pub. If you get it from the discount URL that I'll give you, then you'll get a 50 % discount immediately. Brian (32:24) Awesome. So we'll put that in our show notes. If you're interested in that, you can find the show notes. That's a great deal, 50 % off the book and it's good stuff. well, I just, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for making time and coming on and talking this through your book. Gojko (32:40) Thank you, it was lovely to chat to you.

A collaboration between interior designers and architects…seems like a match made in heaven, right? Today's guest, Gisela Schmoll walks us through the nitty gritty on creating those relationships - and keeping them. Stay tuned! Gisela Schmoll, a California licensed architect and industrial designer, is the luminary force behind Gisela Schmoll Architect, PC (GSA). With a multifaceted career that spans new residential projects and remodels, product design, and the iconic PalmPilot, Gisela crafts spaces that redefine the boundaries of design. Rooted in collaboration, GSA believes in the transformative power of good design, where the experience of being in a space becomes a profound journey. ***

Interview with Steve Leininger, Designer of the TRS-80- Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   0                                 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec              Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec              Intro 9 min 03 sec             bumper - Peter Bartlett  9 min 11 sec              New Acquisitions 17 min 11 sec             bumper - Ian Mavric  17 min 19 sec            Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 53 sec            bumper - Myles Wakeham 21 min 58 sec            Meet the Listeners 28 min 37 sec            Interview with Steve Leininger 1 hr 20 min 29 sec    Closing This particular episode has a special meaning for me, personally.  You see, as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy/Radio Shack was my first home computer (even though my first programmable device was a TI58C calculator).  I recall the joy and wonder of playing with the machine (it wasn't called the Model I at that time; just the TRS-80; as it was the first of the line) in the local Radio Shack store in 1977 and 1978 and the incredible rush of owning one in 1979; after my wife purchased a Level I BASIC machine for me as a gift for college graduation.  That machine only had 4K of RAM and 4K of ROM (Tiny BASIC), as it was the entry-level machine, but it was a thing of beauty.  I felt like I could do anything with that machine, even though my justification to the wife was that we could track our checkbook and recipes on it.  I think she knew better, but went along with it anyway.  The computer came with everything you needed, including a tape drive and black-and-white monitor, which was good for a poor recent college graduate.  I quickly, as finances allowed with my new engineering job, upgraded the computer to 16K of RAM and Level II BASIC (a powerful Microsoft 12K ROM BASIC) and enjoyed the machine immensely, even using it in my job supporting the build-out of a new nuclear power plant back in those days. I eventually sold off the Model I, in favor of a computer that had color graphics and sound (the Atari 800), but have always continued to have a huge soft spot for that first computer. When I started the Floppy Days Podcast, one of the people that has always been on my bucket list to interview has been Steve Leininger, who, along with Don French while at Radio Shack designed the TRS-80 Model I, among other things.  A few years back, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Steve for the Trash Talk Podcast, when I was co-hosting that show, but an ill-timed trip to the hospital for my son meant that I was not able to participate.  While my son's health is of paramount importance, of course, I always wanted to get another chance to talk with Steve.  Not only was Steve the designer of one of my favorite home computers of all time, but he also was a fellow Purdue University Boilermaker, who graduated just a year before I started there.  The thought that I could have met Steve on campus if I'd been there just a year earlier was very intriguing to me, and fueled my desire to talk with Steve even more. In the last episode (#141 with Paul Terrell) I talked about VCF Southeast in Atlanta in July of 2024.  After I had made plans to attend that show, I was flabbergasted to find out that Earl Baugh, one of the show organizers, had somehow managed to contact Steve and get him to come to the show!  I have to thank Earl for the work he did to make that happen.  Here was my opportunity to certainly meet Steve, and perhaps even talk with him!  I prepped some questions, just in case I was able to get an interview. While at the show, I met Steve and asked him if he would be willing to do a short interview for Floppy Days while at the show.  Amazingly, he was very kind and agreed to do that.  We found a quiet room and I was able to talk with Steve for almost an hour.  This show contains that interview. Another note on this: as you'll hear in the interview, the connection to Steve is even stronger than I realized!  He not only went to my alma mater, but also grew up in some of the same towns that myself and my wife did.  We personally peripherally know some of his relatives.  Things like this really do make you think the world is small! One other, final, note: This interview even ties into the recent and continuing interviews I've been publishing with Paul Terrell.  As you'll hear in upcoming episodes with Paul, and in this interview with Steve, Steve actually worked at the Byte Shop before getting the first job with Tandy, and in fact his work at the Byte Shop directly led to him getting hired by Tandy to design the Model I. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed getting it.  I am overjoyed I finally got the chance to talk to one of my vintage computer heroes, Steve Leininger! New Acquisitions C64 Sketch and Design by Tony Lavioe - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4dZGtt2  Compute's Mapping the IBM PC and PC Junior by Russ Davies - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3yQmrlP  The Best of SoftSide - Atari Edition - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-best-of-softside-atari-edition  ZX81+38 - https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38  magnifying glasses - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4cBQYla  Japanese power adapter - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3XjeUW5  Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/  Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub  Interview Steve's Workbench at radioshack.com (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/19980528232503/http://www.radioshack.com/sw/swb/   Transcript of Interview-Only Randy Kindig: All right. I really appreciate your time today, Steve.  Steve Leininger: Thank you for having me, Randy.  Randy Kindig: So let's start out maybe just by talking about where You live today, and what you do? Steve Leininger: I live in Woodland Park, Colorado, which is 8, 500 feet, right out in front of we got Pike's Peak out our front window. Randy Kindig: Oh. Oh, that's nice.  Steve Leininger: Yeah we get snow up through about June, and then it starts again about September. But it's not as much snow as you would imagine.  Randy Kindig: I've got property in Montana, and I lived out there for a couple of years,  Steve Leininger: so there you go.  Randy Kindig: We probably got more snow up there.  Steve Leininger: Hey, you asked what I did.  I'm involved with Boy Scouts, a maker space with a church based ministry firewood ministry, actually. Some people call it a fire bank. So we provide firewood to people who can't afford that.  Randy Kindig: Oh.  Steve Leininger: So it's like a food bank, but with fire, firewood.  Randy Kindig: I've never heard of that. Steve Leininger: We source the firewood. We cut it down and we split it. Lots of volunteers involved; pretty big project.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay, cool. I also wanted to mention, I'm a fellow Boilermaker.  Steve Leininger: There you go.  Randy Kindig: I know you went to Purdue, right?  Steve Leininger: I did go to Purdue.  Randy Kindig: Did you ever get back there?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, and in fact they've got a couple learning spaces named after us. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay.  Steve Leininger: We've been donating to our respective alma maters. My wife went to IU.  Randy Kindig: Oh, is that right? Oh my.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, oh my and me. Yeah, the fact that the family who's all IU, their family tolerated me was, quite a remarkable thing.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  I find it interesting because I think you graduated in 76, is that right? Steve Leininger: 74.  Randy Kindig: Oh, 74.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. I was there from … Randy Kindig: Oh yeah, you actually were gone before I started.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I was there from 70 to 73. 70 to 70 four. When I graduated in four years, I got both my bachelor's and master's degree by going through the summer. I managed to pass out of the first year classes because of some of the high school stuff yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. I started in 75, so I guess we just missed each other.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. You're the new kids coming in.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. . So I, I found that interesting and I wanted to say that. Do you keep up with their sports program or anything like that? Steve Leininger: Yeah, they play a pretty good game of basketball in fact, I ribbed my wife about it because she was from the earlier days, the Bobby Knight days at IU that were phenomenal.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. For those of you listening, I'm talking with Steve Leininger, who was the primary developer, if not the developer, of the TRS 80 Model I.. Steve Leininger: I did all the hardware and software for it. I'll give Don French credit for sticking to it and getting a project started. And for refining, refining our product definition a little bit to where it was better than it would have been if I would have stopped early.  Randy Kindig: Okay. And I have talked with Don before. I've interviewed him on the podcast, and I met him at Tandy Assembly. But I'm just curious, when you were hired into Tandy and you were told what you were going to do; exactly what were you told?  Steve Leininger: They had a 16 bit microprocessor board that another consultant had developed. And they were trying to make a personal computer out of this. It was the Pace microprocessor, which was not a spectacular success for National, but it was one of the first 16 bit processors. But they had basically an initial prototype, might have been even the second level of the thing. No real documentation, no software, ran on three different voltages and didn't have input or output. Other than that, it was fine. I was brought in because I was one of the product one of the engineers for the development boards, the development board series for the SCAMP, the S C M P, the National Semiconductor had a very low cost microprocessor that at one point in time, I benchmarked against the 8080 with positive benchmarks and ours was faster on the benchmarks I put together, but as I was later told there's lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. But so they said take a look at using that, their low cost microprocessor that you were working with. And it really wasn't the right answer for the job. Let's see, the Altair was already out. Okay. That was the first real personal computer. The Apple, the Apple 1 was out. Okay. But it was not a consumer computer. Okay. They, it was just, it was like a cookie sheet of parts, which was very similar to what was used in the Atari games at the commercial games. Okay. pong and that kind of stuff at that time. And I had been working, after Purdue, I went to National Semiconductor. There's a long story behind all that. But in the process, some of us engineers would go up to the Homebrew Computer Club that met monthly up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We're talking Wilbur and Orville Wright kinds of things going on. Yeah. Everyone who was in the pioneering version of computing had at one time been to that meeting. Randy Kindig: It's very famous. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were basically a couple guys working out of their garage at the time. I was still working at National Semiconductor, but I also had a Moonlight job at Byte Shop number 2. The second computer store in all of California. Randy Kindig: And So you worked with Paul Terrell. Steve Leininger: I actually worked with one of, yeah, Paul, I actually worked for Paul's I don't know if it was a partner, Todd, I don't even remember the guy's name. But I just, it was.  Randy Kindig: I was curious because I'm talking to Paul right now and getting interviews. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I, I'm sure we met, but it wasn't anything horribly formal. Since it was the number two shop, it still wasn't the number one shop, which Paul worked out of. And so we had an Apple 1 there. I actually got the job because I when I When I went in there, they were trying to troubleshoot something with what looked like an oscilloscope that they pulled out of a tank, and so it had, audio level kind of bandwidth, but could not do a digital circuit. And I said what you really need is a, I told him, a good tectonic scope or something like that. He said do you want a job here? I ended up moonlighting there, which was, as fortune would have it, was a good deal when the folks from Radio Shack came down to visit. Because when they came down to visit the sales guy wasn't there. We'll let the engineer talk to them, they almost never let the engineers talk to them.  Randy Kindig: So you had to talk with them.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. It was John Roach, Don French, and it was probably Jack Sellers, okay and Don was probably the; he was the most on top of stuff electronically because he was a hobbyist of sorts. The other two guys: Mr. Sellers ran the engineering group. John Roach was the VP of manufacturing. And they were basically on a parts visit. They do it once a year, once, twice a year. And they also did it with Motorola and a couple other places. But I told him about this microprocessor and that I was writing a tiny BASIC for it. Okay. Tiny BASIC was a interpreted basic that a guy named Li-Chen Wang actually had the first thing in Dr. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs magazine. We're talking about, we're talking about things that you don't realize are the shoulders of giants that turned out to be the shoulders of giants. And in fact, we reached out to Mr. Wang as we were working on it. We thought we had the software already taken care of because I'm jumping ahead in the story, but we were going to have Bob Uterich, and you'd have to chase that back. We had him signed up to write a BASIC interpreter for us, but because he'd already done one for the 6800, and it was included in Interface Age magazine. on a plastic record. You remember the old plastic records you could put in a magazine?  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I did see that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, so this was called a floppy ROM when they did it. Yeah. So if you had the right software and everything you could download the software off of the floppy ROM and run it on 6800. I think he used the Southwest Technical Products thing. And so we'd signed him up to do the BASIC. This was independent of the hardware design I was doing. And he went into radio silence on us; couldn't find him. And so we get to, in parallel, I was using the Li-Chen Wang plan to do at least a demo version of BASIC that would run on the original computer. And when the demo went successfully on Groundhog Day in 1977. This is the time frame we're talking about. I I started work on July 5th, the year before it. With Tandy? Yeah. Okay. We rolled into town on the 3rd, and of course they're closed for the 4th. And on the 5th I started, and there was the wandering around in the desert at the beginning of that, and Don's probably talked about how I was moved from there to their audio factory and then to the old saddle factory. Tandy used to be primarily a leather company before they bought Radio Shack in 1966 or something like that. And anyway, when the software didn't come out, I ended up writing the software, too. So I designed all the hardware and all the software. I didn't do the power supply. Chris Klein did the power supply. And, a little bit of the analog video circuitry, but it was very little part of that. Because we were just making a video signal. I did all the digital stuff on that. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: So the software ended up being what was the level one ROM, right?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, the level one ROM started out as the Li-Chen Wang BASIC. But he had no I. O. in his software, so I was doing the keyboard scanning. I had to do the cassette record and playback. Had to implement data read and data write Peek and poke, which is pretty simple. Put in the graphic statements. Yeah, oh, and floating point. Now, floating point, luckily, Zilog had a library for that, but I had to basically, this was before APIs were a big deal, so I basically had to use their interface, To what I had written and had to allocate storage, correct? We're talking about 4K bytes of ROM. I know, yeah. Very tiny, and to put all the I. O. in there, and to make it so that you could be updating the screen, when you're doing the cassette I put two asterisks up there and blinked the second one on and off, you remember that?  Randy Kindig: Oh yeah. Steve Leininger: Sort of as a level set.  Randy Kindig: Yeah.  Steve Leininger: And someone said, oh, you should have patented that thing. And actually I have seven or eight patents, U. S. patents, on different parts of the computer architecture.  Randy Kindig: Oh, do you?  Steve Leininger: But not the blinking asterisk, which is probably a patentable feature.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I wish I'd had that on other machines, that I ended up having. So that would have been nice, yeah. I liken what you've done with what Steve Wozniak did, for the Apple II. You're somebody I've always wanted to talk to because I felt like you were one of the important pioneers in their early years. What do you have to say about that? Do you feel like what you did was ... Steve Leininger: in retrospect, yes. And I have a greater appreciation for people like the Wright Brothers. If you think about the Wright Brothers they took all their stuff from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop down to Kill Devil Hills. We now know it as Kitty Hawk. But they would take the stuff down there by train, and then they would have to put it in horse driven wagons. Think about that. And people would ask them, what are you going to use the airplane for? It's what are you going to use a home computer for? Yeah, to maintain recipes and to play games.  Randy Kindig: Do your checkbook.  Steve Leininger: Do your check, home security. There's a whole lot of stuff that we talked about. And other giants entered the field: Multiplan, which became Lotus 1 2 3, which became Excel. Not the same company, but the idea, could you live without a spreadsheet today? Very difficult for some things, right?  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Yeah, it's ubiquitous.  People use it for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I talked with David and Teresa Walsh. Or Welsh, I'm sorry, Welsh. Where they did the book Priming the Pump. Steve Leininger: That's very that's pretty close to the real thing.  Randy Kindig: Is it? Okay. They named their book after what you did and said; that you primed the pump for home computers. Can you expand on that and tell us exactly what you meant by that?  Steve Leininger: It again goes back to that shoulders of giants thing, and I forget who said that; it's actually a very old quote, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think the thing that we brought to the table and Independently, Commodore and Apple did the same thing in 1977. There were three computers that came out inexpensive enough that you could use them in the home. They all came with ROM loaded BASIC. You didn't have to load anything else in. They all came with a video output. Some had displays. Some Commodore's was built in. One of ours was a Clip on and you had to go find one for the apple. For the Apple, yeah. Apple had a superior case. Apple and Radio Shack both had great keyboards. Randy Kindig: apple was expandable, with its... Steve Leininger: yeah, Apple Apple was internally expandable, yeah. And, but it cost $1,000. Without the cassette. Without the monitor. It wasn't the same type of device.  Randy Kindig: I was a college student. And, I looked at all three options. It was like the TRS-80; there are Radio Shacks everywhere.  You could go in and play with one; which was nice. And they were inexpensive enough that I could actually afford one. Steve Leininger: And, Radio Shack can't duck the, if you did something wrong, you had to fix it.  Randy Kindig: That's right. Let's see here. So initially the idea was to have a kit computer by Tandy? Steve Leininger: Yeah. I'm not sure whose idea that was. It made some kind of sense. Because that's the way the Altair was, and Radio Shack did sell a number of kits, but in the process of still kicking that around, saying it could be a possibility. I was one of the ones that said it could be a possibility. Within the same group that I did the design work from, they also would take kits in that people had built and troubleshoot the things if they didn't work. We had a couple engineers that would see if you connected something wrong or something.  If you didn't, sometimes it was a matter that the instructions weren't clear. If you tell someone to put an LED in, yeah. You specifically have to tell them which way to put it in. And might be an opportunity to tweak your timing. Yeah. Anyway, we get this clock in, and it was a digital clock. Seven segment LEDs probably cost 50 bucks or more. Which is crazy. But It says, put all the components in the board, turn the board over, and solder everything to the board. And, pretty simple instructions. This had a sheet of solder over the entire bottom of the board. Someone figured out how to put two pounds of solder on the back of this thing. And, as we all got a great chuckle out of that, You realize, oh, you don't want to have to deal with a computer like this. You really don't. And Lou Kornfeld, who was the president at the time, didn't really want the computer. But he said, it's not going to be a kit. All right. That, that, that took care of that. great idea. Great idea.  Randy Kindig: Were there any other times when you thought the computer might, or were there any times, when you thought the computer might not come to fruition? Any snags that you had that made you think that maybe this isn't going to work?  Steve Leininger: Not really. I was young and pretty well undaunted. Randy Kindig: Pretty sure you could,  Steve Leininger: yeah I, it wasn't any, it wasn't any different than building one at home. I'd been building kits since, night kits, heath kits, that kind of stuff, since I was a kid. And home brewed a couple things, including a hot dog cooker made from two nails and a couple wires that plugged into the wall. Don't try that at home.  Randy Kindig: No kidding.  Steve Leininger: But, it's funny if you If you look it up on, if you look that kind of project up on the internet, you can still find a project like that. It's like what's it called? Anvil tossing, where you put gunpowder under an anvil, shoot it up in the air. What could possibly go wrong? Don't,  Randy Kindig: It's very well documented in books like Priming the Pump, Stan Veit's book, which I assume you're familiar with, and Fire in the Valley, what your involvement was with the Model 1. But there was some mention of your involvement with the Expansion Interface and other TRS 80 projects. What else did you work on while you were there?  Steve Leininger: The Color Computer, the Expansion Interface. The model three to a little.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  Steve Leininger: Little bit. The model two was the big one. And point I just got tired of the management there.  Randy Kindig: Did you? Okay.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. I my mind was going faster than theirs, and they made the conscious decision to do whatever IBM has done, but do it cheaper. That, to me, that's not a. Didn't say less expensively either, so the whole thing just troubled me that, we're not going to be able to do anything new unless IBM has done it. And at about the same time the Macintosh came out and a superb piece of work. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. So what education training and previous work experience did you have at the time you got hired by Tandy that made you uniquely qualified for that project that they were looking for?  Steve Leininger: I'd been playing around with electronics since I was in the third grade. Actually, electricity.  Randy Kindig: The third grade, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. My, my mom got me a kit that had light bulbs and bells and buzzers and wire from, I think it might have been the Metropolitan Museum. They had a kit. They, they've got a, they still today have an online presence. It, of course the materials have changed, but the kit had all these parts and it had no instructions. And I don't know if that was by design or it didn't have instructions, so I had to learn how to hook up wires and light bulbs and bells and switches to make it do things. And, in the process, I found out that if you put a wire right across the battery terminals, it gets hot. And, interesting stuff to know. Pretty soon, I was taking this stuff in to show and tell in the third grade. Look, and I was very early in electronics. It's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then my mom would take me to the library. She was quite a voracious reader, and I'd go to the library. technical section specifically the Dewey Decimal 621, which was electronics and things like that. Randy Kindig: you still remember that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And in the 590 series, there's some good stuff too. And I would usually take out a stack of books, even though I was a horrible reader because I'm dyslexic and ADD. So I have an attention span and reading problem. But the technical stuff I was reading about pipeline architecture processors while I was still in junior high. And not that was important to where I ended up, but it was important because I understood the words and data flow, and stuff like that. And between that and building the kits and things like that, I When we moved to Indianapolis, my dad moved jobs down to Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, you lived in Indianapolis?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I moved from South Bend down to Indianapolis. So I probably passed your house as . Actually we came down through Kokomo, but but yeah.  Randy Kindig: I actually grew up in that part of the state. Just south of South Bend.  Steve Leininger: Okay. So yeah La Paz, Plymouth,  Randy Kindig: yeah, Warsaw, Rochester.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I was born in Rochester.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. So that's where I grew up in that area.  Steve Leininger: Okay, there you go. My dad's from Akron.  Randy Kindig: Are you serious?  Steve Leininger: I am serious.  Randy Kindig: Akron's where my wife grew up. And I was just 10 miles from there.  Steve Leininger: The general store there, Dan Leininger and Sons, that's my great grandfather. Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: I'll be darned. Okay. Okay.  Steve Leininger: So now it all makes sense.  Randy Kindig: That's amazing.  Steve Leininger: Anyway, we started a garage band. This is before Apple's garage band. And I made my own amplifier. It basically had the sun sun amplifiers back end on the thing and a Fender Showman front end on it. Completely home brewed really loud amplifier. And I had a friend who had a guitar amplifier that was broken, and he had taken it down to the music store there. And after six weeks of not getting it back, they said we've had trouble with our technician and all that. I asked if I could go down and look at it, and in 15 minutes I had his amplifier fixed. And they said, do you want tom so you want a job? All right. Yeah, because I'd been doing, I'd had a paper route before and I don't think I was doing anything since we'd moved and ao I started working in a music store and they ended up with two music stores and then an organ store next door and I started repairing that kind of stuff. And this was the end of my first year in college. Went to the extension in Indianapolis.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. And Was that I U P U I?  Steve Leininger: IUPUI, yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I U P U I.  Randy Kindig: Huh. I went there as well.  Steve Leininger: Yeah and learned Fortran there, got all my first year classes out, and then moved on up to the campus. And because we'd always go to the library, and because my mom would often take me to the library, the newsstand not too far from the library, and she'd get a couple magazines, but she let me get an electronic magazine. And, I didn't understand these things, pretty soon you start understanding the pic, you start understanding it. This is a resistor, I built a little shocker box based on a design in probably elementary electronics. And It's like a handheld electric fence.  Randy Kindig: Oh, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Think hot dog cooker. Anyway, so I learned some electronics that way. A lot of that was self taught. I learned quite a bit more by working in the music store, again, this was before I was taught any formal electronics. And actually when I moved up to campus on Purdue, I thought I was going to be a world class guitar amplifier designer. That's where I thought. And it turns out my analog gut feelings aren't, weren't as good as other people's. Paul Schreiber does a much better job with electronics, with analog electronics than I do. But digital electronics, I understood this stuff. I would hang out in the library and I'd read the trade magazines. So I was up to date on, I was way more up to date than a typical professor would be on current electronics. And in 1973, which was the end of my junior year, Electronics Magazine had an article on the Intel 8008. And I said, Oh, I understand this. See, I'd already been taking assembly language. Now they didn't teach assembly language programming in the electronics school. They had Fortran, but there was no way to get from Fortran to ..they weren't teaching programming languages. I had to go to the business school where I learned assembly language on the school's CDC 6600 mainframe.  Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Through the business school?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And for those of you who have never tried assembly language programming, it looks like a foreign language until you just internalize it in your brain: there's ADD, A D and A D C for ADD with carry, and there's a whole bunch of different things. There's different ways to move data around, but you're only doing a few really basic things, and if you do it fast enough, it looks like it's instantaneous. That's the way even your phone works today. It's because you're doing it fast enough. It fools you.  Randy Kindig: Yep. Wow. Do you ever look back at these days, at those days, with amazement? As far as how far the industry has come?  Steve Leininger: Oh yeah. And, it's funny because you wouldn't, you couldn't probably, but you wouldn't start over again. I had to learn, I had to learn digital video. Actually the giant that I, whose shoulders I stood on there was the late Don Lancaster. He had a book called TV Typewriter Cookbook. And actually that came out a little bit later, but he had a TV typewriter series in Radio Electronics Magazine. And basically alphanumeric display. If you think about it, just the glass teletype, the keyboard display and a serial interface at the time that the RadioShack computer came out was selling for 999. Another 400 on top of what we were selling the whole computer for. Because we had a microprocessor in there. We didn't have a whole lot of options. We didn't have a whole lot of fluff. In fact Motorola said, send this to your schematics and your parts list and let's see if we can minimize your circuit. And after two weeks they sent it back. He said, you did a pretty good job here. . .  Randy Kindig: Okay. Huh. You still stay in touch with people at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: A few of them. It's actually been more lately. Because it's almost more interesting now. It's like the, I don't know whatever happened to Atwater and Kent, of the Atwater Kent radio. But, that's an old school radio that now you've got people that rebuild them and got them all polished up and all this kind of stuff. But for a while they ended up in the dump. I'm sure, there are some trash 80s that ended up in the trash.  Randy Kindig: I'm sure.  Steve Leininger: Yeah but I've gotten rid of lots of PCs that don't meet my needs anymore, right? Randy Kindig: Sure. Yeah, we all have, somewhere along the way. It seemed like you were really quiet there for a long time and that you were difficult to get in contact with. Steve Leininger: I wasn't really that difficult. I didn't maintain a social media presence on the thing, but things that I had my own consulting company for quite a while. I actually came back to Radio Shack two more times after I left. One was to come back as a technologist there. The politics still didn't work out well. Then I came back as a contractor to help them with some of their online things. I actually had a website called Steve's Workbench. Steve Leininger: And you can find it on the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine. And it had some basic stamp projects. And we were going to do all sorts of other things. But I managed to upset the people at RadioShack. com. They didn't have a big sense of humor about someone being critical about the products that they'd selected. And I, I did a... I was going to start doing product reviews on the kits, how easy it was to solder, whether it was a good value for the money and all that kind of stuff. And I gave a pretty honest review on it. And Radio Shack didn't appreciate the power of an honest review. It's what makes Amazon what it is, right? You go in there and if there's something that's got just two stars on the reviews, Yeah, you really got to know what you're doing if you're going to buy the thing, right? And if you see something that's got a bunch of one star and a bunch of five star reviews Yeah, someone's probably aalting the reference at the top end. And so I mean they had such a fit that when they changed platforms For RadioShack. com, they didn't take Steve's Workbench with it And I basically lost that position. Radio Shack should own the makerspace business right now. They at one time, one time I suggested, you ought to take a look at buying Digikey or maybe Mouser. Mouser was right down the street from us. They already had their hands into Allied, but these other two were doing stuff, more consumer oriented, but they didn't. They were making, they were flush with money from selling cell phone contracts. And they thought that was the way of the future until the cell phone companies started reeling that back in. At a certain point, you don't want to be paying your 5 percent or 10 percent royalty to Radio Shack for just signing someone up.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize you had ever gone back and worked for them again.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, twice,  Randy Kindig: and so I'm curious, did you meet any other famous figures in the microcomputer revolution while you were working at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: At Tandy, let's see.  Randy Kindig: I'm just curious.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, Bill Gates, of course. I went out when we were working on level two BASIC. And Bill Gates I think was probably a hundred- thousand- aire at that time. And, working in a, thhey had a floor in a bank building in Seattle. He took me to the basement of his dad's law firm, and we had drinks there, and I went out to his house on the lake. This was not the big house. I've never been there. It was a big house on the lake, but it wasn't the one That he built later on. So I knew him early on run across Forest Mims a couple times. And of course, he's the shoulders upon which a lot of electronic talent was built and some of the stuff is lost. Jameco is actually bringing him back as a… Jameco is a kinda like a Radio Shack store online. It's yeah it is, it's not as robust as DigiKey or Bower, but they've held their roots.  Someone I've not met Lady Ada from Adafruit would be fun.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Would, yeah.  Steve Leininger: I, that, that's another thing that, if we had something along those lines, that would have been cool, but the buyers weren't up, up to the task and they when you don't want criticism at a certain point you've got to quit doing things if you don't want to be criticized.  Randy Kindig: Sure. When you finally got the Model 1 rolled out and you saw the tremendous interest, were you surprised in the interest that it garnered?  Steve Leininger: I wasn't. I wasn't. In fact, there's a quote of me. Me and John Roach had a discussion on how many of these do you think we could sell? And, this is actually quoted in his obituary on the, in the Wall Street Journal. I, Mr. Tandy said you could build 3, 500 of these because we've got 3, 500 stores and we can use them in the inventory. And to take inventory. And John Roach thought maybe we could sell, up to 5, 000 of these things in the first year. And I said, oh no, I think we could sell 50, 000. To which he said, horseshit. Just like that. And that, now I quoted that to the Wall Street Journal, and they put that in his obituary. Yeah I don't know how many times that word shows up in the Wall Street Journal, but if you search their files you'll find that it was me quoting John Roach. So … Randy Kindig: I'll have to, I'll have to look for that, yeah, that's funny. So you were not surprised by the interest,  Steve Leininger: no, it, part of it was I knew the leverage of the stores I'd been working, when we introduced the thing I'd been working for the company for just over a year. Think about that. And it wasn't until just before probably, it was probably September or October when Don and I agreed on the specs. I'd keep writing it up, and he'd look at it. Don actually suggested that, demanded, he doesn't, in a, but in a good natured way, he made a good case for it, that I have, in addition to the cassette interface on there, that I have a way to read and write data. Because if you're going to do an accounting program, you got to be able to read and write data. I actually figured out a way to do that. There were a couple other things. John Roach really wanted blinking lights on the thing. And my mechanical, the mechanical designer, there said that's going to cost more money to put the LEDs in there. What are you going to do with them? And, Mr. Roach was, you know, familiar with the IBM probably the 360 by then? Anyway. The mainframes. Yeah, mainframes always had blinking lights on them.  Randy Kindig: Exactly.  Steve Leininger: And since it's a computer, it should have blinking lights. And Larry said, Larry the mechanical guy said what are you going to do with them? I said, I can't, I said I could put stuff up there, It's… Randy Kindig: What are they going to indicate?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And then, he said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to make the case without holes for the lights and just don't worry about it. That was the end of the discussion. Mr. Roach was probably a little disappointed, but yeah, no one else had them,  Randy Kindig: it's funny to think that you'd have blinking lights on a microcomputer like that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any aspect of the Model one development you would do differently if you were doing it today?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I would, I would've put the eighth memory chip in with the, with the video display so you get upper and lower case. Randy Kindig: Yeah, there you go. Okay.  Steve Leininger: Might've put buffers to the outside world. We had the, the microprocessor was buffered, but it was, it was very short distance off the connector there. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot I would have changed. Software could have been written a little better, but when one person's writing all the software the development system that I had was a Zilog development system. And 30 character percent a second. Decorator, line printer. The fact that I got it done is actually miracle stuff.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, and you got it done in a year, right?  Steve Leininger: And it was all written in assembly language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it all done in a year.  Randy Kindig: That's a good year's work. Steve Leininger: It is.  Randy Kindig: Building a computer from scratch, basically, and then getting it...  Steve Leininger: and back then we had to program EEPROMs. We didn't have flash memory. Okay. Didn't hardly have operating systems back then. Not that I was using one. There was something in the Zilog thing, but yeah we were so far ahead of things, we were developing a product rather than a computer. And maybe that's the whole difference is that we had a product that you pull it up, plug it in, and it says these are TRS 80 and it wasn't the Model 1 until the Model 2 came out.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. It was just the TRS 80. Yeah. So I have to know, do you have any of the old hardware? Steve Leininger: I've got a Model 1. I don't use it except for demonstrations now. I actually have two. I've got one that works and one that's probably got a broken keyboard connector from taking it out of the case and holding it up too many times.  Randy Kindig: Were these prototypes or anything?  Steve Leininger: They are non serial production units. I've got the, I've got a prototype ROM board that's got the original integer basic that I wrote. I don't have the video boards and all that kind of stuff that went with it when we did the original demonstration. Let's see we had four wire wrapped, completely wire wrapped industrial wire wrapped versions that we used for prototyping the software. One went to David Lein, who wrote the book that came with the thing, the basic book. One I had at my desk and there were two others. Yeah. And they got rid of all of those. So a cautionary tale is if you do something in the future where you've got that prototype that was put together in Tupperware containers or held together with duct tape, you need to at least take pictures of it. And you might want to keep one aside. If it turns out to be something like the Apple III, you can probably get rid of all that stuff. If it turns out to be something like the Apple II, The RadioShack computer, the Commodore PET, you really ought to, enshrine that. The original iPhone. Apple did stuff that was, what was it, can't remember what it was. They had a they had a thing not unlike the... 3Com ended up getting them. Anyway the hand of the PDAs, no one knows what a Personal Oh, digital assistant. Yeah. Yeah. We call that a, we call that a phone ...  Randy Kindig: Palm Pilot. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Palm Pilot. That's the one. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I've got three model 100's. I've got one of the early… Randy Kindig: Did you work on the 100s? Steve Leininger: I used it, but I didn't work on it. The design. No. Okay. That was an NEC product with Radio Shack skins on it.  Randy Kindig: Oh, that's right. That's right.  Steve Leininger: Kay Nishi was the big mover on that. Yeah. Let's see I've got an Altair and an ASR 33 Teletype. Yeah, we're talking about maybe the computer's grandfather, right? I've had a whole bunch of other stuff. I've probably had 40 other computers that I don't have anymore. I am gravitating towards mechanical music devices, big music boxes, that kind of stuff.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Cool. Interesting. Steve, that's all the questions I had prepared. Steve Leininger: Okay.  Randy Kindig: Is there anything I should have asked about that?  Steve Leininger: Oh my,  Randy Kindig: anything you'd want to say?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I, I've given talks before on how do you innovate? How do you become, this is pioneering kinds of stuff. So you really have to have that vision, man. The vision, I can't exactly say where the vision comes from, but being dyslexic for me has been a gift. Okay and this is something I tell grade school and middle school students that, some people are out there saying I, I can't do that because, it's just too much stuff or my brain is cluttered. Cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk the sign of? Embrace the clutter. Learn a lot of different things. Do what you're passionate about. Be willing to. support your arguments, don't just get angry if someone doesn't think the way you do, explain why you're doing it that way. And sometimes it's a matter of they just don't like it or they don't have the vision. The ones that don't have the vision, they never, they may never have the vision. I've quit companies because of people like that. But When you've got the vision and can take it off in your direction, it could just end up as being art. And I shouldn't say just art, art can be an amazing thing. And that behind these walls here, we've got a pinball machine and gaming conference going on. And it is nutcase. But is there stuff out there you look at and say, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I do too. Keep it a while going. Randy Kindig: Very cool. All right. That's a great stopping point, I think. All right. I really appreciate it, Steve taking the time to talk with us today.  Steve Leininger: Thanks, Randy.  

Alan Fredendall // #LeadershipThursday // www.ptonice.com  In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, ICE Chief Operating Officer Alan Fredendall discusses using the reMarkable writing tablet to reduce daily documentation burden to 5 minutes per day Take a listen to the podcast episode or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog. If you're looking to learn more about courses designed to start your own practice, check out our Brick by Brick practice management course or our online physical therapy courses, check out our entire list of continuing education courses for physical therapy including our physical therapy certifications by checking out our website. Don't forget about all of our FREE eBooks, prebuilt workshops, free CEUs, and other physical therapy continuing education on our Resources tab. EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION ALAN FREDENDALLHow can we make our documentation more remarkable? Often a very boring topic, but a necessary topic as we are required by law to do a treatment note for every single patient that we see. So today we're going to talk about what is that law that requires us to do those notes. And then we're going to talk about new technology and a new way to think about documentation that's probably going to streamline everyone's documentation in a very significant manner. How can we potentially reduce our documentation burden to maybe five minutes per day? DO WE HAVE TO DO DOCUMENTATION? So first things first, what is that law that says we have to do a note for every patient that we treat? That law is actually the HIPAA law. Way back in 1996, the Health Information and Portability Accountability Act, or what we know as HIPAA. And so that has a lot of things in it about not sharing protected health information, about in 1996 the emergence of the internet and what we can and can't do with submitting patient data electronically. But the main thing it establishes is that we do need to do documentation on every single patient that we see, and that that documentation be available to be transmitted electronically via fax or email upon patient request. Prior to this law, we just basically handed over copies of paper documentation, and it could be a lengthy amount of time before patients could get access to their records. In this day and age, patients need our notes sometimes for things like reimbursement. If we're a cash-based practitioner and they're trying to get out-of-network reimbursement, they may need it to submit because they got the day off work or something like that. And so there's a lot of reasons why folks may need their documentation and why they may need access to it very, very quickly. So the HIPAA law of 1996 established that documentation must be available to be transmitted electronically immediately to patients or other providers with patient approval upon request. Some of you may have interacted with a patient who needed documentation because they were involved in an automobile accident or something like that and they need that documentation to then send on forward. HIPAA also mandates that we keep documentation for up to six years and that essentially means the best way to do that is to store it electronically instead of maybe in an old filing cabinet. Now the thing about HIPAA is it says that documentation must be available to be transmitted electronically via email or via fax, but what it does not say is that our documentation must be inherently electronic. Documentation can still be written as long as it is transferred or changed into an electronic format, stored for those six years, and then available upon demand to be sent when requested. And so we're going to talk about how that opens up freedom for us today to do documentation maybe in a very different way that we have not considered before. Before we get into that, what are the penalties for not following this? What if I don't do notes? What if I just never do notes? What if I'm a cash-based practitioner? I don't interact with other healthcare providers on a regular basis. My patients pay me cash. Most of them aren't asking for auto network reimbursement, so they're not trying to see those notes or see super bills or see claim forms or anything like that. You should know the penalties here are quite severe because we are dealing with a federal law and we are dealing with the federal government. So with HIPAA, they have a four-tier system for violations, Tier 1 through Tier 4. Tier 1 is the lightest punishment. Tier 4 is the highest punishment. Tier 1 is considered that you were not aware of what you were supposed to do, and that you could have not avoided what happened. Now, this is kind of in regards to maybe accidentally revealing protected health information, but also if you don't have documentation stored electronically, and you literally can't submit it to someone, and also that you didn't know that you had to do that. That little caveat that you're not aware that you committed a violation is going to be, the burden is going to be on to you to prove that. If you can prove that though, that you literally had no idea what you were supposed to do and you have no way to fix it, the penalty for that is only $100. Very, very light. But realistically, no one lives here, right? Everyone is aware of what they're supposed to do and probably has a way to reasonably fix it. And so we kind of immediately move up to Tier 2. Tier 2 is you're aware of what you were supposed to do, but there's no way that you could have avoided that violation. This is a very common area for us to live in, right? Let's say you finish with patients for the week on Friday afternoon, and then hey, you're catching a plane, you're going on vacation with your family for a couple weeks, but oops, in that couple weeks while you're gone, a patient requests a note from you. You are aware that you needed to comply with that, but you're just not able to do that, right? Your maybe physical note is sitting on your desk next to your computer at the clinic still. There is no way for you to convert that to an electronic format and then transmit it to the patient. that comes with a little bit steeper fine, that's a $1,000 fine each time that happens. And then we kind of move things very, very quickly when we get to tier three. Tier three is the tier where we start to use the term willful neglect, that you are aware you need to do this, you did not do it, but you are willing to catch up on all of the neglect that you have committed in the past. Now when this happens, the fine jumps up to $10,000, right, a tenfold increase. And then tier four is willful neglect, but you're not willing to correct it, right? You know you're supposed to do notes, you know you're supposed to store them electronically, but essentially you show a habit, you show a pattern of just not doing that, even maybe if you've gotten in trouble in the past. And so tier four is the most punishing tier. Tier four comes with a fine of $50,000 every time that happens, so a very severe penalty. And so when we talk about that in the context of our brick by brick class, when we're teaching people to open their practice, the easy rule is just do it, right? Don't try to butt heads and win an argument with the federal government. The fines are very severe. The penalties are very severe. Just do it as annoying as it is. And my second and third part of today's podcast is showing you that we can make it we can't get rid of it completely, but that we can make it quite simple. So let's talk about that right now. USING THE REMARKABLE  Let's talk about making your documentation remarkable with the remarkable. So if you're listening on the podcast right now and you're only hearing my voice, go over to our YouTube channel, the Institute of Clinical Excellence YouTube channel, and find the video of this so you can see what I'm doing. So this is a Remarkable. I'll close it up for you. It's got just a little folio and then it opens up and it's essentially just a tablet, right? This does allow finger input, but more importantly, it comes with a very nice stylus that lets you write the same as if you were writing on paper. So what we have been trialing here at our clinic in Michigan is using the Remarkable to replace our electronic documentation. So you can see what I have on here is I have a bunch of body chart templates. And so we have a folder for every day of the week stored on this tablet. And then we have body charts for every patient that has come into the clinic for treatment that day. So let me open up a brand new template for you all to look at. And now you can see here is our body chart template, just like we used to do on physical paper. Now it is on this tablet. We can write all over this thing. We can write eggs and eases. We can shade body charts so we can do our subjective and objective when patients come back into the clinic. And then the nice thing is with remarkable, we can add blank pages so we can itemize our manual therapy. And we can write all over this thing. And whatever we want to itemize, should we choose so can also be included in this template. And so what's nice is as soon as I finish this, it's automatically saved as a PDF, both on this tablet. But more importantly, it is saved back to a laptop or desktop computer. And I'm going to tell you in a second how we can put the tablet together with your EMR and basically have your documentation burden fall off a cliff in a really nice way. INTERLUDE So before we do that, I just want to take a break, introduce myself. My name is Alan. I am the Chief Operating Officer here at ICE. This is Leadership Thursday. We talk all things small business management, practice management ownership, tips and tricks. I am the lead faculty in our fitness athlete division, so you'll see me on Fridays for Fitness Athlete Fridays, and also the lead faculty in our practice management division, where we talk about all things related to practice management in our brick by brick course. It is leadership Thursday, that means it's gut check Thursday. This one, very simple, 30-20-10, toes to bar, paired with single arm devil's press. Rx weight for gentlemen, a 35 pound dumbbell. Ladies, a 20 pound dumbbell. And then just to make it hurt a little bit worse, you're gonna do a 400 meter run after each round. I tested that workout last weekend. I think I came in somewhere around 11 minutes. So not as fast and intense as last week. And then our Brick by Brick course starts up again on October 2nd. That class always sells out. Our current cohort is finishing up week six, talking about Medicare, talking about documentation, doing a deep dive into the stuff that we're gonna talk about. SYNCING NOTES TO YOUR EMR So how do we put our knowledge that we need to do documentation, it needs to be electronically available, with something like the Remarkable tablet. And the nice thing about Remarkable, like we talked about, is that when you finish a document on the tablet, and you close it out, it automatically syncs via the cloud to an app on your laptop or desktop computer, and that document is available immediately. So our previous documentation system, we would still do paper body charts, we would come back to our EMR, and we would hand type our notes. And that was okay. That maybe took three to five minutes for daily note, maybe 10 minutes for initial evaluation. That is all gone now, right? Because we have our body chart on the, on the remarkable and now we're doing electronically and it is updating to our computer in real time. What does that mean? That means we no longer need to come back to the computer and hand type our notes. It also means for maybe some of you that we're doing that and maybe taking a picture of your body chart or scanning it into your printer, that is okay. But again, that is a lot of burden, right? That's a couple more minutes per patient. What's great about Remarkable is that document, that body chart is available immediately as a PDF on your desktop that you can simply upload into the patient's chart on your EMR. And so now our documentation, all of the boxes of our soap note just says see PDF from this date, right? We are no longer typing. That carries over from daily visit to daily visit, see PDF this date, see PDF this date. And in that patient's chart of that date is August 1st, 2024, August 7th, 2024. And it is a PDF copy of the body chart and it is HIPAA compliant, right? It's electronically available and it has all the stuff that documentation needs to be sound and legally compliant, right? It has a subjective, it has objective, it has assessment, it has plan, it has some itemized treatment to justify if we're gonna bill insurance, for example, why we're billing insurance and for how much. And so for us, switching to this system has reduced our total documentation load to about five minutes per day, which is really, really, really incredible when you think about it. We already had given two hours in the workday for admin time, following up with patients, documentation, that sort of thing, and now that administrative burden has reduced down to about five minutes a day. And so that's just extra time that our therapists have that's not spent typing stuff that they have already written down on a paper body chart anyways. What's nice about this, this remarkable system is that you can take it into the treatment room and it looks no different than if you have a body chart on a clipboard or something like that. It's not as intrusive as a laptop. Obviously it's not as annoying as typing, right? just chipping away and typing as somebody's trying to talk to you. It's very, very low maintenance and it's really awesome. Now, what are the cons of this? There are some cons. They are expensive. They're about $500. I have asked for a coupon. I have asked if they do volume discounts. They do not do any of that. They know what they're doing. So there is a con of the price. And then the other con is that this thing is really kind of worthless outside of this specific niche, right? Unless you happen to want to journal on it, unless you happen to hand write a lot of other stuff in your life that you also wish could be available immediately electronically, the remarkable doesn't have a lot of value for you. That being said, We love how nice it writes. It writes the same as paper. We love that because it really can't do anything else, it has a super long battery life as well. So we have transitioned our documentation system to that and we're very, very happy with it. So with documentation, HIPAA law requires that we do documentation for every single patient, that there is a penalty if we don't do that, and that we should probably follow that unless we wanna get in trouble. But there are different ways to think about doing documentation other than just typing forever into those boxes on your EMR. That this might seem like a step backwards, because we're writing now, but because of the technology that powers the Remarkable, because it is available instantly as an electronic PDF, and can significantly speed up your documentation time. So give it a shot. The company's name is literally remarkable. Look it up. There are a lot of other competitors emerging as well. And I'm sure in the next couple of years, we'll see more of these become prevalent. Writing on these has on electronic devices has been around for a while. Many of you may remember the Palm Pilot. However, you know, it had a two inch screen and you couldn't read what you wrote. So this is a significant step forward. The writing is beautiful. We're very happy with it. And if you try it out, let me know how it goes. So make your documentation remarkable. Hope you have an awesome Thursday, a great weekend. Have fun with Gut Check Thursday. See you later, everybody. OUTRO Hey, thanks for tuning in to the PT on Ice daily show. If you enjoyed this content, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Instagram at the Institute of Clinical Excellence. If you're interested in getting plugged into more ice content on a weekly basis while earning CEUs from home, check out our virtual ice online mentorship program at ptonice.com. While you're there, sign up for our Hump Day Hustling newsletter for a free email every Wednesday morning with our top five research articles and social media posts that we think are worth reading. Head over to ptonice.com and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.  

In hour one, an update from Dolphins training camp today including why McDaniel isn't concerned with OBJ missing practice. Hoch refuses to open the show's Google Doc because he “can't find it”. A deep dive into the Palm Pilot and how quickly it fell off because of cellphones. Then, Zach Gelb joins the show and argues in favor of the Dolphins bringing in Ryan Tannehill.

How does an early fascination with coding evolve into a career in the cutting-edge fields of Silicon Valley and aerospace engineering? Nico Zeitlin joins us to share his remarkable journey, starting from his childhood days writing code in QBasic, inspired by his older brother, to earning a degree in computer engineering from the University of Buenos Aires. Through his story, Nico reveals how a sense of freedom and continuous learning keeps him feeling most alive, driving his ambitious career path from Argentina to the heart of the American tech industry.What does it take to navigate career challenges during Argentina's financial crises while juggling a family business and academic pursuits? Listen as Nico recounts his high school job writing software for Palm Pilots, his diverse responsibilities in the family business, and the first transformative experiences with the internet in coffee shops. Nico's reflections provide a poignant reminder of how far technology has come and its profound impact on human learning and evolution.How does one maintain personal growth and resilience through professional highs and lows, particularly when balancing career and parenthood? Nico shares invaluable insights into the importance of alignment and purpose in his work, the emotional impact of professional setbacks, and the joy of pursuing childhood passions. With heartfelt advice on embracing continuous evolution and growth, Nico's story is an inspiring testament to the power of resilience and the Sea Squirt  Effect in making bold decisions and driving positive change.You can reach out to Nico on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicozeitlin/There is a wealth of information available and only so much time in the day. Therefore, I truly appreciate you spending some of your valuable time listening to this podcast. Your feedback is very important so please reach out to me on LinkedIn or over email: alla@evolvexlabs.com.You can support us by leaving a review for this podcast, recommending it to a friend or sharing your favorite takeaways by tagging us on IG @theseasquirteffect. Doing so will help us reach more listeners like you!Apply for human performance coaching program.Follow me on IG: @evolvewithallaMusic credits & copyright by "Odin v olen'yem parke" ("Один В Оленьем Парке").

To match the faithful of the Bush campaign, the Kerry campaign builds the largest army of door knockers ever. Just like Team Bush, he thinks he has the election. But did he ever have a chance? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://youtu.be/F_ybuujPtVI Download as MP3 (https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/32f28071-0b08-4ea1-afcc-37af75bd83d6/9f9ba585-e8cc-4f8d-8bb4-2a868e1ae5ae.mp3) Support the show by becoming a patron at tuxdigital.com/membership (https://tuxdigital.com/membership) or get some swag at tuxdigital.com/store (https://tuxdigital.com/store) Comments on our Forum ►► https://forum.tuxdigital.com/t/379-tech-that-slipped-through-our-fingers/6339 Hosted by: Ryan (DasGeek) = dasgeek.net (https://dasgeek.net) Jill Bryant = jilllinuxgirl.com (https://jilllinuxgirl.com) Michael Tunnell = michaeltunnell.com (https://michaeltunnell.com) Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:42 Results of Michael's Ratpoison Challenge 00:03:54 Community Feedback 00:15:13 Tech That Slipped Through Our Fingers 00:53:33 Canonical goes distro'less 01:02:03 New Sneaky Android Malware 01:10:32 Software Spotlight: Echo 01:13:13 Outro Links: Results of Michael's Ratpoison Challenge https://store.tuxdigital.com/products/im-unhackable-tee (https://store.tuxdigital.com/products/im-unhackable-tee) Community Feedback https://destinationlinux.net/comments (https://destinationlinux.net/comments) https://destinationlinux.net/forum (https://destinationlinux.net/forum) Tech That Slipped Through Our Fingers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeoGeo(system) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_(system)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SPH-N270 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SPH-N270) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerryCurve8520 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Curve_8520) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Pre) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_X-MP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_X-MP) Canonical goes distro'less https://canonical.com/blog/canonical-offers-12-year-lts-for-any-open-source-docker-image (https://canonical.com/blog/canonical-offers-12-year-lts-for-any-open-source-docker-image) New Sneaky Android Malware https://thehackernews.com/2023/12/new-sneaky-xamalicious-android-malware.html (https://thehackernews.com/2023/12/new-sneaky-xamalicious-android-malware.html) Software Spotlight: Echo https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.lo2dev.Echo (https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.lo2dev.Echo)

Imagine having your man's entire dating history at your finger tip- PRE SOCIAL MEDIA. That's God tier, my friend. And with great power, comes great responsibility. Stacy, doesn't have any of that. She gets that power of his Palm Pilot and girl bosses directly into the sun. Stacy abuses her position at work (slay) and dives head first into BF's dating history and lands in the pile of trash that is Derek. However, we support women's rights and women's wrongs on this Pod. 

My guest today is Producer/Engineer Aaron C Schroeder, who has worked on projects for Willie Nelson, Hotegaia, Hallows, Arden Leas, Sharkie, Coasthouse Materials, and Hollow Earth Radio. In this episode, we discuss Texas Upbringing Roller Blading & Silverchair Battle of the Bands Early Recording Experiments Recording School Studio Watchdog Recording Willie Nelson Palm Pilot Payment Recording at Home Mell Dettmer Moving to Seattle Working In a Gay Porn Store Recording a Scene Landlord Challenges Recording in A Former Strip Club Running a Basement Studio The Fugazi Ethos Don Zientara Diversification of Audio Podcasting Gigs The Return to Physical Goods Patreon Page Audio for Film Business Manager Role Chuck Vanderbilt Matt's Rant: Not Missing Out on Life Links and Show Notes Jacob Sciba on WCA #263 Steve Chadie on WCA #245 / #487 Alan Evans on WCA #133 /#328 The Altec Bird Cage Aaron's Patreon Aaron's Site Credits Guest: Aaron C Schroeder Host: Matt Boudreau Engineer: Matt Boudreau Producer: Matt Boudreau Editing: Anne-Marie Pleau  WCA Theme Music: Cliff Truesdell  Announcer: Chuck Smith     

En el episodio de hoy viajamos en el tiempo gracias al cumpleaños de Cristobal, quien nos llevo por la galería de sus joyas mejor guardadas como su primer PDA, de Casio, hasta el Apple Newton, que no llegó a tener el éxito que se buscaba. Luego, a partir de una pregunta, Lucas nos cuenta cómo fue el proceso de venta de una de sus compañías, desde lo personal a lo más técnico. Esos momentos siempre son definitorios y claves para la vida de los emprendedores. Lucas Lopatin nos trae una curiosa oportunidad de trabajo, que puede ser un nicho en latinoamerica. Tiene que ver con AI, pero mejor que lo escuchen por ustedes mismos. Al final del episodio Cristobal nos trae la controversial estrategia de algunos fondos latinoamericanos para no fondear a sus empresas. Qué te parece? Hay algo para hacer? Decinos qué te parece este episodio! __ Notas del episodio: Boox Palma: https://lifehacker.com/tech/boox-palma-e-reader-review General Magic, Documental: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6849786/ Primer PDA Casio de Cristobal: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTVwgaUaa5kW5jK6c8TWUNcckd152Z6Da8djaz25SjoCg&s Segundo PDA Casio de Cristobal: https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/UeEAAOSw43tldHhU/s-l640.jpg Sharp Wizard: https://images.offerup.com/M1CEy6H7JFlTkH49Cj8C09kpIag=/333x250/f692/f69247cb9df34c90ae590fb3a23f4bdd.jpg Palm Pilot: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSYZm77PPQXDWvL4UvUq8j5Ikws4kysErvfZYvEQf676g&s Última Palm Pilot de Cristobal: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GF0y-RHZKDQ/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLDu_Yqd50Yv_iRAHRxMLndJELjrcA Apple Newton: https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/guides/images/000/002/752/medium800/newton43.jpg __ Tenes alguna pregunta? Escribinos y seguinos en: Twitter: @CristobaPerdomo y @llopatin Linkedin: Lucas Lopatin  y Cristobal Perdomo  y Visitá: Indie Build Wollef --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/indie-vs-unicornio/message

Download this ep to your Palm Pilots, folks, because this one's a homerun. It's Sex and the City Season 2 ep 1! And as I rounded third base with actors and Yankee fanatics Tom Lenk and Mitch Silpa, I couldn't help wonder: How DID my cousin Robby die, anyway? Got a burning question about a relationship or friendship problem (or really anything Sex and the City adjacent)? Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to AndJustLikeMatt@gmail.com and Matt will answer your question on the show with his very fancy guests. 

Chapters:0:00 - 1:24: Derek's intro and background1:25 - 4:28: Working at Infoseek4:29 - 7:33: The origin of device streaming7:34 - 9:50: The Kerton Group and its councils9:51 - 11:47: Journalism at Tech Dirt11:48 - 17:15: Current trends in telecom17:16 - 25:13: Products at CES 202425:14 - 28:58: Comparison of AI to baseball28:59 - 30:41: How will telecom evolve?30:42 - 31:50: How to reach Derek---Podcast website: https://160.fm/---Connect with Derek:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kertonWebsite: https://www.kertongroup.com/ ---Connect with Jill:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jill-berkowitz160 Characters is powered by Clerk Chat. 

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.We are thrilled to bring you a conversation with David Sacks, Founder and Partner of Craft Ventures. Based in San Francisco, Craft was founded in 2017 and currently has over 3 billion in assets under management.Across the last three decades, David has been incredibly influential as an investor, entrepreneur, and public thought leader. When starting Craft, he was able to draw from his deep operating background, having worked as an early leader at PayPal, and then later founding Yammer, which he sold to Microsoft for $1.2 Billion. He is also one of the hosts of the All In Podcast, one of the most listened podcasts in the world.We had a wide-ranging dialogue that took us through the evolution of Craft Ventures from its initial days to today, the strategic decision-making behind scaling fund sizes and team growth, and his overall views on the current outlook of venture capital.If you're a VC investor, then I'm sure you already know about Sydecar, the go-to platform for emerging VCs to manage their SPVs and funds. Sydecar is on a mission to make private markets more accessible, transparent, and liquid by standardizing how investment vehicles are created and executed. Their powerful software allows VCs to launch SPVs and funds instantaneously, track funding in real time, and offer hassle-free opportunities for early liquidity.Whether you're syndicating your first or fiftieth deal, Sydecar acts as your silent operating partner, handling all back-office functions in a single place. Sydecar always has your back, so that you never have to worry about chasing subscription docs, lost wires, or late K-1s.With all the recent ups and downs in the private markets, the last thing you want to worry about is whether your back office is operating smoothly. Sydecar's responsive and proactive customer support team is there to assist, helping you build trust with your investors and tackle the challenges of building your firm.Visit sydecar.io/ventureunlocked to learn more.About David Sacks:David Sacks is Co-Founder and Partner at Craft. He has been a successful founder and investor for over two decades, building and investing in some of the most iconic companies in tech. David has invested in over 20 unicorns, including Affirm, AirBnB, Bird, ClickUp, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, OpenDoor, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber, and Wish.David first got involved in the technology industry in 1999 when he joined early-stage startup Confinity, later renamed PayPal. Serving as the company's first product leader and then as COO, David built and ran many of the company's key teams, including product management and design, sales and marketing, business development, international, customer service, fraud operations, and HR. He pivoted the product from beaming money on Palm Pilots to emailing money on the web, and introduced the business model. When the company IPO'd on the Nasdaq in 2002, David was 29 — the median age of the “PayPal Mafia” executives listed on the S-1. PayPal was later acquired by eBay and eventually spun back out into a publicly traded company (under ticker symbol PYPL).David is well-known in Silicon Valley for his product acumen. AngelList's Naval Ravikant has called David “the world's best product strategist.” And has received acclaim as one of the Besties on the All In Podcast.In this episode, we discuss:(02:56) David Sacks discusses transitioning from being an entrepreneur with experiences at PayPal and Yammer to founding Craft Ventures, emphasizing the focus on SaaS and leveraging operational expertise to support startups.(04:56) The growth of Craft Ventures from its initial fund to managing $3.5 billion, focusing on SaaS and marketplaces, and how fund size affects strategy(08:15) Portfolio construction and the strategic shift towards reserving more for follow-ons to maintain company ownership and align fund size with venture focus(10:10) The VC market's evolution shifting towards sustainable investment strategies following the 2020-2021 bubble and its correction.(13:39) Advice for entrepreneurs to focus on capital efficiency and realistic growth expectations due to the changing investment landscape(17:33) Predicting a continued reset in valuations and funding availability in 2024, and how startups can adjust their strategies accordingly(34:05) Parallels and distinctions between running a venture firm and a startup, emphasizing the importance of creating a stable, transparent environment at Craft Ventures(36:10) The significance of firm culture and talent acquisition, focusing on collective success and providing transparent, valuable support to portfolio companiesI'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with David. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

An airhacks.fm conversation with Erik C. Thauvin (@ethauvin) about: early computer experiences with Logo and Tandy Model 3, writing horse race handicapping software as a kid, working at Apple at 16 writing resource editor for Mac, starting consulting firm and building custom software, attending Sun Tech Days to learn about Palm Pilot and Java, writing linkblog with Tomcat and JSP, creating popular linkblog with 8 million monthly views, converting projects to Rife and BLD frameworks, motivations for writing software he needs, Erik's blog: erik.thauvin.net Erik C. Thauvin on twitter: @ethauvin

Andre gives a comprehensive review of the Steam Deck OLED and we answer every single question submitted to us in our Listener Mailbag, Right now on Fine Time. Rate us, review us, love us. Twitter: @FineTimePodcast Andre: @pizzadinosaur.fineti.me Steve: @monotonegent.fineti.me Kevin: @kevinflevin89.fineti.me [00:00] Intro [01:30] Andre got a Steam Deck OLED [06:34] Steam Deck: Hardware, Build Quality, and Screen [16:05] Steam Deck: Software, Compatibility, and User Friendliness [31:04] Steam Deck: Emulation and Desktop Mode [34:40] Steam Deck: Various Games Tested [44:52] Break Time! [46:15] Welcome To Our Listener Mailbag! [46:37] Objectively terrible game that we love? [50:24] Ultimate three-person fighting game team? [53:00] What game would we destroy each other in? [54:39] Top three mascot characters? [57:42] Series we want to play but haven't? [01:00:50] Most recommended episodes of Fine Time? [01:04:06] Best video game movie adaption? [01:06:10] Game we could beat without dying? [01:09:55] Movies that don't click for us? [01:19:53] Lasting appeal of Roman Reigns? [01:22:02] Are we plumbers and do we wear ties? [01:23:28] Guilty pleasure movie? [01:26:54] State of Nintendo Switch Online? [01:30:31] Least favorite game genre? [01:33:47] Opinion on Palm Pilot games? [01:35:18] Food you thought was normal but it's actually weird? [01:38:13] Video game with the best-looking food? [01:41:30] Food that ended up disappointing us? [01:49:02] Five arcade games to play for eternity? [01:53:54] See You Next Time!

This is a new series of Crazy Wisdom where I invited my dad Stewart Alsop II to bring people from his past as a tech journalist and uncover the best stories from the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s about the personal computing revolution and apply them to the AI revolution currently happening. Our first guest Donna Dubinsky talks about her career experiences at Apple, handheld innovator Handspring, her work as the CEO of Palm (of the Palm Pilot handheld mobile device), and current AI work at Numenta. She and Stewart Alsop II both go deep on how the personal computing industry led to the mobile revoltuions and now how we got to where we are today. Dubinsky encourages listeners to stay tuned to developments at NatCast, her current project associated with the CHIPS Act. If you subscribe to chatGPT4, check out this GPT we trained on the conversation Timestamps 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and the AI Revolution 00:50 The AI Bubble and Lessons from Past Revolutions 01:28 Invitation to Engage with the Podcast 02:04 Introducing the Special Guest: Donna Dubinsky 02:31 Reminiscing about the Past: The Agenda Conference 03:30 The Evolution of Computing Devices 06:14 The Changing Landscape of the Computer Industry 06:58 The Ubiquity of Computing and the Future of the Chips Industry 08:11 The Evolution of Apple and Personal Device Preferences 14:28 The Journey of Numenta and the Future of AI 29:15 The Evolution of Mainframes and the Future of AI on Phones 37:31 The Early Days of the Tech Community 38:30 Transition from Mainframes to Personal Computing 39:04 The Launch of the Palm Pilot 41:30 The Evolution of the Microcomputer Business 42:59 The Role of Government in Advancing Technology 44:46 The Challenges of Manufacturing and Design in the Tech Industry 01:08:05 The Impact of Pricing on Perceived Value 01:09:17 The Highs and Lows of the Palm Pilot Journey 01:12:26 Current Work in AI and the CHIPS Act Key Insights Early Days of Computing and Mainframes: Initially, computing was not a common feature on everyone's desk. Mainframes, the early giants of the computing world, were massive and expensive, accessible only to large corporations and the government. These machines were housed in special rooms and were far from being personal or portable​​​​. Transition to Client-Server Models and Personalization: Computing started evolving with the development of client-server architecture. From the large, centralized mainframes, the industry moved to a model where computing was more distributed. Time-sharing systems allowed multiple users to access mainframe resources, leading to a gradual democratization of computing power. This shift laid the groundwork for the development of personal computers​​. The Era of Desktops and Handheld Devices: The next significant shift was the move to desktops and eventually to handheld devices. This evolution represented a dramatic change in how people interacted with computers, making them more personal and portable. The podcast mentions how devices like the Apple II brought computing into educational settings, revolutionizing how people could use these tools​​​​. The Impact of the Palm Pilot: The Palm Pilot is highlighted as a significant milestone in personal computing. Before the Palm, handheld devices were simply smaller versions of existing technology. The Palm Pilot, however, adopted a different approach. It did not try to replicate all functionalities of a PC. For instance, it did not support printing directly, positioning itself as a window or client to the PC, thus embracing a kind of client-server model. This decision not only made the device more practical and focused but also less expensive to support​​. Evolution of Form Factors: The podcast discusses the evolution of computing devices in terms of form factors. There were three main form factors: desktop (too big to carry), notebook (fit in a briefcase), and handheld (fit in a pocket or purse). Each form factor was defined by how users could physically carry and interact with these devices. It was believed that devices falling between these form factors would not be successful, although this was later proven not entirely accurate with the success of intermediate devices like tablets​​.

Tech and gaming executive, Cathy Hackl and guest host Lee Kebler release their 14th episode of TechMagic, the show that dives deep into today's tech news and explores the future of tech and gaming. This week Cathy is at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She'll share more next week when she's back on the podcast.In this episode Lee and producer, Lily Snyder, host the show. Lee and Lily reminisce about Palm Pilots and tech gadgets before smartphones and discuss devices like the Rabbit R1. Lee and Lily talk about Apple Vision Pro updates. Apple released an advanced multimodal system called Ferret, which excels beyond Chat GPT-4 in computer vision tasks.Show Notes:Davos World Economic ForumThe 7 Most Important AI Gadgets You Need to Know AboutApple says its Vision Pro is ‘spatial computing,' not VR‘Rec Room' to Roll Out Full-body Avatars in MarchHow Apple's New AI Shakes Up the AI World by Seeing What GPT-4 MissesUNIVERSITY ENROLLING AI-POWERED "STUDENTS" WHO WILL TURN IN ASSIGNMENTS, PARTICIPATE IN CLASS DISCUSSIONSUK's antitrust agency is going to put the screws to US big tech in 2024AI to Make the Metaverse Relevant Again, CES 2024Tween taste is expensive these days. Blame social media.ZooGears TheButter — a "piano" for dogsFlappie AI cat doorSubscribe and Share:www.adweek.com/podcasts/tech-magic/Cathy Hackl on LinkedInLee Kebler on LinkedInLily Snyder on LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Morris, VP of Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Couchbase's new columnar data store functionality, specific use cases for columnar data stores, and why AI gets better when it communicates with a cleaner pool of data. Jeff shares how more responsive databases could allow businesses like Dominos and United Airlines to create hyper-personalized experiences for their customers by utilizing more responsive databases. Jeff dives into the linked future of AI and data, and Corey learns about Couchbase's plans for the re:Invent conference. If you're attending re:Invent, you can visit Couchbase at booth 1095.About JeffJeff Morris is VP Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase (NASDAQ: BASE), a cloud database platform company that 30% of the Fortune 100 depend on.Links Referenced:Couchbase: https://www.couchbase.com/TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode of Screaming in the Cloud is brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. Also brought to us by Couchbase is today's victim, for lack of a better term. Jeff Morris is their VP of Product and Solutions Marketing. Jeff, thank you for joining me.Jeff: Thanks for having me, Corey, even though I guess I paid for it.Corey: Exactly. It's always great to say thank you when people give you things. I learned this from a very early age, and the only people who didn't were rude children and turned into worse adults.Jeff: Exactly.Corey: So, you are effectively announcing something new today, and I always get worried when a database company says that because sometimes it's a license that is going to upset people, sometimes it's dyed so deep in the wool of generative AI that, “Oh, we're now supporting vectors or whatnot.” Well, most of us don't know what that means.Jeff: Right.Corey: Fortunately, I don't believe that's what you're doing today. What have you got for us?Jeff: So, you're right. It's—well, what I'm doing is, we're announcing new stuff inside of Couchbase and helping Couchbase expand its market footprint, but we're not really moving away from our sweet spot, either, right? We like building—or being the database platform underneath applications. So, push us on the operational side of the operational versus analytic, kind of, database divide. But we are announcing a columnar data store inside of the Couchbase platform so that we can build bigger, better, stronger analytic functionality to feed the applications that we're supporting with our customers.Corey: Now, I feel like I should ask a question around what a columnar data store is because my first encounter with the term was when I had a very early client for AWS bill optimization when I was doing this independently, and I was asking them the… polite question of, “Why do you have 283 billion objects in a single S3 bucket? That is atypical and kind of terrifying.” And their answer was, “Oh, we built our own columnar data store on top of S3. This might not have been the best approach.” It's like, “I'm going to stop you there. With no further information, I can almost guarantee you that it was not.” But what is a columnar data store?Jeff: Well, let's start with the, everybody loves more data and everybody loves to count more things, right, but a columnar data store allows you to expedite the kind of question that you ask of the data itself by not having to look at every single row of the data while you go through it. You can say, if you know you're only looking for data that's inside of California, you just look at the column value of find me everything in California and then I'll pick all of those records to analyze. So, it gives you a faster way to go through the data while you're trying to gather it up and perform aggregations against it.Corey: It seems like it's one of those, “Well, that doesn't sound hard,” type of things, when you're thinking about it the way that I do, in terms of a database being more or less a medium to large size Excel spreadsheet. But I have it on good faith from all the customer environments. I've worked with that no, no, there are data stores that span even larger than that, which is, you know, one of those sad realities of the world. And everything at scale begins to be a heck of a lot harder. I've seen some of the value that this stuff offers and I can definitely understand a few different workloads in which case that's going to be super handy. What are you targeting specifically? Or is this one of those areas where you're going to learn from your customers?Jeff: Well, we've had analytic functionality inside the platform. It just, at the size and scale customers actually wanted to roam through the data, we weren't supporting that that much. So, we'll expand that particular footprint, it'll give us better integration capabilities with external systems, or better access to things in your bucket. But the use case problem is, I think, going to be driven by what new modern application requirements are going to be. You're going to need, we call it hyper-personalization because we tend to cater to B2C-style applications, things with a lot of account profiles built into them.So, you look at account profile, and you're like, “Oh, well Jeff likes blue, so sell him blue stuff.” And that's a great current level personalization, but with a new analytic engine against this, you can maybe start aggregating all the inventory information that you might have of all the blue stuff that you want to sell me and do that in real-time, so I'm getting better recommendations, better offers as I'm shopping on your site or looking at my phone and, you know, looking for the next thing I want to buy.Corey: I'm sure there's massive amounts of work that goes into these hyper-personalization stories. The problem is that the only time they really rise to our notice is when they fail hilariously. Like, you just bought a TV, would you like to buy another? Now statistically, you are likelier to buy a second TV right after you buy one, but for someone who just, “Well, I'm replacing my living room TV after ten years,” it feels ridiculous. Or when you buy a whole bunch of nails and they don't suggest, “Would you like to also perhaps buy a hammer?”It's one of those areas where it just seems like a human putting thought into this could make some sense. But I've seen some of the stuff that can come out of systems like this and it can be incredible. I also personally tend to bias towards use cases that are less, here's how to convince you to buy more things and start aiming in a bunch of other different directions where it starts meeting emerging use cases or changing situations rapidly, more rapidly than a human can in some cases. The world has, for better or worse, gotten an awful lot faster over the last few decades.Jeff: Yeah. And think of it in terms of how responsive can I be at any given moment. And so, let's pick on one of the more recent interesting failures that has popped up. I'm a Giants fan, San Francisco Giants fan, so I'll pick on the Dodgers. The Dodgers during the baseball playoffs, Clayton Kershaw—three-time MVP, Cy Young Award winner, great, great pitcher—had a first-inning meltdown of colossal magnitude: gave up 11 runs in the first inning to the Diamondbacks.Well, my customer Domino's Pizza could end up—well, let's shift the focus of our marketing. We—you know, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball this year in the National League—let's focus our attention there, but with that meltdown, let's pivot to Arizona and focus on our market in Phoenix. And they could do that within minutes or seconds, even, with the kinds of capabilities that we're coming up with here so that they can make better offers to that new environment and also do the decision intelligence behind it. Like, do I have enough dough to make a bigger offer in that big market? Do I have enough drivers or do I have to go and spin out and get one of the other food delivery folks—UberEats, or something like that—to jump on board with me and partner up on this kind of system?It's that responsiveness in real, real-time, right, that's always been kind of the conundrum between applications and analytics. You get an analytic insight, but it takes you an hour or a day to incorporate that into what the application is doing. This is intended to make all of that stuff go faster. And of course, when we start to talk about things in AI, right, AI is going to expect real-time responsiveness as best you can make it.Corey: I figure we have to talk about AI. That is a technology that has absolutely sprung to the absolute peak of the hype curve over the past year. OpenAI released Chat-Gippity, either late last year or early this year and suddenly every company seems to be falling all over itself to rebrand itself as an AI company, where, “We've been working on this for decades,” they say, right before they announce something that very clearly was crash-developed in six months. And every company is trying to drape themselves in the mantle of AI. And I don't want to sound like I'm a doubter here. I'm like most fans; I see an awful lot of value here. But I am curious to get your take on what do you think is real and what do you think is not in the current hype environment.Jeff: So yeah, I love that. I think there's a number of things that are, you know, are real is, it's not going away. It is going to continue to evolve and get better and better and better. One of my analyst friends came up with the notion that the exercise of generative AI, it's imprecise, so it gives you similarity things, and that's actually an improvement, in many cases, over the precision of a database. Databases, a transaction either works or it doesn't. It has failover or it doesn't, when—Corey: It's ideally deterministic when you ask it a question—Jeff: Yes.Corey: —the same question a second time, assuming it's not time-bound—Jeff: Gives you the right answer.Corey: Yeah, the sa—or at least the same answer.Jeff: The same answer. And your gen AI may not. So, that's a part of the oddity of the hype. But then it also helps me kind of feed our storyline of if you're going to try and make Gen AI closer and more accurate, you need a clean pool of data that you're dealing with, even though you've got probably—your previous design was such that you would use a relational database for transactions, a document database for your user profiles, you'd probably attach your website to a caching database because you needed speed and a lot of concurrency. Well, now you got three different databases there that you're operating.And if you're feeding data from each of those databases back to AI, one of them might be wrong or one of them might confuse the AI, yet how are you going to know? The complexity level is going to become, like, exponential. So, our premise is, because we're a multi-modal database that incorporates in-memory speed and documents and search and transactions and the like, if you start with a cleaner pool of data, you'll have less complexity that you're offering to your AI system and therefore you can steer it into becoming more accurate in its response. And then, of course, all the data that we're dealing with is on mobile, right? Data is created there for, let's say, your account profile, and then it's also consumed there because that's what people are using as their application interface of choice.So, you also want to have mobile interactivity and synchronization and local storage, kind of, capabilities built in there. So, those are kind of, you know, a couple of the principles that we're looking at of, you know, JSON is going to be a great format for it regardless of what happens; complexity is kind of the enemy of AI, so you don't want to go there; and mobility is going to be an absolute requirement. And then related to this particular announcement, large-scale aggregation is going to be a requirement to help feed the application. There's always going to be some other bigger calculation that you're going to want to do relatively in real time and feed it back to your users or the AI system that's helping them out.Corey: I think that that is a much more nuanced use case than a lot of the stuff that's grabbing customer attentions where you effectively have the Chat-Gippity story of it being an incredible parrot. Where I have run into trouble with the generative story has been people putting the thing that the robot that's magic and from the future has come up with off the cuff and just hurling that out into the universe under their own name without any human review, and that's fine sometimes sure, but it does get it hilariously wrong at some points. And the idea of sending something out under my name that has not been at least reviewed by me if not actually authored by me, is abhorrent. I mean, I review even the transactional, “Yes, you have successfully subscribed,” or, “Sorry to see you go,” email confirmations on stuff because there's an implicit, “Hugs and puppies, love Corey,” at the end of everything that goes out under my name.Jeff: Right.Corey: But I've gotten a barrage of terrible sales emails and companies that are trying to put the cart before the horse where either the, “Support rep,” quote-unquote, that I'm speaking to in the chat is an AI system or else needs immediate medical attention because there's something going on that needs assistance.Jeff: Yeah, they just don't understand.Corey: Right. And most big enterprise stories that I've heard so far that have come to light have been around the form of, “We get to fire most of our customer service staff,” an outcome that basically no one sensible wants. That is less compelling than a lot of the individualized consumer use cases. I love asking it, “Here's a blog post I wrote. Give me ten title options.” And I'll usually take one of them—one of them is usually not half bad and then I can modify it slightly.Jeff: And you'll change four words in it. Yeah.Corey: Yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a different use case.Jeff: It's been an interesting—even as we've all become familiar—or at least junior prompt engineers, right—is, your information is only going to be as good as you feed the AI system—the return is only going to be as good—so you're going to want to refine that kind of conversation. Now, we're not trying to end up replacing the content that gets produced or the writing of all kinds of pros, other than we do have a code generator that works inside of our environment called Capella iQ that talks to ChatGPT, but we try and put guardrails on that too, right, as always make sure that it's talking in terms of the context of Couchbase rather than, “Where's Taylor Swift this week,” which I don't want it to answer because I don't want to spend GPT money to answer that question for you.Corey: And it might not know the right answer, but it might very well spit out something that sounds plausible.Jeff: Exactly. But I think the kinds of applications that we're steering ourselves toward can be helped along by the Gen AI systems, but I don't expect all my customers are going to be writing automatic blog post generation kinds of applications. I think what we're ultimately trying to do is facilitate interactions in a way that we haven't dreamt of yet, right? One of them might be if I've opted into to loyalty programs, like my United account and my American Express account—Corey: That feels very targeted at my lifestyle as well, so please, continue.Jeff: Exactly, right? And so, what I really want the system to do is for Amex to reward me when I hit 1k status on United while I'm on the flight and you know, have the flight attendant come up and be like, “Hey, you did it. Either, here's a free upgrade from American Express”—that would be hyper-personalization because you booked your plane ticket with it, but they also happen to know or they cross-consumed information that I've opted into.Corey: I've seen them congratulate people for hitting a million miles flown mid-flight, but that's clearly something that they've been tracking and happens a heck of a lot less frequently. This is how you start scaling that experience.Jeff: Yes. But that happened because American Airlines was always watching because that was an American Airlines ad ages ago, right, but the same principle holds true. But I think there's going to be a lot more of these: how much information am I actually allowing to be shared amongst the, call it loyalty programs, but the data sources that I've opted into. And my God, there's hundreds of them that I've personally opted into, whether I like it or not because everybody needs my email address, kind of like what you were describing earlier.Corey: A point that I have that I think agrees largely with your point is that few things to me are more frustrating than what I'm signing up, for example, oh, I don't know, an AWS even—gee, I can't imagine there's anything like that going on this week—and I have to fill out an entire form that always asked me the same questions: how big my company is, whether we have multiple workloads on, what industry we're in. And no matter what I put into that, first, it never remembers me for the next time, which is frustrating in its own right, but two, no matter what I put in to fill that thing out, the email I get does not change as a result. At one point, I said, all right—I'm picking randomly—“I am a venture capitalist based in Sweden,” and I got nothing that is differentiated from the other normal stuff I get tied to my account because I use a special email address for those things, sometimes just to see what happens. And no, if you're going to make me jump through the hoops to give you the data, at least use it to make my experience better. It feels like I'm asking for the moon here, but I shouldn't be.Jeff: Yes. [we need 00:16:19] to make your experience better and say, you know, “Here's four companies in Malmo that you ought to be talking to. And they happen to be here at the AWS event and you can go find them because their booth is here, here, and here.” That kind of immediate responsiveness could be facilitated, and to our point, ought to be facilitated. It's exactly like that kind of thing is, use the data in real-time.I was talking to somebody else today that was discussing that most data, right, becomes stale and unvaluable, like, 50% of the data, its value goes to zero after about a day. And some of it is stale after about an hour. So, if you can end up closing that responsiveness gap that we were describing—and this is kind of what this columnar service inside of Capella is going to be like—is react in real-time with real-time calculation and real-time look-up and real-time—find out how you might apply that new piece of information right now and then give it back to the consumer or the user right now.Corey: So, Couchbase takes a few different forms. I should probably, at least for those who are not steeped in the world of exotic forms of database, I always like making these conversations more accessible to folks who are not necessarily up to speed. Personally, I tend to misuse anything as a database, if I can hold it just the wrong way.Jeff: The wrong way. I've caught that about you.Corey: Yeah, it's—everything is a database if you hold it wrong. But you folks have a few different options: you have a self-managed commercial offering; you're an open-source project, so I can go ahead and run it on my own infrastructure however I want; and you have Capella, which is Couchbase as a service. And all of those are useful and have their points, and I'm sure I'm missing at least one or two along the way. But do you find that the columnar use case is going to disproportionately benefit folks using Capella in ways that the self-hosted version would not be as useful for, or is this functionality already available in other expressions of Couchbase?Jeff: It's not already available in other expressions, although there is analytic functionality in the self-managed version of Couchbase. But it's, as I've mentioned I think earlier, it's just not as scalable or as really real-time as far as we're thinking. So, it's going to—yes, it's going to benefit the database as a service deployments of Couchbase available on your favorite three clouds, and still interoperable with environments that you might self-manage and self-host. So, there could be even use cases where our development team or your development team builds in AWS using the cloud-oriented features, but is still ultimately deploying and hosting and managing a self-managed environment. You could still do all of that. So, there's still a great interplay and interoperability amongst our different deployment options.But the fun part, I think, about this is not only is it going to help the Capella user, there's a lot of other things inside Couchbase that help address the developers' penchant for trading zero-cost for degrees of complexity that you're willing to accept because you want everything to be free and open-source. And Couchbase is my fifth open-source company in my background, so I'm well, well versed in the nuances of what open-source developers are seeking. But what makes Couchbase—you know, its origin story really cool too, though, is it's the peanut butter and chocolate marriage of memcached and the people behind that and membase and CouchDB from [Couch One 00:19:54]. So, I can't think of that many—maybe Red Hat—project and companies that formed up by merging two complementary open-source projects. So, we took the scale and—Corey: You have OpenTelemetry, I think, that did that once, but that—you see occasional mergers, but it's very far from common.Jeff: But it's very, very infrequent. But what that made the Couchbase people end up doing is make a platform that will scale, make a data design that you can auto partition anywhere, anytime, and then build independently scalable services on top of that, one for SQL++, the query language. Anyone who knows SQL will be able to write something in Couchbase immediately. And I've got this AI Automator, iQ, that makes it even easier; you just say, “Write me a SQL++ query that does this,” and it'll do that. But then we added full-text search, we added eventing so you can stream data, we added the analytics capability originally and now we're enhancing it, and use JSON as our kind of universal data format so that we can trade data with applications really easily.So, it's a cool design to start with, and then in the cloud, we're steering towards things like making your entry point and using our database as a service—Capella—really, really, really inexpensive so that you get that same robustness of functionality, as well as the easy cost of entry that today's developers want. And it's my analyst friends that keep telling me the cloud is where the markets going to go, so we're steering ourselves towards that hockey puck location.Corey: I frequently remark that the role of the DBA might not be vanishing, but it's definitely changing, especially since the last time I counted, if you hold them and use as directed, AWS has something on the order of 14 distinct managed database offerings. Some are general purpose, some are purpose-built, and if this trend keeps up, in a decade, the DBA role is going to be determining which of its 40 databases is going to be the right fit for a given workload. That seems to be the counter-approach to a general-purpose database that works across the board. Clearly you folks have opinions on this. Where do you land?Jeff: Oh, so absolutely. There's the product that is a suite of capabilities—or that are individual capabilities—and then there's ones that are, in my case, kind of multi-model and do lots of things at once. I think historically, you'll recognize—because this is—let's pick on your phone—the same holds true for, you know, your phone used to be a watch, used to be a Palm Pilot, used to be a StarTAC telephone, and your calendar application, your day planner all at the same time. Well, it's not anymore. Technology converges upon itself; it's kind of a historical truism.And the database technologies are going to end up doing that—or continue to do that, even right now. So, that notion that—it's a ten-year-old notion of use a purpose-built database for that particular workload. Maybe sometimes in extreme cases that is the appropriate thing, but in more cases than not right now, if you need transactions when you need them, that's fine, I can do that. You don't necessarily need Aurora or RDS or Postgres to do that. But when you need search and geolocation, I support that too, so you don't need Elastic. And then when you need caching and everything, you don't need ElastiCache; it's all built-in.So, that multi-model notion of operate on the same pool of data, it's a lot less complex for your developers, they can code faster and better and more cleanly, debugging is significantly easier. As I mentioned, SQL++ is our language. It's basically SQL syntax for JSON. We're a reference implementation of this language, along with—[AsteriskDB 00:23:42] is one of them, and actually, the original author of that language also wrote DynamoDB's PartiQL.So, it's a common language that you wouldn't necessarily imagine, but the ease of entry in all of this, I think, is still going to be a driving goal for people. The old people like me and you are running around worrying about, am I going to get a particular, really specific feature out of the full-text search environment, or the other one that I pick on now is, “Am I going to need a vector database, too?” And the answer to me is no, right? There's going—you know, the database vendors like ourselves—and like Mongo has announced and a whole bunch of other NoSQL vendors—we're going to support that. It's going to be just another mode, and you get better bang for your buck when you've got more modes than a single one at a time.Corey: The consensus opinion that's emerging is very much across the board that vector is a feature, not a database type.Jeff: Not a category, yeah. Me too. And yeah, we're well on board with that notion, as well. And then like I said earlier, the JSON as a vehicle to give you all of that versatility is great, right? You can have vector information inside a JSON document, you can have time series information in the document, you could have graph node locations and ID numbers in a JSON array, so you don't need index-free adjacency or some of the other cleverness that some of my former employers have done. It really is all converging upon itself and hopefully everybody starts to realize that you can clean up and simplify your architectures as you look ahead, so that you do—if you're going to build AI-powered applications—feed it clean data, right? You're going to be better off.Corey: So, this episode is being recorded in advance, thankfully, but it's going to release the first day of re:Invent. What are you folks doing at the show, for those who are either there and for some reason, listening to a podcast rather than going to getting marketed to by a variety of different pitches that all mention AI or might even be watching from home and trying to figure out what to make of it?Jeff: Right. So, of course we have a booth, and my notes don't have in front of me what our booth number is, but you'll see it on the signs in the airport. So, we'll have a presence there, we'll have an executive briefing room available, so we can schedule time with anyone who wants to come talk to us. We'll be showing not only the capabilities that we're offering here, we'll show off Capella iQ, our coding assistant, okay—so yeah, we're on the AI hype band—but we'll also be showing things like our mobile sync capability where my phone and your phone can synchronize data amongst themselves without having to actually have a live connection to the internet. So, long as we're on the same network locally within the Venetian's network, we have an app that we have people download from the Apple Store and then it's a color synchronization app or picture synchronization app.So, you tap it, and it changes on my screen and I tap it and it changes on your screen, and we'll have, I don't know, as many people who are around standing there, synchronizing, what, maybe 50 phones at a time. It's actually a pretty slick demonstration of why you might want a database that's not only in the cloud but operates around the cloud, operates mobile-ly, operates—you know, can connect and disconnect to your networks. It's a pretty neat scenario. So, we'll be showing a bunch of cool technical stuff as well as talking about the things that we're discussing right now.Corey: I will say you're putting an awful lot of faith in conductivity working at re:Invent, be it WiFi or the cellular network. I know that both of those have bitten me in various ways over the years. But I wish you the best on it. I think it's going to be an interesting show based upon everything I've heard in the run-up to it. I'm just glad it's here.Jeff: Now, this is the cool part about what I'm talking about, though. The cool part about what I'm talking about is we can set up our own wireless network in our booth, and we still—you'd have to go to the app store to get this application, but once there, I can have you switch over to my local network and play around on it and I can sync the stuff right there and have confidence that in my local network that's in my booth, the system's working. I think that's going to be ultimately our design there because oh my gosh, yes, I have a hundred stories about connectivity and someone blowing a demo because they're yanking on a cable behind the pulpit, right?Corey: I always build in a—and assuming there's no connectivity, how can I fake my demos, just because it's—I've only had to do it once, but you wind up planning in advance when you start doing a talk to a large enough or influential enough audience where you want things to go right.Jeff: There's a delightful acceptance right now of recorded videos and demonstrations that people sort of accept that way because of exactly all this. And I'm sure we'll be showing that in our booth there too.Corey: Given the non-deterministic nature of generative AI, I'm sort of surprised whenever someone hasn't mocked the demo in advance, just because yeah, gives the right answer in the rehearsal, but every once in a while, it gets completely unglued.Jeff: Yes, and we see it pretty regularly. So, the emergence of clever and good prompt engineering is going to be a big skill for people. And hopefully, you know, everybody's going to figure out how to pass it along to their peers.Corey: Excellent. We'll put links to all this in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing how well this works out for you. Best of luck at the show and thanks for speaking with me. I appreciate it.Jeff: Yeah, Corey. We appreciate the support, and I think the show is going to be very strong for us as well. And thanks for having me here.Corey: Always a pleasure. Jeff Morris, VP of Product and Solutions Marketing at Couchbase. This episode has been brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. And I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment, but if you want to remain happy, I wouldn't ask that podcast platform what database they're using. No one likes the answer to those things.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Sydney Skybetter and producer Kamal Sinclair chat about the intersection of the cultural sector, emerging technologies, and the vintage hardware that shaped their childhoods. Are we all complicit in these complex cultural systems? Oh, and also, can we please bring back the Filofax? About Kamal: Kamal Sinclair supports artists, institutions, and communities working at the convergence of art, media, culture, and technology. Currently, she serves as the Senior Director of Digital Innovation at The Music Center in Los Angeles, which is home to TMC Arts, Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles Master Chorale, LA Opera, and LA Phil. Additionally, she serves as an advisor or board member to  Peabody Awards interactive Board, For Freedoms, NEW INC.'s  ONX Studio, Civic Signals, For Freedoms, MIT's Center for Advanced Virtuality, Starfish Accelerator, Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation, and Eyebeam. Previously, she was the Director of Sundance Institute's New Frontier Labs Program, External Advisor to Ford Foundation's JustFilms and MacArthur Foundation's Journalism & Media Program, Adjunct Professor at USC's Media Arts + Practice program, and Executive Director of the Guild of Future Architects. She is the co-author of Making a New Reality. Sinclair got her start in emerging media as an artist and producer on Question Bridge: Black Males, where she and her collaborators launched a project with an interactive website and curriculum; published a book; exhibited in over sixty museums/festivals. Read the transcript, and find more resources in our archive: https://www.are.na/choreographicinterfaces/dwr-ep-4-fierce-on-the-palm-pilot-a-conversation-with-kamal-sinclair Like, subscribe, and review here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dances-with-robots/id1715669152  What We Discuss with Kamal (Timestamps): 0:00:00: Introduction to Kamal Sinclair 0:01:32: Discussion on the influence of Minority Report on technology and body interfaces. 0:04:56: Personal experiences with early mobile devices and anticipation of smartphones. 0:07:10: Exploring the cyclical nature of technology and imagining the future. 0:08:10: The role of a curator in identifying and bridging new forms of art and technology. 0:09:18: The importance of following the artist and supporting their vision. 0:10:38: Balancing the promise and ethics of technology in art. 0:12:29: Exciting emerging art in storytelling, aesthetics, and movement. 0:15:18: The power of imagination and action in shaping the future. 0:17:43: The relationship between bodies and technologies. 0:18:53: The influence of disability and otherly abled experiences on technology. 0:19:41: Dance historical perspectives on the bodies of the future. 0:21:26: The need to consider nature and relationships in future designs. 0:23:25: The negative impact of militarized surveillance technologies on marginalized groups 0:25:39: Discussion on the immersive VR experience of Birdly 0:27:02: Healing and altered states through immersive experiences 0:28:30: Managing complicity and the future of work for artists 0:30:41: Closing with the acknowledgement of not knowing 0:31:19: Show credits & thanks The Dances with Robots Team Host: Sydney Skybetter Co-Host & Executive Producer: Ariane Michaud Archivist and Web Designer: Kate Gow Podcasting Consultant: Megan Hall Accessibility Consultant: Laurel Lawson Music: Kamala Sankaram Audio Production Consultant: Jim Moses Assistant Editor: Andrew Zukoski Student Associate: Rishika Kartik About CRCI The Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI) explores the braid of choreography, computation and surveillance through an interdisciplinary lens. Find out more at www.choreographicinterfaces.org Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts & Performance Studies' Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces thanks the Marshall Woods Lectureships Foundation of Fine Arts, the Brown Arts Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their generous support of this project. The Brown Arts Institute and the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies are part of the Perelman Arts District.  

Carl Yankowski. Do you remember who he was? Well, the answer to that is: “very likely not.” But Carl Yankowski's life as a business person can hold some very valuable lessons for us in our personal and  professional lives. Join Kevin as we delve into a portrait of Carl Yankowski and how his life can inform ours!  // Download this episode's Application & Action questions and PDF transcript at whitestone.org.

Show Notes: Neil Hendin, a graduate of Harvard, has a diverse career history, including being an undergrad, grad student, teaching assistant, teaching fellow, and staff member. Neil has worked in various engineering departments, including physics, electronics, and computer systems. He has also been involved in campus radio and radio engineering. Neil also completed his master's degree at Harvard. His first job as an engineer was at Maxim Integrated Products, a semiconductor company headquartered in Portland, Oregon. He moved to Hewlett Packard, where he worked in radio engineering. He has been in Silicon Valley since working at Maxim and has also worked at HP, Nvidia, Palm, and Google. Neil currently leads the ChromeOS hardware team at Google and has moved up the engineering management ladder over the past 12 years.  Neil started his career at WHRB after helping a woman set up a stereo for her college. He joined the radio station as a technical staff member and later became chief engineer. He was responsible for maintaining the hardware, including transmitter repair and maintenance. Neil's interest in radio engineering was sparked by the analog nature of circuit building and the ability to analyze and simulate the engineering tools available today. He believes that the field of radio engineering is considered one of the "black magic" fields in electronics, as it requires a lot of skill and experimentation. Radio Engineering Explained Radio engineering is the process of transmitting signals over long distances using electromagnetic radiation, such as electromagnetic waves or Morse code. It involves modulation, which involves sending data that is decoded to transmit multiple messages. Radio engineers deal with high frequency circuits, typically ranging from 100 megahertz to 70 gigahertz. The frequency range of these signals depends on the language and technology evolution, with the term "micro" being higher than UHF. Antenna engineering is another subspecialty, involving the antennas that launch signals into free space. Modern smartphones have at least six or eight antennas, which can be divided into lower, mid-range, and high bands. Some phones combine these bands, while others have a pair of antennas for each set of bands. Bluetooth is often combined with Wi-Fi, as they are in the same frequency range and are often done by the same chip in the phone. Radio engineers often gravitate towards the cell phone business due to the challenges of fitting all of this in their pocket and the challenges of running the phone off of batteries. They also worry about the potential interference with aircraft sensors and the plane's avionics. While there were initial fears of interference, radio engineers do not turn off their phones during takeoff or landing to ensure aircraft safety.. From Palm OS Architecture to Chromebooks Neil talks about the birth of the modern smartphone as a significant milestone in the history of technology. Palm and handspring invented the Palm OS, which was popular among 30 million people. They spun off from Palm and started cellular phones, adding cellular modems into the Palm Pilot type architecture. The Palm Pilot was the first modern smartphone with an app store, replacing paper calendars and address books. Neil talks about the evolution of the Palm Free and how it led to the accelerated development of the iPhone. Neil left Palm and joined the Chrome team, where they piloted a test of Chromebooks.  Managing a Group of Engineers at Google Neil transitioned from being an individual contributor to managing a group of engineers. He realized that team dynamics, collaboration, communication quality, and trust were crucial for everyone's individual abilities. He realized that having a diverse mix of backgrounds and experience levels made teams more productive.  At Google he noticed how well-run teams were, even if not everyone was equally experienced. He decided to manage a small team of engineers, allowing him to have more impact. He asked people if they wanted to try new roles and gave them organizational flexibility. He managed a group of 75 engineers, which is currently in the low 40s due to a recent layoff. Managing a group of engineers is different depending on the type of roles they have in their organization. His current team size is around 44 engineers. Neil shares stories of engineering challenges that may bubble up to managers, such as the down economy and the decline in the personal computer market.  The Process of Designing and Interacting with Manufacturers Neil discusses the process of designing and interacting with manufacturers, such as OEMs like Dells, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, and LG. These OEMs, often based in Taiwan, have access to China's resources for high-volume manufacturing and have factories in various parts of China. Neil has a team of around 28 to 22 people, based in the Taipei office and two engineers in Sydney, Australia. They work with manufacturing companies (ODMs) to design a reference design and tweak it to ensure it stays agile and cost-effective in the current landscape. The team works closely with OEMs to build prototypes, and a lead OEM, such as Dell or HP or Lenovo, implements a lead product on one at the same ODM. The learnings from this build are then shared with another OEM. Influential Courses and Professors at Harvard Neil shares his experiences at Harvard, mentioning two professors who have influenced his career, his electrical engineering professor, Al Pandiscio, was a mentor, friend, and instructor, while Victor Jones, a professor of electromagnetics, taught the electromagnetics class and cellular communications. Timestamps: 07:57 How Neil got into radio engineering 25:16 Leaving Palm and joining ChromeBook 27:30 Testing ChromeBook 27:52 Transition from individual contributor to managing a small team 35:10 Managing as an engineer 39:28 Managing a team of new managers 45:51 How Neil works with manufacturers?  CONTACT: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nhendin Email: Neil.Hendin@gmail.com  

Welcome episode 227 of the Cloud Pod podcast - where the forecast is always cloudy! This week your hosts are Justin, Jonathan, Matthew and Ryan - and they're REALLY excited to tell you all about the 161 one things announced at Google Next. Literally, all the things. We're also saying farewell to EC2 Classic, Amazon SES, and Azure's Explicit Proxy - which probably isn't what you think it is.  Titles we almost went with this week:

The MacVoices Live! panel takes another look at the desirability and function of foldable phones after some close encounters. Chuck Joiner, Guy Serle, David Ginsburg, Ben Roethig, Eric Bolden, Kelly Guimont, Web Bixby, and Mark Fuccio. They share their experiences and initial impressions, highlighting the challenges of weight and app compatibility. They also touch on Samsung's struggle to differentiate itself from other Android makers. The conversation wraps up with brief mentions rumors about upcoming Apple events. (Part 3)  This edition of MacVoices is brought to you by the MacVoices Dispatch, our weekly newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on any and all MacVoices-related information. Subscribe today and don't miss a thing. Show Notes: Chapters: 0:00:01 Introduction and discussion of foldable phones 0:01:30 Shift in conversation to another topic: foldable phones 0:04:25 A Friend with a Samsung Galaxy Foldable 0:04:39 Desiring a phone that transitions into an iPad 0:06:18 Comparing foldable phones to the Palm Pilot 0:12:06 Speculating on the Future of Technology 0:13:23 The iPad vs. TikTok debate 0:15:13 Apple's control over their platform and app development 0:17:39 The frustration of Samsung's attempts to be different 0:19:12 Apple's interest in a foldable iPad 0:20:43 The limitations and wasted space of foldable screens 0:24:00 The benefits and drawbacks of foldable phones 0:24:40 Unexpected Departures and Quick Mention of Apple Card and Cortana 0:26:25 Apple Rumors: Event Date Speculation Links: Apple Card savings account tops $10 billion in deposits https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/02/apple-card-savings-account-tops-10-billion-in-deposits/ Guests: Web Bixby has been in the insurance business for 40 years and has been an Apple user for longer than that.You can catch up with him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Eric Bolden is into macOS, plants, sci-fi, food, and is a rural internet supporter. You can connect with him on Twitter, by email at embolden@mac.com, on Mastodon at @eabolden@techhub.social, and on his blog, Trending At Work. Mark Fuccio is actively involved in high tech startup companies, both as a principle at piqsure.com, or as a marketing advisor through his consulting practice Tactics Sells High Tech, Inc. Mark was a proud investor in Microsoft from the mid-1990's selling in mid 2000, and hopes one day that MSFT will be again an attractive investment. You can contact Mark through Twitter, LinkedIn, or on Mastodon. David Ginsburg is the host of the weekly podcast In Touch With iOS where he discusses all things iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and related technologies. He is an IT professional supporting Mac, iOS and Windows users. Visit his YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/daveg65 and find and follow him on Twitter @daveg65 and on Mastodon at @daveg65@mastodon.cloud Kelly Guimont is a podcaster and friend of the Rebel Alliance. You can also hear her on The Aftershow with Mike Rose, and she still has more to say which she saves for Twitter and Mastodon.  Ben Roethig has been in the Apple Ecosystem since the System 7 Days. He is the a former Associate Editor with Geek Beat, Co-Founder of The Tech Hangout and Deconstruct and currently shares his thoughts on RoethigTech. Contact him on  Twitter and Mastodon. Guy Serle, best known for being one of the co-hosts of the MyMac Podcast, sincerely apologizes for anything he has done or caused to have happened while in possession of dangerous podcasting equipment. He should know better but being a blonde from Florida means he's probably incapable of understanding the damage he has wrought. Guy is also the author of the novel, The Maltese Cube. You can follow his exploits on Twitter, catch him on Mac to the Future on Facebook, at @Macparrot@mastodon.social, and find everything at VertShark.com.   Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon      http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:      http://macvoices.com      Twitter:      http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner      http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:      https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:      https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes      Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss 00:00:00 Introduction and discussion of foldable phones 00:01:30 Shift in conversation to another topic: foldable phones 00:04:25 A Friend with a Samsung Galaxy Foldable 00:04:39 Desiring a phone that transitions into an iPad 00:06:18 Comparing foldable phones to the Palm Pilot 00:12:05 Speculating on the Future of Technology 00:13:22 The iPad vs. TikTok debate 00:15:12 Apple's control over their platform and app development 00:17:39 The frustration of Samsung's attempts to be different 00:19:11 Apple's interest in a foldable iPad 00:20:42 The limitations and wasted space of foldable screens 00:23:59 The benefits and drawbacks of foldable phones 00:24:39 Unexpected Departures and Quick Mention of Apple Card and Cortana 00:26:24 Apple Rumors: Event Date Speculation

In this episode of the Fearless Sellers podcast, host Joie Roberts interviews Rob Stanley, the man behind the money suit and the face of Getida. Rob shares his journey as an OG in the Amazon and e-commerce selling space, starting from his early days selling on eBay in 1998. He talks about his experience with taking apart Palm Pilots and providing instructions through photos and later transitioning to video. Rob's YouTube channel gained millions of followers, driving significant sales, and supporting many families. Tune in to hear more about Rob's fascinating journey in the world of online selling. [00:01:09] Selling palm pilot parts. [00:03:15] Evolution of e-commerce platforms. [00:06:39] YouTube as a lead generation. [00:10:35] Pivoting and staying successful. [00:13:14] The Canton Fair [00:17:48] Selling a YouTube channel. [00:19:04] SEO tips for Amazon brand owners. [00:24:10] SEO and YouTube optimization. [00:26:51] YouTube and Google integration. [00:29:38] Starting a new job. [00:32:48] Breaking news on Docmaster Pro. [00:35:29] YouTube channel and content creation. Rob Stanley is a prominent figure in the YouTube and e-commerce selling space. He has built a successful YouTube channel with millions of followers and was able to sell it. At its peak, the YouTube channel was generating $100,000 in monthly sales. Rob's philosophy in this field is to encourage others to utilize the content they already have and start a YouTube channel today, without the need for expensive equipment. His achievements and credentials in this space make him a respected authority and a valuable resource for those looking to succeed in YouTube and e-commerce selling. Connect with Rob: www.Getida.com Contact Joie on Instagram: @JoieRoberts.official Interested in learning how to build your own Amazon business from the leaders in the Amazon industry? Book your free consultation with Joie and team at www.AMZInsiders.org/apply?sl=fp  

Twitter's rebrand to X may actually be happening soon. Alphabet reports better-than-expected quarterly results driven by growth in cloud. YouTube Q2 Ad Sales Rise 4.4%, Alphabet Handily Tops Earnings Estimates. Google's CFO just got a promotion. Google says 2 billion logged in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts. Google Street View is back in Germany after 10+ year halt. Jeff talks about his trip to Google previewing NotebookLM. Google software engineer got $605,000 bonus, plus more from massive salary leak. Google's nightmare "Web Integrity API" wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web. Top tech companies form group seeking to control AI. ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI. Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia. Google Play services ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat. Everything Samsung Announced at Summer Galaxy Unpacked 2023. ChromeOS 115 rolling out: Android App Streaming, PDF signatures. Picks: Stacey - Weighted Vest. Jeff - IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer's 70 mm release. Ant - "Google Stadia" Lives On For Me. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: discourse.org/twit AWS Insiders - TWIG fastmail.com/twit

Twitter's rebrand to X may actually be happening soon. Alphabet reports better-than-expected quarterly results driven by growth in cloud. YouTube Q2 Ad Sales Rise 4.4%, Alphabet Handily Tops Earnings Estimates. Google's CFO just got a promotion. Google says 2 billion logged in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts. Google Street View is back in Germany after 10+ year halt. Jeff talks about his trip to Google previewing NotebookLM. Google software engineer got $605,000 bonus, plus more from massive salary leak. Google's nightmare "Web Integrity API" wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web. Top tech companies form group seeking to control AI. ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI. Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia. Google Play services ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat. Everything Samsung Announced at Summer Galaxy Unpacked 2023. ChromeOS 115 rolling out: Android App Streaming, PDF signatures. Picks: Stacey - Weighted Vest. Jeff - IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer's 70 mm release. Ant - "Google Stadia" Lives On For Me. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: discourse.org/twit AWS Insiders - TWIG fastmail.com/twit

Twitter's rebrand to X may actually be happening soon. Alphabet reports better-than-expected quarterly results driven by growth in cloud. YouTube Q2 Ad Sales Rise 4.4%, Alphabet Handily Tops Earnings Estimates. Google's CFO just got a promotion. Google says 2 billion logged in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts. Google Street View is back in Germany after 10+ year halt. Jeff talks about his trip to Google previewing NotebookLM. Google software engineer got $605,000 bonus, plus more from massive salary leak. Google's nightmare "Web Integrity API" wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web. Top tech companies form group seeking to control AI. ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI. Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia. Google Play services ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat. Everything Samsung Announced at Summer Galaxy Unpacked 2023. ChromeOS 115 rolling out: Android App Streaming, PDF signatures. Picks: Stacey - Weighted Vest. Jeff - IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer's 70 mm release. Ant - "Google Stadia" Lives On For Me. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: discourse.org/twit AWS Insiders - TWIG fastmail.com/twit

Twitter's rebrand to X may actually be happening soon. Alphabet reports better-than-expected quarterly results driven by growth in cloud. YouTube Q2 Ad Sales Rise 4.4%, Alphabet Handily Tops Earnings Estimates. Google's CFO just got a promotion. Google says 2 billion logged in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts. Google Street View is back in Germany after 10+ year halt. Jeff talks about his trip to Google previewing NotebookLM. Google software engineer got $605,000 bonus, plus more from massive salary leak. Google's nightmare "Web Integrity API" wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web. Top tech companies form group seeking to control AI. ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI. Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia. Google Play services ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat. Everything Samsung Announced at Summer Galaxy Unpacked 2023. ChromeOS 115 rolling out: Android App Streaming, PDF signatures. Picks: Stacey - Weighted Vest. Jeff - IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer's 70 mm release. Ant - "Google Stadia" Lives On For Me. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: discourse.org/twit AWS Insiders - TWIG fastmail.com/twit

Twitter's rebrand to X may actually be happening soon. Alphabet reports better-than-expected quarterly results driven by growth in cloud. YouTube Q2 Ad Sales Rise 4.4%, Alphabet Handily Tops Earnings Estimates. Google's CFO just got a promotion. Google says 2 billion logged in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts. Google Street View is back in Germany after 10+ year halt. Jeff talks about his trip to Google previewing NotebookLM. Google software engineer got $605,000 bonus, plus more from massive salary leak. Google's nightmare "Web Integrity API" wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web. Top tech companies form group seeking to control AI. ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI. Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia. Google Play services ending support for Android 4.4 KitKat. Everything Samsung Announced at Summer Galaxy Unpacked 2023. ChromeOS 115 rolling out: Android App Streaming, PDF signatures. Picks: Stacey - Weighted Vest. Jeff - IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer's 70 mm release. Ant - "Google Stadia" Lives On For Me. Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham, and Ant Pruitt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-google. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: discourse.org/twit AWS Insiders - TWIG fastmail.com/twit

We are all over the place this week with plenty of bonus pro tips and witty banter. There are some great tips for being aware of scams and some real-life stories of being skeptical when it comes to emails, popups, and phone calls. Enjoy and tech better! Watch on YouTube! Followup: Elon Musk Changes Twitter name and logo to X (01:55) Meta and Microsoft introduce the next generation of Llama (07:15) Stability AI releases Stable Doodle, a Sketch-to-image tool (10:40) Google raising price of YouTube Premium to $13.99 per month (14:30) Dave's Pro Tip of the Week: Threads… General > Keyboards > Character Preview (19:10) Just the headlines: (24:20) FTX lobbyist tried to buy Pacific island of Nauru to create a new superspecies, lawsuit says For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon Hundreds of drones retrieved from Victoria Harbour, Docklands following light show malfunction Facebook, Instagram face Norwegian ban from tracking users for ads Nissan is the next automaker to adopt Tesla-style EV charging plugs Takes: Here's why the best IMAX movies still need a Palm Pilot to work (26:20) Google releases Nearby Share, its Android AirDrop clone for Windows (30:55) Google has an ‘Enhanced Safe Browsing' feature. Should you use it? (34:11) US military emails sent to Mali because of common typo (40:45) Bonus Odd Take: Your favorite addictive Flash games back from the dead (43:15) Picks of the Week:  Dave: Sony SELP18105G E PZ 18-105mm F4 G OSS (Renewed) (45:30) Nate: CarbonKlean Peeps Eyeglass Lens Cleaner - Efficient and Durable Carbon Microfiber Technology - Exclusively Used by NASA - 500 Uses (Injected Purple) (50:45) Find us elsewhere: https://notpicks.com https://www.notnerd.com https://www.youtube.com/c/Notnerd https://ratethispodcast.com/notnerd https://www.tiktok.com/@notnerdpod https://www.twitter.com/n0tnerd/ https://www.instagram.com/n0tnerd https://www.facebook.com/n0tnerd/ info@Notnerd.com Call or text 608.618.NERD(6373) If you would like to help support Notnerd financially, mentally, or physically, don't hesitate to get in touch with us via any of the methods above. Consider any product/app links to be affiliate links.

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce discuss all the gadget news from this week, the state of EV charging for non-Tesla owners, the unions of Hollywood on strike, and much more. Further reading: Beats Studio Pro headphones review: leaning on a legacy The future of EV charging for non-Tesla owners may not be as bad as it looks HP Spectre x360 13.5 vs. Dell XPS 13: which flagship should you buy? Motorola G Stylus 5G (2023) review: a good phone spoiled by bloatware  Framework Laptop 16: our exclusive hands-on OnePlus 12 leaks show a bigger battery and faster charging Logitech buys Stream Deck rival Loupedeck   Tesla reveals Cybertruck size specs as it builds release candidates Meta is giving away its AI tech to try to beat ChatGPT Apple is testing an AI chatbot but has no idea what to do with it The unions of Hollywood are trying to save it from itself Bob Iger's big ideas for Disney involve cost-cutting at Marvel A real-time reaction to the actors' strike. TREE LAW Vox Media drops its own CMS Netflix reportedly has around 1.5 million subscribers on its ad tier in the US. The Biden administration is tackling smart devices with a new cybersecurity label  Here's why 70mm IMAX movies like Oppenheimer need a Palm Pilot to work Your Starbucks order is not ready Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple is testing its own version of ChatGPT, called Apple GPT, as a way to catch up to what OpenAI has done with AI so far. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg breaks it all down. Jason shares his story of the week about Netflix's growth as it axes its 9.99 plan and deals with dual Hollywood strikes. Mikah talks about how IMAX projectionists are using old technology to show IMAX films and why they continue to use it today. Finally, friend of the network Megan Morrone stops by to share her experience using ChatGPT as a life coach. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Mark Gurman and Megan Morrone Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zocdoc.com/tnw drata.com/twit AWS Insiders - TNW

Apple is testing its own version of ChatGPT, called Apple GPT, as a way to catch up to what OpenAI has done with AI so far. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg breaks it all down. Jason shares his story of the week about Netflix's growth as it axes its 9.99 plan and deals with dual Hollywood strikes. Mikah talks about how IMAX projectionists are using old technology to show IMAX films and why they continue to use it today. Finally, friend of the network Megan Morrone stops by to share her experience using ChatGPT as a life coach. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Mark Gurman and Megan Morrone Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zocdoc.com/tnw drata.com/twit AWS Insiders - TNW

Apple is testing its own version of ChatGPT, called Apple GPT, as a way to catch up to what OpenAI has done with AI so far. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg breaks it all down. Jason shares his story of the week about Netflix's growth as it axes its 9.99 plan and deals with dual Hollywood strikes. Mikah talks about how IMAX projectionists are using old technology to show IMAX films and why they continue to use it today. Finally, friend of the network Megan Morrone stops by to share her experience using ChatGPT as a life coach. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Mark Gurman and Megan Morrone Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zocdoc.com/tnw drata.com/twit AWS Insiders - TNW

Apple is testing its own version of ChatGPT, called Apple GPT, as a way to catch up to what OpenAI has done with AI so far. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg breaks it all down. Jason shares his story of the week about Netflix's growth as it axes its 9.99 plan and deals with dual Hollywood strikes. Mikah talks about how IMAX projectionists are using old technology to show IMAX films and why they continue to use it today. Finally, friend of the network Megan Morrone stops by to share her experience using ChatGPT as a life coach. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Mark Gurman and Megan Morrone Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zocdoc.com/tnw drata.com/twit AWS Insiders - TNW

Apple is testing its own version of ChatGPT, called Apple GPT, as a way to catch up to what OpenAI has done with AI so far. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg breaks it all down. Jason shares his story of the week about Netflix's growth as it axes its 9.99 plan and deals with dual Hollywood strikes. Mikah talks about how IMAX projectionists are using old technology to show IMAX films and why they continue to use it today. Finally, friend of the network Megan Morrone stops by to share her experience using ChatGPT as a life coach. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Mark Gurman and Megan Morrone Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zocdoc.com/tnw drata.com/twit AWS Insiders - TNW

Apple is testing its own version of ChatGPT, called Apple GPT, as a way to catch up to what OpenAI has done with AI so far. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg breaks it all down. Jason shares his story of the week about Netflix's growth as it axes its 9.99 plan and deals with dual Hollywood strikes. Mikah talks about how IMAX projectionists are using old technology to show IMAX films and why they continue to use it today. Finally, friend of the network Megan Morrone stops by to share her experience using ChatGPT as a life coach. Hosts: Jason Howell and Mikah Sargent Guests: Mark Gurman and Megan Morrone Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: zocdoc.com/tnw drata.com/twit AWS Insiders - TNW

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 164. Ichiro Lambe has been making games since the days of MUDs and Palm Pilots, and here he talks to Drew about what’s new—from the possibilities of so-called AI (as exciting as they are fraught) to his strategic deck-builder of ramshackle autobattles, Million Monster Militia. You can wishlist Million Monster Militia, along … Continue reading "Monsters and ‘Merica, LLMs and Luddites, with Ichiro Lambe"

Bluetooth The King Ragnar Lodbrok was a legendary Norse king, conquering parts of Denmark and Sweden. And if we're to believe the songs, he led some of the best raids against the Franks and the the loose patchwork of nations Charlemagne put together called the Holy Roman Empire.  We use the term legendary as the stories of Ragnar were passed down orally and don't necessarily reconcile with other written events. In other words, it's likely that the man in the songs sung by the bards of old are likely in fact a composite of deeds from many a different hero of the norse.   Ragnar supposedly died in a pit of snakes at the hands of the Northumbrian king and his six sons formed a Great Heathen Army to avenge their father. His sons ravaged modern England int he wake of their fathers death before becoming leaders of various lands they either inherited or conquered. One of those sons, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, returned home to rule his lands and had children, including Harthacnut. He in turn had a son named Gorm.  Gorm the Old was a Danish king who lived to be nearly 60 in a time when life expectancy for most was about half that. Gorm raised a Jelling stone in honor of his wife Thyra. As did his son, in the honor of his wife. That stone is carved with runes that say: “King Haraldr ordered this monument made in memory of Gormr, his father, and in memory of Thyrvé, his mother; that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.” That stone was erected by a Danish king named Herald Gormsson. He converted to Christianity as part of a treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor of the day. He united the tribes of Denmark into a kingdom. One that would go on to expand the reach and reign of the line. Just as Bluetooth would unite devices. Even the logo is a combination of runes that make up his initials HB. Once united, their descendants would go on to rule Denmark, Norway, and England. For a time. Just as Bluetooth would go on to be an important wireless protocol. For a time.  Personal Area Networks Many early devices shipped with infrared so people could use a mouse or keyboard. But those never seemed to work so great. And computers with a mouse and keyboard and drawing pad and camera and Zip drive and everything else meant that not only did devices have to be connected to sync but they also had to pull a lot of power and create an even bigger mess on our desks.  What the world needed instead was an inexpensive chip that could communicate wirelessly and not pull a massive amount of power since some would be in constant communication. And if we needed a power cord then might as well just use USB or those RS-232 interfaces (serial ports) that were initially developed in 1960 - that were slow and cumbersome. And we could call this a Personal Area Network, or PAN.  The Palm Pilot was popular, but docking and pluging in that serial port was not exactly optimal. Yet every ATX motherboard had a port or two. So a Bluetooth Special Interest Group was formed to conceive and manage the standard in 1988 and while initially had half a dozen companies now has over 30,000. The initial development started in the late 1990s with Ericcson. It would use short-range UHF radio waves in the 2.402 GHz and 2.48 GHz bands to exchange data with computers and cell phones, which were evolving into mobile devices at the time. The technology was initially showcased at COMDEX in 1999. Within a couple of years there were phones that could sync, kits for cars, headsets, and chips that could be put into devices - or cards or USB adapters, to get a device to sync 721 Kbps. We could add 2 to 8 Bluetooth secondary devices that paired to our primary. They then frequency hopped using their Bluetooth device address provided by the primary, which sends a radio signal to secondaries with a range of addresses to use. The secondaries then respond with the frequency and clock state. And unlike a lot of other wireless technologies, it just kinda' worked. And life seemed good. Bluetooth went to the IEEE, which had assigned networking the 802 standard with Ethernet being 802.3 and Wi-Fi being 802.11. So Personal Area Networks became 802.15, with Bluetooth 1.1 becoming 802.15.1. And the first phone shipped in 2001, the Sony Ericsson T39.  Bluetooth 2 came in 2005 and gave us 2.1 Mbps speeds and increased the range from 10 to 30 meters. By then, over 5 million devices were shipping every week. More devices mean we have a larger attack surface space. And security researchers were certainly knocking at the door. Bluetooth 2.1 added secure simple pairing. Then Bluetooth 3 in 2009 bringing those speeds up to 24 Mbps and once connected allowing Wi-Fi to pick up connections once established. But we were trading speed for energy and this wasn't really the direction Bluetooth needed to go. Even if a billion devices had shipped by the end of 2006. Bluetooth 4 The mobility era was upon us and it was increasingly important, not just for the ARM chips, but also for the rest of the increasing number of devices, to use less power. Bluetooth 4 came along in 2010 and was slower at 1 Mbps, but used less energy. This is when the iPhone 4S line fully embraced the technology, helping make it a standard.  While not directly responsible for the fitness tracker craze, it certainly paved the way for a small coin cell battery to run these types of devices for long periods of time. And it allowed for connecting devices 100 meters, or well over 300 feet away. So leave the laptop in one room and those headphones should be fine in the next.  And while we're at it, maybe we want those headphones to work on two different devices. This is where Multipoint comes into play. That's the feature of Bluetooth 4 that allows those devices to pass seamlessly between the phone and the laptop, maintaining a connection to each. Apple calls their implementation of this feature Handoff.  Bluetooth 5 came in 2016, allowing for connections up to 240 meters, or around 800 feet. Well, according to what's between us and our devices, as with other protocols. We also got up to 2 Mbps, which dropped as we moved further away from devices. Thus we might get buffering issues or slower transfers with weaker connections. But not outright dropping the connection. Bluetooth Evolves Bluetooth was in large part developed to allow our phones to sync to our computers. Most don't do that any more. And the developers wanted to pave the way for wireless headsets. But it also allowed us to get smart scales, smart bulbs, wearables like smart watches and glasses, Bluetooth printers, webcams, keyboards, mice, GPS devices, thermostats, and even a little device that tells me when I need to water the plants. Many home automation devices, or IoT as we seem to call them these days began as Bluetooth but given that we want them to work when we take all our mostly mobile computing devices out of the home, many of those have moved over to Wi-Fi these days. Bluetooth was initially conceived as a replacement for the serial port. Higher throughput needs moved to USB and USB-C. Lower throughput has largely moved to Bluetooth, with the protocol split between Low Energy and higher bandwidth application which with high definition audio now includes headphones. Once the higher throughput needs went to parallel and SCSI but now there are so many other options.  And the line is blurred between what goes where. Billions of routers and switches have been sold, billions of wireless access points. Systems on a Chip now include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth together on the same chip. The programming languages for native apps have also given us frameworks and APIs where we can establish a connection over 5G, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth, and then hand them off where the needs diverge. Seamless to those who use our software and elegant when done right. Today over four billion bluetooth devices ship per year, growing at about 10 percent a year. The original needs that various aspects of Bluetooth was designed for have moved to other protocols and the future of the Personal Area Network may be at least in part moved to Wi-Fi or 5G. But for now it's a standard that has aged well and continues to make life easier for those who use it.

Show Notes Author Jimmy Soni kicks off the conversation by explaining why the PayPal mafia is more noteworthy than other large startups. Soni explains that he wrote the book to document not only the business successes, but also the personal stories of the founders. He explains that the market has been good and that people can learn a lot of new things from the book. Soni reveals that his favorite thing about the book is learning about the inventiveness and innovation PayPal had. The Birth and Growth of the PayPal Mafia Jimmy  and Will discuss the phenomenon of the PayPal Mafia, the group of entrepreneurs who emerged from PayPal's success and went on to found some of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley. Soni explains that the PayPal Mafia is a unique phenomenon because the founders were relatively young when PayPal was successful, they had faith that businesses on the internet could be successful,  and they supported each other's ventures. PayPal alumni invested in and supported each other's companies, and they hired alumni as their first employees. This mutual support and collaboration was key to the success of the PayPal Mafia, and their success has been a major factor in the success of Silicon Valley. He shares how PayPal was able to succeed in the early 2000s due to their right timing and how important that was, the selection of very talented people, and the nurturing of their employees. They were able to take advantage of the increasing ubiquity of email addresses and the platform of eBay, which hadn't yet sorted out its payment infrastructure. They also managed to survive the .com burst and make a successful IPO. This was due to their selection of very smart and entrepreneurial people, and their experiences of putting a company together from scratch and having it be a success. He mentions how the book The PayPal Wars by Eric M. Jackson shows how messy real companies can be and how PayPal started out as two companies, Con Finiti and X.com, that merged and began toying around with the idea of beaming money from one palm pilot to another. Building a Startup Jimmy  reflects on his experience of studying the formation of PayPal and how it taught him about Silicon Valley strategy and the messiness of how companies actually grow. He emphasizes that building a company from scratch is much harder than most people think and that things that seem inevitable can often look ridiculous at the start. He demonstrates this by using the example of the Palm Pilot that was labeled one of the 10 worst business ideas of the 1990s but that company became PayPal. He emphasizes that researching the book has made him more aware of the difficulty of creating something and has taught him to not to dismiss ideas that seem silly or take for granted the companies that occupy our lives. The creation of PayPal was a “dogfight” that required a lot of hard work and effort. The biggest challenges in making it successful were to convince people to use the payment system and make sure that people were not taking advantage of it.  Jimmy talks about the uncertainty and anxiety that comes with being involved in a startup and the do or die moments that can arise and that there are often one or two decisions that are crucial to survival. He noted that CEOs usually only make six important decisions per year, so it's important to go into a startup with eyes wide open and know that these moments will arise and that the company could go under at any point. He also talked about how chaos can be beneficial for a startup, as it can bring about new ideas, but also can just be chaos. His insight from the story of PayPal is that a lot of what appeared to be chaos from the outside was actually a controlled chaos that was directed towards the right problems and issues.  The Elon Musk's Pressure Cooker Leadership Style Will and Jimmy discuss Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter and his ability to lead a tech company. Jimmy explains that he and Musk never spoke about social networks, and that they only discussed payment networks. He noticed that Musk's management style and that Musk used the term ‘maniacal urgency' to describe it, and believes that Musk's intense approach is necessary for the success of a startup. Jimmy goes on to explain that this style of management has been consistent from Musk's first venture, Zip Two, to his current companies Tesla and SpaceX. Elon Musk's leadership style is one of prioritizing urgency and setting unreasonable demands for his employees. This was the case in his experience with PayPal, and is now being seen at Twitter. An engineer from X.Com shared that during this period, Elon worked longer hours than anyone else and that it was an energizing environment for engineers who wanted to build something quickly, get rapid feedback, and keep moving towards a big goal. This style is not for everyone and can be difficult to understand, but it has been successful for Musk in the past. Through his research, it became clear to Jimmy that startups need to be maniacally urgent and dedicated in order to succeed.  He discusses the market for books about companies, including his own book The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley The book has done well, both domestically and abroad, and Jimmy  believes that people are drawn to the book because of the famous and controversial players involved. Feedback received from professionals  in the startup world have told him that the book captures the energy and feeling of what it is like to be in a startup. Soni shares that the market for books about companies is big and that the Silicon Valley halo has not diminished abroad; all of these factors have contributed to the popularity of the book. His book has international appeal and what differentiates his book from others in the same genre is the inclusion of personal stories.  Researching the Book  He talks about the importance of invention and how startups are allowed to look at a problem and create something new to solve it. He shares how many inventions were developed by PayPal.  When it came to gathering information, he struck gold when he was interviewing someone who offered him access to the company's early records. The person sent Jimmy several gigabytes worth of emails from the time. Jimmy was able to access emails sent and received by key players in the company, giving him a better understanding of the story he was researching. To capture the widest possible story, he started with any emails sent to the company and printed them all out. He then read through every page, looking for any interesting gems that could be included in the book. He found a motivating note from Elon Musk outlining the company's struggles and signed off with Work like hell, Elon. This note was unexpected and captured the character of Musk that is still seen today.  When writing his book, Jimmy explained that he took a methodical approach to email research, using folders, binders, and highlighting to identify key points. He used Google Drive to store PDFs of her citations for fact-checking. This email archive was instrumental in making the book more accurate, rather than relying on hazy memories.  Jimmy talks about the secret sauce of recruiting talent. He specifically mentions Peter Thiel's superpower. Jimmy believes that it is talent identification. Thiel has an uncanny ability to identify people who have potential and to offer them help in the form of introductions, investments or by sketching out a vision of their career that is bigger than they thought possible.  Jimmy shares what he learned about his time working at McKinsey and how that helped him as a writer, and what he is working on now, which is a co-writing project on tech history.  Timestamps 07:41 "The Evolution of PayPal: A Story of Near-Failure and Success"  09:57 Exploring Contingency in the Story of PayPal's Success  13:33 Managing Uncertainty in a Startup Environment  14:15 Analysis of Elon Musk's Management Style at Twitter  18:42 Recruiting Strategies at X.com and Confinity  24:34 The Market for Books About Companies  27:59 On PayPal's Inventiveness and Innovation + Exploring the Origin Story of PayPal's CAPTCHA Technology  38:10 Analysis of Peter Thiel's Superpower: Talent Identification  41:23 Peter Thiel's Approach to Hiring and Recruiting  44:42 Writing Books, Consulting, and Professional Development  Links: The Everything Store, Brad Stone The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley,  A Mind at Play, Jimmy Soni https://jimmysoni.com/ CONTACT INFO: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmysoni/ Twitter @jimmyasoni https://jimmysoni.com/ Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.