For the blog at work, I took a look at the Flip MinoHD Camcorder vs. the iPhone 4, in terms of HD Video Capture. Which is the best? It comes down to your needs, but ultimately – if you need a new cellphone and HD camcorder, get an iPhone 4. If you are locked into a cruel contract with your current wireless provider and no upgrade in sight, the Flip MinoHD is a great camera for a low price – especially if you find a good deal online (try Gazaro! ;-)
Read the blog post and make sure to enter Gazaro’s contest where, we are giving away a Black Flip Camcorder, the MinoHD (same model as compared to the iPhone 4 on the blog).
I ended up getting the opportunity to read a pre-release copy of Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness thanks to a tweet from Brad, who I work with at Gazaro. They ended up sending me four copies of the book, but lucky they went to good use as my roommate Neil quickly snatched them up and finished the book in a day or two. Part of the pre-release program was that I would blog about the book on the day of its release – today. Here goes!
Delivering Happiness details the story of Tony Hsieh, starting with his childhood entrepreneurial aspirations, through to his first big acquisition – LinkExchange – and finally finishing with the struggle of Zappos and eventual acquisition by Amazon. The book was great as it detailed his launching and operating these interesting businesses. The story of Zappos, and the gambles he took on it in the company’s early days, are a great read.
The only place that book fell short for me was the large section focusing on company culture, and Zappos’ ideals around delivering happiness. I found myself bored by the section featured Zappos employees detailing their experiences and opinions on delivering happiness.
This book, with the exception of my small grievance noted above, is a great read. I ended up finishing the book in just two weeks, no small feat for me! (My grade 12 English teacher could testify to that) I really enjoyed his views on entrepreneurship and running companies. As a business book if provides some interesting ideas about management and leadership.
I’d definitely recommend this book, and am glad they did this neat promo so I had the chance to read it when I did.
See DeliveringHappinessBook.com for more information about the book and think about picking it up from Kobo Books – so that you can read it on your BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, and on the web.
My brother Derek wrote an interesting blog post about his time in the film industry and paying his dues, something most of his college cohort refuse to do.
There is a sentiment within our generation of being better than the bottom of the totem pole, of being owed more. I get it, but please, if you are trying to break into this industry don’t snub the idea of paying your dues.
Read his post here: Sweat Equity
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Tagged film industry
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RIM’s split personality strategy
This story from the Globe and Mail is probably the best summary of the challenges that RIM faces and the strategy they are using to approach them.
Win an Acer Netbook from Gazaro
At Gazaro I am currently running a contest where the prize is an Acer Netbook Computer. To enter, you have to submit your prediction of what you think the price will be on May 10th. The contest closes at 8pm May 7th, so if you want to enter, do it now!
David Frampton, developer of the very fun Chopper iPhone game, wrote a good blog post about what he called “Obligation Games”, for example FarmVille or We Rule.
“The main obligation is to come back and stay a while. They prey on the deeply rooted human need to care for things so they grow, and to not let things die. Stuff grows quicker if you spend more time in the game, and If you don’t start up the game within a certain period of time, things die.”
I never tried FarmVille, but I did start playing We Rule on my iPhone. I thought it was a pretty fun game to begin with, and it certain did have an addictive quality. I would plant crops with varying lengths of time to grow, and have to make sure I got back into the game at the right time to harvest them. It sounds stupid, and it is, but it made so much sense when I was playing it!
Having kicked that habit I can easily see how these games manage to be so successful. They suck you in with a fun concept, I’ve always like castles, so why not build one in We Rule? But where the game wore thin was the limited depth. Once I had quickly gotten to an advanced level, there was very little for me to do, even if I paid money for gold in the game, it wouldn’t have really added much. These games have great potential to suck people in, but if they are going to be long term successes, they need to have more depth. Something like World of Warcraft or Diablo Two using this model might really take off on the iPhone platform, or as David said:
“Now all ngmoco have to do is make the games actually fun (they’ve got the addictive part nailed, but the gameplay is poor), and we’ll all be doomed.”
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Tagged Games, iPhone
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I was asked to go through a website and detail my experience, so I thought I’d post about it here too. The site is TripWow.com – a very cool product with a unique twist on travel picture slideshows.
Here is an example of the movie I made with it, only took a minute or two! Using Facebook Connect it automatically found all my Facebook Photo albums, allowing my to select one to build a movie from. Once selected, I had to enter what cities my photos were from so that it can build the cool map graphics. Very easy to tag locations, rearrange photos, remove specific photos, edit captions (it grabbed the Facebook’s captions – nice!), select a theme (only two themes – they should develop more), and choose music (you can also upload your own music).
— Not sure why but controls on the embedded video aren’t clickable… better to view it on TripWow’s website —
This travel slideshow of Will Robertson’s trip to 4 cities including Washington DC, Toronto and Frederick was created by TripAdvisor on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 8:15pm UTC. Will traveled 567 kilometers (352 miles) on this trip.
Check it out at www.TripWow.com
During the Apple event on Thursday to preview iPhone OS 4.0, Steve Jobs announced an interesting thing. Even though iPhone OS 4.0 is coming to the iPhone and iPod touch in the Summer:
“We’re bringing iPhone OS 4 to the iPad this fall. All these features on the iPad.” – Steve Jobs
When I first heard this I thought that is was strange the iPad was getting the update later than the iPhone, and wondered, could that mean a hardware update is coming to the iPad as early as the fall?
There is one glaring omission on the iPad, a camera. Adding a camera to an iPad would be a minor addition, but it would definitely add a lot of functionality, including video chat.
Today 9to5Mac posting an interesting story detailing their exploration into the iPhone OS 4.0 software, and their evidence of an iChat app and video chat capabilities, presumably to be revealed with the new iPhone released this summer with iPhone OS 4.0. At the end of the article they added this:
“Finally, we’ve heard separately that the iPad and likely the iPod touch will receive video camera updates in the Fall when the 4.x OS goes Universal. The timing would make sense for the normal iPod touch yearly updates. The iPad, until then won’t have access to these camera strings, so it won’t have much use for a camera. Apple’s secrecy in building the iPad likely kept the iChat group out of the loop. Without them, there was no need for a camera on the first iPad.” Mark Gurman for 9to5Mac
Releasing a new iPad in the fall would definitely anger the early adopters whose iPads will be outdated after only 4-8 months, but Apple has not been afraid of that in the past as witnessed by the original iPhone’s early price drop.
It will be interesting to see if an updated iPad is released this year. It definitely has me wondering whether I should wait it out until the Fall announcement before I grab an iPad.
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Tagged Apple, iPad
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