In the summer of 2007 I was doing a bunch of research as to whether or not to buy a few shares of $100-$130 Apple stock. I knew the iPhone was coming, and I thought it was going to be big. The reason I eventually decided the iPhone was going to be a loss? Rumors of a Google phone, which I thought would be the end-all.
Heh.
A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you could say this is even more the case with hardware.
I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.
Also interesting to note that while car sales in the US declined steeply in '07 and '08, they are slated to have a consecutive record sales year in 2013, possibly surpassing the record year of 2005. [1]
In the last 5 years, many manufacturers have had substantial YoY growth - the luxury segment had 13.4% YoY growth in 2012. [2]
An analogy that comes to mind - physical exercise. When you are stopped doing exercise (e.g. running at a traffic light), people often will jog in place. Obvious reasons - keep heart rate from large deltas, muscles warm/responding well, etc.
If you watch competitive PC gaming, you will notice that even professional gamers will often 'spam' their hotkeys in low activity periods, typically the beginning of games. Some people claim that it is simply for actions-per-minute stats, but I could see it as some kind of setting of mental/physical cadence.
I don't think that the analogy holds. Jogging in place is to maintain movement and keeping the body warm so that it's easier to continue running when you can run.
Spamming before a round starts is done in order to fire off an action before your opponent or just as soon as possible.
Neither scenario is analogous to a non-responsive software application because everything is in fact responsive. If the stop light is red, then that's temporary, it is in fact the whole purpose of the signal. Only if the light hangs for an abnormally long amount of time do people get nervous. In the game scenario, there's usually a countdown to the round starting, so again nothing is frozen.
No, not before a round starts. For a concrete example, in starcraft all you normally do in the first minute is build up your worker supply and make 1-2 buildings, maybe send a scout. But you'll see players hitting hotkeys to view their base, no view over here, no view the base, now use the mouse to select all the workers, now do it again 7 times, now give this one ten move orders to the same spot as fast as you can click... They're not trying to get an action done faster, they're not even hitting keys that do anything, they're just constantly spamming input.
In as much as it has any real purpose, I would say spamming hot keys is more about making sure your hands/controllers are properly positioned. And then making sure of it again. And again.
Also, given the above, spamming hot keys is just about the only physical action you can take using your hands to expend nervous/bored energy.
I think you're right - the post fails to address how big of a necessary / not necessarily negative component of our foreign policy/diplomacy is centered around arms trade. I'm no expert on the subject, but have worked with people with experience in this area. One thing I remember is hearing that the US has the distinction/disadvantage in the business of refusing to work with bribes.
My question to you - if you thought the article was off-target, why submit it? Seems pretty disingenuous to me.
The foreign policy aspects are just that we give financial aid to countries who then are only allowed to buy our weapons -- in some cases we give aid to our enemies (Pakistan, Egypt) to turn them into dependent friends, or to "sterilize" our air to our actual allies (e.g. Israel). Outside of our top end weapons systems (many of which, like the F-22, we refuse to sell), no one is clamoring for US small arms or other weapons; if we weren't giving them money, they'd be just as happy with Russian or Chinese arms.
They addressed the issue in the second half. But, this is the world of TL;DR.
It's never too late to transfer - and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!
I went to a major public university my freshman year and transferred to an Ivy League school once I decided I wasn't satisfied with my experience at the public university. It ended up actually being significantly cheaper for me to go to the Ivy League, and opened up a world of opportunity and support I would have never found at my original school.
Since then, my sister has also attended the same Ivy League (you see a lot of families/siblings at such schools) almost free of charge. I could also go on about how the resources and individual support from a private school (effective tuition of 50-60k) far exceed that of a public school - even a top UC.
I'm at a community college (because I have no money, not because I'm stupid) and am presently trying to transfer to two "elite" schools. One says pretty explicitly that they don't guarantee that they meet full need for transfers, even though they brag about it for their 18 year old freshman applicants. The other seems more welcoming, but I'm still nervous. I don't know if I've gotten into them or not, either. I can barely afford $3500/year tuition for a community college, much less something way above that while also paying to move and live in another state. (Luckily I got 2 science scholarships to cover my CC tuition for the 2012-2013 year, but I still have to worry about food and rent. The maximum amount of stafford loan I can take out is barely enough to live on, even as an independent student.)
Is it all right to ask what Ivy you went to? Is it the same as the school associated e-mail in your profile?
> and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!
That isn't necessarily the case. A close friend of mine attended a school (Bradley University, admittedly not ivy league) that gave a full ride to national merit scholars and finalists, but only if they had never enrolled anywhere else. She was a finalist, but she attended a state school for her freshman year. Bradley gave her nothing, but she still enrolled because money wasn't her biggest concern. She got her degree, but has said on numerous occasions that she'll never give a dime to any of their alumni fund-raisers since she paid the full load up front.
With the way most schools treat their students as cattle they need to get through the mill as quickly as possible, it amazes me that anyone donates to alumni organizations.
> It's never too late to transfer - and being a transfer doesn't make you ineligible for financial aid!
This is definitely the case. I went to a state school that was cheap. Transfering to a top school that usually costs 10x but with financial aid ended up being cheaper still.
It bothers me a bit when people link this to 'explain away' pop music.
It's my belief this is an oversimplification - many of these songs are written in different keys, which can create different sounds and feelings of songs. Sure, you can transpose them to a common key (as they've done here), but at that point, it's not really the same song anymore.
Also, I've found that chord progressions can be quite flexible if only 'snip-its' of certain songs are being used, namely the standard chorus or verse. Much of the genius of songwriting comes in transitions or bridges.
I'm not denying this is not entertaining, and it works to an extent, but I would say that there is a degree to which this hinges on the widespread renown of these songs. It's not so easy to say they would have become so popular if they were all written in the same key, and not the one of the original artist.
Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or 'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field. My opinion most of the talent is in production - Dr. Luke, Red One, Max Martin, etc.
> Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or 'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field.
Pop music and folk songs use common chord progressions with variations for the simple reason that such songs are easy to pick up and play. To that end, pop music is the opposite of an expert discipline, it is a form that is accessible to people who want to play music. That doesn't mean that a pop song can't be complicated or have lots of technical finesse, but that wouldn't be the typical kind of pop song people play.
Pop resolutely is an expert discipline, but the expertise is of a type that many classically-trained musicians barely register.
Skilled musicians tend to be timbre-deaf; In addition, classically-trained musicians are invariably groove-deaf. They mentally process melody and harmony very efficiently, which is tremendously useful but inevitably means discarding a lot of musical information that is highly meaningful to the lay listener.
If you listen with a musician's ear to most pop records, you hear a simple melody, a simple chord progression, maybe some simple harmonies, all at a fixed tempo and time signature. If you listen with a pop songwriter's ear, you hear hooks and earworms and prosody, you hear a perfectly honed and polished lyric and a melody that carries the meaning of that lyric without a wasted beat. If you listen with a producer's ear, you hear the product of sixty years of evolution in creating sonic landscapes that sound big and rich and engaging on anything from a nightclub soundsystem to a pocket radio.
In pop production, you've got to grab someone's attention in ten seconds, engage them in thirty seconds and move their emotions in three minutes. When most of your potential listeners are scarcely paying attention, that's fiendishly difficult. Pop has it's own virtuosi, an elite of songwriters and topliners and producers who can tell a story and convey a feeling with haiku-like efficiency.
You've said what I've been trying to articulate for a long time - in much better terms than I ever could. Thank you!
I like the dichotomy of songwriter vs. producer - but I would guess it isn't always so discrete - i.e., production and mastering is essential to conveying the emotions and moods of the songwriting. In fact, I would argue the lyrics are often overemphasized in analysis - they are more of a vessel for tones and cadence of the song.
As someone pretty close to the Fortune 500, I'd like to refute the ego point. Having a quality app - especially with iPads, and especially with higher-spending consumers - is a business necessity. You lose out on a lot of engagement and most of all brand credibility by not having an app.
I think it's hard to put actual numbers to it because it's not a $$$ per app kind of metric - it's a signaling mechanism that a company is still 'with it', and not losing touch. Sort of a 'cool/current' factor, but also a consumer trust that they will be able to operate at the cutting edge if they desire.
It's definitely the native feel. I think for a lot of non-technical people, engaging on a tablet makes them feel like they finally are on top of technology - a sense of control. Perhaps it could be equated to the feeling of mastery when you know a video game quite well.
And also - 'cutting edge' for the average upper class Joes, not cutting edge with technology. A well designed, sleek/sexy - even if simple from a functionality standpoint - app can really get people excited.
I feel a little bit bad about my post, because it is so far from being data-driven, but it's what I have observed from watching 40-60 something SVPs, CXOs, and partners. "Can I do that from my iPad?" is a common question.
Don't feel bad about your post. I like your concept that having an iPad app signals "being with the times".
When I've dealt with Fortune 500 contracts, I never actually met anyone at the company directly. Subcontractor of a subcontractor, all relationships based on trust and prior project results. I think that, ego aside, that maybe it is more about embarrassment and behind-conference-doors shame, if a major company does not have an app, especially if it is an important customer want.
A good trend is that corporations are increasingly investing in the training/risk of building in-house mobile development teams rather than outsourcing. Yes, they run the risk their employees will jump when they have acquired real mobile dev chops - but the truth is there is an intangible benefit to working predictable 9 to 5, 5 day work weeks.
Stripe so far has been really developer focused and so they've really targeted themselves towards that audience (home page, docs, marketing, etc.), unlike PayPal which is more consumer friendly. I think there's a lot of baggage that comes with being a consumer facing brand that Stripe doesn't have to deal with, at least not yet. That said, there isn't anything preventing them from doing so; it's definitely a risk for Stripe-based businesses like this, but Stripe could always just acquire or acqui-hire whoever does the best job.
Honestly, this feels like the sort of thing they were putting in contract work anyway, and just decided to change into a service since they had it anyway...
Every one of these articles gets the pitch of these toilets completely wrong - for every person, and in every scenario, these are not universally better.
Consider the following experiment:
Smear some mud on your arm. Now, using a jet stream the power of a squirt gun and very low precision, wash it all off in 10 seconds. Not so easy.
Then - imagine if you put mud on a place with hair! Not only will it not be clean without some actual washing, we haven't even gotten to the drying part yet.
Fact of the matter is, these do not replace toilet paper. I thought they were OK (Google) until I decided to use toilet paper after - and I was shocked and disappointed. My routine simply got longer and more complex, with a small value add of washing with water instead of dry paper.
Sorry about the grim detail - I think the 'squeamish about bathroom routine' point of the article is right - just in the wrong way!
This is pretty insightful. I used them at Google as well and discovered similar variabilities. Doing some A/B testing (trust me testing on the toilet is encouraged there :-) I did find that I used less paper, but not 'no' paper. And it wasn't just for 'drying purposes' it was to insure everything had been taken care of.
Another observation was that you got better with the wash over time. Once familiarized with the placement controls of the unit and the 'feel' (sorry) of the action you could achieve better results. There was some interesting speculation on what a 'complete' fix might entail, and one of the hardware engineers put a 'watts up' meters in line with the seat to get a read on its actual usage (about .037 kwH per month),
My take away was that it was an improvement but not a $1,500 improvement (or $4,500 if I wanted to do it to all three toilets in my house). It also increases water usage, albeit modestly, which is sort of anti-california but that was before I talked with the toilet guys who said the water saving toilets only save water on urine flushes since it it typical for solid matter to require more than one flush cycle. (it still saves water but still).
I read a version of this argument in some US newspaper a while back. It completely misses the point.
These ass-jet toilets are not intended to replace toilet paper. They are for getting your asshole (and ladyparts, but I can't testify on that topic) much cleaner in much less time than with conventional American toilets and dry paper alone.
You use the ass-jet, then paper. That's how they work. (For a heinous bowel-movement situation, you might do paper, ass-jet, paper again.) You aren't supposed to skip the paper!
Using your mud example, if you got mud all over your head, would you rather just keep scraping your head with dry paper towels, and use up a couple rolls worth and still have some mud left over, or use some water too? Same principle.
If you take a perfect shit (love when that happens), then sure, it just slides out and leaves behind minimal debris. Great. But let's say you ate a plate of Uncle Jim's nachos the night before, along with a twelve pack of PBR, and you definitely didn't achieve shitting perfection this time. That is when these toilets really shine.
The number of times you have to wipe your ass to achieve that comforting pure-white-no-residue final wipe, that tells you your asshole is clean, is astronomically higher with paper only than it is with an ass-jet plus paper. I mean, have you ever had one of those wipe-it-ten-time-and-dammit-it-still-isn't-clean kind of shits? You just never have that happen with the ass-jet. The water helps wash your doody-hole AND that moistens the toilet paper (for the first post-jet wipe). That makes it work better, just like a wet dishrag is more effective at cleaning a dish than a dry one.
I personally would be surprised if populations that lack ass-jet toilets didn't have a higher incidence of hemmhorrhoids from all that wiping, over a lifetime. I don't think we have that long-term data yet.
But from personal experience, they have saved me thousdands and thousands of asshole-wipes over the years, and I could never go back to a the barbaric American toilets of my youth.
(When I moved back to America several years ago, I brought a Toto washlet toilet seat with me. And the new apartment that I just bought in Tokyo had many options to specify, but the toilet wasn't one of them--just as patio11 suggests above, the place came with a brand new whiz-bang model featuring the latest in shitter technology from Toto, complete with not only heated seat, ass-jet, and wall-mounted control panel, but also sensors that allow it to raise the seat automatically as I approach, and flush for me when I am done.)
I can confirm @aptimpropriety's claim after having tested this in bidets in multiple countries. It doesn't matter how high you turn on the water pressure, if you grab a piece of toilet paper afterwards it seems to always find some... remainders.
Hand dryers are very efficient! They don't seem to do anything for the first ~20 seconds, but in the last 5 seconds you feel all the water evaporating. That's because only the water surface evaporates, until your skin is exposed dry. You are probably like most people who I see use them in public bathroom, using them only for <10 seconds.
After she passed, my Dad just threw them in the guest bathroom. Using both paper and these (preferred order is up to the user) seems to fit the bill for just about any, uh, circumstance, and I've had numerous people make positive comments on it which is strange in and of itself.
At first I thought it was a bit wasteful, but I think many times you can get by with less total paper. YTPMV.
With Bidets you may be correct because you have less water flow and also less control of the direction. A hand held bathroom bidet sprayer is so much better than a stand alone bidet and this is why:1. It's less expensive (potentially allot less) 2. You can install in yourself = no plumber expense 3. It works better by providing more control of where the water spray goes and a greater volume of water flow. 4. It requires no electricity and there are few things that can go wrong with it. 5. It doesn't take up any more space, many bathrooms don't have room for a stand alone bidet. 6. You don’t have to get up and move from the toilet to the bidet which can be rather awkward at times to say the least. Available at http://www.bathroomsprayers.com
Very informative post. Thanks for getting into some details that were bouncing around in my mind.
The article makes it sound as though you don't need toilet paper and that didn't sound quite right unless the jet was pretty significant and included some kind of soap.
The only thing worse than cleaning feces paste off my butt with paper that shields my hand would be cleaning diluted feces water off my butt with paper that soaks the water through to my hand.
I would like to point out that women use washlets when they urinate and they are, especially with a built-in dryer, infinitely better than toilet paper alone.
Further, they shouldn't require much precision as the area we are talking about isn't all that large. Of course, until you get to the high end models, you generally don't get position adjustment or oscillating cleansing.
Maybe the Google ones you used were just poor? The ones I used in Japan ranged from excellent to ok.
Congrats on introducing the female 'angle' as it were. A group of male engineer types discussing the merits would tend to completely forget that a huge percentage of toilet visits are by females for no 1 purposes only, and perhaps a light wash followed by a quick blow dry are more than sufficient.
I have tried these in Japan and the first time I hit the squirt button I got a shock-inducing surprise at how accurate they are. It's like they are laser guided or something, such is the accuracy of hitting the target.
Hello, I've lived in Japan for about 3 years now and I find these toilets indispensable.
For the situation you described, I have experienced the same thing but I have found that there are a few ways of getting around it. The main way is the "move" function, which oscillates the nozzle back and forth. Usually you can activate this by pressing the spray button twice or pressing a dedicated button. You can also usually manually adjust the nozzle position to better suit your needs.
Additionally, some of them have dryers which further negates the need for toilet paper. My routine is usually spray, oscillate, check with one or two TP squares, and then dry. This saves me from a lot of hassle and saves a lot of toilet paper.
Excuse my vulgarity, but I've had times where what would otherwise turn out to be a "nightmare shit" became a relatively pleasant experience. It's those times where I can really appreciate modern technology.
I think Toto did a good job to try to get it to fit the majority of people's needs, but it seems some manual tweaking and button pushing is still necessary sometimes.
Sounds like your hairy ass is the real problem. Ever considered trimming down there? Dry paper might afford you the illusion of cleanliness, but I guarantee you your bum remains dirty without a thorough washing.
shattaf's (North American salad sprayer but for the restroom) work much better then the Japanese toilets, however I would only want to use one in my residence not a public/work restroom. They are common in Brazil and the Middle East, I think the heat makes being "unclean" a bigger issue.
Both shattafs and bidets (which is the whole separate ceramic apparatus, not just the spray) are common here in Brazil. I always though it was because of bigger French/Islamic influence.
There is something wrong with your jet/mud/arm analogy, because it doesn't translate the real life results. The size, location, mobility, etc. make a difference.
Also, these toilets come with a warm air dryer as well.
I also saw them for the first time at Google, and then I bought one for home. It saves a ton of waste and you'll be and feel cleaner afterwards.
Granted, it does take a little more time to exit after you are done. But, if people were really in a hurry why would they keep a magazine/book by the toilet?
I must disagree -- in my experience, the jet/mud/arm analogy translates precisely into real life results.
Also, should you find an additional paper pass to be necessary, you'll find it complicated by the fact that the area to be wiped is now wet. Toilet paper notoriously doesn't hold up well when soaking wet.
I think it's worth listing the things people already pay $50 (or more) for:
-TV / Internet / Phone bundle
-Electricity
-Water
-Car insurance
-Gym memberships (?)
-Daycare
-Food
-Interest (home mortgages / loans etc.)
-Clothes
Almost all of the suggestions in this thread are effectively replacements for one of the existing services in one of the categories above. That means you'd have to beat the incumbents (challenges: investment, infrastructure, partnerships, etc.), or create a new market demand. I love the idea though, keep thinking. "If it were obvious, everyone would be doing it".
Things that come to mind: a personal trainer that is delivered through the internet and scalable? Some kind of 'make my grocery list and just have me pick it up' service? Financial engineering that decreases the interest on a large pool of loans (ha!)?
Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you could say this is even more the case with hardware.
I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.