Category Archives: Helpful Hints

June 20, 2012 · 10:05 am

Why Your Phone Won’t Stay Charged

My phone almost ran out of power the other day.

Angry Birds

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience – a busy day of calling and mail and suddenly you’re getting the red battery indicator, triggering a desperate search for an outlet.  Not fun at all, especially when it doesn’t feel as if you’ve been all that careless about battery use.  Oh sure, you checked Facebook a couple of times and there was the 10 minutes of Angry Birds during a coffee break.  Well, that might be all it took.

According to research conducted by the folks at Microsoft, free mobile apps which use third-party services to display ads drain a lot more battery life.  In fact, they found that up to 75% of an app’s energy use goes to power the advertisements in free, ad-supported apps.  Notice the use of the word “free.”  The paid versions of the apps – the ones without the ads – don’t have the same effect.  It’s not just apps either – some mobile web pages were evaluated along with various browsers and that made a difference as well.

This raises a few questions in my mind.  If people can pay $1 and improve battery life, they’ll probably do so.  What does that do to the installed base of ads in the mobile sphere?  The study is very detailed about where the energy leaks occur, sort of like a report from an insulation installer walking around your house before winter begins (seal this window, you need to weatherstrip the doors).  Why don’t app developers spend more time on this?  Is it because they don’t particularly care?  The researchers recommend developers ask one question – Where is the energy spent inside my app?

The point for us as consumers is that “free” isn’t always better in the grand scheme of things.  More importantly, the point for those who depend on the continued growth of the ad-supported mobile economy is to focus on keeping those phones charged.  People can’t see and click on ads if their phones are dead.  It’s not the other guy’s problem even though they share the responsibility.  Finally, the lesson for all of us in business is to keep the consumer front and center.  Creating apps, web pages, or any other product that make us money and make our customers miserable is short-sighted.

And now I’m off to uninstall a bunch of apps!

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June 15, 2012 · 8:43 am

Anchovies

Let’s discuss the little fish that’s often the subject of big disagreements for our Foodie Friday Fun. Of course I mean the anchovy.

Northern anchovies are important prey for mari...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They’ve been used in cooking for centuries despite the fact that many people wrinkle their noses are the very idea of the bony things. “Caesar salad but no anchovies” is a familiar refrain to servers everywhere.  Yet every culture employs them as a part of their native cuisine so they must be doing something right!

I’m bringing them up today because there’s a business thought I have as I think about them and it’s tied to a cooking secret:  you’ve probably eaten more anchovies than you realize.  They aren’t always visible as they might be atop a pizza or on a salad.  They’re like duck fat – an ingredient in many dishes that makes everything else more delicious.  Many pasta sauces – puttanesca, Norma, and others – as well as Worcestershire sauce contain anchovies.  They’re not really noticeable as a salty fish taste as we expect – they’re a subtle note we’d notice is missing if they weren’t used.

The business point is this:  in every business there are anchovies – quiet, semi-hidden elements that mustn’t be left out or the overall effort suffers.  The problem is that we often ignore them or choose to omit them as we become conscious of their existence.  They might be best practices or they might even be people.  You might not like tight financial controls, for example, but you’ll notice when they’re missing.

Personally, I’m a fan of anchovies of all sorts.  They help make me better both in and out of the kitchen.  How about you?

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June 12, 2012 · 7:41 am

Buying Shirts

If you’ve ever walked through the part of a big department store where they sell men’s shirts (and ties – remember them?), you might have noticed that there’s almost an infinite number of choices.

WASHINGTON - DECEMBER 28: A shopper looks thr...

(Getty Images via @daylife)

At least it seems so to me. Collar styles, colors, patterns, and cuffs are all mixed up in a lot of variations. I suppose it’s the same in the dress department – an overwhelming number of possibilities.  I bring this up because a project in which I’m involved has stumbled into a figurative department store.  The technology is filled with possibilities.  So many, in fact, that we’re at a point where we need to exclude some intriguing avenues just so we can get to the checkout with something in our carts.

Working with highly energized, very creative people has a downside.  They tend to see so many possibilities – all the shirts and dresses – that they’re often running off in a hundred directions while not really advancing.  To a certain extent, that sort of war gaming is critical.  It’s a less formal type of decision tree analysis that many of us like to do.  However, there comes a time when the branches of that tree with less potential or which don’t meet near term goals (and for new ventures that usually includes kicking off revenue pretty quickly) need to be trimmed off.

In this case, what we’re trying to do is to lay out all the possibilities, to look at the possible outcomes of making each choice, to assign values and probabilities to each branch of the tree and to make a decision based on our best guesses and whatever information we already have.  In other words, buy a shirt.  We’ve spent enough time trying things on and holding them up to the mirror.  We need to get out of the store and get to work.  And so do you!

Thoughts?

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