I have always been a die-hard paper book lover. Nothing to me smells better than a old used book store. But I have recently finally given in to the eReader boom. I have had a Viewsonic gTablet I hacked with Android Honeycomb for about 6 months. On it I have Kindle and started playing with it, downloading sample chapters and a few full books. It quickly grew on me. Then with the release of the Amazon Cloud Reader it has put me over the top.
I enjoy being able to highlight and notate things in the mostly non-fiction books I read. Along with being able to access the books from my phone, tablet, and desktop. Most books I read are technical or startup/business related so my notes come in very handy with the research I do.
Some things that won me over:
Notations in-line of the books with notes
The ability to make black on white text and vice versa (big plus when reading in bed)
Ability to make multiple bookmarks to reference things previous
Access to books from many devices at once
Saving a tree or two
Lightening my load when it comes time to move to another residence
My biggest complaint about Kindle books is the disproportionate pricing compared to hardback or paperback books. Many times the price is only a few dollars less.
A very interesting talk about ideas from William Baumol and Sir Harold Evans. Being that idea maturation is one of my prime research interests this discussion is especially of importance to me. The video is almost 2 hours long but well worth a watch even in increments.
I spend a good deal of time monitoring trends in patents and patent applications. Along with reading most any news articles related to patents. They can be a good gauge to determine future technological convergences and rates at which GNR is accelerating. More recently in the news there is much discussion of “defensive patents” and patent trolls who do not invent anything. They just own a lot of patent rights and make money by suing (or threatening to sue) startups and companies creating new technologies that may fall under their broad patents.
I got a Viewsonic Gtablet as a birthday present a few weeks ago with the intention of hacking it with custom ROMs and getting Android Honeycomb on it. It is a good tablet being that the hardware specs are very similar to the Motorola Xoom at half the cost (seen as low as $275 new). The only downside to it is that the default Android 2.2 build that is on it sucks to say the least. Many 2.2 and 2.3 ROMs are available on XDA and Slatedroid to fit your needs.
The only real downside to the Gtablet is the bad viewing angles on the screen but this does not bother me too much since I am not using it to watch movies with others or something that would require more than just me looking at it.
I have finally got Honeycomb on it and am happy with it even though it is an Alpha release since it is a hacked ROM being that Google is not releasing the source for Honeycomb. So aside from a few bugs it is great. You can also over-clock the CPU to around 1.5Ghz with no real impact in terms of overheating using CPU Master. Once you over-clock the tablet screams compared to a Xoom.
I have been compiling some notes on ways to foster innovation and help turn around the lack of innovation in companies I have seen first-hand. This is a working copy basically that I will add to and tweak as needed:
Have no more than 3 governing rules for a team
Follow the Lean Startup ideas of Build -> Measure -> Learn and repeat
Create an environment of experimentation
6 people tops per team
Do not keep teams in a vacuum
Promote cross-pollination between teams (openly share ideas free of fear)
Customers decide on what the MVP is not the stake holders. Double down on what the customer wants and uses. Drop the rest.
Ask the right questions (don’t put the answer before the question)
NEVER allow process over innovation!
Remove barriers to teams getting new products/features
I have worked for over 15 years in the technology sector and consider myself a student of idea maturation and innovation. Mainly in terms of fostering teams to create innovative approaches to problem solving. While creating a company culture that is conducive to improving upon and generating new ideas.
Some of my more recent experiences in the last few years have encouraged me to sit down and write this post regarding the things I have seen that “management” does to hinder innovation and adversely impact company moral unintentionally (of course).
Negative traditional management actions:
Lack of communication
Leaving the “troops” out of decision making
Creating a wall between management and workers
Walling off project by stake holder (producer/manager)
Pigeon holing
One of the main things I have noticed is the lack of general communication with the teams that actually do the work. You have management communicating with other management. But at the same time leaving the developers or other workers in the dark as to even the most simple knowledge in regards to the business and how well (or poorly) it is doing. I have spoken with many people who have no clue how a product is doing because they are not told. So they may make the wrong assumption and be looking for another gig when where they are is actually doing well.
I have been using an Ubuntu desktop for the last few years doing the version upgrades and having no issues to speak of with it. But I also started to notice that the system was being a bit slow with larger applications like Firefox and others. Recently I have been moving back to my roots in terms of using terminal apps over pretty GUI versions. So I decided to take on the challenge of doing my once every two years complete reinstall of my home desktop with a slant on minimalism and cleanness.
I looked at various “distributions” like Crunch Bang, Dream Linux, Arch Linux, and countless others. Yet it is somewhat of a stretch to call most of them distributions since just bundling and branding or Debian based packages. So I decided to just go to the source and roll my own. This is by far the best option for a clean minimal desktop with only what you need and will use on it.
(Cross post from my Google+)
A few posts ago I wrote about 
I was reading about how a 
I have been using an 