Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
There are different strategies to learn something new. With a book, some people perform best with the step by step pattern going from chapter 1 to 12, others jump straight to the section they need, and some others ditch the book entirely and jump in to the problem only to find that they actually need a book or some way to acquire knowledge. I fit best in the third group. When it comes to learning I am always in a hurry. A few years ago when I was still in school, I was frustrated with the pace at which we were going in class. I did slow down eventually eventually but this had lead me to learn things in a very disorganized way.
Sometimes I read blog posts that I completely disagree with. Sometimes the post is actually good, but the comments offend me so much that you can't go to bed without answering. I want to give them a piece of my mind. Tell the author he is an idiot. However I am starting to realize that you can learn a thing or two even from the thing you hate the most.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It saddens me a little that the new Ubuntu Edge Project did not reach it's goal of $32 million but it didn't come as a surprise. It is a considerable amount of money and the campaign was most successful in the first few days. However the bar for the future of smartphones has been set.
Has someone ever told you that your product sucks? Has a customer cancelled his service because he found no use of it? Did you release your product to get feedback and your feelings were hurt? Believe it or not that's what people do and it's actually a good thing. That's the signal you will use to improve your product.
I hope this post doesn't turn into meta-blogging but since this idea is itching me I might as well get it out. It has been 4 months since I started this blog, after many unsuccessful ones, and I sure am satisfied. I have not written any master piece (yet) but people did seem to enjoy a thing, or two about what I have to say. By enjoy I simply mean that I had lots of visitors on those pages. The comments section says otherwise; and boy comments can be mean sometimes.
A simple and elegant solution
You can write emails, play video games, shoot a movie, take pictures, read a book, listen to music, tweet, see what your friends are doing, start your microwave oven, lock your car and much more with your smart phone. When was the last time you used your phone to make phone calls? Are there any reasons at all to use this little feature of your phone? Turns out it is the one thing that actually matters.
Most of your projects will be crappy. You just have to accept it so you can improve it incrementally. I am learning this first hand as I started mine a few month ago. I went on and checked the competition and was dissatisfied with theie services (note that this is what everyone say about their competitors). So I built a tool that provide the exact same result, but for a much lower price. I got a few sign-ups and then it became a ghost town. How did it happen? Well my theory is I built something just for myself.
I always start a new project full of hope and inspiration. Ideas just keep flowing. I start to write the code. It is amazing how sometimes you are only limited by how fast you can type. Then comes the time where you have your minimum viable product or MVP and all the inspiration goes away. But then you start thinking about a new idea and the cycle repeats itself.
