Testing The Velodyne vPulse

While on a business trip several years ago I made an impulse buy and dropped several hundred dollars on a set of in-ear headphones (aka, “buds”). These earbuds were from a brand I trusted from my years of gigging as a drummer. We’ll refer to these buds as Brand-X , with the X standing for “eXpensive” or “pay eXtra” or “X” as in “multiply what you think they should cost by “X.”

Consequently, this is one of two purchases I never told my wife about. (The other involved a golf club…a used golf club.)

I found the standard iPod headsets adequate for most uses, but while flying frequently for business I noticed that to really hear the music I had to increase the volume to a level that would be uncomfortable in normal circumstances. Like me, I’m sure you’ve been on an aircraft and heard someone’s headset blaring next to you … or maybe even heard it from across the aisle.

My new earbuds brought out the vibrance of the music, from the high range to the mid and the bass sound was impressive. I could listen at a comfortable level and not miss a note. As for the ambiant sound of the jet engines, near silence. In fact, I could sleep undisturbed. I considered making a sign to tell the flight attendants, “Will Wake For Food & Drink.”

I was pleased at my secret investment.

At the same time I always had the nagging guilt that I paid waaaaay more than a reasonable person could justify. The again, I’m a drummer and have an excuse, but … but …

Here’s where you’re gonna thank me because my experience is gonna save you money. Yep, read on.

A friend at Velodyne recently sent me a pair of Velodyne vPulse ear buds and I am very impressed.

I’m not sure how Velodyne does it, but all of the sound qualities I liked about Brand-X are there without the expense. Seriously, I could purchase several vPulse ear bud sets for the same price.

The pluses about vPulse:

• Solid bass with sound quality across the spectrum
• Ambiant noise reduction that was surprisingly good. To test this feature I sat in our living room and I could not hear my wife calling to me while in the same room, nor could I hear our 5 children. (I know, some men have this as an innate ability without earbuds.)
• Volume and Play/Pause controls that work with Apple products
• Flat cord design – I didn’t know why this would be handy until I realized that it prevents tangles – Mikey Likey!
• Multiple earbud sizes and types that come with the product
• Price – seriously, all this at a terrific value

The only drawback from my experience is interestingly similar to the drawback I had with Brand-X. The Brand-X earbuds fit snugly in my inner ear canal and his took a bit of getting used to. I was okay with it until, during a flight, the #&$#* Brand-X earbud separated from the earbud itself and got stuck in my ear! I was more than a little concerned and had to use tweezers to pull it out! I began traveling with a set of tweezers with me because it happened more than once.

With the vPulse, even with the smallest earbuds I can’t seem to fit it into my ear, so I have the opposite problem. On one hand this is okay as I won’t get a bud stuck in my ear, but it’s a challenge on the other hand as they vPulse aren’t snug and tend to fall out easily. I’m gonna chalk this up to human error for now, but let me know if you’ve experienced something similar.

Bottom-Line

In the end, I rate these a Strong Buy. They perform above-par compared with many earbuds I’ve tried, the manufacturing and style are functional and innovative and they don’t get tangled! vPulse are a fantastic, valuable discovery for this audiophile.

The post Bring On The Bass – Velodyne Review appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

Translation = “He talks a lot, but never says anything!”

I’m in a quandary and don’t know what I should do about it.

On Twitter I’ve got a few followers who mention me by name daily, sometimes even multiple times a day, but they don’t tweet anything of substance. Oh, they might add on something akin to, “Have a nice day” but that’s about it.

What would you do?

After a while seeing these types of tweets in my timeline gets annoying and I used to @ mention them to please stop. If they ignored that request then I would simply block them and c’est la vie. Maybe that’s what I should do again; however, I’ve checked manually and I’ve used some analytic tools. These often are real people, not spam-bots. I like being the nice guy, but I also don’t want to be a sap.

(Oh, and I know how to recognize those spam-bots quickly.)

Have you seen this behavior too? I’m interested to know how you responded.

Hey, and I know those @ mentions do “something” for my Kred score and relevance and all, but meh … is it worth it? In the overall scheme of my Twitter interactions it’s not that bothersome, but c’mon.

The post Over-Tweeting appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

<whew>

I’ve also had the privilege of connecting my current employer with my alma mater in establishing an internship program. On the same day as the luncheon above I connected with our HR department and discovered that my introductions led to a group of students visiting our firm to talk about internships last week. Both parties enjoyed the introductions and next steps are underway.

I approach introductions with caution for many reasons and I love it when I can be part of the process in lining up qualified people with great opportunities.

There are some key elements to working well with networkers to realize the desired outcomes.

The Networked

Those of us who are well-networked have invested a great deal of time, effort and resources to build our network. We utilize it when needed on behalf of ourselves and, occasionally at our discretion, we may use it on behalf of others. We want our network credibility to at least remain intact and, ideally, we want it to grow through credible introductions and recommendations.

We’ve built that network based on a number of things including, but not limited to:

• Trust
• Work Performance
• Exceptional Results
• Shared Experiences
• Shared Interests
• Education
• Expertise
• Referrals from other trusted network resources

All of these take considerable trust, effort and time to build, to maintain and to grow.

Often, strong networkers are asked to share “how they did it” with the “it” being their description of their network. I know some networkers who are truly superb and in every case, including my own, the secret of “how” they did “it” was by all those bulleted points above. They took the time, put in the effort and built a network that serves their needs. In almost every case those needs are customized for them.

The Intention

Networkers know their network has value and we often want to help and to be of service as it adds value to the network. Plainly stated – by helping others we help build the value of our own network, so there is a huge element of self-serving here.

We generally trust the intention of those asking for assistance; however, the prep work done by those who ask often tells us much more about their intention than many may realize.

Recently and on multiple occasions, I’ve been asked for help that I simply had to push back on.

• One person sent me an email and asked me to contact 30+ people in my network on their behalf to establish a connection with them so that person could pitch them on their services. (!?!?)
• Another said they were looking for a job in sales and marketing. I don’t know of a broader question than that. It’s almost like saying, “Help, I need a job.”
• Another contact asked for help in finding a sales role. “Help, I need a job. Get it for me.”
• Someone asked for help in finding a job in social media. “Help, I need a job and I want you to tell your social media network about it.”

I each case I sincerely wanted to help, but their first question did little to help me in assisting them.

My reactions were varied and I responded to them asking clarifying questions.:

• To this person I simply pushed back asking for them to follow the process for introductions via LinkedIn rather than asking me to do the laborious job of contacting these targeted individuals for them.
• You’re looking for a sales job? In what industries? Product or services? What level of expertise do you have and how many years of successful selling do you have? Would you consider moving? What kind of compensation are you expecting?
• Social media. Social media is a fast-paced, maturing industry. What do you have to offer in the space? Do you want to work in an agency or within a firm? Doing strategy work, content creation, content promotion, research, BI, analytics, engagement, branding, and the list goes on.

Networkers will often ask some questions just to see if the person will put in the work to respond.

Would you believe that only one of those mentioned above responded at all? What does this tell me about their intention? It tells me that they want me to do the work for them and I simply don’t have the time.

The Result

Don’t underestimate the value of preparation before asking for help from someone in utilizing their network contacts. Just as one would prep for an interview, prepare to talk specifics about the request.

So many of these have come my way lately that I finally had to blog about the topic.

Key Learnings

1. Networkers, by nature, build custom networks that serve their interests
2. Be well-prepared in asking for help
   1. Be clear about the request
   2. Demonstrate that some thought into what is being asking for
   3. Don’t ask the Networker to do the hard part, like the home work
3. Don’t take offense if they push back with questions
4. Respond to their questions – good networkers will ask clarifications for two primary reasons:
   1. To keep their network strong they use questions as a filter
   2. To see if and how the requestor will take a moment to do the work and respond before the networker will invest their time into helping someone

The post The Networked appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

More than just the smoothie recipe though you really need to know the rest of the story.

While on vacation as a family, on Memorial Day, my dear wife told me of a free app her parents were using, MyFitnessPal. She thought I might have interest in taking a look at it from a digital anthropologist’s point of view. I went ahead and downloaded the app with no intention of actually using the app as part of a diet plan. (Remember that.) I’ve never been on a diet and never considered I needed one. I figured I just needed to eat less and move more and the pounds would fall away … eventually.

Following the steps for setting it up I entered in my height, weight, lifestyle (sedentary – even with 5 children), and a “goal” of losing 2 lbs per month or a 1/2 pound per week. Then I tracked everything I ate that day and I was literally shocked by the results. Look at the inserted pic.

Not only was I waaaaaay over the line, but I suddenly understood why I was gaining weight. I simply could not continue consuming  1.5 days worth of calories on a daily basis! So I got religion and started tracking everything in earnest.

I’m happy to report that it’s working! Not only is my weight lower, but I’m losing more than a half-pound a week and am actually down almost 30 pounds in 6 months.

And I can still eat Nutella! Yep, that’s right, and I want you to try this recipe from my wife who was a trainer for Jamba Juice:

Amy’s Nutella Smoothie

1 Frozen Banana (very important to freeze it for smoothie consistency)
1 Heaping Scoop of Costco’s Protein (Whey) Powder (Chocolate or Vanilla)
1 Cup 2% Milk (Can substitute coconut milk, almond milk, soy, rice, etc.)
10 – 12 Ice Cubes (or an 8 oz glass full of ice)
2 Tbl Spoons of Nutella

That, my friends, is just 531 calories made in heaven.

If you’re gonna diet and are serious about it you’ve got to find a diet you can live with and enjoy. I hope my sharing this is helpful and I’d LOVE you hear from you!

All the best,

Mike

The post My Nutella Smoothie Recipe appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

This venting tweet had nothing to do with politics, by the way. Just wanted to clarify that.

This is a story about @DellCares and I want to share the story that indeed, they do.

You’re gonna laugh, but we have a bunch of computers in our home. One new ThinkPad for my work, an HP Laptop, a couple of MacBook Pros, and lastly, we have two older Dell desktops both running Windows XP. This story is about those two Dells which I’ll affectionately call, Machine 1 and Machine 2.

-        Machine 1 (M1) is a Dimension 5100 bought back in July, 2005 (so yeah, it’s ancient).

• M1 was intended to be the Parent’s PC and is loaded with more RAM, larger HD, bigger monitor, and runs all the periphery equipment, etc.
• System CD’s are around the house, somewhere, but I’ve no idea where.

-        The other is Machine 2 (M2), a Dimension E310 bought in early 2007 on a promotional special from Dell for about $400 or so.

• M2 is the Kid’s PC, smaller everything and, since it was bought as a promo item we decided to not upgrade anything at the time and just go with what came with the offer.
• M2 can be restored to Factory Settings right from the Hard Drive. No misplaced CD’s to go looking for.

It so happens that M1 became inoperable a couple years ago. Happily I do have an external backup for M1 as it isn’t very functional after booting up. I can log into it, but it can’t do much else. The kids ended up using both machines (you knew this even before I typed it, right?) and I dunno what happened. I’ve been unable to download any files from the web, install anything or even get a file copied from a USB drive to M1. Thinking it might be a system security issue I went into the Control Panel to see if the security settings were the issue. Guess what? No User Profiles are there. It’s blank. Something serious is going on. M1 has essentially been a backed up brick.

M2 in the meantime was running fast as can be, until the HD filled up. Now it’s S-L-O-W and takes 30 minutes to boot up and maybe longer.

A short time ago I decided to take one more look at M1 and it booted right up. I found a Microsoft Support Article regarding Installation issues and it had an .EXE file to try to fix the problem. I tried downloading the file to my Mac, but Microsoft wouldn’t let me…so I booted up M2 to try and get the file.

While waiting for M2 to boot up I started watching Oceans 11. About 30 minutes into M2’s booting process I got agitated, ticked, and impatient. I sighed a lot and then tweeted something like:

“It’s amazing how much of Oceans 11 I’m able to watch on my MacBook Pro while waiting for my Dell desktop to just boot up.”

I broke my own GAP Rule. I vented publicly. I “took it to the streets,” as it were. All I wanted was to download and try running a little, tiny trouble-shooting .EXE file. In that moment of crazed, social media rage I cracked.

Let me say now that I’m glad I tweeted something and, more importantly, how happy I am that @DellCares listened and R-E-S-P-O-N-D-E-D.

I tweeted on a Saturday and the following Monday @DellCares reached out me. To shorten this a bit, Dell took my Service Tag number and they are shipping me new system CD’s, by FedEx no less, to help me get up and running. Mind you, this machine is long outside warranty at 7 years old!

This is beyond customer service. This is customer excellence. Their primary concern is my happiness with their product and they want to make sure I’m up and running. Their follow-up with me is flawless. In fact, I’m astounded at Dell’s responsiveness.

If customer service is a differentiator for brands like Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Amazon then Dell sets a new standard for the electronics industry.

Dell, I’ve been a customer numerous times and now I’m a raving fan. Thank you!

I’ll let you know how this plays out once this non-systems guy tries to rebuild things…

Oh, and since I wrote the above sentence I received the CD’s then tweeted Dell that I received them. I also let them know I was nervous in starting the project. Guess what? The tweeted me a link to a guide to walk me through the process.

Dell #FTW

The post Oceans 11 & Dell Cares appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

It’s a great little app to use that gives anyone you share it with a live-feed, updated “glimpse” into your location, direction, speed of travel and even an estimated time of arrival. Their tagline of Share Your Where is … spot-on.

Why We Liked It

Our family of seven (7!?) did a road trip from Redmond, WA to Midway, UT. I had taken a quick look at Glympse at work and thought it might be a useful tool to test out. The interface was fairly straightforward and, after setting up my social connections as desired, I created a Glympse to share with our family members.

This time we chose to drive through the night while the in-laws and other family followed our progress as we drove through Eastern Washington, through Ellensburg and Yakima. They texted us encouraging words as we crossed into Oregon, Idaho and eventually into Utah in the wee hours of the morning.

We made it safe and sound and – the best part – they had a hot breakfast waiting for us since they knew exactly where we were the whole time.

Glympse became the favorite app of the trip as other family, also traveling to our family reunion, used the app and we observed their on-the-road progress as they journeyed up from California.

The options of who to share it with and how – via text message, email, Twitter and Facebook are fantastic and simple.

It has an auto Expiration setting so you don’t inadvertently leave your Glympse open for people to see. This can be set to a little as 15 minutes up to 4 hours.

It comes with pre-canned messages that you can use or you can create your own.

You can also set your destination and it runs a simple algorithm to figure out your estimated time of arrival.

Some Drawbacks

It is a little weird thinking that people know exactly where you are and how fast you’re traveling. Well … it kinda knows. Glympse said at one time I was traveling at 103 mph which wasn’t accurate.

It seems to use a lot of battery power; however, I’m not sure if that’s the app or the cel network. I’m an iPhone user and on that particular route I noted that sometimes I was on 4G, 3G or even on Edge networks. That’s gotta eat battery life, but hey, that’s why I had it on the charger the whole time.

I’ve not been able to Delete Expired Glympses yet – they seem to keep showing up in my app, and that’s a little problematic.  I’ve also had difficulty in using Favorites as I’m not clear on how this works, but that may be just user-error / lack of experience with the app.

Lastly, again on that Expiration time, I had to keep upping the time manually as our trip was about 15 hours. I’d like an override option to leave a Glympse open until I reach the pre-set destination. Then I wouldn’t have check to make sure the Glympse didn’t expire.

The drawbacks were overshadowed by the benefits and you should definitely give this app a try.

How Do They Make Money?

I’ve no idea how this app makes money now but I definitely see a path where they could. Luckily I’m meeting with some of the Glympse team soon.

They could make this part of the native iOS as a safety measure. Incorporate it

with Siri and Glympse could dramatically improve cel phone safety while driving. I would guess a large percentage of texting while driving are things  pertaining to location or, “are you close?” types of questions.

Combining Glympse and PIRQ and you’ve got location-based dining options at your fingertips.

Share Your Where

The post Getting a Glympse appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

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On a recent date-night with my wife we spoke about how we are connected to people on Facebook with whom we have little or no connection with in real life.  Unless we take the time to work with Facebook’s Privacy Settings the content shared there is really open to anyone realizing, of course, that if we don’t invest the time to verify every Facebook update there will be breaches in securing access to the information we share.

We discussed how many of our online connections read what we post without our knowing they have connected with us in some way until, at some later time, they comment about something that was shared.

In real life we have real-time, two-way or multi-way dialogues and speaking with someone in person opens up not only the verbal communication, but the non-verbal signals as well. During phone conversations our brain processes the tonality, intonation, speed, volume and other parts of speech in processing the emotional intent of the one speaking. We miss all of that important information when we restrict engagement to online platforms (such as this blog).

More importantly, we lose the fulfillment of human interaction.

In speaking to a group of graduating BYU Idaho students, Elder David H. Bendar, (PhD on Organizational Behavior, Purdue), gave a fantastic talk on this topic entitled, Things as They Really Are. From the August 10, 2007 Wall Street Journal, Dr. Bendar quotes:

“Please note the lack of personal fidelity in the following episode as reported in the Wall Street Journal:

Ric Hoogestraat is “a burly [53-year-old] man with a long gray ponytail, thick sideburns and a salt-and-pepper handlebar mustache. … [Ric spends] six hours a night and often 14 hours at a stretch on weekends as Dutch Hoorenbeek, his six-foot-nine, muscular … cyber-self. The character looks like a younger, physically enhanced version of [Ric]. …

“… [He] sits at his computer with the blinds drawn. … While his wife, Sue, watches television in the living room, Mr. Hoogestraat chats online with what appears on the screen to be a tall, slim redhead.

“He’s never met the woman outside of the computer world of Second Life, a well-chronicled digital fantasyland. … He’s never so much as spoken to her on the telephone. But their relationship has taken on curiously real dimensions. They own two dogs, pay a mortgage together and spend hours [in their cyberspace world] shopping at the mall and taking long motorcycle rides. … Their bond is so strong that three months ago, Mr. Hoogestraat asked Janet Spielman, the 38-year-old Canadian woman who controls the redhead, to become his virtual wife.

“The woman he’s legally wed to is not amused. ‘It’s really devastating,’ says Sue Hoogestraat, … who has been married to Mr. Hoogestraat for seven months.”

A later quote within the same article:

“Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by … a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. More than a quarter of gamers [who responded indicated that] the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world.”

I enjoy many new friendships, connections, opportunities and events from the wonderful connections I’ve made online. I’ve found that my online presence has deepened friendships, rekindled old connections, and enriched my life; however, I appreciate this caution to see things as they really are and not become more caught-up in the online world than in the real one.

It’s a balance and an approach with moderation that I struggle with and I know I’m not alone. What have you found works for you in balancing your offline and online interactions?

The post Online Reality appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

The sessions were organized into three tracks:

1. Users / Bloggers
2. Power Users & Designers
3. Developers

While I am a “blogger” I’m not a power user. I have the Fresh team to thank for making me look like I am, so I chose to attend the Users / Bloggers session. I found this track incredibly useful for helping me to approach what I do with my blog and how I do it more effectively. The mid-day keynote with Scott Berkun was transformative, even inspirational. I took a string of notes during the sessions and I want to share LOTS with you, but, like a good blogger, I’m gonna keep this to just three key learnings that I found very helpful.

Key Learning #1 – Blogging should be scheduled

We all know this. Becoming proficient at anything takes work and discipline. My children play piano and they are very good at it. Why? Because they practice daily and usually at a scheduled time. On the contrary, I blog whenever I feel “inspired” to write something that I feel is profound. I’m not in the practice of writing regularly, therefore I’m not as proficient. Like the quote from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when the great, Lady Catherine De Bourgh says, when speaking of becoming a great musician, “If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” She never did so she never was.

• I need to schedule time for writing
• I need to blog according to a schedule

Key Learning #2 – Blogging is work

Scott Berkun shared a most interesting quote from magician Penn Jillette, from the Penn & Teller duo:

The whole world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology. The bottleneck is really in art.

Yeah, ok, numbers ARE the wrong metric to measure the effectiveness of a blog, but it sure is easy to measure this and then stop, right there. SEE! I’ve got readers! I’ve got followers! People really, really Like me.

Meh.

It’s not the numbers of readers, but the quality of them. How the heck can one measure this? To my knowledge there’s no software tool in the world that can accurately mesure this, but let me tell you what works for me:

• When people comment – I love this, whether the comments agree or disagree. Comments indicate the content was read, considered and the reader took the time to comment publicly to share their feedback.
• When people meet in real life and discuss their opinions about what was written.
• When people link back to your content
• When they share your content with others
• When they say, “Hey, that video on your About Page really hit me.”
• When you get speaking requests, consulting gigs, interviews, etc. from something on your blog

I continue to process insights from attending WordCamp and cherishing the new friends I’ve made since diving in to this digital media world. With so many of my new friendships made online when we meet it’s not handshakes, but hugs.

Perhaps hugs is the best metric of them all?

The post 3 Key Learnings About Blogging From WordCamp Seattle 2012 appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.

Anyone who is busy likely has, and on more than one occasion, said something like, “I’m so busy I could use a clone.” Being an entrepreneur I decided to actually DO something about it and I commissioned one. It was a remarkably easy process and the clone is quite a handy asset most of the time.

To Wit:

1. The clone is great at helping me be two places as at the same time. I can make appearances at social events, even multiple events in the same evening, and no one is the wiser as no one really cross-checks our check-ins to see if there are issues.
2. He can be out on the town while I’m home being an attentive father and husband.
3. He can clean my desk and catalog all the piles and piles of business cards that have built up over the years.
4. He’s capable at Tweeting on my behalf whilst I’m sleeping and he has occasionally met with troublesome clients for negotiating when I was simply too uncomfortable or emotionally attached to the deal.

The problem? He is gone, as in missing and I need your help getting him back.

From here on out I’ll refer to the clone as “It” rather than as “him.” You might find offense at this, but he (It) is a facsimile of me, not the real me. So “It” is him.

You see, It was never allowed in our home. That was strictly off limits to protect the family. Our children have enough issues without dealing with more than one of me out there and having them make an issue out of It.

Getting It back will be challenging as It’s not easily fooled.

Here are some key signs you’re taking with It versus me:

-       Recognition – You say something like, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” and, trying to play the part, It will say something like, “Maybe. Did you go to such-and-such event?” or “Well, I’m big on Twitter and I know so-and-so.” or, “I have a really popular blog and …”

• It’s all an act
• Please remember, It knows nothing and no one
• It is trying to play off of my credibility

-       Acknowledgement – It will smile and wave at you thinking It knows you, but It doesn’t.

• It is trying to get something from you. Connections, information, money. Beware!

-       Style – It likes to mimic my style, so this can be a little tricky. What might blow Its cover is wearing of the following:

• Workout Apparel – I own it, but I never wear it to really “work-out” in.
• Working Out – Again, a dead giveaway that It is really “him.” I have a gym membership that I might use annually.
• Hoodie – Again, I own one. I’ve no idea why.

-       Age – Clones don’t age as quickly as we do. Also, It has no responsibilities, pressures or kids, so It will appear to be a younger, more care-free version of me.

Luring and Capture

Here’s how you can help put a stop to It. I need you to lure, detain and help capture It. Like Superman to Kryptonite, It has weaknesses. If you can distract It or even if you see It, call 911 and report any suspicious activity. Here are some ideas on how to lure It.

1. Food – Like me, It really, really likes certain foods.
   1. Nutella – if shopping at any supermarket check the isle where the Nutella is.
   2. Oreos & Milk – if you suspect a positive identification, offer either Nutella (see above) OR Oreos and Milk. Both are very distracting to It.
   3. Socializing – Again, tricky. Remember, Its original job was to attend events on my behalf. It doesn’t like the spotlight though, so It won’t accept speaking gigs like me. It prefers to sit at a table and “act” like It knows people and is having meaningful conversations whilst sipping a Sprite. Or Diet Coke.
   4. Sleep Deprivation – It doesn’t require much sleep. If you see It at any Starbucks or other events before 9:30 am you’ll know It’s “him” and not me.

Lastly, I’m gonna be out of commission for a few days as our new, baby girl is being born tomorrow, April 6^th. ANYONE out and about who looks like me should be a suspect.

Thanks for your help!

Mike

The post Incognito appeared first on Mike Whitmore's Blog.