I walked passed a book store last week at the airport.  I didn’t go in.  I was tempted, but I didn’t go in. I didn’t need to buy a book, so no real reason to go in. Why?  I already had two new books loaded on my iPhone.  I have been traveling quite a bit lately and have been reading two or three books a week – all on my iPhone.  I really like reading them on my iPhone.

I can’t by ebooks for my iPhone in a book store.  I do that on Amazon and maybe with iTunes before long.  It is not quite as much fun browsing online as it is in the bookstore, but I am learning to do it.

Now I need a new excuse to browse in the book store.

How are you doing your reading?

Checklist Manifesto

Today we often ask,” is there an app for that?”  Atul Gawande asks, “is there a checklist for that?” in his new book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.  The idea in this book is that using a checklist for things will help you avoid missing many of the simple things.  It is a fun read and makes a great point.

The book is the story of how Gawande (and a team of others) worked to solve a hard problem with a simple low cost solution.  It is really pretty amazing what they did and how they did it.  They solved the problem of  how to to improve the results of surgery world wide, with a checklist.

It is also the story of how checklist are used in many places to help people do a better job when the job is complex.  It shares some good ideas about how to make useful checklists and how to use them.

One of the things I really liked about this book is how it shows how to learn from other disciplines.  Gawande studied professionals from construction to rock and roll to airline pilots to see how they used checklist to help them be successful.   He tells some great stories on how they do it. It is a valuable idea to learn from how others solve the same kids of problems you have.

I like this book so much that I bought several copies and handed them out at work.  I think checklists are a great way to help us execute almost any process with improved results.

Thanks to Mark for mentioning this book in his blog, An It View.  He has some great ideas and this is not the first book I have read at his recommendation.

The ability to get an app instantly for whatever I want to do will be an expectation that IT departments will be challenged to meet. Users always want and need more functions, and IT always has a backlog. How can an IT department get all the iPhone developers in the world to work on their problems?

An app they can use with no training and no training manual will be what users expect and IT departments will need to learn to deliver.  Apps that deliver a great user experience are the order of the day. How can users learn to deal with the complexities of specific business processes as easily as they can use their iPhone to do things they already understand?

A few small pages containing icons give me access to all the things I can think to do on my iPhone, but does that really compare to the the long list of business functions a user in a big company might need to use? IT departments will have to find ways to simplify the number and complexity of functions a user needs at the same time they continue to provide more functionality.

Lots of challenges ahead!  Thanks, Apple, for raising the bar. What is your company’s development team doing to meet those challenges?

MiFi Hot Spot

It seems like much of the new technology I use these days it to make traveling better.  Verizon’s MiFi does that pretty well.

I was getting ready to head out with a car full on a two day drive to a Thanksgiving family reunion.  I though it would be nice to have Internet connectivity in the car.  One of my colleagues  had sent me an article several months ago Verizon’s MiFi device that provides a mobile hot spot.  This seemed like a good time to give it a try.

Went to the Verizon store and after a little wait, I headed home with a small box that was supposed to provide a wireless Internet hot spot for 5 connections in the car while it headed down the road at 70 mph.  I opened it up, connected it to my laptop’s USB port to initialize it. It installed  some software and I clicked on activate and is was ready to go.  Pretty easy.  So I had my wife grab here laptop and we drove to get some ice cream while she connected to the internet to test it out.  She got connection and was on Facebook posting about my new toy.

The device is about the size of a credit card, but a little thicker. You just turn it on and works.  The password for the secure WiFi  network it creates is printed on the back.  They have two data plans, I got the 5G a month plan.  Who knows how muchdata transfer you need when you have a car load of lap tops and several days of driving.

Now for the big test – Three lap tops and a two day road trip – one way.  All I can say is that it worked great.  I am connected now as I write this post.  Everyone could connect.  The connection seem faster than I expected – didn’t seem much slower than being connected via my cable modem at home (I didn’t try in big uploads or downloads).  I did the get car charger for the the MiFi since I knew it would get used just about the whole trip.  I did notice that the battery was supposed to last 4 hours (that is what I remember from the little reading I did) but it seems to only last about two hours.

So now my wife can post on FaceBook and tend to her farm, my sons can play their online games, and my daughter and I can update our blogs.  Now we just need someone to drive!

Do you have moble wireless access for your laptop?  How does it work for you?

iPhone Speedometer

I was heading east on I-40 on a two day drive to meet up with my mother’s  family for a big reunion in North Carolina. Something we do every three years at Thanksgiving.

We had just crossed in to Tennessee and I noticed the speedometer was stuck at 65. It was broken. Just what I needed on a long drive in holiday traffic.  I need to make good time, but I really didn’t want to meet any of the friendly officers from the states I was traveling through. We stopped for dinner and I was complaining about the broken speedometer and my wife said, ” I bet there is an app for that!”

I checked out the app store while I was eating my Arby’s sandwich and sure enough there were several apps for that. I download a free one and headed back out on the road.

Amazing, now I had my iPhone perched up on the dash board as a new dash board speedometer. It seems like it was pretty accurate, based on the traffic around me.   Later in the trip it seemed the speedometer in the car returned to normal and the iPhone app was right on. 

Who would have though that my mobile phone could double as a speedometer.  Who would have though my wife would have thought of checking for apps on our iPhone before I did.  Who would have though that my iPhone could solve about every problem I have (ok not really, but it sure seems like it sometimes.)

What problem has your iPhone solved for you that just amazes you?

I was on the road again this week and I noticed my new past-time:  finding a place to plug-in my iPhone.  I had to find a place to plug-in in the office I was visiting, in the hotel where I stayed the night, in the airport where I had a layover and in my car on the way home.   As we all know, letting you battery run out is really against the rules.

I did noticed in the airport there are an increasing number of places to plug-in. There are plug-ins in the wall (which don’t aways work).  There are rooms and towers sponsored by phone companies where you can plug-in.  Today, I noticed they now have plug-ins in the rail between the back of the waiting  lounge seats.  And of course, there are plug-ins by each seat in the Admirals Club (my favorite place to plug-in).  The airports have learnd what is most important to travelers today – finding a place to plug-in. 

 So what is so important about our electronics that we have to have them charged up and ready to use all the time?  Is it that we can’t live with out them?  For me, my iPhone and laptop are now pretty integrated into what I do everyday  Today I used my iPhone to wake me up, check my email, to get a reminder of a meeting,  to check the gate for my flight, to read a book, to play a game, to listen to some tunes, to get a message from a friend, to get a notice of a gate change,  and to call my wife to tell her my flight was going to be late.  So may be I can’t or don’t want to live without it. Is that a bad thing?  I don’t think so. What do you think?

I am glad I could find a place to plug-in today.  I wish I had been smart enought to buy stock in the plug-in receptical companies.

“We wrote this book to help you make your ideas stick. By “stick,” we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact — they change your audience’s opinions or behavior.”

I think they succeed in their goal.  If the principles they describe are use to build messages about ideas, I am pretty sure the message will be stickier.

The Heaths give an easy to remember acronym, SUCCESs, to make their message stick.  SUCCESs stands for six thinks you can do to help your idea be remembered.

• Simplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotions
• Stories

In each chapter, the book provides explanations and specific examples of using each of these principles.  I found the examples clear and compelling.

Those of us that do information systems work are not usually trained as communicators.  We often think since the solution, plan or idea is obvious to us then it should be to everyone.  I think if we used more of these principles to communicate our ideas then our ideas would be better received, understood and remembered.  It takes work to create a good message about ideas.  If you do the work to apply the SUCCESs principle to the messages you need to communicate then I think you will find success in making your ideas stick.

I found this book easy to ready because of how applicable each principle seems to be.  I can easily see how to use these principles to improve the internal communications in the organizations I work with, to create more effective marketing messages to external audiences, or just to help me develop a good introduction to a presentation.

I also found these guys have a web site and a column in Fast Company magazine.

I think that using these ideas will help me make my ideas stick.  Read the book.  Let me know if you think using the ideas will help you.

Tripit is a free online service that will keep track of your itinerary and download it to an app on your iPhone.  It is amazingly simple.  You get your itinerary from the travel agent, online travel service or airline, email it to plans@tripit.com(after you set up your account), and the Tripit service processes the email and sorts it all out.  It finds all the flights, hotels and rental cars and all the details about each one.  Then you just bring up the Tripit iPhone app, click on the trip and see an organized itinerary with all the facts about your travel and reservations right at your finger tips.

You can set up a free account or they have a paid account that offers some additional services like notices on flight changes. (I have a friend who didn’t miss a flight because of this feature.)  You can also subscribe to a calender with each travel event on it.  I subscribe to the calender in outlook and it shows up with my other calenders.  The only thing I had a problem with was getting these travel events on my iPhone calender.  One of my colleagues told me how to send the iCal link in a email and then click the link in the email on my iPhone.  The iPhone will  then ask me if I want to subscribe to my Tripit calendar. Neat. You can also share your trip info with others.

Tripit has solved my problem of keeping up with my itinerary.  What travel problems do you have that you have  a technology solution for?

The guy sitting next to me ask, “Are you reading a book on your iPhone?”

I said, “Yes, I am.”

He said, ” That is awesome! Can you really do that?”

We had a good discussion on how I was using the Kindle app to read books and how well it was working for me.  He had the Kindle app loaded before we got on the plane.

I am traveling more these days, so I have more airplane time to read. I wanted to try reading on my iPhone, so I got the Kindle iPhone app, got an Amazon account to buy eBooks, and downloaded a few books.  The eBooks cost a little less than the paper version.  I have now read four or five books on my iPhone and the answer is – Yes!

It did take reading about one or two books to get used to reading on the iPhone for several hours at a time.  I had to find the right text size so that the text was big enough for me to read but small enough that I didn’t have to turn the page every sentence.

Here are seven reasons I like it:

1. The iPhone doesn’t weigh much, so holding it a long time is easy.
2. I can easily read my iPhone in low light.
3. The iPhone is small, so I carry and use it on places like an airplane.
4. I can carry several books at a time without filling up my bag.
5. The iPhone Kindle app keeps track of where I am in the book so it is easy to get started reading.
6. I can buy a new book anytime from Amazon with my laptop or with the browser on my iPhone.
7. Last but not least, I always have my iPhone with me,  so it is very convenient. I can read a few pages almost anytime I am stuck waiting.

There are a few things I don’t like.  The airlines want me to turn my iPhone when we take off and land so I can’t read then.  When I want to go back to find something in the book, it is not as easy as it would be to just thumb through a hard copy of the book.  When I am reading something that require lots of  work to understand (re-reading, skipping back to the previous page to check content, etc.), I do find reading on the iPhone more difficult.

Overall, reading books on my iPhone is a great plan for me.  I have recently read Dan Brown’s new book,”The Lost Symbol,” and several of the books I have reviewed on this web site including, “The Tipping Point.” I have access to one of the early Kindles and have friends that love them, but for me, not having one more device to mess with is helpful.  If you haven’t tried it, you should.

How do you read today?  Have you used your iPhone or Kindle to read a book?  What works for you?

The book  provides a clear and understandable analysis of epidemics, fads, or big changes in society and business and describes how:

• the few – the people who are connectors, mavens and salespeople,
• the stickiness of the message, and
• the environment

were the cause of big change. The examples explored include:

• The re-emergence of Hush Puppies
• The syphilis epidemic
• The reduction of crime in New York City
• Airwalk boom and bust

I think this book presents interesting ideas about how people solve some very hard problems with innovative and surprisingly simple solutions.

I really liked this book because:

• It was easy to read and made sense
• It helped me to understand some things that I don’t think I had thought about before
• It had good ideas supported by interesting examples
• It is applicable to lots of thing I work on
• It makes me think I could make change happen by using these ideas

In applying technology to solve problems we often introduce change.  Change is hard.  It is often resisted.  I think we could use some of the ideas in this book to implement change more successfully.  It shouldn’t be to hard to find the connectors, mavens and sales people in our organizations that would help us implement change.  We could work to present our ideas in a way that makes them stick.  We  can find small changes in the environment (sometimes in our systems) that facilitate change.  The main point is that we should recognize that we are asking the organization to change and we should spend some time thinking about how to make that change in an effective way.  The ideas in this book will help.

Are you interested in making changes in your market, organization or the world? The ideas in this book should be valuable to you.  I really enjoyed reading the book, discussing it with my family and friends, and seeing how it could apply in several things I am working on.

Have you read it?  How does it apply to what you are doing?