Mr. Pezely has worked with the likes of Zillow, WaMu, and IBM in addition to numerous start-up and early stage companies. He has had the spirit of an entrepreneur from an early age. He ran a business throughout college writing custom software applications and selling them to bigger companies.

As Mr. Pezely shared experiences, I noticed that he kept returning to a few points that he thought were very important to make sure we understood:

There is an inherent uncertainty in entrepreneurship. True, born-to-be entrepreneurs know what path they are destined to take. But it takes persistence to succeed. You have to be resourceful and be yourself. Follow your intuition and if you are mistaken, try again or try something different, so long as you try.

There is more than one type of entrepreneur. There is a sort of preconception about entrepreneurs as a mythical founder/President/CEO all-in-one magician. But you don’t have to be a CEO or even founder to be a real entrepreneur. Mr. Pezely oftentimes joins companies after they’ve been started by other people and helps develop their product and then moves on to another company after a while.

Everything is a lesson. Somewhat related to the first point. You may have a grand vision for your groundbreaking, world-changing, paradigm-shifting product only to spend months developing it and found out that it is useless in its current form. But users may really like one particular function that you can extract and turn into a full product. You have to learn from your failures and successes alike. Keep your mind open to adaptation and new ideas and you will have a much higher chance of succeeding in the future.

I came away from the talk with lots of useful tips to think about and incorporate in my future endeavors. Meeting Daniel Pezely was very exciting because his work is very similar to what I would like to do in the future. I hope I can be an influence on young entrepreneurs one day!

What tips and advice have you found useful in the past? Who has been influential in your life/work?

Quick Background

Mr. Lehman asked millionaires (with a net worth of $1 million or more not including their home) 50 questions to understand their spending habits and what they do differently from an average person that sets them apart and makes them successful. He summarized what he found and shared the important and relevant pieces of information.

How millionaires think differently

• Delayed gratification: If there is something they want, they wait a few months before buying it. If they still want it after waiting, then they know it’s worth buying. The price may have also dropped, like the initial price drop on the first iPhone.
• Live below your means: Just because you can make monthly payments on a Ferrari doesn’t mean you should. Buying less than you are able to allows you to save money and build your wealth.
• Buy appreciating assets: People blow a lot of money on goods that lose value quickly. The example Mr. Lehman mentioned multiple times was purchasing new cars, which lose 40% of their value once you drive them off the lot.

How does this apply to me?

As a college student, I don’t have millions of dollars to mismanage. However, learning good money management principles early will pave the way for financial success. As Mr. Lehman pointed out, many of the millionaires he interviewed were pretty normal people with somewhat but not overly successful jobs who had just been wise with their investments and spending.

Figure out how much sleep you need. I’m sure you’ve heard people say that “the average person needs 8 hours of sleep.” This simply isn’t true. Sleep varies for everyone. Generally, college-age students need 8-9 hours of sleep to function. I personally need about 9.5 to feel prime. Some need more, some less. Getting too much sleep is just as bad as getting too little sleep. If I get more than 10 hours I feel sluggish all day.

Figure out when to sleep. In addition to how much sleep you need, determine the best hours of the night that work for you. If you are a morning person, you may like to go to bed at 11 PM and get up at 8 AM. Some people like to get work done at night and wake up at 11:30. I find that going to bed at midnight and waking up at 9:30 is optimal for me. I try to schedule my earliest class for 10:30 if possible. This gives me enough time to get ready for the day after an optimal night of sleep.

Wind down. One of the reasons I could never fall asleep is because I was always doing something right before I would turn in for the night. The National Sleep Foundation suggests (see “What We Can Do”) developing a relaxing pre-bedtime routine and starting an hour or more before you want to actually be asleep. I suggest something that doesn’t require much physical or mental power, like taking a shower or listening to calming music. I don’t recommend reading right before bedtime because that trains your body to become sleepy as soon as you start reading. This can make studying difficult…

Make sleep a priority. Sleeping is the most important day-to-day activity you do. Don’t skimp on it. If you get a proper sleep, everything else you need to do takes less time because you are at full mental and physical capacity. The brain repairs itself during sleep and the body releases growth hormones, which are essential not only for growing but also muscle and tissue repair.

College is a busy time. Attending class, studying, working, volunteering, participating in clubs, physical exercise and squeezing in some time for fun add up to strenuous days and long nights. If you find yourself falling behind and just can’t concentrate because you are so drained, follow these steps on a daily basis. If done correctly, your all-around well-being will improve dramatically. It worked for me: after analyzing and adjusting my situation, I stopped skipping class, was able to study harder, retain more information, and ended up with a 3.85 GPA for Fall quarter.

Anyways, the other day I was reading a blog entry from David Cole on the Britannica Blog called Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom. This article illustrated a point that I comment on constantly. Anytime I have a discussion about studying and learning methods, I always say that students should NEVER bring their laptops to lectures.

Typing on a laptop isn’t nearly as effective as writing information down by hand. Students go into “stenographic mode,” as Cole says, when they type notes. Most college students can type deftly without processing the information they are recording. Think about this comparison: If someone watches a film adaptation of Phantom of the Opera and is asked the name of Phantom a week later, that person may or may be able to recall that fact. However if the same person takes a lead role in a play of the same story, they will instantly tell you that the Phantom’s name is Erik and they will probably remember that fact for the rest of their life. Handwriting notes versus typing them is similar. Physical writing requires that a student think about the topic at hand.

Also, a laptop is a huge distraction. A student with a laptop is tempted to surf the Internet, play Solitaire, chat on IM, play with Photoshop, watch TV and movies, etc. You name it. A piece of paper, on the other hand, offers no entertaining alternative to writing. You can doodle if you want, but even that only serves as a reminder that you should be taking notes. Students have a hard enough time paying attention and trying not to fall asleep without a large, bright screen begging them to do anything but pay attention.

Finally, a laptop is a distraction to the people around the user. If a person is using their laptop below me or next to me, the brightness of the screen encourages me to look at whatever they’re doing, which usually isn’t taking notes. Once I am pulled in, I stop paying attention to confidence intervals and start wondering if anyone left me comments on my Facebook. Even if I can’t directly see a laptop, the sound of typing above and around me is enough to be distracting.

Because of these reasons, I recommend leaving your laptop at home. Your productivity will increase dramatically and you will have to study less because you will remember more from lecture.

Do you bring your laptop to lectures?

p {
  attribute: value;
  attribute: value;
  ...
}

p span {
  attribute: value;
  attribute: value;
  ...
}

Very plain and simple CSS. But I noticed that as my projects become larger and larger, it becomes hard to determine which elements are at the top level and which elements are descendants and if so, what elements they are descendants of. Well-structured HTML (as well as Java, Python, PHP and pretty much every other language) makes use of indenting to easily identify the order of elements.

I wondered if applying these indenting rules to CSS would make it any easier to read. The new CSS file would read like this:

p {
  attribute: value;
  attribute: value;
  ...
}
  p img {
      attribute: value;
      attribute: value;
      ...
  }

  p span {
    attribute: value;
    attribute: value;
    ...
  }

    p span em{
      attribute: value;
      attribute: value;
      ...
    }

Applied to a large file, I think this method makes reading CSS much easier, especially for an outside person looking at the code for the first time.

What about you? What methods, if any, do you use while writing CSS (or other code)?

To sign up for the service, you must have a valid University of Washington email address. Registration was quick and painless. No unnecessary data is required, just basic registration information. The interface is easy, intuitive, and looks great.

The main idea of the site is to pit users against each other and see who can come up with the wittiest answer to a question posed by GetHundos in 160 characters or less. An example of a contest is: “How do you know when you are obsessed with Husky football?” Users come up with responses and other users vote up the ones they like and vote down the responses they think are lame. A picture can be uploaded with the response to enhance the message and make it funnier. Whichever entry garners the most votes at the end of the time period nets $100 dollars (hence the name GetHundos). Users also have the options of SuperVoting and Bombing entries, which count as +10 and -10 votes, respectively.

Users can earn “hundos” for entering and winning contests as well. Hundos are like currency and are used to buy more SuperVotes and Bombs at the GetHundos store. They also determine your rank in the GetHundos community. Like any other social network, users can befriend others and grow their network. In addition, users can become Fans or Haters of other people and establish alliances.

GetHundos is a simple but extremely entertaining site for college students. Once it gets bigger and looks beyond the UW campus, GetHundos should be very popular. If you are a UW student you should sign up right now. If you already have, what do you think of the site? What contests have you entered so far? What contests should be posted there?

Find me on GetHundos using the name cyruskazemi

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that of the 3 million annual high school graduates, about 2 million are enrolled in some sort of college the following October. (Source) Now say half of those students got a new laptop, divided into half Windows and half Macs. Vista was released in January 2007 and was widely distributed by the time the class of 2007 graduated in June. Half a million incoming freshmen and half a million sophomores with year-old laptops makes roughly a million students with Vista laptops; probably a conservative estimate. If these million students are like me, they probably find Vista is sufficient for what they do on their computers.

I bought my laptop in July 2007. It came with 2GB of RAM and a decent Core2Duo dual core processor. This makes it like the majority of laptops sold since then. After using Vista for a year, I have only reinstalled it once, but that was completely my fault (I was messing with Linux and accidentally deleted my Windows partition… oops). Vista doesn’t slow down with prolonged use as long as the user does a bit of tidying here and there.

Here are some things I rather like about Vista:

• Aesthetics: Vista just plain looks really nice. The Aero interface is beautiful. With 2 gigs of ram, Windows runs just as fast with Aero turned on. Vista’s interface makes XP look ugly and OS X look kind of boring. OS X looks decent but certain elements like the blue scroll bars definitely detract from its look. Vista is very polished and clean all around.

• Search functionality: Being able to search for a specific file or subfolder in any folder is a great feature. It has made me enormously more efficient. Even for running programs I don’t use often, I don’t even need to use the mouse. I just press the Windows button and type the beginning of the name of the program in and press Enter when it pops up.

• Wireless connectivity: Some people complain about this interface but I find it much easier to use than in XP. Just let your computer boot up and look for available networks then connect to whatever network you want. Easy.

I regularly simultaneously use Textpad, an FTP client, Photoshop, iTunes or Windows Media Player and Firefox with many tabs open and my system runs quickly and fluidly. I certainly don’t see why everyone complains about Vista being slow. If it isn’t slow doing all of those things, you’d have to really go out of your way to see it lag.

This is just my two cents on a heavily debated topic. I covered what I like about Vista, but it definitely isn’t perfect. What do you think of Vista? Do you like it? Tolerate it? Think it should be totally wiped off the face of the planet? If so, what do you use instead and why?

This blog will be similar in subject matter to my last blog. However, there will be more of an emphasis on startups located in the greater Seattle area. Since this is where I live and go to school, Seattle startups are of the most interest to me.

To learn more about me, visit the About Me page. Be sure to leave comments on posts you enjoy and subscribe to the RSS feed!

One might wonder why someone would try to create a site based solely on how-to guides when thousands of such videos can be found on YouTube. What sets apart Howcast from the competition (which includes Instructables, Expert Village and 5min in addition to other people YouTube) is the quality of the videos. The majority of the videos on the site so far are actually produced by Howcast’s own studio. Once users register they can suggest new topics and even write up and edit instructions for those topics.

The site also includes a wiki section. I find this especially helpful for instructions that are easier to visualize in my head than to watch in a video (such as How To Do A Kickflip). The wiki section is where users can submit their write ups. If Howcast chooses to make a video out of a certain wiki, they either shoot it in their own studio in New York or pay film students to shoot the footage then Howcast voices it over and makes it pretty.

Revenue is driven by embedded ads in the instructional videos. These ads are much more effective in my opinion. When I watch a video online, I don’t want to wait 15, 30 or 60 seconds to start the video. Placing a small ad at the bottom of the video grabs the user’s attention without being too annoying. It’s similar to driving a car: for some reason it feels more efficient to be moving slowly than to be stuck at a red light before driving off quickly.

Howcast looks promising. It offers a broad range of topics with the potential user involvement of a wiki with the entertainment of online video.

What are some your favorite Howcast how-tos? Do you think Howcast seems like a service you would want to use?

More and more, people are relying on web-based applications instead of desktop apps. Map applications are popular for getting directions, sites like expensr and mint and helping individuals with financial matters, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets is gaining ground on the Microsoft Office suite. The popularity and availability of these web apps means people can get more accomplished in a variety of settings.

Earlier this month, Apple announced the MacBook Air. This ultra-compact laptop was designed with the wireless lifestyle in mind. It ranges from 0.16 to 0.76 inches thick, which is incredibly small for a computer of any size. It features a 13.3″ 1280 x 800 pixel widescreen display, full keyboard, Core2 Duo processor, 80 GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM. It even has the option to replace the hard drive with a (pricey) 64 GB solid state drive. All in all, it is a great notebook and at only 3 pounds can be taken just about anywhere.

However, the MacBook Air is quite pricey compared to other ultra-portable laptops and wireless devices. The Asus eee PC retails for $300-400 and, with a 7″ screen and a total weight of just over 2 pounds, is even more portable. The Nokia N810 features a 4.3″ touch screen, slide out QWERTY keyboard and a Linux-based OS with a Mozilla-based browser for $399. Even the iPhone/iPod Touch is a good alternative, with a 3.5″ multi-touch screen, Safari and Mail and 8-16 GB of storage space. The point is that there are other devices that are much, much cheaper but still have the necessary functionality and large enough screens to be efficient.

I think cloud computing will be very popular in the future. However, I think Apple was premature in releasing such a high-end wireless device that has trouble operating as a traditional laptop (only 1 USB port, no ethernet, etc) and is many times more expensive than its competitors. What is your opinion on the MacBook Air?