“You can be assured we are working as hard as ever this year to deliver an incredible year and some products that will blow your mind,” said Cook, 51, speaking before investors at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

If only Cook could build anticipation for new products.

A failure to embrace pursuit is to cede opportunity to others. A leader’s failure to pursue clarity leaves them amidst the fog. Their failure to pursue creativity relegates them to the routine and mundane. Their failure to pursue talent sentences them to a world of isolation. Their failure to pursue change approves apathy. Their failure to pursue wisdom and discernment subjects them to distraction and folly. Their failure to pursue character leaves a question mark on their integrity. Let me put this as simply as I can – you cannot attain what you do not pursue.

Smart leaders understand it’s not just enough to pursue, but pursuit must be intentional, focused, consistent, aggressive, and unyielding.

And in the same vein, also from Forbes – The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives:

Habit #3: They think they have all the answers

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past

And finally, from The American Scholar:

What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.

[...]

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.

[...]

It seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.

[...] starting this fall, new fine arts undergraduates at the Moore College of Art and Design will also be using iPads to help them learn their craft.

Moore [...] is also the first art and design school to officially partner with Apple to provide its incoming BFA’s with the popular iPad tablet technology, says academic Dean Dona Lantz.

Each student of the new class will receive an iPad 2 pre-populated with a suite of apps that will enhance what Moore refers to as it’s ‘Foundation curriculum.’

[...]

Moore hopes that integrating the mobile learning tool into the classroom experience will foster new ways for its art students to develop alongside technology.

Firstly, it’s interesting that schools can officially “partner with Apple” to provide their students with Apple products. The article indicates that the school receives the devices at a slight discount, presumably due to the publicity and volume of the partnership.

Now imagine this type of thinking applied to my previous post about new approaches to online learning. Every new student to an online program could be sent an iPad preloaded with custom and standard apps that are particular to the teaching methodologies the school wants to promote and utilize. With the rate of tuition rising for online programs, the cost could easily be absorbed (especially if discounted through a partnership) with a certain amount of commitment from students who wish to receive the iPad for free.

And iOS apps, among others, seem to be attracting the attention of some very smart people; just take a look at this Youtube demo of a prototype for dynamic page turning in a tablet application.

But the question remains – who is really going to push this envelope and use the cutting edge technologies that are out there? When are we going to see live learning sessions where each student uses an iPad to listen and touch the materials while the professor uses an iPad or PC to moderate and steer the conversations? To show the students videos, 3d graphics, and documentation exactly when appropriate, and to converse with them face to face and allow them to talk back?

I recently finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, a fun sci-fi book set in the future in which a simulated world, the OASIS, has been created to which humans escape using a virtual reality visor and gloves with haptic feedback – kind of a mix between a successful and more immersive version of Second Life and the virtual world from Wall-E. The interesting wrinkle is that the OASIS has also provided opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise have existed; for example, a child who is raised in a poor family and can’t get to a good school can apply to go to school in the OASIS.

Aside from appealing to my inherent affinity for technology by endlessly referring to 80s geek culture (the creator of the OASIS grew up in the 80s and laid mountains of easter eggs in the virtual world referring back to it), one passage near the beginning really struck me with regards to online learning:

It was also a lot easier for online teachers to hold their students’ attention, because here in the OASIS, the classrooms were like holodecks. Teachers could take their students on a virtual field trip every day, without ever leaving the school grounds.

During our World History lesson that morning, Mr. Avenovich loaded up a stand-alone simulation so that our class could witness the discovery of King Tut’s tomb by archaeologists in Egypt in AD 1922. (The day before, we’d visited the same spot in 1334 BC and had seen Tutankhamen’s empire in all its glory.)

In my next class, Biology, we traveled through a human heart and watched it pumping from the inside, just like in that old movie Fantastic Voyage.

In Art class we toured the Louvre while all of our avatars wore silly berets.

In my Astronomy class we visited each of Jupiter’s moons. We stood on the volcanic surface of Io while our teacher explained how the moon had originally formed. As our teacher spoke to us, Jupiter loomed behind filling half the sky, its Great Red Spot churning slowly just over her left shoulder. Then she snapped her fingers and we were standing on Europa, discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life beneath the moon’s icy crust.

How can you not read that and get excited? We’re not there yet, but we do have technologies at our fingertips to begin the journey. The question is: who is going to take the first step?

But there is a more interesting question to ask here. Is it worth the time spent imitating traditional lectures, or should we use the opportunity provided by the online realm to transform how we teach? Online learning has long been relegated to a supplementary form of teaching. As the perception changes with the popular acceptance of new technologies, and as schools realize the unique revenue that can be generated from the medium, questions like these are quickly becoming more relevant.

A recent NPR article explores the idea that the traditional lecture doesn’t really always work.

[Arizona State's David Hestenes] says that listening to someone talk is not an effective way to learn any subject.

“Students have to be active in developing their knowledge,” he says. “They can’t passively assimilate it.”

[…]

[University of Maryland's Joe] Redish says when he lays out the case against lecturing, colleagues often nod their heads, but insist their lectures work just fine. Redish tells them — lecturing isn’t enough anymore.

“With modern technology, if all there is is lectures, we don’t need faculty to do it,” Redish says. “Get ‘em to do it once, put it on the Web, and fire the faculty.”

Some faculty are threatened by this, but [Harvard's Eric] Mazur says they don’t have to be. Instead, they need to realize that their role has changed.

“It used to be just be the ‘sage on the stage,’ the source of knowledge and information,” he says. “We now know that it’s not good enough to have a source of information.”

Mazur sees himself now as the “guide on the side” – a kind of coach, working to help students understand all the knowledge and information that they have at their fingertips. Mazur says this new role is a more important one.

What if the paradigm shift in teaching necessitated by online learning creates something more valuable than the traditional lecture? It is possible that we have the opportunity to learn something new about teaching, and to pull it back into the classroom as well.

Not only might the shift provide more value to students, but professors become even more indispensable. In online learning, for example, students are usually expected to assimilate textbook knowledge on their own. The professor then, instead of delivering that same information, is free to deliver interpretations, connections, and applications of that information.

The creation of knowledge becomes the focus, rather than information transfer.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: success by failure is not an oxymoron. When you make a mistake, you’re forced to look back and find out exactly where you went wrong, and formulate a new plan for your next attempt. By contrast, when you succeed, you don’t always know exactly what you did right that made you successful (often, it’s luck).

[...]

The best way to shape culture is of course to focus on hiring the people who will ultimately make up that culture. Yet this is often overlooked, replaced with corporate values, slogans, and mission statements. It took billions of years to create and define all of the world’s great cultures — through failure after failure — so it is with arrogance alone that we executives think we can create and define one for our company. To be blunt, cultures are not created or defined by executives; they evolve around the people who make up a company.

That means if you take your phone into a quiet event — a meeting, concert, or other — you should probably power off the device completely for the duration. Press the sleep/wake button for about 5 seconds, and then slide to power down.

If this is not possible, you’ll want to set the ringer to mute, set the system audio to zero, launch Siri and lower the volume to zero, disable all alarms, and review the Settings > Notifications items in the Notification Center to switch off audio.

I never thought about this before, but is this seriously what you have to do to make absolutely sure your iPhone doesn’t make any noise? Shouldn’t there be a system-wide silencer somewhere in the settings?

Recently, she bought me a fourth generation one as a replacement. I still love it for the gym and for running, although now I only use it for running when it’s raining or snowing and I’m afraid my iPhone will get too wet while I’m out.

I never bought the first generation one or the third, mostly because I thought they weren’t that great. I loved the second generation one, and am happy that they’ve returned to that form factor. The only gripe I have is that they’ve made it square now, which removes the area where you could grip it to open the clip. Every time I clip it to something I skip to the beginning of the song or the last song.

It’s a little niggle that’s not like Apple. I wish they’d “rectangularize” it again so I could get a grip.

(iPod shuffle news via TUAW)

Ah, the trials and tribulations of a geek dad. We have a newborn in the house, and my wife and I wanted to get a video monitor so we could both hear and see our new little one to make sure she’s safe. We both also wanted to have a system that worked with our iPhones and iPad (well, to be honest, I usually think of these things and she goes along with me because she loves me – luckily, she usually ends up thinking the results are pretty cool).

Video Monitor – Part 1

I started my search with a few products labeled specifically for parents with iPhones and iPads. The first product we tried was the iZon video monitor, priced at $129.95. It came out in October, and we pre-ordered so we had it as soon as our baby got here. The setup was dead simple, and the video is pretty good. Unfortunately, I went through three cameras from the manufacturer, each with at least one stuck pixel, before I gave up. The customer service representative told me that stuck pixels were extremely rare, but I didn’t want to chance it after the third one (not to mention that, at the time of my testing in October 2011, the product’s iPhone app was pretty convoluted for anything beyond just watching the feed). I also wasn’t completely comfortable with all the video stream being channeled through Stem’s servers before they got back to the iPhone app – that’s how their system works, and it did allow for automatic uploading to youTube and some other neat features. But we’re just pretty protective of our little one and didn’t like the idea of the video funneling through someone else’s tubes. For a much more thorough review of the iZon, and some pretty fair critiques and praises that I mostly agree with, see David Pogue’s article here in the New York Times.

Audio Monitor

Once the (third) iZon was returned, I decided to go with an audio-only monitor as an interim solution. That’s when I found the Evoz iPhone app (iTunes link). What a great product. You set up one iPhone or iPad as the monitor, and any of your other iDevices can listen to the audio stream from that monitor. Each iDevice can also be switched back and forth between monitor and speaker, so if you want to change your setup over and over it’s dead simple to do. The software also can differentiate between crying and other loud noises, and send you a push notification when it senses crying for an amount of time you determine.

We’ve been using the Evoz system as our only monitor for about 3 months now, and it works very well. The only quirk we’ve found so far is a bug in the software that cuts off the audio feed after about 35 minutes. A quick stop and start of the feed kicks it in again, and an Evoz customer service rep told me via e-mail that a fix has been submitted to the App Store and is awaiting Apple’s approval. (She also extended our subscription an extra month without any prompting – that’s how you get a product off the ground). There are some other minor quibbles such as how the audio streaming is handled (it uses http streaming rather than the newer built in iOS developer tools so, for example, you can’t control the audio from the multitasking bar), but no deal-breaking issues. The app is free to try for a few weeks, so you can see for yourself. After that, there’s a tiered subscription plan, although you can still use it quite a bit at the “Free” level. We’ve subscribed to the middle level so we can have unlimited listening, and the top level allows you access to your baby’s behavior data and push notifications (which we realized we don’t really have a need for). We love the Evoz system, and will be even happier when they fix the little glitches.

Video Monitor – Part 2

That would be where our tale ends, but my wife was going back to work this January, and I wanted to give her that piece of mind we were originally in search of, so I restarted my quest for a video solution to complement the Evoz audio. There are some video solutions like the iZon that are specifically branded as baby monitors that work with the Apple ecosystem pretty well. The iBaby Monitor and Wifi Baby Monitor are two. I considered them, but they’re $199.95 and $279 respectively. That was just too expensive.

Luckily for me, I discovered the wonderful world of FOSCAM video cameras. They’re mainly marketed as security cameras, but the price was irresistible ($86.99 on Amazon at the time of publication) and the functionality is perfect for a baby monitor. Unlike the iZon, the feed is private on your network (unless you enable it to be viewed outside your network, and even then the security level is determined by you) and only delivered to your desired destinations. The FOSCAM also allows for remote panning, tilting, and night vision so you can see in the dark (like when your baby’s sleeping – this is really a killer feature!). We have the video stream set up to work from any web browser (with password protection) and our iPhones and iPad.

It’s working great, although you do have to be a bit comfortable with technology to set it up, as the documentation is sparse and it’s a bit fidgety (look for an upcoming post in which I detail my set up process). Once set up though, it’s awesome.

Bottom Line
With Evoz audio monitoring + FOSCAM video monitoring, my wife and I can see and hear the baby’s room from just about anywhere. This solution has allowed us to spend a minimum amount of money for something priceless – peace of mind (and, for me, a whole landslide of geek dad cred – at least with my wife…).

Pricing
Evoz audio monitoring:
Subscription pricing (with a free option). We’re paying $3.99/month currently, but we might change plans or save money by going yearly (you can also go day to day, which is pretty cool for vacations). There are a lot of options. It’s easier to just go look at the plans on their site.
FOSCAM camera:
$86.99 on Amazon. You can use a web browser to see the feed, and we use the excellent free iPhone/iPad app CamViewer for Foscam Webcams (iTunes link).

While reading, I also figured something out that’s been nagging at me for a while. I’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with Groupon. I couldn’t figure out why though. Who doesn’t love a great deal? (I obviously do – I’d have to if I think that Kindle Special Offers really are special) And the business owners get business (especially health spas, apparently)!

But the deals are so good sometimes that I feel like I’m getting away with something – like Groupon and I are pulling one over on these businesses. “Hey, look at all the great exposure you’re getting! Don’t worry that you’re losing money on every one of these new customers! They’ll come back for more, promise!” It feels a little icky to me.

Give me some distance and I’m in. A good online deal? Done! Deal at a huge national chain? Done! But, man, I bought one for a little mom and pop bakery one time, and I almost couldn’t bring myself to use it. I did use it (I’m not invincible!), but then I also bought a bunch of other stuff out of pure guilt.

Ever since then I don’t buy Groupons for restaurants or little shops. I respect that they went to Groupon to get some publicity, but I’d rather pay full price and be on my way. That way, if I ever want to go back to one of these great little finds, I feel like I might have helped to keep them around a little longer.