As David Agus, a cancer doctor, would like to say:

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars — in terms of treating disease — in the last two years of a person’s life.

I pondered on it one evening and thought I’d find out about some “programmable” possibilities related to cancer research for hackers from the non-scientific community, besides the obvious means of help like donations (both charity and research), awareness drives and volunteering.

I got in touch with Jon Kiddy, a software engineer who works at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Jon kindly shared his views and pointed out that the current state of cancer research can be summed up in one of Daniel Markham’s excellent posts. After having read the book on the subject called “The Emperor of All Maladies”, Daniel went on to state the general problem with cancer research is that the US healthcare isn’t setup to support individualized care and treatment, which is currently undergoing the most intensive scrutiny. A commentor on Hacker News responded to Daniel’s post with this inspiring message:

You want to fix cancer, don’t wait for the scientists. They are hobbled by regulation. Be an engineer: get out there and make one of the viable solutions work, and make it work outside the US.

What started as modest self-education, has led me to several impactful ways in helping with cancer research:

1. Distributed Computing Projects – In 2003, with grid computing, in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease. Without the grid, the work would have taken more than one year to complete. Participating in a distributed computing project is the easiest way to get involved with cancer research.

You can donate your unused computer resources to research projects like Help Conquer Cancer, Help Fight Childhood Cancer, Rosetta@home, Folding@home.

Grid computing works by splitting complex computations into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously on individual public nodes, there-by reducing research time and making the technology infrastructure cost-effective.

2. Build on “Big Data” – Massive amounts of raw data is available for analysis in cancer research. As Jon wrote back to me:

The problem comes when there is such a large amount of data to process in a field where each individual’s treatment is usually uniquely suited only to them. Hadoop/Hbase is in use by The Cancer Genome Atlas to make some of this process more bearable. Their datasets are invaluable.

The combination of Apache Hadoop (for distributed computing), HBase (distributed database), MapReduce (for distributed computing on large datasets on clusters of computers), R Project (for statistical computing), and Gephi (for visualization and exploration) changes the way we think about analysis of Big Data.

Data analysis, data visualization and even Web crawler technology are all important in cancer research, for processing highly distributable problems across huge datasets using a large number of computers.

Last year, the Cloudera Data Science Team wrote about some of their work with Hadoop:

Instead of focusing on a handful of outcomes, we can process all of the events in the data set at the same time. We can try out hundreds of different strategies for cleaning records, stratifying observations into clusters, and scoring drug-reaction tuples, run everything in parallel, and analyze the data at a fraction of the cost of a traditional supercomputer. We can render the results of our analyses using visualization tools that can be used by domain experts to explore relationships within our data that they might never have thought to look for. By dramatically reducing the costs of exploration and experimentation, we foster an environment that enables innovation and discovery.

3. Apps and Tools – Personal profiling and monitoring could be another area of focus for developers interested in cancer research or general health-related diagnosis.

• Whether it’s an app to protect against or detect (early) skin cancer,
• a wearable computing device to track Adverse Drug Events (ADE),
• a crowdsourced game to solve scientific puzzles,
• a prediction model based on social trends,
• or a Web-based tool (similar to mappiness or TrackYourHappiness) to monitor a persons diet (it’s been widely discussed that smoking, ingestion of sugar and excessive red meat may set the stage for rise in cancer occurrences).

There are lots of possibilities for personal solutions that aid in collective science.

“In lieu of spending a decade in training to become an oncologist, I have been able to put my skills to practical use.”, Jon says about the impact he’s making.

I really wish for many more technology enthusiasts to devote their time, skills and efforts in the fight against cancer. In what other ways can we help? Do share your comments and views.

Why work on problems few care much about and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the most important components of the world’s infrastructure? Because schlep blindness prevented people from even considering the [difficult] idea of fixing payments [that Stripe is doing].

I completely agree with Paul. However, I also tend to think that there’s a reverse schlep blindness at play in a lot of cases. Some startup founders often subconsciously ignore or avoid problems that seem too simple to solve. They would rather work on complex problems, requiring complicated architectures, plethora of ‘cool’ technologies and ‘beautifully’ intricate code, all of which few care much about and no one will pay for. Maybe it’s another form of schlep, a cognitive bias after all.

Yet another mobile website builder? Too simple to be “ground breaking”. Yet another Web form builder? Too easy, I’ll look naive. Yet another cloud platform for developers? A VPS is enough and there’s Heroku for everything else. Yet another blogging platform? Boring, most use WordPress anyways. A bingo card creator? Naaa.

‘Too simple to do’ doesn’t mean that it’s easy to build, easy to sell and unfeasible as a business because one might think there aren’t any paying customers for it. Such markets are often overlooked and eventually existing competition suffers a slow death due to lack of innovation and new ideas.

Hard problems are good, because both good and bad solutions to those tedious problems will result in learning, eventual innovation and disruption. Simple problems are good too, because their execution will require a radical (yet simple) solution, and that’s hard to do in itself.

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.”

Most people already program their devices as end-users to a tiny extent, be it an iPhone or the heating thermostat. But a more diverse level of programming will reach the masses, sooner than one might think. It won’t be the same as one would perceive writing complex computer code. It will be more intuitive.

At the moment, the majority of programming is profit or research oriented. The mass programming that I anticipate will primarily be self-serve. Want your refrigerator to automatically order a watermelon and some cold beverages for home delivery based on periodic weather forecast checks? Just program it through your tablet. Want to replace a broken part in your juicer mixer? Just program the 3D printer to make a new one right at home. Want the carpet vacuumed before the in-laws arrive in the evening? Just program the personal robot at home to do so while you are at work.

This emergence is already being made possible due to:

1. Open hardware initiatives, that make device integration and prototyping easier than ever, like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, SparkFun, Seeed Studio, GTA04, Pandora Handheld, and its all going to be huge.

2. Global ‘Learn to Code’ initiatives, that encourage programming as a fun activity for all, like Code Year 2012 (where 333,628 people have already enrolled at the time of writing this post), the UK government introducing programming lessons into British schools, and ‘The Academy for Software Engineering‘ – New York City’s first public high school that will actually train kids to develop software, and even the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project will reach out to kids in under-developed nations.

3. Visual programming tools, that enable a simplified approach to developing applications, will also help accelerate the adoption of the self-serve programming culture, a bit like ifttt I suppose. But their UI/UX will take a few more years to achieve mass appeal.

4. Community support – Years ago I read somewhere that “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” I believe programmers and hackers are not such institutions. We like to share, teach and learn in the process. The sheer volume of open source projects out in the wild is an evidence of this. The existing programming community will help thrive the Long Tail of mass programming.

Computer Science may remain to be for the elite, but someday, soon, self-serve programming is going to become a common man’s Swiss Army Knife.

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and its, almost lyrical, resemblence to life touched me. Any failure or setback in life can be overshadowed by what is done with the learning it leaves behind.

Starting this New Year on a philosophical note, wishing that it brings peace & good health to everyone.

Most aspiring startup entrepreneurs are like drug addicts.

Drug addiction, or “substance dependence”, is dangerous. SUBSTANCE dependence. What has started bothering me lately is that many of my fellow dopey technologists are depending on something that has no substance at all, thereby feeling gloomy due to inaction and eventually it results in tragic cases of product abandonment and morale deprivation.

There are disturbing stories of intervention and rehab all over these days. One such testimony comes from “Sean” (name changed), who confesses:

I’m turning 30 and I’ve produced no amazing art.

Sean has ideas, lot’s of shimmering new ones. Incurably, he has procured domain names (over 300 now!), probably one (or more) for each one of them. But he feels he hasn’t done anything meaningful yet. This is a rather common psychedelic syndrome. Sean, and many others like him, are getting trapped by the thought, rather than the action. The realization is a good thing, because it can induce intervention.

A lot of these domain addictions occur due to, what we in the non-medical profession call, the first snort — viz. the recurring thought that the name is so important that it must come above & before all.

The name of your product is, and will always be, secondary to the product itself. The domain name is hugely overrated. It’s like naming your baby before you’ve even graduated from high-school. What it also does is that it creates a psychological barrier. Now that you’ve found a great name (great in your mind), you have to push yourself to build an equally great or even better application. Great, amazing, incredible, best, awesome, are all narcotic fences that restrict you (but look so good in keynotes by Apple Laboratories).

My fellow dopey technologists, The Crazy Ones, don’t get caught-up with the masturbation of your ideas. It’s pleasing, I know. But, don’t abuse your talent. Don’t take comfort in thoughts and imaginary applications. Find solace by finding customers, who will pay for a problem-solving product, not your idea or your domain name or that 3-page hypothesis you wrote about your new Spell Checker using Node.js and Haddop.

Say no to domain names until you can stand up on your feet with a simple working prototype or an MVP.

Say no to drugs.

–
P.S. Ironically, dope.com is a placeholder, that will probably sell for millions.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Steve Jobs
1955-2011

1. Know your customers – Before I approached the banquet organizer, I came to know from a nearby shop owner that they were having trouble with the taxman because of improper bookkeeping. I sold the software to them on the very premise that it will relatively improve their billing and reporting capability, and it did.

Here’s a story: A disappointed salesman of a cola company returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asked, “Why weren’t you successful with the Arabs?” The salesman explained, “When I got posted in the Middle East, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem. I didn’t know the Arabic language. So, I planned to convey the message visually through a poster with three pictures..

First picture: A man lying in the hot desert sand, totally exhausted and fainting.

Second picture: The man is drinking our cola.

Third picture: Our man is now totally refreshed.

And this poster was pasted all over the place. “Then that should have worked!” said the friend. “The hell it should have!?”, said the salesman. “I didn’t realize that Arabs read from right to left.”

2. Price it high – In hindsight, I think I should have priced my billing software higher, much higher. $10 barely covered the development costs, but I didn’t pay much attention to this critical component at age 18. Now I know, it’s easier to lower the price if you’re too high than higher if you are too low. Everyone wants a deal so when you have high prices it’s easy to discount. A high price communicates value. It also helps sustain a higher quality of service.

Here’s a story: We went into Triple A, CSAA in San Francisco. It was going to be our first multi-million dollar customer. I went in with Gina. They loved our stuff, it really was going to do them a world of good. They said, how much is it?

And I was about to go, “$75,000…” And Gina goes, “Shut up I’m the salesperson.” She said, “A million dollars.”

And I went “…” Gina’s going, “Shut up. I’m the salesperson.”

And the guy looks at Gina and said, “Gina you’re out of your mind. We don’t pay more than $675,000.”

And Gina said, “All right. We’ll let you have it for $675,000.”

So, here was this software. I was about to let it go for $75,000, my first professional software salesperson had just gotten $675,000 and she did the same thing. And she said, instead of per year, she said, “But that’s for the base module. What other ones would you like?”

By the time we walked out, we got an enterprise software order for about $1.2 million. The point about pricing is, particularly if you are an engineer, it’s very easy to under price your product. Because you tend to value it on cost or need or competitive or whatever.

3. Personality of the product – My billing app only had 2-3 screens but it did what it was supposed to do. It was quick, it validated all data entry and it had decent exception handling. But it lacked a personalilty. Just like us humans, a product cannot make everyone happy, so it’s important for it to have an opinion and take a side. None of it mattered then, because I was just selling to one customer. But it matters with products now, because there are a few thousand of any sort in the market trying to get the customers attention. So, how do you get the customers attention? Underdo your competitionand make the choice insanely simple for the customers. (Update 26 Oct 2011: Jason Shen has written a nice article about How to Give Your Product Personality.)

Here’s a story: “Professor” Sheridan Simove has “produced” a 200 page book entitled “What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex”. This Worldwide Best-Seller is currently sold out online on Amazon. “Author” Sheridan Simove said, “This book is the result of 39 years of painstaking research and practical study into the subject. I left nothing to chance and really threw myself into my work.” The twist — all 200 pages of the paperback book are blank.

Speaking at Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg got a laugh out of how accurately his wardrobe was represented in the movie. “It’s interesting what stuff they focused on getting right,” Zuckerberg reflected. More importantly, Zuckerberg took a stab at Hollywood, “They just can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.” I think that’s the key aspect of the discussion. Feelings of deprivation do drive entrepreneurs and economies. Most entrepreneurs build what they need and this dogfooding leads to bigger things. Evidently, economies innovate the most during recessions. Scarcity and necessity are the catalysts of invention. When Michael Arrington asked in his essay, “Are you a Pirate?,” and wrote about the “risk aversion algorithm,” it gave me goosebumps for the same reason. Some of us want to be in the game, not just watching it.

The other aspect of the film that I found intriguing was the palette of Zuckerberg’s character. He doesn’t come across as a likeable person, yet he has friends (albeit few), enemies, a life and some ideas. While Zuck’s character has been shown as cocky, cunning and deceitful (what would you expect, he’s the CEO b**ch), he is also shown to be calm, focused and optimistic. In a way, the Zuck in the movie and the Zuck in real-life, both understand the trap of “cognitive afterimage”, because one of the fascinating things about “building things” is that it lets you see beyond that trap. Entrepreneurship can be a dope and an anti-depressant, at the very same time. It can make you dreamy, sometimes overly optimistic and sometimes deeply stressed. But it all literally spirals into a larger psychological mind-set.

In a study conducted at Harvard Medical School, 27 students were paid to play Tetris (the video game where shapes fall from the top of the screen while the player rotates them to create as many unbroken lines as possible). For days after the experiment, the students couldn’t stop “seeing” and even dreaming about shapes falling from the sky.

“This stems from a very normal physical process that repeated playing triggers in brains,” explained researcher Shawn Achor. The students became stuck in something called a “cognitive afterimage,” where seeing something for an extended period of time actually clouds your vision because this image has (temporarily, anyway) changed the wiring in your brain. “This explains why unhappy people get stuck in negative thinking patterns, both personally and professionally — their brains are searching for more reasons to fail and be miserable.”

“Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full,” stated Achor. “It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective and successful at work and in life.”

Like attracts like. Some refer to it as the Law of Attraction, as did the documentary ‘The Secret‘ that I saw sometime back on the recommendation of my sister. Time and again, personally and externally, I’ve found that the anticipation and the process of “building things” is so engrossing and fullfilling that it lets you see beyond the negative thought patterns. Creativity helps in avoiding negativity by means of innate expression, and it helps attracting simplicity and prosperity by means of realistic optimism.

Feelings of deprivation can be constructive or destructive. Some individuals try to focus on the former and some focus on the latter. But in the end, we all belong to the same social network.

[from the film]
Mark Zuckerberg: Your date looks so familiar to me.
Sean Parker: She looks familiar to a lot of people.
Mark Zuckerberg: What do you mean?
Sean Parker: A Stanford MBA named Roy Raymond wants to buy his wife some lingerie but he’s too embarrassed to shop for it at a department store. He comes up with an idea for a high end place that doesn’t make you feel like a pervert. He gets a $40,000 bank loan, borrows another $40,000 from his in-laws, opens a store, and calls it Victoria’s Secret. Makes a half million dollars his first year. He starts a catalog, opens three more stores and after five years he sells the company to Leslie Wexner and the Limited for four million dollars. Happy ending, right? Except two years later, the company’s worth 500 million dollars and Roy Raymond jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. Poor guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh highs.

Last night, I watched a TEDGlobal talk by Sheena Iyengar, a Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, about her research on “choice”. Yes, choice, or choices – depending on how you interpret modern dilemmas. It’s a really insightful talk about the gullible nature of choices:

The [second] assumption which informs the American view of choice goes something like this. The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice. So bring it on Walmart with 100,000 different products, Amazon with 27 million books and Match.com with — what is it? — 15 million date possibilities now. You will surely find the perfect match. Let’s test this assumption by heading over to Eastern Europe. Here, I interviewed people who were residents of formerly communist countries, who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society. One of the most interesting revelations came not from an answer to a question, but from a simple gesture of hospitality. When the participants arrived for their interview I offered them a set of drinks, Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite — seven, to be exact.

During the very first session, which was run in Russia, one of the participants made a comment that really caught me off guard. “Oh, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all just soda. That’s just one choice.” (Murmuring) I was so struck by this comment that from then on I started to offer all the participants those seven sodas. And I asked them, “How many choices are these?” Again and again, they perceived these seven different sodas, not as seven choices, but as one choice: soda or no soda. When I put out juice and water in addition to these seven sodas, now they perceived it as only three choices — juice, water and soda. Compare this to the die-hard devotion of many Americans, not just to a particular flavor of soda, but to a particular brand. You know, research shows repeatedly that we can’t actually tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

…In reality, many choices are between things that are not that much different.

While this phenomenon may be cultural, some of it also has to do with the notion of individualism in many societies. “We are what we choose”, remarked Jeff Bezos in his speech to the Class of 2010 at Princeton University. But thinking too hard can often lead to poor choices.

What if most, if not all, of the choices could be simplified with something simple — a default option.

A default option, provisioned through careful analysis, can have an immense impact on us, specially in the social and economic landscape. What if the default option for the delivery of your utility bills or bank statements is email instead of paper mail? What if the default option for the enrollent in a retirement plan is inclusive instead of exclusive? What if a school cafeteria displayed the healthiest foods at the front? What if a $1 donation is a pre-selected option in a magazine renewal form? The simplest way to get more organ donors is to make the system “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”. People use the default choice most of the time, since they believe it is default for a reason.

Changing the defaults can be a powerful incentive to changing behavior. Having said that, choosing a good default is equally important. A wrong default for an array of choices can be counter-productive. Facebook’s privacy settings are a good example of poor defaults.

In the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Prof. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler talk about the science of choices and defaults:

The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food. Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot.

In present day and time, we often forget that when we have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

Execution is more important than ideas.

Good ideas are only so good in the mind of the beholder, unless proven to be useful or effective through execution. Ideas matter. The execution of those ideas matters more. But, what is execution?

Execution may mean different things to different people. In it’s basic form, execution means:

a carrying into effect or to completion

I believe that execution fundamentally derives from two inter-related facets: achievement and focus.

Achievement comes from continually completing a thing, more than repeatedly starting many things. Initiation is important, but without completion it’s worthless. Having said that, it’s practically impossible for one person to start many things and complete all of them. So, basically, the secret to achievement is to start fewer tasks or projects, and focusing on completing them before starting anything new.

Focus, and more precisely – uni-focus, is related to achievement. It’s an equally important factor in execution.

Let’s look at an example of a toaster. It’s a common gadget in many households, available in many shapes and sizes. Its primary function is to toast bread.

The ‘Back to Basics Egg & Muffin Toaster’ does it all. It has a 4 slice toaster, 2 egg cooker, slots for toasting muffins & bagels and a host of device controls.

On the other hand, the ‘Transparent Toaster’ has a radical design. It’s a novel idea, but it only does one thing. It toasts bread. And it is transparent, so you can see it all happening, thus avoiding the dreaded burned toast. The sad part is that it’s only a concept design. It couldn’t be mass produced due to a lack of heated glass panel technology.

Then there’s the ‘Magimix Vision Toaster’, which is similar to the ‘Transparent Toaster’ concept, only that it is an actual product. It toasts any kind of bread. It has minimal controls, and it is a classic example of uni-focus execution. It does less, yet its streamlined design overshadows the lack of bloat. Most importantly, it’s a finished product with paying customers.

If you look at some of the most popular and widely used Web applications today like Google Search, Facebook, Twitter or even the Google Chrome Web browser, you’ll find a common theme. They are all uni-focused. Their primary function is based on a single point of operation. The Google Search box is where the world starts their search. The Twitter status update box is the epicentre of real-time micro-messaging. The Facebook status update box helps millions of users to express themselves. The Google Chrome Omnibox is another brilliant example of a uni-focused control where you can search and navigate from the same textbox. All of these applications do much more, but 80% of the users only use the primary function on a daily basis.

Execution is about finding the right balance between achievement (the ability to do less, but get more done) and focus (the ability to concentrate and streamline).