@guy

Free Your Mind

2024-01-12T06:59:00.000+02:00

“…and the rest will follow.”

One of the simplest things you can do to feel more in control of your productivity is to stop asking your brain to be your storage system.

Your brain is pretty good at having ideas, solving problems, noticing things, and occasionally reminding you at 2:11 AM that you forgot to pay the water bill.

When you try to remember every task, errand, idea, appointment, and random thing you need to look up later, your mind has to keep tapping you on the shoulder: "Don't forget to fix the gate" "You need to email Gary The Clown about a refund" "Buy WD-40" "What was that restaurant Gary recommended?" (different Gary 🤡)

And if it doesn't keep bugging you about those things, there's a decent chance they disappear completely.

That's why one of the best things you can do for your productivity, and probably your sanity, is to set up a system you trust to hold all of that stuff for you.

As David Allen says in Getting Things Done, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”

There are two basic kinds of things worth getting out of your head:

Tasks: things you actually need to do. This could be paying the water bill, calling someone back, buying screws for the gate, or sending an email. Some tasks have a due date or need a reminder. Others just need to be handled whenever you have a chance.
Data: things you may need for future reference. A restaurant recommendation is a good example. So is the name of a contractor someone recommended, a link to a product you may want to buy later, notes from a meeting, or the dimensions you measured for that project you are definitely going to get around to (I'll get to it dear, you don't have to keep reminding me 😀).

A good system does not have to be complicated. It just needs to do a few things:

Make it easy to capture a task or thought as soon as it comes up.
Be available wherever you are.
Remind you about tasks that have deadlines.
Give you a place to store information you may want to find later.

The specific app matters less than trusting yourself to use it. If adding something takes too much effort, you'll put it off, and then we're right back to relying on our good old brain. And who wants that?

For me, the system I keep coming back to has two main parts:

Microsoft To Do for tasks. It's where I put calls to make, things to buy, bills to pay, random chores, and the little things that would otherwise keep bouncing around in my head. I use it on my Mac and iPhone, so it is usually nearby when I need it. I can add reminders, notes, and subtasks, and its “My Day” feature gives me a place to choose what I want to focus on today. I also have separate lists for different topics, like things to fix around the house.
Trello for data and managing larger projects. Trello gives me a place to organize projects, keep notes, make checklists, and store useful things I don't want to lose. Planning a trip, collecting ideas, keeping a list of places I want to go, or tracking all the pieces of a project... It all has a place.

You definitely do not need to use the same tools I use. There are a million task apps out there, and the best one is the one you will actually open and add things to.

The important part is to make it easy to get ALL the tasks and useful information out of your head and into a system you trust.

Once you know your system will remember things for you, your mind can get back to doing what it does best: having ideas, solving problems, and focusing on what matters right now.

Get it out of your head, put it somewhere you trust, and get back to the things that deserve your attention.

The Mind Mastery Challenge Is Here

2023-10-05T21:32:00.000+03:00

I've spent a long time creating something I'm excited to finally announce: the Mind Mastery Challenge.

Modern life gives us plenty of reasons to be anywhere but where we are. We're constantly pulled by distractions, demands, notifications, and pretty much everything around us is always trying to get our attention (I'm not talknig about you, kids :).

As a result, we often don't even notice the moment we're already in.

I created this 21-day challenge to help people become more present, unleash creativity, and find focus.

Each day, you'll receive an email with a new task or exercise designed to help you slow down, pay attention, and build a more intentional relationship with your mind and your time.
Along the way, I'll give you tools to help you better understand how your mind works, and will enable you to focus, be more creative, and just simple practices for being more fully engaged in everyday life.

If you've been feeling distracted or just want to reconnect with the present moment, give it a try.

Learn more about the Mind Mastery Challenge

How to use Gmail to send emails with a WordPress site using any email address

2023-06-18T12:52:00.000+03:00

You may have noticed that when your WordPress site sends emails using PHP's default settings, your emails often don't get delivered. The solution to this problem is to use an external SMTP server to do the actual email sending.
Turns out that setting it up to send from your own custom email address is not as simple as it should be, especially if you want a free solution and don't want to pay for an SMTP server.
This is the free solution I use for most of my sites, once you set it up it works like a charm, and you never have to worry about it again.

These same instructions can be used if you just want to set up your Gmail account to send emails from any email address, for example from an address on a domain that you own. Just start from step 5.

TL;DR Summary: set up the free WP Mail SMTP plugin, set up a Gmail account to send email as any email address you want, connect the two.

Step 1: Install the free WordPress plugin: WP Mail SMTP. The easiest way is to go to your WordPress Dashboard, Plugins, Add New, and search for it. This is what it looks like:

Step 2: Create a free Gmail account. You can use your existing account but I prefer to have a separate account that will be used for sending emails from a website. There are some limitations on the number of emails you can send using a Gmail account, so if you expect to be sending a high volume of emails then go with something like Sendgrid (WP Mail SMTP supports a ton of different email senders).

Step 3: Go through WP Mail SMTP's setup wizard and choose Gmail as the provider. There are a few steps you need to go through there to set up an app in your Gmail account, but the instructions they have are good, just follow them. Make sure you're signed in to your new Gmail account when you do this (I do it all in an incognito window to make sure I don't mix up accounts).
When you're done with this you should have your website sending emails using your Gmail as the SMTP sender.

If you don't want to change the email address that Wordpress uses to send, and are fine with sending from your Gmail address, then you're done.

The rest of the steps are how to change the email address that your website uses as the From email address when sending emails.
These instructions are the way to set up a Gmail account to send emails from any email address, for example from an account on a domain you own.

Step 5: Setup your Gmail account to send email from an alias. You first need to be able to send emails from your Gmail account using the email address that you want to use. There are good instructions for this here: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157. I'll cover the important parts:

Step 6: Set up 2-step verification in your Gmail account. You need this in order to create an App Password for your account. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/security and turn on 2FA.

Step 7: Create an App Password. The App Password will be used by Gmail to send outgoing messages from a different email address. Once 2-factor authentication is turned on you'll have the option to create an App Password in the same security section of your Google account. If you still don't see the option go to the URL: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
Under "App passwords" click Select app and then Mail. Then Select device and then Other. Enter a name and click Generate. Copy that code.

Step 8: Add an account to your Gmail to "Send mail as". The exact instructions to add an email alias are at the same link as in step 5 above https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157. The gist of it is to go to your Gmail account and go to Settings->See all settings. Then go to Accounts and Import. Under Send mail as click on Add another email address. Then fill in your name and the email address you want to use. In the SMTP Server field, enter: smtp.gmail.com, use your Gmail address as the username, and use the App Password you created in the previous step as the password. Gmail will then send you a verification email with a code, copy that code and you're done.

Step 9: Change the email address that WordPress uses to send emails with. Finally, you can go back to your WordPress site and go to WP Mail SMTP, and Settings. Scroll down until you see From Email. You should now have a dropdown where you can finally choose the additional email address you added to your Gmail account as the from email your site will be sending emails from.

How to use the Sendfox API with PHP

2022-09-08T18:43:00.000+03:00

Here's some PHP code that shows you how to use Sendfox's API in PHP.
This specific example shows how to add a new contact to a mailing list, but similar code can be used for all their other API endpoints.

To get the Sendfox list id for the list you want to add a contact to, go to your Sendfox mailing lists and click on the list you want.
You'll see its id in the URL after /lists/

How to increase your external microphone's volume for using in a Zoom meeting, podcast, streaming, voice call, or anywhere else

2022-06-27T22:42:00.000+03:00

If you have an external microphone but you find that even though you have the volume cranked up all the way it's still not loud enough and you're getting complaints, here's what you can do to boost your mic's volume.

TL;DR Summary: use OBS to add a gain filter that increases your microphone's volume. The audio from OBS is routed to VB-Cable so that you can choose it from any application you want to use your boosted microphone.

Step 1: install OBS. OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is an excellent free and open-source application for Mac and Windows for video recording and live streaming. It lets you do a ton of stuff with video and audio like share your screen while still showing your webcam in a corner, smooth transitions (like the pros!) between showing yourself fullscreen and then showing your desktop, mixing audio from different sources, etc...
The installation itself is quite straightforward, just download the installer from the official site and follow their instructions, nothing special.

Step 2: install VB-Cable. VB-Cable is a free virtual audio cable that you're going to route sound to. Download and install VB-Cable. Then in any application that you want to use that sound you just choose VB-Cable as the source. For example in Zoom, Hangouts, Facetime, Messenger... just choose VB-Cable as the audio source device, instead of choosing your microphone directly.

Step 3: setup OBS to use your microphone. Launch OBS, click on the plus in the OBS Sources pane, and choose "Audio Input Capture". Then choose "Create New", give it a name you'll understand (like the model of your mic), and then choose your microphone as the source device.

Step 4: route your microphone to VB-Cable. Select your new audio source from the sources pane and click on "Filters". In that window click on the plus at the bottom and choose "Audio Monitor". Name it whatever you want (I usually leave it "Audio Monitor") and then choose "VB-Cable" as the device. What this does is send the audio from this device (your microphone) to the VB-Cable virtual audio cable. Don't close the filters window yet.

Step 5: add a gain filter to your microphone. In the same filters window from the previous step, click on the plus at the bottom again and choose "Gain" this time. You can just name it "Gain". This filter is where you'll boost your microphone's volume. Now all you need to do is slide the slider to the right and your mic's volume will increase. BTW you can add a ton of free filters this way to your microphone, for example noise reduction, compression, EQ, etc...

Step 6: That's it. Now just choose VB-Cable as the microphone source in any application. For example in the Zoom settings window, go to Audio and choose VB-Cable as the microphone. You can do the same anywhere on your computer, like in Facebook Messenger on the web, while on an audio or video call open the settings and choose VB-Cable as your device.

The new site design is here!

2021-04-18T14:46:00.008+03:00

Welcome to the new design for the site 🍾

I think I had the previous design for about 11 years(!!) so a new design was long overdue.

This is the 5th major redesign I've done for my personal website since I launched it in 2001.

Thanks to the Waybackmachine, here are some screenshots of the different designs over the years:

July 2001

September 2003

(btw those boxes were transparent so it looked better)

July 2004

April 2010

Whew, that was an eye sore 😀.

I also moved the blog over to blog.atguy.com and created a simple about me page on the homepage.

Let me know if you notice anything wonky with the site, all the old links should still work.

This one will probably be around for another 10 years so get used to it 🤣

Alfred open folder hotkey workflow

2017-11-24T16:41:00.004+02:00

Here's a really simple Alfred workflow I created that saves me tons of seconds every day.

It does one very simple thing: adds a hotkey that opens Alfred and types in: "open ".
So you can easily open any folder on your computer by just hitting the hotkey and typing the name of the folder you want to open.

Plain and simple.

You can download it here:

Download the Open Hotkey Alfred workflow

How to customize Alfred to work with Google Calendar (Alfred workflow)

2017-06-12T01:24:00.005+03:00

I use Google Calendar in the browser a lot so I thought why not setup Alfred to make working with Google Calendar easier.
(If you're not familiar with Alfred, it's an application launcher and productivity application for Mac)

I started off with trying to find an Alfred workflow that lets you easily open Google Calendar and easily add an event. I couldn't find such a workflow so I started working out different ways Alfred could do what I need.

At the end of the day I ended up creating this workflow that combines the different things I typically do with Google Calendar.

It basically lets you do 3 things:

Quickly open Google Calendar in the browser by typing the keyword gcal into Alfred.
Open Google Calendar using the keyboard hotkey ⌘ + g
Quickly add an event to Google Calendar.

The format for adding an event to Google Calendar is:
gc [event] at [time] on [date] in [location]

For example:
gc Dinner with friends at 8pm on next Sunday
Will open this event:

You can even do things like:
gc Weekly meeting every Wednesday at 3pm
And Google will add an event that repeats every Wednesday at 3pm.

Google does a great job at understanding what you mean when you type in natural language so play around and see.

You can also just type gc and hit enter and it will bring you to the new event page in Google Calendar.

Download the Google Calendar Workflow

If you don't want to add a workflow for some reason you can add this custom search instead:
Add event to Google Calendar
(clicking on that will prompt you to add it to Alfred, it's really easy to do)

It will let you quickly add events to Google Calendar via Alfred using the same format as described above.

Enjoy!

Sh#%, I messed up

2017-06-02T11:00:00.001+03:00

The 6 best apps for managing your tasks, now that Microsoft is killing Wunderlist

2017-05-19T21:52:00.001+03:00

Snapchat trick - How to upload any photo to Snapchat without the white borders!

2017-05-10T23:23:00.000+03:00

Why do we doodle

2017-05-06T22:29:00.001+03:00

BE AN UNDERACHIEVER

2017-04-16T15:53:00.001+03:00

3 best ways to stream videos to Chromecast

2015-08-18T18:54:00.000+03:00

This was originally posted on Medium

The Chromecast is one of my favorite gadgets. It’s cheap, it’s simple, and it usually just works.

However, one of the biggest problems with it is that once you get a taste of the simplicity of streaming YouTube videos to your TV via Chromecast you immediately want to stream your local video files to your TV, with the same ease.

And then the problems start.

There are a bunch of different ways to play videos from your PC or Mac on your Chromecast, and I’ve tried pretty much all of them. After a lot of trial and error these are the 3 best methods that I discovered.

Videostream

Videostream is a Google Chome app. To use it you need to launch the app on your computer (from within Chrome), choose the video you want to watch, and then click on the Google Cast extension to cast the app to your TV. A bit tedious but the stream works well, much better than just casting a tab using the Google Cast extension. The video and sound are smooth and the app is quite easy to use.

As an added bonus, there are free iPhone and Android apps that let you control Videostream from your phone. So essentially you just need to start the video from your computer and do the rest from your phone (like play, pause. rewind, etc.).

Downside: Need to start streaming from your computer

Price: free

Chome app link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videostream-for-google-ch/cnciopoikihiagdjbjpnocolokfelagl?hl=en

iPhone remote app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id983686352

Android remote app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videostream.Mobile

Air Video HD

AirVideo HD is an awesome app, regardless of if you have a Chromecast. It lets you view any videos you have on your computer (Mac or Windows) from your iPhone/iPad. So you can be anywhere in the world and your entire video library is easily accessible from your mobile device using Wifi or data. It supports a ton of different formats and even lets you download videos to your iOS device so that you can view them when offline.

In order to use Air Video HD you need to install Air Video Server, their free server application, on any computers you want to access from your mobile device (Air Video Server is available for Windows and Mac).

In order to stream from Air Video HD to Chromecast you currently need to join their “Early Access” program which is a $1.99 in-app purchase. They have a free trial so you can see that it really works for you before you buy early access. My guess is that Chromecast support will soon be part of the regular app and you won’t need to pay for early access. I paid the $2 for early-access and it was totally worth it.

Added bonuses: supports almost any video format (it transcodes videos on-the-fly), works smoothly with subtitles, can stream to Apple TV (using AirPlay), it looks great, and lets you download videos for viewing offline.

Downside: you need to have the server app running in the background. It’s a one time thing that you just install and never have to think about it again. Oh and no Android support.

Price: $2.99 for the app

Site: http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd

iPhone/iPad app: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/app/air-video-hd/id668354926?mt=8&at=11laGd

LocalCast

LocalCast lets you stream videos from your Android, iPhone, iPad, iPod or NAS, DLNA/UPnP, Google Drive, Dropbox, and even videos embedded on a webpage. That means that, unlike AirVideo HD, you don’t need to install anything on your computer. LocalCast just connects to any shared folders on computers on your local network and then lets you cast them to a number of different devices. That’s right, you can also stream videos directly from Dropbox and Google Drive to your TV (or local video files you have on your mobile device).

It supports the following devices that you can stream to: Chromecast, Nexus Player, Amazon FireTV, SmartTV, Sonos, Xbox 360, Xbox One or other DLNA devices (like a Philips TV).

Added bonus: LocalCast lets you stream video to your TV but listen to the audio using your phone’s headphones, if you don’t want to bother people around you.

Downside: doesn’t transcode videos so if casting to Chromecast not all video formats work.

Price: the free version is totally functional but supported by ads. The Pro version (which removes ads) is $4.99

iPhone/iPad app: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/app/localcast-for-chromecast-dlna/id969804264?mt=8&at=11laGd

Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.stefanpledl.localcast&hl=en

Summary

If you don’t mind getting up to your computer to start the video and want an entirely free solution, go with Videostream.

If you want total control from your iPhone/iPad and don’t mind paying $3, go for AirVideo HD. Also, if you have various different video formats that Chromecast doesn’t necessarily support, AirVideo transcodes videos smoothly on the fly.

If you don’t want to install anything on your computer and want full control from your phone (and support for a bunch of different devices & Dropbox), LocalCast has you covered.

PHP code for fetching a remote file and saving it with the right file name

2014-08-07T16:08:00.002+03:00

Here is some PHP code I wrote for downloading a file from a remote server and saving it locally using the file's real name.
It tries to get the real file name using three methods:

First by checking if the server returned the name of the original file to save as (using the content-disposition http header)
By checking the content-type header that the server returned
If all else fails then by the filename in the requested url.

I hope you find this useful.

Why the top Super Bowl 2013 ads worked

2013-02-05T00:32:00.000+02:00

Like every year, a main highlight of the Super Bowl are the TV commercials.
Here's my rundown of the top commercials from Super Bowl 2013, and what made them good.

My criteria for a good commercial was whether it did the job (in my opinion) based on these:

Does it reenforce the brand
Is it memorable
Will people talk about it afterwards
Does it engage the viewer

Excellent ads nailed most of these criteria.

Here's the list:

OREO - Whisper Fight

Everybody was talking about this one, mainly because it was a funny situation. But not only that, the commercial opened up an age old conversation that is directly connected to the product: what's better the cookie or the creme.

Taco Bell

This Taco Bell commercial did a great job of connecting between the brand and having a good time. Even if you think it's shitty food, the ad makes you feel good about living life and having a good time.

The Rock runs out of milk

The message in this ad is that even a super hero like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will do anything to bring his kids milk, even if the world is falling apart. The huge production (explosions, woman trapped in a car with a lion, aliens...) and the silly situation of The Rock running down the street in his pajamas just to get milk, amidst all of this, make this ad memorable.

Hyundai - why turbo

A very simple concept that demonstrates the benefits of this specific product. As the commercial proceeds it gets sillier and more extreme, all building up anticipation for the punch line: "Why turbo? It's just better to be in front" (with the most extreme one coming after the punch, now that you get it).

Pizza Hut - Hut

An excellent connection between all the excitement around the game and their brand. Such a good connection that it makes the viewers think, how didn't I think about that before. All that while repeating the brand name over and over.

Speed Stick Unattended Laundry

Speed Stick took what they are good at (times when you sweat) and told a story that people can relate to. They created a funny awkward scene that men specifically can relate to, and it points out the benefits of their product.

Tide - Miracle Stain

Again, the extreme situation depicted here is very memorable. And fans of both teams could connect to it thanks to the punch at the end.

SodaStream

This commercial uses two interesting techniques, there's the cool effect of the bottles exploding (in a fun sleek way), and the environmental aspect. Both make you relate to the commercial while teaching you the benefits of the product, which is not that well known yet.

Subway FebruANY

Subway took the awful name FebruANY and made it memorable by having a bunch of celebrities trying to pronounce it, in a blooper roll. Viewers are likely to try to say it themselves which increases the chance of them remembering it. So not only do you remember FebruANY at the end of the commercial, the meaningful name hints that you can get anything at Subway during the month of February (even if that's not what they are actually offering).

Go Daddy - Perfect Match

This GoDaddy commercial was kinda boring in my opinion, but I mentioned it in this list because it got a hell of a lot of buzz (and GoDaddy reported record sales after Super Bowl 2013). The old cliché is true, sex sells. It sells even more if you have a geek-loser getting to kiss a supermodel.

Here are more SuperBowl 2013 commercials on YouTube.

What are your thoughts on the best ones?

How I proposed using a Chrome extension

2012-11-30T22:46:00.000+02:00

Yup, I'm a geek. Everybody who knows me knows that.
As you can tell by the title of this post, here's how I proposed to my girlfriend by developing a Chrome extension (there's an added bonus at the end on how my mom discovered on Twitter that I had proposed).

When I decided to propose to my girlfriend I knew it would be geeky. Not Star Wars geeky, I'm not that hardcore, but something geeky nonetheless (and she is totally not a geek so any l33t speak would not work).

I threw around a few ideas. I knew I wanted to surprise her out of the blue, I wanted to do something that required investment (and not just half-ass it), but I didn't want it to be too grandiose (we're both not into those kinds of things).

Eventually I decided that I wanted to mess with her on Facebook.
Then I got the idea of creating a Chrome extension (after all, I was a long time at Conduit :) that injects JavaScript into her Facebook and would let me change stuff there.

Since this was a marriage proposal, the obvious place to mess with her on Facebook was the relationship status. This is what I came up with...

The first step was to ask her for some pretty basic stuff:

I was pretty sure that she would get annoyed with it and not want to cooperate so I added the little locks to give an impression that the information is private.

In the second step, it would ask her to update her relationship status. No matter what relationship status she chose it continued as if she had selected "Married".

and then she'd get this confirmation dialog:

The idea was that she would think she chose "Married" by accident and then hit the "No" to go back and then see that "Married" was selected.

After finally agreeing to update her relationship status she would then see this dialog:

Those are all profile pictures of male facebook friends she has, not including me.
After a few seconds those pictures would fade out and my profile picture would slide in and she'd see this:

I thought that at that point she'd understand and I would be standing there with the ring.

My good friend Adiel helped with the development of the extension and we set it up so that I could remotely control when to run the injected Javascript (thanks again Adiel!).

I loaded up the extension on her laptop during the night and my goal was to get her to check Facebook on her laptop during the next day (the next day was 10/11/12 a nice date to propose on, right?).
Easier said than done.

The extension was loaded up on her laptop, I had the ftp to the server open ready to enable the extension remotely, but she wouldn't go to her computer.

So I decided to send her this message on Facebook:

You have to check this out:

The idea was that she'd get that message on her iPhone and think it wasn't working properly so she'd check it on her laptop. Worked like a charm... she went up and opened Facebook on her laptop.

As soon as I saw she loaded up Facebook I enabled the extension.

She got the "Facebook update your details wizard", got annoyed, and closed the page.
She reopened Facebook, hoping it would disappear, but the damn thing was back (hee hee).
After getting annoyed at it a bit she called me over to show me what Facebook was forcing her to do... so far everything was progressing as planned...

I took a look at it and told her I had no idea what that thing was but since there's a lock there she had nothing to worry about, the information would be private.

Reluctantly, she filled out the first step (home town) and got to the next step with the relationship status. She got really annoyed at that :)

I told her not to worry that she could just choose "single". She looked at me like I was nuts :)
(neither one of us had ever updated their Facebook relationship status till then)

Eventually she chose "single", hit next, and got the "Please confirm you are updating to Married" screen. Just as planned, she thought she made a mistake and went back. There she saw that "married" was selected and chose single again.
Of course the second time it asked her to confirm "married" really pissed her off :)
At this point I told her to just hit next, who cared. She was't willing to and told me to do it. I ended up hitting next to confirm, thinking that she would immediately understand what was going on on the next screen.

The faces came up and again she looked confused, asking me "what the hell is this?". I said "dunno", knowing that my pic would come up in a sec (the ring was already in my hand at this point, she had no idea).

A few seconds later my picture slided in and I looked at her, sure that she knew what was going on, and pulled out the ring.

She was floored :)
She had no idea till that second what was going on (mission accomplished :).

Luckily for me, she said yes!

A few minutes of mushiness ensued while we collected ourselves and indulged in the moment, and then I explained to her how the whole thing worked.

To top all this off, the next thing I obviously had to do was update my Twitter with the good news and that was how my Mom found out I proposed. When I called her to tell her the good news she answered saying "I need to discover on Twitter that you proposed?". She was a great sport about it :)

Like I said, yup, I'm a geek.

Employee Equity by Fred Wilson

2012-04-22T19:10:00.000+03:00

Just saw this great talk by Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures, about employee equity.
It's a bit long but if you are building a company try to put an hour aside to watch this.

The video of the entire talk is embedded below, and here's a link to Fred's post about it.

There are useful tips and best practices scattered across the entire talk so it's worth listening to, but if you don't have the time/patience here are the highlights.

The high level concept of the entire talk is that "if anybody goes to the pay window, everybody goes to the pay window". Meaning that everybody in the company should be an integral part of the ride and be compensated accordingly in the case that the entrepreneur and founders get their payday by selling the company, IPO, etc...

At the beginning of the talk (minute 3:37-10:40) Fred explains the basics of dilution, giving an example of a common scenario where a founder brings on a founding team, then some seed investors who also get equity, an employee equity pool, and a VC investment. The example shows how the founder gets diluted as more people get a bite of the pie (as do everybody else along the line).

He then goes on to explain various tax implications of options vs. stock and different vesting plans for employees, founders, and the founding team.

In my opinion, the most important part of the talk starts at minute 32:50 where Fred discusses a technique that he uses for how to calculate how many shares to give a specific employee (it goes till about minute 42:00).

Here's how to determine how much stock to give a specific employee:

First of all you need to put down your own real valuation of your company. This is not an official number or something that a 409A firm comes up with (more on that in the beginning of this video, if you're interested), it's how much you really think your company is worth at that point in time. In his example it's $25M.

Next you need to bucket your employees into 4 buckets and their multipliers:

Senior team (CFO, CMO, CPO... executives who report to the CEO): 0.5x - 1x
Junior VP level/directors (people who report to the senior team): 0.25x - 0.5x
Key hires (engineers, designers,... people who are hard to hire and hard to retain): 0.1x - 0.25x
Everybody else: 0.05x - 0.1x

The multiplier ranges are so you can tune it according to your specific market and how competitive/hard to find certain people it is. Geography also affects what multiplier to use.

Now determine the market cash compensation for these people, not what you're gonna pay them, what they would get paid at a competing or big company. In his example it's a CFO who would make $250K annually (you're paying him $175K but he could make $250K on the market).
You then take that number and multiply it by that person's matching multiplier. In this case he used 0.75 which gets to $187,500 which is the dollar value of the equity that you're gonna give the CFO.

All you need now is to see how many shares you have outstanding, and divide. In his example he used 10 million outstanding shares. So you divide the valuation you came up with by the number of outstanding shares to get the price per share (in his example, $25M/10M=$2.5 per share).
Now just divide the equity dollar value that you calculated for that employee by the share price to get how many shares to grant that person. In this example, $187,500 / $2.5 = 75,000 shares (Fred has a calculation error on the board in the class).

Note that the price per share that the employee actually gets will not be the number you used for this calculation, it will be the 409A valuation which is hopefully much lower than the valuation you came up with (you want your 409A valuation to be as low as possible for tax reasons).

At minute 50:15 there is also a part about retention grants. Fred recommends giving retention stock grants 2 years after hiring so that people have unvested stock that will keep them with the company (otherwise they can just leave with their entire stock pool after the 4 year vesting is up).

The formula he recommends for retention grants is one half of what the sign on grant would be for that employee, if the employee was hired today, every 2 years.

So in the CFO example above, he originally got 75,000 shares. Two years later, the company is now worth $50M (twice as much), so his sign on grant would be 37,500. So his retention grant should be 18,750 shares (half of 37,500), vested over 4 years.

That's it, that's the gist of what you need to know about giving your employees stock so that everybody on board is motivated to make the company a success and compensated accordingly.

Why Draw Something Works

2012-03-26T18:24:00.000+02:00

Drawing from bestofdrawsomething

The latest rage to hit the interwebs, as you all know, is OMGPOP's Draw Something (if you aren't familiar with it you can checkout my review of Draw Something on LightenApp.com).
According to their latest news, only 7 weeks after launching Draw Something was downloaded more than 35 million times and Zynga bought the company for $180 million.

We've seen it time and time again where a company takes an existing concept, that was not necessarily ever a big hit, puts their own twist on it, and the result is "overnight success". Google did it with search and Gmail (for example), Rovio did it with Angry Birds, and the list goes on... The OMGPOP story is far from an overnight success, as my good friend Shahar Nechmad noted in a recent post, but they definitely nailed it with Draw Something.

So what did OMGPOP do in Draw Something that caused this incarnation of pictionary to catch on so fast and turn into the amazing phenomenon that it became?

Here's my analysis.

Asynchronous playing - people love playing mobile games and they love playing with their friends. The problem with playing mobile games with your friends is that you typically need to all play at the same time, which is not very convenient when on a mobile device. You usually want to play on your phone when you have some spare time. In Draw Something the entire gameplay is based on asynchronous turns, so that whenever you want you can launch the app and play a round or two, even if your friend/s aren't currently online. When you finish your turn whatever you did is sent to wait for your friend. So you are playing with real people however you can always launch the app and get immediate satisfaction, even if nobody else is playing at that time. Even though it's asynchronous the game still lets you see what the other side experienced as they were playing, watching you draw. So you get the asynchronous game play without losing much of the real-time effect of playing with another live player.

Simultaneous games with several people - The downside of asynchronous games with real people is that you have to wait a lot between turns, till the other person finishes their turn and sends it back to you. The way OMGPOP solved that problem in Draw Something is by letting you play a lot of simultaneous games with many people.
When you complete a round with one person you don't have to wait around for the person to be online and play their turn, you just jump to another simultaneous game with somebody else. The game allows for enough games in parallel so that typical users will have enough games to play and not get bored waiting around. Since people are playing several rounds at once, each time you launch a round you first see the last drawing you drew for that user. That quickly reminds you where you left off and can continue playing from that spot.

Not being able to quit in the middle - Sometimes you run across players who don't really know how to draw well or are bad guessers. Draw Something is designed in such a way so that you can quit playing with anybody you don't want to play with, but the quitting point is at the end of a round. This subtle product feature keeps users engaged longer with the game than if you could just quit in the middle of a round just because the other user annoyed you ("can't you see that's a golf club???"). When you are in the middle of a round and get annoyed at the other user, you still have to complete the round (watch the user guess your word, watch them draw and try to guess, draw a new word). So effectively you can quit the round once you've finished drawing something. But don't you want to see if the user got your word? After all you just created this masterpiece, you don't want it to just disappear, never to be seen by anyone. Right? Ok, I'll go another round and give them another chance.... Not only does this create more activity within the system, it also give a chance for poor players to keep playing (and hopefully improve).

Limited set of letters to choose from - Not letting users just type in the entire word they are guessing, but forcing them to choose from a limited set of characters has 3 benefits. 1) It limits the possibilities for the curent word ("that looks like a dog but I don't have a 'd', I guess it's cat") which in effect increases the chances that people will guess the word, which makes both sides happier ("If he got the word I guess my drawing was good" and "I'm so smart I managed to guess that word even though it's an awful drawing"). 2) It helps with spelling problems, especially with an international userbase. 3) Finally, limiting the characters creates an opportunity for in-app purchases of bombs to eliminate characters and not lose your winning streak.

Easy random player hookup - Even if you don't know anybody who plays Draw Something you can just get the app, create a game, and find a random partner to play with. Since the game is asynchronous and simultaneous this really helped get the game started even when there weren't a lot of users using it yet (it was easy to seed the game with a small group of initial in-house players who took on the new users coming in).

Playing with actual friends - It's very easy to play Draw Something with people that you actually know, via Facebook Connect. And since the game is asynchronous you can even start playing with friends that don't even have the game yet. This both makes the game fun (it's more fun to play with somebody who you know in real life, vs somebody random) and makes the game viral. If you choose not to connect to Facebook you can still play against people you know via either their user name or email address.

Winning streaks + aligned goals - both players playing a round of Draw Something have the same goal, to guess the word. If I draw a good drawing and you guess it, we both win. Combine that with a winning streak counter and both sides have a mutual goal of keeping up that streak and not letting the other side down. This works exceptionally well when playing against friends you know via Facebook.

Not all the things Draw Something did were so outstanding, but these things are what caused the game to be both fun and viral among friends, which led to its great success.

Here are a couple things they didn't do that well on, and will hopefully improve in their upcoming versions:

The user interface when logging in is not standard and actually quite weird. Instead of asking for your email/username and password they ask for your email and username. I've seen more than a few people put in their email and then type their password in the username field (because it looks like it should be the password field) and what happens is that you now get a new username that is your password. Not cool at all.

They also screwed up the Facebook integration when you choose to sign in with a user name instead of using Facebook Connect. If you use a username you can't then connect to Facebook and play against your Facebook friends. That's both less fun and less viral, both sides lose.

In their next version of Draw Something they will let people share their drawings easily on Facebook and Twitter (among other things they'll be adding). This will create more engagement around the game among friends and increase their virality.

I can't wait to see what other product improvements they'll introduce that will make Draw Something an even bigger success....

GrrReader

2012-02-28T03:04:00.000+02:00

Google recently moved the Google Reader link into the "More" section of their top navigation bar (you know, that black toolbar that they added to all of their sites when they launched Google Plus).

For those of us who use Google Reader regularly, it's quite an annoyance. Not only the fact that it's now harder to access Google Reader, but the fact that Google can change whatever they want in these tools that we use daily, and we pretty much have nothing to do about it.

So I took the opportunity to create a Chrome extension that adds it back to where it belongs, on the navigation bar itself.
The extension was pretty simple to write and gave me a chance to brush up a bit on my Javascript skills (especially JQuery stuff).

If you're interested, you can find the Chrome extension for download from the Chrome Web Store (it's free obviously).

Comments are welcome...

Discovering Apps

2012-01-15T14:39:00.000+02:00

I recently started an additional site about app discovery: LightenApp.

As you can probably tell by its name, LightenApp is focused entirely on apps, mainly iPhone apps.

The format is simple: short app reviews added daily.

If you want to discover new apps and get tips and recommendations, just subscribe to LightenApp on any one of these channels:

Like it on Facebook:

Follow on Twitter:
Follow @LightenApp

Follow on Google+:

Get the RSS feed:

If you know any good app that you think should be reviewed, let me know.

Designing a Logo

2011-12-06T12:44:00.001+02:00

We recently changed the name of our company and one of the implications was that we needed to create a new logo for the company.
The name of the company is iglloo (igloo.com was taken, big surprise, but we managed to grab iglloo.com) and when we chose that name I immediately envisioned us having some kind of cute logo, although nothing specific came to mind.
For some reason, we thought it would be pretty easy to create the imagery that goes along with the values what we want our brand to represent (in a nutshell we build apps, primarily for iPhones and iPads), but we quickly learned that creating something "real" out of our vague thoughts, was not an easy task.

We tried a few concepts but the designs that we got were too literal. We kept getting images of igloos.
Things like this:

Which is cute, but not more than that. We were looking for something sophisticated, simple, and fun.

I had envisioned a simple textual logo, with an igloo incorporated somehow as part of that textual logo.

So we decided to open a contest on 99designs.

If you aren't familiar with 99designs, it lets you setup a contest for any graphic work you need. For example, you can create a contest for designing a web page and offer a $300 reward to whomever designs the best page for you.
Lots of designers hang around 99designs looking for projects to work on and they may see your project and submit a design, hoping it will win the contest and they'll get paid.

Similar to the X Prize (and the original Orteig Prize which Charles Lindbergh won in 1927 for flying non-stop from New York City to Paris), the idea is that the sum of all the effort put in to the competition by the participants is greater than the value of the prize.

Essentially you get tons of people working for you for free and one of them gets overpaid a bit for their effort.

Sounds like a great concept, especially for things like graphic design.

I heard from a few people about different results on 99designs, some were really happy and some didn't like the quality of the work they got there. So we decided to go with the cheapest option there ($299) and give it a try.

Within a week we got 38 designers who submitted about 140 design concepts for our logo.

Some were WAY off and a few were quite close to the concept we had imagined and tried to describe to the designers, but none of them really stood out. We were basically looking for a stroke of genius.

Here are a few of the designs that were kinda of the concept we were looking for (some after refinement based on our comments to the designers):

In our opinion, none of them were really spectacular/genius enough and we were pretty disappointed with the results.

At that point we pretty much gave up on the contest, didn't award a winner, and went on with our day to day business (still using the old brand). The rules at 99designs are that if you don't pick a winner you don't have to pay. We were definitely willing to pay full price for the design, if there was something that we liked.

I must say, the support team at 99designs did a great job. They were very accommodating, they offered to extend our contest longer because we hadn't decided on a winner yet (contests are typically for 1 week) but we still didn't get good enough results.

At that point I even tried to create the logo myself and came up with this idea:

I actually really liked the concept (I guess I'm just in love with my own ideas) but the problem was that it doesn't scale. At small sizes that little igloo image is totally not clear.

After about 2 months the logo issue came up again and I went back to 99designs to see the old submissions, maybe looking at them again would give a different perspective. Still nothing spectacular.

Since 99designs offer a refund if you don't pick a winner, I sent them an email and asked how I get the refund. They replied that they can only refund within 60 days and that more than that had passed.

They did offer to reopen our contest and basically start over. So we reopened the contest, again for 1 week.
This time we got WAY fewer submissions. I'm not really sure why (I asked their support and they didn't have any good answers). They also offered to give us their PowerPack for free which basically gets you better listings in their directory along with a few other tweaks so it stands out (usually $85).
The PowerPack didn't make any difference, we just got a few random submissions, nothing even close.

Then while looking at all the different submissions I suddenly ran across this design from the original contest:

I never really noticed it because it "wasn't what we were looking for", we were looking for some kind of genius twist as part of the textual logo.

But this was interesting.

We showed it to a few people around the office and everybody pretty much liked it.

I asked the designer for the meaning of the icon and this is what he sent in reply:

The meaning of the icon according to the designer

Ok, I can live with that.

We then went back and forth playing around with different fonts and stylings, these were among them:

At this point I was just exchanging emails with the designer, going back and forth about different things like the dot above the i, what L's to use, etc... According to 99designs, during the handoff process you can ask for some changes but the designers aren't obligated to do anything. Beehive, the designer who created this logo, was very responsive and helpful.

After about a day of mixing and matching different elements from different fonts (and trying to keep it from looking like a Frankenstein-ish mess) we finally came up with the final design!

It wasn't what we had originally envisioned in terms of the concept, but it does the job.

And without further ado, here is the official new logo for iglloo:

So do I recommend using 99designs?
To an extent. While looking around there at different projects (I was looking to target designers who created things I like) I saw some pretty good designs.
My feeling is that it's kind of a crapshoot, with relatively good odds.
You may be able to get something really good for not a lot of money but you may leave disappointed.

If you can afford $299 then I would give it a try.
I think logos are particularly difficult to design (the story behind the Conduit logo is quite long too) but if you are looking to design a website you'll probably be able to get good results (although 99designs may be a bit more expensive than just buying a template and customizing it a bit).

Twylah - Your Trending Tweets

2011-11-06T19:53:00.000+02:00

One of the annoying things about Twitter is that things that you tweet just vanish into the ongoing flow of tweets and disappear forever, never to be seen again by a human being (and Twitter's horrible search engine makes that problem even worse).

I recently ran across a great service that addresses this problem - Twylah.
Twylah analyzes the content that you put on Twitter and automatically generates a site for you which gives your readers a beautiful summary of who you are and what you tweet about.
That page is also optimized for SEO which is a great way for you to drive new traffic back to your content.

So basically, instead of sending people to your boring old Twitter page (which may be filled at the moment with irrelevant tweets because you just happen to be in an ongoing conversation with somebody on Twitter about the latest episode of Beavis and Butthead), you send people to your Twylah page.

That page will show them your personal trending topics and what you are all about.
My Twylah page, for example, currently shows that I tweet about Twitter, iPhone, Apple, Games, and Nike (I recently ran in a Nike run so I've been tweeting about it).

Look at the difference between a regular Twitter page to the Twylah page generated from it:

It's much easier to understand what kind of stuff you tweet about and it looks much better.

I assume Twylah is mainly targeting brands to use this but I see no reason why any individual who is on Twitter wouldn't want to use it.

Check out my Twylah page and you can request a beta invite to get your own.

Leaving Conduit

2011-05-25T18:15:00.000+03:00

After nearly seven amazing years at Conduit, I have decided to leave the company and pursue other ventures.

This journey started in a room with a small group of all engineers that quickly grew to an outstanding company with over a quarter of a billion (that's right, with a b) of monthly users and a network of hundreds of thousands of publishers. A dream come true for anybody trying to create something online.

One of the first versions of the Conduit homepage

Over the years I've had the privilege of being involved with many different aspects of the company at different stages: from hands on technical roles, to dealing with our very first customers and users, marketing to the long tail, managing support, product definitions, meeting new prospective publishers, leading product, and the list goes on and on.

This experience has been life changing and gave me the rare opportunity to accompany a company from it's inception, throughout the different stages, the ups and downs, up to a huge success story with hundreds of millions of users and a multi million dollar revenue stream.

I would like to thank all the great people who I've worked with over the years at Conduit and am sure that they will continue to make this company a true game changer.

What now you ask?
(ok, maybe you didn't ask but I'll tell you anyway)
Over the past few years, we've all seen the explosion in the mobile web space. Instead of saying "here's an idea for a startup" people now say "here's an idea for an app" (I even unknowingly tweeted this a few months ago http://bit.ly/l8I6Jm). With the easily accessible platforms and infrastructures we currently have, I believe there is a lot of potential for solving problem with the mobile Internet, and that's what I plan on doing.

I've partnered with Shai Wolkomir, a serial entrepreneur but most importantly an old friend, and together we plan to change the world. Or at least have fun trying to do so.
We've assembled a small but very capable team that will give us the ability to try out our ideas and quickly see what works, what needs refining, and what should be thrown out.

The first product to hatch out of our nest is Props which is a way for people to give recognition to people for things they are good at and get the respect they deserve.

So far it's getting a lot of great responses from the people who saw it at TechCrunch Disrupt and we have a lot of plans for it.

So without any further ado: go install it and let me know what you think :)

Cheers,
Guy

Techonomy3 - The Rundown

2011-04-06T09:06:00.003+03:00

(Photo by Yaniv Feldman - Newsgeek)

This is a repost of an article that I originally wrote for Technorati and was published there.

The startup scene in Israel is booming, and a(nother) testament to that is the Techonomy3 conference, which just wrapped up not long ago.
The format is simple: 6 startups presented to about 400 attendees in the room (and probably a few thousand viewing via the live video stream from around the world).
A panel of respected, well-known judges gave their comments after each presentation, and the audience voted on the winner, American Idol style.

America (well, Israel actually), here are your top 6:

Hitpad - an iPad app that automatically gives you highlights of what's going on today by analyzing different online sources and giving you trending topics with drill downs of topics you're interested in. Very cool.
Dapsem - an iPhone app to give your friends virtual fist bumps as a sign of appreciation. The concept of giving recognition to people you know is great and has huge potential.
From what I've seen, Props are the ones to keep your eyes on in that space.
Magisto - a web app (remember those? :) that automatically detects interesting content in your videos for creating professional looking edits of your videos. Like Animoto but with zero effort.
Tingiz - a platform for creating mobile microsites for products. Manufacturers of physical products can create a mobile microsite for their products and connect them via a QR code. The product microsites will show things like product videos, information, Facebook page, etc...
Jumboard - a large plastic PC keyboard with big red, yellow, blue, and green buttons that let little kids easily interact with Flash apps on Jumboard.com. This gives young kids an interface they can easily use to start interacting with games/applications and parents get feedback on the progress of their kids. Kinda like a modern incarnation of the Comfy keyboard.
TVtak - an iPhone app for easily getting information about TV shows. All you do is take a picture of your TV while watching a show and TVtak will recognize what you are watching and give you information about that show (and let you share it with your friends). Very much like Shazam does for music.

Based on the reactions of the crowd and the live Twitter board (which was on fire during the event), Techonomy was a huge success for everybody involved.

And without any further ado... the winner of Techonomy 3 is.....
Magisto!

Congrats to the winners and to the organizers of this conference, they put on a great show.
And to the losers: "it's an honor just being nominated", or in this case, just being on stage.