The Lean, Agile Quantified Self
Self-tracking and personal science has always fascinated me, from trying one of the early heart rate monitors 20 years ago to separately plotting lean and fat body weight changes (my team developed the LeanScale app), to measuring my brainwaves at night with Zeo.
I’m blown away and humbled by the collective intelligence and spirit of adventure and curiosity in every single participant and presenter at the first Quantified Self Conference today. In the afternoon I’ll be co-presenting a short talk entitled Agile Self Development, on borrowing ideas from Lean Startup and Agile Software Development for optimizing personal development, experimentation and productivity.
Seth Roberts suggested in his opening plenary that professional science is stagnating, while personal science is about to revolutionize the advancement of knowledge and human health, productivity and happiness. Hooray for progress!
Startup Lessons from NASA (and pictures of Discovery’s last flight, STS-133)
Shuttle Discovery on pad 39a, night before her final launch
My visits to NASA for this launch were an amazing experience, but I also noticed a valuable lesson for company founders and leaders.
Innovation and reliability sometimes compete, but they matter differently to each of the things you do. At any stage and any size, your company can be more nimble and accepting of failure where needed, and more risk averse where needed. The trick is knowing the difference and taking advantage, rather than succumbing to the temptation to always favor one over the other.
Perhaps a more interesting way to look at it might be that we’re always engineering a reduction in different kinds of risks. Focus on the right one to reduce for each problem, and we can meet our most important and appropriate goals. Beware the temptation to manage the wrong risks.
More about the lesson and the launch, with a few of the snapshots I took on this trip (all are unedited/uncropped from my point-and-shoot Canon sx30is), after the break… Read more
How I Enabled New Facebook Comments for WordPress (March 2, 2011)
After trying out Facebook comments on Techcrunch and reading a few people’s thoughts on them, I decided to try them here on my blog.
I think it will result in more discussion and views as they post both here and on folk’s Facebook walls. It’s really cool to see a comment show up in both places.
If it goes well, I’ll look into hiding or disabling Disqus (or better yet, Disqus and Facebook will come to some agreement that lets them integrate and pull in Twitter as a login option).
The plugin I used is at http://grahamswan.com/facebook-comments/ and includes clear instructions for how to install (including setting up a Facebook application key). (I also PayPal’d the author a quick donation.)
What do you think?
Who can build your iPhone app?
Last night my friend Doc Pop asked me for a recommendation of who could build an iPhone app for his performance and art. Doc is a force of nature: he blogs, is a nerd core rapper (who is releasing a new album of all-iPhone music), a world-champion yo-yo’er, comic creator, and does other arts and crafts in addition to his day job as an iPhone game designer. So of course he should have his own app.
We were at a party, so I didn’t have time to find out more about what he had in mind before giving him the general answer of what anyone in his position needs to hear… Read more
What comes after The Social Network?
Leaving the theater, I wanted more.
While hardly an insider, I’ve been to Facebook’s offices a couple of times over the years, and I’ve met some of the people from the film in person. I wanted to know what other people, closer to it, had said about film, Facebook, and what comes next… Read more
Comparing high-speed Internet in San Francisco: AT&T U-Verse vs. Comcast Extreme vs. Speakeasy DSL
Today we have AT&T U-Verse and Speakeasy DSL, next week we’ll also have Comcast Extreme 50. These appear to be the only choices here (except commercial dedicated circuits). We’ll be disconnecting two of them shortly, but it’s a great opportunity to compare service from the three providers and I wanted to share what I’ve learned so far. Read more
What AT&T doesn’t want you to know about the iPhone
This fantastic video does a great job of expressing the unique advantages I enjoy through being on AT&T.
(I’ve also been meaning to update my review of the AT&T 3G Microcell… but I’m still waiting for another return call from AT&T tier 2 support. I’ve spent hours on the phone with AT&T over the past month.)
(via @scobleizer/@ChrisPirillo/@shadoestevens)
LeanScale and SFAppShow
I’m about to launch a new iPhone and web app, LeanScale at the next SF AppShow. Join us, it’s a great event, and look for more here soon.
LeanScale is the only tool that separates fat and lean for better health. Don’t watch your weight, watch your lean, with LeanScale. You get immediate, powerful feedback on what is happening with your body right now, even when you are making gradual changes (the best kind). If you’re interested in the private beta, please comment below.
Invite (or, what’s the opposite of a Fail Whale?)
We asked our friend Yiying Lu to make for us the opposite of the Fail Whale for our wedding invitation.
She calls her new design “Win Penguins”
We combined the new and the old when we got engaged on Twitter. I asked Laura to marry me on bended knee with ring in one hand, iPhone in the other, in a room that included many friends as witness. In the same way, our invitations include Yiying’s new design and Laura hand-wrote the text of each one with a fountain pen. They were mailed last week.
Thanks, Yiying! (And thanks to our friend Bob Meyer of Galaxy Press for printing them.)
UPDATE
Our friends at Laughing Squid blogged about our wedding invite, then Mashable.com posted about it, as did Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, and the Huffington Post, too.
First AT&T 3G MicroCell Review (tested at two homes in San Francisco)
AT&T 3G Microcell
Yesterday I read on Mobile Crunch that the AT&T 3G MicroCell went on sale. I ran out and bought the last available one from the AT&T Store nearest me. I’ve tested it in two San Francisco homes and can report on how it works for me.
The theory is great. I pay AT&T an extra $150 to fix service that I’m already paying more than $100 a month for. They give me a cute little orange and white box by CISCO that connects to my broadband internet and makes a micro cell site out of my house. Voila, a little bubble of reliable service in the wasteland that is trying to make iPhone voice calls in San Francisco.
Or so I hoped. Read more
About Dale
Executive Coach to Entrepreneurs.
Prior to becoming a consultant, advisor and now a coach, I'd been a CEO, a software engineer, a rocket scientist, book publisher, editor and author, a personal trainer, helped build a couple of mobile and Internet marketing agencies. Yeah, I was also the guy at the front of the iPhone line; all four times. iPad, too.
I mostly write about startups, marketing, business, and technology (especially mobile, social and web), and sometimes about other interests such as travel and health.