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A results-only work environment (or ROWE) is a radical new way of working that focuses on results instead of face time. ROWE in practice means “each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want as long as the work gets done.”

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1) It was utterly unreliable. Three or four times every month friends and family would call me, hear rings, and leave voicemails. The phone would be sitting next to me at home, plugged in, powered on, connected (3 bars) and never ring. Checking my phone later, I would discover a new voicemail — but no record of the call in the call log.

2) The UI was atrocious. The best test for a UI is the wife test: Every time my wife had to use my phone in a pinch — she would scream in frustration as she couldn’t access common functions (such as the dialer) or couldn’t enter text accurately on the virtual keyboard. Windows Mobile is a disaster on touchphones. Eventually, I was able to workaround this issue by installing SPB’s Mobile Shell which is a remarkable product which Microsoft should buy and integrate.

3) GPS performance was horrible. Obtaining a GPS lock in Google Maps took 3-5 minutes where you had to remain completely stationary and away from tall buildings. You could drive (moving) for miles and never obtain a lock. It was so frustrating being lost/late and unable to obtain a fix. There was not–as far as I could tell–any “Assisted GPS” which uses cell phone tower triangulation to speed up the fix process. Various apps/tweaks which were supposed to improve GPS acquisition had no effect.

4) GPS was locked down. Google Maps, Garmin Mobile, and other applications could not access the internal GPS. About halfway through the life of the phone I decided to “flash” a new ROM onto the phone to remove this restriction. This was a complicated, warranty-breaking process and it was totally ridiculous that I had to go through it.

So, onto the Blackberry Storm! I would’ve preferred an iPhone, however I’m not willing to put up with AT&T’s poor voice coverage just for the sake of a snazzy device. It looked like the Storm was the best touch-based smartphone available on Verizon. It was a scary purchase, because of the thousands of Storm horror stories out there. After four weeks of Storm usage, I’m surprisingly satisfied! A few thoughts:

1) The SurePress click screen is serviceable. Based on peoples comments, I was expecting it to be a nightmare. Occasionally you can’t quite select a button or click where you want to, but 90% of the time it works fine. I do worry about dirt getting under the screen however.

2) The Blackberry browser is serviceable. Again, based on peoples comments, I thought it would be awful. It’s not. It’s a little pokey sometimes, but mostly it works and gets me around mobile-friendly sites without issue. I installed Opera but rarely use it!

3) The memory limitation is a real problem. The Storm has 128MB of memory which acts like “RAM”. The more applications you run concurrently, the less RAM available. Bizarrely, the more applications you install (even if they aren’t running!) — the less RAM available. Very quickly you begin to run low on RAM. When less than 10MB of RAM is available, the Storm begins to crawl. After a reset, I have about 20MB free RAM, by mid-day I’m down to 15MB, and at night I hit 10MB. Two applications make this problem manageable: MeterBerry — which monitors free RAM and notifies you when it drops below 10MB (so you can reset) and QuickPull — which automatically restarts your Blackberry early every morning (e.g. 4am) to clear the RAM out.

4) The camera is excellent! I can’t believe how much better the Storm’s camera is vs. my HTC Vogue. It’s an incredible difference… pictures of text in books and magazines are actually readable! Because of this — I’ve been using Evernote for Blackberry much more than I used Evernote for Windows Mobile.

5) Voice quality is excellent! The Storm is louder and more clear than my Vogue. The speakerphone is good. Thankfully, it doesn’t miss calls either.

6) GPS is amazing! I can’t get over how fast the Storm acquires a lock in Google Maps… 10 seconds at most. I love popping it out on a downtown street corner and knowing exactly where I am.

7) The virtual keyboard is decent. It’s not perfect, but its better than Windows Mobile. The landscape layout really shines. Thankfully, my wife can actually type on it with minimal frustration. I’ve gotten progressively faster in terms of typing speed.

Like Windows Mobile, RIM’s OS is not designed for touch devices. You see this in the long drop-down list menus and too-small buttons. RIM has done a *better* job than Microsoft of adopting to touchscreens, but there is definitely more work to be done.

Overall, my Storm experience has been good. Verizon cut the price to $99’s — so it wasn’t expensive either. Clearly, I’ve benefited here by coming to the party late: Early Storm users faced horrendous software/stability bugs with RIM’s OS. Most of those issues have been ironed out at this point. I wouldn’t buy a Storm for my wife, it’s still too rough around the edges, but it’s a great phone for tech savvy who are unwilling to go to AT&T.

jason

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How often does Utah, of all places, get mentioned as a hotbed of public-policy innovation? Not often. But, last August, the state carried out a rather novel idea: Shift all government employees to a four-day workweek. No, this wasn’t the French approach. Workers would still put in their 40 hours; they’d just toil in the office for ten hours a day, Monday through Thursday, and then get Friday off. The experiment’s been going on for a year and the results are finally in—the state actually saved a fair bit on energy costs. Scientific American reports…

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On Prosper, the largest of the peer-to-peer sites, the process is a little like eBay-meets-Match.com. Lenders select from among a catalog of prospective borrowers much as singles “shop” an Internet dating site for potential partners. A typical listing includes a personal narrative making a case for the loan and a picture of the borrower. (These pictures often also include kids, puppies, and other images that might tug on a lender’s sympathies.) In addition to this (unverified) information, Prosper lists hard data from borrowers’ credit reports, including past delinquencies, credit lines, and ranges for income and credit rating. Once a desirable borrower is identified, lenders place bids specifying how much they’re willing to lend to a particular borrower and at what interest rate. So if many lenders perceive that a borrower is a good credit risk, he’s likely to get all the money he needs at low rates. High-risk cases will end up paying higher interest rates and may not attract funding at all.

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A few years ago, Swiss economists Bruno Fey and Alois Stutzer announced the discovery of a new human foible, which they called “the commuters paradox.” They found that when people are choosing where to live, they consistently underestimate the pain of a long commute. This leads people to mistakenly believe that a mansion in the suburbs, with its extra bedroom and sprawling lawn, will make them happier, even if living there might force them to drive an additional 45 minutes to work. It turns out, however, that traffic is torture, and the big house isn’t worth it. According to the calculations of Fey and Stutzer, a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office.

While the concept of critical density has been repeatedly demonstrated using computer simulations—drivers are surprisingly easy to model as a system of interacting particles—it wasn’t until last year that this theory of traffic was experimentally confirmed. A team of physicists at Nagoya University wanted to see how many cars could maintain a constant speed of 19 mph around a short circular track. It turned out that the critical number was 22: Once that density was reached, tiny fluctuations started to reverberate around the track, which caused the occasional spontaneous standstill. As the scientists note, this is actually a pretty familiar scenario for particle physicists, who are used to studying phase transitions, such as the transformation of liquid water into solid ice. In this case, the critical threshold is temperature, which triggers clusters of molecules to slow down and form a crystal lattice, which then spreads to nearby molecules. A traffic jam is simply a solid made up of idling cars.

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Fancy Fast Food

McSteak & Potatoes (Fancy Big Mac) by FancyFastFood

Ingredients:

* 1 McDonald’s Big Mac Extra Value Meal (#1) with a large fries and large Coca-Cola

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Potential explanations all come from behavioral economics: cognitive biases that affect how we think and make decisions. (I’ve written about some of these biases and how they affect security decisions, and there’s a great book on the topic as well.)

First, there’s a control bias. We tend to underestimate risks in situations where we are in control, and overestimate risks in situations when we are not in control. Driving versus flying is a common example. This bias becomes stronger with familiarity, involvement and a desire to experience control, all of which increase with increased risk analysis. So the more risk analysis, the greater the control bias, and the greater the underestimation of risk.

The second explanation is the availability heuristic. Basically, we judge the importance or likelihood of something happening by the ease of bringing instances of that thing to mind. So we tend to overestimate the probability of a rare risk that is seen in a news headline, because it is so easy to imagine. Likewise, we underestimate the probability of things occurring that don’t happen to be in the news. A corollary of this phenomenon is that, if we’re asked to think about a series of things, we overestimate the probability of the last thing thought about because it’s more easily remembered.

According to Jørgensen’s reasoning, people tend to do software risk analysis by thinking of the severe risks first, and then the more manageable risks. So the more risk analysis that’s done, the less severe the last risk imagined, and thus the greater the underestimation of the total risk.

The third explanation is similar: the peak end rule. When thinking about a total experience, people tend to place too much weight on the last part of the experience. In one experiment, people had to hold their hands under cold water for one minute. Then, they had to hold their hands under cold water for one minute again, then keep their hands in the water for an additional 30 seconds while the temperature was gradually raised. When asked about it afterwards, most people preferred the second option to the first, even though the second had more total discomfort. (An intrusive medical device was redesigned along these lines, resulting in a longer period of discomfort but a relatively comfortable final few seconds. People liked it a lot better.) This means, like the second explanation, that the least severe last risk imagined gets greater weight than it deserves.

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Size & Weight: The E4300 is a 13″ widescreen. Having used both smaller (12″) and larger (14″) laptops I feel qualified to opine that 13″ is really the sweet spot on the size/usability continuum. 12″ laptops become consciously irritating when writing long documents or trying to compare things side by side. 14″ laptops are just too big/heavy to conveniently haul around. 13″ is just right. The E4300 is not particularly thin, but nor is it fat. Most importantly, with the standard 6-cell battery, it weighs a mere 3.3lbs! Impressive engineering.

Screen: The E4300 uses the newer ‘backlit LCD’ display, instead of the older cathode tube display. Backlit LCDs are lighter, brighter, and thinner. It’s a beautiful screen, easy on the eyes for long hours. Only the high end Sony Vaio’s have nicer screens, with the Latitude’s coming in a close second. Standard 1280×800 WXGA resolution.

Input Devices: Dell managed to squeeze what is basically a full size keyboard into the widescreen frame. It’s not the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever used (that honor definitely goes to Lenovo), but it’s definitely above average and completely serviceable. Surprisingly useful bonus feature: The keyboard activates a backlight in low-light conditions! There is both a trackpad and a touchstick. I don’t really use trackpads but I’m sure my wife will appreciate it and the touchstick — while not a Lenovo — gets the job done.

Performance: The E4300 has the “new” SP-series dual core intel processor designed specifically for mobile devices. This amazing processor gives you high speeds (up to 2.5ghz) while downclocking to lower speeds when not being heavily utilized. The end result is you get strong performance with a real-world 20%-30% increase in battery life. This thing zips around Windows Vista. The video controller is onboard, so graphic performance is modest, but more than sufficient for photoshop and watching DVDs (I’ve never understood playing games on laptops anyway). Mine came with a decent 7200rpm hard drive, but I plan on upgrading to an SSD when prices drop (which should offer a 10%-20% performance boost — extending the useful life of this hardware).

Battery Life: The aforementioned SP series processor works its magic here. Using the six cell battery, I routinely get 5-6 hours of typical usage. At 2.4ghz speed in a 3.3lb package — that’s really impressive.

Build Quality & Reliability: The Latitude E4300 is Dell’s laptop line targeted at business folks and professionals. Accordingly it gets a stronger chassis and less plastic than it’s consumer counter-parts (e.g. the Dell XPS M1330). Everything about the laptop seems solid. Nothing squeaks, flexes, or seems out of whack. Windows never freezes or bluescreens.

Refurbished: I’ve never purchased a refurbished computer before, but after my ideal configuration came out to almost $2k new, I became curious. I did some research both on and offline — there were a few horror stories but most (about 85%) of the Dell refurbished experiences were good! Importantly, Dell offers a 21-day return period so that took away my anxiety. I’m happy to report another satisfied customer. Aside from some tiny scratches on the outer screen cover (not noticeable unless closely inspecting) — it was truly like new. It’s impossible to determine why the previous owner returned it — everything works fine! Another benefit is refurbished laptops are shipped the next day, so you don’t have to wait for them to be “built.”

Dell: I don’t usually buy Dell (preferring IBM/Lenovo and HP) as I’ve generally associated them with cheaper/inferior products. But a number of IT folks whom I trust have recently told me that they believe Dell’s laptop line is really improving. In fact, a number of IT services companies have recently switched to Dell laptops for their field techs. I decided to take a chance and the experience was flawless. I haven’t had to call support yet, but I’m told that its serviceable.

Warranty: I thought it was worth pointing out that when buying refurbished, $99’s gets you three years of next business day onsite repair. That’s quite a deal and a nice offer to stand behind. I definitely took the plunge on that one for peace of mind.

Value & The Competition: If you want the same combination of flashy performance in a tiny (sub 3.5lb) package there are really only three options: Lenovo, Sony, and Apple. Weirdly, HP has nothing in the ballpark. Sony was off the table for me because — while they make some beautiful VAIOs — they just aren’t hardy. Someone should track down all the VAIO owners with cracked or separated frames or screens and put together some sort of lawsuit. That left Lenovo and Apple. I have too many useful PC programs for an Apple and they’re too expensive anyway. The comparable Lenovo options are ridiculously expensive as well, and usually lack DVD drives. I briefly considered the Dell XPS m1330, until realizing its power hungry processor gives it a mere 2-3hrs on a 6-cell. After much research the choice was clear!

Conclusion: Overall — this is a great laptop suitable for a wide audience. It does everything well and has none of those bonehead annoyances that can ruin an otherwise good experience. At under $1k (refurbished) its really a steal. Highly recommended.

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Editor’s Query
Tell us about a time when the lights went out and something unexpected happened

Sunday, June 14, 2009

In my family, there are a few stories that get told over and over.

One of them was a mystery. About 40 years ago, my parents took my very proper grandmother to dinner at Hausner’s, then a downtown Baltimore icon. They enjoyed a fancy meal and had dessert, something they did only on very special occasions. My father ordered strawberry shortcake, and the confection arrived adorned with a single, enormous, red strawberry. But before Dad got to take a bite, the lights went out in the restaurant. When the lights came back on, the strawberry was gone.

Over the years, when one of us encountered a large, luscious strawberry, the incident was recounted, and my father, with a glint in his eye, accused my mother of stealing it. My mother retorted that my father had sneaked it in the dark, and we kids opined that our grandmother wasn’t as proper as we thought. Even the anonymous waiter was implicated. No matter how often the story was told, no one admitted guilt.

Last summer, my father suffered complications from surgery and lay in his hospital bed unconscious and dying. We gathered around him while making the decision to disconnect life support. When we decided it was time to let our father go, my mother leaned into her husband of 56 years, kissed him and whispered: “I know you can hear me, honey, and before you go, I need to confess that I ate the strawberry.”

We laughed at this bittersweet resolution and steeled ourselves for what came next.

Kathy Goodin, Fairfax

Technorati Tags: stories

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