Category: Technology
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Thoughts on 2014 and 2015
So I’m starting to see end-of-year wrap-ups and predictions for 2015. It’s always good to take a look a back on what is happening in the industry, epecially at Kobo. Largely, a lot of the stuff I am citing is predicated on Mary Meeker’s “State of the Internet, 2014 ed” that she puts together for…
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HP T620 thin client
[UPDATE – 2014/11/26: Made a few updates on the hardware.] [UPDATE – 2015/12/23: I ended up taking the Wireless N / Bluetooth combo card from the T610 and putting it in the T620] I’ve been fascinated with repurposing PC thin clients. I like them because they are virtually silent and very energy efficient1. I’ve used…
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Feature Pruning: When and how to kill a product or feature?
Kobo hosted the November 5th, ProductTO MeetUp. I facilitated a session on “When and how to kill a product / feature?” The sessions went well. It was nice to participate in the larger community for once–it’s something that Kobo has never been good at, but I’m going to make a priority for 2014 to host these…
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Apple Pay vs. CurrentC: One addresses a customer issue, the other a business issue
CurrentC requires an app, password and QR Code to be scanned. It works for pre-paid, cash accounts. This is a solution to a business problem (lower transaction fees, better customer tracking) that is being touted as addressing a customer need. People like using their credit cards. The US economy (and Canada to a lesser extent)…
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Apple Pay: Addressing a customer problem
[stag_intro]I think one thing that people don’t understand about Apple is that they are really trying to solve customer problems. [/stag_intro] A lot of people think that Apple is about selling more hardware, creating lust for their products, but deep down, I feel that they are trying to address real problems and pain points for their customers.…
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Oculus Connect 2014 Keynote: Frank comments from John Carmack
This is a great keynote from John Carmack. It was like he said, I don’t have any slides, so fuck it, let’s have a good chat. He goes through some of the issues and proposed solutions for the keynote. Road to VR has a great write up on the salient points, but I encourage those…
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pfSense on Watchguard Firebox x550e
[UPDATED – 2014-11-24]: I noticed that I had gotten the model wrong in the title of the article. Fixed that. One of the odd things as I have moved up the food chain into (product) management is that I don’t have the opportunity to work directly on the products that teams build. Keeping a software…