tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82205302228578153452024-02-22T07:19:36.886-08:00On Business and Software ArchitectureDiscussion about business, software architecture and general programming conceptsKenneth Hurleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794248055110096465noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-19774005466989200662015-12-19T17:46:00.003-08:002015-12-19T17:48:52.029-08:00The Failure of Athos Wearable Technology.I've been documenting my predictions over the last few years with
what I believe is a complete waste of VC and Limited partners money
in technology investments.<br />
<br />
Athos has raised close to $50 million and it just goes to show that some VCs just don't know what they are doing.<br />
<br />
The
company sells a wearable technology that tracks your muscle electrical
pulses to determine how much and how effective you are working
particular muscles.<br />
<br />
Well, that doesn't seem to be much
of a mass market to me. I might be one of their target customers
because I have been lifting weights for a long time, but I don't need
something like this. The average consumer isn't going to need this
either.<br />
<br />
So maybe professional athletes, or extreme athletes? A very, very niche market.<br />
<br />
The apparel that you have to use is like a slim wet suit directly
next to the body (no under garments). Really? I want to push myself and
sweat with a completely non-breathable set of "clothing"? Not likely.<br />
<br />
Add
to that to purchase get a full set (shirt and shorts) with two of the
core units will cost you around $600.00. And with it actually
"backordered" and not guarantees that it will ship by 12/25/2015, I
would guess they've had very limited demand and have kept supplies low.<br />
<br />
And
since the suit needs to be next to your body, when you return it, the
company basically has to burn it. With slim margins in the price of the
suit, I would guess the company could make $100.00 on a full suit
sold. But with the amount of returns that they would get, it would eat
away at any potential of profit.<br />
<br />
Again, dumb VC money,
just being thrown away without doing any competent due diligence on the
market and the viability of a product.<br />
<br />
Who knows, the company might succeed by selling using the "greater fool" theory.<br />
<br />
Until Next Time!<br />
<br />Kenneth Hurleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794248055110096465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-86320703968053931962014-09-20T15:56:00.001-07:002014-09-20T15:56:52.041-07:00Transformational Leadership and Employee Retention<br />
It's been a while since I've posted to my own blog. I've been very busy with some management and hands-on engineering for a couple of companies. I wasn't always a great manager. I was fair and I don't believe I was too hard on employees in the early days of my own company, but I was more of an authentic leader than a transformational one. But a lot has changed for me in the last 10 years.<br />
<br />
I soon will be finishing my MBA and have learned some new ways of being a great leader. Although I had learned quite a few things from running my own software company for 10+ years, I did learn a couple of new things when it comes to effective leadership.<br />
<br />
I really have always been pretty honest and open with employees about everything and always strive to keep employees engaged and help them build their career, even if it was destined to be outside my company. You can see from my LinkedIn recommendations that I think I've achieved great success in being a truly transformational leader.<br />
<br />
I have recently been working for a couple of people that aren't transformational leaders and are more transactional leaders. It is very tough for a transformational leader to work under transactional leaders. This is the most significant reason I have left companies recently.<br />
<br />
A good infographic that I recommend everyone read and understand some of my goals with respect to becoming a better transformational leader can be found here: <a href="http://www.officevibe.com/blog/stats-employee-engagement-infographic">http://www.officevibe.com/blog/stats-employee-engagement-infographic </a><br />
<br />
In the mean time, I am engaging my reports with transformational leadership techniques and still trying to up-manage so that the executive staff will eventually learn how to keep employees engaged. The rule-by-iron-fist techniques of the past do not work very well with the new generations. Time will tell if the company can be successful or not.<br />
<br />Kenneth Hurleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794248055110096465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-54425183520560478652013-05-10T19:53:00.001-07:002013-05-10T20:49:12.225-07:00The Demise of Google Glass<br />
This is one more prediction for 2013. Google Glass will be a failure. It's a nice nerdy/geeky thing, but really? It's a novelty item, but one that will die very quickly.<br />
<br />
But KPCB has going to invest in apps for this? http://venturecompany.com/blog/2013/05/kpcb-culpa-tua<br />
<br />
What has the venture community come too? What a bunch of buffoons. Please just give me the money to light some cigars with. It will be faster and less expensive.<br />
<br />
Are the limited partners really on board with this? What about the safety implications? Does having that much money really kill brain cells?<br />
<br />
One more prediction for 2013, the complete and utter failure of Google Glass.<br />
<br />
Until next time.Kenneth Hurleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794248055110096465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-34227076802127899662013-04-12T08:07:00.001-07:002013-05-10T19:57:08.467-07:002013 Predictions<br />
I've decided to start documenting my predictions, because when it comes to the technology, I seem to have a knack for it. Call it common sense, intuition or just a gut feeling, I seem to be able to get it right quite a bit.<br />
<br />
Some past predictions:<br />
<br />
The gaming industry will have a major shift away from retail titles into more digital titles (predicted circa, 2008). I first predicted within a year, but then realizing how things move I extended my forecast to 2 years.<br />
<br />
I will now make another prediction about the new video game consoles coming out of Microsoft and Sony, DOA, yes "Dead On Arrival". Nintendo WiiU/3DS and other consoles are going the way to of the dinosaur. Yes there may be still some hardcore gamers that will buy the systems, but in general it won't be enough to support a profitable business. Nintendo will shift focus to strictly software and eventually get out of the hardware business (prediction: about 2015 or so).<br />
<br />
The reasoning behind all this? Simple, time. People have less and less time to spend on video games. They have to sneak in time here and there. The younger generation is using portable devices, but they are multi-use. Parents hand their kids their iPhone or their iPad and have games & educational titles on it. This exposes the kids at an early age in using portable devices. Apple has a pretty good foothold on this market.<br />
<br />
I predicted the slow adoption of Windows 7 and what I see as a complete failure of Windows 8 and the Microsoft PC business. I fully predicted that this wouldn't be a success. I don't think it will kill Microsoft, but it is going to reduce their total earnings. That coupled with the decline in XBOX 360 sales and the failure of "XBOX 720" will probably reduce their earnings by at least 30-40%. They will survive, because they have lots of cash in the bank and are entrenched in enterprise and server side software. But that will soon change also. I will talk about that more later.<br />
<br />
Apple and Samsung - Continue to split the market. Apple has made a business out of fantastic user interfaces and ease of use. I used to be a hardcore PC user and when the Macbook Pro and Air came out and I could use bootcamp for Windows, I got rid of all my PCs. My Macbook Air is not a real monster powerhouse, but it's good enough for what I need to do, which is a lot more than the average user would use it for. The only thing that can hinder Apple at this point is pricing. They get a premium for their products and I am willing to pay for it, for now.<br />
<br />
Now comes a bold prediction, at least I believe it is. A certain company is quietly eating away at all of the above mentioned companies. They are are missing a couple key ingredients, but are partnering with the right companies. Who is it you may ask? Amazon. Amazon has become an under the radar powerhouse in different areas that will help propel the company to a new level.<br />
<br />
Amazon EC2 and other systems are their cloud based servers that allow you to run instances of your own servers on their hardware. No more hardware maintenance for you. You can install Windows Server or Linux on your server and setup a really good system without the investment in hardware. The only downside is you are at the mercy of Amazon's infrastructure. But so far, so good.<br />
<br />
Now along comes the Kindle, Kindle Fire and they just released tablets that rival the iPad 3 with retina display and it's cheaper. It's Android based, so they've partnered with Google. While I'm not a huge fan of some of the decisions that Google made with respect to Android OS, it is getting better. Also, Google did release their Native Development Kit, which helps overcome some of the problems with speed by using C++ and also allows easier porting of applications to the system.<br />
<br />
I mentioned their were a couple of areas that Amazon is missing. The first being the OS. Being beholden to others for an OS can be very cumbersome. Google has mitigated this problem a little by allows hardware vendors to modify the OS for their hardware. It does make and engineers job much harder however. The second area is the phone area. Samsung rules the Android phone market. This is mainly because of the Asian market, but is had spilled over into the U.S. market.<br />
<br />
But this is possibly a good strategy for Amazon. Let Samsung borne the cost of the phone hardware and Amazon will have and end to end solution for the software. Software is where the money is made anyway. For instance take a multiplayer game on Android. You can play it on a Kindle, Kindle Fire, etc. To download and pay for the game you can use Google Play or Amazon Appstore for Android. Even if the game is put in both places, you can use the backend servers of Amazon for the multiplayer part of the game. Now Amazon has you using their hardware, possibly their app market and their backend, taking a piece of the pie in each step. And I for one am more than willing to pay for this.<br />
<br />
It's going to take a couple years (probably until 2015), but I predict Amazon is going to become a big winner. Google and Samsung will remain strong, albeit in more a niche sort of way. The big losers will be Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo all will have diminishing returns upwards of 40%.<br />
<br />
The only twist to this is if one of the majors decides to make an all in one system that is open to all developers to develop for. They would then have to make a profit on the hardware or really put out some killer games for the hardware. I would definitely pay $299-$399 for a product that can play Blu-Ray, allow PS/3/4 games to be played, surf the web, play back my music, be a home based cloud server that connects to my Android/iPhone to retrieve movies/music/pictures and was easily upgradeable to large hard disks of my own choosing. That would be the panacea of a home entertainment system. Sony, Microsoft, you guys listening? No, how about Amazon? They would be perfect for this.<br />
<br />
I will update predictions when I see them. If for no other reason to document what I think is going to happen in the market and revisit to see if I am right.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Kenneth Hurleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14794248055110096465noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-153631124297825872013-03-18T13:53:00.000-07:002013-03-18T14:33:28.022-07:00Electronic Arts and Riccitiello<br />
It's no secret that I've been vocal about what I see as a waste and just dumb decisions in executive leadership in the game industry. What I find very interesting about the really really bad decisions is that it was able to spill over into VC;s and game industry investors.<br />
<br />
Bing Gordon, runs sFund that is mentioned here. <a href="http://venturecompany.com/blog/2013/03/kpcb-mea-culpa/" target="_blank">http://venturecompany.com/blog/2013/03/kpcb-mea-culpa/</a> He also was the primary VC behind Zynga. LP's should be waking up and smelling the losses. But they will probably keep these guys in power and accept the millions more in losses. When will it stop?<br />
<br />
Electronic Arts and Elevation partners is another prime example of how investors and Limited partners have been swindled out of hundreds of millions. I would guess that it's over a billion in losses total now.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9796120-7.html" target="_blank">http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9796120-7.html</a><br />
<br />
How this cannot be "illegal" is beyond me. You start a VC firm, then go to work for a company that buys out one of the firms investments for an ungodly amount and personally benefit from it.<br />
<br />
From the article:<br />
<br />
"Not only may the deal strengthen EA, but Riccitiello will probably
personally benefit from the deal. He remains an investor in the
Elevation Partners fund, and could stand to make $4.9 million on the
deal following the distribution of the profits to fund shareholders,
according to a filing EA made with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday" <br />
<br />
Like Georges from the venture company, I've been vocal about my dissatisfaction with the lack of good VC performance, especially when related to the game industry. The VC model and this model is broken. Now it happens for the 3rd time with respect to Electronic Arts. The fiasco of a launch of the Sims being reported as the probable reason.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/18/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-steps-down-larry-probst-becomes-executive-chairman/" target="_blank">http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/18/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-steps-down-larry-probst-becomes-executive-chairman/</a><br />
<br />
I am going to start putting my predictions in my blog from now on, as Georges has been doing. Here's my take on the state of EA from 4 years ago:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.phatyaffle.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=107&func=view&id=781&catid=38" target="_blank">http://www.phatyaffle.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=107&func=view&id=781&catid=38</a><br />
<br />
Excerpts from those blog posts<br />
---------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 100%px;"><tbody>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="msgtitle">EA and Riccitiellos Plight </span> <span class="msgdate" title="2008/10/31 04:34">4 Years, 4 Months ago</span>
</td>
<td align="right"><span class="msgkarma">
<b>Karma:</b> 50
</span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2" valign="top"><div class="msgtext">
EA loses $310 million for 1 quarter. Ouch.<br />
<br />
OK, I'm going to be a blunt and rant a little here. I've been critical
of the game industry costs of development for games for quite some time
now. In order to make good profit you need to find efficiencies. We
have taken that model and been using it for a few years now. It's
either that or keep losing until the company is broke. Investors in EA
are not going to be happy. But heck, EA can pump out the next Madden
and make coin for it. More power to them. But the business will not
have significant growth unless they can find alternate streams of
revenue. Social Gaming, Online gaming, digital distribution, virtual
goods, etc.<br />
<br />
But they are growing stagnate and complacent. Stagnation will kill a
company. I wonder if he remembers the old phrase from EA "mutate or
die". He seems to have some good common sense and is promising to do
just that. See this article:</div>
<div class="msgtext">
<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/20900" target="_blank">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/20900</a><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="msgtext">
<br /></div>
<div class="msgtext">
Also,</div>
<div class="msgtext">
<br /></div>
<div class="msgtext">
Also, another blast from the past!. EA.com spent 200 million back in
2001 to get online, I heard it was closer to $500 million to get online
in the end. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20061022183807/http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA619045.html" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20061022183807/http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA619045.html</a><br />
<br />
Riccitiellos said the same thing back then. He wants to focus on games that have higher profit potential. <br />
<br />
Problems is you don't know what is going to hit really big. Might as
well make profit current IP and on the little ones that do profit until
you find that hit. How hard is that business plan?<br />
<br />
I hope EA shareholders see this, how long before EA can wake up and see
the shifting winds? Behemoths like EA are starting to look like the old
Behemoths of the past that aren't very nimble and just bleed money.<br />
<br />
---------------------------------------------------------------------------</div>
<div class="msgtext">
<br />
Maybe 4th times a charm for Riccitiello? Maybe we'll see
him back in a year or two with another "bill of goods", er em, game
company to sell EA. Isn't the saying, "fool me once, shame on you, fool
me twice shame on me". What about 3 or 4 times?</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-13371410515019583092013-03-18T12:09:00.000-07:002013-04-15T15:05:19.869-07:00Agile or Waterfall? How about both!<br />
In the many years I've been doing development and managed many an engineer, I've been through both development processes.<br />
<br />
I've never been very happy with either and always used a blend of both. Some companies have coined<br />
the term "Nimble" or "Wet Agile".<br />
<br />
This, in my opinion, is probably the best way to get a project completed close to on-time and on budget with getting your team as efficient as possible. It also bridges the gap of a Waterfall process with the ability of Agile to get a product that your customer wants.<br />
<br />
There is a fantastic white paper on the subject available from:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.commonplaces.com/sites/commonplaces.com/files/attachment/article/a_guide_to_planning_your_next_web_project.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.commonplaces.com/sites/commonplaces.com/files/attachment/article/a_guide_to_planning_your_next_web_project.pdf</a><br />
<br />
It's exactly what I like to do in terms of development process and managing that process.<br />
<br />
What's nice about it, is that it fits well withing the Mobile/Web development process. Most of the time I see development that is a combination of web front ends, server backends used in conjunction with Mobile<br />
client applications.<br />
<br />
Using the "Nimble" approach solves the issues to allow good processes and architecture to be in place across the entire software system.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-85729214408790386482013-01-25T09:04:00.003-08:002013-02-09T14:36:33.318-08:00How Kickstarter is Killing Innovation<h2 style="text-align: center;">
How Kickstarter is Killing Innovation</h2>
<div style="text-align: left;">
A better choice is Rockethub: <a href="http://www.rockethub.com/projects/14868" target="_blank">http://www.rockethub.com/projects/14868</a><br />
<br />
I used to like Kickstarter. I even blogged about it before. But I think it has declined into something that is bad for innovation. You see, like other projects, my Kickstarter project was declined. Now, you may be thinking, well it happens, maybe your project didn't fit the guidelines. That isn't the case. Here's the story:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I spent quite a few weeks putting together the pitch for my project. Followed all the guidelines. To be honest, I thought of their process as a contract. You follow the rules, etc, we will post your project, that simple and we get a percentage of what you collect. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
Well it didn't turn out that way.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
They basically say that the project doesn't fit into their "focus" and isn't a "best fit" for Kickstarter. Not that it violated any of their guidelines.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So now, Kickstarter has turned into basically a Venture Capitalist of sorts. A Kickstarter staff member gets to decide if he thinks your project is worthy. Only then can you have the project posted. Crazy isn't it?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This has really turned me off to Kickstarter and I won't be supporting any more projects on the site. You can call it sour grapes or whatever you want, but I don't think Kickstarter is or should be the authority on what is a good project. They are a platform to enable you to reach friends, followers, and possibly other interested people in your project. But they are afraid, very afraid. This is probably why they aren't going to be approving many crowd funding projects in the future.<br />
<br />
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/22/why-this-jilted-kickstarter-backer-decided-to-sue-why-he-was-right/</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Also, now that I spent a good deal of time and effort to massage my proposal into their Kickstarter system, shouldn't I be able to charge Kickstarter for my effort? I'm not an attorney, but to me this seems like a breach of contract and non-payment for that contract. I signed up with Kickstarter to both contribute and get my projects funded. I started the project and expected that I would be compenstated for my work, by having my project go live and be able to get some exposure for my time. I followed their guidelines to a 'T' and spent all this time and effort only to be told sorry, your project isn't in Kickstarter's vision.<br />
<br />
They should kill the category and not let me think that my project has a chance, since it seems that they are doing this because of legal reasons.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
They will probably take down the preview link, but it is here and I will soon have it available on another website using the selfstarter.us code base.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/klhurley/1105551075?token=a2c42f6d">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/klhurley/1105551075?token=a2c42f6d</a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So, to all my friends, if you use Kickstarter to try and fund your projects, I won't be contributing any help through their system.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Here's the declined emails. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<ol class="form-panels">
<li class="panel" data-panel_id="submission" id="submission-panel">
<div class="NS_projects__edit_submission rejected">
<h1>
Project declined</h1>
<div class="">
<ul class="messages">
<li class="message unread">
<div class="avatar">
<img alt="Staff_small" height="80" src="http://d297h9he240fqh.cloudfront.net/cache-4aab9682b/images/users/staff_small.jpg" width="80" />
</div>
<div class="message-container">
<div class="vitals">
<div class="small-tag roundtiny">
Kickstarter Staff</div>
</div>
<div class="meta">
<div class="date">
Friday Jan 25, 8:19am PST</div>
</div>
<div class="body">
Hi there,<br />
Thanks for taking the time to write to us again. We took another look
at the project after your message and, although we appreciate the hard
work you've put into this project, it is unfortunately not the best fit
for Kickstarter. This isn't a judgment on the quality of the project,
but rather a reflection of our focus.<br />
We wish you the best as you continue to pursue this endeavor, and we hope you continue to be part of the Kickstarter community.<br />
Best,
<br />
Kickstarter</div>
</div>
</li>
<li class="message read">
<div class="avatar">
<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/klhurley"><img alt="Img_0008.small" class="avatar-small" height="80" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/avatars/2460977/IMG_0008.small.jpg?1356549884" width="80" /></a>
</div>
<div class="message-container">
<span class="appeal_flag">Appeal</span>
<br />
<div class="vitals">
<span class="person"><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/klhurley">Social Systems Technology</a></span>
</div>
<div class="meta">
<div class="date">
Thursday Jan 24, 2:46pm PST</div>
</div>
<div class="body">
I would like to appeal this. I'm not sure why you
would reject this. It is a great piece of software for your iPhone and
iPad and includes a great piece of hardware.<br />
You approved other projects which are very similar including, "OUYA",
Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone, Twine, Transporter, CloudFTP
just to name a few.<br />
All of these projects are similar and provide you with hardware and
some software to access them. You've even approved a NAS device before.</div>
</div>
</li>
<li class="message read">
<div class="avatar">
<img alt="Staff_small" height="80" src="http://d297h9he240fqh.cloudfront.net/cache-4aab9682b/images/users/staff_small.jpg" width="80" />
</div>
<div class="message-container">
<div class="vitals">
<div class="small-tag roundtiny">
Kickstarter Staff</div>
</div>
<div class="meta">
<div class="date">
Thursday Jan 24, 2:02pm PST</div>
</div>
<div class="body">
Hi Kenneth,<br />
Thanks for taking the time to share you project with us, but this project is not a good fit for Kickstarter. <br />
Technology is a category with unique challenges and not all projects
fall within our focus. We know building a project and submitting it for
review is a lot of work, and we're sorry to have bad news to report.<br />
We appreciate you taking the time to check out Kickstarter, and we hope you'll consider us again.<br />
Thanks
<br />
Kickstarter<br />
</div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-24601976287254262612012-05-03T11:23:00.004-07:002012-05-04T13:47:54.931-07:00How VC's, Angels and Kickstarter Can Get Along<a href="http://www.greylock.com/teams/14-john-lilly" target="_blank"></a>When I was first introduced to Kickstarter <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/" target="_blank">(www.kickstarter.com</a>), I was thinking that this type of funding would preclude VC's and Angels from being involved because of the nature of capital being raised. Kickstarter projects are donations and not investments in the company. There are rewards for your donation, but they are usually very small in comparison to your donation.<br />
<br />
The way I see Kickstarter is that it is a good system for building jobs. Even if it is temporary employment for 3-12 months, it is indeed a good donation to make. How often do you make a donation to food banks, shelters, etc. only to have that money be used for 1 meal or something that doesn't last? But as an old Chinese proverb goes "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."<br />
<br />
Kickstarter projects are usually funded by the donation of crowds, hence the term Crowdfunding. You would think that this cuts out VC's and Angel investors as they can't really make an investment into the idea unless the parties pull their idea after an Angel or VC expresses interest. But the new JOBS act does change that a little starting in 2013 with the ability to "make and investment" instead of "make a donation". There are plenty of hoops to jump through and it may not work as the projects on Kickstarter are usually composed of 1-5 team members.<br />
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I have recently gained a lot of respect for John Lilly the founder Mozilla and now partner at Greylock Partners <a href="http://www.greylock.com/teams/14-john-lilly" target="_blank">http://www.greylock.com/teams/14-john-lilly</a> as I tweeted him about his thoughts on the whole Kickstarter idea and how VCs (Venture Capitalists) and Angels were shut out of the system. To use VC speak, Kickstarter is an extremely "disruptive" technology, but not to the benefit of the venture community! Or so I thought. He replied back very shortly saying he actually personally contributed to some projects on Kickstarter. This gave me an idea and I wanted to make sure I credited him for it.<br />
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Some VCs and Angels are all about control. Some are partners and will work with entrepreneurs and not try and control them. I've talked with a couple of startup CEO's who work with Greylock and said they are great partners. I am not trying to endorse them specifically, but they seem to be one of the good ones. The ones that are about control probably won't be able to reap any benefits of Crowdfunding.<br />
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Now Kickstarter came along and now the entrepreneurs are in control of their project and company and really don't have to give up control to the venture community. You would think that this completely cuts out the venture community. But it doesn't have to. If Angels and/or VCs started a fund that donated to Kickstarter or other Crowdfunding communities they would be creating short therm jobs thereby simulating the economy. Not only that they would be betting on small businesses that might succeed and may need additional funding to scale their operation once successful! I'm sure the entrepreneurs would be very grateful and work with the venture community when needed.<br />
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Now do I think any VC or Angel would do such a thing? I think it depends on their mindset and investment strategy. Some VCs and Angels invest in incubators and Kickstarter is an online incubator, but no equity is given. Can the venture community bring themselves to change their business models? That is yet to be seen, but this could be a very lucrative way for Angels and VCs to not only support small business ventures, but to also find new innovations that can build into much larger and scalable businesses.<br />
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I also wanted to give a quick plug for my project on Kickstarter (<a href="http://kck.st/IhTOfg" target="_blank">http://kck.st/IhTOfg</a>). Please take a look and make a donation if you can. It will create 4-5 jobs for at least 6 months and when successful should be able to create 100's of jobs in the Social Media space.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-44669518250055740522012-04-30T16:31:00.000-07:002012-04-30T17:29:37.574-07:00Crowd FundingCrowd Funding looks like a great way to help out small businesses. Yes, it
is a little like begging for change. But wouldn't you rather put
$10.00 in the hands of a possible entrepreneur who would probably create
jobs, then to hand it to a person on the street, who may or may not use
it for the greater good?<br />
Growthink has a great presentation on this type of funding here: <a href="http://goo.gl/Mungg" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/Mungg </a>Be forewarned, he's will try to sell you something about 3/4 of the way through his presentation, but it might be worth it if you are an information junkie like I am. As he points out Crowd funding
is by far the best idea in funding that has come along in 50 years.
Imagine if Congress would let you take a tax deduction for donating
money like this. It could reinvigorate the economy even further. But alas, Congress has different plans and in my opinion is clueless to the new era of funding.<br />
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Congress has a proposal called the CROWDFUND act, and is part of the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act. They are trying to legislate the crowd funding and this will be effective in January of 2013. This part of the JOBS act is really useless for what Crowd Funding is. Running a small public company in the past, I could raise $1 million a year. But in general, I could only have 35 unaccredited investors and unlimited accredited investors. See <a href="http://www.sec.gov/answers/rule504.htm" target="_blank">http://www.sec.gov/answers/rule504.htm</a> for a definition of accredited vs. unaccredited. OK, so the CROWDFUND act now allows 2,000 unaccredited investors, but limits the amount they may invest as a percentage of their net worth or income.<br />
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Congress is so out of touch, it blows me away. Most of the companies/individuals seeking funding don't have the resources to be able to satisfy the regulations imposed upon them for this. The regulations help in a very small way, as now companies that want to do raise money this way, can now offer returns on investment to a bigger group of investors. This is not "Crowd Funding". Crowd Funding is individuals/small groups of entrepreneurs basically panhandling for funds to start a project.<br />
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Let's hope that the law doesn't effect the true benefits of Crowd Funding. They way I see it Crowd Funding could be a great benefit to the economy and create lots of jobs. But if Congress is going to try and regulate Crowd Funding (especially the donation form), this would be akin to telling the Red Cross that it can only accept money up to a certain amount from individuals and $1 million a year. I don't think that is what Congress had in mind and it really shows that the act is pretty useless for true "Crowd Funding"<br />
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A few friends and I started a project on Kickstarter because I like the Crowd Funding model. You can see it here: <a href="http://kck.st/IhTOfg" target="_blank">http://kck.st/IhTOfg</a>. And yes, this is me with "hat in hand" asking for a donation to help build a business and save the economy. You've probably given to other charity, doing so here will probably generate productive members of society with jobs, who by the way will pay taxes and help the economy as well! And if we get enough people to donate $10.00 it can get funded.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-57746551526982746082012-04-18T16:26:00.001-07:002012-04-18T21:01:43.508-07:00Better Debugging Techniques<div style="text-align: left;">
Recently I was working on a problem for someone that involved a graphics glitch. It involved only one chipset on mobile OpengGLES. The engineers had been looking at this for almost two weeks and still did not have a solution. They were certain it was a driver bug. From my experience, about 1/2 the time this doesn't turn out to be the case.</div>
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One of my techniques for efficient debugging is to actually use a debugger. When I arrived and started working with the team to try and solve the issue, they had been what I call "poking" at the code. What this means is placing printfs in the code, stripping out pieces the code, writing alternative ways to render, etc.<br />
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In fact, they had one other idea that they wanted to try, which was to write some code to ping pong between textures because they had a suspicion it was a problem with glClear not being called.<br />
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I asked if I could first identify the problem exactly, which usually takes me a few hours at most (if it's a hard bug). There were a couple of bugs that did take me a week to find, but those usually took 24 or more hours to reproduce. I explained that just because they are seeing it in only one game and only one hardware chipset, it can still rear its ugly head somewhere down the road. They didn't care they just wanted a hack for now. I've seen it time and time again, if you don't understand the bug and just hack around it, you create a whole can of other beetles for yourself. I would have said worms, but beetles are bugs.<br />
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It was clear that I wasn't a good fit for this group. They didn't need me, what they needed was a coder that would just be a robot and just code up hacks until they found a solution. Not my cup of tea!<br />
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Upon my exiting they asked me for feedback on what they were doing. I said it would be nice to have a debugger and they said, "Why? Do you need to look at the stack or something?" OK, I thought, I guess I need to write a blog entry about this.<br />
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Only when drawing quads on a certain level and only after about 10-12 quads would the background graphics become glitched and would corrupt a texture or corrupt the UV coordinates or corrupt something. The corrupt something should be your goal and to identify it exactly, so that you can come up with a general solution. If you "One-Off" it you get a temporary fix that almost certainly will cause you more time and more pain in the QA process.<br />
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How I would have solved this problem in less than a day using a debugger is as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li>Use a debugger to set a breakpoint with a count in the code to break one time before drawing that particular quad that seems to be causing the issue</li>
<li>Write down or look at all the parameters, data, etc for the working quad</li>
<li>Run again with one more breakpoint that is set when the problem quad is rendered</li>
<li>Now look at that quads parameters, data, etc and see if it is overwriting something</li>
<li>Check Vertex Buffers, UV buffers, texture pixel data etc.</li>
</ul>
Also, I never make an assumption that it is a driver bug just because you are seeing it only on one chipset. I have identified and fixed so many bugs in both drivers and game software, I always want to get to the root of the problem and exactly locate the source of the problem.<br />
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In this case, I could imagine that ATI had closely packed a vertex data/UV data and that if NVIDIA, QualCom, etc packed differently where you might not see the glitch.<br />
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I personally use GUI debuggers because I can move around much faster in them, don't have to fill my unused synapses with a myriad of commands as I already have most of the programming languages floating up there!<br />
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Here's a screenshot of DDD <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/" target="_blank">http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/</a> It is a general debugger that I've used before and it seems to be pretty well designed.<br />
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<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/manual/html_mono/PICS/tut-backtrace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/manual/html_mono/PICS/tut-backtrace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="353" src="http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/manual/html_mono/PICS/tut-backtrace.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Until next time! <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8220530222857815345.post-11488552503359289052012-04-12T16:35:00.001-07:002012-04-13T08:50:46.520-07:00Quantum Hierarchical State Machines<h2 style="text-align: center;">
Quantum Hierarchical State Machine</h2>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I really like Miro Samek's Quantum Hierarchical State Machines. They solve issues with regular state machines and treat state machines much more like classes. This helps prevent state machine explosion (and spaghetti code).</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
For a good C# implementation you can get the source code here: <a href="http://code.google.com/p/gqhsm/" target="_blank">http://code.google.com/p/gqhsm/</a> </div>
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Also, there is a good GUI tool written in C# for editing the state machine and saving the code into XML format included in that code. Here's a screen shot of some Zombie A.I. I did in the editor and it worked pretty well inside Unity 3D.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg04IBW8jYbtRBAsH7z7BqXXFYrvHRxrdSfGawH4h2mt4VgMMpGW6YJ0SzXq5C7ZuvJTLprgJKS1miJPyrPtFfyXx0-b8J48ggMMeh8Rg9UkOBP6ubL34w10Lc5XD6KGaTaD_31BNZsAjh/s1600/ZombieAI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Zombie AI jpeg" border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg04IBW8jYbtRBAsH7z7BqXXFYrvHRxrdSfGawH4h2mt4VgMMpGW6YJ0SzXq5C7ZuvJTLprgJKS1miJPyrPtFfyXx0-b8J48ggMMeh8Rg9UkOBP6ubL34w10Lc5XD6KGaTaD_31BNZsAjh/s400/ZombieAI.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zombie A.I. Hierarchical State Machine</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The Zombie A.I. Stateproto file can be retrieved from here: <a href="http://www.socialsystemstechnology.com/%7Epublic/files/ZombieAI.sm1" target="_blank">ZombieAI.sm1</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0