“I never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.” – Steve Jobs, 1994

Transcript:

I’ve actually found something to be very true. Most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.

I always call them up.

I called Bill Hewlett when I was twelve years old and he lived in Palo Alto and his number was still in the phone book. He answered the phone himself, “Yes.”

“Hi, I’m Steve Jobs and I’m twelve years old. I’m a student in high school and I want to build a frequency counter. I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have?”

He laughed and gave me the spare parts to build this frequency counter. Then he gave me a job that summer at HP working on the assembly line. Putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a job in the place that built them. I was in heaven.

I’ve never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. When people ask me I try to be as responsive, to pay that debt of gratitude back.

Most people never pick up the phone and call, most people never ask. That’s what separates sometime the people who do things from the people that just dream about them.

You gotta act. You’ve gotta be willing to fail, to crash and burn. With people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever.

If you’re afraid of failing you won’t get very far.

"I never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help." – Steve Jobs, 1994

Transcript:

I’ve actually found something to be very true. Most people don’t get those experiences because they never ask. I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help.

I always call them up.

I called Bill Hewlett when I was twelve years old and he lived in Palo Alto and his number was still in the phone book. He answered the phone himself, “Yes.”

“Hi, I’m Steve Jobs and I’m twelve years old. I’m a student in high school and I want to build a frequency counter. I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have?”

He laughed and gave me the spare parts to build this frequency counter. Then he gave me a job that summer at HP working on the assembly line. Putting nuts and bolts together on frequency counters. He got me a job in the place that built them. I was in heaven.

I’ve never found anyone who said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. When people ask me I try to be as responsive, to pay that debt of gratitude back.

Most people never pick up the phone and call, most people never ask. That’s what separates sometime the people who do things from the people that just dream about them.

You gotta act. You’ve gotta be willing to fail, to crash and burn. With people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever.

If you’re afraid of failing you won’t get very far.

What a real alien attack would look like – Chile’s Puyehue Volcano eruption (photo)

Chile’s Puyehue volcano erupts, causing air traffic cancellations across South America, New Zealand, Australia and forcing over 3,000 people to evacuate. (Reuters)

via Buzzfeed

For more alien-like attack photos The Atlantic has 21 more of the volcanic lightning and ash.

 

What a real alien attack would look like – Chile's Puyehue Volcano eruption (photo)

Chile’s Puyehue volcano erupts, causing air traffic cancellations across South America, New Zealand, Australia and forcing over 3,000 people to evacuate. (Reuters)

via Buzzfeed

For more alien-like attack photos The Atlantic has 21 more of the volcanic lightning and ash.

 

Is the future of television paying by the channel? This venture capitalist thinks so

John Backus, managing partner of New Atlantic Ventures, discusses the future of television:

Take a look at some major developments so far this year:

– Netflix was once viewed as an invincible Wall Street darling and the stock has nearly fallen off a cliff as it struggles to evolve its business model. But it realizes television is about the content so it continues to pay up to acquire premium television content for its streaming service.

– Hulu was for sale and then it wasn’t.

– NBC Universal was formed by Comcast and GE.

-Amazon launched a streaming service and is offering it free to Prime members

-Google introduced YouTube channels to organize video content

-HBO, ABC and many others introduced dedicated iPad apps for users to stream their shows. Comcast and Verizon followed suit with a subset of their cable offerings streamed anywhere, anytime.

-In just the last week, Dish Networks is rumored to be exploring a radical change in its delivery strategy as it struggles to retain subscribers

Live sports are the only programs propping up the cable companies today. Everything else is becoming available, rapidly, by the show or by the channel.

—

My prediction: You will be able to buy television by the channel. You will be able to watch it live, or watch it from the cloud using live streaming for any channel any program any time slot over the last 30 days. ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox for $1.99 a month. CNN & Fox News for $.99. Discovery, National Geographic, Sprout, BET $2.99. ESPN? Maybe $4.99.

 

Too many deal sites out there, we need an aggregator – Yipit.com

I’ve already bought movie tickets, a whale watching tour, chocolate, and a Christmas gift. You could say I’m addicted to deal sites, or you could say I’m a “super user”.

I subscribe to several of them and have this complex filter/label/folder system running in my Gmail account. No longer.

Now, I just visit Yipit.com and they do all that for me, and more. I get nation-wide deals with the bigger companies, deals from the new, fringe, and exclusive sites, and an industry leading preferences system. Which by the way, Groupon seems to be copying.

Definitely worth checking out – Yipit.com

 

There is also a Yipit iPhone app:

 

 

“To make something great you have to be willing to throw away something good” – Steve Jobs (video)

Perfection, or rather the pursuit of perfection. It’s a quality that only the rarest individual can achieve.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs came very close with many of his products, even though in the fast-pace world of technology they become dated just a few years later. To achieve this he would often talk about the need to start over. To go back to the beginning even when you’re halfway done, against a deadline, and going to upset a lot of people.

The more I listen to him explain this concept the more I understand it. In the early stages of development a lot is learned and mistakes are made. This process often influences the development of the product and even makes it into the final release.

To start over, to take that new knowledge back to the beginning often results in a far superior product. Yet, for some reason, all of us are afraid to scrap our rough drafts and spend the time to start over.

If we can meld this with our own desire to achieve perfection, or even greatness, then perhaps we can achieve what Steve was able to achieve.

Steve Jobs on Design

Some transcribed quotes from the video:

Steve: “Design is a really loaded word…I don’t even know what it means. So we don’t talk about design a lot around here, we actually just talk about how things work. Most people think it’s how they look but it’s not really how they look it’s how they work.”

Johnny Ive: “When we were developing the iMac we were at a point where we had a couple of solutions, and we thought they were good. But, then we had that sinking feeling, you know when you start to convince yourself that something is better than you really know that it is.”

Steve: “Sometimes you just have to look at it yourself and say, you know it’s just not really great, it’s ok, it’s good, but lets not fool ourselves and call it great.”

Steve: “We are willing to throw something away because it’s not great and try again, when all of the pressure of commerce and business are at your back saying no you can’t do that.”

"To make something great you have to be willing to throw away something good" – Steve Jobs (video)

Perfection, or rather the pursuit of perfection. It’s a quality that only the rarest individual can achieve.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs came very close with many of his products, even though in the fast-pace world of technology they become dated just a few years later. To achieve this he would often talk about the need to start over. To go back to the beginning even when you’re halfway done, against a deadline, and going to upset a lot of people.

The more I listen to him explain this concept the more I understand it. In the early stages of development a lot is learned and mistakes are made. This process often influences the development of the product and even makes it into the final release.

To start over, to take that new knowledge back to the beginning often results in a far superior product. Yet, for some reason, all of us are afraid to scrap our rough drafts and spend the time to start over.

If we can meld this with our own desire to achieve perfection, or even greatness, then perhaps we can achieve what Steve was able to achieve.

Steve Jobs on Design

Some transcribed quotes from the video:

Steve: “Design is a really loaded word…I don’t even know what it means. So we don’t talk about design a lot around here, we actually just talk about how things work. Most people think it’s how they look but it’s not really how they look it’s how they work.”

Johnny Ive: “When we were developing the iMac we were at a point where we had a couple of solutions, and we thought they were good. But, then we had that sinking feeling, you know when you start to convince yourself that something is better than you really know that it is.”

Steve: “Sometimes you just have to look at it yourself and say, you know it’s just not really great, it’s ok, it’s good, but lets not fool ourselves and call it great.”

Steve: “We are willing to throw something away because it’s not great and try again, when all of the pressure of commerce and business are at your back saying no you can’t do that.”

Interview with Cisco Founder Sandy Lerner: The Difference between Weird and Eccentric? Wealth

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing a screening of Something Ventured, a documentary that traces the genesis of some of the world’s most revolutionary companies, from Atari to Apple to Genentech, and the impact of venture capital on entrepreneurship. The film premiered at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival and features some legendary VCs who helped foster America’s start-up culture, encouraging an environment of risk that yields unprecedented rewards.

The documentary is well worth the watch (it comes out on Netflix next year), giving insight into and a history of venture capitalism, but the highlight for me was the entrepreneurs, who had the vision and passion to create entirely new industries. A hidden gem of the movie is an exclusive interview with Cisco Co-Founder, Sandy Lerner, who is touted as the first female philanthropist to emerge from the Silicon Valley boom era.

Lerner was ousted from Cisco (in very much the same style of Steve Jobs from Apple) at the age of 35, worth $170 million in stock options that she immediately sold. The most compelling component of the one-on-one is the utter acerbity she still harbors about the ousting. Cisco was not a company she built and co-founded; it was a child she conceived, that was brutally ripped from her arms. The interview is a telling confessional of how little money factored into her passion and ambition, which is an overriding theme for the entrepreneurs featured in the film.

After the screening during the Q&A, the film’s producer acknowledged how much effort it took to persuade Lerner to do the interview and speak about her firing, then directed the audience to a recent and rare interview she did with FoxNews about sustainable farming. Two highlights of the interview come in this admission from Lerner, “I got fired by the same guy who fired Steve Jobs” and her response when asked if she thinks she’s a bit eccentric:

I am now that I’m rich. I used to just be weird.

Occupy Portland – pepper spray in her mouth, nose, and eyes (ouch)

I had to put some sympathy in the title because all I’m doing is laughing at this image.

A protester gets sprayed in the face with pepper spray at an Occupy Portland protest. (Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)