So this Consumer Electronics Show (my third one) - was a bit different from years' past. Whereas in the past two I had time to see the floor one or two days, and had less meetings - this one was packed to the brim with meetings from 6am - 11pm everyday! The great thing about all of the meetings - was that most everyone important who needed to get a closer look at our technology, did.
The downside was - I didn't get to see as much of the show this time! But... Alex Marchicelli & I did see something awesome that caught our eye and will end up as our future conference room trinket: The Nikko R2D2 projector:
It's a high quality DLP projector - and R2D2 moves around too! The remote control is the spaceship from Star Wars, too!
Filed under: Speak With Me, General Software Development, CES, Bloghaus, CES 2008, CES2008, Star Wars, projector, Nikko R2D2, DLP, R2D2
Hey everyone,
We now have a fully functional navigation system + Media Player + Cell Phone integration with StreetDeck + Microsoft MapPoint.
Please check out http://www.speakwithme.com for more info!
Special thanks to our friends at StreetDeck and the whole Speak With Me, Inc. team!
We are fast working on now porting our finished platform to Windows CE, QNX, Linux, Mac OS X, and Symbian!
Happy CES and MacWorld everybody - we'll be at CES showing some private demos this year!
Filed under: Speech, Speak With Me, CES, Bloghaus, Windows CE, OS X, QNX, Linux, Ford SYNC, Streetdeck, mp3car, Mac OS X, SYNC, CES 2008, CES2008
Happy New Year Everyone!
Wow - 2007 has been a big year! Lots of great things happening for Speak With Me, Inc. - which will be revealed slowly in the upcoming year - and a whole lot of lessons learned - in both business and personal relationships. I'll use this post to reflect on things I've learned this year - and hopefully all of you can share your experiences too!
1. The Fraility of Life. The Joy of Life. The Thrill of Life. Enjoying the ride!
As many of you know, I am one of the car nuts who hangs out at Santana Row routinely, coming in everything from my beater Red 1980 Rx-7 to the pretty fast blue sedan. Earlier this year, a bunch of us went on a drive thru Santa Cruz and up to Half Moon Bay - and one member of our group, Luis Aldaz - had a pretty severe accident that day, and unfortunately didn't make it. Luis - always lived life on the edge - and to the fullest. He raced his 911 GT3 routinely, skydived, and always was pushing himself in every aspect of his life, having immigrated here from Spain - and really made a name for himself in Silicon Valley. Everyone loved him - he always greeted you with a warm smile - and truly defined living life with no regrets. Luis is an inspiration to us all!
Some wonderful memories - Pictures courtesy of the Santana Row crew...
2. Live life with no regrets.
For every decision you make in life - if you are going to regret it later - make a different decision! Life is too short to have regrets!
3. If you want something, ask for it.
You'll usually get it. Being nice helps your odds :)
4. Be patient with your friends and loved ones.
I had a situation this year where I admittedly revealed something to a longtime friend before she was ready to hear it - and I got egg in my face in response. Looking back, I wish I was more patient with her - and since then - I've learned to be more patient with everyone. We all are aware of what others are going through well in advance of what they are aware of what they are going through - so in the words of the Eagles, "Learn to be still." People for the most part, have to emotionally grow on their own. Sometimes nudging them can help a ton - but only if they trust you - and trust themselves - enough to hear you and listen.
5. Never make a fear-based decision.
We all have a choice in life - to make decisions based on fear, or faith. I've found that every situation in which I've taken the faith based decision - has yielded long term success - even though there may be a shorter-term struggle to get over along the way. However, fear-based decisions tend to be extremely short-sighted and one almost always regrets them in the long term. This goes with #2 - living life with no regrets.
6. Miracles can happen - but you gotta make them happen!
My good friend Andre Vanier - founder of Rondee.com - and I had a discussion in early July - where we were going through everything I had done to get Speak With Me, Inc. funded. We went through the list three times - and we had exhausted all possibilities - so the conclusion was that, yes indeed, I had done everything humanly possible to get Speak With Me, Inc. funded. So Andre suggested to take a break and wait - and try to focus on other things. Indeed, a week and a half later, we got our first funding check in! Some day I'll post the before and after account balances (or maybe it'll go into a future book!) - I've kept the bank statements and wire transfer receipts for a company memento! The faith based decision making process I put in place in 2005 - yielded success!
7. Have Faith, have fun, and don't forget - you are a human too!
And humans - make mistakes. Self-awareness, compassion, humility, and forgiveness are the most important things to learn to yield the best out of yourself - and to give the best you you can be - to the world and to yourself. Always apologize when you screw up - and before you send the apology - be sure to have forgiven yourself first! Many religions - Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, (sorry if I left some out - I've only read scripture from these four) among others - try to teach these concepts in some form or another. The path to success - is littered with mines, some of which might have exploded along the way. The path to failure - is not walking across that minefield.
In other words...
Filed under: Ramblings, Cool Technology, Speak With Me, Community News, General Software Development, Ferrari Chat, Santana Row, 6 Speed Online, New Years, New Years Eve, Luis Aldaz
1. start working within 2 min. of taking it out of the box? My last Windows box (a thinkpad running windows XP SP2 purchased in august 2007) needed 2 HOURS of setup/screens before I could use it.
2. find and connect to my home server (a windows server 2003 box) faster/sooner/more easily than my recent Thinkpad which took futzing with for four hours to get it to connect properly?
3. Make me smile every time I look at it? I get angry looking at my windows boxes now, remembering how much agony it was to set them up to self maintain (defrag & backup every night, migrate to new machines).
4. find all my music and movies and other media content so much more quickly?
6. run an incredible amount faster / boot much more quickly than a similarly speced windows box?
7.cost about the same for nearly the same configuration hardware wise (price difference: $8. that's less than me & Knick Jim going to the taco truck)?
8. not annoy me every time I want to run an executable or asking me always "Am I sure I want to do this?" for every freakin' action?
9. not have ANY 64 bit driver issues? (running Vista 32 bit is like trying to walk with one leg. The OS hogs so much memory you can't get anything done - I refuse to use it. I was about to build a new PC to run Vista 64 bit, but after experiencing this Mac Book Pro - my next desktop is going to be a Mac too.).
I swear, I am only MORE motivated to port Speak With Me's code to the Mac now (and support the iPhone too). We're all equipped with VMWare fusion and if 70% of the car navi market didn't use Windows CE we wouldn't have to support Windows for the long haul. I think that Thinkpad will be my last PC purchase. Windows, you are now going to be relegated to being a second class citizen I dual boot to - or run as a virtual machine so I can kill you any time I want to. This is coming from someone who used to be fanatical about Windows NT 4.0 & Windows 2000. No one is getting Vista in our office for as long as we can avoid it (we may get a contract for a media center pc that requires it, but until then...)!
We had the Mac purchases in mind initially so we can support the iPhone - but I think these will fast become our daily use machines.
If you aren't making a product you yourself LOVE to use everyday, make something different. Make something irresistible - make something drool-worthy, make something you are proud of - and WANT to show off and talk about. And don't piss off your users - they are your biggest evangelists.
It's 3:48am - and for the first time since I used the very first macintosh when I was four years old - I have this huge grin on my face that won't go away - and all the inspiration I need to convince everyone on the planet - that the next step in the user interface - is the one that listens to your every word!
Don't be surprised if I stay up this late routinely (actually I had some espresso right before the Earthquake yesterday...), as I am itching to make our stuff work on an iPhone just that much more quickly. I have an HTC TyTN II coming my way this week for Windows CE testing too.. so my thoughts on that device will be coming too...
Whee - we had fun today at the Santana Row exotic meet - great cars, great friends, and a great drive!
Below are some pics AlexD took :)
I'm in the Blue Audi in the first pic! :)
Summer of 2007 sure has been an interesting one. It's been one of self discovery and a lot of growth, both for me personally, as well as Speak With Me, Inc. Speak With Me, Inc. has received it's first bits of angel funding, we've hired a few new spectacular people, and we're puttering along pretty well. I have been slowly getting used to the many more requests for my time from all of the new people both interested in the company, and working with the company! We're still in a bit of a stealth mode, so our website still doesn't show much yet - all good things come to those who wait!
We're already planting seeds for our next round of funding, so if you or anyone else you know is interested in a new user interface technology that will be making lots of noise in the coming years, please do let me know at ajay AT speakwithme DOT com.
http://www.shootforthecure.net/site/
If you're in Pittsburgh, help support the cure for breast cancer and have Yan and Johnny do your portraits for you!
Yan's definitely an awesome photographer!
Say hi if you live back east -- I'll be back there from April 15th - May 7th.
Philly, NYC, Toronto, possibly Boston too.
...We're going to be making some Speak With Me T-shirts soon!
Please refer us some high quality and well-priced places!
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