Just read an interview of Brandon Schauer, who works at Adaptive Path, on Design Thinking at Jess McMullin’s blog. Here’s a piece that I found well worth quoting here:
You don’t necessarily need to go and get an MBA – I’ve heard an MBA called a degree in common sense and I can’t necessarily argue with that. But the key is just realizing the world that your business partners come from, whether they’re looking through a lens of finance or of operations or management, and being able to understand the issues they are dealing with. Having empathy with the issues that they come to the table with and actually being able to resonate with those by having read similar topics, having an appreciation for what their needs are and listening to them just as you would listen to a customer when you go out to do your research can really change how you work together.
Empathize.
Interesting experience of why Rob Christensen, from Adobe AIR product development/management team, decided to switch to Apple iMac in his post Six reasons why he made the switch. His reasons are quite compelling and I agree fully with what he has to say against Microsoft Windows and in favor of Apple Mac. My most compelling reasons, from Rob’s post, for switching to an Apple Mac would be:
Apple. In the past year, I’ve purchased two iPod Shuffles: one for myself and one for my wife. When I thought I had lost my Shuffle recently (for the second time), I decided to upgrade to an iPod Nano. It’s an absolutely incredible piece of technology. … The allure of hooking up iPod hardware to a Mac is difficult to ignore. Also, Apple’s decision to extend the hardware capabilities of the iMac has really put it in direct competition with Dell’s flagship desktop products like their XPS line.
Apple, and Steve Jobs, is an inspiration. I had the first generation iPod Nano and it was awesome! I love Apple and what it is creating. Correction: Innovating!
Media Management. It’s truly shocking to me that Microsoft has not improved the user experience with Windows Media Player (WMP). Something about the design of WMP has always felt exceedingly video centric as opposed to library focused. Playing an .mp3 will force most of the screen to be taken over by an annoying visualization. … In addition, the lack of basic photo management in Windows has been the source of tremendous grief.
I have to agree with Rob’s WMP experience. Though I have been a Windows Media Player user since long (I was hooked to the ex-king Winamp before that, during its 1.x and 2.x versions reign, and Sonique too – ah what a super cool player that was!), but since my WMP music database has been wiped out (the database itself, and not the music files) after the Vista of my laptop’s pretty Windows was shot down by a vicious virus and I installed it anew, I am trying out a new media player: the open source Songbird. And it’s pretty good.
Most applications are now on the Mac. Nearly all of the applications I use are now available on the Mac such as Firefox, the Creative Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.), Office, Stellarium, AIM, Google Earth, etc. If the tools you use and depend on are portable, then it makes it even easier to make the switch.
That’s definitely a compelling reason. And on top of that, if a Windows application has not yet been ported to the Mac, one always has the option of Boot Camping to Windows. Tada! Nice one, Apple.
Now all these reasons make me crave for an Apple iMac/Macbook all over again! I hope I’ll be able to afford one soon.
If you are like me then you probably avoid having any antivirus or antispyware installed on your PC/laptop because it renders it slow or cumbersome. Instead, you install stuff from only trustworthy sources. And you have this innate ability to tell a malicious site, software, download, ad, link from a good one.
But one day all of that changes, when you let someone else use your computer for a while. Your PC gets infected!
Badly!
That is exactly what happened with me: After 1 year and 8 months of getting my laptop (an HP 6000 series), having it run without any antivirus, without any formatting or reinstallation of Windows, my Windows Vista OS just stopped working, except for the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)! The culprit? Some “autorun” virus that infects USBs! It was my brother’s USB and although I had told him so many times (whenever his PC gets infected) that he should be careful of these autoruns from USBs and cameras, but, it had to be my laptop this time!
Unfortunately, the DVDRW of my laptop was also not working (I wish they were any better from HP)! So I couldn’t get to boot to DOS, with a bootable CD, and install some antivirus or backup software. So I ended up reinstalling Windows Vista with the inbuilt setup that came with my laptop. Thus, ended up wiping out everything that was on my C drive, including the My Documents and Desktop folders. But I didn’t lose much data since I keep most of my data on other drives/partitions. I also lost my WMP Media Library, specifically the play count of songs (yes that’s important to me). Saved passwords in Firefox and other little details were lost too. Though I was able to recover some of my wiped out files through a recovery software – Easy Recover Professional.
Checklist to save yourself from such a fiasco:
- Do NOT trust autoruns on USBs, cameras, media/mp3 players
- If multiple people use the PC/laptop, completely disable autorun on USBs and other devices
- Install an antivirus and keep it updated
- Keep as much of your data on other partitions as possible
- Have a working DVD drive, in case you need to boot into DOS and run a virus check or recover data from there
- Keep backup of your data on DVDs/BluRays
- Also get a backup external hard disk, it will be much convenient
I will post on the above steps in detail in later posts. Please post any queries in the comments.
