think differently big

TRIGG: A Framework for Predictions

Quickly identifying the type of a prediction will help you either create your own list or going through others’ much easier.

There are 4 types of predictions.

1. Truism. This category should be obvious. Already confirmed facts, sometimes in a new packaging that is supposed to make them sound new, carrying no actual value, no new or interesting information.

2. PR-esque. There are types of roles—think C-level management—requiring people to formulate some predictions characterized mostly by unjustifiable optimistism. These predictions usually take the form of: “this is the year of our product”. Sometimes there are facts or some truth behind them, but most often these are given an unbalanced weight or emphasis compared with reality.

3. I told you so or It was me that said this firstly. There are jobs—think analysts or journalists—that require people to throw out the most phantasmagoric predictions in the hopes that at some point in the future they’ll get any form of confirmation thus justifying their titles.

4. Gibberish. These out of thin air predictions are formulated for making the numbers. Having 5 instead of 4, or 10 instead of 8 bullet points is more marketable.

Update: After some more thinking I’ve concluded there is a form of predictions that could be considered valuable or at least interesting.

1. Guesstimates: a combination of historical data or experience with a dose of intuition. The trick for these not to fall either in the truism or the “I told you so” categories is that they need to hit just the right balance of data and intuition. Not too much guessing as that would easily make them phantasmagoric (or too optimistic). Nor too much data and no guessing as that would result in truisms.

18 Fonts I’d Use, ComicBookFonts, and Their Jan.1st Special Offer

It all started with searching for and experimenting with different monospaced fonts in IDEs. But then reading and writing so much slowly transformed me into a font maniac. For a while the Personal and then Portfolio Typekit plans offered me comfort.

The last episode of Andy Ihnatko’s podcast introduced me to the ComicBookFonts and their special offer on each year’s Jan. 1st: every font for $20.12^[1].

So even if I know I’ll not be able to get them, I’ve put together the list of fonts I’d like to have:

• FaceFront
  
• BlahBlahBlah
• YadaYadaYada
• DigitalDelivery
• DavidGibbonsLower
• Letterbot
• CleanCutKid
• MarianChurchland Journal
• CutthroatLower

Nine fonts isn’t much, right? But I couldn’t stop here and I have a second list of nice to haves:

• GothChicPale
• TresureTrove
• SpellCaster
• Dreamland
• NearMyth
• HappyHolidays
• Passtheport
• GrandGuignol
• Golem

Andy Ihnatko posted his 10 picks here.

If you are a font addict too, I bet this whole thing will make you waste a bit of time. But hey, it’s the holiday season so we’re allowed to relax and dream of gifts.

Analysts, Reports, and Market Predictions: Carrier IQ Nominated as IDC’s 2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch

While it’s outside the main focus of my NoSQL blog, reading that IDC nominated Carrier IQ—let’s say it is a Big Data company—in its 2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch, made me wonder how often are analysts off or how limited are these reports. Were they off when predicting the future of NoSQL Database companies too?

The iOS Missing Gesture

The 4-fingers gesture on iPad is better than double-tapping the home button. But this would be the perfect one.

Daedalus Touch: Tools That Do the Unexpected

I was getting ready to post a hint about the nice^[1] iPad editor Daedalus Touch being available for $1.99, when I’ve discovered its dark face.

One of the features I was looking for is Daedalus Touch’s integration with Dropbox. The action is called “Import from Dropbox”. But this import has a dark face: if the files you are importing have a non .txt extension they get deleted and replaced with .txt copies. Which part of an import operation includes renaming files?

I hate tools that are supposed to do one thing and they end up making completely unrelated decisions for me. What could I say more about the cases when they are making the wrong ones.

Developers Explain Changes in Growl 1.3, but Miss Important Aspect

MacStories published a short summary of the explanation provided by Growl’s developers about the mess in Growl 1.3.

Unfortunately the summary missed one very important aspect in the devs’ post:

Out-of-date applications don’t work with Growl 1.3 - Due to the changes in Growl 1.3 in order to get Growl into the App Store, some applications currently do not work with Growl and will need to be updated. Some applications have already updated to address this problem. If you are a developer who requires assistance with these changes, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help. Users can use Growl Version Detective to help mitigate this problem, but long term changes need to come from developers.

I’ve used the Growl Version Detective (you can get it from this page) and I haven’t found any application on my system that is compatible with Growl 1.3.

While I do understand the reasons for pushing out the new version as early as possible—and I payed for Growl to support its future, the Growl team has made a terrible mistake: they broke compatibility with older applications. I’m pretty sure they could have thought of workarounds that would not have disappointed exactly the people that hurried to support the dev team.

Steve Jobs’s Ideas vs Execution

Steve Jobs:

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

and separately:

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. […]

Via John Gruber.