Lee Semel

Will it Blend? is a funny site that advertises a powerful blender with videos of their spokespan blending all sorts of objects, from iPods to golf clubs. Its popularity is an example of how people will willingly seek out ads of they’re funny and entertaining. David Pogue writes:

I’m not alone when I say that I’ll happily watch your ad if it’s entertaining and worth my while. The number of hilarious ad videos circulating on YouTube—millions of people VOLUNTARILY watching corporate ads—is testimony to that.

A while back I wrote a game called Wolf5K, which was a re-creation of the original first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D in only 5K of Javascript. There’s an online tutorial about how this was accomplished. It used an archaic 1-bit image type called XBM, originally designed for the X Window System, to dynamically generate bitmap images via Javascript.

I’ve just discovered that XBM images no longer work in Windows XP. There apparently was a recent security update that removed support for this image type, and it won’t be included in IE7. This means that the game will no longer work, unless there’s a way around this restriction. I’d like to keep the game up, so if you have any ideas, please contact me.

Today I walked in on a bank robbery. Well, actually, I missed it by about 15 minutes. I was headed to Commerce Bank on Park Ave and 21st street to exchange all of my accumulated change. The bank was full of cops, and the officer at the door said it had just been robbed.

I’m not naive but I always find it amazing how certain people have such little respect for the law or their fellow humans, combined with a high tolerance for trouble, that they’ll do things like rob banks, steal credit card numbers, break into brokerage accounts, or other dishonest activity. Even if these people score a big zero in the morals department, this kind of life has got to be incredibly risky and stressful.

Anyway, I finally lugged my 20 pounds or so of change to the 15th and 5th branch, and ended up with enough cash to buy a nice iPod Nano.

There’s a lot of buzz about how the way we interact and socialize is changing thanks to innovations in social websites – virtual worlds, avatars, social networking. But it only seems like these ideas are new. Having been involved with computers since I was a kid, I’ve realized that there’s very little that’s actually new. Even some of the coolest trends of 2006, virtual worlds and avatars, are rehashes of things that have come before. The only difference now is that computers have more power and better connectivity, but more importantly, that the general public is much more receptive and open to the Internet as part of their social lives.

In 2006 there was a lot of buzz about Second Life. But in the 1980’s, Lucasfilm launched one of the first online multi-user games, called Habitat, which was part of QuantumLink (now known as AOL). It was a 2D world with blocky graphics, but had most of the elements of today’s virtual worlds. You got to create your own avatar, walk around the virtual landscape, and interact with the other members. I vaguely remember playing this as a kid on my Commodore 64, but my use was severely limited because it took about 5 minutes of loading time to even start the program, and at $6 an hour, my parents weren’t about to let me run up the bill.

Yesterday, I found out about a cool new site called Webkinz, where you can adopt a virtual stuffed animal, an on-screen representation of physical stuffed animals you buy in the store, and set up online via entering a code printed on its tag. Like Neopets and The Sims before it, this is the latest recreation of the Activision game Little Computer People. You’d adopt a virtual person, who would take up residence in a house on your computer screen. You’d be responsible for feeding him, and keeping him healthy and happy. Sound familiar?

This also shows how long it takes, and how difficult it can be, to get any kind of software really right. How many unsuccessful virtual worlds have been developed through the years before Second Life came along?

So if you’re looking for a new idea, try flipping through the pages of old computer magazines and see what’s been tried already. Maybe you can execute better. What was once confined to a small slice of computer-savvy kids is now commonplace and cool.

It’s New Year’s Day, a time for fresh starts. Each year, millions of people make resolutions for improving their lives: losing weight, becoming happier, starting a business, making more money. And every year, millions of people follow their plans for a month or two, but ultimately forget about them.

If there are important changes you want to make in your life, thinking about them once a year isn’t enough. Instead, do a three-month plan. Three months is long enough to see changes and improvements in your life, but not so long that you can put things off easily or lose sight of your goals. Just as public companies issue quarterly results to Wall Street, you should issue quarterly reports to yourself.

Here’s the process I use for the quarterly plan. This needs to be done in writing because it will become something you refer to often, as well as a document of where you started and what you’ve achieved:

• Identify the major areas of your life. My list includes Business & Career, Financial, Family, Relationships, Social Life, Learning & Knowledge, Fun & Recreation, and Health & Fitness. You may have others.
• Make an assessment of each area, and plan your goals. Write down an honest assessment of where you are in each of these areas. If some areas are suffering, it’s important to acknowledge this, because unless you admit there’s a problem, there’s no way to improve. For each area, determine what you want to change and write down your goals. Look ahead in the long term to see where you want to be in a few years, and choose appropriate short term goals for the next 90 days to help you get there. This can take several hours, but it’s worth it to see where you are and keep you on track toward accomplishing your goals.
• Turn the goals into concrete actions. To accomplish a goal, you need to identify a list of concrete actions you can take toward achieving it. Write down a list of the things you can actually do, right now, to get the ball rolling. Be as specific as possible. For instance, “lose weight” isn’t specific, but “go to the gym from 8-9 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays” or “buy diet soda instead of regular soda” are. If any seem daunting, break them down into smaller tasks.
• Take action. Immediately, start implementing the actions steps on the list. After completing them, highlight them or cross them off (using the strikeout feature of your word processor). Don’t delete them, because you’ll want to keep a record of what you accomplished. Surprisingly, the act of writing down and crossing off completed actions helps increase your motivation and sense of accomplishment. It’s very satisfying to open up the document and see a list of 30 days you’ve been to the gym, each marked as accomplished.
• Review the list weekly to stay on track. It’s important that you use the document as an essential planning tool, reviewing it regularly. This ensures you never lose sight of your goals. Otherwise it’s easy to get caught up in day to day work, and focus on what’s urgent and immediate while forgetting about your long-term goals. The first thing Monday morning, go through your actions list to check your progress, and to plan time for them in your week’s schedule. No matter how ambitious, all of life’s goals have to take place on ordinary days between the time you get up and the time you go to sleep. If you’re writing down goals and actions but don’t plan actual time to execute them, nothing will happen. If you have free time during the week, you can check the document to find an action you can take toward one of your goals.
• Every three months, re-assess your plan. At the end of every quarter, go back to the assessment, take a look at what you planned to do, and note what you actually done. When you haven’t followed your plan, this will be easy to see, and you can make a course correction in your behavior and time management. Then, go through each major area of life. Write a summary of your accomplishments for the quarter, and note any areas you haven’t made progress in. Revise your goals, and come up with new actions to take during the next quarter.

Writing a quarterly plan will help keep your goals and resolutions constantly in mind, and will give you a sense of control, because you’ve systematically thought out and planned all the major areas of your life. The critical step is reviewing the plan regularly, as part of your regular work process. This will ensure you continue to work toward your long term goals, and never get sidetracked by day-to-day concerns.