r+d

Pretty neat look at the inside of some of GEs factories from the view of a mini-copter. MRI machines, 210 ton locomotives and jet engines oh my! Who says America doesn't manufacture awesomeness anymore.

Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical—nearly impossible—to make a cheeseburger from scratch. Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in the fall. Mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive—requiring a trio of cows—and demand many acres of land. There’s just no sense in it. A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.

Home Depot did something for a customer that may help renew your faith in big box managers.There was an early run on snow blowers back in October in the Northeast because of the Halloween snowstorm, so when customer Matt went to get one from Home Depot, he was told that all its stores within 50 miles have been sold out for a month, reports Chris Morran at The Consumerist.
Nobody knew when more would arrive, so Matt sent a note to the Home Depot HQ, and his local store's manager called him.

The manager went out of his way to locate the model Matt wanted, and found one in a store about four hours away. He said it would take a week for delivery. But the snow blower was available for Matt to pick up the next day. How'd Home Depot get it shipped so incredibly fast? The manager sent out a pair of his workers to pick it up personally and bring it back -- an eight-hour trip. Wow.
Here's what Matt had to say about the experience: "I was already pretty devoted Home Depot customer but this guy just made me a loyal customer for life. It's nice to know this level of customer service does still exist."

Now, could Home Depot do something like this for every single customer that comes along with a need?When the manager took it upon himself to find his customer that snow blower, and ordered it, he had already made an impact. How much investment did that take? A few minutes of his time, plus the cost of shipping. Getting the snow blower driven in by his employees was going far above and beyond the call, and wouldn't be possible to do for every situation. But just taking that initial step to help the customer (in Matt's case, answering him in the first place and calling around to find the closest snow blower) is something that isn't seen enough from big retailers.

I admired Steve Jobs, although he was completely different from me. He used to shout at employees that made mistakes. He did not delegate much, and broke all the rules I believe in. Somehow it worked for him. Apple is one the best brands in the world.[But] I think that criticising people is counter-productive. A good leader is someone who praises a person for his or her best efforts, not someone who criticises. People know when they make mistakes. Of course, sometimes I just can’t resist and end up saying something, but never more than once. The secret of success is finding good people.

I devote most of my time to activities like The Elders [A South-African NGO], but I make it a point to take care of things that are important to Virgin, like hiring its key executives. I interviewed Josh Bayliss, the Group’s CEO, in the back seat of my car while waiting in a traffic jam that lasted almost two hours. Now, he makes money so I can spend it. Learning to delegate is vital in business. You have to be willing to let people do good things and let make them mistakes.

A tribute from Jony Ive: Jobs' second hand man and arguably the best industrial designer alive today. I could listen to this guy all day.

“In ’79, when Joan, my fiancee and I were on a holiday in the British Virgin Islands, we were trying to catch a flight to Puerto Rico; but the local Puerto Rican scheduled flight was cancelled. The airport terminal was full of stranded passengers. I made a few calls to charter companies and agreed to charter a plane for $2000 to Puerto Rico. Cheekily leaving out Joan’s and my name, I divided the price by the remaining number of passengers, borrowed a blackboard and wrote: VIRGIN AIRWAYS: $39 for a single flight to Puerto Rico. I walked around the airport terminal and soon filled every seat on the charter plane. As we landed at Puerto Rico, a passenger turned to me and said: “Virgin Airways isn’t too bad – smarten up the services a little and you could be in business.”

I don't think I would have ever gone out of my way to go to Thunder on the Gulf, but it just so happened that the weekend we were down at Ono recently, it was in town. And it was a pretty fortunate thing, because for a lover of all things vehicular, Perritt really enjoyed it. Here is is on the Bat Boat, which is a boat that goes ridiculously fast and was literally being held together in places by duck tape. 

(download)

Click here to download:

Thunder_on_the_Gulf.zip (664 KB)

You just couldn't have asked for a more perfect mashup between the genius of Mad Men and the true power of Facebook's Timeline.

The control centre in Concept You consists of four main areas; a digital Driver Information Monitor, a head-up display on the windscreen, a touch screen on the upper part of the centre console and a touch screen between the two individual rear seats. The wood/leather steering wheel has aluminium and glass paddles with integrated touch screens.

The touch screen in the upper part of the centre console remains in sleeping mode until the driver looks at it. A hidden infrared camera registers the eye movements and information is displayed on the screen. Another sensor registers hand movements and triggers the infotainment system's control mode. The possibilities are different depending on if the screen is approached by the driver or by the front seat passenger.

"Certain functions, such as surfing the web, are only accessible from the passenger side while the car is rolling. The technology knows who is the present operator and adapts itself automatically," says Peter Horbury.

This is one of the many reasons Vonnegut is my favorite author. Here he is explaining the shape of stories.