Monthly Archive
for: ‘June, 2009’

The secret life of ideas

Posted Jun 23 2009 by Amir in All, Business, featured with 2 Comments

About a year ago, I had an experience that taught me one of my life’s biggest lessons. I learned it the hard way. Probably the most painful way.

A couple of friends and myself got together in Borders and sat down to chat about some ideas we had, and pick one to start working on. We had big ideas. Ones that can potentially change the world. Surprisingly, one small and simple idea kept presenting itself in many of the things we’ve discussed. One that’s so trivial that anyone can sit down in a couple of weeks to design it, code it, and publish it. We decided to give it a shot anyway, and to see how our collaboration will turn out. We all had our own thriving consulting/freelancing business, and we agreed to to this work on the side, in Google’s 80/20 manner. Read More

The catch

Posted Jun 23 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured with 0 Comments

Two young MBA couple graduated and landed great jobs in California. They realized that they had some time before their job starting date, so they flew to California a couple of weeks earlier and enjoyed spending their days on the beach.

One day, the Devil walked by and saw them, so he approached them and said: "Hey. I see that you are enjoying your time here. I have a proposal for you:

I will offer you everything you ever dreamt about: fame, success, money and prosperity for as long as you and everyone of your descendant shall live. In return, I need you to offer me one thing: your soul."

The couple looked at each in bewilderment, then looked back to the Devil and asked: "What’s the catch?"

The circus elephant

Posted Jun 16 2009 by Amir in All, Stories, featured with 1 Comment

When I was a kid, my school used to host a circus every summer. In the morning, I would sneak behind the circus tent and watch the animals being fed and trained. That was one of my greatest joys.

I remember looking at the elephants, and noticing something that fascinated me and kept me wondering for a while: knowing how powerful an elephant is, I was surprised to see a thin rope tying the elephant’s leg to a pole, and that the elephant never tried to escape even though it wouldn’t take any effort for it to cut the rope and walk away.

After a while, I gave up guessing and went to ask one of the trainers. He smiled and said:”It wasn’t always a rope, you know. When the elephant is young, we put a hard chain around its leg so that whenever the elephant pulls, it would feel the resistance of the strong chain and know that how far it can go.”.

“When the elephant grows up”, he continued, “there is no need for the chain anymore. We just put a thin rope around its leg and the elephant stops pulling whenever it feels that rope. The elephant doesn’t know anymore that the chain is gone, and that the rope tying it to the pole can be easily broken as soon as it decides to walk away. The only limitation that elephant has, is in its own mind.”

“For the elephant,” the trainer said, “all that it knows is the memory of the old chain, and the slight feeling of resistance from the thin rope… The elephant doesn’t know the difference. “

Finding a way around constraints

Posted Jun 2 2009 by Amir in All, Business, Stories with 0 Comments

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:
Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love, Papa
A few days later he received a letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.
Love,
Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.
That same day the old man received another letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,
Vinnie

Adobe Flash Catalyst – First impressions

Posted Jun 2 2009 by Amir in Design with 0 Comments

Yesterday, Adobe made a pleasant surprise and quietly announced that the Beta version of Flash Catalyst is finally out. I’ve been teased by many presentations over the past few months and I was excited I could finally get my hands on this product and try it out.

In case you don’t know what Catalyst is, it’s an ambitious effort to bridge the gap between design and development workflows. This is a very interesting topic to me as I worked hard with the Expression Blend team from 2004 to 2007 to solve that problem. Blend and Catalyst are very different from each other, and I will not be attempting a comparison here.

I played with Catalyst for a couple of hours yesterday, simulating some workflows for a couple of RIAs that we’ve worked on before, and trying to get some graphics into Flex for a project that we’re currently working on. Read More

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