Interesting Links for 15-04-2012

[andrewducker]

• Working at Valve sounds awesome.
  (tags: valve work technology games business )
• Cheaper hardware and software mean you can attend a wedding at 5am (in your pyjamas)
  (tags: awesome technology internet telecoms BenWerdmuller )
• Want Breakthrough Ideas? First, Listen To The Freaks And Geeks,and People Who Are Not Your Customer
  (tags: design research creativity ideas innovation )
• The man who has spent 38 years working on the biography of one man. Gripping stuff.
  (tags: biography history books )
• Complaing about rape, get discharged from the US military for mental issues.
  (tags: military usa rape )
• GODZILLA by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio - the script before Devlin got his hands on it.
  (tags: movies godzilla )
• The USA continues it's long tradition of being wrong about drugs
  (tags: EpicFail usa drugs )
• Harrison Ford's finger has more acting ability than most movie star's whole bodies.
  (tags: HarrisonFord movies )
• Why We Still Need Publishers
  (tags: books publishing )
• Fiction doesn't tell you about the human condition, for that you need psychology
  Yes, I know it's an April Fool's. But it's also _right_. (See the comments for interesting discussion)
  (tags: fiction writing KenMacleod )

Comments

[skington.livejournal.com]

I love that they found a way to have the picture and dialogue out of sync in the Godzilla script.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

The article about where to find breakthrough ideas may have changed my life. It gave me an excellent light bulb moment.

Thank you.

[andrewducker]

Really? Care to share?

[laplor.livejournal.com]

I'm preparing to start a small business in the service industry (organizing/cleaning).

As I've been defining my market and considering how to advertise and so on, I've been looking at it all wrong.

I have been looking at the people who currently hire cleaners and wondering why they hire private versus hiring the large companies.

I should be looking at who doesn't hire a cleaner at all. I don't want to have to compete hard against more established providers. Not only is that not my style, but there could be advantages to networking.

It would make more sense to look at, and talk to, the people who don't hire cleaners now, and find out why. Also to talk to people who have tried other services and stopped using them.

For example maybe there are hoarders out there who are too embarrassed to have cleaners come in - but these are people my particular set of talents and experiences can help the most.

The article is a jumping-off point for thinking outside the box on designing services/product/market.

[andrewducker]

That's a perfect example! Thanks for sharing it.

I chatted to Julie about this, because we've both considered getting a cleaner, but been worried about a few sticking points. Grabbing a random website (http://www.thehomecleaningco.co.uk/) what I'd really like to see added (apart from a better designed website) is a FAQ, with things like "I'm worried that a cleaner might steal my things." and "I'm embarassed about how untidy my home is.", that said nice reassuring things, at least letting me know that they had thought about these issues. Because it's things like that which have prevented us from using a cleaner before.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for some good tips.

I'm actually very interested in identifying and overcoming those particular objections.

Related to your specific concerns.

Re theft. It's a valid concern so a company should have insurance and be doing criminal record screenings/checks. An individual should be happy to provide you with a record check and references. At the least, they should be prepared to show you ID. You're correct that this should be on the website! If you are still uncomfortable, you might arrange to come home while the cleaner is there, and certainly put away valuables.

Cleaners are concerned about being falsely accused of theft, so will usually have a procedure in place for when they do see valuables. Molly Maid works in pairs, and at the franchise where I worked, if we found
a quantity of cash or any other valuable we immediately called in our partner to verify it and called the office to report it. Some have been framed for theft before.

Re mess: The website needs to include assurances of how they protect client privacy. Frankly, other than maybe curiosity, the cleaner doesn't care as long as a really messy person realizes that it will cost more to clean a messy house.

Thanks for more to take away!

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd say you're now on the right track, and about to take an approach towards advertising that would cause me to hire you if we were in the same country/neighborhood.

(I might insist that I'm not a Hoarder, just an Accumulator -- born the year before the beginning of the previous Great Depression (as we call it in the U.S.), I've hung on to everything that might come in useful some day, and have lived in the same house for 60+ years. It's not that I have any qualms about parting with the Stuph (well... c. 90% of it), but that I'd want it to go to a good home, or at least be recycled, and I don't have the time & energy to see to that ... nor have I seen any cleaners/organizers who mention anything of the kind.)

[laplor.livejournal.com]

Thanks! You sound like a part of my market, and part of a group with whom I can relate. My Dad was born in 1924 and Mom in 1934. I truly understand the motivation to keep things 'just in case.'

I would never call anyone a Hoarder, though I've been known to agree with people sometimes when they said they were. Rather I would probably use phrases like, 'help you reclaim your space' or 'feeling that it's time to gain control of your collections.'

So a cleaner/organizer with the means to arrange for things to be picked up by, or taken to, a charity or an estate auction would be of interest you you? I'm thinking that's something I will need to look into to get at the market segment I should target.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I am now quite tempted to contact Valve.

in fact the only thing stopping me is that they ain't local.


Breakthrough ideas:
the one thing that consistently gets me through projects is a bloody-minded insistence on doing things that are not in the specification. There has to be something people aren't expecting, but which makes total sense and is functional. As a result, people tend to remember my final submission not because the end result is amazing [though sometimes it is], but because there are cool things happening that no-one else thought of.
most recently that was changing the text colour in a C++ project. Very simple, attractive, and made the output both more interesting and easier to follow.

I need to get a *lot* better at this. In terms of both the ideas and the execution. And, of course, encouraging team-mates to do the same.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

The article isn't right though, even if the author did stumble onto something interesting. Comparing psychology to fiction doesn't work, they're two distinct fields. And while we might get there with psychology/biology, in studying things like selfishness, conflict, and biological altruism, and then comparing them to theories of mind, that stuff is all basically in its infancy compared to fiction.

It isn't so much that you get into just one person's theory of mind. There's that. But there's also the default human template at play. All people have the same general set of emotions equipped in their biological frame, and so we can all appreciate hearing Spock say, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one."

So on the one hand you have Ayn Rand, who's deeply entrenched in her own viewpoint, and on the other you have John Steinbeck, who basically channels the suffering of the poor.

I would say be wary of April Fool's jokes that catch you, lest you start agreeing with them regardless to not feel foolish for agreeing in the first place.