Sonos Play:5 | Five Likes and Five Dislikes

I have been using a Sonos Play:5 and Sonos Bridge system for a couple of months now and I thought of writing up a short list of what I liked and disliked so far. This is not a full review of the product, but more of a way of summarizing the key points.

5 things I like

1. The setup of the whole system was VERY easy and took less than 15 minutes. 
2. Using the product is so easy that even a 8 year old can easily master it.
3. The Sonos system works with Spotify.
4. The hardware design is beautiful and such that it becomes "invisible".
5. The system keeps getting better with firmware updates.

5 things I dislike

1. The hardware has only volume up, down and mute buttons. I miss a skip button.
2. Spotify search is not working well
3. Some titles on Spotify cannot play on the Sonos.
4. The design of the Sonos controller is horrific compared to that of the hardware.
5. Starting the Sonos controller software on my iPhone 3GS takes more than 5 seconds, 3-4 seconds too long 

Overall, how likely am I to recommend this product to a friend? VERY likely.

A quick comment on Windows 8

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I like very much this start screen. Maybe this sounds silly, but that is an excellent start.
I hope soon to be able to dig more and see how the things behind it work.

Why Success Always Starts With Failure :: Tips :: The 99 Percent

"Few of our own failures are fatal," economist and Financial Times columnist Tim Harford writes in his new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure. This may be true, but we certainly don't act like it. When our mistakes stare us in the face, we often find it so upsetting that we miss out on the primary benefit of failing (yes, benefit): the chance to get over our egos and come back with a stronger, smarter approach.
According to Adapt, "success comes through rapidly fixing our mistakes rather than getting things right first time."

This sounds so self evident and yet, it is so hard to act this way.

What have you tried today and, more importantly, what did you fail at today?

The news this morning

Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple

Tim Cook Named CEO and Jobs Elected Chairman of the Board

This morning I was wondering whether I should visit techmeme.com for a quick glance at the tech news from the US. I expected nothing big.
Well, I was wrong.

Would you buy a 8GB iPhone 4?

(Reuters) - Asian suppliers to Apple Inc have begun manufacturing a lower-priced version of its hot-selling iPhone 4 with a smaller 8 gigabyte flash drive, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Well, I would consider it if the price was right.
I wonder how low Apple could go with it. Halving the flash memory configuration might not have a sufficient impact on the bill of materials to make the device go to mass market pricing.

How many U.S. people used Facebook in July 2011?

comScore’s July traffic numbers are out and similar to June’s findings, Facebook and Twitter both saw record traffic in terms of U.S. unique visitors in the month. In July, Facebook saw a whopping 162 million unique visitors, compared to 160.8 million unique vistors in June, and 157.2 million uniques in May.

162 million uniques reported by comscore. Freaking many I'd say.

Paul Buchheit: The two paths to success

One of the problems I've faced throughout life is that I'm kind of lazy, or maybe I lack will power or discipline or something. Either way, it's very difficult for me to do anything that I don't feel like doing. If I try to force it, my energy disappears, and I hate life. Furthermore, not only were my parents not Chinese, but they had five kids, so there wasn't time for Amy Chua's style of parenting. I kind of had to figure it out on my own.

My strategy can be reduced to two rules: 1) Find a way to make it fun and 2) If that fails, find a way to do something else.

I do agree with Paul. Increasingly so.