How to install a 2 port USB power adapter in an ‘87 BMW

April 21, 2013
Cars, How To
2 Comments

For some reason BMW forgot to put USB power sockets in my ’87 535is. In addition, while the JVC stereo the previous owner installed has a USB port, I use it for a memory card for music. Lastly, the cig lighter socket in these cars is “always on”. For these reasons I decided to do a little mod: Adding a 2 port USB power socket. This post explains how I did it and the parts …Continue reading →

Have a Plan

March 2, 2013
Clarity of Thought, How To, Startups
2 Comments

Yesterday someone asked me to share my thoughts on the secret to building excellent things. I summarized what I know as: “Put the customer first, have a plan, create a shared mission, get early victories, remove process, and make it fun.” – me, yesterday. This was the formula my cohorts that built the Windows Phone app platform used. It worked. This is what the small team that created www.milelogr.com did. “No battle was ever won …Continue reading →

Businesses Buy Differently

February 28, 2013
Business, Platforms
9 Comments

My post on Why Nobody Can Copy Apple has become one of the most read posts I’ve ever written (thanks @gruber). Commenters are asking me “Can you describe more what the behaviors are that are different when building for business vs. consumers?” There are many, but central is the sales motion: the approach and process an organization uses to sell product. The sales motion for businesses is diametrically different than the sales motion for consumers. …Continue reading →

"Write Once…" is Anti-Customer

February 21, 2013
Customer & Product, Mobile, Platforms, Technology & Execution
23 Comments
The father of WORA: James Gosling

Just as in the ’90s, there’s a bunch of hype these days around solving the cross-platform development problem. Mobile platform fragmentation is killing developers, and if only every device supported some common language or technology engine we could all Write Once and Run Anywhere. If only. WORA was, is, and always will be, a fallacy. WORA reminds me of the mole in whack-a-mole. It just keeps popping up and the realities of competing platform vendors …Continue reading →

Bubbly Time: MileLogr has its first, real, paying customers!

February 19, 2013
Startups
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When we launched MileLogr (www.milelogr.com) yesterday we didn’t know how long it would be before the first real customer actually paid us for a report. It happened today! We have monies! It is time for a serious glass of champagne! We got some great press on the launch too.  Todd Bishop of Geekwire wrote: The service, called MileLogr, works in conjunction with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple calendars, creating a detailed mileage report based on the …Continue reading →

Why Nobody Can Copy Apple

February 19, 2013
Business, Customer & Product, Platforms
128 Comments

Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled “Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple?”. As he points out, Apple is fairly unique in its command of vertical integration and many people point to that as the “why”. However, Horace also admits this can’t be the sole reason and he is unable to explain what that reason could be. I think I know. Tim Cook refers to integration and a great team as unique Apple advantages (but …Continue reading →

1929 Jennings ‘Dutch Boy’ Quarter Play Slot Machine

January 21, 2013
Kindel
2 Comments

In the ’50s my father & grandfather came across about a dozen slot machines that had been unearthed from a building excavation in Chicago. Out of the pile, they were able to restore a couple of them. I remember my grandfather’s at their house in Grand Rapids. It was a nickel based unit and he always had a jar of nickels next to it. We had a $.25 based machine. When I was a kid, …Continue reading →

Don’t Make Your Team Say No To You

January 9, 2013
Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Organization & People, Startups
4 Comments

Leaders are often visionary “idea people”. The difference between success and failure is how good these leaders are at training their teams to say No. Idea People often forget they are disrupting their own teams by voicing their ideas. If leaders don’t learn and practice skills for controlling the flow of ideas, their teams will fail. When I was building home networking for Windows at Microsoft, I learned getting a team to a focused plan, …Continue reading →

Goodbye GitHub: MCE Controller now on CodePlex

January 1, 2013
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
1 Comment

I love git. I love GitHub. But GitHub doesn’t seem to appreciate open source projects that require hosting more than source code. MCE Controller is an open source Windows app intended to be used by non-developers. This means it has an installer, online documentation, and requires a discussion forum for support for end users. GitHub never really provided great support for this kind of project. For example, there is no forum/discussion feature (although some claim …Continue reading →

MCE Controller 1.7 Released – Now Supports RS-232

December 19, 2012
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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By popular demand (shocking, I know), MCE Controller now supports RS-232 in addition to TCP/IP connections. This means that you can now control any Windows PC via the serial port. MCE Controller is an open source application I built for my home control system. It makes it easy to integrate Windows PCs with other devices and control systems. Any device that can send strings over TCP/IP or (now!) a serial port can now send commands …Continue reading →

Be as Excellent at Saying No as Saying Yes

December 3, 2012
Clarity of Thought, Leadership, Organization & People, Startups
2 Comments

While in Amman Jordan last month, I had the opportunity to speak at Amman Tech Tuesdays, a local startup event held every month there. I was asked to talk about what I’ve learned in my career to an audience of about 500 geeks and entrepreneurs. I decided to talk about focus, a topic dear to my heart. The title of the talk is “Be as Excellent at Saying No as Saying Yes”. Below the video …Continue reading →

Four Things I Learned in Jordan

December 3, 2012
Startups
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I wrote a guest post for the Huffington Post on Dec 7, 2012. You can read the full post here, but here’s the TL;DR: If the Middle East can stay relatively stable for just 10-15 more years, entrepreneurship will have a major long-term positive impact on the social-economic future of the region. As the Middle East grows as a source of commerce and technology for the rest of the world, Arab women entrepreneurs will be …Continue reading →

Apps are Dead. Long Live Experiences.

November 26, 2012
Branding, Mobile
3 Comments

I like to get people’s attention by asserting “apps are dead”. I do this because it causes people to pause and think about what “apps” really are. After Apple started the app explosion in 2008 most apps were primarily client-side code. Today, however, it is almost impossible to find an app that does not rely on at least some Internet based service. In fact the apps most people use most of the time are almost …Continue reading →

Word as a Blog Writer? Finally?

November 4, 2012
Uncategorized
3 Comments

I have fallen in love with Windows Live Writer as a blogging tool. I love how it reads & writes to my blog seamlessly, how it renders my posts within the editor as they’ll be posted, and how it handles images and other uploads easily. So I’ve been pretty disappointed that there is no version of Windows Live Writer that works on Surface. @AlexBream just made me aware that Word 2013 has a “Blog Template” …Continue reading →

Computer Vision Explosion

November 4, 2012
Mobile
5 Comments

We are about to see an explosion in the use of computer vision systems. If you thought Kinect was cool or you think Creepy Cameraman is scary, the technology right around the corner, and its impact on our lives will blow you away. We’ve all dreamt of the day when natural user interface (NUI) systems were “real”. For example, in 1984 I built, as a high school project a system that allowed my school to …Continue reading →

Why Win8 Picture Password is Not Secure

November 2, 2012
Uncategorized
9 Comments

Windows 8 includes a slick feature intended to make it easier to log in: Picture Password. You select a photo that will be displayed on the login screen and then setup a simple gesture that you “draw” on the image to login. It makes quickly logging in easy, especially if you use strong passwords and you use a touch screen. And given Windows 8 pretty much requires you to link your Windows login to your …Continue reading →

Has MS Finally Gotten Through To DELL?

November 1, 2012
Uncategorized
11 Comments

I complained on Twitter to @MichaelDell that I could not buy a DELL XPS One 27 with “Microsoft Signature”. Today I got tweet from @MaryFadAtDell that read: @ckindel We have committed not to install bloatware on our XPS systems with Win8. I’ll email you details on what’s pre-installed. — Mary Fad (@MaryFadAtDell) November 1, 2012 The full of her email is below: Charlie – I wanted to get back to you on your concerns about …Continue reading →

If This Looks like This in 3 Weeks, We’ll Know The Answer

October 31, 2012
Mobile
5 Comments

This is the VerizonWireless Smartphone device page as of today. This is the “Featured” view, which means Verizon decides what devices appear at the top of the page. In about three weeks, if there aren’t a few Live Tiles a the top of the page then the canary is dead.

Keeping Tracks of Books I Read

October 26, 2012
Books, Uncategorized
15 Comments

Each January I post a list of books I read during the previous year (one of my favorites this year is @Scalzi’s Redshirts). Even though almost all books I read are via Amazon and Kindle, it is still a total pain in the butt to create those blog posts. http://ceklog.kindel.com/category/passions/books/ This has me thinking about a potential app idea and I’d love to hear from YOU about how you keep track, document, list, and share …Continue reading →

LockerGnome Guest Post on Mobile Fragmentation

October 22, 2012
Mobile, Platforms
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Today LockerGnome ran a guest post by yours truly titled “The Fragmentation of Mobile Fragmentation”. This is a follow-on post to my post focused on Android in January, intended to express my opinions on the broader mobile ecosystem. (Note, as of right now, the post on LockerGnome does not have my byline. They are working on fixing that). “Mobile fragmentation is going to get significantly worse over the next few years. While this fragmentation will …Continue reading →