Saturday 27 April 2013

88% of spreadsheets have errors



Microsoft Excel makes it easy for anyone to do the kind of number crunching once reserved for accountants and statisticians. But the world’s best-selling spreadsheet software has also contributed to the proliferation of bad math.

Close to 90% of spreadsheet documents contain errors, a 2008 analysis of multiple studies suggests. “Spreadsheets, even after careful development, contain errors in 1% or more of all formula cells,” writes Ray Panko, a professor of IT management at the University of Hawaii and an authority on bad spreadsheet practices. “In large spreadsheets with thousands of formulas, there will be dozens of undetected errors.”


 

Given that Microsoft MSFT -0.47%  says there are close to 1 billion Office users worldwide, “errors in spreadsheets are pandemic,” Panko says.
Such mistakes not only can lead to miscalculations in family budgets and distorted balance sheets at small businesses, but also might result in questionable rationales for global fiscal policy, as indicated by the case of a math error in a Harvard economics study. By failing to include certain spreadsheet cells in its calculations, the study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff may have overstated the impact that debt burdens have on a nation’s economic growth.
The problem is so widespread that there are now whole groups devoted to stamping out spreadsheet snafus, such as the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group. There’s no question that spreadsheets are a powerful tool, essential to the functioning of the modern world, the group’s chairman, Patrick O’Beirne, tells MarketWatch. “Chainsaws are also a very good tool, but who would use one without a chain guard,” he says. “People don’t take safeguards to ensure their work is correct — in fact, in many cases, all it would take to catch these errors is a second set of eyes.”
While few would publish a book or article without having it edited first, spreadsheets often get put into use in first-draft form, O’Beirne says. “Peer review is the gold standard in academic research, and the best self-protection for business users of spreadsheets,” he says.

There has been growing awareness of the problem in recent years, and there are now several certification programs designed to ensure best practices are followed by spreadsheet creators.
But even those who don’t have someone to check their spreadsheets can take extra steps to minimize mistakes, O’Beirne says. “Technically, the Harvard error could have been spotted by simple tests, such as pressing Ctrl + [ on a formula, to show what cells feed into the total” he says. “There are also many software tools, such as XLTest, to point out structural flaws.”
Simple arithmetic errors may be rampant, but spreadsheet use is likely to go on as before, Panko warns in his paper. “Despite this long-standing evidence, most corporations have paid little attention to the prospect of serious spreadsheet errors,” he says. 

Helicopter Managers: The Helping Hand Strikes Again

We all know helicopter parents, who are always hovering overhead to make sure that their children are thriving. In one survey of 725 employers hiring recent college graduates, more than a quarter had been contacted directly by applicants’ parents or received applicants’ resumes from parents; some even had parents show up at interviews with their children, negotiate the terms of their job offers, and ask for a raise or promotion.


In the workplace, many people become helicopter managers, hovering over their employees in a well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt to provide support. These are givers gone awry—people so desperate to help others that they develop a white knight complex, and end up causing harm instead. Studies by the psychologist Sandy Lim suggest that helicopter managers prevent recipients from becoming independent and competent, disrupting their learning and confidence for future tasks. In focusing on the short-term benefits of helping, helicopter managers overlook the long-term costs. 

To grow, people need to be challenged. Research at the Center for Creative Leadership shows that challenges—including having to work on unfamiliar tasks, lead change under uncertainty and exercise influence without authority—are important predictors of learning and development on the job. And three decades of evidence reveals that people achieve higher performance when they are given difficult goals. Difficult goals motivate people to work harder and smarter, develop their knowledge and skills, and test out different task strategies, all of which facilitate effectiveness and growth. But what’s the optimal level of difficulty?

In a classic study led by the psychologist John Atkinson, people were given the opportunity to take practice shots in a game of shuffleboard. Imagine that you’re in the study, and you have the option to take practice shots from various distances. Here are the odds of success if you shoot from different distances:

(a) Very easy (1-5 feet away): the odds of success are about 55%
(b) Intermediate (6-10 feet away): the odds of success are as low as 30%
(c) Very difficult (11-15 feet away): the odds of success are as low as 2%

Before you start, we’ll measure your desire for achievement, which allows us to classify you as either a low achiever or a high achiever. Now, where will you shoot?
As you might expect, the high achievers preferred to challenge themselves. More than half of the high achievers chose the intermediate level of difficulty, and more than a third chose the very difficult distances. Just 6% chose the very easy distances.
But surprisingly, the low achievers liked challenges too. Only 19% of them chose the very easy distances; 26% chose the intermediate difficulty, and 54% chose the very difficult distances. In other studies, Atkinson found that people often prefer a 50% chance of success over a 75% chance of success. In Ambition, Gilbert Brim writes that we strive for “just manageable difficulties”: challenges that test and stretch our skills, but don’t set us up for certain failure.
To prevent the helping hand from striking again, we need to keep our white knight complexes and helicopter tendencies in check. Instead of rushing to the rescue in ways that fail to benefit employees, and providing help that stifles their growth and development, leaders and managers would be wise to present just manageable difficulties. In the words of Anne Frank, we “can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”

Friday 26 April 2013

Top Performers Never Work "For" A Company

                                


I recently got asked:
What's the one key difference you see in top performers
compared to the rest of the workforce?
My answer: Top performers never see themselves as working "for" a company. They believe it's better to work "with" a company.
Do you know the difference?
When we believe we work "for" a company, we give up control. They set the rules and we blindly follow them. They plan the future and we obediently execute the plan. They are the master and we are the ____(insert whatever you want). In short, we place a set of golden handcuffs on and silently suffer.
But J.T., if I stand up for myself, I'll get canned.
I'm sure many of you read the above and immediately fear standing up for yourself will get you in trouble. Yes, if you decide to be aggressive and demand your employer make changes or else, you'll most likely be shown to the door. That's not what I'm suggesting. It's about changing the way we see, and subsequently, work "with" the employer. The fact is, they don't think they owe us anything. Why? We've been compensated for what we agreed to as the working arrangement. If we want to change the results, we need to change the approach.
Professional Emancipation = The Secret to Being a Top Performer at Work
Top performers don't view themselves as employees. They don't give up perceived control over their destiny. They see the employer as a means to an end - a client they want to work "with" as a way to create a win-win scenario. They patiently but persistently negotiate the terms until they feel there's an equitable arrangement where both sides profit. And, when the situation changes (which eventually, it always does), and they start to feel like the agreement is out of balance, they proactively and positively explore ways to bring it back to equality. They plan their own futures and use the work they do with the employer to help them further their ambitions. They recognize they are their own boss and the employer is a consumer - an entity they must please to stay in business, but one that can be replaced, or even fired, as long as they keep their business relevant and in-demand.
I realize that is easier said than done. But please remember, I was asked about top performers - and in my experience, that's what it takes.
So, which would you rather? Work "for" or "with" a company?
I believe we need employers and they need us. I believe we can free ourselves of The Golden Handcuff Effect and partner with employers to do great things. But most importantly, I believe it begins with deciding to stop working "for" a company and start working "with" them.
What do you think?

Hiring Wisdom: Top 10 Ways to Guarantee Your Best People Will Quit

                                     © vladgrin - Fotolia.com



Here are 10 ways to guarantee that your best people will quit:
10. Treat everyone equally. This may sound good, but your employees are not equal. Some are worth more because they produce more results. The key is not to treat them equally, it is to treat them all fairly.
9. Tolerate mediocrity. A-players don’t have to or want to play with a bunch of C-players.
8. Have dumb rules. I did not say have no rules, I said don’t have dumb rules. Great employees want to have guidelines and direction, but they don’t want to have rules that get in the way of doing their jobs or that conflict with the values the company says are important.
7. Don’t recognize outstanding performance and contributions. Remember Psychology 101 — Behavior you want repeated needs to be rewarded immediately.
6. Don’t have any fun at work. Where’s the written rule that says work has to be serious? If you find it, rip it to shreds and stomp on it because the notion that work cannot be fun is actually counterproductive. The workplace should be fun. Find ways to make work and/or the work environment more relaxed and fun and you will have happy employees who look forward to coming to work each day.
5. Don’t keep your people informed. You’ve got to communicate not only the good, but also the bad and the ugly. If you don’t tell them, the rumor mill will.
4. Micromanage. Tell them what you want done and how you want it done. Don’t tell them why it needs to be done and why their job is important. Don’t ask for their input on how it could be done better.
3. Don’t develop an employee retention strategy. Employee retention deserves your attention every day. Make a list of the people you don’t want to lose and, next to each name, write down what you are doing or will do to ensure that person stays engaged and on board.
2. Don’t do employee retention interviews. Wait until a great employee is walking out the door instead and conduct an exit interview to see what you could have done differently so they would not have gone out looking for another job.
1. Make your onboarding program an exercise in tedium. Employees are most impressionable during the first 60 days on the job. Every bit of information gathered during this time will either reinforce your new hire’s “buying decision” (to take the job) or lead to “Hire’s Remorse.”

Wednesday 24 April 2013

10 Things That Really Amazing Bosses Do


Are you truly an amazing boss or just a good one? See how many of these 10 traits are natural for you.



Recently, I had overwhelming response to my column on 10 Things Really Amazing Employees Do. In it, I also gave tips for being a better boss. Better is great, but amazing bosses didn't need the tips because they already knew what to do.
Being a boss is hard. People don't naturally wish to have one. And not everyone aspires to be one. But most people are anxious to follow a good leader, and most organizations live and die on the quality of the leaders who run them. See how you stack up with these 10 traits. I have given a reference point for good bosses as well so you can assess if you are truly hitting the mark or if perhaps your people are just being nice when they say you're amazing.

1. Good Bosses maintain control and get things done.
Amazing Bosses know efficiency can be the enemy of efficacy in the long run and so they work to create an atmosphere of expansive thinking. They empower their team with time, resources and techniques, to solve big issues with big ideas instead of Band-Aids and checklists.

2. Good Bosses foster a sense of community, making room for everyone.
Amazing Bosses form an internal culture by design rather than default, making sure they attract the right people to get on the bus and then get them in the right seats. They also make sure that the wrong people never get on the bus, or if they do, they get off quickly.

3. Good Bosses invite creative thinking.
Amazing Bosses know how to integrate creativity into daily conversation and procedures so that every employee feels natural about being creative and facilitating productive creativity when interacting with others in the company.

4. Good Bosses create an open environment for voicing concern and frustration.
Amazing Bosses create an environment where people are empowered to make change on their own to improve product, process, and procedures. They integrate open communication to the point where the expression of honest concerns is expected, required, and desired by everyone involved to achieve the highest levels of team performance.

5. Good Bosses encourage career development for their employees.
Amazing Bosses integrate individual learning and development into every job description so that personal growth is required and rewarded. They know companies that do this thrive thanks to new leaders rising from the inside. They make sure the company apportions time and dollars toward personal growth so that everyone shares reasonable expectations of commitment and success.

6. Good Bosses run effective and efficient meetings.
Amazing Bosses make sure that everyone on the team understands the difference between a valuable meeting and a waste of time and resources. They educate the team on facilitation techniques and give each person consistent practice at structuring and leading effective meetings with postmortem feedback.

7.  Good Bosses build trust so people feel safe.
Amazing Bosses encourage constant interaction and high performance within the team so they succeed or fail together, creating tight bonds of loyalty to the company and each other. Successes are met with equal high praise and rewards, while failures are met with encouraging acceptance and postmortem learning discussions yielding next-step improvements. (Of course amazing bosses know how to make sure people and teams fail safely in the first place.)

8. Good Bosses generate happiness in the workplace.
Amazing Bosses constantly seek and execute ways to help employees gain deep personal satisfaction from their responsibilities so they are inspired and excited to come to work and perform well every day.

9. Good Bosses make sure people are responsible for their roles and actions.
Amazing Bosses promote personal accountability by providing clear communication and buy-in as to the culture, vision, and goals for the company. They know how to effectively and efficiently align the team, communicate in rhythm, and measure progress so they can adjust quickly with minimal risk.

10. Good Bosses know how to praise and show gratitude.
Amazing Bosses know how to instill a deep sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment in individual team members. They help employees develop a strong sense of self-confidence and self-praise that outweighs any pat-on-the-back or award provided.





Bill Gates and Paul Allen Recreate Iconic 1981 Microsoft Photo



Are you truly an amazing boss or just a good one? 
See how many of these 10 traits are natural for you.



Bill Gates and Paul Allen Recreate Iconic 1981 Microsoft Photo

Back in 1981, Bill Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen pulled of an audacious feat: they licensed MS-DOS to IBM, but in a deal that saw them retain entire control of the software. To mark the occasion, the pair were photographed amid a sea of contemporary computers—and now they've recreated the image.
The picture, taken at Seattle's Living Computer Museum—in fact founded by Allen—shows the pair surrounded by the exact same hardware. Nice to see that Gates still looks a little scruffy after all this time.




Tuesday 23 April 2013

The Importance of Scheduling Nothing


If you were to see my calendar, you'd probably notice a host of time slots greyed out but with no indication of what's going on. There is no problem with my Outlook or printer. The grey sections reflect "buffers," or time periods I've purposely kept clear of meetings.
In aggregate, I schedule between 90 minutes and two hours of these buffers every day (broken down into 30- to 90-minute blocks). It's a system I developed over the last several years in response to a schedule that was becoming so jammed with back-to-back meetings that I had little time left to process what was going on around me or just think.
At first, these buffers felt like indulgences. I could have been using the time to catch up on meetings I had pushed out or said "no" to. But over time I realized not only were these breaks important, they were absolutely necessary in order for me to do my job.
Here's why:
As an organization scales, the role of its leadership needs to evolve and scale along with it. I've seen this evolution take place along at least two continuum: from problem solving to coaching and from tactical execution to thinking strategically. What both of these transitions require is time, and lots of it. Endlessly scheduling meeting on top of meeting and your time to get these things right evaporates.
Take coaching, for example. It's often quicker for senior leaders to solve people's problems for them. You've amassed years of experience solving the issues being brought to you. But doing so provides short-term relief at a longer time cost. As the organization gets larger, so too will the frequency of those issues, yet there remains only one of you. Unless you can coach others to address challenges directly, you will quickly find yourself in a position where that's all you're doing (adding even more meetings to your day). That's no way to run a team or a company.
Learning what makes people tick -- their unique perspectives, fears, motivations, team dynamics, etc. -- and properly coaching them to the point that they can not only solve the issue on their own the next time around, but successfully coach their own team takes far more time than telling them what to do. The only way to sustainably make that investment in people is by not jumping from one meeting to the next but rather carving out the time to properly coach those who stand to benefit from it the most. Equally if not more importantly is taking time in between those meetings to recharge. I want to ensure I'm at my best when coaching the next person who needs it.
The same can be said of the transition from tactical execution to thinking strategically. There will always be a need to get things done and knock another To Do item off the list. However, as the company grows larger, as the breadth and depth of your initiatives expand -- and as the competitive and technological landscape continues to shift at an accelerating rate -- you will require more time than ever before to just think: Think about what the company will look like in three to five years; think about the best way to improve an already popular product or address an unmet customer need; think about how you can widen a competitive advantage or close a competitive gap, etc.
That thinking, if done properly, requires uninterrupted focus; thoroughly developing and questioning assumptions; synthesizing all of the data, information and knowledge that's incessantly coming your way; connecting dots, bouncing ideas off of trusted colleagues; and iterating through multiple scenarios. In other words, it takes time. And that time will only be available if you carve it out for yourself. Conversely, if you don't take the time to think proactively you will increasingly find yourself reacting to your environment rather than influencing it. The resulting situation will inevitably require far more time (and meetings) than thinking strategically would have to begin with.
Above all else, the most important reason to schedule buffers is to just catch your breath. There is no faster way to feel as though your day is not your own, and that you are no longer in control, than scheduling meetings back to back from the minute you arrive at the office until the moment you leave. I've felt the effects of this and seen it with colleagues. Not only is it not fun to feel this way, it's not sustainable.
The solution, as simple as it sounds, is to periodically schedule nothing. Use that buffer time to think big, catch up on the latest industry news, get out from under that pile of unread emails, or just take a walk. What ever you do, just make sure you make that time for yourself -- everyday and in a systematic way -- and don't leave unscheduled moments to chance. The buffer is the best investment you can make in yourself and the single most important productivity tool I use.

Android up 13%, iOS down 7%, BlackBerry down 81% — and Windows Phone up a massive 52%


The mobile operating system market share numbers are in for Kantar Worldpanel’s last quarter, and the numbers are shocking.
Not the Android and iOS numbers: Steady but unspectacular growth for Android and gradual but not catastrophic drops for Apple are pretty much in line with expectations.
But the BlackBerry and Windows Phone numbers are dramatic changes from the same quarter a year ago. Windows Phone looks to be finally taking off, with 52 percent growth in December, January, and February of this year compared to the same three months in 2012. And BlackBerry is falling of a sales cliff, with an 81 percent plunge in sales.
Smartphone sales by operating system - U.S.
Source: Kantar WorldPanel
Smartphone sales by operating system – U.S.
The big kahuna, of course, is Android.
Google’s Android now owns more than half of U.S. smartphone sales, with 51.2 percent market share. That’s up from 45.4 percent in the quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, iOS is holding fairly steady at number two, with 43.5 percent, down slightly from last year’s 47 percent.
What’s interesting about the Windows numbers, even though they are on a much smaller installed base, is that Windows Phone is currently the fastest-growing mobile phone platform. At 4.1 percent of mobile operating system market share, Microsoft still has a very long ways to go, and growth rates could start to slow as it piles up share. But the numbers have to be encouraging for Redmond as it is finally gaining traction in a market that it once appeared to have completely lost.
And the international numbers contain pockets of even more good news, such as Italy, where Windows Phone now makes up 13.1 percent of new phone sales.
Apple’s mobile offerings are strongest with the two largest U.S. carriers, AT&T and Verizon. Both sell a majority of iOS smartphones, with AT&T selling 68.4 percent iOS versus 20.8 percent Android, and Verizon selling 55.1 percent iOS versus 43.4 percent Android.
Meanwhile, Samsung is continuing to expand its Android leadership, taking away market share from competitors LG and HTC:
“Of those who changed their phone over the last year to a Samsung smartphone, 19 percent had previously owned a Samsung feature phone, 15 percent owned a HTC smartphone, 14 percent owned an LG feature phone, 10 percent owned a Samsung smartphone, and 9 percent owned a BlackBerry,” said Kantar Worldpanel analyst Mary-Ann Parlato. “It’s apparent that Samsung is successful at capturing users from across the competitor set and not just gaining from their own loyalists.”
Kantar Worldpanel is the largest continuous consumer research mobile phone panel in the world, and conducts more than 240,000 interviews per year in the U.S. alone to determine what consumers are buying and using.

Thursday 18 April 2013

Inside IBM’s $67 billion SAGE, the largest computer ever built


SAGE, at the Computer History Museum


SAGE, like most supercomputers, was built to solve a big data problem. During the Cold War, hundreds of radar installations across North America were constantly on the lookout for Soviet missiles and bombers. As you can imagine, these stations produced a lot of data — a lot of data that needed to be analyzed and acted upon immediately. With the physical size of the US, the high speed of modern jet aircraft, and the sheer number of possible attack vectors, the US military decided that a network of computers was the only viable solution. In 1957, IBM began the construction of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, by far the world’s largest computer. Spanning more than 20 different locations, each equipped with acre-sized computers and connected by a nation-wide network of bleeding-edge 1,300-baud modems, SAGE was the pinnacle of the United States’ Cold War radar and missile air defenses.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    .SAGE radar and direction center map

SAGE consisted of 20 or so Direction Centers, each of which was a windowless, one-acre-large concrete cube (see below). Inside each DC were two CPUs, each one measuring 7,500 sq ft and consisting of 60,000 vacuum tubes, 175,000 diodes, 13,000 newfangled transistors, and 256KB of magnetic core RAM, consuming a total of 3MW of power and weighing in at 250 tons. Each CPU — only one operated at a time; the other was kept as a hot spare to minimize downtime — was capable of  executing 75,000 instructions per second, which was enough to spit out tons of radar data to 150 CRT consoles.


A SAGE concrete cube

According to Scott Locklin, this was the first system that used CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, and the first to use magnetic core RAM. (See: The history of computer storage.) As you can see in the photo below, SAGE operators used light pens to interact with their CRTs — another first, some 30 years before the arrival of the NES’s light gun Zapper.


SAGE CRT interface, with light gun


Each of the Direction Centers was connected to each other, a handful of Command Centers, and hundreds of radar centers, by AT&T telephone lines (running through a central, hardened underground bunker) and microwave towers. At the end of each telephone line was a Bell 101 modem — the first mass-produced modem, and the first device to use ASCII. SAGE was one of the first wide-area networks, and many of those who worked on SAGE would go on to be involved with the creation of ARPANET in 1969. ARPANET, if you weren’t aware, is what eventually became the internet.
At this point you might be wondering what the “semi-automatic” part of SAGE is. Believe it or not, SAGE was actually equipped with the technology to launch and control interceptor planes (such as the F-101B Voodoo and F-4 Phantom), and air defense missiles. Scarily enough, one of the missiles that SAGE could launch and control was the CIM-10 Bomarc (video below), which was equipped with a nuclear warhead. SAGE communicated with aircraft and missiles via HF, VHF, and UHF radio signals transmitted from the radar stations.

All told, the SAGE system is estimated to have cost around $10 billion dollars in 1954, or about $67 billion in today’s money — or about three times what the US spent on the Manhattan Project during World War II. SAGE remained in continuous operation between 1963 and 1984, with thousands of people all over North America constantly scanning their radar screens for Soviet attacks, all hankering for an opportunity to launch a radio-controlled nuke. As we now know, though, SAGE probably saw little if any action throughout its 21 years of operation. Before you label the $67 billion price tag as exorbitant, though, remember this: If SAGE had never been built, we might be living in a world without the internet, without IBM, without air traffic control systems, and perhaps we’d all be calling each other comrade.
For more information about SAGE, watch the 20-minute infomercial — produced by the US Air Force itself — embedded below.





When a Valuable Lesson at Work Became an Invaluable Lesson in Life...


Several months ago, walking to my car on the way home from the office, I was reflecting on a couple of moments from that day in which I was able to demonstrate compassionate management. It reminded me of some of the most important lessons I've learned that made it possible: The ability to be a spectator to my own thoughts, especially when becoming emotional; putting myself in the shoes of others and seeing the world through their eyes rather than projecting my own perspective; and working hard to manage compassionately not just with the people I connect with most readily, but unconditionally, regardless of how challenging the circumstances. It's taken years to get to the point where I can manifest these dynamics in my day-to-day role, so it always feels good when I'm able to put them into practice.

However, on this particular night, the satisfaction would be fleeting. As I opened my car door and started thinking about getting home to my wife and our two girls, it hit me: For as hard as I worked to manage compassionately at the office, I was not always actively applying the same approach with my family. To the contrary, by the time I got home on some nights, I'd be so spent after expending all of my energy at the office, that after putting the girls to bed and having dinner, I essentially had little left to give. So when my wife would try to bring up her day, or talk about the things we need to get done, I would reflexively say something to the effect that it had been a long day, I was exhausted, and could we talk about it some other time? In other words, I was doing the exact opposite of managing compassionately and I was doing it with the person who mattered most. My wife is the bedrock of our home and has built the foundation upon which my work exists. As cliche as it sounds, I couldn't do what I do without her.

Put another way, I was doing what so many of us have a tendency to do: Taking the people we're closest to for granted by assuming they are the ones we don't need to make an effort with. After all, they'll understand, right? However, nothing could be further from the truth.

It's taken me over 40 years to realize what makes me happy -- simply put, it's looking forward to going to work in the morning, and looking forward to coming home at night. Applying the most valuable lessons I've learned in both facets of my life to the integrated whole, and not taking anything or anyone for granted, is one of the most important ways I can make that happiness an enduring reality.

Yahoo Buys A Mobile News Startup Found By A 15 Year Old For $30 Million


Yahoo announced today that it has acquired Summly, a mobile news aggregation app from British entrepreneur Nick D'Aloisio.
D'Aloisio is only 17-years-old. When he started Summly, he was only 15.
Summly scans the Web for news and uses an algorithm to find the type of content you want to read. Then it summarizes it for you.
Yahoo is going to shut down Summly as a stand alone app, but it says it's going to incorporate Summly technology into its own mobile apps and sites.
Clearly, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wanted to hire D'Aloisio. She has been making a lot of small acquisitions like Summly. She wants to bring young, fresh, mobile-focused talent to Yahoo. 
Humoursly, Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud storage company Box, notes on Twitter that D'Aloisio was born after Yahoo was founded.
There was no price announced with the deal. However, All Things D reporter Kara Swisher says Yahoo paid just under $30 million. The app generated no revenue.
According to Crunchbase, Summly has raised $1.53 million in venture funding from an impressive list of investors.


summly
Summly
Summly
Hong Kong billionaire businessman Li Ka-shing put $300,000 in the company in September of 2011. A year later, the rest of the money came from people like Brian Chesky, the CEO and founder of AirBnb, Mark Pincus, the founder and CEO of Zynga, Ashton Kutcher, Yoko Ono, Wendy Murdoch, and a few other big names in tech.
When Steve Jobs opened the iPhone's App Store, Nick D'Aloisio was only 12-years-old.
D'Aloisio taught himself how to make an app. Three years later he launched his own startup, Trimit, which truncated a news story into 140 characters for people that wanted to tweet out stories.
He realized people didn't want to truncate the news. They wanted the news truncated for them. So, he flipped the app and made Summly.
Previously it was reported Summly only had 500,000 downloads, which is not much for an app. D'Aloisio says Summly has had "90 million summaries read," whatever that metric means.
Here's the release from Yahoo announcing the deal:
Today, we’re excited to share that we’re acquiring Summly, a mobile product company founded with a vision to simplify the way we get information, making it faster, easier and more concise.
At the age of 15, Nick D’Aloisio created the Summly app at his home in London. It started with an insight -- that we live in a world of constant information and need new ways to simplify how we find the stories that are important to us, at a glance. Mobile devices are shifting our daily routines, and users have changed not only what, but how much information they consume. Yet most articles and web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks. The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge -- we want easier ways to identify what’s important to us.
Summly solves this by delivering snapshots of stories, giving you a simple and elegant way to find the news you want, faster than ever before. For publishers, the Summly technology provides a new approach to drive interest in stories and reach a generation of mobile users that want information on the go.
Nick and the Summly team are joining Yahoo! in the coming weeks. While the Summly app will close, you will see the technology come to life throughout Yahoo!’s mobile experiences soon. So stay tuned!
Mobile devices are at the center of how we engage with the people, experiences and interests we love. Across Yahoo!, we’re focused on creating beautiful experiences that people are excited to use every day -- products that inspire and delight. We can’t wait to work with Nick and the Summly team to do just that.

And here's Summly's announcement:

In true Summly fashion, I will keep this short and sweet.
I am delighted to announce Summly has signed an agreement to be acquired by Yahoo!. Our vision is to simplify how we get information and we are thrilled to continue this mission with Yahoo!'s global scale and expertise. After spending some time on campus, I discovered that Yahoo! has an inspirational goal to make people's daily routines entertaining and meaningful, and mobile will be a central part of that vision. For us, it's the perfect fit.
When I founded Summly at 15, I would have never imagined being in this position so suddenly. I'd personally like to thank Li Ka-Shing and Horizons Ventures for having the foresight to back a teenager pursuing his dream. Also to our investors, advisors and of course the fantastic team for believing in the potential of Summly. Without you all, this never would have been possible. I'd also like to thank my family, friends and school for supporting me.
Most importantly, thank you to our wonderful users who have helped contribute to us receiving Apple's Best Apps of 2012 award for Intuitive Touch! We will be removing Summly from the App Store today but expect our summarization technology will soon return to multiple Yahoo! products - see this as a ‘power nap' so to speak.
With over 90 million summaries read in just a few short months, this is just the beginning for our technology. As we move towards a more refined, liberated and intelligent mobile web, summaries will continue to help navigate through our ever expanding information universe.
Sincerely,
Nick
Founder



Sunday 7 April 2013

7 Lessons From The World’s Most Captivating Presenters


LESSON #1: START WITH PAPER, NOT POWERPOINT.

Think back to the last time you prepared for a presentation. Did you start by outlining the story you would tell on paper? Did you then gradually weave in meaningful data, examples, and supporting points, based on that outline? Did you have a clear unifying message that your audience would remember even without the benefit of a transcript or notes?
Chances are, you answered “no” to those questions. If you’re like most people, you probably “prepared” by opening up PowerPoint the night before your presentation, cobbling together a few dozen slides from decks you or your colleagues have used in the past, peppering in a few stock photos, and counting on your ability to “wing it” in person.
 “The single most important thing you can do to dramatically improve your presentations is to have a story to tell before you work on your PowerPoint file.”
—Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points
The world’s most captivating communicators know better. They carefully, painstakingly plan, storyboard, script, design, and rehearse their presentations like an Oscar-winning Hollywood director prepares their film for the big screen. They’ve seen the impact that a carefully crafted story can have on influencing an audience, and they know that skipping this crucial first step is what separates average communicators from extraordinary ones.
According to Nancy Duarte, the communications expert behind Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, presenters should dedicate roughly 30 hours to researching, organizing, sketching, storyboarding, scripting, and revising the story for a one-hour presentation. (Later, they’ll invest another 30 hours to building their slides, and a final 30 hours to rehearsing the delivery.)
It takes 90 hours to craft a world-class, 60-minute presentation.

TAKEAWAY:

Don’t sell yourself short by jumping head-first into presentation software. Take the time to thoughtfully craft your story on paper before you even think about creating a single slide.

LESSON #2: TELL YOUR STORY IN 3 ACTS.

Most presentations follow some variation on the following format:
  1. Who I am 
  2. What I do (or what my company does)
  3. How my product/company/idea is different
  4. Why you should buy/invest/support me now
The world’s most captivating communicators typically rely on a three-act structure, more common in modern storytelling than in corporate conference rooms. The narrative is divided into three parts -- the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution -- and comes complete with vivid characters, heroes, and villains.
The following table provides a snapshot of the three-act structure and which critical questions are answered for the audience in each:

3 acts updated resized 600

Notice that this structure turns the typical presentation “flow” on its head.
Instead of following a WHO > WHAT > HOW > WHY flow, master communicators like Steve Jobs prefer a WHY > HOW > WHAT format, because they recognize that thefirst thing they need to do when standing in front of an audience is get them to care. So they begin by answering the one question everyone in the audience is silently asking: “Why should I care?”  
From there, they focus on answering the question, “How will this make my life better?” and finally, they spell out the “WHAT,” as in, “What action do I need to take now?”

TAKEAWAY:

By structuring your presentation with a clear and compelling beginning, middle, and end, you’ll take your audience on an exciting journey … the kind that inspires action, sells products, and funds businesses.

LESSON #3: A PICTURE IS WORTH 1000 WORDS.

There’s a reason why expressions like, “Seeing is believing” and, “A picture is worth 1000 words” are so universally recognized -- and that reason is based in science.
It’s called the Picture Superiority Effect, and it refers to a large body of research, which shows that humans more easily learn and recall information that is presented as pictures than when the same information is presented in words.
In one experiment, for instance, subjects who were presented with information orally could remember about 10% of the content 72 hours later. Those who were presented with information in picture format were able to recall 65% of the content.

Picture Superiority Effect
Not only do we remember visual input better, but we also process visual information 60,000x faster in the brain than we do text.
Which of the following did you comprehend faster, for example?

visuals trump text
Sure, it takes more time to find and select awesome images to replace text, but master communicators know that it’s worth the extra effort to achieve maximum impact and maximum audience retention.

TAKEAWAY:

Images are wicked powerful. Use them liberally.

LESSON #4: EMOTIONS GET OUR ATTENTION.

Virtually every presentation relies on some form of data to illustrate or emphasize the core point. Master communicators like Steve Jobs leverage data skillfully -- but they also know that data alone ain’t enough.
Think of it this way: If data were sufficient to truly change the way people think or behave, nobody would smoke. Organized religion would have no followers. And who in their right mind would have unprotected sex with a stranger?
Clearly, humans are creatures guided by more than logic alone.
Science again comes to our aid in explaining how and why this is important. In his book, Brain Rules, molecular biologist John Medina has this to say about the role of emotion on the human brain:
“An emotionally charged event (usually called an ECS, short for emotionally competent stimulus) is the best-processed kind of external stimulus ever measured. Emotionally charged events persist much longer in our memories and are recalled with greater accuracy than neutral memories.” 

emotion brain image resized 600
Chip and Dan Heath further elaborate on the impact that emotion can have on persuasive communication in their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The authors describe an exercise that Chip does with his students at Stanford University. The students are tasked with giving a one-minute persuasive speech. Everyone must present on the same topic, with half the class arguing for one point of view and the other half arguing for the opposite point of view.
After everyone has given their one-minute speech, the students are invited to rate each other on the effectiveness of the presentations, and then instructed to write down key points made by each speaker.
Here’s the data they collected from this exercise:
  • On average, the students used 2.5 statistics during their one-minute speeches
  • 1/10 of the students used a personal story to make their point
  • 63% of the class remembered details from the speeches that used stories
  • Only 5% remember the statistics that were shared
The Heaths drew this conclusion from the data:
“The stars of stickiness are the students who made their case by telling stories, or by tapping into emotion, or by stressing a single point rather than ten.”
Perhaps nobody more succinctly emphasizes the importance of making your audience feel than Pulitzer Prize-winning author Maya Angelou:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

TAKEAWAY:

Make sure your presentation content goes beyond pure “facts.” Triggering audience emotion is a guaranteed way to increase retention and impact of your core message.

LESSON #5: USE PLAIN ENGLISH.

When Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPod, he could have said something like this: 
 “Today we’re introducing a new, portable music player that weighs a mere 6.5 ounces, is about the size of a sardine can, and boasts voluminous capacity, long battery life, and lightning-fast transfer speeds.”
But he didn’t. Instead, he said: “iPod. One thousand songs in your pocket.”
Jobs could have described the MacBook Air as a “smaller, lighter MacBook Pro witha generously-sized 13.3-inch, 1280- by 800-pixel, glossy LED screen and a full-size keyboard.”
Instead, he walked on stage with an office-sized manila envelope, pulled the notebook out and simply said, “What is MacBook Air? In a sentence, it’s the world’s thinnest notebook.”   

Steve Jobs introduces the MacBook Air

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Jobs generally avoided complicated stats, technical data, buzzwords, and jargon in his presentations. Instead, he relied on simple, clear, direct language that was easy to understand, easy to remember, and better yet, was extremely “tweetable.” Jobs frequently used metaphors and analogies to bring meaning to numbers -- for instance, when he described the iPod as “a thousand songs in your pocket” instead of “5GB of memory.”
A closer look at some of Jobs’ most famous keynotes reads like a presentation in “headlines” -- powerful, memorable, specific statements that consistently add up to fewer than 140 characters.
Now take a look at one of your recent presentations. Is it buoyant with simple, specific, tweetable headlines? Does the script read like plain English that a 7-year-old could understand? Do you put data and stats in context so their meaning is clear and easy-to-digest? Have you ruthlessly pruned out all of the jargon, including overused, meaningless terms like “integrated,” “platform,” “leading-edge,” “synergy,” and so on?

TAKEAWAY:

If you want to improve your ability to persuade an audience, do your best Steve Jobs impression. Use simple language, free of jargon. Make sure your key messages are concrete and consistent. And don’t forget to use vivid metaphors or analogies to provide context and clarity around big numbers and complex ideas. 

LESSON #6: DITCH THE BULLET POINTS.

This may be hard to believe, but Steve Jobs never used a single bullet point. Not once. His presentations were always remarkable spare, relying on a few powerful images and carefully selected words or phrases.
Even during product demos where Jobs explains or demonstrates key benefits of a new product, his slides are refreshingly devoid of bullet points. 

no bullets

As Seth Godin explains in a 2007 ebook called Really Bad PowerPoint, “The minute you put bullet points on the screen, you are announcing ‘write this down, but don’t really pay attention to it now.’ People don’t take notes at the opera.”
Seth’s right. Researchers have demonstrated time and time again that text and bullet points are the least effective way to deliver important information. Yet despite clear evidence that wordy, bullet-point-heavy slides don’t work, the average PowerPoint slide has 40 words. No wonder SlideRocket has found that 32% of people fall asleep during PowerPoint presentations, and 20% would rather go to the dentist than sit through another one!
Fact: the human brain has this function called “short-term memory,” which is basically the ability to process and retain a small amount of information at the same time. 

brain

Think of short-term memory as your brain’s Post-It note. Like a Post-It note, it doesn’t have huge capacity. On average, our short-term memory can hold onto fewer than 7 items for no longer than 10-15 seconds.
So, imagine you’re introducing the world’s thinnest notebook. Replace the bulleted list of techie product features with a photograph of a large, manila office envelope.
Or perhaps you’re trying to inspire an audience to help your nonprofit end the water crisis? Skip the bulleted list of statistics in favor of a short, powerful video that shows rather than tells why everyone in the room should care.
The next time you’re tempted to cram a dozen facts onto a slide, remind yourself of the Leonardo Da Vinci philosophy that Steve Jobs frequently quoted:
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Or take a page from Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, and ditch the slides altogether!

TAKEAWAY:

Guns don’t kill people. Bullets do.

LESSON #7: REHEARSE LIKE CRAZY.

As communications expert Nancy Duarte pointed out in Lesson #1, creating a presentation that informs, entertains, AND inspires an audience takes a lot of time. The first 30 hours will be spent researching, sketching, planning, and revising your story. The next 30 hours will go toward building simple, highly visual slides with very few words and NO BULLETS.
The final 30 hours will go toward rehearsing the delivery.
When was the last time you spent 30 hours rehearsing for a presentation?
Of all of the lessons revealed above, this one is undoubtedly the most often overlooked. Don’t be the person who does everything by the book, only to blow it all at the very end by failing to practice. A lot.

TAKEAWAY:

30 hours of rehearsing may be painful. It’s definitely time-consuming. But there are no shortcuts to excellence.

A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS.

On September 28, 1997, Apple debuted its now famous “Think Different” ad campaign, which featured a series of black-and-white images of iconic figures like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., and Amelia Earhart. While their images flashed on the screen, the following words were spoken:
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
The goal of the “Think Different” campaign was to sell computers. Notice how the word “computer” didn’t appear even once in the script.
I point this out as a final thought, because it summarizes a crucial, remarkable quality shared by most of the world’s most captivating communicators, including Steve Jobs, Scott Harrison, and Gary Vaynerchuk. They may have wildly different presentation styles, but they all have this in common:
They don’t just provide “information;” they convey meaning -- and they do it with passion.
They don’t simply tell people “what is,” they paint a vivid picture of what could be -- and then they arm their audience with a roadmap to get there.
World-class presenters like Jobs, Harrison, and Vaynerchuk aren’t selling computers, clean water, or wine. They’re selling the dream of a better tomorrow.
By applying the 7 lessons described above, perhaps you can, too.