MyBlog

my 2nd blog

Is gmail losing its mojo?

Something is happening with Gmail. Ever since they introduced Google+ the service has consistently underperformed. 

it just drives me nuts.

It is slower, loads much slower, specially when this is a first time load. Recently they failed in launching their iPhone app. Their android app is one of the worse email client i have ever seen (it requires 2 clicks just to compose an email!)

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What's going on? this used to be the Rolls Royce of emails

It still offers an impressive panel of features for a free service. But something is going on and it does not smell right

Do you also feel something is not right with Gmail lately? Maybe it should have stayed in Beta after all.

Is there an alternative? a better one i mean?

Good entrepreneurs stay frustrated

i recently spoke in an event and was asked at the end "how do you keep yourself motivated as an entrepreneur?" 

It is easy to be motivated and passionate at launch. But how do you keep the fire going on on a ride of a few years with many ups and downs?

To which i answered "stay frustrated with your own work"

The biggest danger is, in my opinion, being satisfied with your work. Satisfaction cools down the temperature and the energy you need to move on. 

I don't know any good entrepreneur that is really happy with the current status of their business: not enough customers, not enough revenues, not enough feedbacks, product not good enough...They are always frustated and want more.

You need to feel what's wrong and where it's wrong. And many times you are the only one to be able to detect that. It does not matter. As long as you feel something is missing.

Transforming frustration in positive energy is the next important stuff. And the only way it can happen is when you have happy users or customers (or at least enough)

Happy users is what matters most. More than the features you dreamt of in your last release. 

This is why getting attention to feedback is so important. And that is why any developer should dedicate all his energy to collect, as efficiently as possible, the impression from their users

Specifically in the app world this is very difficult because apps are little piece of software with no real user interaction with the developer

In our case we spent an important part of our time building the necessary bricks to collect in real time users' feedback. Believe me. IT IS AWESOME

Every notification you get is a drop of fuel in the motivation tank.

Bottom line: don't settle, find what's wrong, get feedback and stay motivated to iterate.

PS: if you want to know how we do it reach out...

Mike Arrington's legacy

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Mike Arrington is leaving techcrunch. I knew that would happen at some point but not like that. 

i worked 3 years with him building Techcrunch France from scratch and contributing sometimes to Techcrunch.com. I experienced everything from real enjoyment to frustration. This experience created a (amazing) pivot in my career. A boost i could have never gotten otherwise. And somehow i keep very good memories of working with him. He trusted an unknown french guy he never met to create the second (or third) blog of his network. And i think this is something that he did consistently: hire guys that know that take things a step further in the right direction without him.

I am sure Techcrunch will still be successful but still will be different. since inception i read every single of his post. sometimes many times. he's a terrific writer. i hope he keeps blogging (what happened to crunchnotes.com? )

I have little comments on this BS "ethic as a blogger/VC" story. the only part i can testify is that even my own stories (post Techcrunch France or as a VC) never got a special treatment in any ways. Many times they even got ignored. Many times my competitors are treated way better than my own company. Read also Loic's post about how things happen.

I am fine with that. I know Mike has managed to create a "clear in the game" publication creating rules readers respect. and that startups respect.

This game is not over. With or without mike, Techcrunch will remain the spicy tech publication that no other network has managed to create. Precisely because of the rules Mike has created and that penetrated Techcrunch DNA. 

PS: congrats Erick on the new Job :)

disclosure: i own techcrunch stock and could be perceived as a biassed teller. if have the right to think so. that's fine...

Mac and Hebrew. tips and failures.

It is amazing to me that in 2011 it is still painful to correctly use your mac with hebrew for text editing. As a non israeli native i find it so complex to use in a same doc hebrew and english. I mean that is not a piece of genius to get this done. right? 

Most amazingly i asked the question to my social network and you know what? every one is stuck with the same damn problem.

want to have a double check? take any piece of hebrew, copy paste it in word and pages, then try to edit it...

There are a few tips you need to know to make sure this is going to be as painless as possible

Let's start with this. Microsoft word for Mac and Apple's pages are not fully compatible with hebrew. They don't fully support right to left and tweaky editing like bullet list on the right or multi columns

Here is what works decently that i tried

  • Google docs, when set correctly is really the best option. BUT you need to be online to use it.
  • Mellel is a [ugly but efficient] paid text editor that will treat well hebrew input
  • The native Apple's text edit will do to but has very limited editing capabilities.
  • I heard Neoffice is hebrew friendly but i have not tried it [available on donation only...]

Apple, Microsoft if you read this: Make Word and Pages fully hebrew compatible. like now...

What are your tips/best practice/top soft to use hebrew on mac?

GoogleRola

Google just announced they bought Motorola (mobility. That i know of this is the first non software company they re buying

If this was April, i would have believed it's a fake. The news does not resonate right me. I don't see the fit between both corporation with such different cultures.

The only thing i can think of is that Google wanted to react to the fact they could not get the Nortel patents and that the hardware is less of an interest to them. 

But was that a good reason? What will be the price google pays now vs all other manufacturers using android? Android will remain open with a but lock on their door.

This means a radical change in the DNA of the company which is not a hardware company. at all.

Israel in Crisis? tip#2 -> get the landlords to calm down

One thing that keep coming back in the conversation i have with people in Israel: renting something is becoming a nightmare. 

not just because of the current rental prices and scarcity of quality apartments but because of the abusive power of landlords

The current regulation is giving total power to the landlords and nearly no power to the renter. I have been renting places in many countries in the world. Israel is the worse when it comes to protecting the renter against abusive practices. 

Live examples

  1. A landlord can raise the rent of his apartment according to what he wants. no limits. even if you are already renting a place. You may end up paying 20/30/40% more year over year. No cap. no limit.  This end up in yearly fights (i am sure you know the drill...) when it comes to renew the rental contract.
  2. A landlord can ask for any kind of guarantee for his apartment: 6 months, 12 months rent. Double guarantee with deposit, bank deposit...which not only cost money but block a huge amount of money in your bank account.
i could add a long list (related to the responsibility of each and how a contract should be enforced when not respected by the landlord)

you obviously can negotiate and no one is forcing you to accept. but guess what? if you don't accept this someone else will, because landlords know they can expect this. they have the power.

There is no problem in raising the rental price, or asking for guarantees. The problem is in the abuse.

This is why in many countries this is regulated by law. So you, as a renter, don't have to worry about being abused.

Rental price should not be raised more than x% a year and a guarantee should not be more than 3 months rental deposite (refunded the day you leave, not whenever the landlord want)

The government can do something about this IMMEDIATELY and this well help hundreds of thousands of people in israel immediately. Specially students and young employees.

Israel in Crisis? tip #1

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Deep breaht. Relax

this is what i received this am in my mail box. 3 printed letters from my bank. 3 in 1 day! and i can't stop counting. i must be receiving something like 20 letters or more. that i don t even have the time to read or open.

This just drives me nuts.

The banking system in Israel is prehistorical. Israelis are in the street and complain to their government about how expensive their live is becoming. The problem is that private Israeli corporations are very often unproductive and inefficient at management and cost control. This is a typical example. Can you imagine the waste of money thrown into mail and this is just one chapter.

Ok. Let's complain to the government. but let's complain also to our banks that have insanely high commission rates. They can be cut very efficiently by killing paper and allowing customers to receive update electronically. Cost cutting will drive lower commissions (or should) and should impact every day how much less we pay to our banks.

Tip #1 let's pay less bank commissions. let's kill paper

Tip#2 is on the way

My problem/solution with QR codes

i can't find myself using QR codes on a regular basis although i am really exposed to them on a regular basis (business cards, ads,...)

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The reason? i think it is too painful to get them scanned. It requires a reflex we don't naturally have to open a special app to read them

QR code reading should be a native feature of smartphone. And they should be accessible in 1 or 2 click max so users are enticed to read them.

There is a killer app in every smartphone for this> the camera app. If it was able to read QR codes that would be great

And since is most new phones the camera is accessible in 1 click that would be awesome (in iOS5 it will be avail from the lock screen)

Until then, i doubt this can become a natural reflex for all of us

We need an IMAP for notification systems

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facebook, twitter, Google+ all have a common features: Notifications.

Something happens of importance (a new friends, comment, mention, reply, tag...) and the system notifies you. The problem with those notifications is that they are broadcasted in several manners and they do not sync..

Eg: i receive an Direct message on twitter, i receive a notification from twitter by email then i go to twitter i will read my direct message from Twitter for mac. The problem? the notification remains active on other clients (Twitter for iphone or iPad) because they unread status is not synced and the notification is still active

eg2: Someones tag you on Facebook in a picture: you click on the email notification, you go to facebook see the pictures: but on top you still see the notification active. it will become inactive only once you go to the notification box and open it...

If in addition you use Boxcar or any other notification agregator it is one more signal you will receive and that will not be deactivated

Notifications need to sync between platforms where they are consumed. Notifications need to become smarter. We need something like IMAP where an email is marked as unread everywhere you read emails, once an email has been read.

Why is that a problem? we start to be surrounded by notifications and those little red bubbles. They catch our attention, and many times this is more noise than signal.

If at least they could sync, that would help reduce the noise level...

Reading blogs starts to become painful

In spite of Twitter capturing more and more of my attention i am still reading lots of blogs. The pattern has shifted though. I used to read them only via google reader and netvibes. in a clean and uncluttered environment.

But with twitter i am flowing with my followers and read on the fly when i see a good link. Which points to the browser

One thing i have noticed with all major blogs. 

Blogs are becoming impossible to read. 

Blogs used to be lightweight and fast to load publication platforms but are today, years later, real media formats with complex CMS, tracking codes, advertising snippets wrapping the content.

It takes no less than 5 to 10 seconds for a page to load (at least on my Chrome browser with decent connection) and the pleasure of reading blogs is faded by the cascade of probably useful for the editors/owners but useless for the reader - pile of code.

In addition more and more the content itself takes a smaller part of the page, which makes the page looks like more a christmas tree for advertising.

Not mentioning that getting to the comments is also painful

This is why i believe blog readers are still and will still be popular. They provide a clean experience, although nothing great for reading comments.

I am missing times where it was great reading Techrunch, Readwriteweb and Gigaom on the browser. I love this blogs, but i much prefer skipping reading for later rather than going straight to the news.