Headworx

I've started reading the George Gilder's latest Knowledge and Power . George starts with his favorite metaphor of entropy and moves on to explore the concept of a learning curve and how it impacts the economy and competitive landscape in particular. I dawned on me George had just named what I was feeling and believing all the time. Where the advantage of an organization comes from. For a number of times I was naming the team, the culture, even the management as far more important than ideas and money. But Gilder has nailed it: the learning curve. The angle, trajectory and sustainability of the learning curve is the most important factor deciding who will win the race. If an organization learns faster, it will be the first to deliver better product with better quality and products that cost less or bring higher margins than the competition. What else do you need? The thinking follows the Steve Jobs' sentence I quote most often: " there's a tremendous amount of...

A short retrospect on what worked on my vacation trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. I planned to travel light, taking only a carefully prepared set of gadgets. I took two Sigma DP Merrill cameras, the DP1M and the DP3M . I'm still in the process of working on the photos (the Sigma software is a pain), but I really, really love the results. I took three times as many photos with the DP3M and I think I will let the DP1M go. If somebody likes wide angle lens coupled with Hasselblad IQ (image quality) in a minimalistic and pocket friendly design, please drop me a note. Sigma Merrills require two support items: spare batteries (many of them, plan at least two per day) and a tripod. I took two tripods: the Gitzo GT1550T 6x Carbon (probably the lightest full size tripod on Earth) and the Manfrotto Pixi . Both served me extremely well. Both Sigmas I had in AST Ever Ready cases that proved to be very handy, stylish and protecting the cameras very well. So did the National Geographic NG ...

We're hiring and we've been doing many interviews with potential job applicants recently. Whenever possible I try to attend the interviews. The value for me is to have a grip on the state of the engineering talent we could potentially reach out for. After all in my opinion it is the team that defines what you can or cannot do. The strategy, the ideas, the money are relatively easy compared to assembling the team. At the interview I try to learn how a candidate thinks, how she or he approaches a problem. Not how the problem is solved. Among many skills I value creativity and problem solving the most. So I present some real design or implementation problems we have and see how they are approached. Personally I have one general rule I use when working on a solution. I assume we are never the first to face the particular problem. Meaning somebody must have already done something with it. And if so, I want to learn about the approach and the solution. So I start with Google sear...

It has been several years since I called USB the Universal Supply Bus and I'm happy to see how much improvement is being done in this area. Innergie is the new player in this field and takes the market by storm thanks to the no-compromise approach. I report to be a very satisfied user of the dual - port 15W USB charger and the 3000mAh rechargeable emergency battery. Both share several common design goals: Output rating of 2.1A per port - meaning they will fast-charge the most power hungry tablets and smartphones (including the Galaxy Note II, the Google Nexus 10 and the iPads. Size / weight squeezed to the minimum  I happen to travel with several USB - powered devices all the time. It is always the Galaxy Note II and then a smartwatch ( the Pebble ), a backup battery (the Innergie), a backup wireless data server (the AirStash), a portable WiFi AP ( the Huawei hotspot ). Therefore a dual - port, high output USB charger is a must and it has greatly simplified my mobile setu...