Headworx

As a team leader, the thing I like about myself the least is I tend to do everything with my own hands. Because I *think* I can do better. Or faster. Or both. And it is really really hard for me to let the team be responsible for a task. Yes, passing the responsibility down to the team and other leaders is probably the hardest thing when growing a company. Because very often it simply does not work. Responsibility is somewhere in the genes. Some have it, some don't. Regardless how hard you work with them and how many times they acknowledge you, they repeat their irresponsible approach over and over. Situations when I'm really both furious and hopeless are when somebody just passes a problem up to me: "I failed. Sorry". Don't. Ever! First, it's great you've realized you failed. But instead of being sorry just do something about it. Fight! In business it is not about absolution. It is about getting things done and learning from mistakes. But sometimes it...

Changing a personal computing device has always been a pain. Since the early 1990's when I was among the early adopters of mobile computers (I bought my first notebook in 1990), upgrade has always been painful. And even after almost 25 years it still is. Two weeks ago I upgraded my faithful Galaxy Note II to Galaxy Note 3. The reason was Poland was the first region where Samsung provided the 4.4 Android Kitkat for Note 3 users. I bough the device, charged the battery and left it for some time to upgrade to 4.4. Then I set up the Google account and it downloaded all the settings from Google's Cloud. The nice thing about the Google cloud is it even brings forward the list of WiFi networks the old device visited, together with memorized passwords. Then I realized the alarm clock in KitKat was unreliable. I usually set two alarms, 15-20 minutes of each other, each with the "smart alarm" (smooth pre-awakening) option turned on. One alarm was for 5:40, the other was f...

Smart homes have been around for some time. Usually associated with rich owners. Often considered difficult and problematic. The history of smart homes resembles the history of computers a lot. Computers have been around for some time. In the early days usually associated with rich owners. Often considered difficult and problematic. The computer era had several important milestones: Apple II, 8-bit enthusiast machines (Atari, Commodore, Sinclair), MS-DOS, Windows, MacOS, Web, iOS, Android. Each of the milestones was bringing computers closer to an average human. Generally because the cost of ownership was going down, but also because the human-machine interaction has improved a lot. No more cryptic commands, no more unexpected behavior, improved reliability, predictable actions. Same story repeats with smart homes. Up till now they have been like the Apple II. Rather expensive, neither really productive nor entertaining, but iconic to their proud owners. It seems now we are enter...

With our heads down in the icons and circuit diagrams and code snippets, every now and then it is important to look at things in perspective. I have just read an article in EE|Times calling the end of the smartphone era . Junko Yoshida, the author, writes: The value here isn't the smartphone itself, but in peripherals -- the software and hardware that run Nest. The smartphone, a mere messenger for these functions, is fast becoming a commodity. I could not agree more. We all know the term IoT, the Internet of Things. But we barely know the meaning of it. No wonder. Since 2010 I am in a head over heels deep relationship with IoT, yet every day in this field surprises me more. There is such incredible tide coming, hard to predict the outcome. It will wipe many existing business models and established players. With every thing smart and connected, a phone (a smartphone of course) is becoming less and less relevant. In the best case it will be a dumb pipe to the cloud, ...

2014 is the year of the Internet of Things. It could not be off to a better start than the Google's acquisition of Nest that cemented what the world focused on at CES. I simply feel this with my every sense. I went on a tour to China back in December 2013, visiting many prospective hardware partners there and I found it difficult to persuade them the tide of the IoT and Smart Home in particular is coming. Most of the time their standpoint was "we would wait on the sidelines and see how it develops". Then I came back a month later - the week when Nest was bought (which was a week after CES). It was amazing how much the attitude changed over this short period of time. Suddenly they all understand the IoT is already here. And they all "want it". I also see how our prospective customers we've been trying to evangelize over the last year about connected devices are suddenly coming back willing to engage in projects involving smart / connected devices. IoT in ...

So a year after the latest investment round at the lofty valuation of $800M, Nest Labs has been acquired at 4x the price, for cash. WOW! Not too many predictions I made about Nest in 2013 have literally happened, but in general Nest has been moving in the expected direction. They did not release an European thermostat, but I believe they are making lots of research on Home Automation in general. And the rationale behind the Google's move? Well, I think there are two stories behind the acquisition. #1 is the preemptive action to leave Apple with empty hands. Home Automation is hard. Nest has always been the leader. Only followed by a bunch of startups, far behind. There are no other important players today. The old league of established Smart Home players is in a different galaxy. They require professional installation and will never grab the DIY market. The startups, with one exception, are just toys that disappoint after one afternoon. My Revolv hub started collecting dust ...

The common wisdom is electricity is expensive (as a consumable energy). Which is only partially true. Because electricity is only expensive at peak time, when demand forces the suppliers to engage the most expensive power plants. Off-peak electricity is cheap. And there are even times when the suppliers would happily pay the consumers to burn it. As is already is the case in some European countries (Belgium). Because it is almost impossible to stop a nuclear power plant. And when windy, the renewable generators inject even more of what we cannot consume at 3AM. The problem with electricity is the daily fluctuation of demand and no practical way to  balance it. The most common so far has been PSH, or Pump Storage Hydroelectricity: pumping a lake uphill off-peak and then draining it to generate back power during a peak demand period. 30% is wasted this way. Now think about electric vehicles. They don't care when they are charged and they can store significant amount of energy. T...