H Bay

Three years after I gave up spending all my money on King Gillette and switched to an eternal straight razor, I can conclude that I have made the right choice (and one of the best investments in my life). Besides saving lots of money and learning a new craft, I made some important progress in the quality of my shaving. Here the 3 points I think most important for the quality of the shave.

1. Long soaping process. The more time I spend on soaping, the smoother the shave and the less accidents happen. When I am limited in time, it often happens that I speed the soaping process up. The result is either an accident, bad shave, pain, etc. So taking time (at least 2 minutes) makes the hair soft and ready to be shaved.
2. Learning how to sharpen knifes in general and razors in particular. The sharpness of the razor is crucial for the quality of the shave. I rather spend money on sharpening stones than on expensive razors or knifes. Any knife can be used for a shave if it is sharp enough. I shaved myself already with a regular $1 kitchen knife. There was no big difference in quality. Learning how to sharpen knifes with for example japanese water stones brings numerous advantages. Firstly, saving money on sharpening services and new kitchen knifes (by the way, manually sharpened knifes are a lot sharper then brand new knifes). Secondly, always a perfectly sharp razor and perfectly sharp kitchen knifes. Onions do not burn the eyes when cut with a sharp knifes. Sharp knifes produce less accidents. etc. Lastly, it is fun to sharpen knifes. By the way, sharpening knifes has something meditative touch such as shaving with a straight razor. Learning the craft of sharpening knifes is a lifelong process. It is like being on the quest for the perfectly sharp knife.
3. No pressure. A sharp razor does not require you to apply force on the blade while shaving. Any force would result in the blade entering deeper in the skin and this again influences the angle between the blade and the hair (less than the optimal 60 degrees) and could dig the blade rather in the skin than in the hair. A consequence of too much pressure will be that accidents happen, the skin gets irritated, and the blade will need sharpening much sooner than without pressure.

Here some more reading about shaving with a straight razor http://artofmanliness.com/2009/10/06/how-to-straight-razor-shave/

Shaving with a straight razor is really fun.

“Drei Tage nicht gelesen, und das Gespräch wird schal” das Chinesische Sprichwort bringt es auf den Punkt. Lesen fördert die Kommunikation – ob gesprochen oder geschrieben spielt dabei keine Rolle. Davon zeugen zahlreiche Weblogs und online Foren. Wie einfach ist es doch, einen Online-Artikel an Freunde weiterzuleiten; “schon gelesen?”. Als Reaktion kommen nebst etlichen Facebook-Likes, Re-Tweets oder Kommentaren oft auch tiefgründigere Email-Diskussionen zustande. Der Journalist freut sich über diesen Applaus an Reaktionen, der zum Teil noch lange nachhallt. Der Verlag oder Blog-Betreiber heimst sich durch die virale Verbreitung seiner Inhalte zusätzliche Werbegelder ein und gewinnt gleichzeitig mehr Leser. Offline Medien können leider nicht von solchen Möglichkeiten profitieren, oder etwa doch?

Der Wind des Fortschrittes bringt die bisher statischen Print-Seiten in Bewegung und bläst sie ins Zeitalter der Interaktion. Eine Smartphone-Anwendung – oder zu Neudeutsch “App” – macht es möglich. Mit dem “Shortcut Reader” können herkömmliche Print-Seiten per Knopfdruck oder “Touch-Screen-Tap” elektronisiert und via Email, SMS, Facebook oder Twitter an Freunde und Bekannte versendet werden. Die Magie der Shortcut App liegt darin, dass der gelesenen Artikel über die Handy-Kamera visuell erkannt wird – ähnlich wie ein Barcode Scanner aber ganz ohne Barcode oder Wasserzeichen. Als Resultat wird eine elektronische Version der Seite angezeigt. Der Verlag kann letztere mit zusätzlichen Links und digitalen Inhalten wie Videos oder Bilder anreichern. Im Zentrum jedoch steht bei Shortcut die Print-Seite.

Nach einem langen Kampf gegen online Windmühlen in Terra incognita zieht es die Verlage heute in ihre Heimathäfen zurück, wo sie wieder gute Inhalte produzieren und verkaufen wollen. Überall wird Print und Online konsolidiert und die Inhalte werden kostenpflichtig zur Verfügung gestellt. Die NZZ hat mit der Lancierung ihrer Paywall den ersten Schritt getan und die anderen Verlage folgen der alten Tante. Eine Redaktion – nicht mehr wie vorher die Online und Print-Redaktion getrennt – erstellt die Ausgabe welche anschliessend über verschiedene Medien (Print, Online, Mobile, Tablet) den Weg zum Leser findet.

Shortcut bietet einen Kanal zu mehr Lesern und neuen Abonnenten. Indem jede Seite einer Ausgabe gescannt und verbreitet werden kann, werden neue Leser geschaffen und zwar im Verhältnis eins zu fünf. Einmal weiterleiten generiert im Schnitt fünf neue Leser des weitergeleiteten Artikels. Die grösste Verbreitung bringen Twitter Nachrichten. Leser werben so neue Leser. In den persönlichen Nachrichten der Leser an ihre Freunde kann der Verlag bereits einen Promotionslink, zum Beispiel zu eine Bestellseite für ein Probe-Abo, einfügen. Zusätzliche Links, Inhalte oder Leserumfragen können ohne grossen Mehraufwand in die Resultatseiten eingebaut werden. Mit gezielter Kommunikation kann die Redaktion ihren Lesern die neuen Möglichkeiten näher bringen. Damit hat der Verlag die volle Kontrolle über den Erfolg und die Intensität der Leser-Interaktion. Ausserdem wird über Shortcut die offline Werbung mit der online Werbung verbunden. Der Verlag kann seinen Werbekunden einen zusätzlichen Mehrwert über die neue Interaktivität der Inserate bieten und behält dabei die Kontrolle über die Messbarkeit.

In Zukunft können über Shortcut nebst Abos auch mehrseitige Artikel oder ganze Ausgaben verkauft werden. Zu jedem Artikel werden – wie bei Amazon – ähnliche Artikel vorgeschlagen oder es kann nach Schlüsselwörtern gesucht werden. So leben auch Print-Artikel im Netz weiter und sorgen noch nach deren Verfallsdatum für nachhaltige Wirkung.

Die Leser können über Shortcut fortan mit Ihrem Umfeld die Eindrücke und Gedanken Teilen, die das Gelesene in ihnen hervorruft. Auch Journalisten nutzen immer häufiger Shortcut, denn: Je mehr ihre Artikel gelesen werden, desto besser. Schliesslich wollen ja auch sie, dass ihre Artikel für neuen Gesprächsstoff sorgen.

We probably all refer to Google when we want to know something. However, we should never stop questioning the search results. For example when it comes to wind information, Google makes a major interpretation mistake. On the Google weather results, the wind blows in the wrong direction.

During the weekend, I was looking for weather information about La Gomera, the Spanish Canary Island. I wanted to know how favorable the wind direction is to sail from there to the Cape Verde archipelago. La Gomera is quite known among sailors as Christopher Columbus started from there in 1492 to discover the West Indies. So I googled “weather in la gomera” on my iPad.

According Google, the wind came from the south-west heading to north-east (see screenshot below – note: it seems that wind information is only visible on the iPad). I was confused as the winds around the Canary Islands are quite stable in December and usually blow in exactly the opposite direction. If Columbus had started under such conditions, his Santa Maria would have sailed him directly back to Spain. Therefore, I checked some other sources for validation. Windguru and the official meteorological GRIB data were speaking of north-easterly winds. Does Google misinterprete wind directions?

Wind chart comparison. Google, Wendseeker and EBRB in comparison. Google points in the wrong direction.

The best way to find out was to check multiple locations and compare against the official GRIB data. On the Caribbean island Curaçao, the trade winds blow constantly from the same direction – east-north-east. Even the trees grow with the wind and point westwards. Google managed to turn the trade wind 180 degrees. Same story for other locations such as Iceland, Tonga, etc.

Maybe Google follows a different definition of wind? But as far as I know there is only one definition. According Wikipedia “Wind direction is reported by the direction from which it originates. For example, a northerly wind blows from the north to the south. Wind direction is usually reported in cardinal directions or in azimuth degrees. For example, a wind coming from the south is given as 180 degrees; one from the east is 90 degrees.“

Wind directions are kind of tricky and therefore, mistakes are common. However, the Google engineers should master that. The only explanation I have is that there are no sailors, windsurfers, or similar working at Google. However, this assumption is wrong as Google CEO Larry Page is a kitesurfer.

Winter is now definitely here. Days are short and the weather cold. It is time to wear warm clothes. However, we have to be careful what socks we wear. Some socks don’t warm our feet, but make them actually drastically colder than without any socks.

Why is that? Imagine the following situation. A hot summer day. You are at the beach with a can of beer. But the beer is warm – aergh!! There is no fridge or ice box around. The only thing you have is sand, water, your towel and that bottle of warm beer. How can you get the beer nicely cold and refreshing? Right, you make the towel wet and wrap it around the beer can. Then you wait 30 minutes – et voilà. A nicely cold beer without any fridge or ice. When water or moisture evaporates, it removes heat, lowering the temperature of whatever the water is in contact with.

The same happens with our feet. They sweat, even when it’s cold. The moisture is hold back by the socks. As a consequence they get humid and cool down our feet – drastically. This happens with cotton socks or any socks that store moisture.

A much better treatment against cold feet is to fire up blood circulation. This can be done by bathing the feet in ice water for one or two minutes. It is not the first thing we would think of, but it actually works.

With Apple’s update to iOS 6, my life has changed. At least the way how I navigate. When I had to find an address before that momentous update, I was relying on the pre-installed Google Maps app to find my way. It was very easy, yet too easy as it turned out.

It all started on a business trip to Geneva. Arrived at the train station, I had to find my way to a certain house number on Rue de Lyon. This is one of those big streets that never ends and has 400+ house numbers. So when you start on the wrong side, you risk to walk your shoes thin and be terribly late. Out of a habit, I took my iPhone – with the new iOS 6 – and started Apple maps. Searching for Rue de Lyon 200 something, it directed me to Paris or Marseille, but not to Geneva. However, by zooming in on the Geneva map, it clearly read “Rue de Lyon”, but no hint about street numbers. I was lost.

My survival instinct told me to calm down and to search for cues that can help me to find my way to the venue. I remembered that when I was, back in the office, looking on Google Street View
for the location, I saw a bus with the number 6. I also remembered the facade of the building. So the plan was obvious, take bus number 6, keep eyes open until identification of the building. In the worst case, I had to walk back one bus station. I arrived at the meeting 5 minutes in advance. The plan worked.

You certainly think “boy, prepare your trip in advance”. Sure, that would be the most logical conclusion. However, my habits somehow give a damn about logic. Again and again I fall into the same trap. Apple Maps are useless and the web-based Google maps version sucks somehow. But actually, I don’t mind anymore. Because my experience in Geneva was the beginning of a quest to regain the navigation skills of our ancestors. Ok, ok, I admit, it actually started long before. Natural navigation is kind of a hobby. Now, with the new iOS, I am just forced to use it more frequently in a real-life scenario.

Natural navigation is actually quite cool. There are numerous hints surrounding us that can lead us to our destination. We can deduce north by observing trees. This also works for mountain tops, the wind, the sun, the moon, stars, birds, shadows, clouds, etc. The polynesians report that they navigate using water temperature – WTF. Also, landmark navigation is cool and sometimes astonishing accurate. Until now, I read three books about natural navigation. The Natural Navigator, The US Army Survival Manual, and the eBook about Marvin Creamer’s circumnavigation without any navigational instruments (not even a compass), available on this website (beware, the website is quite 90s style). Natural navigation made me aware of a lot of things. Perception of places suddenly changes. Things such as moon phase, position of the sun, etc. become important and actually start to make sense when applied to navigation.

Apple maps forces me to apply natural navigation more often in real-life scenario. But sometimes, I simply ask people the way. Both is fun. Yet I hope this is only a transition period until the next iOS update. Until then I remain lost in transition.

This post has nothing to do with the song joy in repetition from prince in his 90s album graffiti bridge, featuring one of my favorite guitar solos.

It is about something I have read a long time ago somewhere I don’t remember. It read that one’s life repeats itself every 7 years or so.

The reason why I am writing about this today is that I think that there is some truth behind it. Sometimes I have the impression that things become important to me, which were important about 7 years ago, or I feel a bit the way I felt 7 years ago. I have got this feeling already several times. Things come and go in one’s life, but some things are appearing in a persistent repeating way. For example the need to exercise “now for real” , the wish to complete a solo album, re-tune the guitar, and start writing songs, or be an entrepreneur and found the own company. Today I feel like the latter. The cool thing is that we just founded Shortcut Media as a spin off of kooaba. So, the feeling is not really a coincidence, right?

It is. I didn’t feel that way when we founded the company. I didn’t feel that way last week. The feeling to change something in this world, to make things that matter, to add value, to create jobs, etc. I don’t want to say that I didn’t think that way before. No, I mean that today I really feel it.

All this might sound a bit weird and it also feels weird to me. But if the theory of the seven years is true, then I know already today when I will found the next company.

On the Internet, people have lots of user names. Often, they are close to their real names such as for example my Twitter name @hebay, which is obviously a combination of Herbert Bay. But how many people have a user name in real life? A pseudonym. I do. My pseudonym is Tom.

It all started with my morning habit of a three-hour block of interruption-free working time, so called quiet time. This is most effective in the morning when the brain is fresh and energy level is at its maximum. For this, I often go working at Starbucks with my beloved “double tall latte” and the free WIFI. It never was a problem until Starbucks decided to ask customers for their names.

One morning, there was this unexpeced question coming from a good-looking and charming lady behind the counter “what’s your name?”. Flattered I told her my name, expecting her name in return. But her answer was something I did not expect. Actually, she didn’t understand my name at all. “Sorry, what was that? Albert?” she replied. I repeated my name about four more times until I thought she got it. Then she wrote something on the paper where she previously took my order that was like “Erwert”. What the F…. In contrast to the lady, everybody around knew my name now.

A bit dazzeled I went on to wait for my doubble tall thinking about what just happened. Is my name really so weird? It never was a problem until now. Ok, there was some noise, but do I really speak so unclear? Does the lady actually speak the same language as I do? Lots of questions, but no real answer, until…

The next day, different Starbucks, same story. This time I was “Umbert”. This was repeated for about three more Starbucks visits. Enough, I thought. I need a new name, a Starbucks name. It needed to be international, short – maximum three letters, understandable, and something cool. Tom was the name I needed. I always liked the name Thomas, but that would have been too complicated for the Starbucks staff. Tom was perfect.

I was excited to test my new name the next day. It sounded weird to say a different name. So many years I was used to my real name. Answering the name question with a preudonym felt like bertaying smebody. But I thought that it was for a better purpose and continued the order. It all went fine. No “sorry” or “what was that?”, just “ok Tom, thanks”. Wow, it worked and it always did from that day on. I still feel a bit weird, especially when paying with my credit card with my real name, but who cares.

However, after talking about my Starbucks pseudonym to my friends, it turned out that I was by far not the only one. It seems that everybody had the same idea long before I did. Why didn’t they tell me before? “Listen, when you go to Starbucks, don’t say your real name because they will not understand”. Maybe Starbucks should write it on the door, “when asked for your name, say something that everybody understands such as Steve, Peter, Sara, or Kate, no one cares about your real name”.

They could actually create a website where you can type your real name and it checks whether it is ok or not for Starbucks. When your name is on the black list, it Provides you with a list of alternatives, similar to what some websites do when your user name is already taken. What is your Starbucks pseudonym?

Already some time ago (August 11th 2011) I met the author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” Tim Ferriss in San Francisco at the Evernote trunk conference (the kooaba team thinks that he is my secret Idol, which is of course not true ). Alex Pachikov from Evernote was so kind to make the introduction.

Tim Ferriss and me at Evernote Trunk Conference

Tim loves wine and takes photos of wine labels to remember. I showed him our app kooaba Déjà Vu, which we launched that very day. Déjà Vu recognizes wine labels automatically from a photo of the label and adds direct links to the wine on Vivino. Tim was very impressed.

I am still very impressed by Tim and his book “The 4-Hour Workweek”. It is a good read and I can recommend it to any marketer, entrepreneur, Internet startup company, and life hacker.

However, I didn’t read his new book “The 4-Hour Body” yet. I wonder the name of his next book. Maybe something like “The 4-Hour Company”?

The newly released text editor iA Writer is using a minimum amount of features in order to make writers focus on the essential and being more productive in what really matters… writing. iA Writer re-invents the text editor. Watch the video.

Icons and menu tool boxes are OUT, shortcuts (which are faster and therefore increase productivity) are IN again. It reminds me of the old days when I was using the simplistic text editor vim in order to write C++ code. However, with iAWriter there are much less shortcuts to learn than with vim as the main task of iA Writer is not to code, but to write. I was a great fan of vim as it is one of the most powerful text editors for coders while being extremely simple. Now, I am a great fan of iA Writer for similar reasons. Simplicity and focus, which both increase productivity.

What I also like is the courage of the inventor Oliver Reichenstein (Twitter: @iA) to underdo his competition. He was aware that with the given resources he could never beat Microsoft Word by building a software with even more features. Therefore, he built a really simple tool with almost no features, stripped down to the essential, but still extremely powerful.

iA Writer is not the only tool I like because of its siplicity. The productivity tool Things is probably the most used app I have. I use it for Desktop and on my iPhone where I use it more than phone calls, or text messages. It is just great.
I am not paid by iA Writer, and I don’t know Oliver personally even if we are both Swiss and Switzerland is small . I write this because I like iA Writer and because I want to test my new gadget. Meaning that this post is obviously written with iA Writer . There is one thing missing. A shortcut for links. I am tired of writing href=”http://…

“Interruption is the enemy of productivity” as stated in the book Rework by the 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. But working for hours without interruption is also very bad for high productivity, as described by Tony Schwartz in his book Be Excellent at Anything. So, this sounds like a contradiction, right?

However, it makes totally sense, if we define an interruption as an unwilling interruption of the work in progress due to an external influence such as an incoming phone call, incoming emails, your working colleague asking a question, or your boss requesting an update. They all are productivity killers. On the other hand, we define a break as an intended interruption of work after a certain amount of time (best is after 90 minutes) in order to recharge your batteries with food, drink, breathing, and/or relaxation. Interruptions are poison, regular breaks are the fuel for more productivity.

Why are interruptions bad for personal productivity? Because it takes time to focus your mind on a certain task. For example writing a business plan, or financial forecast, or to code something takes a lot of brain power and complex thinking, seeing the whole picture. You need to think of everything and be creative and efficient at the same time. At the moment of an interruption, your brain is interrupted in its creative process and has to change focus (often to something very different). Then after the interruption, it takes time to get focussed on the “real” work again. The brain has no time to “think” about the given task. It always has to change from one topic to the other. This is not only bad for productivity and creativity, it is also very tiring and doesn’t lead anywhere. Therefore, avoid interruptions.

Why are breaks good for personal productivity? As perfectly described by Tony Schwartz in his blog post,

As every great athlete understands, the highest performance occurs when we balance work and effort with rest and renewal. The human body is hard-wired to pulse, and requires renewal at regular intervals not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

This said, Schwartz proposes regular breaks after 90 minutes of intensive and focussed work.

What to do during a break? Take five to ten minutes for active relaxation while breathing consciously. Don’t use your break for checking emails (productivity killer #1).

Everybody can control regular constructive breaks, just set a timer at 90 minutes. That’s basically it. The question, however, is how to avoid interruptions?! This is more complicated as we cannot control interruptions directly, they just happen. However, they can be avoided resulting in fewer interruptions. There are several approaches to avoid interruptions.

1. Redirect phone calls to a voice mail box during the hours you want to be productive. Then you check the voice mail box twice per day, for example at 11AM and at 4PM and call back the urgent calls, or follow up via email the less urgent ones. If the caller doesn’t leave a voice mail it was most probably not important.
2. Check emails only two or three times a day. Can be combined with the voice mail consultation. Answer emails directly, which take less than two minutes to answer. The other emails you can either delegate or create a todo item or even a project if there are multiple todo items related to it.
3. Set fix quiet times during which you plan not to be interrupted. This means that during the quiet times, you are switching off your phone, or redirect it to the voice mail, you quit the email client, and tell your colleagues to only interrupt you if it is really important, meaning that they would also wake you up at 1AM for the same reason. This sounds nice in theory, but is more difficult to realize in practice. It is not always possible to tell your boss not to interrupt you. Managers often think they can interrupt at any time because they think that their things are much more important and urgent than your stuff. However, in most of the cases this is not the case. So try to speak with your boss and explain the concept. If that doesn’t work, try working at home (if possible).
4. Start wearing head phones during your work. This indicates that you are listening to some music even if you are not. As a consequence, people will think that you don’t hear them and wont interrupt. However, this doesn’t always work.