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TL;DR; My phone died. My other phone wasn't with me. Nothing revived the phone. After a couple of hours, trying every trick I knew, I googled, found a solution on the web - and it worked. Having a backup phone is great! But only if you have it :-) Full Story: I always carry two mobile phones. An iPhone and Android. An iPhone X and Samsung S8. I do it to know what is considered by over 90% of world population to be the best mobile OS. I always carry two phones - but this time I didn't. As we left our home, I realized that with all the excitement I left my Samsung at home. I told myself it doesn't matter. And then it did. My phone went dead. Nothing I tried could revive it. It wouldn't boot, and wouldn't reset, and none of the tricks I had learned over the years to revive iPhones helped. Wow. I felt lost. Cause I always carry two phone. And this time I didn't. Finally, after a couple of hours, google proposed a solution. I tried it - and it worked. My phone worked again. So, if you have a spare phone, be sure to have your spare phone with you... And if not, be sure to google frequently. Below, a picture I had NOT taken with my phone, since it was a brick...

Will try to improve.

Early on in life, I learned two basic lessons from my father: Better be 30 minutes early than 1 minute late (numbers may vary, but you understand the principle) Be nice to people. Say hello and smile - even if you don't know them. He probably had his reasons for developing that method of operation, and overall, as many children do, I guess I accepted this as "If dad says so..." I mentioned the reasoning to "tuning" your behaviour in a previous post, so I won't elaborate on #2. But a few words on #1... Better be very early than a little late. It's a good habit that forces you to plan ahead (usually, a good thing), not to arrive breathless and/or sweaty (usually, a good thing), and - once you got this habit in place - it allows you to spend your time and energy focused on your real goal - instead of making your goal to be on time... Just Be on Time. And if you can't be on time - be Early. #culture #life #philosophy

So... You may know this scenario, and may be frustrated by it, as much as I am. It start with having a car (great!), and having to share it with other drivers (less great). So far, so good. Next, imagine some of the drivers are significantly more vertically-challenged than others (in other words - some of the drivers are way shorter than others) - let's call them Tall and Short. Short drives the car, and adjusts the car seat to his height, so as to comfortably reach the pedals. Tall wants to drive the car, and needs to re-adjust the seating. And here's the WWTT moment. You're Tall, and you're standing outside the car, opened the door and realize the seat is so near the pedals, you can't get in the car. You can't re-adjust the seat like normal people do, by sitting in, and moving it back. Ideally, you'd push you foot in, and using it would lift the lever, and apply backward pressure to move the seat back. Then you can sit it, and complete the adjustment. Ideally. But not in some car models. Look at the drawing. See [A] - the move forward/back handle - it's unreachable (and trust me, I tried, I am "Tall" in the scenario above...). Compare that with the sensible car model, the top image - see the [1] seat position adjustment lever. This design makes sense. WWTT??? #WWTT #reuven #product

[This is an update to a review of Google Home, which I performed almost exactly a year ago] [I've only updated the main differences, which caused me to upgrade the overall score from 3.8 to 4.1] TL;DR Great Promise - starting to deliver - and Much to Look Forward to! ==> Total: 4.1 out of 5 My main complaint with the device, was that for a Smart Speaker, it's use was super limited, mainly to paid music services (and conveniently enough, Google left out the one paid music service I'm using, Apple Music. To make things worse, there was no way to enjoy content on my device, unless it happened to be integrated Google ChromeCast. Well, that all (mostly) changed. 1. Adding good integration with TuneIn, a free service streaming radio, integrated with many stations around the world, including Israel, allowed me to listen in to local (Israeli) radio stations. 1.1. While the commands I had to give were to easy to fail ("Ok Google, Play Eco 99 FM on TuneIn"), Google worked around this by adding the option to define shortcuts, making it quite easy ("Ok Google, Radio 99 fm"). ==> So now I can easily listen to Radio! 2. And even better, they added Bluetooth Audio. All I had to do was to say "Ok Google, Bluetooth Pairing" - and voila - I could connect my phone to the speaker, and can stream any audio content to the device. And the beauty of it all - it was (as I hoped and expected) all done via software upgrades. One day I didn't have it. The next day I did. Hoora! #product #google #WWTT

TL;DR; Wanted donuts. Couldn't find them. Registered to Instacart. Had them within an hour... Details. So, here's what happened. I was travelling to New-York and had to spend the weekend in the city. I decided to treat myself to one of my vices - Powdered Entermann's donuts. And Glazed ones too. So every day I checked a number of places to see if they sell them - and either they didn't sell Entermann's donuts at all - or (and I don't know what's worse) they didn't sell the Powdered or Glazed ones. And then, at almost the last moment before the weekend, I remembered there's a Super Hero - The Internet. I accessed instacart, checked out their providers - and found out that one of their providers, Best Market, offers the donuts I love! I was about to place the order (total 13.87$, plus a totally reasonable service fee of 1.39$) when I noticed the delivery fee of 13.99$ - and was about to give up. But, since I just signed up to Instacart, I got offered a free, 14-day trial of Instacart Express - free, instant deliveries within the hour. So, long story long, an hour later I had my donuts delivered by Jonathan. Thank you Instacart. Thank you Best Market. Thank you Jonathan! #happiness

TL;DR; If you're asked to do something you believe is wrong - speak up. (I'm talking about workplace, but I suspect it can be generalised.) Actively try to Right the Wrong. Either work harder - and learn why it's not Wrong - but actually - it is Right. Or work harder - to explain to your partners why it's Wrong. If both fail, escalate. (There are exceptions, but this is the rule.) Make a Difference. Be Involved. Longer Story (I'm writing about a specific case involving Product Managers and Software Developers - but feel free to replace with any two names/roles/people you can think of. This Is Truth.) Recently, I was involved in a discussion at work involving some product crisis-and-resolution. Once the crisis was resolved, we ran a retrospect/post-mortem - analysing the steps leading to the crisis and it's resolution, to see what we can learn to decrease chance of such crisis from happening in the first place, and how to better handle a crisis when it does happen. At some stage, one of the developers said: "I told the Product Manager that this may break, and we should instead be doing that, but the PM insisted". When asked "And what did you do?", the developer answered "Well, I knew it was wrong, but the PM insisted, so I went ahead and did what the PM asked, despite my conviction". That's when we knew (part of) what broke - and what (once fixed) will decrease chances of crisis, and increase chance of quick remedy and minimal impact on users - once the inevitable crisis happens... When you're part of a team working on something (example: a developer working on a product) and you're asked to perform a task you believe to be wrong (example: develop a solution that you are convinced work work/scale/etc.), you must speak up. TL;DR; If you're asked to do something you believe is wrong - speak up. (I'm talking about workplace, but I suspect it can be generalised.) Actively try to Right the Wrong. Either work harder - and learn why it's not Wrong - but actually - it is Right. Or work harder - to explain to your partners why it's Wrong. If both fail, escalate. (There are exceptions, but this is the rule.) Make a Difference. Be Involved. #culture #life #philosophy

(* This post is inspired by me finally playing with Android Instant Apps.) Whoever knows me, knows I'm a big Apple fan, from the times it wasn't popular to be one. You also know I carry two phones for the past 5 years - a late model iPhone (currently iPhone 6S), and a late model Android (currently Samsung S8 - one of the most amazing phones e-v-e-r, but that may be a topic for a different blog post). You also know I'm a big mobile fan - whether mobile-web or mobile-apps - and specifically a great believer in mobile native apps. But mobile-native-apps have two very (very!) big problems: Discoverability - how will users find your app? The "Installation Barrier" - how will you "convince" them to install your app? Both Apple and Google have been trying to solve this problem, and there's even a branch of marketing called ASO (like SEO - Search Engine Optimization) - App Store Optimization, to help your app be place higher and be found in the App Stores, and then hopefully installed... But still, no solution. Until now? But I guess Google had more to lose - since Google wants everything to start within their search engine , and preferably stay in the browser... So last year (Google I/o 2016) they announced Android Instant Apps - the technology that would allow an app developer to structure and build their native app (well, their Android native app) in a way that will allow it to be found, linked to, and effectively (partially) run within the browser (on Android devices). They showed a demo of a search for a Sony a6000 camera, and the web browser result linking to B&H Photo product - and the user completes the whole buying experience - including checkout - is completed in-the-browser - with a true-native-experience. Promising! It's a great promise. It's a possible solution (at least in the very-dominant Android world) for the Top 2 Blockers of Mobile Apps. To quote the link below: "Users can get to your flagship Android experience from any URL—including search, social media, messaging, and other deep links—without needing to install your app first" Wow! * If your Android device supports Instant Apps, simply click this link for the NY Times daily mini-puzzle. Over the past year they rolled it out, and finally - we can try it too... See below for instructions. You need an updated Android device (Android 6.x and better) - I tested on Samsung S8​. ​To enable​ the feature: Open your phone's Settings > Google > Instant Apps ​ ==> enable the feature/turn it on (you'll need to Accept the terms & conditions). ​To see some test cases: https://developer.android.com/topic/instant-apps/index.html There are currently a number of featured 3rd-party instant-apps. ​(The actual use-cases are still not dramatic - but the potential is great...)​ I tested and "confirmed" the NY Times mini-puzzle and Vimeo... ** A way to confirm the experience was/is indeed Instant Apps (and not web - sometimes its hard to tell - is to go back to where you enabled the feature) - and any instant apps ran will be listed there. (for more on how the technology works, see the video below - but it's not required.) #google #android #ios #apple #product #mobile

(Originally posted on Facebook, in Hebrew, on July 19th, 2017. Now, in English, and much more general. Original text at end...) They said it can't be done. That you can't have your cake and eat it too. Well, in the context of societies and/or organizations, I believe you can. Read more... There's a riddle I like. A very simple riddle. But a very insightful one. How do you split piece-of-cake fairly between two people? (Answer below the line, search for ***). Recently (June/July 2017) there's was a heated discussion regarding the claim of certain individuals and organizations that more-and-more orthodox content is making it's way into the secular education system. Of course, orthodox organizations immediately refuted the claims, and overall the heated discussion moved on with each "side" claiming how right they are and how wrong the "other side" is. I'll skip presenting the claims. Read about it by googling הדתה במערכת החינוך. I do however want to refer to one item. Or two. Mutuality, or Reciprocity. Diversification. It's about the fact that whenever two (or more) sections of an organization (society, company, group, team - two or more people) claim to a problem in the relationship, they should not claim to have a solution to apply to the other. Since every relationship is complex. And no every complexity can be trivially solved. Then every solution must be mutual. Diversify - or don't. But don't half-diversify! * Different Genders. Different Backgrounds. Secular. Orthodox. Different Religions. As long as they all share one intention: to better themselves - and thus to better the group. When you diversify - without blurring the uniqueness of the components - well, that's having your cake and eating it too... *** One person cuts the cake, the other gets to pick first. It become a mutual interest to split as fairly as possible... יפה אמרת אברי גלעד Avri Gilad, יפה מאד. אבל... ***הבעיה*** (לטעמי) במערכת החינוך היא חוסר-איזון. אשמח שייכנסו יותר ויותר מורים דתיים לבתי-ספר חילוניים - אבל לא כי הם דתיים - אלא (***למשל***) כי הם מעולים בהוראת מתמטיקה - ולא ״אוטומטית״ על משבצת ״המורה הדתי״. ומה עם איזון? מה, לא יכול להיות שיש אדם חילוני שיכול ללמד בבית-ספר דתי? למה את זה לא רואים? ולא רק כמורה ל- (שוב, לדוגמה!) מתמטיקה - אלא אפילו - חס-וחלילה, ה׳ ישמור - כמורה למחשבת-ישראל? יש בעיות עם הרעיון? כן, יש בעיות. לא פשוט ועם השלכות - כן, לא פשוט. החיים מורכבים. והילדים והנוער שלנו מסוגלים להתמודד עם זה. עדיף לי חיים מורכבים ביחד מאשר חיים פשוטים, בגטו. בהצלחה לכולנו. שאלה מממגיב אלמוני: למה לא ללכת צעד קדימה - ולשלוח את הילדים לבית ספר מעורב דתיים וחילונים? לא יודע באמת. באמת לא יודע. אבל כן יודע שיש מידה מסויימת של התנשאות - ולטעמי, לא מוצדקת - של ״הצד שלנו״. כמה מהאנשים הטובים והערכיים שאני מכיר הם חילוניים, ולא רק בתיאוריה, אלא מממשים. אז איך אני יכול להתחבא מאחורי מסכת ״רק דתי יכול לחנך דתי״ - ולהתלונן על ״רק חילוני מחנך חילוני״? (זה אותו הקושי שיש לי עם מסלול ישיבות ההסדר... הוא לא הדדי.) אני חותר להדדיות. ומעדיף הדדיות מחברת מאשר מנתקת. ומתחיל בצורת חשיבה. #culture #thestateofisrael #philosophy #עברית

Netflix created an amazing presentation on Workplace Culture. You can find it here. [UPDATE: A version/variation is also available on Netflix' site.] It's 124 slides, viewed over 16 million times (as of the time of this post... probably more by the time you read this). It's very readable (should take you no more than 30-40 minutes - a small investment if you want to learn about great workplace culture), and very understandable. Rumors are that Sheryl Sandberg - Facebook COO - said that this presentation is “the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.” Based on the presentation, and the feedback/comments, I’d dare say Netflix has created an amazing Workplace Culture. But. While I enjoyed the reading, and wrote down some notes, I think they’ve overcomplicated things, by spelling out everything. I realize that if you want to root out Blue-Chip Corporate Culture, then you probably need to spell out all the things that are ok to do, and all the pitfall to avoid. But if you need to spell out things in such a detailed way, I think you’re fighting a losing battle. I know I sometimes oversimplify things. It's one of my many shortcomings. I think the presentation is interesting. But. Too many details. Too many examples. IMO, to make a great company with a great and sustainable culture, you need a much simpler set of values. Simplify the game plan. And keep it simple. I believe a great Company Culture can not be achieved by numerous examples of things that are OK to do. You can’t spell out a rule for every case. And rules are made to be broken. Don't be stupid about them. Just be sensible about things. Use common sense. Why? Because we invest so much money in recruiting top talent. Both in the recruiting process – and in retaining them. We trust them to develop the best products in the world. They must be trusted with the running of the company. That’s it. And even this is too long. #workplace #culture

(For the English version of this post, checkout the Related Posts or click here) 你有多了解你的客戶? (上) 回想我的第一份工作，我覺得這是匪夷所思的 - 我竟然對每一個用戶（客戶）都瞭如指掌。 當時,我有着真正接觸市場的感覺，從客戶生活中所發生的大小軼事，我體會了莫名的親密感，以及我的生意對他們的影響。 當時覺得自己浪費了時間，考慮到我只有10或12歲...和事實上，我只有60個用戶。 如果只有我知道，我現在才理解... 這是上個世紀的一個炎熱的夏天，我只有10或12歲，我的爸媽替我找到一份工作。 有一個傢伙，名字叫Joe，他會在早上（非常的早）驅車到周圍的鄰居，並提供早餐雜貨給附近的家庭。 鄰居們會醒來，並在門外找到預訂的雜貨。 客戶們也可以選擇，在他們睡覺之前留下對不同雜貨的特定要求，我們在早上將指示作為交貨週期的一部分，我們從儲備的卡車載送額外的產品，在指定的時間送抵他們的門口。 他們會在月底收到帳單，我們都會很高興。 我的工作時間表如下： 04:00上午Joe將到達我們的房子，他會發一下汽車的響號。我會醒來。 04:01我會再睡著。 <重複10分鐘> 04:10 Joe會再響號兩次，這次真正醒來了，我會洗臉，趕到卡車，然後開始我們的路線。 由現在開始，在往後的90分鐘左右，我們將循環這種模式： * Joe驅車到下一個地址 *在驅車期間，我會為“標準訂單”包裝，準備送往我們下一個目的地 * 到了，Joe會剎停 – 我會跳出麵包卡車，跑到房子，檢查有沒有 “特別訂單” 等待我們，然後離開，跑回去那麵包車 - 然後去下一個地方，不斷重複這個過程。 **如果房子門外有一張“特制定單”，我就必需跑回到麵包車，把訂單更新（例如放回兩個麵包，因為孩子們不在家; 或要添加額外的牛奶和牛油，因為他們的家有客人等等） - 我需要飛奔回卡車，把訂單更新後，再將其留在客人門口。 06:00 清晨 Joe會把我送回我父母家，我會再次上床睡覺，趕上我失眠的時間。 這項工作中最具挑戰性的部分，就是得使用來回客戶房子之間那段很短的時間，為下一個家庭正確地包裝貨物 - 我做得越快，我們完成整個工作的速度就越快。 在這暑假的兩個月內，我了解了這些房子裏的，約60個不同的家庭。 我清楚知道誰去了旅行，例如（“在8月12-15 不需要交貨”），那個家庭有客人（“在7月 20-19之間，標準訂單要雙倍"），誰已經離婚/分居（“從現在開始，只需要提供 .."） - 我們與客戶之間的信息，從來沒有停止。 從理解這些信息中，我能夠更優化我的工作，更好地預測我用戶的需求，並為下一個家庭更快地準備包裹，節省寶貴的時間，讓我們更快地完成工作路線。 了解用戶是一股力量。了解用戶是一種價值。 你有多了解你的客戶? (下) • 我從這個夏天的工作中，學到了很多。 • 我知道在我們周圍的户主中，都養了狗。 • 我知道，很多時候狗比他們的主人更聰明...（就算向我們下了訂單, 户主很多時候仍然沒有用鏈把狗狗綁好） • 我學會了跑得快。非常快。起碼要比狗狗還快。或者至少要比有繫上狗鏈的狗狗更快:-) • 我已經知道，了解您的用戶是偉大的，能讓你擁有一個更好的產品或服務。 但我當時只有60個用戶。就這麼而已。 當你建立一個規模龐大的產品時，你有數以千萬計的用戶，你真的可以知道你的用戶嗎？ 我在Wix工作超過4年，現有超過100,000,000（一億）個用戶 – 相信無論在什麼情況下，你都不能完全理解他們所有。 你又不能調查他們（或者可以 - 但我們不信任意見調查，這可以是另一個博客文章的主題）。 那麼，你可以做什麼？ 與您的用戶交談。可以的話，越多越好。 是真的 - 比起做意見調查，你或者永遠不可能與客戶有太多交談的機會 - 但至少你會得到兩樣準確的東西： • 你會感覺到用戶的真正熱情，無論是好是壞，他們不會只顧回答關於理論性的問題（通常發生在意見調查中 )，例如他們使用產品的什麼功能等等，反而是抱怨什麼不能用，缺少了什麼 - 或者是他們愛和愛你的什麼 - 這包括他們的語氣和聲音。 • 你會真正理解客戶的業務，這是意見調查表永遠做不到的。 這不是關乎向客戶提問『你會在你的網店使用航運功能嗎?』，或是 『那麼你想要那個供應商』之類的問題，而是 - 『節日是偉大的，同時也是可怕的』， 『我在我的網上商店賣了這麼多的產品，這真是好極了 - 只是，當我把所有的包裹帶到郵局，並排隊排上幾個小時，要是你有一個航運功能在商店的話...“ 所以簡短的答案是： 您可以 - 而且您必須 - 認識您的用戶。 就算你最可能只認識一小部分的用戶。 但一定要去了解他們。聽他們說。與他們交談。 然後，去做一個完美的產品... (Translated to Chinese by Stella Siu - thank you Stella! Checkout Stella's blog) #reuven #product #users

(Continued from Part 1) I've learned so much from this summer job. I've learned that house owners in our neighborhood tend to own dogs. I've learned that many times dogs are much smarter than their owners... (the owners would many times leave the dogs running loose, despite having asked us to deliver) I've learned to run fast. Very fast. Or at least faster than the dogs. Or at least faster than the chained dogs :-) And I've learned that knowing your users is great, and lets you have a better product or service. But I had 60 users. That's it. When you're building a product with scale, with thousands - millions - of users, can you really know your users? Working at a Wix for more than 4 years, with over a 100,000,000 (thats one hundred million) users - well, you can't know them all. No matter what. And you can't survey them (well you can - but we don't trust surveys - and that's a subject for a whole different blog post). So what can you do? Talk to your users. As many as you can. True - you will never interview/talk with as many as you could survey - but at least you'll get two things that are much more accurate: You'll feel the real passion of the user, for better or worse... They won't be answering theoretical questions about what feature they would possibly use (as often happens in surveys) but instead complain about what doesn't work or is missing - or what they love and why - and you'll hear their tone and voice. You'll learn aspects of their business you would never understand from a survey. It's not about "Would you use a shipping feature in a store - and what provider do you want" but instead - "Holiday season was great - and horrible - at the same time. I sold so many products in my online store - which was great. But then I had to carry all the packages to the Post Office, and stand in line for hours. If only you had a shipping feature in your store..." So the short answer is: You can - you must - know your users. You most probably can only know a small portion of your users. But be sure to know them. Listen to them. Talk to them. Then, go and do a winning product... #product #reuven #users