GaryEimerman.com

You’ve had to be living under a rock or not have a soul if the past few years if you haven’t been trying to become “greener.” Greener food, greener driving, greener electronics have all become part of my life in recent times, but at the end of the day I’m a tech geek. I love my toys and with each and every new gadget I get there is that much more junk that ends up in the landfills. Multiply that by the 100,000s and if not millions of other early adopters we make for a lot of non recyclable garbage. The components in today’s electronics not only have a half life long than most can calculate, but are also poisoning water and food supplies if then end up at a landfill close to a source.

There is now a service to help technology early adopters be a littler greener. Gazelle.com has stepped into be a reCommerce service that helps you sell and recycle your used electronics. They’ll pay you for your slightly used laptops, phones, cameras, and pretty much anything that’s electronic. They even pay for shipping the device to them. Then they resell the products on eBay, Amazon, refurbished and sell in bulk, or properly recycled depending on the devices, condition, and demand. Even if the product is valueless or not working they promote you sending it in with other items and they’ll recycle it at no cost.

It’s really great if you think about it, less than 1% of all electronics survive beyond their first user and many times there is technology that as an early adapter you wouldn’t be caught dead using or claiming ownership to 2 years, 1 year, 9 months, maybe even less after buying. So much of that is cutting edge tech or more than a non techie-snob could expect.

Gazelle’s makes it super easy to go to their site, narrow down the product and then they use a “patent pending technology” to calculate what they pay for it. Besides using the cheesy “patent pending” clique its very straight forward and you can choose to sell or not. You may not make as much as on eBay, but this is for those of us that aren’t 100% in it for the money and hate the hassle. It’s also just perception, but on eBay or Amazon I don’t get the warm fuzzies inside that come with doing something good, but the spin Gazelles has makes me feel good about recycling.

In the end gazelle.com is a business like any other (right now claiming margins around 20%), but next time you’re done with a gadget make an effort to dispose of your older gadget with a green touch. Find a place to recycle or re-sell your gadget and be a little bit greener.

I’m currently in the midst of reading The Knack – How Street Smart Entrepreneurs Learn To Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, which I already believe is, a must read for anyone who currently has or ever plans to own or run a business. There is no such thing as a step by step guide to running a business, but what Norm and Bo do in this book is educate you on situations. They help you train your brain to be prepared for the different situations that come up when running a business.

There is coverage on profit margin, selling, negotiating, delegation and much more, but where the value of this book is truly located is in Norm’s lessons taught through experience. Norm has written this book as if you were sitting down next to him and he was giving you the training that you could then take and apply to your own situation. (I especially like this because it is a method of teaching that we employ at Train Signal with our computer training.)

One lesson that resonates softly throughout all of the lessons and is brought up specifically dealing with negotiating is “You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get” a quote he learned from his father. I’ve heard this same quote many times and in many forms and I always feel it is worth repeating. We all know that you can’t get what you don’t ask for, but many people are bound by the fear of rejection. Sure, rejection can lead to momentary disappointment, but that’s only if you expect to be accepted. So many times you find yourself not asking a question because you expect to be rejected. If that’s the case why not ask? If you’re expecting rejection you shouldn’t even be disappointed if that’s what is expected. Just smile and move on to your next great question. In cases where the other party says, “yes”, then you’re surprised and walk away happy or with an experience that you otherwise would have just thought about.

People who ask the questions that others don’t many times are more successful in business than those who keep their questions bottled up. Why? Because they don’t have to wonder what-if? They get to experience that which others don’t? They get everything they want? They’re just naturally more successful? No, it’s because as in life, in business, there are multiple people who have different desires and needs. Making assumptions on the desires and needs of others is just a way to miss out on an opportunity to find out exactly what they desire or need. How? By asking them!

Money, time, and flexibility are just a few of the needs and desires that people have to factor in when making any decision. By asking those involved what their needs or desires are and listening to the information they respond with many times will lead you to getting more of what you want. Almost every decision in life is a negotiation. Sometimes it is between you and yourself and sometimes it is with you and others.

To offer an example of this in the personal world think about the classic boy meets girl situation. Asking that cute guy or girl you just met out on a date so often is an opportunity missed due to fear of rejection. A good percent of people are afraid to talk to or ask the other sex out for company for fear of rejection. At first, most people don’t realize that dating and relationships are just a series of negotiations (this never changes, no matter how long the relationship, the best negotiating couples are the ones that last.) When you first meet someone you don’t know what they’re looking for, what they’re thinking, etc… What better way to find out then to just ask.

There is no guarantee that by just asking you’ll be happier, more successful, or anything will change, but by asking you will know one thing for sure; you won’t have to question yourself “what if?” Here is to asking.

Recently I was in a discussion with a hiring manager for a Chicago marketing company and he brought up he just can’t find talent that has the ‘It’ factor right now. I looked at him and asked him what is ‘It’. His response was less than satisfactory to me, “You know, when an employee just gets ‘it’. It was then I realized that I too had used the ‘it’ factor in the past to describe what I wanted in a canidate. Hell, I’ve heard about having ‘it’ or just getting ‘it’ in every industry I’ve been involved in. ‘It’ is not limited to just business. The greatest athlete of all time had the ‘it’ factor. Why? In my opinion, laziness or lack of effort to define ‘it’ by the person describing someone as having ‘it’.
 
If my product team manager came to me and said I need a new employee for position xyz, one item I would request from him is a list of the skills and attributes that his choice canidate would have. If he put ‘they get it’ on the scorecard or job description I’d throw it back at him and tell him to come back when he’s thought it out more.
 
So why do managers continually wonder why they can’t find another candidate who just gets it? Because they don’t know what ‘it’ is. If you are referring to the ‘it’ factor then you haven’t put the time in to define what the it factor is. ‘It’ is a generalization for something that is that is probably quite important to getting what you want or don’t want out of an employee or canidate. Using ‘it’ as a descriptive feature is also bad communication. There is no way to measure ‘it’ because it isn’t properly defined and people are going to define and measure it differently.
 
Let’s use Michael Jordan as an example because there are very few people who are as recognizable globally as being so extremely skilled in his former profession. Many people when looking at MJ and his accomplishments say, “man, that guy just had ‘it’.” So let’s play the role of an NBA GM looking for the next MJ. If I tell my scouts I need someone who has the ‘it’ factor of Michael Jordan, they’ll be confused, probably go out and find a very talent player who they believe has ‘it’ and bring them back to me. If I’m lucky I’ll they player will fit what I’m looking for, but more likely I’m going to have a good player that doesn’t meet my expectation of having ‘it’. That because I didn’t define ‘it’ so lets do that. This is the same thing that happens when you pass a job description off to HR to hire or just hire on your own. If ‘it’ isn’t defined and measured then you are only lucky if you get what you’re looking for.
 
*Unfortunately, I’ve only coached MJ in my imagination on my driveway court as a kid or in video games and my career as Chicago Bulls GM never got started, so I’m going to use some assumptions on skills and experience.
 
Defining what ‘it’ is starts by creating three lists. One list should be what does this person does that others who don’t have ‘it’ don’t. Second and third is then listing the skills and attributes of the ‘it’ individual and the non ‘it’ individuals and comparison of the two list to identify the ‘it’ factors. I personally like starting with the list of what the someone who just has it or gets it does that others don’t first because it helps me then list the attributes out that make the most difference and not every attribute.
 
What does Michael Jordan have that I want above and beyond a talented basketball player?
- he was one of the most clutch athletes of all time
- he is the leading all time scorer
- he made the players around him better / relentless leader
- he is a marketing and sponsor giant.
 
What skills or attributes lead to these (For sake of the length I’ll only do it for the first point)
- Michael was an exceptionally conditioned athlete
- he was mentally sound individual. He missed as many last second shots as he made, but it never changed he desire to be the one in control of the outcome. He was able to forget the misses and focus on his next opportunity to make one.
- he practiced almost additively
- his preparation for games included studying video and knowing the trends and skills of players on the other team
 
What are the skills he had that other didn’t? (I’m making assumptions here, but you will be able to have more concrete knowledge of your positions and expectations)
There are plenty of exceptionally conditioned atheletes, players that practice almost around the clock, and players, coaches and teams that prepare and study for games.
- Michael’s mental fortitude
 
In this case, one ‘it’ factor is mental fortitude. It doesn’t mean that all those other features that other players are attributes that I want in my next player. Actually in this case those are all elements I want, but want it means is I have defined an ‘it’ factor that I can now go to my scout and work with them to figure out the best way for us to measure this attribute.
 
If you have a great employee who gets it and you want to replicate them; take some time, step back and define what are their ‘it’ factors. Believe me its worth your time and while you’re not able to clone employee (just yet at least ) you’re going to have a much higher likelyhood of replicating the success employee in future hires if you’ve define ‘it’.

I recently came across a new website/service called Dirpy. They are currently in the beta testing phase, but in my experiences with the product it has performed excellently. Dirpy utilizes the YouTube API in order to transcode the video to MP3 in real-time upon a request. What does this mean for you? It means with just a few clicks and just a few seconds (depending on your internet connection) you can download an MP3 of your favorite video. Additionally, if you want to be able to take the video to go with just one more click you can download the video as well. It supports HD videos if the video is available. I haven’t tried it yet, but I assume if you download the HD version mp4 file you’ll be able to load it up on your iPad if you want to take it to go. *The non-HD files will not work with iPod, iPad, iPhone as they are Flash files which aren’t supported by Apple. Here are a couple of quick how to’s with Dirpy.

How to create an MP3 from a YouTube Video with Dirpy:

1) Go to www.dirpy.com

2a) Enter in the URL of the YouTube Video
For the demo I’m going to use a video of my wife Erin during her grad school program she took an acting class and this is her final exam.

2b) Search for the YouTube Video
It’s a nice feature that if you don’t know the URL of the video that you want you can just search as if you were on YouTube itself.
3)Modify File Information
Notice that there are a couple of elements that you can modify on this page. First is the Filename. I like to keep all of my files with the same naming convention, so I normally modify this. By default this is filled with the title of the video, but you can quickly change this to your liking. Second is the transcoder settings. They start out giving you the ability to set start and end times. By default its the entire video, but if you just need a sound byte you can edit this to just be that segment. The bitrate can be modified, but unless file size is very important to you I’d suggest leaving this at the default (high – 128 kb/s). The ID3 tags is the info that displays on your MP3 player or searchable in programs like iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc… I like a clean media library so I personally add as much info to this as I know, but it is all optional.

4) Click Download
Once you’ve clicked download your browser will start downloading the MP3 file. Next to the download button you will see an estimate of file size. Finish it off by launching the MP3 with your favorite media player or toss it on your mobile device and enjoy.

How to Download a Video From YouTube with Dirpy:

This process is almost identical to downloading an MP3 from YouTube using Dirpy

1) Go to www.dirpy.com

2a) Enter in the URL of the YouTube Video

2b) Search for the YouTube Video

It’s a nice feature that if you don’t know the URL of the video that you want you can just search as if you were on YouTube itself.

3)Modify File Information

Notice that there are a couple of elements that you can modify on this page, but really only one effect the video, the Filename. By default this is filled with the title of the video, but you can quickly change this to your liking.  The bitrate and ID3 tags are for the MP3 and don’t change the video file.

4) Choose Video Quality to Download
Here you get the choice of quality, 240p in a Flash FLV file or 360p in a MP4 file. IF the original was not uploaded as a HD video you will get an error trying to download the higher quality file.

The video download seems to be much clunkier than the MP3 and shows a few places for UI (User Interface) improvement. It would be nice to see the MP3 download button and video download links turned into three separate buttons labled “Download Mp3″ “Download 240p Video” and “Download 360p Video” respectively. It would also be nice if the options that only effect the MP3 be organized in a section title “MP3 File Options” so not to confuse users not familiar with what works with the video and what works with the audio.

Overall, I’m a big fan of this service. I’ve already ran into a spot where I came across an amazing cover song that isn’t available anywhere and downloaded the file and tossed it on my iPod to listen to in the car. I do have some concerns about what people can do with this. The quality is lossless, but if an artist has a good quality upload of a song this makes it way too easy to download that song. I could see a lot of hubbub (did I really just use that word…oh well) if this service takes off and gains popularity. It would be nice to give content owners the ability to choose if something like this can be done on their videos; however the realist in me knows there are always going to people and ways to illegally get content off sites like YouTube. *There is a way that content developers can already block sites like this. If the video has embedding turned off and must be viewed on YouTube, you won’t be able to use Dirpy to get the files.

All around I’m quite impressed by Dirpy and the use of the YouTube API. I like how the related videos is incorporate right into the Dirpy website. You can find yourself wondering through videos just as if you were on YouTube’s website. I’ll be starting a YouTube Channel with a bunch of the videos from the site. Once it’s setup feel free to head over to www.Dirpy.com and get copies for you’re own offline use.

As a wanna be guitarist and guitar fan I had to share this little gem of a video. Orianthi and Steve Vai definitely know how to shred and do a great job of making the guitars sing on this song.

Last month I had a great opportunity to attend streaming media west. I had an opportunity to sit down and chat with the team over at Ooyala. If you’re looking for an all in one video platform make sure to check them out. Here is a quick video of Wendy (Senior UI Developer) and myself chatting about our use of ooyala.

Not to long ago Mark Cuban blogged about “What’s the next and 1st big broadband Application?” and it got me thinking. Right now all these applications that are requiring huge amounts of bandwidth are nothing more than video for the most part. There is nothing groundbreaking out there. We’ve have TV blasted to us for over 70 years and even in the more recent years High Definition is quickly becoming the norm. So if anything these applications are just trying to catchup with the other media offerings we accustom to.

With the continued improvement in broadband bandwidths we’ll see more and more content brought into and out of the home and office, but why are we building/getting them now?!?

Some comments to his posting noted concerns about not building an application because of bandwidth limitations is the common thought. I’d like to address that from a different direction…if your application or product is so groundbreaking that it becomes a necessity, users will get the bandwidth to use it. The key is to not just make a bandwidth hungry app to use the pipe, but to make it so feature rich and usable that it needs that extra bandwidth.

I would love to see/build the ability to go to CNN(or any other news station) on my TV and watch the live feed or pull up any or all of the segments that I choose right there on demand.

What about a refrigerator that provides you access to the local markets and gives you instant pricing and stock on whatever you need. Even a 3G/wireless approach like the Kindle where your grocery store picks up your wireless tab for accessing their system by closing the sales right then and there at your fridge.

Those are just some of the end user potentials. If you stepped into any corporate office and looked at their systems the opportunities are endless. The efficiency of business in this global economy can improve much beyond Teleconferencing and VoIP. Imagine building prototypes live on a Surface style PC with your marketers and engineers around the world and all the same time utilizing cloud computing to calculate product wear, market share and production costs.

One thing I believe that needs to come first or at least with more broadband applications is a more widespread secure/encrypted traffic. The net is not always friendly and for something to be truly groundbreaking the user will have to share sensitive data. Encrypting all traffic on the web would increase the overhead, but give many users the confidence to utilize the bandwidth in more groundbreaking ways.

Media is always looking for the next great idea or at least the next unique idea. Well I’ve definitly stumbled across a unique one last weekend. Casey Pugh, a mind behind Vimeo has started a new project called Star Wars Uncut in which you can stake claim to 15 seconds of a Star Wars movie that you then recreate in any way you would like. After the entire movie is claimed and produced all of the clips will be compiled to create the most unique version of Star Wars A New Hope ever seen.

If Lucas Films isn’t already supporting this project they need to get their heads right and back them. Maybe help out with possible DVD production after the completion of the project. You’ve got 2000 of the most die hard fans rebuilding a classic. There is no doubt that if cultivated properly this can turn into a fantastic venture bringing old media and new media together.

Hats off to Casey and his team for coming up and executing another great idea.

Have you found another great, unique idea floating out there? Let me know.

I guess this is a perk of being a pro hockey player. All I’ve got to say on this one is sign me up. I’ll puke my guts out and love every second of it.