In this webinar, GSG’s Platform Evangelist Joey deVilla will talk about that area of an organization’s mobile telecom environment that goes, unobserved, unknown, or unmanaged — the terra incognita that we call “Dark Mobile”. We look at the negative effects it has on a company’s…
VarageSale — that’s short for “Virtual Garage Sale” — is the brainchild of Tami Zuckerman, who came up with the idea out of frustration while trying to clear out her house by selling stuff through Craigslist and similar marketplace sites. She and her husband developed an app that helped her sell her excess stuff with her smartphone, and while they didn’t start out intending to create a business, the idea grew into one.
VarageSale connects people through their Facebook profiles, and uses volunteer moderators to approve new members. You post items for sale and an asking price, and the app lets prospective buyers comment, haggle over price, or say “sold”! The service has grown in popularity, the Canadian tech news site TechVibes named them Canadian Startup of the Year for 2014, and in March, they raised $34 million in venture money from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. So to answer a question you might have already asked: yes, it looks like they’ve got a future.
I’ll personally vouch for VarageSale’s Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Baird, as someone who knows how to get things done. I know her through my developer evangelism work in Toronto with Tucows, Microsoft, and Shopify, and through her work at Interactive Ontario (a not-for-profit industry trade organization that encourages the growth of the interactive digital content industry in the province of Ontario), the social game development shop Social Game Universe, and at various industry events in Toronto’s thriving tech scene. She gets stuff done, and my feeling is that so will any company that where she’s COO.
If you get the job, you’ll be working remotely from Florida and in regular communication with the team at the head office in Toronto, Canada, which you’ll have to visit from time to time (it’s a great city). You’ll be part of the Growth Team and the “face” of VarageSale in the Sunshine State, get people hooked up with VarageSale and building up the community of Floridians who use it to buy and sell things. You’ll be part of their global expansion effort and working closely with their Launch, Marketing, and Happiness Teams to kick off their push in Florida and building and nurturing Florida’s VarageSale communities on an ongoing basis.
Some things about the community manager job (these are distilled from their job posting):
You’ll need to be able to communicate your passion and care for the community not just in person, but, more importantly, online.
You have to be comfortable being the celebrity in the grocery store and the go-to online resource for all VarageSale communities. This is a job for someone who can get in front of a crowd, “shake hands and kiss babies”, and get them to take action — namely, using VarageSale and getting them to get other people to use it as well.
Your job will be to grow VarageSale communities in Florida. This means building bases of users all over the state, finding and cultivating influencers to help get the word out, and organizing and hosting VarageSale events. That means showing up, which in turn means you’ll have to do some traveling.
You should be comfortable working remotely in a startup culture, and you should have some marketing and/or community management experience. If you’ve ever had to be the “face” of a product or service, that’s even better. And you’ll need to know how to work a community.
Because I had Star Wars on the brain at that moment, when I saw the announcement that the iPad Pro would feature keyboard cover and stylus accessories, this twist on a famous Obi-Wan Kenobi quote came to mind:
…and if you Google (or Bing, if you must) around, you’ll hear these cries of annoyance. Hey, I’m expecting a few myself, just for that “hundreds of Surface users” jab. I kid because I care.
Sometimes, the future predicted in jest comes true
As an unapologetic Apple fanboy, I am probably not the most expected source for seemingly anti-Apple sentiment. But a fact is a fact, and chief among Apple’s key strategies is waiting for years after a new service, feature or function is adopted and implemented by EVERY other competitive platform before putting their own spin on it and taking all the credit as if it were their own invention. They are almost always the last to the party, but they are always the best dressed, the most interesting, the sexiest and the only one everyone remembers the next day.
I don’t fault Apple for this type of behavior because all they are really doing is letting the other guys take the risks and make the mistakes and gauging public response based on other products before taking all of that knowledge and refining the hell out of their own product before launching it (2 or 3 years after the first one came out). Then WE, not Apple, create the notion that Apple did something new, different and spectacular. Apple is the only tech company not frothing at the mouth to be the first to a milestone. They have the foresight to know that in 5 -10 years, no one will remember who did it first. They will only remember who did it best. No one will ever say, “Did you see Apple’s new Diamond Rio Mp3 Player? It’s called an iPod.”
There will be whining…
…and highly-placed whining, too! Here’s Steve Sinofsky, former President of the Windows division and Microsoftie since 1989 on Twitter:
iPad Pro has a magnetic keyboard fold-out keyboard (with seamless key covers). What an awesome idea!! pic.twitter.com/ldspeuAysv
That’s pretty rich coming from a guy whose fortune in the industry comes from helping build the company that popularized the acronym “FUD”, whose internal mantra was “Embrace, extend, and extinguish”, and for whom this editorial cartoon is rather apt:
Microsoft may not have been original, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t creative (people often confuse the two), and they could execute.
It should be noted that Microsoft was into tablets and wearables long before the iPad and Apple Watch were even announced. Microsoft’s Tablet PC,SPOT watches, and Pocket PC devices were all available in the early aughts, but they failed to define their spaces in the same way that Windows did. Just as Microsoft out-IBM’d and Apple’d IBM and Apple on the desktop, Apple and Google would end up out-Microsofting Microsoft in the online and mobile worlds.
Presentation matters
For the people who invented a piece of software is practically synonymous with the word “presentation”, Microsoft have a lot to learn about giving them. Compare and contrast the original iPad “Stevenote”…
…with the original Surface keynote:
While not as polished as the Apple keynote, it was passable right up to that point where the device locked up during Sinofsky’s demo:
You can almost see the PIP being issued in his eyes.
“That was years ago!” a friend of mine who still works at Microsoft retorted when I recently brought it up, but if the recent Windows 10 keynote at IFA is any indication, they still have to clean up their presentation game. The reception for Windows 10 has been quite good so far, and they had an opportunity to get people even more excited about it. However, they dropped the ball so badly that even Windows super-fan Paul Thurrott was disappointed:
To anyone who was wondering how long it would take for Microsoft to kill Windows 10’s momentum, I submit today’s IFA keynote into evidence. — Paul Thurrott (@thurrott) September 4, 2015
If you have about 45 minutes to spare and nothing — and I mean nothing — better to do, here’s their IFA keynote, where they show a lot of computers to the tech press that they’ve already seen before:
If Microsoft needs a new slogan, they can take the full candor approach and go with “We never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.
It’s a shame: they’ve got a decent device in the Surface Pro, a decent OS in Windows 10, and some decent “develop with our platform, deploy anywhere” potential with their latest development tools; they just need better ways to get their points across.
To me, the most interesting product announcement at today’s Apple event was the all-new fourth-generation Apple TV. With support for apps and an all-new controller with touch and motion sensors, along with support for a number of game controllers, it’s the living room opportunity that iOS developers have been waiting for. It’s got the familiar iOS underpinnings, it gets hooked to the biggest screen in the house and is located in the most social room, it gives us a real shot at programming apps that incorporate Wii-like motions, and it comes with a market of customers reader to buy your wares. All we need is the chance to get our hands on one.
Luckily for us, Apple’s providing that opportunity. If you sign up at the Apple TV Developer Kit registration site before Friday, September 11 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific (3:00 p.m. Eastern /19:00 UTC), you could get sent a free Apple TV Developer Kit that includes the new Apple TV, Apple TV Remote, Power cord, Lightning to USB Cable, USB-A to USB-C Cable, and documentation.
There’s a limited number of these kits, so they’re giving priority to people who have apps in the store. This program is open to developers who have a valid Apple Developer Program membership as of this morning and who are based in one of the following countries:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Poland
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
Hey, a free toy to play with! What are you waiting for? Register now!
It’s September, which means it’s time for Apple to hold a big event. This one, which they’ve named “Hey Siri, give us a hint” in the promotional material, takes place today in San Francisco at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (1:00 p.m. Eastern, or 17:00 UTC). In this article, I’ll show you how you can watch it online as it happens if you have an Apple device, how to get live updates if you don’t have an Apple device, and what Apple watchers think will be announced today.
How to watch it online (if you have an Apple device)
Apple CEO Tim Cook delivering a keynote presentation.
Apple will livestream the event at apple.com/live, but you won’t be able to access it on just any old system that you may have lying around. It may be Apple snobbery, a way to make the Apple faithful feel special, a way to keep the broadband bandwidth and costs for what’s likely to be an insanely popular event down, or some combination of all three, but the most — but not all — of the ways you can watch the livestream involve an Apple device.
In order to watch the livestream, you’ll need one of the following:
An iOS device — that is, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 7.0 or later. If you’re like most iOS users, you’ve kept your device reasonably up-to-date and should be fine. To double-check which version of iOS you have, go to Settings, then select General (you may have to scroll down), then select About; then look for the Version item.
A Mac — Macbook, Mac Mini, iMac, or Mac Pro running:
OS X 10.8.5 (OS X 10.8 is also known as “Mountain Lion”) or later. To double-check which version of Mac OS you’re running, click on the Apple menu and select About This Mac. The version number should appear just below the headline for the window that appears.
Safari 6.0.5 or later. It has to be Safari: Apple is a jealous and angry god, and they won’t let you view their event on anyone else’s browser.
An Apple TV. It’ll need to be a second- or third-generation one running software 6.2 or later. To see which version of software your Apple TV is running, go to Settings, then General, then About.
A device running Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser.
How to get live updates
There are always a number of “liveblogs” of any given Apple announcement.
If you don’t have an Apple device or don’t want the full-on distraction of a live video stream, there are a number of people who’ll be “liveblogging” the event with short, quick, rapid-fire updates of text and photos. Here’s out list of media outlets who’ll be liveblogging today; just click on their link to see their liveblog:
This is the first really noticeable change to Google’s logo since 1999. There were a couple of tweaks in 2010 and 2013, but unless you’re into design, chances are that you didn’t notice. The transition from the original serif font, which has been less embossed over time, to this new, simpler, sans-serif typeface will be obvious even to non-designers. I suppose we were given a hint when Alphabet was announced — the new font is the same as the one on the alphabet blocks on that page:
According to their announcement on the Official Google Blog, the new look is meant to reflect Google’s ubiquity across all manner of computing devices — “whether it’s on your mobile phone, TV, watch, the dashboard in your car, and yes, even a desktop!” It also fits the “bold, graphic, intentional” look and feel that they’ve been going for since they unveiled Material Design.
In addition to a full-on wordmark, there’s this icon, which incorporates its four colors into a single “G”:
The Tampa tech scene wouldn’t be the same with the smiling face and hard work of Microsoft evangelist Joe Healy (he’s @DevFish on Twitter), whom I had the pleasure of meeting on the second week of my job at Microsoft back in 2008. Many developer/techie/creative events here in the Accordion Bay area come about with a little help from Joe, and I’m thankful for everything he does.
Every now and again, in order to help the community stay in touch — and possibly just to keep us off the streets — he holds “co-working office hours”, in which he opens up Microsoft’s Tampa offices to let indie, freelance, and other works not tied to an office space to come hang out, get work done, and even play a board game or two. I’ve been to a couple of these, and they’re part of my usual changes of pace that I set up to make sure I don’t go stir crazy at my home office.
For those of you not familiar with it, Tampa Bay Wave is a venture center, incubator/accelerator, coworking space, and general booster of entrepreneurial and techie activity for Tampa Bay. Founded in 2008, they’re a non-profit public charity whose goal is to support the local tech community and help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into growing businesses with their “for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs” approach.
Tampa Bay Wave’s marketing manager, Gracie Leigh Stemmer (she’s @GracieLeighz on Twitter) has invited us to all work at their new downtown Tampa facility, and Joe will be playing host. I’ll be there, and if you’d like to be there too — to work, play, or a little bit of both — come on down! You can find more details on the event’s meetup page.
It should be noted that Microsoft was into tablets and wearables long before the iPad and Apple Watch were even announced. Microsoft’s 
