Edward Kiledjian

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.- Desmond Tutu

First we saw digitization, then came appification, then gameification, then personalization and now we enter the era of hyper-personalization. 

Every consumer wants to feel loved, understood and wants to feel special. Being understood and being special means companies must understand the individual likes/dislikes of each consumer then tailor the consumer's experience during each interaction. 

This is done through signals and large companies have spent billions building and buying heavily used apps/service so that they can collect more. More signals means better tools for making hyper-personalization possible. 

When you open your Facebook news feed today, you often see elements that are of little interest to you. Facebook learns every time you choose to hide content and tries to do a better job next time. This is personalization. Hyper-personalization means the service will automatically know what it shouldn't show you and your feed will automatically be "clean".

This trend is spilling into other fields including medicine. If you are ill today, you go to one of the larger medical guidance sites, enter your symptoms (as best you can) then the site provides a laundry list of possible causes. It's better than rushing to the clinic every time you feel a little hot, but hyper-personalization demands more.

The Scanadu Scout is a health monitoring, tracking and recording device. It is designed for you will hold it to your forehead and it will scan your vitals then provide customized hyper-personalized recommendations on what to do? 

We are seeing pharmaceutical companies working on genetics based medicine in an effort to reduce negative side-effects and provide more effective treatments based on each person's genetic makeup (this is hyper-personalization of medication).

But what about the enterprise?

Most companies I have worked with still do not see the tidal wave about to hit them. Even though there are thousands of signals they can collect from employees, partners, suppliers and customers, most simply do not and waste valuable information that could lead to building a substantially more profitable organization. 

The hyper-personalized enterprise could design more efficient employee systems that pro-actively provide the right information to the right person at the right time using the right medium. 

If you are a car company, you can equip each of your cars with a car monitoring system that records and uploads millions of sensor data to the manufacturer every evening (when the car is parked in the driveway.) The car manufacturer can then tailor the service maintenance schedule per car based on distance driven, driving style, weather conditions, etc (instead of the generic oil change every x miles). Not only can it be used to generate custom maintenance programs but it should also know where the customer works/lives, where and when it is most convenient for them to take the car in and proactively call the customer with a proposed reservation. 

Shifting role of CIO

When I consult with large organizations or start-ups, my first recommendation is to source all commodity services from the cloud (where legally possible). Every dollar you save on non-value generating commodity services can then be used to drive these new hyper-personalization services. Using cloud services also means your hiring strategy will be much more evolved. Instead of hiring 12 employees to manage your email infrastructure, you hire 1 person to manage the vendor relationship and commit the 11 other hires to these new emerging value generating activities. 

Many CIOs will not be able to handle this radical shift we are asking them to make. Change is inevitable and pushing back will only force the business unit heads (which see the need for these new services to keep up with the competition) to build the missing pieces themselves [without IT] causing inefficient silos.

A modern CIO will see this as his/her opportunity to become a huge value driver within the organization, instead of the cost centre most IT departments have become. 

This modern CIO not only has to have the desire to change and evolve, but must also have a background in general business (finance, supply chain, legal, manufacturing, sales, strategy, etc) and understand the shifting nature of computer science (advanced computation, machine learning, etc).

Rewarded will be the organizations who see this shift coming and adapt quickly. The shift has already started, where does your organization stand?

I love gadgets related to camping or survival. Over the summer, I had the opportunity to test various solar chargers in real world situations and after all the testing was done, the Joos Orange won a special place in my heart.

The Joos Orange is a big heavy plastic box with a solar panel on it. Unlike all of the other major solar chargers I tested, it was the only one that is completely self contained (battery, circuitry and solar panel), waterproof and can be locked to a tree, table or other immovable item. 

Although its WATT rating was low (considering its weight), its solar cell is extremely efficient and it performed superbly well in all weather conditions.

It's the power dummy

The best place to start the review is with its power performance. I compared the Joos Orange to the SolarMonkey adventurer, Instapark Mercury and the Goal Zero. The Orange Joos charged my tablets (ipad and Nexus 7) or smarpthone (Note 3 or iPhone 5s) as fast or faster than its competitors. 

The built in angle legs held position the Orange Joos in the optimal position to catch the sun's rays.

These legs are a small touch that made a big difference in the field. Plus it was the only charger I tested that had these angle legs. 

The device comes with a 5400mAH built in battery that is large enough to partially charge an iPad or to fully charge an iPhone twice. You can pre-charge the battery before leaving which means the solar panel only has to top off the battery as you use it.

If you have a laptop, they offer a little app (MAC or Windows) that allows you to monitor the efficiency of the solar panels and the battery power level.

In field use

Here comes one of my biggest annoyances with the device, you have to use their USB cables. Why oh why.... Since the iPhone 5s lightning connector was not included in my kit, I used their Joos-to-USB connector plugged into my Apple cable. You can buy the lightning adaptor from them for $10 plus S&H. This one design flaw kept annoying me every time I wanted to charge a device. When you buy the kit, it comes with the basic Apple 30-pin connector, micro USB and standard USB connectors all stored in a weird waterproof zip up bag. 

The next version of the Joos Orange should have a standard USB connection. I can't stress that enough. There was one instance where I took the Orange Joos but forgot the proprietary connector at home so the kit was useless. 

Once I got over the above issue, every thing else was wonderful. I had a chance to test it in all kinds of weather conditions from direct bright sunlight to all day overcast with rain. In every situation, the little charging light was blinking. Since none of its competitors were waterproof, I was hesitant to leave them out when rain was possible. Plus the Orange Joos seemed to charge faster in every condition. In bright summer sunlight, I charged the battery from completely dead to full in about 9.25 hours. 

When you add the reflectors (sold separately), they cut charing time by about 35-40%. Which made the great charging time of the Orange Joos even better. Having installed and removed the reflectors about 60-80 times since this summer, you can see a little wear around the screw insertion spots. This won't impact performance but the charger will outlive the cheaper plastic reflectors for sure.

The large hole at the top of the charger was great for attaching to the outside back of my backpack while hiking. Other times I use to leave it at the camp site to charge in the sun and use to lock it to a large wooden picnic table to prevent theft. Nice design touch. 

I read over a hundred reviews on various internet sites and a complaint that kept coming up is related to the connector. A small percentage of users complained that after several months of use, the connector would become unreliable and you would have to fiddle with it to "make" the connection. After my months of in field testing, I didn't encounter this issue but wanted to make sure you were aware of it. I emailed some questions to their support team and always received prompt courteous responses. If your device does encounter this connector issue just contact them.

Q&A with the company

During my tests, I had some questions for Solar Joos and thought you may benefit from the answers so here it is.

Q1 - What drove the creation of SolarJoos and the Orange?

"The technology was originally created for commercial phone charging stations(before my time here), but ran into some complications so the founders decided to create a consumer product since there is such a large and growing market for portable power.  Since we have the best solar technology it made sense to try to create a consumer product for portable power, we came up with the JOOS Orange." - Dan Trautman

Q2 - What differentiates you from the other major solar player

"What separates us from Goal Zero and everyone else is our patented technology that allows us to use one complete solar cell(as opposed to cutting multiple cells into strips and wiring them together in a series).  It is an internal component that takes the 2.6W from the solar cell and 'saves' up enough to output at 5W into the battery so USB devices can charge from the battery.  Our competitors have to have enough solar cell strips to equal 5W which is why ours is a much smaller form factor.  If half of their solar mat gets covered in shade charging will stop.  You can cover 95% of our cell with shade and it will still collect some power from the sun as opposed to not working at all.  This is how the JOOS is able to charge in low light(real-world) conditions.  Also, the JOOS Orange has an internal battery that the solar cell charges and then the battery charges your device as opposed to having to have the solar cell and device in the sun simultaneously.  The sun doesn't have to be out for the JOOS to charge a device if there is power in the battery.  We also have a patent on our social media idea for people to be able upload their solar collecting data and compare with other JOOS customers, it will be a much better version of our dashboard diagnostic software."  - Dan Trautman

Q3 - What are the 2-3 most striking use cases you know for your product?

" Last year, the JOOS became a pretty popular device for helping keep families connected when hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the US.  The JOOS has also helped mountaineers summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Denali, and many other mountains.  We also have many customers in the Peace Corps that use it to stay connected while in remote parts of the planet.  We've also donated a few units to a US based project that helps bring tablets to schools in remote villages in Africa. the JOOS is their power source." - Dan Trautman

Q4 - How much is a replacement battery?

Replacement batteries are $29.99 and should last 200-300 cycles (about 1 year).

Q5 - Are there any other products in development?

"Yes, many new and exciting things are in the works.  We'll have a larger unit for better tablet charging and laptop charging.  Plus a smaller version(1 smart phone charge) that will be much more portable geared toward everyday usage and travel." - Dan Trautman

Conclusion

I really liked the Orange Joos Solar charger because it is self-contained (battery plus solar charger), water proof, charged extremely well in all types of weather and durable. If these are qualities you are searching for then buy the Orange Joos and I promise you won't be disappointed. 

If however you don't care about your solar panel being self contained. If you don't need a water proof solar charging solution. If you aren't concerned about maximizing charging in various weather conditions. If you need something lightweight then you may want to look at some of the other solar charing kits (like the InstaPark Mercury 10 - link - combined with an external battery). 

I'm excited to see what Solar Joos does with future products. 

Many of our most valuable assets are now online (banking, backups, social media, etc). Losing control of these means weeks of work to rectify the situation. 

Most internet users often forget that their security is only as good as the weakest link and in most cases the weakest link is email. If a hacker gains access to your primary email account, they can then go through you emails, figure out what services you use and request a password reset from those services (which will most often send the reset link to your email account).

I recently received a frantic call from an old colleague who had her GMAIL account taken over by hackers. Within minutes, they had reset password to many of her most important sites (including her bank, online stock broker, twitter, Facebook, smugmug private photo album, etc). She was devastated and recovering all of her accounts took months.

How could she have protected herself? She could have avoided all of this if she had simply enabled 2 factor authentication for her email service.

Most well known sites now support some sort of 2 factor authentication and you should go enable it now.

Enable 2-Factor Authentication For Google Services

There is a great site called 2 factor auth (link) that lists the larger sites that support 2 factor authentication.

Google is constantly pushing to map our big blue marble and some of those locations just aren't accessible via car. What is Google to do? They have resorted to Camel power to records the desert of LIWA in the UAE. 

Not news worthy but we have all been wondering what the L will stand for.

Nice to see Google having some fun.

There are dozens of large well respected online sites that protect their content using paywalls. A paywall is a fancy way to define  subscriber only content. In the above case, it is an article about Elon Musk's electric car company called Tesla.

Unfortunately I can't read the article. If I click the X to close the subscription options, I get taken back to the homepage. But there is a way to gain access to the content without paying the subscription.

The trick to access the content is fairly straightforward. Right click on the link from the home page and copy the destination URL.

Then head over to Google Translate (link) and paste the URL into the translation box. Make sure the translate to is also English.

Then press Translate. The inaccessible site is now "translated" from english to english and you gain access to the content. 

This is possible because many sites want search engines to index their content (in order to drive traffic) so when the page is read by Google, access is permitted and Google then displays it to you.

Everybody loves free and now Amazon is giving you $165 worth of apps for free (nada, zilch) on its Android AppStore.

The offer includes a wide range of categories from office productivity to gaming. 

Examples of the free apps includes:

• Sonic 4 Episode II
• Riptide GP2
• Threes
• Paper Camera
• Sketchbook Pro
• OfficeSuite Pro 7
• Swype keyboard
• Perfectly Clear <- AMAZING PHOTO APP. Get it Get It Get It!
• Merriam-Webster Pro dictionary
• City Maps 2 Go (great offline maps for travel)
• many many more

Deal will be offered until September 27 so download it while the downloading is good.

Here is the link to the Amazon AppStore promo page (link)

A lot of people buy the GoPro adventure camera (cam) as the family vacation video camera. Putting these people aside, the real adventure seekers are the ones that are ready for a challenge anytime day or night. But the GoPro doesn't work at night (quality really degrades quickly as it get's darker and darker). But fear not my friend, the Knog Qudos is here to shed light when ordinary lights scare away and break. 

The GoPro friendly accessory mounts next to your beloved recorder and shines a very bright 400 lumens in wide angle mode (175 in target spot and 275 in ultra wide). The Qudos is waterproof to 40m (131 ft for my american readers) which means this light can go anywhere your GoPro can rain or shine, mountain or ocean. 

The add-on can be used for only $119. Get info on the company's website (link)

There are times when you will be off-grid (camping, disasters, remote location work, etc). You could use satellite phones to stay in touch with your team but that can get costly very quickly. A company called BearTooth claims to have built a smartphone sleeve that turns it into an FRS style radio that uses unlicensed bands to communicate (it seems to convert your cell into a high priced software controlled FRS radio).

It will allow you to have voice conversations, send text messages and send your geolocation information. 

The company claims it will have similar range to "normal" unlicensed band style radios (which means it should work over a couple of miles depending on the terrain). The magic is encased in aircraft grade aluminium and contains the radio and battery. The company says the device will will be controlled by custom built software that will be available for both  IOS (iphone) and Android (Samsung, HTC, Nexus, etc).

It will be available "sometime" next year and pricing hasn't been announced yet. You can checkout the company's website for more information (link).