Month: October 2016

The article by Will Grice from The Sun discusses the recent change that Netflix are making to enable customers to download content that they would be able to watch offline.
Listening to the founder Reed Hastings talk about learning and growing constantly with the consumers, I found it odd to read that Netflix held such a harsh position for few years by not allowing customers to download content for offline viewing. Even after Amazon Prime launched such service and customers repeatedly asked Netflix to follow, they held their position and didn’t agree to make the change.
Nevertheless, Netflix is working nowadays to implement the change in service and was finally convinced to allow offline viewing, which initially would include mainly original Netflix productions and will preserve the focus on the company’s main advantage.
Eventually the whole story of Netflix’s success is based on learning their surroundings, courageous actions and feedback.

In the business world all companies should watch and learn from companies like Netflix. New and established companies should develop strong basis of principles that would lead them but at the same time be willing to adept and change in order to stay vital. Entertainment companies, different services and even retailers should keep updating and learning from their customers’ feedback otherwise they would be vanished by the competition.

Netflix is getting an OFFLINE mode and it’s going to make a lot of people happy

http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Why-Netflix-Won-t-Let-You-Download-Offline-Viewing-84077.html

A new startup company co-founded by former Google employees, named Osmo, is building an augmented reality game to educate kids on running a simple business. Pizza Co. is the name of their latest game, and the company has previously developed similar games to teach programming, drawing, and math before it. The company website is here

The game makes the kids build different types of pizza from cardboard cutout pieces and handle payment and change. The Osmo camera on the iPad on which the game runs then picks up the shapes and gives animated feedback to the kids, teaching them math and shape recognition skills.

I think this is a smart idea, to educate kids about money and transactions in early ages. If they learn the necessary skills early on, they might grow into more responsible adults and have the simple understanding of how money and transactions work in business. It is an essential skill later on in life, and making it into a game which uses physical objects is as close as it can get to the real learning experience at young ages.

So the new playstation is about to come out, and this is the first ever game system in the untied states where all the games are virtual reality. Every time a new playstaion or xbox is released if you don’t buy it the day it comes out it will be sold out for months. Basically if you don’t camp outside your local game store, and be there the second the store opens you will not get the new playstation. I remember when the last playstation came out I waited in line for hour and once I was almost at the front I sold my spot in line to someone for $400. Also my friends dad who actually stayed on the line and bought the playstaion ended up selling it on ebay that very same day for $2000 dollars. It’s just crazy how much time and money people will spend just to be the first ones to use a product, and that alone can create opportunities for people to capitalize. I’m also concerned/excited that if virtual reality is now possible what other innovations may be following the release of the playstation VR.

I have been seeing a lot of stories lately of people raising money on this website called go fund me. So basically you go to this website post a blog describing what your cause is and how much money you need to achieve whatever your goal may be. People all over the world can donate money to your cause via paypal, and leave friendly messages. This is very innovative because literally anybody can start any cause or business, and actually make it a reality with no kind of experience nessesary. My friend Dblock made a Go Fund Me account to raise money for his friend who has cancer just to buy him his dream bike. He was able to raise the $700 dollars in less than 23 hours, and got his friend the bike he always wanted. Now he has a new goal where he is trying to raise 150 thousand in order to buy special bikes so that disabled children with limited mobility can ride bicycles. here is a link to the story behind his friend who had cancer.

 

In the past two weeks or so I ran into a story through social media about a guy that delivered his resume to potential employer inside a doughnuts box in order to catch their attention and create an “out-of-the-box” (J) experience to make sure he stands out when considering him for the job.

It made me think about us as aspiring entrepreneurs that will write probably more than one business plan throughout our career and what we can maybe do to make it unique and appealing to investors. I think that if we consider the resume example we can probably think of all sorts of exceptional ways to make our business plan more creative during this class and to make sure it stands out when we approach investors in the future.

 

These are the links to the resume story and two articles about creative business plan ideas:

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/this-guy-hides-his-resume-in-boxes-of-donuts-to-score-job-interviews

https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/how-to-write-a-creative-business-plan-in/22923754275

http://www.wonderlass.com/blog/how-to-write-a-business-plan-for-creatives-a-free-template/

 

So I was watching the news the other day, and they had this little segment about how skitching was on the rise. Skitching is a word that has been developed when you are riding a bike, skateboard, or any type of manual pedaling device and you grab a motor vehicle and let them pull you. doing this will get you up to speeds that are not possible to reach if you were to pedal manually, but it can be extremely dangerous. This was not really news to me because I have seen and done this all the time but what got my attention is when the news anchors mentioned a bmx rider who had over 100000 views of him just skitching all over his city. When someone has that many followers or views on social media you start to get sponserships and can actually make money. So im thinking to myself that someone was actually making money off doing something that me and my friends do all the time maybe I could post videos like that as well. Anyway here is a link to a video of a skitch tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezi-vEqOdR8

I want to talk about a living legend in the bike messenger world. William Lopez is a 51 year old messenger who has been working for over 20 years in NYC. He goes by the nickname “Skeletor” and you can hear him coming from blocks away as he screams “hip hip yea yea” as he passes every intersection. He is a father of two and also battling lung cancer. Despite his age and health he is still out here to this day working on the same bike. He has been doing this since before I was born, and can also be seen in the documentary pedal. This is a movie I feel like everyone should watch at least once and this link is Skeletors profile in the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqTxNgEtL4I

Last Friday when I was riding my bike home from work I ran into a very interesting group of cyclist. They go by the name of Cycle Squad Maniacs. There was three of them I had the pleasure of meeting; Maniac Dblock, Mohamed Blockz, and Chino Blockz. I have always seen these guys around the streets doing bike stunts through heavy traffic, but on this day I had the honor of riding with them through uptown Manhattan, and the Bronx. We would all take turns popping wheelies through traffic, and doing all types of tricks while dodging cars. At one point during the night we ran into another group of stuntmen called Bike Life who are known for riding illegal dirt bikes and atvs all over NYC. When we saw these people Dblock instantly yelled for us to follow and said “its show time” at that point we all caught up to the motor bikes and started to wheelie next to them, and when they saw us they screamed out in approval and began doing tricks too. This lasted for about a mile until the bike life people got onto the highway and we split off from them. This was a very fun experience for me, and I later found out that Cycle Squad is pretty internet famous. Mohamed Blockz was on world star hip hop for doing a wheelie on his bike with one hand and leans all the way back until his other hand touches the ground and he pushes himself back into balance. They call it the 12:00. Dblock is famous as well for holding the record for the longest wheelie. Here is one of Dblock’s most recent videos where he wheelies through the Bronx with another person standing on the back of his bike.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHzN98WN8n4

Last week was the 2016 North American Cycle Courier Championship. It was the first time the event was held in NYC. With the help of the 33rd police precint, several streets were closed down in Williamsburg, Brooklyn so that a race course could be made and no cars were permitted to enter the premises. NACCC is an event for bike messengers all over the world to come together and celebrate their work. Its also a competition to see who is the best courier. The race course had 12 checkpoints, and each checkpoint was occupied by a sponsor of the event. at the start of the race you are handed a manifest with a list of checkpoints you must pick up packages from and then deliver to. You can complete them in any order but you must follow the rules of the course. First of all you can only travel with traffic and going against it will result in disqualification. At each checkpoint you must lock your bike or event staff will steal your bike and hide it. Also at each checkpoint the sponsers will act as clients so if you offend them in anyway you will also be disqualified, so its important that you are polite to everyone. The top 25% of messengers to complete the manifest the fastest adavance to the finals to compete for the NACCC champion. There are other side events where messengers compete to see who can bunny hop the highest, drift the longest, popping a wheelie, and who can do the best tricks on a bicycle in general. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to raise awareness about the services that delivery people provide to the world.

Transmedics has developed a new way to transfer organs while they are active to patients for an implant. Currently, they can deliver a heart, liver or lungs in working condition. Organs in this state beat or breathe while being transported. It is possible thanks to a medical device the company has developed which keeps organs active instead of the frozen transport method. Blood from the donor is circulated through the organ by the instrument to hold it in the best condition possible. More information about the process is available on the company webpage, but please do not click the link if you are disturbed by sight of blood or medical images. The device is currently ‘investigational’ which means it is not entirely ready for health use yet, but the company is still working on it. I think this prevents loss of life due to failed transplants because the organ does not have to go through the freezing and thawing process which destroys tissues and reduces success rate. The devices ability to contain the organ disease free and in good condition helps with lower mortality rate. Maybe soon startup companies such as Organovo or Cyfuse Biomedical who aim to print 3D organs for implant can also test and deliver the organs in a safer way, reducing mortality rates.