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Manufacturing beautiful and functional hardware is more difficult than ever due to capital demands and a lack of hardware experience on most startup teams. My experience at Apple taught me some important lessons about hardware design and production that, if heeded by hardware startups, provide an opportunity to bring innovative products to market without suffering setbacks – or even failure – from preventable mistakes.

1.  Get inside the factory

I’ve met too many people in this game who make one trip to China, pick a manufacturing partner, and never visit again. All of the companies they represent eventually end up with enormous problems when it comes time to launch. Get out on the manufacturing floor and talk to the line managers and operators. You’ll be amazed at what you learn about the manufacturing process and about your manufacturing partner. Seemingly small pieces of information from the factory floor can later help you refine product design for better manufacturability or even clue you in to larger issues with factory management.

In 2010, we had a supplier in China that had agreed to increase capacity by 50 percent over the next nine months. It had been a few months since anyone from my team had visited the factory, so I stopped by to see how the expansion was coming along. To my surprise, only about half of the new equipment needed was actually on order. After speaking with the floor manager, we learned that he was not given the resources to meet our expansion plans. Needless to say, we had to have a fairly direct conversation with senior management to get the expansion back on track.

2. Build prototypes close to home

3D printing houses and rapid prototyping shops are popping up all over the U.S.. You often get what you pay for in this realm, so it isn’t where you want to pinch pennies. Use the proto phase to refine, refine and refine some more. That way, when it comes time to spend money on pricey mass-production equipment, you only have to do it once. Mass production molds for plastic parts can cost upwards of $50,000, so finding out two parts just don’t fit together quite right after you’ve started mass production is an excellent way to jeopardize and even kill your company.

The added benefit of prototyping close to home is that your engineering team can iterate faster.  3D prototypes can be on your doorstep in a few days, compared to the four to six weeks needed for other prototyping methods. Expedited turnaround times accelerate overall development cycles, and in turn, reduce development costs. Rapid development also gets your product to market faster than the competition!

3. For mass production, China isn’t the only game in town

Examine the total cost of your supply chain. If you’re building product in China, you need to do the math on how it is getting to the U.S., where it will be packaged, cost of import duties, what happens if a product is defective, and a thousand other questions. Each of those factors has a cost implication, and when added together, startups sometimes discover that Chinese manufacturers are not price leader after all.

Look for manufacturing opportunities closer to your customer. For instance, there is tremendous manufacturing talent and capacity in places like Guadalajara, Mexico, where you can benefit from NAFTA tariffs and reduced logistics costs, not to mention low cost of labor.

4.  The job doesn’t end after launch

Once you launch (congrats!), resist the temptation to sit back and watch it all happen. To the contrary, monitor your supply base like a hawk. There is a reason Apple has thousands of supply chain professionals on the ground in countries around the world. When things go wrong, they can go very wrong very fast. Actively monitoring supply chain data and maintaining a transparent relationship with managers at each node in the supply chain will prevent most issues.

When it comes to tracking data, inexperienced startups are often overwhelmed with the amount of data and tracking options a modern-day supply chain produces on a second-by-second basis. It doesn’t take an Apple-size team to avoid most supply chain issues. Figure out what your key data points are and track those on a daily or weekly basis. Take the time up front to build reporting tools that make it easy for you or your team to see at a glance if there is a problem building.

For instance, my team was able to monitor over a billion dollars of annual procurement across 22 factories using just six spreadsheets. Careful planning and foresight will go a long way towards ensuring that data can be used to proactively identify and resolve issues.

5.  Tim Cook is right – inventory is “fundamentally evil”

Most startups I’ve encountered are unaware of how excess inventory can quickly crush a small business. The simple answer to inventory management is to never carry more inventory than you absolutely, positively need (easier said than done). Before production starts, set realistic goals for inventory turns and days of inventory. If inventory exceeds pre-defined levels, shut down your supply chain. Shut it down entirely.

You simply can’t afford to have more product coming off the line if you’re not going to be able to sell it. You may find yourself in an uncomfortable position with your supply chain, but that discomfort is minor compared to the pain of writing off a massive inventory. If you don’t agree with this approach, please refer to RIM’s colossal $485 million inventory write-off at the end of 2011.

Oh, and one more thing:  Fire any engineer that ever says “it’s not possible.” That no-can-do mentality has no place at an innovative startup. Attitudes are infectious and that one is positively poisonous within an engineering organization that strives to innovate. People who are motivated by the challenge to push a manufacturing process to a smaller tolerance or a larger scale than ever achieved before are the lifeblood of innovative hardware organizations. Everyone else is just dead weight and a liability to your mission.

Bill Banta is currently a student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and CEO of Stealth HD, which builds 360-degree video technology for the military and media broadcasters. Previously he worked at Square and also at Apple.

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Making more engine power used to mean that you’d be changing everything from the camshaft and carburetor, to the intake and heads. It was an arduous process that was time consuming and at days end, cost major money. In today’s world though, increasing horsepower can be as simple as plugging in a laptop computer and hitting a few buttons. Chris Harris recently found this out when a little bump in software gave his lightly battered Audi S4 wagon a big boost in performance. Check it out after the jump.

Source: Youtube.com/DRIVE

Will Austin be the next city to get a gigabit network?

The City of Austin and Google are hosting an event next Tuesday on April 9, and sources in the city suspect it is related to a broadband announcement. As a resident whether or not we are getting Google Fiber is my first and most pressing question, but if this is a gigabit announcement, it has big ramifications beyond my personal broadband speeds.

The invitation reads:

You are a leader here in Austin. Every day, your work and contributions help make our community better and stronger. That’s why we want you to be one of the first to hear about something new coming to Austin. Please join Google and the City of Austin for an announcement on Tuesday.

It’s possible that Google’s invite is nothing more than an invitation to business leaders to hear about a new office or a pilot program for a Google service such as same-day delivery. However, Google has said that it is thinking about deploying other gigabit networks outside of the one it is turning on in Kansas City. And Austin was pretty high up in the running with regards to the initial competition between cities to get Google’s fiber network. With a tech savvy population, a city-owned utility that might be able to offer concessions when it comes to stringing fiber along telephone poles and business and a government willing to work with Google, Austin has many of the elements that might draw Google.

Google declined to comment for this story.

At the launch of Google Fiber last summer in Kansas City, Google’s Milo Medin was clear in his frustration with how access speeds and costs were not keeping up with computing speeds and costs. As the man who helped build the first cable broadband business back when everyone said DSL speeds would suffice, he’s well aware that if you give people faster speeds they will use them. And that’s the stated rationale for Google to get into the broadband business — it wants to see what people will do with a gigabit connection.

But if Google really wants to put pressure on incumbents, perhaps rolling out fiber in one place isn’t enough?

Equipment, communities and even developers aren’t ready to support gigabit speeds yet, but as more places get them, companies will develop products and services that can handle those with gigabit connections. Maybe Google is ready to invest more dollars into broadband networks to drive demand. After all it can’t see what people will do with a gig if people can’t actually find ways to use it — and if people don’t have other gigabit communities to share their gigabit applications with.

So I’m hoping that the Google announcement next Tuesday in Austin is about a gigabit network for the Texas capital. Any expansion of Google’s network is a benefit not just to the cities that get it, but it also places pressure on incumbents to invest in upgrading their own networks. Maybe we can get to gigabit networks in all 50 states. Or even better — gigabit networks in every area where the population densities let the economics make sense.

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The HTC First was announced at Facebook’s event yesterday and is the first device to feature Facebook Home. Previously, we’ve talked about the HTC M4 who’s specs are almost identical to the First. Now, there are some new details about the M4 and here are the rumored specs:

• 4.3-inch 720p display at 1280 x 720
• 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 dual-core processor
• 1GB RAM
• 16GB internal storage
• UltraPixel rear-facing camera
• 1.6 megapixel front-facing camera
• WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0
• Sense 5.0 on top of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean

There is no mention of Facebook Home so there is a good chance that the HTC M4 will simply ship running the latest version of Sense.

Source: LlabTooFeR

Come comment on this article: HTC M4 Very Similar To HTC First, May Not Ship With Facebook Home

There are lots of applications for data crunching in the security-obsessed worlds of the defense, healthcare, and financial services industries. The problem is that these organizations have a hard time crunching all that data without potentially exposing it to prying eyes. Sure, it would be great to pump it all into Amazon Web Services and then run a ton of analytics, but that whole public cloud thing is problematic for these kinds of companies.

CryptDB, a project out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, (CSAIL) may be a solution for this problem. In theory, it would let you glean insights from your data without letting even your own personnel “see” that data at all, said Dr. Sam Madden, CSAIL director, on Friday.

“The goal is to run SQL on encrypted data, you don’t even allow your admin to decrypt any of that data and that’s important in cloud storage, Madden said at an SAP-sponsored event at Hack/reduce in Cambridge, Mass.

He described the technology in broad strokes but it involves an unmodified MySQL or Postgres app on the front end that talks to a CryptDB query rewriter in the middle which in turn talks to a MySQL instance at the back end.

According to CryptDB’s web page:

“It works by executing SQL queries over encrypted data using a collection of efficient SQL-aware encryption schemes. CryptDB can also chain encryption keys to user passwords, so that a data item can be decrypted only by using the password of one of the users with access to that data. As a result, a database administrator never gets access to decrypted data, and even if all servers are compromised, an adversary cannot decrypt the data of any user who is not logged in.”

The technology is being built by a team including Raluca Ada Popa, Catherine Redfield, Nickolai Zeldovich and Hari Balarkishan.

CryptDB  could also run in a private cloud but there are still some big implementation questions. Asked how CryptDB would negotiate data transmission through firewalls, for example, Madden punted. “That’s not something we’re focusing on. The great thing about being an academic is we can ignore some problems,” he said.

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You may remember Boston Dynamic’s Petman anthropomorphic robot, with his terrifying human-like movements, testing various types of military protective gear. In order to properly test such gear, the robot needs to act as human as possible in its movements. Petman does just that. He even sweats.

Good lord, I’m calling it a “he.” It’s begun.

Well, now they’ve put him it in a chemical protection suit. Watch this video and tell me you could know, for a fact, that it’s a robot under there and not a human in a hazmat suit.

[Boston Dynamics via Engadget]

It seems that Michael Sheen isn’t the only thing actress Rachel McAdams has gotten rid of these past few months. The Mean Girls actress was spotted this week without her famous platinum-blonde hair.

According to an US magazine report, the actress has instead dyed her hair a bright shade of red. She was spotted as a redhead while visiting Disneyland with friends and family.

McAdams broke up with British actor Michael Sheen this past February. The two reportedly met on the set of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

McAdams rose to fame with roles in the Tina Fey movie Mean Girls and the Nicholas Sparks movie adaptation of The Notebook. More recently, she starred in the romance movie The Vow, in which she (and her brunette-colored hair) re-learns to love her husband (played by Channing Tatum) after an accident causes her to suffer amnesia.

(Image courtesy Attit/Wikimedia Commons)

When I was a college student interning in Washington, D.C., a senior manager, Bridgett, made a habit of treating each intern to lunch over the summer. When my turn rolled around, it was no surprise that Bridgett proved an adept conversationalist and an excellent host.

Several weeks after I’d returned to college, however, I was surprised to find an envelope from Bridgett in my mailbox. It contained a handwritten note and a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners, a book she’d recommended over lunch. I barely knew Bridgett, but her note said that I’d helped her organization and that she appreciated it and wished me luck. It was a gesture that stayed with me and forever led me to view Bridgett as a thoughtful person.

Personal handwritten notes grow rarer by the day. According to the U.S. Postal Service’s annual survey, the average home only received a personal letter once every seven weeks in 2010, down from once every two weeks in 1987. And The Wall Street Journal recently lamented the “lost art of the handwritten note.” Some might claim that in a wired world — where emails, tweets, and text messages are more accessible than handwritten notes — this is the natural evolution of communication. Who has time for stamps, stationery, and “manual” spell-check, after all? But I think it’s premature to write off the importance of handwritten notes. They remain impactful and unique in several ways.

For one, handwritten notes mean more because they cost more. Emails, tweets, texts, or Facebook messages are essentially costless. They’re easy to write and free to send, and you and I produce hundreds of them every day. A recent study indicated the average corporate email account sent or received more than 100 emails per day (PDF), and Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 now send or receive nearly 100 texts per day.

These electronic communications are rarely notable. But handwritten notes are unusual. They take minutes (or hours) to draft, each word carefully chosen with no “undo” or “autocorrect” to fall back on. Drafting one involves selecting stationery, paying for stamps, and visiting a mailbox. They indicate investment, and that very costliness indicates value. If, as the U.S. Postal Service notes, we only receive a handwritten letter once every two months, each of those letters likely means more to us than the “cheaper” communication we receive each day.

That conveyance of value is amplified by the fact that personal messages are often notes of gratitude, civility, and appreciation that reach beyond the conventional thank-you. Robert Cialdini, in his classic work Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, profiled legendary car salesman Joe Girard. Perhaps the most successful salesman of his generation, Joe would send a handwritten message to all his clients once a month with simple messages printed inside like, “I like you.” Joe believed these little notes were one of the reasons his clients stayed so loyal to him. Because handwritten notes are so painstakingly slow — to draft, to send, to assure delivery — they’re often a poor way to ask for things. Instead, they’re more frequently used to remind others that you value your relationship.

While saying “thank you” is important, the beauty of a well-crafted handwritten note is that it can show deeper investment and appreciation than a simple thank-you can. It can follow up on a conversation, remind someone they’re not forgotten, raise new issues, or even include a gift, like Bridgett’s, that carries its own meaning. And in a world where so much communication is merely utilitarian, these simple acts of investment, remembrance, gratitude, and appreciation can show the people who matter to your life and business that they are important to you.

As an added bonus, studies show that those who express gratitude also benefit by experiencing better health and sleep, less anxiety, and more life satisfaction. They benefit giver and receiver alike.

Finally, handwritten notes have permanence. How many of us have our old high school yearbooks in a closet somewhere? How many keep shoe boxes with old letters or short notes from former colleagues or friends? The last time I moved, I came across several boxes of correspondence I’d had over the years. Taking the time to read through some of them, I found the memories of my old friends and colleagues, and my gratitude for them was reinvigorated. Email is “permanent” in its own way; our electronic messages are easy to keep and search in huge volumes. But they aren’t tangible and enduring in the same way those old notes are. We don’t print emails and display them on our desks, refrigerators, and mantles they way we do with letters and notes from friends. The physical notes are more memorable.

It may seem nostalgic, but I still believe there’s room for the handwritten note in personal and professional communication. They cost something, mean something, and have permanence in a way emails and text messages don’t. They let the people in our lives know we appreciate them enough to do something as archaic as pausing for 15 minutes to put pen to paper in an attempt to connect and sustain a relationship with them. I still remember that note from Bridgett — and many others I’ve received over the years — and perhaps in writing personal notes to our friends and colleagues, we can reach out to others in a way that creates a lasting, positive connection.

Samsung is just weeks away from the release of the Galaxy S 4 and thanks to strong mobile sales, increased its first quarter profit by 53 percent to 8.7 trillion won or $7.7 billion. These numbers were released ahead of full first quarter results on April 26 and beat analyst estimates by 400 billion won or $353,466,000. Samsung’s mobile division continues to grow with this being the fifth straight quarter in a row with record-breaking profits. As far as how many smartphones were sold, the South Korean company estimates anywhere between 68 and 70 million. However, Samsung isn’t planning on stopping there. According to a report from Digitimes, Samsung has set a goal of 500 million handsets shipped in 2013.

Source: Reuters

Come comment on this article: Samsung Electronics Grows Profit By 53%, Fifth Record-Breaking Quarter In A Row

This is a crucial period for the PlayStation Vita: several weeks after a price cut that revived the console in Japan, Vita is demonstrating fairly astonishing tenacity. According to Famitsu, Vita remained the No. 2 console in Japan during the week of March 31st with 33,000 units sold, down moderately from 38,000 units in the previous week. The reason this week was particularly important was the debut of a major new title for Nintendo’s (NTDOY) struggling home console Wii U. Alarm bells at Nintendo’s headquarters must be on full blast, because Dragon Quest X sold just 36,000 units and failed to lift weekly Wii U sales higher than 21,000 units from the previous week’s dismal 10,000 unit level.

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On Friday, April 5 check out the Race Central Radio, hosted by Kurt Hansen, from 6-8 pm streaming live on Mile High Sports Radio, 1510 AM or 93.7 FM in the Denver area. Tim Esterdahl from Tundraheadquarters.com will have a spot at 7:20 to talk about the North American truck market. Tune in to hear what is going on!

Check out more about the Race Center Radio Show at RaceCentralMedia.com

If you catch it, go ahead and bash Tim’s performance below!

The post TundraHeadquarters on Race Central Radio Show appeared first on Tundra Headquarters Blog.

After years of Chrome running on the WebKit rendering engine, Google announced earlier this week that it was moving to its own rendering engine. The new engine, named Blink, is a fork of WebKit, and will apparently not affect Web developers that much as Google transitions to the new engine.

That being said, developers are going to have questions, and Google welcomed those questions with open arms during a hangout yesterday with engineering leads Darin Fisher and Eric Seidel. Some of the issues addressed during the hangout include the relationship between WebKit’s and Blink’s codebase, Blink’s support of multiple programming languages, and when we can expect to see Blink hit Chrome.

For more on Blink, check out Google’s exhaustive FAQ.

Twitter’s six-second video service Vine has just announced a new way to find content in its “explore” tab. Starting today, Vine will now display trending hashtags.

The “explore” tab lets you surface content via Editor’s Picks, “Popular Now,” and now trending hashtags.

The “Popular Now” section also features hashtags, but they are picked using a different metric. The new trending hashtags show those that are the fastest-rising, but not necessarily those containing the most posts.

“We launched Vine with an Explore section to make it easier for you to find great content, like popular posts and hashtags, from accounts you may not follow. Since launch, there have been a ton of awesome, creative posts that don’t always make it to the popular sections. In many cases, these posts include a hashtag that the community is using,” says Vine.

Hopefully, this will help Vine users get into the action.

Last week, Vine finally made videos embeddable via web and mobile. You can can embed your own Vines anywhere on the web, as well as other users’ Vines – as long as they’ve already shared them on Twitter first.

The other day, entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made headlines when he said he might draft Brittney Griner. Today, TMZ is sharing an interview with Cuban in which he says he’d be honored to have the first openly gay NBA player on his team.

“I’ve been saying the same thing for years – that there will be someone who comes out, it will be a great moment for sports – I would be honored if he was on my team,” Cuban says.

“I think things have changed significantly, and that the players would accept him,” he adds. “I don’t think there’s any question that even though all professional sports have had their homophobic missteps on the way, that it’s a new era/generation, and the player would be accepted.”

The interview comes on the heels of (and references) words from NBA great Magic Johnson, who shared his own support for gay players in sports in another interview (below).

As Kate Middleton’s baby bump grows larger, speculation about the Duchess of Cambridge’s due date has reached a fever pitch. In January it was officially announced that the Duchess’ due date is sometime in July.

This week, the scope of the due date has been narrowed even further.

According to an E! News report, Middleton spoke with the press in Glasgow, telling them that “mid-July” is when the baby is expected. “It’s around mid-July, but apparently babies have their own agenda,” the Duchess is quoted as saying.

The Duke and Duchess were in Glasgow this week as part of a two-day tour of Scotland. The couple met with Prince Charles today at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, where they were scheduled to participate in the opening of a new Outdoor Center.

Facebook Home was announced yesterday and will be launching on select Android devices April 12. With the social network heavily monetizing its mobile app, many are wondering if Home will also feature ads. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Home will not launch with ads, but they will eventually make their way to Cover Feed. Cover Feed is basically the home screen and you’re able to swipe left-to-right through updates from your friends. Ads are a necessary evil in order for Facebook to keep the social network alive and continue to grow. Amazon for example offers cheaper Kindle tablets that are ad-supported and feature home screen ads. For Facebook, Home isn’t just a new mobile experience, but also a new data resource that can be tapped into to help them better target ads to users.

Source: The Next Web

Come comment on this article: Facebook Home Not Launching With Ads, Will Eventually Come To Cover Feed

Samsung announced today the availability of the Galaxy Note 8.0 at the Samsung Experience Store in Westfield Stratford City. More locations will follow, but at least for today this is the only location where you can grab the new 8-inch screen device. The WiFi only version is selling for £339.99 ($517 USD). To help entice buyers, Samsung is pre-loading the devices with some special offers and apps including AVG Anti-Virus Pro, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, and limited-time access to The Times newspaper, Samsung Music Hub, and 50GB of DropBox space. This special offer will be available through April 15th.

In case you missed the specs for this latest Galaxy Note device, it comes with a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of memory that can increase with a microSD card, and a 5MP rear-facing and 1.3MP front-facing camera. The tablet will come loaded with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean.

Hit the break to read the full press release.

GALAXY NOTE 8.0 AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW FROM THE SAMSUNG EXPERIENCE STORE
Free content and services bundle worth £60 available with every purchase from 15th April for a limited time

5th April 2013, London, UK: Samsung Mobile UK has today announced that customers in the UK are now able to buy the Galaxy Note 8.0 from the Samsung Experience Store at Westfield Stratford City with other channels to follow. Ultra portable thanks to its 8” screen size, the Galaxy Note 8.0 comes pre-loaded with a suite of new content and services worth over £60, at no extra cost to the customer*.

The new mid-size tablet, together with a suite of intuitive features and an evolved S Pen, gives you the ease of using a traditional pen and paper with speed, efficiency and accuracy. Features include a suite of S Note templates and tools that allow you to create, edit, manage and share documents, as well as seamless multi-tasking thanks to Quick Command, continuous text input and Multi-Window View which means the portable 8” screen can be split and used to access a number of live applications at the same time.

A range of S-Pen apps, including Paper Artist and Photo Note, mean you can be creative wherever you are, whether on the commute to work, on holiday or sat on your living room sofa. The new Reading Mode makes it easier to read e-books, magazines and newspapers as you can optimise the settings to create the most comfortable reading experience, plus you can annotate, highlight, cut and paste text.

For a limited time from 15 April 2013*, the Galaxy Note 8.0 will also come pre-loaded with the following content and services;

–          A £20 voucher to spend in the Samsung Learning Hub
–          A Two Month Free trial subscription to The Times newspaper worth £32.00
–          AVG Anti-Virus Pro
–          Access to the Samsung Music Hub for free for 1 month
–          Need for SpeedTM Hot Pursuit
–          Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2
–          50GB DropBox free for 2 years

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 now on sale in the U.K.

Injustice: Gods Among Us, the DC fighter from NetherRealm Studios, isn’t set to launch on consoles until April 26. If you really need your Injustice fix now, however, you might want to try the recently released game for iOS.

Thankfully, the iOS version of Injustice isn’t a poorly constructed fighting game for mobile platforms. Instead, the team has created a thoughtful title that combines the cinematic fights of its console brother with an accessible collectible card game mechanic that players can use to level up their fighters.

As an added bonus, Injustice for iOS unlocks exclusive content in the console version of the game. It’s not being said what can be unlocked, but it’s probably a few costumes or other aesthetic rewards. Still, it’s better than nothing.

You can grab Injustice for iOS here. It’s a free-to-play title supported by microtransactions that aren’t exactly micro. There’s something definitely wrong when an in-game item costs $100, but that debate is for another time.

Do skyrocketing Bitcoin prices mean that the virtual currency is in the midst of a speculative bubble? Don’t tell that to Reddit user anon_bitcoin_gambler, who claims to have invested his “entire retirement and savings” in Bitcoin. The user, who has so far refused to reveal his identity, says that he is “quite poor” at the moment but has “good credit” that has allowed him to receive “over $30,000 USD in credit card 0% balance transfer cash” that he has “slowly been investing in bitcoin for the past two months.”

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