New Product Hype

I spent some time skiing with my daughter on her day off this weekend and we saw someone skiing on a pair of skis that were supposed to revolutionize the ski industry several years ago. With the advantage of passing time we can look back and say that the prediction turned out to be quite false. I remember thinking that I didn't see what all the fuss was about when the ski came on the market. So what went wrong.

I am a firm believer that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. There are a lot of products that we are told will revolutionize our lives. Sometimes the hype is warranted and other times it is not. With the case of this new ski design, it leveraged boat building technology to create a ski that floated better than other skis of the time. Skis and boats share a lot of manufacturing methods in that they both use fiberglass and sandwich construction for strength and to help save weight. Therefore it makes sense that a ski manufacturer would look to the boating industry when trying to come up with new design ideas. Sometimes the ideas work and other times they don't.

I have a pair of skis from the same era as this hyped ski but manufactured by another ski company. At the time, wide powder skis started gaining popularity. My pair of skis tend to sink in powder and so a design change would have helped it ski significantly better. One manufacturer came up with the very hyped design while all other manufacturers made a much more subtle change to achieve the same result. This subtle change is now used by all ski companies.

So what is the dead giveaway that a new technology is being over-hyped? For this ski, it came from non-skiing media sources. Ski magazine does a ski test every year and they gave this new ski some favorable marks. When I saw more general-purpose magazines and newspapers such as Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of this new ski, I began to wonder if it could live up to the hype. I learned from this experience that the source of the glowing recommendation should always be considered. I will never trust a ski recommendation from a general-purpose news magazine ever again unless there is significant support from ski industry trade journals as well. The same holds true for computer and technology announcements.

Inventions in Japan

I am in Japan this week and it is probably the only time I ever read Time magazine as there is a copy in my hotel room. This week's cover story is about the 25 greatest inventions of 2017. I have glanced through the list and have to wonder how many of the devices will continue to be great in 5 years. I know that predicting what will be great is a bit difficult and nobody ever gets it right but that doesn't keep us from trying.

If you were to ask me my thoughts on the greatest inventions in the past half-century, personal computers would definitely make the list. There is one invention that has yet to really make its way from Japan back to the United States that I would like to highlight instead: the heated toilet seat. I don't know why I continue to forget about this modern marvel until I return to Japan each time, but I do. I constantly tell my wife that we need to redo the master bathroom so that it has a heated toilet seat but there is a lot of work that goes into it. It is not something you can just bolt on to your existing toilet. Why? Well it needs electricity to keep it warm and power outlets are not something you generally put next to water-filled objects that occasionally have the tendency to overflow.

In the middle of summer, I don't mind a cool toilet seat. It can be somewhat refreshing on a scorching-hot day. In the middle of winter a cold toilet seat can be quite a shock and downright uncomfortable. It may sound funny but a heated throne adds significantly to your personal comfort. In a world of uncomfortable situations, who doesn't need more personal comfort. I therefore nominate heated toilet seats to be one of the greatest inventions of that past 50 years and encourage you to give one a shot. You may be pleasantly surprised.

The Last Lecture

Last night I was feeling a little frustrated with the computer and so I decided to search for “Funniest YouTube Videos”. I find that watching funny videos is a great way to get myself laughing and feeling good. There were the usual videos that appeared and then I stumbled upon Time Magazine’s list of YouTube’s 50 Best Videos. Naturally there was some duplication of things I had seen earlier, but it was a long list and so I started going through them.

One video that stood out on the list was “Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.” I had read about how this university professor had been diagnosed with cancer and was shortly going to die. Until now, I have resisted watching the video because I didn’t want to be reminded of my own mortality and mistakenly thought that would be very apparent. Boy was I wrong. The title of the lecture is something along the lines of how to accomplish your childhood dreams. Randy does a great job of outlining his own childhood dreams and then how he went about making them reality. He then talks about the satisfaction of helping others achieve their childhood dreams.

I would have to say that it was a great lecture. While I only watched part of the other videos on Time Magazine’s list, I watched all one hour and sixteen minutes of Randy’s. While I have managed to live out some of my own childhood dreams I definitely learned a lot. I even forwarded the link to my own nineteen-year-old son who is preparing to move to Romania for the next two years. Hopefully he appreciates the sage advice.