Open up your mind and say, ahh...

If you’re like millions of Americans looking for a job right now, it might be time to take a step back and evaluate your job-search tactics. There are some common mistakes that can make you your own worst enemy when trying to get your foot in the door of a new employer. To give your employment search some performance enhancement, make sure to follow these tips.

1. Early Bird Gets the Worm

The sooner you get your job application in, the better luck you will have at getting your resume seen. If you are slow to reply to a job listing, you likely will lose your shot at be considered, so make sure to stay up-to-date on new listings as they arise.

2. Get a Jump-Start

Even better than being one of the first to apply for an open position is seeking one out before it is posted. Research the companies you are interested in working for and reach out to see if any openings are on the horizon. Interact with the company on LinkedIn, join the same local trade organizations the company attends and find out where their staff members might be speaking publicly. Consider volunteering at events the company may be involved with to start to get to know the staff and familiarize yourself with the company culture.

3. Tailor Your Information

Applying for jobs can often be a numbers game, so once you have narrowed down the best fits for you, make sure you customize your resume and cover letter for each position you apply for. Though you will want to be one of the first to apply, don’t be in such a rush that you automatically eliminate yourself by not indicating how your skills are a match for a specific position and how you meet that particular’s company’s requirements. Not showing you are a fit for that specific job will surely end your chances of being considered.

4. Follow Up

Though it may feel like you are sending your information into a large black abyss at times, there are people on the other end. It’s perfectly acceptable — even preferred — to send a follow-up email if you don’t get a response within a couple of days. This is when you confirm that the interviewer received your information, giving you a chance to reiterate your interest in the job. But, if a listing specifically states “no phone calls or emails,” abide by that request or you may end your chances. Once you have landed the interview, absolutely follow up with your interviewers through a thank-you note, again expressing your interest in the company and the job.

If you feel like your job search is at a standstill, be sure to reevaluate how you are going about it. After all, we all could use a little performance enhancement from time to time.

The clickwheel of the first iPod worked by measuring electric field disturbances in one dimension. The first iPhone touch screen functioned similarly, but in two dimensions.

This week, Microchip Technology, a large U.S. semiconductor manufacturer, says it is releasing the first controller that uses electrical fields to make 3D measurements.

The low-power chip makes it possible to interact with mobile devices and a host of other consumer electronics using hand gesture recognition, which today is usually accomplished with camera-based sensors. A key limitation is that it only recognizes motions, such as a hand flick or circular movement, within a six-inch range.

“That’s the biggest drawback,” says University of Washington computing interface researcher Sidhant Gupta. “But I think, still, it’s a pretty big win, especially when compared to a camera system. It’s low-cost and low-power. I can completely see it going into phones.”

Gesture recognition technology has advanced in recent years with efforts to create more-natural user interfaces that go beyond touch screens, keyboards and mouses. Microsoft’s Kinect made 3D gesture recognition popular for game consoles, for example. But while creative uses of the Kinect have proliferated, the concept hasn’t become mainstream in desktops, laptops, or mobile devices quite yet.

Today, Microsoft, along with other companies such as Leap Motion and Flutter, are working to improve upon and expand camera-based technology to new markets. For smart phones and tablets, Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon mobile device chip includes gesture recognition abilities, via its camera, but few mobile devices make use of gesture control.

Despite the six-inch distance limitation, the electrical-field controller could have some interesting advantages compared to camera sensors. “It’s really complementary,” says Fanie Duvenhage, director of Microchip Technology’s human-machine interface division.

Power consumption is a key issue for battery-powered devices. Microchip’s controller uses 90 percent less than camera-based gesture systems, the company says, and it can be left always on, so that it could be used to, say, wake up a smart-phone screen from sleep mode when a person’s hand nears.

The controller works by transmitting an electrical signal and then calculating the three-coordinate position of a hand based on the disturbances to the field the hand creates. Whereas many camera systems have “blind spots” for close-up hand gestures and can fail in low light, the Microchip controller works well under these conditions and doesn’t require an external sensor (its sensing electrodes can sit behind a device’s housing).

Perhaps most interesting, the controller could easily go into electronics that don’t have a camera, including car dashboards, keyboards, light switches, or a music docking station. In fact, Microchip Technology already sells components to 70,000 customers that make these products. Duvenhage says he imagines interesting uses in cars, such as controlling an in-car navigation system, or in medical or kitchen settings where users might not want to touch a button or screen.

The controller comes with the ability to recognize 10 predefined gestures, including wake-up on approach, position tracking, and various hand flicks, but it can also be programmed to respond to custom movements. Similar to the programming of voice recognition software, Microchip Technology built the gesture library using algorithms that learned from how different people make the same movements. These gestures can then be translated to functions on a device, such as on/off, open application, point, click, zoom, or scroll.

The precision is about the same as using a mouse, but the system has limitations. It can’t yet distinguish between, say, an open hand and a closed fist, or simultaneous movements of different fingers, an area the company wants to improve.

Today, less than a year after acquiring the German startup that developed the technology, the company is making a development kit available for sale, and Duvenhage says they’ll be looking to customers to see what uses they create. Microchip plans to reach mass production levels by next April, and it expects to see the first products using the technology on the market sometime next year.

Virgin Galactic has announced plans to enter the commercial space payload delivery business, with Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson making the announcement at the Farnborough International Airshow in England. Virgin Galactic will use the same aircraft designed to launch passengers aboard SpaceShipTwo on sub-orbital space tourism rides, to carry a small, two-stage rocket capable of delivering satellites into low earth orbit.

The announcement isn’t a huge surprise, as it’s long been assumed the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft would serve as a launch platform for other space-bound vehicles beyond SpaceShipTwo. Keeping the naming of its space vehicles relatively simple, LauncherOne is capable of carrying up to 500 pounds (225 kilograms) to low earth orbit for less than $10 million.

“Virgin Galactic’s goal is to revolutionize the way we get to space,” Branson said at Farnborough. “Now, LauncherOne is bringing the price of satellite launch into the realm of affordability for innovators everywhere, from start-ups and schools to established companies and national space agencies. It will be a critical new tool for the global research community, enabling us all to learn about our home planet more quickly and affordably.”

Artist rendition of LauncherOne’s second stage separation.

Branson added that Virgin Galactic has already received deposits from four private companies intent on using the LauncherOne for “several dozen launches.” One of the companies, Skybox Imaging, is planning to deploy a constellation of high resolution imaging satellites. Another of the new customers is the recently announced Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company.

The small satellite industry is growing as engineers are able to cram more and more capability into smaller packages. Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne is competing with existing air launch provider Orbital Sciences, as well as small, ground-based rocket launch services. But air launch ideas aren’t limited to the small satellite industry. Scaled Composites – the company that designed and is flight testing WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo – is also working with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to develop the largest airplane in the world, which will air launch a SpaceX Falcon 9-based rocket capable of carrying heavier payloads to orbit.

Both Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne and Orbital Sciences’ Pegasus rocket feature small wings to aid stability during the drop from the carrier aircraft and turn the rockets make to their upward trajectory to orbit. By using a carrier aircraft, rockets can be launched from 50,000 feet, independent of weather conditions on the ground. And unlike ground-based rockets that are limited to a handful of launch sites around the world, air launched rockets can be carried almost anywhere to optimize the entry to the desired orbit.

WhiteKnightTwo has recently been busy with resumption of flight testing for SpaceShipTwo. The flight test team at Scaled Composites made eight flights with WK2 last month, the last two included releasing SS2 for glide flights.

Images: Virgin Galactic

Gabe Zichermann is a public speaker, designer, and author of the books Game-Based Marketing and Gamification by Design. Follow him @gzicherm

Most of the interest in gamification and user engagement for startups centers on customer acquisition. This is partly because of the short time around startup planning, but also the strong need to show and grow traction as quickly as possible. With startups like Foursquare, Codecademy and StackOverflow using gamification to build unprecedented early customer engagement, it’s no wonder so many founders want to talk about virality.

But while some startups exit within 12 to 18 months without having to prove revenue models or market opportunity, many other breakthrough entrepreneurs are still running their companies after three or four years in increasingly crowded markets. These organizations must get serious about marketing, especially when subscription drives their revenue. And nothing is more important to serious marketers than loyalty — or its new-school proxy, engagement.

By definition, loyalty is expressed when a consumer chooses your product/service when other options are mostly equal. It’s a form of incremental affection whose balance can be easily disturbed. A new way of thinking about loyalty is in the framework of gamification. After all, if loyalty is about driving incremental user action in a crowded environment, gamification is able to do that and deliver viral user growth, improved satisfaction, and revenue. Here are five ways to develop loyalty, based on some of the principles of gamification.

Define the Grind

Choose a clear and easy-to-understand action as the core of your product and loyalty effort. Think checking in or tweeting. Repeating this activity regularly is called a “grind”, though it need not feel negative at all. Sometimes your experience may have multiple grinds, like posting a photo and commenting (Think Instagram or Pixable) but it’s important to think of the smallest unit of energy for users and make that as commonplace as possible. Once users are doing the grind regularly, you can begin to build other, more complex behaviors on top.

Lay Down an XP System

Next, you’ll need a point system to understand the behavior of your users. Start with what’s called XP or experience points. This is an incremental point system that tracks the behavior and knowledge of your users over time. Start by assigning each grind activity one point in your XP system.

Create Five Social Actions

Think of the top five social actions you want your users to take, and use verbs to describe them. Don’t use “buy” or “subscribe” because those are outgrowths of good engagement rather than ends in and of themselves. Concepts such as “like,” “comment,” “argue,” or “challenge” are good examples. It’s critical to think of them as social actions because they will also help you attract new users. Now, assign XP point values to each of those social actions. Consider what the relative values should be. Is creating a profile worth 10 times the commenting, or just five times. Remember this initial table of values is just a starting point and will change as you test your system.

Develop a Social Loop With Appointment Mechanics

Consider the actions you just described. How do they fit into a social loop that includes a place for emotion, expression, positive feedback and return? If they don’t contribute to this social loop, you can use this moment to try and expand or revise your design. Now, include an appointment mechanic that has users make a commitment to check in or come back on a regular basis, preferably every day (consider the power of Gilt Groupe’s noon release schedule). Because of the signal-to-noise ratio in the market, appointment mechanics can be extraordinarily powerful, and you should build notifications into your product as soon as it’s practical.

Have a Reward System Based on SAPS

Beyond the intrinsic rewards of your experience, users will expect to receive a tangible benefit for their good behavior. Now’s a good time to start thinking about what that looks like, but turn the model on its head. Use SAPS: Status, Access, Power and Stuff to drive your design. This list is in order of stickiness and cost-effectiveness as tools for behavior change.Tangible rewards like merchandise, discounts, and cash equivalents are a default concept in loyalty program design but are increasingly becoming less relevant in the gamified world. Offer your users emotionally meaningful rewards. Think of experiences like Nike Plus and StackOverflow as good examples of stuff-free reward models.

Obviously, many concepts that are critical to good gamified engagement aren’t included in this discussion, including the importance of a redeemable point system (potentially used to redeem for rewards in SAPS models), monetizing loyalty itself (by selling virtual items or points to third parties) and demonstrable status items – e.g. physical loyalty cards. But as with all elements of good startup design, the first step is to get the core design and iterate in an agile fashion. With Gamification, startups can give major loyalty programs a run for their money, focusing on great design, user engagement and scalable, non-cash rewards.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, hocus-focus

Facebook defended its support for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a controversial cyber security bill critics often compare to the unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

In a Facebook blog post, Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s Vice President-U.S. Public Policy, explained the difference between the two bills and how CISPA would protect Facebook and other websites.

Most importantly, Kaplan says Facebook or other companies would not be required to share its users data with the government or any other site under CISPA. Instead, the cyber bill allows the government to pass along cyber threat data to companies like Facebook to better protect their sites. He explained further that CISPA would not require Facebook to share more information with the government than it already shares, which does not include user’s private data.

“One challenge we and other companies have had is in our ability to share information with each other about cyber attacks. When one company detects an attack, sharing information about that attack promptly with other companies can help protect those other companies and their users from being victimized by the same attack,” Kaplan wrote a blog post on Friday. “Similarly, if the government learns of an intrusion or other attack, the more it can share about that attack with private companies (and the faster it can share the information), the better the protection for users and our systems.”

The post was prompted after several privacy and civil liberties groups have opposed CISPA and asked Facebook to not support the bill. CISPA bill sponsor Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said CISPA is not another version of SOPA, but that hasn’t convinced the critics.

“The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity,” Kaplan wrote. “Facebook has no intention of doing this.”

CISPA differs from SOPA in that it protects computer networks from being attacked by hackers, while SOPA focused on intellectual property and copyright protection, Rogers has said. SOPA bill sponsor Lamar Smith (R-Texas) withdrew the bill in January.

Kaplan doesn’t want critics to worry about CISPA having any effect on Facebook users’ privacy. He explains there is still time for the bill to be modified and that Congress is working with privacy and civil liberties groups to address questions and privacy concerns about CISPA.

“We hope that as Congress moves forward in considering this and any other cyber legislation, the result will be legislation that helps give companies like ours the tools we need to protect our systems and the security of our users’ information, while also providing those users confidence that adequate privacy safeguards are in place,” Kaplan said.

It’s been baffling and aggravating to watch the tech press gnash their teeth about Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, a service that lets you add old-timey filters to your camera phone pics, and share them with friends. This thick-headed post on CNET–titled “Facebook Buys Instagram…But For What?”–is a good example of the genre. In it, the author notices that other, even less savvy tech pundits seem to think that Facebook bought Instagram either for users, a better mobile presence, or to squash an upstart competitor. And then, she procedes to torch each one of these straw men. Instagram’s users and mobile mojo don’t mean anything, because they’re not monetized. As for competitors, the writer, in essence, says, ‘Who cares about filters? I bet most people don’t.” Case closed! This Instagram thing is the worst idea in the world, the symbol of a bubble in the making. As if there were no other reasons for Facebook’s move.

But they do exist, and they have everything to do with design and product development.

People take tons of pictures on their smartphones. Why do so few get shared?

In our recent coverage of Facebook, one thing is clear: The company views itself above all as a design-driven company. You can hate them for their actual designs–given all their talent, it really is surprising that Facebook isn’t better than it is. But they do think of themselves as user-minded and hyper-focused on product improvement. Therefore, you have to look at their purchase of Instagram through the lens of: How does Facebook think Instagram will improve their product. If you fancy yourself a great product company in the vein of Apple, that’s your lens, always.

Instant artiness, thanks to Instagram

From that viewpoint, Instagram’s accomplishments start looking pretty impressive. Consider these two competing facts about social-networking and picture-taking:

1. People take tons of pictures on their smartphones. But almost none of that content gets shared.
   
2. The thing we all love most on the Internet is seeing other people’s pictures.

Instagram stepped into the gap. They managed to get people to share more of exactly what their friends want. And they did it simply by providing filters that allow people to turn any crappy old camera-phone pic into something resembling a snapshot by William Eggelston. In other words, Instagram is tapping creative instincts while eliminating the effort required to create something good. They’re satisfying our social-curiosity with pictures, helping us grab hold of fleeting moments that we might never share otherwise. They’re tapping into user emotions.

Moreover, by allowing users to feel as if they’ve created something worth sharing, Instagram is helping users create an image of themselves as they’d like to be seen. They’ve turned the act of picture-taking into a performance, whose message is: Look how cool my life is. Wasn’t that what Facebook did at one point, with all those Like pages and interests? And when was the last time you looked at Facebook and said, ‘Wow, this person seems really cool?” Through dull designs and a straight-jacketed experience, the ability to convey who you are has leeched out of Facebook. Timeline was an attempt to solve that problem, but it’s not a magic bullet. Robert Fabricant, of Frog, just put that point to Inc. quite well:

I think Facebook is getting a little nervous about Pinterest, for instance. There is a new generation of meaningful social networks that are all about personal identity curation. Like Pinterest, Instagram understands that the future is photo-driven, and that those photos are about style and moments. Facebook is playing catch-up. It can either become this fundamental layer, the glue that holds this world together, or they can start creating better environments for users across the the board.

We’re now at a point where technology in and of itself isn’t all that interesting (even if the tech journalists only seem to write about them). When it comes time to buy an iPad 3, most people don’t care how fast it is; instead, they judge it by how fun it is to use. Features don’t matter nearly as much as user-experience. And here’s one stunning metric about how much users love Instagram: The app has a 5 star rating in the app store, on 70,000 votes. Have you ever seen a rating that high?

Tres, tres cool. Thanks to lots of filters.

That says great things about what Instagram has done so far. But the real question is how it will evolve, and how it could improve Facebook’s core product. Again, as Fabricant says, “There are so many possibilities for how Facebook could use Instagram. It’s not hard to imagine how good it could be. Then again, you never know.”

The app is great because it is in such a simple stage in its development. It’s still not clear to me that they can improve that experience while dealing with the inevitable complexity that comes with scale–and there are worrying signs that Instagram won’t be able to do it, including clunky sharing pages and fussy UI details that seem far more complicated than they should be. Moreover, Facebook doesn’t have any track record of being able to absorb other companies and use them to improve their core offering. (This has always been a guiding strength at Apple, from its purchase of Steve Job’s Next operating system to, more recently, Siri, which went from being a surprise acquisition to a main marketing point with blazing speed.)

I’m not saying that the $1 billion price tag was fair: I do agree that the Valley is capable of burning money in ways that defy all common sense. Cash flow is the ultimate judge of how good a company is. But I am saying that viewing the deal simply through the lens of monetization and competing features is a good example of how tech journalists, tech investors, and even tech companies simply have no idea how to absorb design and product development into their world view. Users don’t give a crap if a service is going to make decent margins in the future. But they do care about a product is fun to use. And that is what ultimately makes a company great: It has to make great things.

Facebook has made design a part of their DNA, if their recent hiring spree is any indication. But we don’t know if they’ll be able to draw the best out of their own talent. Can Instagram help inspire them to do better?

All photos by yours truly.