The fastest way to wipe your old iPad before selling it

I just got my new iPad 3 so I put my old iPad 2 up on craigslist. I had a buyer within 10 minutes. He wanted to come pick it up 2o minutes after we agreed on a price.

Before you sell a device, you should always delete all of your old data for security reasons. So, I plugged it into my computer and said to do a factory ‘Restore’. iTunes told me it would take 59 minutes to do this. I couldn’t wait that long.

Here’s the better, 2 minute option:

  1. Go to ‘Settings’ > ‘General’ and then tap on ‘Reset’ at the bottom.
  2. From there, tap ‘Erase All Content and Settings’
  3. About 1-2 minutes later, everything is wiped and it’s like you never owned it.


 
UPDATE: This works too…

March 16, 2012

On App Copywriting

Today I was deep into working on blank state views for Obsorb. Sam Hutchings made an insightful comment.

Two rules:

  1. Use as few words as needed to get the message across
  2. Use plain english, assume your user is a novice.

Hire Sam for your copywriting needs, he’s excellent.

January 16, 2012 , ,

Unreliable Klout

I’m a big fan of Klout and their attempt to measure people’s individual influence on the internet. I think marketers can begin to do interesting things when they have access to this information. However when the scores are unpredictable, it isn’t going to work. The above chart shows my Klout score jumping 12+ points to just over 52 within 24 hours. Klout also says Robert Scoble — a tech journalist — is more influential than Obama. I highly doubt that.

December 3, 2011

How to Best Measure Productivity Towards Your Goals

Over the last few months I’ve slowly developed a few habits that have allowed me to quantify the progress on goals I’ve set for myself. It’s been working really well for me so far, so I thought I would share as it may be helpful to others. Consider this a ‘how I work’ post.

Personal productivity is inherently personal

Tim Ferriss during an interview in You 2.0, a documentary on life hacking

First and foremost, have some goals. I recommend coming up with a mix of personal and professional goals for yourself, it will keep you balanced and happy. Here are some of my goals for the year. I tweaked a couple since writing that but you get the idea. I’ve also accomplished several of them already (more on that later).

Keep them infront of youI use a to-do app for Mac called Things and the corresponding iPhone and iPad apps that all sync together. In Things I add goals as projects. I keep most projects as ‘Inactive’ until I’m ready to focus on them. Projects go into ‘Areas of Focus’. In my case they are Personal, Obsorb, and AllRendered (my 2 companies). Each task relating to the goal goes inside that corresponding project.

Identify what is moving the ball forward. This is the most important part. When I add any task I tag it with either ‘proactive’ or ‘reactive’. If you write things on paper, just put proactive or reactive next to the task, its as simple as that.

Reactive tasks = a task that you need to deal with that doesn’t pertain to a goal you set. It’s incoming work.

Proactive tasks = a task that, once completed makes you one step closer to accomplishing a goal that you set.

One important thing to note is not all tasks inside of a project are tagged ‘proactive’, even if they’re for a goal. For example, I have a monetary goal for AllRendered. Landing a very large animation contract and getting it going was all proactive. Responding to incoming questions about progress on it was not. That was reactive work. Tagging each task requires a second of thought.

You’re going to have to deal with reactive tasks, its just not possible to eliminate all reactive work. What you can do however is measure the proactive to reactive task ratio you accomplish. Successful people live purposeful lives by doing work that moves them closer to what they want. The ones that just get by are stuck on reacting to the incoming stuff.

Give yourself some feedback from data.

Every Monday, I look at the log of all of the completed tasks from the previous week and add up the proactive and reactive tasks. I input this data into a google doc’s spreadsheet. Each day has a column for the # of proactive and reactive tasks completed. There is then a percentage breakdown of proactive and reactive tasks completed for that day. (ie, on 2/25/11 75% of my tasks completed that day were proactive, 25% was reactive.) That daily and weekly percentage is your crucial feedback, monitor it.

None of this is really new. I’ve simply pulled from many different things that I’ve read and tried over the years. This works for me. If you do one thing from this post, monitor your breakdown.

The goal is to keep the proactive totals and percentages high. I shoot for 70% or more of tasks completed to be proactive. 

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April 29, 2011

The Obligation of Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs, by means of nature or nurture (another argument) you’ve been gifted with the ability to bring together resources for profit. Just as much as our world needs you for economic stability, jobs, and innovation, we need you for your ability to bring resources to those in need.

This year I’ve been heavily influenced by an organization called Charity: Water. Their founder, Scott Harrison made his living as a New York City nightclub promoter. He led a life of selfishness and arrogance. Desperately feeling unfulfilled, he asked a simple question:

What would the opposite of my life look like?

Scott proceeded to take a position with a humanitarian organization traveling to Africa. It is there he found his calling. Scott saw first hand the affects drinking dirty water had on people. He went on to use his gift as a promoter and founded Charity: Water. The organization now raises money to drill and build wells for the billion people living without clean drinking water.

Scott Harrison used his influence and entrepreneurial abilities to help those in need. As an entrepreneur, it is my belief you have the obligation to do the same.

I’m starting small. On January 1st, I turned 21. Instead of asking for gifts which I certainly don’t need, this year I decided to give up my birthday and ask for donations for Charity: Water. Each $20 raised is another person that never has to go without clean drinking water.

I’d like to encourage you to find an occasion or reason of your own to “give up” an event for a charity. Entrepreneur favorites include:

Kiva.org which supplies micro loans to entrepreneurs in third world countries and the aforementioned charitywater.org. They also have a nice platform for you to host your own event page at mycharitywater.org.

Some of the most rewarding experiences you will have in life will come from helping those in need. Do something besides blowing your money on shots at the bar on your birthday and decide to do something that matters. It’s your duty.

I originally published this on Under30CEO.com

January 9, 2011

9 Predictions for the Tech Industry in 2011

Here are my predictions for the tech industry in 2011… Can’t wait to see how it all pans out. I think #6 would be awesome and in my opinion, quite possible.

  1. Facebook does NOT IPO this year
  2. Groupon surpasses a $20 Billion valuation, IPOs in Q3
  3. Yahoo! unloads flickr to highest bidder
  4. Instagr.am surpasses 10 million users by years end, continues independently
  5. Quora is acquired by Google in Q2
  6. Apple purchases a large stake in Netflix, possibly acquiring them entirely
  7. The iPad continues tablet market domination
  8. A Verizon iPhone & iPad is offered in Q2
  9. Gowalla is acquired, foursquare stays independent

January 3, 2011