Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to the world of mobile technology, a year is a long time for sure, regardless of whether one is talking about tablets or smartphones. Having said that, the Xiaomi Mi Pad, which has certainly sold very well when it was first released, looks set to be replaced – and this is a good thing, of course. Leaked live images of the alleged Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 have hit the Internet, and if it were to be the real deal, you can only say that the to-be-released tablet would have a number of design elements borrowed from the Mi Note/Mi Note Pro flagship phablet pair.

One might even go to the lengths of saying that the upcoming Mi Pad 2 is actually a Mi Note that has been stretched to Mi Pad proportions, where the rumor points to it packing a similar glass back as well as having a slightly curved front panel. In addition, the overall layout of the front does share a very close family resemblance with its central earpiece and sensor arrangement.

The machined metal frame also seems to deliver a rather solid build overall, ensuring that the weight remains manageable at the same time. Well, one would only need to be patient and wait for the real deal to be released, which should not be too long down the road, actually.

Alleged Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 Spotted In Leaked Live Images

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The Alcatel Onetouch Watch certainly wowed the masses when it was first announced at CES earlier this year, and it is nice to see that close to three months after the initial announcement, something more concrete concerning the timepiece has been revealed. In fact, pre-orders for the Alcatel Onetouch Watch have already opened up, which should be of interest to those who would want something different apart from the standard Apple Watch that looks set to be all the rage when it arrives.

There does not seem to be any changes made to the Alcatel Onetouch Watch back when it was revealed in January, which would mean it will arrive with a silver case and a black band. The Alcatel Onetouch Watch has also been priced at an extremely competitive $149.99, and Alcatel claims that shipments of this timepiece will kick off within 30 days of the order being placed. Well, the website does show the end of April, that is, the 30th, to be the day of availability.

The Alcatel Onetouch Watch will make use of a proprietary software in order to hook up to either iOS or Android platforms, so you can be safe knowing that these happen to be your options. It will also come with a slew of seemingly standard features, such as being able to relay smartphone notifications and track fitness. As for the battery life, we are looking at a time frame of between 2 to 5 days, depending on your usage pattern.

Alcatel Onetouch Watch Up For Pre-Orders Now

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We did bring you Samsung’s attempt at an April Fool’s Day prank earlier this morning, where it involved the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge smart knife, which was a smartphone and a piece of kitchen utensil, all rolled into one. Of course, one would shudder at the thought of having a razor sharp edge as your smartphone, since holding on to it too hard might end up leaving you with more than just a few cuts. But I digress – Google has decided to usher in April Fool’s Day via tinkering with Google Maps.

Basically, if you were to boot up Google Maps and land yourself in an area where there are plenty of roads around – and New York City would fit the bill nicely, just click on the notable Pac-Man icon that is located on the bottom left, and then you would be transported to the past with the ability to play Pac-Man right there and then on Google Maps. Needless to say, you would have to do your bit to watch out for pesky ghosts, and there are power pills lying around so that you can turn the tables on those ghosts and gobble them up for points instead. Pretty cool, don’t you think so?

Google Maps Pays Homage To Pac-Man

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Gregg Jacobs is an insomnia specialist at the Sleep Disorders Center at the UMass Memorial Medical Center and the author of Say Good Night to Insomnia. In answer to my questions, he shared his insights on how human sleep patterns have changed over time, healthier and more effective alternatives to sleeping pills, and how to reverse our worst sleep habits and behaviors.

Describe your research on insomnia.

I have a longstanding interest in the relationship between the mind and health. My doctoral research, which assessed the ability of the mind to control physiology, showed that it was possible to use deep relaxation techniques to voluntarily produce brain wave patterns that were identical to the initial stages of sleep. My postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School included research on the meditative practices of Tibetan monks. This research, conducted in a Tibetan monastery in Sikkim under the auspices of the Dalai Lama, revealed that advanced Tibetan monks possess remarkable control over their brain waves and physiology. This led to my efforts to develop a safe, drug-free intervention for insomnia, called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), over the past 30 years at the Harvard and University of Massachusetts medical schools. This research culminated in a landmark study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, showing that CBT-I is more effective than Ambien. Because few people have access to CBT-I, my more recent efforts have focused on making CBT-I widely available in an inexpensive, practical format through my website, cbtforinsomnia.com. Numerous studies have recently demonstrated that internet-based CBT-I can be delivered as effectively as face-to-face CBT-I and is more practical and cost-effective.

You’ve discussed the history of segmented sleep. Do you believe we have evolved past this pattern, or are our bodies struggling against us when we try to sleep in one chunk of time? How does insomnia relate to this?

Research suggests that we may have displayed a polyphasic (i.e., multiple periods) sleep pattern for virtually all of our evolution until the recent advent of nighttime lighting. Prior to that, humans likely went to sleep soon after dusk and awakened at dawn in longer sleep periods that consisted of alternating bouts of sleep and wakefulness. This non-continuous sleep pattern is characteristic of virtually all mammals and is also the pattern we experience early and late in life. It is only in adult life, and the last 350 years of human history, that a more consolidated nocturnal sleep pattern is apparent. However, many adults still experience polyphasic sleep in the form of insomnia, and regular intervals of waking are still experienced in normal sleepers today, as evidenced by six to 12 brief awakenings per night (which most of us don’t recall, for they are too short). Evidently, this polyphasic sleep pattern lies dormant in our physiology, met an evolutionary need, and therefore may be adaptive rather than a sleep disorder.

In segmented sleep, how was waking time between the two sleeps spent?

In prehistoric times, it may have been spent tending to the fire, being vigilant for predators, in deep relaxation, for creativity and problem solving, and a channel of communication between dreams and waking life. Historical accounts suggest it was used for sexual activity and socializing, reading and writing, praying, meditating on dreams, or tending to the fire in the cold months.

Tell me about cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. How does this treatment for insomnia compare with other methods like sleeping pills? What successes have you seen among your patients, and how can others incorporate the strategies into their sleep habits?

CBT-I is the most effective psychology-based treatment for a health problem and has consistently been proven to be the most effective first-line treatment for chronic insomnia. It improves sleep in 75 to 80 percent of insomnia patients and reduces or eliminates sleeping pill use in 90 percent of patients. It is so effective that I am surprised if my patients do not report improvement in sleep, or a reduction or elimination of sleeping pills, from CBT-I. And in three studies published in major medical journals that directly compared CBT with sleeping pills, including my study at Harvard Medical School, CBT-I was more effective than sleeping pills. CBT-I also has no side effects and maintains improvements in sleep long-term, and new research shows that CBT-I doubles the improvement rates of depression compared with antidepressant medication alone in depressed patients with insomnia.

In contrast to CBT-I, sleeping pills do not greatly improve sleep. Objectively, newer-generation sleeping pills such as Ambien are no more effective than a placebo. Subjectively, they only increase total sleep time, and reduce the time it takes to fall asleep, by about 10 minutes. Furthermore, these small to moderate short-term improvements in sleep are often outweighed by significant side effects and risks, particularly in older adults. These include impairment of alertness, driving, and learning and memory (including sleep-dependent memory consolidation); increased mortality risk, as shown in almost two dozen scientific studies; and dependence, addiction, and activation of the same neurobiological pathways involved in drugs of abuse.

CBT-I is based on the idea that some individuals react to short-term insomnia (usually caused by stress) by worrying about sleep loss. After a few weeks of lying awake at night, frustrated and anxious about insomnia, they start to anticipate not sleeping and become apprehensive about going to bed. They soon learn to associate the bed with sleeplessness and frustration; consequently, the bed quickly becomes a learned cue for wakefulness and insomnia. As a result, they begin to engage in these types of maladaptive sleep habits, thoughts and behaviors that exacerbate insomnia that must be changed with CBT-I (sleeping pills are marginally effective because they do not change these behaviors):

• Negative, distorted thoughts and beliefs about insomnia such as “I must get eight hours of sleep” or “I did not sleep a wink last night.”
• Going to bed too early or sleeping too late and spending excessive time in bed.
• Irregular arising times.
• Trying to control sleep rather than letting it happen.
• Lying awake in bed, frustrated and tense.
• Using the bed and bedroom for activities other than sleep.
• Use of electronic devices before bedtime.

Online reputation management isn’t just for big companies any longer. For many years, the cost was prohibitive unless you had the deep pockets of a corporation. Today, in our social media driven world, we all need to know what an online search of our name brings up.

BrandYourself, a start-up in this niche was launched after co-founder Pete Kistler couldn’t get an internship during college because he was being mistaken for a criminal who shares his name. This becomes more than just an nuisance when your reputation is at stake.

He was desperate to fix the problem so his Syracuse University friends and BrandYourself co-founders Patrick Ambron and Evan McGowan-Watson used their tech talent to help him work it out. They realized that many other people would be facing similar mis-identity situations or even just unflattering photos from years past posted whimsically when it didn’t matter.

The only online reputation management solutions at the time cost upwards of $25,000. Reputation management was a high-end service based business. Ambron says:

“It catered to wealthy people with a specific issue but there are millions of ‘Petes’ who have an issue but can’t afford that. There are even more people who just want to put best their foot forward and be more visible, making sure all the good stuff is highlighted.”

With their collective skills in tech, they knew they could disrupt the industry. Ambron says, “In 2010, we initially approached the market by developing a do-it yourself software program to help walk people through the process; like Turbo Tax instead of paying an accountant. We spent time figuring things out, putting prototypes out there but never quite getting it right.”

They entered the Tech Garden’s Creative Core Emerging Business Competition in 2011. It was the largest publicly funded start up contest with thousands of competitors. They were the youngest ones and took the $200,000 grand prize. They were initially given $100,000 and then had to hit their milestone projections in order to get the second installment, which they did.

They built their first versions but couldn’t seem to scale. Ambron says:

“We didn’t have the software background. We wanted to find the best possible person to add to our team. We needed someone with experience in software, scaling a business and using different pay walls. Instead of putting out a job posting we wanted to do a search and recruit the right person. I thought online dating was a similar industry; they have tons of users, constantly competing with other companies. This is where we found our CTO, Dan Chote. He had been CTO and co-founder of Singles.net, where he built the company into 8 million users in 2 yrs. It was bought by Match.com. We approached him and it took about six months to get him on board but he was the missing piece. He also brought his two lead developers.”

This prize money allowed them to hire, rebuild and re-launch with what is now the modern day iteration of BrandYourself.

Relying on Press for Momentum

While things had fallen into place and the platform was solid, they didn’t have a substantial marketing budget so they relied on getting tidbits of press. The first business model was either the free sign up or the $100 a year level. At one point they signed up 60,000 users in 60 hours. Ambron says:

“We released a feature where if someone googled themselves, we could tell them exactly how/where they were found. Mashable covered this feature and it got 13,000 shares. It was so popular that other outlets picked it up too. It was a great snowball effect that led to sign ups of 1,000 people an hour for a few days.”

It was the first tipping point. They worked hard for buzz and then became focused on their customer conversion rate.

Laser Focused on Conversion

Ambron explains, “On a product that people can sign up for free, the industry standard is an 8% conversion rate. We worked so diligently and got that up to 30%. Since it’s not inherently a viral product, like a social network or a game, so we have to be good at getting people to engage. Our biggest focus was daily usability tests where we find out the points of disconnection and fix the problems. When the most a customer will be paying is $100 a year, you can’t pay much to acquire the customer. We realized that we could also offer a higher cost option that was still less expensive and better than the competition. So, we launched our concierge service and it’s doing really well.”

Adding that next level of service was the big tipping point, their revenue went from $30-40,000 a month to $300,000 a month. They moved their office from Syracuse to New York City with four people, two and a half years ago. They now have 65 people on their team, most of them working within the concierge service division.

Short term goals:
Ambron says:

“The thesis of our company is to have people understand that we live our whole lives online now and we should all have control over what’s out there. You don’t want random surprises from social platforms. We create tools and services that put people back in control of their online reputation. People need to know that this isn’t just a service for people who have a negative result but it matters for everybody. If you don’t define yourself you will be defined by someone else. You are being looked up, negative results hurt you but positive results help you.”

Ambron’s Advice About Entering Competitions:

We saw competitions as an opportunity to get in front of people. We had no experience, no track record, we weren’t from Silicon Valley and I had never taken a business class. Competitions were strictly an opportunity to get in front of investors and customers. They also generated press. When we won them, it added credibility. Don’t let competitions convince you that your business is viable. Approach them strictly as a marketing channel.

Ambron’s Advice On Pitching Investors:

• We took a targeted approach by figuring out the five best people in the industry and then got in front of them. Every investor said no but we knew they were the right guys so we kept after them. We kept in touch by offering bi-weekly updates which led to building a mentorship relationship. Every single one came in on our investment round seven months later! Without a track record, you have to really work to create a relationship.
• Don’t pitch investors until you know exactly how and where you would use the funds.
• Clearly show investors exactly where they fit in. Tell them where you are today and explain your point B. You have to define a very specific plan.

They have built a solid foundation that is now definitely disrupting the industry. Patrick Leber, the PR manager says, “BrandYourself has gotten national recognition as a leading authority in the ORM industry, being named the the overall StartUp winner at SXSW, listed on the White House Empact 100, and awarded Inc Magazine’s 35 Under 35 Coolest Entrepreneurs.”

Ambron was recently on Shark Tank and while he didn’t walk away with an investment, he did receive big offers. It wasn’t a total loss though, as they had already banked $5,000,000 in funding and the exposure from the show generated approximately 10,000 sign-ups. They were prepared with 40 employees working all weekend to be sure everything ran smoothly.

You can’t argue the fact that we all search people every single day online. As Ambron says, “You want people to see the best version of you online, not the Spring Break ’08 version.”