Tole's Take

Here's an idea in GPS for a smart entrepreneur

UPDATE: Folks have pointed me to a few sites like this that offer this service already. The quality of the voices are a little short of professional, but some (like the Governator, Arnold) are pretty darn funny.

It's time has come - a manufacturer finally created a voice-themed GPS device, this one using KITT from the 80's Knight Rider TV show.

>>It was bound to happen sooner or later: Generation X nostalgia and modern technology have come together in the “Knight Rider” Global Positioning System from Mio Technology.

The Knight Rider GPS (www.knightridergps.com) takes both its sound and style from the 1980s television show about a computerized talking 1982 Pontiac Firebird named KITT. William Daniels, the actor who was the voice of the sleek black car, narrates the unit’s driving directions. The device, which sports a black exterior and flashing red lights, can be personalized to use one of 300 common names in the greetings and random phrases it utters.<<

Who's going to be the first smart entrepreneur to apply the mobile world paradigm of downloadable ringtones to GPS voices?

There's bound to be a market for everything from Shrek's voice and expressions ("You are dumber than a donkey! I said turn left!") to Yoda directions ("Left you will go, young padwan. There is no try, just do").

More entrepreneurial types will of course recognize the potential for, ahem, adult-themed directions as voiced by their favorite screen stars ("Oh you are a bad boy, I said to turn left ...").

Lifehack: 3 Tips to be More Efficient with Email

One of my resolutions this year was to be more efficient at work, and that involved taking a step back and looking at my entire work picture in a completely different light. I've done this before, and each time I've found it is essential to take everything apart from the ground up in order to be effective.

It turned out that email was the single biggest detriment to my productivity, by a huge margin.

Email led to inefficiency (breaking my concentration when a new message appeared), incomplete work product (dashing off quick notes that, upon later review, led to an unnecessary number of responses to clarify the initial message), and a general feeling of unease throughout the day (checking frequently while waiting for a reply to appear).

So, here are 3 tips I've been using to be more efficient with email. I'm happy to report that they really do work if you are willing to employ them and not slip back into your old habits at crunch time:

1. Turn off email. Schedule 3-4 times per day to check your inbox, and stick to it religiously. The rest of the time, shut it down so it is not there as a distraction to your wandering eye. I check email at 6am, 10am, 3pm, and 9pm, and pound out all the emails I need to send or reply to in under 45 minutes per session.

2. Write short emails. I make all my emails 3 sentences or less; it forces me to think hard about what I want to say in the least amount of words. Anything longer? Pick up the phone and call the person.

3. BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front. Take a page from military correspondence, which has to be short, sweet and to the point. It's a key part of #2 above - say what you want to say right up front. Your audience will appreciate your emails and you will get much better (and faster) responses.

What's a good email template look like?
[First sentence: what you want to happen as a result of the email]
[Second sentence: the issue at hand]
[Third sentence: the deadline for completion]

Example:
"Dear Sue:

I need to know if the widget project will be completed by Friday.

Our biggest customer, Mega-corporation Inc., has a tight deadline for their integration of our widget. Please let me know by 4pm today if we are on schedule or if we are in jeopardy of missing the Friday deliverable so I can let them know. Thanks."

Incidentally, I find it is extremely helpful to your readers to have a paragraph break separating the first, and most important, point from the other two sentences. Most email readers are time-starved and overtaxed, so the joy of seeing a simple, one-line email request usually leads to an immediate response - voila, you have made your email more efficient!

Thoughts on the Landis case, now that it's finally over

The Floyd Landis affair is finally over, now that the CAS has ruled against him and effectively stripped him of his 2006 Tour de France title for using performance-enhancing drugs.

There were a lot of red herrings thrown up throughout this case. In the last couple of years, I've done plenty of reading and listening to podcasts during long rides and runs and have always tried to cut through the BS and clutter to what is really going on in sport these days. Some thoughts:

- Labs are not biased, and are not out to get any particular athlete. Listen to Dr. Michael Ashendon explain it.

- Our initial reaction is nearly always with the athlete, whom we have just spent the better part of 3 weeks watching on TV. We are athletes ourselves, and positive in nature, so seemingly-heroic comebacks feed into our desire to believe in the good side of sports.

- The athletes themselves feed on this "need to believe" with their public pronouncements about their impeccable character/ethics/background. Remember Tyler Hamilton's dog who passed away? Landis's straight-laced Amish upbringing? Listen to reporter Mark Zeigler if you want the BS-free scoop from someone who has covered drugs in sports since 1988 and has been taken in by all the boy scout-type athletes who later turned out to have a dark side.

- The athletes' side of the story is the only one the public hears while the case is prepared for trial. Defense lawyers do their best to sway the court of public opinion and can talk freely to the press (unlike the prosecution), which serves to distort the picture of what really occurred and paint the athlete in a more sympathetic light. This is exacerbated by (or exacerbates) the public's "need to believe."

- Do I think cycling is the dirtiest sport out there? Hell, no - they just test more. There isn't a single drug test in the major US sports immediately after a game, unlike in cycling; the only "testing" is a handful of offseason tests, not the 24/7 unannounced on-demand testing anywhere in the world to which cyclists must submit. Plus, without any sort of testing for HGH it is hard to take mainstream sports seriously - take a look at videos of football, baseball and basketball players from 20 years ago as compared to today's players. Advances in nutrition and weightlifting can't explain everything.

Cycling has a long road to recovery if it wants to regain its good name in the public eye, and this will likely take a generation or more. While the questions raised about the effectiveness of current EPO tests makes you wonder if we are in for more of the same this year, the "need to believe" in me says that the public anti-doping stances adopted by Slipstream-Chipotle and Team High Road are a step in the right direction, as are the recent team sponsorship announcements by Garmin (now Garmin-Chipotle), Columbia Sportswear (replacing the High Road name) and Saxo Bank (taking over for CSC at year's end).