Crunch. As I dropped my Nexus S, an handy 4.6 oz Google smartphone on the Manhattan sidewalk, I winced at that the cracked touch screen that paralleled with a crack of my digital loving heart. Immediately, I bought the Google Nexus 4 (currently sold out).

But when I started seeing people on the New York City subway carrying the iPad Mini, I wanted it badly. But having just purchased the Nexus 4 and owning multiple iPads, I cannot really justify the purchase of a smaller tablet. While this is unquestionably a first world problem, it underscores the consumer’s confusion on when making purchasing decisions in the mobile device space.

Being Mobile Is Not Enough

The 3.5-inch touch screen phone was the form factor that changed mobile, but typing on a 3.5 inch touchscreen requires squinting and is not easy for children or elderly, which is a serious usability issue.

A way to avoid that is by using voice commands and search. We have been accustomed to voice interaction from XBox control to various apps with such features. For example, Evernote has voice translation and Google has made search available by with a phone call for a long time now.

If voice search and commands are optimized, why do I need a screen except when I want to type and to write? Instead of pressing fat figures on little keys, what we really is a keyboard that is part of my body that I can type on…maybe that can be my forearm. The more important question is why is computer interaction still so divorced from the way we interact with the natural physical world? Touch interface has been a huge move in that direction, but we are not there yet. The devices still stop us in the middle of street, as a poignant reminder that the current interfaces stop our flow.

The crux of usability is flow. Users prefer touch, our natural way of interacting with the physical world. We want to multi-task and search and obtain information from our apps and devices without take our eyes off the road. We want this information instantaneously and seamlessly. If we want to take pictures, we’d like it to capture the moment. Putting my hand in my pocket to grab the phone, open it, then find the app – each of the action in this sequence holds me back from doing what I was doing and be in the moment, like laughing or eating.

Smartphone usage stops our flow and is not seamless. We want to see, record and respond using technology without breaking out of our flow. That’s crux of usability.

The Wearable Computer Is Here

Enter Google Glasses. They look a lot more normal than expected. Sergey Brin was spotted in the New York City subway with it looking ever nonchalant.

Google glass have the potential to optimize our experience and is one step closer to a seamless technology. This piece of technology can be incredibly user friendly and considered cutting edge and a mass market appeal if Google could take a page out of Steve Jobs’ playbook and make the glasses fashion forward as well. Sophisticated consumers and earlier adopters who are both digitally fluent and fashion conscious will find the glasses irresistible.

Google is not the only company pioneering this space. The fundraising of Pebble on Kickstarter, which is over 102 times over-funded, gives us pause. The Pebble watch has a great form factor and a modern design and it doesn’t stop our flow. With open APi, it has the potential do most things that your phone and apps can do while keeping your hands free.

We’ve see some of the early types of wearable technology. This type of technology is sticky, because as a phone is customized to be my own (with my apps, ring tones and info), wearable technology can conform and mold themselves to the user’s need and taste in a what is a previously unseen extent. And that will be the sticky point to make these products last.

The most important trend in consumer technology in recent year is not faster CPU, better GPU, better resolution, or other incremental improvement. The real trend that has defined consumer technology product is personalization and usability. In the same way that a piece of jewel defined us, iPhone, iPod and their accompanying accessories defined us. We use them as a piece of personal wear and make a statement about ourselves as much as we use them for productivity.

Are the smartphone’s days numbered?

Unfortunately, we have not seen much innovation in the smartphone market. Admittedly, CPU is faster, display is better, but Apple’s product announcement for 2013 shows that they are planning to price down to remain relevant with intense competition.

Wearable technology is where the action is. Apple is rumored to be making a watch too but this company is not usually the first-to-market in innovation.

3D Printing + Wearable Technology

3D printing has been in the works for a while now but the latest reception at CES 2013 seems to show that there is growing demand from consumers. Synergies exist between highly customizable wearable products and the increased ease with which consumers themselves could customized their products with 3D printing technology.

We could be seeing design and customization integrated with wearable technology in a previous unseen extent. This is great timing, because great leaps in innovation usually happens when several waves of complementary technology converge.

This post is originally published on Whiteboard: http://www.whiteboardmag.com/consumer-of-the-future-what-you-really-want-is-a-wearable-computer/

About the author

Jane Wang is a software engineer at Etsy, and formerly a product manager at financial tech startup, an investment banker, and a hedge fund racketeer. She is a strong supporter of female hackers and entrepreneurs. In her free time, she blogs at Isometric Cube, writes for content platforms, including Forbes, Women2.0 and TechWomen, and makes things with brackets, numbers, and paint. Follow her on twitter at @janeylwang.

Photo source: Kickstarter, Pebble, Machina

Mobile E-Commerce Forecast for 2013 by eMarketer. On the top level, is averages to $130 gross spending per user for 2013. Interestingly, tablet usage for 2012 is more evenly distributed across age groups, particularly for the children and elderly. This general adoption for tablet seems to suggest that tablets have more diverse type of use case for different needs across the population (i.e. children - education and gaming, elderly - reading, emails).

Furthermore, it is curious to note that Gen Z has lower mobile usage on average than Gen Y. I wonder if this is not accurately accounting for Gen Z’s currently weaker purchasing power. When they move up to the next age bracket, their adoption rate could likely be higher.

Learning to code is one of the most empowering things that I’ve done and I’m thankful for learning it everyday.

My journey started in January of 2011 when I signed up for a beginner web development class at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. My motivation was mostly out of curiosity of being able to make beautiful things on the web, and partly because I’ve read about news articles of past employees from the hedge fund where I was working that had left to build tech startups in foreign countries. Thus when I received a catalog from NYU out of the blue, I opened it up and found myself planning out my computer science curriculum.

That was how my journey first began.

Attending Classes and Stumbling in the Dark
My New York University’s class was a great entry point. Learning HTML, CSS, and networking made me marvel at our current state of the web. My first webpage was my resume on a simple HTML page. With a background in art, I realized that there’s a lot of creative control over design and style.

Yet, it soon became much harder. Making HTML pages is far from building a web application. After the class is over, I started digging into the online tutorials like nettuts+, books, and papers - anything I could find for free from public libraries and online. Theory came easier to me first than practice. I enjoyed reading academic papers with the likes of Sergey and Larry’s paper on Google’s PageRanks, but coding itself was hard. It was often frustrating when the instructions didn’t make sense, or that I encountered a bug that only appeared in a newer version of a framework. Searching for the answer seems tough because a) I didn’t know what to search, and b) the answers have so many jargon that they read like an ancient Sumerian text. There were weeks that I was motivated and made progress, and there were weeks when I was stuck on an error and doubted what I was doing.

Self-learning is hard for the uninitiated. I realized that after reading how other people learned on their own, I needed to develop my own method. After all, learning by attending classes is limited, because classes can only take you so far.

Hackathon’s Wannabe Hacker
I had wished that I knew more developers. In finance, being in the center of bankers and hedge fund folks gives you a great flow of information, and keeps you current on new developments. In a different industry, I imagined that it would be the same. For this reason, I attended hackathons. If I couldn’t code well, at least I could pitch ideas and discuss business models. To my unwitting self, hackathons in New York City were filled with business folks and far fewer developers, so finding a developer to carry out an idea is not easy. Even though I liked the structure of building a product within a short period of time and validating a business idea, I often felt that I would better provide value if I could build the product. Moreover, learning how to code during hackathons works if you have met a minimal level of proficiency, and just needed someone to point you in the right direction.

Learning to Ask for Help
I’ve seen meetings where real hackers hang out and build things together on meetup.com. Unfortunately, it took me awhile to work up the courage to go to these gatherings. More often, I found myself going to Show N’ Tell events where the speakers would talk about their projects. Listening to other people’s projects is not equivalent of learning to build your own. When I finally worked up the courage to go to a meetup with hackers, they were gentle with me and there were other young developers.

The Moment When You Make a Real Commitment.. Accelerated Learning
I really started to learn how to code when I started building my own startup and was desperate to build the product. There was no other way that I could do it except to build a proof of concept. That was when I no longer had the luxury to think of coding as an hobby or as a self-improvement project. Rather it had became something that I desperately needed to know. It took a lot of grunt work, sleepless nights, leftovers, and takeouts, as the road to mastery of any craft it is not enough with brain and no heart. It was an incredibly humbling experience, but true commitment makes hard things less hard.

Hacker School - Getting on a Rocket Ship
Be it luck or coincidence, when my startup didn’t work out, I saw a note about Hacker School in my inbox, and I applied, figuring that I had nothing to lose and not knowing that it was a rocket ship. I didn’t know much about the movement of unschooling and self-directed learning or the idea that you should learn what interests you most. But I went, had a wonderful time, and you can read about my experience here. It requires a commitment of putting your life on hold. It was a right time for me, because I had achieved enough proficiency that I knew I could build. Being able to do well at Hacker School has validated for me that I have been initiated to this path of software engineering. I think the best experiences gained from Hacker School are from programmers who have met some level of proficiency, and can gain the most from the incredible residents and leaders of open source community that are there.

Advice I Wish I Knew
- I wish that it took me less time to work up the courage to attend weekly hacking sessions, because I have met a lot of really interesting and helpful people there. I saw very early beginners who were there being taught by more seasoned developers. I wished that I had asked for help earlier.

- I wish that I had spend more time building a product that I cared about instead of reading programming books. That is not to say that reading books isn’t the right way to learn, but it wasn’t the right way to learn for me. Each person needs to figure out her own style of learning.

- Find the language that works best for you. Some languages are more popular than others, but that doesn’t mean it is the right one for you. As your first language, instead of following the herd, figure out what language you like. Your first hurdle is getting to know the syntax, so pick something you like makes the hurdle lower.

- Stick with one language, instead of bouncing around. First, I tried Ruby, then Python, and then JavaScript. I would strongly caution against bouncing around, since the process may make you feel like you are making progress, but, on the whole, you are just scratching the surface of each without going for depth.

- When things are difficult and I bet they will be, be easy on yourself and do not expect that you will do it perfectly the first time. You will keep trying, redoing, and expecting the outcome to become better each time. If you have an expectation that you won’t learn something immediately and give you time to dwell and to figure things out, then you are less likely to become discouraged. When things do become more difficult, you can say that you now have the opportunity to figure things out, instead of becoming frustrated or thinking that you lack the ability.

- Don’t ever think that you lack ability. Make mental adjustments and stay positive. It is important for perseverance.

This article is published on Women 2.0.

Jane Wang is an hacker at Etsy, a graduate of Hacker School, the founder of Parkit Labs, and formerly a product manager at financial tech startup and an investment banker. She is a strong supporter of female hackers and entrepreneurs. In her free time, she blogs at Isometric Cube, writes for content platforms, including Forbes, Women2.0 and TechWomen, and makes things with brackets, numbers, and paint. Follow her on twitter at @janeylwang.

Fred Wilson just wrote an in depth post on peer-to-peer marketplace, after his recent post on general types of online commerce. It’s worth every second of reading. And you should read and re-read to chew it down: here with the comments.

I haven’t had time to formulate my thoughts, and I haven’t seen the numbers for Fab but you bet that I will be getting those now. I’ll be dissecting these arguments in my upcoming post.

Studies shows that success is not about having better innate abilities but is really about the ability to set goals and being able to reach those goals. It means to focus on getting better than being good. When you allow yourself to make mistakes and not expect yourself to do everything perfectly, then you are more likely to do better without having the stress of being perfect.

Also I see a lot of people who focus only on the positives on reaching a goal. Nothing worth having is so easily gained. I believe taking a more leveled approach towards the end point, and think about each of the steps of the path towards the goal. This makes reaching the goal easier.

Photo: Porini Safari

A great artist is never too comfortable. Outsiders have different perspectives. They usually can see change more clearly.

I’ve been reading voraciously on design. Design separates the great products from good and ultimately distinguishes luxury products from the rest. In the modern world of constantly decreasing manufacturing costs, the empathy and respect for the end user is most effectively communicated by design. Luxury products, in turn, derive their value by making the end user feel esteemed. Speaking more specific on software products, good code without great design will not achieve its intended purpose by reaching the common masses.

To learn about design process, I’ve watched designers at work. You can learn a lot by observing them. Great designers that I’ve studied and lived with are constantly collecting and looking over things that they like for inspiration and for synthesis. They go through the physical world taking pictures, saving images from the internet, even cutting out pictures from books and magazines to add to their ever growing collections of inspiration. I don’t know a single good designer that doesn’t have a collection of images stashed somewhere that they return often to for inspiration. In Shiro’s Dream of Sushi, the maestro sushi chef said to become an excellent chef, you have to eat excellently, as it refines your palate. In same vein, to become a good designer, it appears, you also have to consume good art, to refine your taste.

While I was living in Japan, a land with a design aesthetics that is quite different from America’s, I’ve taken opportunities to become acquainted with the country’s reigning design philosophy. The Japanese design is characterized by its simplicity. In the land of Zen and ascetic beauty, I tried to find places and things that could teach this design sense to me. After all, having a refined sense of design informs one not only on developing usable products, but also on living well.

What does the Japanese do well? Japanese design brings out the nature of the original material and cuts out the embellishments. Whether it is its clay bowl used in Wabi Sabi tea ceremony found in the Tokyo National Museum or its demure buildings, the material itself is exposed of its natural characteristics to the extent that the Western eye would say that it is flawed. To the Japanese, it means authenticity.

Steve Jobs, if you consider what he has done in his works, obeys this design principle. Here’s Steve on designing Pixar office:

“Then there’s our building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.”

So there it is - a thoughtful simplicity that inspires us with authenticity, and has the power to connect us. 

2012 was a roller coaster ride and, for the good, the bad, and the ugly, it was nothing short of an amazing year in terms of experience gained. I’ve built a startup, fell flat on my face, picked myself up, worked through Hacker School, published on Forbes, consulted in Tokyo, Japan, and ended up at a fantastic tech company called Etsy. I thought I wasn’t going to make a list of New Year resolutions for 2013, because I’d obsess over it too much and perhaps it may limit me in what I deem to be possible. But I should write the list down to hold myself accountable. Here it goes:

1. Build three little apps (one in half-baked state, the other two not started) that I’ve been thinking of building.
2. Just because Hacker School ends doesn’t mean the learning stops. Do well in bootcamp and move on to build more challenging things.
3. Manage my investments and capture new investment opportunities.
4. Sign up for a yoga class in Brooklyn and bike to work every day as soon as the weather becomes warmer.
5. Take the class that I’ve mentioned that I’d take.
6. Do pure math with GP, the Cambridge theoretical physicist, and teach him how to code.
7. Read and write more.

I’ll stop here and check-in in a few months to see how many items I’ve cross off this list.

So you found a great startup to invest with wind to its back - increasing market size, dynamic team, and, unlike the competition, they have a big fat margin. In fact, the margin is so high that you think you would be a fool to pass up. 

Well, you’d be a fool to pass up, but a bigger fool to invest. Warren Buffet said, “We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet.” When the margin is high, competition and copycats are sure to arrive, so that big fat margin that you think you see now may be eroded by rising marketing cost, and not be there down the road. It may not even be there before the next round happens.

In PE, they talk about vintage year. Well, timing is everything. And regarding the macroeconomic outlook, I’m not bullish.

I have received questions about Hacker School from the ladies at Women 2.0, members of NYTechWomen, and friends of friends through email introductions. I will do my best to address these below.

How did you get a job at Etsy? Because hacker school was located/incubated at Etsy last season?

Immediately after Hacker School, I worked in Tokyo, Japan for a startup on a consulting basis. After my consulting work, I interviewed with several startups and tech companies. You are not entitled to a job at any company, because you’ve attended Hacker School.

That said, Hacker School is based at Etsy, and, if you want to work at Etsy, you have opportunities to show your interest and ability while you are attending Hacker School. The same goes for getting a job at any company. If you have your heart set on a company, then take opportunities to make yourself a strong candidate. Etsy, like any other businesses, hires based a number of factors, and one of greatest is business need.

What projects did you work on? What did you build?

I worked on several Node.js projects. One of those is an app called Instafun, using the Instagram API. It is a way for users to search through Instagram with keywords or tags. Another project that I am particularly fond of is a multi-player game over websockets called Icarus which is similar to Asteroids (won by object avoidance), using Express, Backbone.js, Socket.io, and Underscore.js.

I also worked on Python, built several small projects with Django and Flask, and contributed to BPython. Towards the end of Hacker School, I started using functional programming and learning Erlang.

What programming skills did you have before hacker school? What was the delta in your experience at hacker school?

Before Hacker School, I was building a startup, Parkit Labs. The API and the desktop web version is built in Node.js, which is what I was working on. The frontend is an Android app. I wrote a little Java, though my co-founder has done most of the work for the app. Coming into Hacker School, I was proficient in Node.js, including testing with the Mocha framework.

In addition, I had extensive experience writing SQL queries and stored procedures as well as some C# experience from my previous work.

One of the delta at Hacker School is that building computationally intensive games taught me a lot about writing good, performant algorithms. Rewriting code a few times and a couple of different ways taught me to recognize good patterns. Working with and watching how different types of non-mainstream languages work showed me the power of languages. I also tinkered with a Raspberry Pi after seeing another Hacker Schooler had one.

I think my greatest takeaways from Hacker School were being able to work with something new and getting to proficiency quickly (i.e. learning about how to learn). I figured out a style of learning that seems to be working for me, which is to dive into the deep end, be confused, and be comfortable with that. Then, try to make connections until pieces begin to fall into place and a clearer picture emerges.

After hacker school, how did you prepare for technical interviews and what is the best way to prepare?

To me, the best way to prepare for interviews is to interview extensively, and to review your own performance each time. Every interview question you’d like to see, or a permutation of such, is typically available online. If you want a job at a specific company, I would encourage building something with its API. You should have a good idea of what type of software development job you want, then focus on what they are asking for you to know. For startups, they may have limited resources for your ramp up, so they appreciate when you are familiar with the language, framework, and testing framework that they are working with.

If you don’t have a lot of experience, you need to know that the companies are taking risks on your behalf. The level of risk that they are willing to take is a function of your current strength as a developer, your ability to learn (your expected ability), other factors about you (i.e. fit), and their own resources.

I know some hacker schoolers prepared extensively for interviews. I took a different route and was more interested in going to hackathons sponsored at various companies. I participated in several competitions, including Node Knockout, Onswipe HTML5 Hackathon (winning entry), and Angel Hack.

Do you have any advice about the application?

Yes, apply early and do your best on the application, but do not agonize over it. Also please don’t wait until the start of Hacker School to start building. Start now. If you want to go to Hacker School, just remember to keep building.

I hope this post helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions that I can help to answer.

This article is published on Women2.0 http://www.women2.com/questions-about-hacker-school/

Jane Wang is an hacker at Etsy, a graduate of Hacker School, the founder of Parkit Labs, and formerly a product manager at financial tech startup and an investment banker. She is a strong supporter of female hackers and entrepreneurs. In her free time, she blogs at Isometric Cube, writes for content platforms, including Forbes, Women2.0 and TechWomen, and makes things with brackets, numbers, and paint. Follow her on twitter at @janeylwang.

Magnificent UNESCO #World #Heritage site in Nara, Old Japan #Travels

This is an holiday post to encourage women who are interested in programming and computer science to take the leap in the new year and apply to Hacker School now. The application is open till Tuesday, January 1st at 11:59pm ET.

Why should you apply?

- You will find motivated people who keep you focused. So much of what we do is affected by our environment. No matter how good you are as a developer, you will find that working with other smart and passionate developers to be highly motivating.

- Residents! Residents at Hacker School are typically the leaders in the programming community and they may even be Benevolent Dictator for Life (GeekSpeak for open source leaders who have the final say to disagreements) of their own programming community. You can seat along side and code with them (i.e. learning from the best).

- If you are a woman, there will be other women. You won’t be the only one. In fact the men at Hacker School are genuinely good people. I think the founders took care to select genuinely good and nice people.

- You will discover new programming languages. Presentations and daily conversations with fellow Hacker Schoolers will introduce you to projects that are being working on. Hacker Schools are working on projects because they are interested in them, so it will be lead to exciting discussions. You will find out about languages, tools and frameworks that you’d didn’t know about and watch them live in action just by asking for someone to show and tell. It will expand your horizon and sometimes blow your mind.

- You will be asked to ship. Steve Jobs said, “Real artists ship.” It’s no lie. There’s a focus at Hacker School to ship. People will ask you about what you build every week. You get to ship and tell people about it.

Other awesome benefits not to be overlooked

- Hacker School is based out of Etsy. You get to go Eatsy for lunch, which is ridiculous good food on Tuesday and Thursdays, and work next to the Brooklyn bridge with a park to stroll in that has a stunning view of Manhattan.

- There are tons of social activities within each batch, including official outings to Fat Cat and Black Swan restaurants that are inclusive of previous batches. Students also self-organize to go to climbing events, ramen outings, dumpling outings, game nights, poker nights, and so on.

- After you graduate, you will have a great group of friends at various tech companies and startups. We continue the tradition of having regular social events.

Reflections

Reflecting on my own experience one batch ago: On my first day, I was nervous. But as soon as everyone started talking about their project ideas and what they want to learn, I realized that everyone is there to learn and to make friends. It was completely acceptable, in fact encouraged, to pair with someone, especially when they are interested in the same and collaborate. I discovered another woman was very passionate about JavaScript on the first day and we immediately started sharing tools and tips.

Fast forward three months: On the last day, I had a sense of reassurance in my ability to grasp complex concepts and pick up things on the fly. That’s the level of confidence a lot of hacker schoolers walked away with, because we have been doing it for three months since day one. I think this level of trust in your own ability by itself can help you tackle tough problems.

Thank you for reading. I wish that women out would give themselves an opportunity and make an investment in themselves. That’s the best kind of holiday present.

This article is published on Women2.0 http://www.women2.com/5-reasons-you-should-apply-to-hacker-school/

Jane Wang is an hacker at Etsy, a graduate of Hacker School, the founder of Parkit Labs, and formerly a product manager at financial tech startup and an investment banker. She is a strong supporter of female hackers and entrepreneurs. In her free time, she blogs at Isometric Cube, writes for content platforms, including Forbes, Women2.0 and TechWomen, and makes things with brackets, numbers, and paint. Follow her on twitter at @janeylwang.

If you don’t know what this is, then you must be living under a rock. It’s a crystal called herbertsmithite discovered at MIT and the first discovered QSL after it was theorized to exist decades earlier. Why do we care about a rock? Or if you’ve been reading, what is a QSL?

“Quantum spin liquid (QSL), could lead to significant advances in data storage. QSLs also exhibit a quantum phenomenon called long-range entanglement, which could lead to new types of communications systems.”

Material science for the win!

Finding Rebecca West. Chuck Palahniuk, Theodor Adorno, Rebecca West cornered you and asked, “do we really want to define ourselves with stuff?”