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Why Edge of Tomorrow is great and misunderstood

Let me get right to the point.  I think the aliens won.  This is a great movie.  Everyone is comparing it to Groundhogs Day because of the time loop, but it also reminded me of the book Ender’s Game.  The reason it reminds me of Ender’s Game is because the aliens are looping time for a reason.  Why are they looping time?  To refine their strategy.  By starting over, they get to correct their mistakes.  This advantage is passed through blood to Tom Cruise as it had been on Emily Blunt previously.  She used that advantage to win a decisive battle.  But there is an important plot point that I think a lot of people are not really considering.  Emily Blunt and Noah Taylor (Dr Carter, the weird scientist) believe the aliens intended to lose that battle so that 1) the humans would believe they could win and 2) they would pour all there forces into a combined effort so that they could eliminate the insurgency in one effort.  There is another plot point I think people are overlooking.  The aliens had a plan in the event their power was passed to their enemies.  Do you remember that?  They gave false visions.  They showed that the Omega was in Germany in or around a damn, which they later realize is not so.  It is actually in the Louve.  But something unexpected happens when they kill the Omega.  Tom Cruise is killed in the successful attempt on the Omega.  And time resets.  Obviously the twist is we expect, since the Omega died, that they would  continue on.  But not only does time reset, it resets at a different time period than it has throughout the movie.

I would suggest that killing the Omega was indeed a big blow to the Mimics, but not fatal.  Presumably this isn’t their first rodeo.  They can control time, after all.  So they reset.  That is actually bad news for humanity because this time and each consecutive attempt will fail since the Mimics will refine their strategy.  That is, after all, the whole reason they loop time.  This time, as like in the first battle when Emily Blunt loses her ability to loop, we can only assume Tom Cruise has also lost his, losing their strategic advantage over the Mimics.  Strategically speaking, if you held the bulk of Europe, you would place your critical chess piece, so to speak, in a better protected position.  If in water, deeper.  And you would prepare for an attack regardless if you thought it was possible.

Trello: Simple Project Management Tool

I have a couple developers working on the Jables app.  They showed me an application that I think is pretty cool.  It’s Trello.  Trello is “is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards.  In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s worked on what, and where something is in a process.  Made in New York City by Fog Creek Software.”  So basically each board has three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done.  You create “cards” which act like post-it notes.  On the card you write a task to be completed.  You can assign one or more people to it and add a deadline date.  You can also add color, but I haven’t used that that much.  Once work has started on a task, you can move it to the Doing column.  And obviously once it is completed, you move it to the Done column.  It is a simple but effective project management tool.  And best of all, it is free.

You can also have multiple boards.  So we have 4 boards which are iOS Mobile App, Android Mobile App, Backend, and General.  Each board has a log so you can see who moved or edited what.

It seems that pretty much all the functionality I would want is free.  There is a Business Class version that is $5 per month per user or $45 per year per user.  It lists the additional functionality as easily manage boards and members, Google Apps integration, additional and custom board background, additional and custom stickers, 250MB attachments, one-click bulk data export in CSV and JSON, bulk export history, and an observer role.  I think if we had more people and were juggling more that would be useful.

Tools To Make A Killer Prototype

I think the prototype process is the first step to creating a great site.  It is critical if you are making a custom site.  It helps you think through the user experience and answer things like “what happens if I click on this.”  There are a ton of tools out there.  The method I used to create a prototype was really easy and created a prototype so good that people often think the site is already built when they look at the prototype.  I think there are basically three steps to prototyping.  Some people just do one but I think three is really helpful for the site creator if you do all three.  If you go through each of these steps, not only will you give the developer solid PSDs, but he can see how they interact with each other.

Step One: Mockup Wireframe

This step is where you think through UX and UI.  Some people think you should keep this step as free from design and work only on function.  I think the real answer is somewhere in the middle.  You can use tools like Balsamiq to make a really simple wireframe, but I really liked using Axure.  At $289, it is much more expensive than Balsamiq’s $79, but you can use photos and make the wireframe look really close to what you think the final version should look like.  You can also see what a shitty designer you are.  You can see my wireframe here.  After step two, I am embarrassed to even show it, but it really goes to show what a good designer can do.

Step Two: Design with PSDs

This step is the step that is going to make the site look good.  And you are crazy if you don’t hire a good designer for this.  To put “good” in perspective, I paid a designer $75/hour.  If you don’t know where to find designers, Dribbble is a great resource.  This should get you PSDs for each page.  If you look at a source like oDesk, you will see most front end developers are building from PSDs.  Getting the front end built from PSDs is really cheap, too.  In my opinion, spend the money for a good designer and save money on the front end.  You can find good front end developers for about $10 an hour if you are comfortable with going overseas.  And if they have good PSDs they will know exactly what to do.

Step Three: Make a Final Prototype

This is the fun step.  Once you have all the PSDs, you can upload them to InVision.  There is a free version, but it is worth it to pay for the Pro version while working on the prototype with the back end developers.  With the pro version, you can download and host the prototype.  You can see my prototype here.  You can link all the pages together so a developer can see what page they go to when they click on a link.  It begins to break down if you have a function.  For instance, if you a list that you sort and filter.  It will, however, let the developer see the bulk of links between pages.

Conclusion

After using this process for the main site, I used these three steps to make a prototype for the mobile app, and I couldn’t believe how quick the process was.  I think the mobile prototype is amazing.  I would be comfortable showing that to anyone.

 

Clone Scripts

I was at a networking event last night and was telling someone that I wanted to build something similar to Yelp.  His first question was, “I wonder if there is a clone script for that?”  What the hell is a clone script?  It basically turns a CMS like Drupal or WordPress into a popular site.  Want your own Twitter?  Get a Twitter Script.  Want your own Facebook?  There are almost a dozen Facebook clone scripts.  There are sites like clonescripts.com that host hundreds of sites.  It seems like if there is a popular site, there is a clone script for it.  And most in PHP.

Fight for $15

My first business was a convenience store that had two fast food franchises inside.  So most of my employees worked for low wages.  We didn’t pay minimum wage, but we were close.  It was hard working next to these people seeing their daily struggle.  Some were trying to support a family on that.  To be honest, I was paying myself $35,000 and that seemed hard to live on.  I can’t even imagine, really, what a life on minimum wage must be like.  I don’t want to think about it.  But that is a reality for many.  Today, May 15, people around the world fought for a living wage.  In the US it was $15.

About the same time I was running that store I heard people talking about a “living wage”.  The concept is this: at a minimum, we should pay a wage that people can realistically live on because, many argue, you cannot really live on minimum wage.  I think the rising tide lifts all ships, as they say.  I think by paying more, the whole economy improves.  Of course, there are a lot of people against this and I would suggest they either are executives or stock holders in the companies that have made huge returns off of low wage and high margin businesses.  Companies like WalMart, McDonalds, Burger King, Target, and Dominos to name a few.  I think it is dumfounding that executives, making salaries in the millions, say they can’t afford to pay employees more.  Donald Thompson, the CEO of McDonalds makes a salary (not including stock benefits) of $9.6 million.  In half of one day he makes more than most of his employees in an entire year.

In this Forbes article How Much Would A Big Mac Cost If McDonald’s Workers Were Paid $15 Per Hour? they site a model done by Arnobio Morelix, a student at the University of Kansas School of Business.  He suggests the cost of a Big Mac would go from $3.99 to $4.67, a 68 cent or 17% increase if McDonald’s were to raise their worker’s wages to $15.  A Bic Mac meal would go from $5.69 to $6.66, a $1.17 or 20% increase.  In Morgan Spurlock’s Inside Man episode on Unions they quote a UC Berkley Labor Center study that if WalMart were to pay an average of $12 up from $8.81 it would raise prices about 1%.  To me, that seems like a small price to pay considering these people would make $31,200 a year.

Some things to think about:

  • Every time you spend money at businesses like McDonald’s, WalMart, Burger King, Target, and Dominos, you are supporting the exploitation of the poor.
  • According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.55 million people in the US make minimum wage or less.  About 1%.  In Texas 455 thousand people make minimum wage or less.  About 1.7%.  The number of people making minimum wage or less in Texas is almost double what it is in the rest of the country.
  • $80 billion is spent on the United States federal food stamps program.  “Just in fast food, 52 percent of families are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs—like food stamps and medicaid—compared  with 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.” Says Fight for 15.
  • Raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 will decrease enrollment in the food stamp program as much as 7.5% to 8.7% according to a study by the Center for American Progress.

So for that reason I don’t shop at Walmart or McDonald’s.  Dominos or Taco Bell.  If given the choice between Home Depot and and independent, I’ll go to the independent.  I do my best to shop at places I think pay fair pay.  I can’t always, but I do my best.  I wish there was more to do.

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