You probably long ago put your CDs into iTunes, but DVDs are not so easy to digitize. The process requires third-party software, and some apps are more obscure than others. MacX DVD Ripper Pro has long led the field, and you can currently get it free via MakeUseOf Deals, saving $59.99. No strings attached, just pure generosity! What it does MacX claims this is the fastest DVD ripper around, and there is no reason to argue. The app turns DVDs to digital files at top speed while giving you full control, utilizing multi-core CPU processing. It will even rip copy-protected…
These custom built lightsabers look pretty authentic and dangerous. And that is the whole point. If you want a lightsaber you can use for realistic and immersive live-action roleplay, Kyberlights could be your weapon of choice. They are tough and durable and they look badass.
You can use them to live out your Star Wars dueling fantasies, as an accessory at a convention, or for sci-fi LARP meetups. They are built to last, ensuring they’ll handle the most violent abuse you can dish out, just like a real lightsaber.
They are made from interchangeable parts, so you can mix and match different components to customize your lightsaber any way you like. Each one consists of a hilt, a guard that attaches on top of the hilt, a pommel that screws on at the bottom, a sleeve that goes around the hilt, and a blade that slots on top of the assembly. They can light up in one of 20 beautiful bright colors, and make all the appropriate lightsaber noises when swung around.
Head over to Kickstarter to order your own Kyberlight saber for $199.
Few things irritate office workers more than booking a meeting right over lunch. Sure, it may be the only time most people’s calendars are open, but that’s probably because everyone’s trying to get out of the office and have a meal. The solution is simple: don’t schedule lunch meetings unless you’re buying lunch.
At my old job, I had to organize more meetings than I prefer to remember, but one thing was certain—if you booked a meeting in that time block between 11am and 1pm, you should expect someone to walk in and tease you with “so, when’s lunch getting here?”
Obviously if it’s important and everyone agrees that it’s the best and only time for the meeting to happen, then it needs to happen, but considering that lunch is the only time that most people working in offices actually get to get up, walk around, leave the office for a little bit, or have a little time to themselves, it’s best avoided if at all possible—and if you do need to intrude on that time, the least you can do if you’re the meeting organizer is to provide or organize a lunch delivery, even if you ask everyone to chip in for it.
For the rest of us though, if you have that particular manager or team member who just can’t get away from booking people over lunch, may we suggest the old “block off time for everything on your calendar” technique to keep them from booking you? Your calendar will look busy (especially if you make it a private appointment) and they’ll have to find some other time you’re available.
As always, thanks to everyone who entered our Show Us Your Favorite Round contest. There were many varied and inspiring entries, but in the end, someone had to put his foot down and choose the best, and that foot is me.
Congrats to all the winners.
Second place: PS’s SIG P229 with SIG 9mm FMJ
Third place: JS’s Smith & Wesson 642 with Federal .38 Spl. +P 158 gr. Nyclad® HP
A walk through the woods. It sounds wonderful. Birds chirping, deer frolicking off in the distance, the majesty of the trees, the opportunity to get lost and drink river water that ties your stomach in knots. Hiking doesn’t have to be a combination of pure joy and fear of succumbing to the dangers of being outside.
To lower your chances of becoming wild animal fodder, we found some great tech to take along on your next jaunt into the woods. To stay in touch with your companions, the GoTenna turns your smartphone into a two-way FM radio-based texting machine with location sharing capabilities. So if you do wander off the trail, your GoTenna-enabled friends can quickly find you.
If you do get get lost or forget to bring along a canteen, the Lifestraw Personal Water Filter will make a nearby river or lake a source of refreshment, instead of a series of trips behind a tree to unleash your bowels. Our test to filter out anything that would destroy the intestines of one (un)lucky hiker was (thankfully) successful.
We documented all this borderline-self-abuse using two Narrative 2 clips. Unfortunately, only one of them actually delivered on the promise of shooting video or photos every few moments. But the one that did work as advertised caught some candid photos of our walk. But you have to make sure the clip on is pointed in the right direction. A lot of our photos were of trees because the Narrative was pointed slightly up.
To keep all this tech juiced up, we wore the Voltaic Offgrid Solar Backpack. The panels on the bag take the raw power of the sun and use it to keep your smartphone, tablet or any other gadget charged up. The internal battery is removable so your devices aren’t trapped in the bag when they need a to stay on during chats with your friends. It’s also helpful when you’re watching movies on your tablet while you fall asleep in your tent after a long day of enjoying the wilderness.
Outfitting your home with Internet of Things devices can still be a pain. Figuring out which pieces of hardware from different companies work together is a trip down a confusing rabbit hole. But for those in the market for a connected home, is increasingly becoming a ready-to-go option.
Adding home automation elements during construction isn’t new. What’s changed in the last few years is that the prices have dropped dramatically (from tens of thousands to about $3,000) and the systems can be run from Apple’s HomeKit or a voice assistant like Alexa instead of proprietary hardware. Now large homebuilding companies like KB Home, Brookfield Residential and Lennar are offering IoT options for new houses.
Providing homeowners turnkey solutions gives these companies an additional source of revenue. But, it also shows that the current wave of connected home devices and platforms is finally reaching a level of maturity that will convince people that home automation is actually useful.
Jacob Atalla, KB Home VP of sustainability, tells Engadget, "We are at stage beyond the (individual) widgets." He added now that different devices are working together thanks to the HomeKit platform, his company is able to deliver a real experience to homeowners.
You shouldn’t expect to walk into one of these new houses and see a Nest on the wall or a WeMo controlling the lights. A home is a decades-long investment. Sure the startup world is exciting, but homebuilders are relying on established manufacturers like Whirlpool, GE and Honeywell. David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures, tells Engadget, "When you buy a new home, it’s a significant piece of machinery. We rely on and take a lot of stock in the manufacturing process and quality control of the large manufacturers."
The closest thing to a startup in these homes is Apple. All three homebuilders are working with the iPhone-maker to make sure the buildings are HomeKit-ready to simplify the transition to a smarter house. All the devices in the dwellings will be compliant with Apple’s IoT solution. "What people want is an entire package that’s simple and unified and easy to use. Consumers don’t want one device over another, they want an entire solution," Kaiserman says.
But the executives all also noted that they are open to working with other platforms — which should be welcome news to Android-using home buyers. Plus, it’s a sign that the companies see this as a long-term trend. Brookfield Residential COO, Adrian Foley, believes once people see what a smart home can accomplish, they won’t go back. He used the car as an analogy, noting that people don’t want to return to a time before keyless entries and electric windows. "I think we’ll get very used to the convenience of the smart home," he says.
In the meantime, house hunters have the opportunity to jump directly into a connected home without the headache of building it on their own. And while KB Home, Lennar and Brookfield Residential would like everyone to enjoy the benefits of IoT with a clean slate, the truth is that won’t happen. But, what will happen is that people will visit their friends in their fancy new automated dwellings will realize that maybe IoT is something they want in their own home — even if it still takes more effort than it should.
Our lives have never been the same since we left the comforts of the city to move to an off grid property deep in the Idaho mountains. We are building an off-grid homestead from the ground up (and blogging about it at purelivingforlife.com). We have the mentality that it’s better for the mind and body to start small and slowly build up to bigger projects, so rather than tackling the difficult task of constructing our house right away, we decided to start with something a little more, well, relaxing. We wanted to build something that would make it easier to build our home and something that could ease our sore muscles. A wood fired cedar hot tub seemed like the perfect project.
Why choose to build a wood fired hot tub?
Because we live off grid, our electricity is limited. Though a full solar set up is our dream for the future, all we have right now is an electric generator. A propane-powered system was an option, but seeing that we live in the middle of the woods it seemed silly not to take advantage of the free wood fuel all around us.
What is the advantage of using cedar?
Our initial plan was to build a cheap and simple “cowboy” hot tub, but we soon became captivated by the allure of building with cedar. This gorgeous wood would add a touch of refinement to our home, be more durable, and would be a whole lot more fun to experiment with!
Check out our hot tub series!
Cedar hot tubs are expensive, costing anywhere from $3,000- $7,000 to buy. We wanted to go a cheaper route by getting deals on materials and doing everything ourselves, and we thought it would be useful to others if we documented the process. When everything was done, we had only spent about $850 for the entire project. Not too shabby. If you want to see a list of tools that were needed to complete this project look here, and keep reading for farther building instructions.
Step 1: Source Affordable, High Quality Cedar Boards
By far the hardest part of building your own hot tub is finding clear cedar lumber at an affordable rate. Any board with knots in it can’t be used because knots are weak places in the wood that might blow out under pressure, creating a huge leak in the side of the tub. Yet clear cedar (considered #1 grade) doesn’t come cheap and is hard to find at most lumber yards.
We used Craigslist to find a lumber yard in our area with plenty of cedar available. The only catch was that it was #2 grade and full of knots. We requested permission to go through the pile to search for clear lumber that could we could use for our project. This is pretty rare — sorting lumber is usually frowned upon at lumber yards, so be sure to ask permission before you try!
The tub we built is 5′ in diameter and 3′ in depth and we knew these measurements before seeking out wood. For your own project, make sure to calculate the amount of wood you will need before buying any as it will save a lot of headache later on.
Additional, knotty lumber was also purchased to be used for a patio fence, hot tub seats, and other tub accessories.
Step 2: Cutting the Staves
The staves are the boards that make up the sides of the hot tub, and cutting them was the first part of this project we tackled. The dimension of each stave is going to depend on the size of lumber you are using and the circumference of your tub. Be mindful that the staves will be connected to the inside edge of the hot tub floor, meaning that the inner circumference will be decreased.
Because we were using #2 lumber we worked hard to get the most out of every board. We paid special attention to the order of our cuts to maximize the amount of usable clear wood. A table saw and cross cut saw were essential for this part of the project.
Step 3: Stave Joinery
We can’t overstate how important the stave joinery is for the success of this project. Seriously. Carelessness or inexact cuts will make it virtually impossible to get your tub water tight.
Building Bead & Cove Joinery
We decided to use a canoe joint (also called a bead and cove joint) for the joinery. Our stock was 1.5″ thick so we used a bead with a ½” radius and a cove bit. We found these measurements left a small shelf on the staves which allowed the joint to rest on them properly. Your router should work fine for this. Each board has to be run through four times to complete the joint, twice on each side.
A lip on the joints can be taken care of with a planer to smooth the joint. If you create your joinery correctly, the cedar should swell when water is added, allowing the tub to become water tight.
Dado Joinery
We used a dado joint to attach the boards to the floor. Later in this article we will talk about the depth you will need to create this joint at. Getting it super snug on every stave is super important. We used our table saw for this step, but there are lots of other ways you can do it. It’s worth jigging your saw because this cut needs to be as accurate as possible for maximum snugness. Check each joint to ensure they are being cut consistent.
Step 4: Building the Floor
For our floor, we used the cedar that was available, which was 1×6 v-groove tongue and groove. This wasn’t ideal, and we don’t recommend using v-groove with something else is available. Most cedar tubs are built with 2×6 stock which would be a lot easier than what we used.
To build the floor we followed the some technique of maximizing cuts as we did with the staves. We positioned the lumber on the ground so that the whole floor was clear cedar. To make the cut, we made a guide the length of the radius of our tub (2 ½ feet) and used it to draw a circle.
We built the floor joists with 4×4 cedar, using two pieces that were 5′ in length and two that were 3′. These were equally spaced around the tub.
The dado joints were cut to the theoretical perfect length that would give us the length needed to have a whole number of staves around the tub (it’s hard to use half a stave). We have a secret way to come up with the magic number for the depth of the dado joint, so watch this video to learn about it!
Sadly our magic fell a little short for us and our measurements were slightly off, meaning we had to get a little creative with our last few staves. But all’s well that ends well, right?
Once everything was put in place we used a ratchet strap to hold it all together while we used a jig saw around the circumference.
Step 5: Assembling the Hot Tub
The Staves
The staves were super simple to put in place. We gently tapped them in with a dead blow hammer. Getting a tight fit is essential, so take your time with this part and switch out staves if they aren’t fitting right.
Just need half a stave to finish it?
When we finished putting the staves in place we discovered that we needed a partial stave to finish it. We came up with a creative solution that’s shown in this video where we cut a stave in half and attached it to the second-to-last stave with a tongue and groove joint.
Cable Tension Bands
We used 3/16″ vinyl-coated cable to hold our tub together because we thought the coating would prevent it from harming the wood. We used two clamp sets on each cable (with three cables total) because we thought it made them look more finished. The ends were attached with a stainless steel turn buckle.
TIP: Ratchet straps are really helpful for holding the tub together when you are putting on the cable bands. It’s a good rule of thumb to have the turn buckles tightened half way when you finish, because the tub will swell when water is added and might shrink back down after being in full sun for a few days.
Step 6: Benches & Plumbing
Building Benches
Because it doesn’t matter if there are knots in the benches, we got to utilize our leftover wood. (This is why it pays to be careful with your cuts!) We used 2×4 #2 grade cedar for the legs and leftover staves for the seats.
We built the benches to fit in a hexagon shape, but we only built four sides of the hexagon. This means that the longest length of each bench is equal to the radius of the tub, and the angle of the seat lumber is 30 degrees from every direction. We invested in corrosion proof stainless steel hardware for the benches. Pricy, but certainly worth it.
Plumbing
For the hot tub drain, we installed a simple push-style floor drain like can be found in most bath tubs. Below the tub we attached a 90 degree pipe with additional fittings that could be connected to a garden hose when we want to drain the tub. A ball valve was installed as a backup measure, which was great foresight because the regular drain leaks! It’s most likely because we skimped on quality, which is almost always a mistake.
Step 7: Filling the Tub
For those of you lucky folks that live on grid and have an endless supply of water, filling the tub is super straightforward. For us… not so much. This was the most miserable part of the whole process for us because we don’t have any large scale water system yet.
When we first started filling the tub it leaked like crazy… for three whole days. Eventually it swelled enough to stop leaking and held water. This is actually pretty normal for cedar tubs.
Our impatience eventually got the best of us and we caulked the tub with a marine-grade clear caulk. It helped a bit but we aren’t sure it was completely necessary. However, we weren’t fully confident in our joinery (super important to get right, like we said earlier) so we wanted to be safe rather than sorry.
Step 8: Adding the Wood Stove
A wood stove is just one of many ways to heat a hot tub. We perused Craigslist until we found a used stove for sale. They aren’t listed often so check regularly.
Our stove was extremely buoyant so it took careful attaching to keep it from floating up. Beyond that the installation process was very straightforward.
Thankfully the stove came with 6′ of stove pipe, which allowed the smoke to be released above our heads.
For your own tub, be sure to research the best type of stove for you. An external wood stove that you plumb in can also work. If you live on grid, a propane of electric system can also give you good results. In a lot of ways stove type depends on personal preference and what’s available in your area.
Our initial plan was to build our own external stove with a washing machine drum and an old truck radiator, but when our stove came up on Craigslist we couldn’t resist the deal.
Step 9: Enjoy Your Hot Tub & More Tips
After all the hard work of building comes the fun part, relaxing in your new tub! We were so happy to discover our wood stove fired up easily and that our tub could be heated from 65 degrees to 102 degrees in less than two hours. The stove is simple to shut down when the temperature gets warmer than is comfortable, so we aren’t TOO worried about cooking ourselves.
Our Top Tips & Tricks
(Updated Regularly)
For additional resources on how to build this project with ease, make sure to check out our DIY cedar hot tub videos series page. We use this page to answer all the questions we have been getting about our tub so that all the information is consolidated in one place. You can also check out our blog post about the most rewarding experience we’ve had so far — our first soak.
Stay in touch for future videos, updates, and series!
Dyson’s Bladeless Fans are wonderfully awesome but also ridiculously expensive. Am I really going to spend 300 bucks on a fan? Nah. Thankfully, Rulof the master maker of things breaks down how to build the bladeless fan with a water jug, a few vases, and a microwave fan.
Just like Dyson, this DIY version of a “bladeless” fan hides the blades inside the base. It looks like it works pretty well. And while it doesn’t look as good as a Dyson fan, it has its own charm… sort of.
To be honest, am I really going to spend all this time and effort to make a bladeless fan? Probably not. Good thing that there are people in this world that would though.
For early- to mid-stage B2B software and SaaS companies, selling in to the enterprise is hard. Getting a lot of enterprise customers to pay for your solution on a repeated and long-term basis without seeing your sales growth stall out at $15-25 million ARR? That’s really hard.
Welcome to the challenging world of enterprise sales.
Companies like Salesforce, Workday, NetSuite and athenahealth found lasting B2B sales success and turned their companies into pillars of the enterprise SaaS ecosystem. But the majority of private enterprise companies still face this Mount Everest of a challenge. Many factors can slow a company’s B2B sales progress, including competitive challenges, timing issues and product deficiencies.
Here are three big sales mistakes we see private enterprise software companies make:
Mistake No. 1: Good product-market fit is not good enough
George Mathew, president/COO of Alteryx says, “In today’s enterprise software market, it’s important to define a user experience that is 100 times better than the status quo.”
There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that inertia, incumbency and bureaucracy are all working against you. For emerging companies, this means finding a way to be exponentially better with fewer resources. As a result, focus is key.
Yammer co-founder David Sacks addressed this when he took over as CEO of Zenefits earlier this year. “Companies execute better when they ruthlessly prioritize and sequence their efforts,” Sacks wrote. “For us, that means hyper-focusing on the small business market where we have product-market fit.”
To succeed, resist the urge to broaden your focus too much or too soon, and then scale proportionately.
What does this mean — “hyper-focusing … where we have product-market fit”? It means pursuing those market segments for which your product has a unique and compelling solution — exponentially better than the status quo — and pursuing only those segments.
Many private B2B companies have developed solutions that are working for a subset of customers, but are still challenged with sales cycles longer than ideal. Average revenue per customer remains below the target. Or new customer sales growth is incremental, not exponential. In other words, the product-market fit is not compelling enough.
Sometimes the market-fit issue with developing enterprise companies stems from insufficient focus. Ruthless prioritization, as advocated by Sacks, does not come naturally. Market fit can improve from having more ongoing dialogue with customers. For targeted sectors, your solution may simply be just a nice-to-have service and not compelling enough to overcome typical enterprise barriers.
With more market focus, however, companies can find a sweet spot by developing an acute understanding of customers’ needs in a particular segment, which is more nuanced than the broader sector requirements. To succeed, resist the urge to broaden your focus too much or too soon, and then scale proportionately.
Mistake No. 2: Are you competitively disadvantaged?
Competitors come in many different shapes and sizes. As Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane says, “There’s an incredible variety of software products out there.”
Indeed, read the “About Us” section of all the companies in your market universe, and consider how many of those view your space as theirs. Your competitors include other private companies and larger established incumbents with massive sales organizations. You also compete with customers’ own internally developed efforts, which may be inferior but can be difficult to overcome given ties to their own solution.
Invest time to glean important, insightful information about your competitors.
Competition also includes service and reselling companies that represent third-party vendors.
AppDirect co-CEO Daniel Saks points out that 70 percent of on-premise software sales have traditionally been channel-based. He adds, “80% of on-premise software vendors operate a channel program to enable other companies to sell their products, while only 20% of SaaS vendors operate similar programs.”
This channel and reselling hurdle highlights a competitive challenge for SaaS companies facing off against traditional software vendors. It’s a zero-sum game among vendors, so signing a customer means a loss for someone else.
One often overlooked step is simply engaging with customers about the competitive landscape — including prospective as well as won/lost targets. Invest time to glean important, insightful information about your competitors and adapt accordingly.
Mistake No. 3: Bad timing — outta sync, outta luck
With enterprise sales, timing can make or break a company. Bad timing in the B2B sales process can stem from several factors. Here are three common timing issues:
Timing problem No. 1: You’re behind the market demand curve with a not-exponentially-better product — and losing to competitors or incumbents.
If you don’t give customers sufficient reasons to make a change, you will encounter too much inertia to close business. The enterprise customer’s default action is to stick with their current solution. Be aggressive in solving this problem by uncovering more unique, urgent requirements, and then credibly and proactively addressing those. More target market focus and customer-driven product iteration can help you move ahead of the curve.
Timing problem No. 2: You’re ahead of the market demand curve and struggling to close sales.
Enterprise markets can be unwelcoming to pioneers, so consider finding ways to bridge an entrenched solution to your ahead-of-the-curve solution. For example, TigerText introduced a secure enterprise mobile messaging platform to healthcare customers in 2010 but faced resistance from hospital employees that still relied on pagers. To overcome this, they developed a messaging solution that included paging options. To get your foot in the door, you may need to support valued but possibly outdated requirements to help companies transition to your platform.
Timing problem No. 3: You’re suffering under the weight of a long sales cycle and not closing enough deals quickly enough.
SaaS products and business models have shortened sales cycles in some sectors for a number of purchases in recent years (e.g. see Harry Stebbings’ interview with Immediately’s CEO Branko Cerny). This is not true for all purchases in all enterprise markets, however, including large purchases in regulated industries or many Global 2000 companies.
How to accelerate slow sales cycles
What to do about those long and costly sales cycles?
“Selling to the consumer is about selling positive emotions. Selling to the enterprise is about suppressing negative emotions,” says GoodData CEO Roman Stanek. “Enterprise IT is not a culture of early adopters.”
He is right — but there are a few practical strategies that can get slow-moving targets to move.
Employing best practices with your sales and marketing processes is critical. In many Global 2000 companies, there are multiple groups of decision-makers or influencers involved, including product users, IT gatekeepers, administrative or executive groups and compliance teams, any of which can slow down your sales process.
With incomplete information flowing back to the sales team, it’s critical to measure and track all customer communication and best practices by carefully utilizing your CRM and marketing automation tools — and then managing your team accordingly. Work to build a company wide culture to document customer communications and make best practices repeatable across sales, marketing, customer success and business development teams.
Also, there are countless times that we have seen large, long-term enterprise deals go to a competitor that has successfully triangulated the buying process or leveraged backchannels. Your team’s success in triangulating with customer targets and establishing backchannels of communication with friendly insiders is vital to winning long sales-cycle deals.
In fact, even though your product is B2B, perhaps the biggest mistake you can make is forgetting that your sales process is still P2P (peer-to-peer). Executives make decisions for all sorts of reasons that are not based simply on product features or depth of IP. With a long sales cycle, building rapport at many levels in the customer organization chart is critically important. Mastering these softer P2P skills can help drive successful triangulation and backchanneling, which lead directly to more enterprise sales.
“We’ve seen that successful enterprise sales stem from a variety of factors,” says Nick Elprin, CEO of Domino Data Lab. “But in closing the largest and most important deals, people skills are ultimately at the top of that list.”
There’s no shortage of weather sites and webapps around the web that will show you weather conditions now or predicted ones in the future, but Ventusky is brand new, looks great, and shows you current conditions on a live, always-updating map that you can drag around, click on, or just search to explore.
If you’re used to using a service like Google Maps, then Ventusky will come naturally. Type in your location (if it’s not automatically detected) to see your area, and a live map of temperature and wind patterns in your part of the world. You can adjust the altitude to see wind and cloud cover at different levels, or add more layers, like cloud cover, precipitation, wind speed, snow cover, and more.
From there, you can browse other parts of the world, or select a span of time to play back temperature or wind changes, or the movement of cloud cover or storm systems. You can even view predicted information for the future, so you can see if you’re going to get that storm this evening that a friend of yours out west mentioned in an email this morning. There’s even a handy settings panel that walks you through the webapp’s features and explains the nuance to you.
Even if you use another service for local forecasts and up-to-the-minute weather data, Ventusky is one of those sites you could probably bookmark and keep out on for a while. Hit the link below to give it a shot.
