I read a great article in the May 11th issue of Forbes magazine. The article focused on a university professor, Richard Nisbett who does research on the thought processes of East Asians and European Americans. According to Nisbett, Americans and East Asians view the world quite differently. He set up an experiment using a virtual aquarium on a computer screen. East Asians tend to focus on the background whereas Americans focus on what stood out, the biggest and brightest objects. East Asians focus on context, while Westerners focus on the point at hand. Asians tend to be collectivistic, Westerners individualistic. Each culture has its own strengths and weaknesses. And we’ve got a lot to Read more [...]

At Astonish we're constantly developing new products and upgrading current ones. Anyone who has ever developed complex software has heard of bugs. A bug is a problem that causes a program to produce invalid output or to crash (lock up). The problem is either insufficient or erroneous logic. ALL software has bugs and the software engineer's job is to architect a program that minimizes this erroneous logic. Some bugs are really not bugs at all but user error. A user many interact with a program in a way that was not intended. Great programmers anticipate these potential errors and minimizes them. In the case of web based software, bugs can occur as usage increases. Why do I say all this? Read more [...]

Jim Immelt's new book brings out some great points on leadership. One of his main points is to "learn constantly and learn how to teach". I know it sounds cliche, but the older I get, the more I realize how much I don't know. Immelt's book encouraged me to learn constantly. This takes effort. Shut of the T.V. Discipline yourself to read voraciously. Start a blog! Keep growing. Keep filling your mind with new ideas. Do an assessment of what you do well and what you need to improve. Stretch. As a business owner I'm sure your asking your employees to do the same. Bottom line, we must be teachable. Be humble. This is my first post and I'm using this blog as a way to "force" myself to continue Read more [...]