Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others

Note: this quote has been falsely attributed to Nelson Mandela but is actually from Mariane Williamson’s ‘A Return to Love’.

random strangers choosing to sit shoulder to shoulder with each other in distracting awkwardness, with the overwhelming feeling of obligation to engage in witty banter

It’s ironic, but through my entire IT career it was a constant complaint of employees when they got stuck in a room with or in close proximity to a coworker. The #1 reason to get promoted in the corporate world was getting your own office, whether for designers, PM, devs, etc. Now everyone wants to sit shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of strangers.

The problem with coworking is first and foremost the definition of work. Sometimes work requires collaboration. When it does, working closely with others is far more productive than remote work. But this requires you to cowork with the people on your actual project, not people working on a completely different project with a different company.

The opposite of collaborating, which is the bulk of most work, necessitates you being alone. It’s head down, get things done work. For this you need isolation. Coworking is a total fail for this kind of work. You can’t do pomodoro quality work when you feel obligated to socialize or collaborate. If you aren’t doing this type of focused work, well, you aren’t getting much done.

I think what most people mean when they say cowork, is socializing with peers during work hours. As much fun as this is, it’s not work. Save it for breakfasts, lunches, meetups, and after hours. There are enough distractions in a day as it is without sitting next to someone you rarely see who you enjoy talking to.

Back before there were coworking spaces, I frequently coworked with a friend at Panera Bread. This was back before anyone else was doing it. We were the only two there and using their wifi. We would frequently get asked about it by customers and employees. They were so puzzled as to what we were doing in a restaurant with our laptops. It was the glory days; the benefits of being a pioneer. No shortage of electrical outlets! Within a year, the plugs were impossible to get, the wifi was turned off at lunch and the fun was just gone. Though at least customers stopped walking by us staring in confusion and sometimes judgement.

During those early times of “coworking”, we actually worked. We would sit next to each other for hours without speaking. We stopped for lunch and talked only then, and after, dove right back into isolated work. I don’t see that any more. I see people gathering to do 50% work and 50% talk. That just isn’t effective. We’d be better off separating our social time from our work time. It would make us more effective at both.

I’ve been looking into another solution, in hopes of launching it in the Safety Harbor area, that would solve the desire for “coworking”, and the need to be around others, but remove the distracting nature of what occurs today. Hopefully I can find the right place and the funding to give it a shot.

I first launched PeepNote, a contact and relationship management tool for Twitter, in 2009, during the Rails Rumble. I was interested in participating in the 48 hour development competition, both for the challenge of creating an app in that short amount of time, and for the focused opportunity to launch a startup. Launching a startup can be a difficult thing to do when you are working a full time job, but focusing on this competition provided a specific deadline for motivation, a team of four to get the work done, and a set aside time with extra incentive to do the work.

At the time, I already had my best friend since age 7, Steven Pothoven, as a co-developer, but needed a designer. I had decided that unless I could find a top designer for the project, I would pull out of the competition. For me, design is a crucial part of any functional app. It’s not the most important part, but I believe its important enough for the success of an online service, that I would never consider launching one without a design expert on the team.

It was not easy to find someone. I attended the Front End Design Conference in 2009 in St. Petersburg and put the word out that I was looking for a designer. I wanted one from Tampa, but sadly, there just weren’t many in this area at the time who had experience with applications.

It was coming down to the wire and I was getting nervous, but then I met a fantastic designer online: Josh Hemsley. We chatted online, and not only did he accept the challenge to be on the team, but he ended up participating on my team in the 2010 Rumble as well for Commendable Kids and also designed the original We Are Tampa Bay and my personal blog. After adding Josh to the team, I also asked Linda Olson, (we were working together on Wombeat.com at the time) to assist with testing, content writing, and the creation of a demo video. The team was set, and there would be many long hours to prepare prior to the actual 48 hour competition.

Why PeepNote?

At the time, Twitter was still in the early adopter stage, and I was struggling to keep track of the new people I was meeting online. I wanted to be able to take notes on those I followed, remember why I followed them, where I first met them, etc, and to tag them for easy sorting. I also wanted to be able to search my notes and their bios, and create Twitter lists from those tags. It was out of this personal need that the PeepNote idea originated. The team was set, the idea formed, and we spent the next month planning out how we would go about building it in just 48 hours.

The Competition

At the time, I had years of experience managing the creation of online software services in Java and for large multi-million dollar companies, as well as a few years as a Ruby on Rails developer for the Miley Cyrus web sites. I had been an amateur entrepreneur since I was a child, but had never launched a small “startup”, and particularly not in such a short time frame. It was a fun challenge to complete so much work in such a little time. My number one goal wasn’t to win, but was to illustrate just how much could be accomplished with proper planning, a strong team, a competent product development manager, and the Ruby on Rails web development framework.

237 teams competed worldwide, with only 137 actually finishing on time and able to submit their entry. Of those, 22 were selected by an expert panel to enter the final round of public voting. PeepNote was selected as one of the finalists and after public voting finished, we were 8th. It was also picked as one of the best by Mashable. We were tired after 48 hours of building, but it was well worth the effort, and the experience was priceless both in memory and in the experience gained.

In the end, the majority of comments both from voters and from judges was that they could not believe how much we had accomplished in just 48 hours. Mission Accomplished.

To Startup or Not to Startup?

After the Rumble we were flying high. The judges comments, finishing in the top ten, the numerous write ups online, all encouraged us to continue with PeepNote post-Rumble. At first we were polishing things we had to skip during the Rumble, changing some things we were forced into by the time constraints. Then we began adding other functionality to make the app more enticing. As time went on, our designer had to move on to other things, and my co-developer could not spend the extra time in the evenings that I was able to. I spent the majority of nights for the next year improving PeepNote. The catch was, however, that at even 10 hrs a week of extra time, beyond my family obligations and more-than-full-time job, it would take me 16 weeks to duplicate the time spent during the Rumble from 4 full time people. It was slow, and I was only product building at this point.

As time went on, I lost site of the big picture. I was heads down building, but so busy with everything else that I wasn’t paying attention to what customers wanted, or even more importantly, to who my customers actually were. I continued to be emboldened by users comments, and even comments from some other successful founders and investors. I knew I had something, but the time burn was intrusive in life, and yet was resulting in very slow progress, and certainly no money.

We finally released the pro plan. It was the first attempt to make money from all these people that loved the service. But no one converted, at least not for a long time. As I began interacting more with potential customers I realized that my target audience was not what I thought it was. It wasn’t people like me who were heavily using Twitter for career networking and wanted to keep track of how I met people and what I knew about them. Instead, the only people that would pay for the service were companies. Companies that wanted to use it to track potential customers; a CRM.

At this point I began to pivot but the functionality set this new target audience wanted was drastically different from what I’d just spent the last year working on and I was burned out. We had some larger companies interested in using it, “if only we could add…”. At 10-15 hrs a week at most, that wasn’t easy to do. I realized the only way to turn this into a real business would be to invest money; substantial money. I needed more developers and a designer in order to respond to what what could make money. Then, to make matters worse, Twitter changed the API, and all the features of the Pro plan stopped working. I was faced with the need to rewrite a huge portion of the functionality in order to continue.

At this point, I reviewed the numbers and they didn’t look good. At what I thought I could charge, combined with a smaller niche audience, it didn’t give me confidence that the return on investment would be worth it. Even more importantly, the entire project was missing a crucial element: my passion. The passion was gone. For months I had no idea why. This was what I had wanted wasn’t? I built a product that users loved and were using. I was proud of it. In the end though, that just isn’t enough. I had no free time to do what I wanted, and since the 2009 Rumble I now had other applications I wanted to work on (like Commendable Kids). I also had no passion for working with it as a CRM and with the new target audience. That wasn’t why I had gotten into it in the first place, and the pivot had turned it into something I could no longer find easy motivation to do. I had to fight to make myself work on it.

In the end, PeepNote was never a startup. It was a side project, a fun challenge, and I learned more from the experience than from any conference I ever attended, any book I’ve ever read or any class I’ve ever taken. But it was never a startup. That word gets thrown around so easily these days as if every side project in IT is automatically a startup. Long before the Internet ever made anyone a penny there were hundreds of thousands of IT side projects. No one ever referred to them as a startup. For some reason today, almost everyone labels their side projects a startup. To me, its not a startup unless the primary goal is the making of money and you are attempting to do so. As well, you must be investing not just your time but your money. If you aren’t willing to take out a loan to invest into it, and you aren’t actively attempting to convert people to paying customers, you are just having fun with a side project. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. The more honest you can be with yourself, the more heartache you will save and the less time you will waste.

I know its not sexy to have a side project. I know having a “startup” sounds so cool, particularly when you can put it on your blog, tweet about it, and attend conferences where you can identify yourself as a founder. But if you aren’t building it with sound business principles, you’re a fraud. I say that, not to crush your dreams, but to free you from using it as a crutch. Today, its become accepted that everyone has a startup and no one expects any of them to actually make money. But when we do this, we do a disservice to the entire startup community and we lower our own expectations. It would be far better if we all started with side projects, powered by passion. Build it, share it, tweak it, and gather feedback. If you have aspirations to make money from it, interact with the early adopters and ask them straight up, if they would pay for the service and how much they would pay for it.

You’ll have to go all in if you want to make the move from side project to startup. You’ll have to sacrifice your hobbies, any other fun projects, and certainly your own money. As well, beware, the bulk of time needed to be spent for a startup, vs. a side project, will be customer acquisition and communication. If you love to build projects first and foremost, you probably aren’t going to have great success turning it into a profitable startup. Most people I talk to, developers and designers a like, believe that 90% of the work is building the product. I would say that 90% of the work of a startup comes post build, which is why building the smallest possible product is crucial. You must get to that 90% of work as soon as possible to save you a long year of sleepless nights building something no one is ever going to pay for. Don’t do like I did and spend a full year building before you find out who is willing to pay for it and what they are going to want it to do in order to spend their money.

The Conclusion

As a side project, PeepNote was a complete success. It worked, it looked good, it was usable, and people have used it since 2009. I have aspirations, however, far beyond that. I’m a builder and a creator by nature, but also a business man who wants the things I create to profit. For me, the two have to go hand in hand. I have another venture or two that I’d like to focus all of my time on, and so because of that, PeepNote will be closing next month. The journey for this side project has come to an end. If you have data on the site, you will need to make a copy of it within the next 30 days, before we shutdown the service. It’s been a great ride, with a lot of great memories. We appreciate all the support and kind words we’ve received and I will never regret any of it, even the mistakes. The entire experience was invaluable and will make my next venture far more likely to transition from side project to a startup.

Upon entering the massage room, I wisely remembered to shut off my phone. The last thing I needed was to hear the phone vibrating on and off for an hour. I’ve never had much of an issue calming my body down. I trained myself to do it in high school and ever since I’ve been able to fall asleep in minutes, at almost any moment and any location. Staying relaxed, I found, was also crucial to my martial arts (a predominant cause to the aforementioned body damage). A relaxed body takes less punishment, expends less energy, and moves faster and with more agility.

Almost immediately following my massage I entered a Greek restaurant for some lunch and work prior to another appointment. I was tentative to enter because I was in such a peaceful and calm state. But, my stomach would not relent with its insistence that I get food and soon, and so I entered the restaurant. I noticed almost immediately that the music playing inside was virtually identical to the music playing during my massage, and yet, the place was anything but quiet and peaceful. It was instead, a bustling room as one might expect during a lunch rush. I attempted to stay calm, while I ordered, took my seat and, riskiest of all, checked my email.

After the flood of email came pouring in, all from only an hour offline, I managed to catch the sound of that calm music still playing amidst the chaos. It reminded me of the importance of staying calm in all situations. I would guess that most of us rarely get enough opportunities for a relaxing massage, a walk in the park, or whatever other calming activity may work best for us. We should do those more for sure, and I highly urge it for both introverts (we seek it naturally), but also to extroverts, who can often find themselves feeling edgy and uncomfortable in such stillness.

It is the calm mind that thinks clearer, faster and with more agility. It is the calm mind that can withstand the extreme forces and stresses we often find ourselves living within.

This was a lesson Bruce Lee, a hero of mine growing up, taught frequently. For example, he said:

Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.

Stay calm.

Never waste energy on worries or negative thoughts, all problems are brought into existence -drop them.

Stay calm.

I’m intense; crazy intense, but I do my best to be as calm as I can and try to hide the internal fire, so as not to scare the children. For whatever reason, everything I do falls into two categories: those I’m intensely passionate about, and those I’m not. There isn’t a lot of in between. I would bet that’s a common attribute of an entrepreneur. It has both pros and cons, but because of it, those of you who are like me, have to take special care to stay calm.

I analyze everything; overanalyze, and that by very definition, isn’t being calm. Thinking while someone else is talking to you? Not calm. Reading in between the lines? Not calm. Second guessing yourself? Also, not calm.

If you find yourself doing any of these, be aware that your mind is clouded and you are distracting yourself, and wasting time and energy. I’ve found that although my mind is capable of deep thinking, innovative problem solving, and seeing things that other’s don’t, it’s often the state of mind of being free from such thoughts (a true state of calmness) that results in the most brilliant discoveries and insights.

It is only through remaining calm that we can attain that laser-like focus, determination and perseverance needed to overcome the setbacks of life, both personal and within our startups.

What do you do to calm down and be alone with and without your thoughts? What could you do today, to bring calm to yourself and take a time out from the distractions and chaos of our high tech, whirling, beeping and buzzing society?

I had a blast working with my fellow Gauged2 teammate, Keith Burson, as he brought my slogan to life using his awe-inspiring design skills. Now we need your votes to get it printed!

If you aren’t sure what “Asynchronous” means, it means “not occurring at the same time”. So “Asynchronous Communication” means communication where you don’t receive an immediate response. Synchronous communication is talking in person or on the phone. All these new types of Internet based text communication are asynchronous because the person you are talking with doesn’t necessarily reply immediately. So its a programmer’s term, however, its becoming mainstream thanks to Twitter, Email, Facebook, Texting, Chat, and Google Plus.

To help us get this printed, be sure to give it a 4 or 5 and check the box that says “Notify me if… [checbox] as a tee!”. We would also appreciate any encouraging comments. Thanks!

Score this design: “Asynchronous Communication,” to help it get printed on Threadless!

Share your answer in the comments and then share the test with those you care about.

The Scenario

You are old. Too old to do much more than sit on a front porch and rock in a rocking chair. Though you do get up throughout the day and do your best to “stay active”, the majority of the time is spent staring your own mortality in the face, and looking back on life. You have lots of time to think.

The Question

As you rehash your life over and over in your head, what will you regret not doing more of?

Follow Up

You might be quick to say, “Sky diving” or “Alligator wrestling” or “be a rock star”, whatever challenges you once upon a time listed on your bucket list, or whatever you once dreamed of becoming. Give it deeper thought. This isn’t the time to be cliche, or quickly move on to whatever you were doing before you clicked on this post. This is serious.

One thing I will bet you is that you won’t be wishing you had worked more hours. You won’t be wishing you had worked harder and sacrificed more so your rocking chair could be made of more expensive materials and be in a nicer location with a better view. That’s not how you’ll be thinking at this time; not in this situation.

Most likely, you’ll be wishing you had spent more time with your spouse, your children, your family, and your friends. Consider at your current age how you feel when you lose someone you care for? Imagine being of the age where you’ve already lost most of your friends, your parents, and your older family. Your younger family members aren’t with you regularly but are off living their own lives.

Whatever great things you accomplished “on the job” they just won’t matter anymore and in most cases won’t even exist anymore. Sure maybe if your thing was curing cancer it will have been worth the personal sacrifice, though you’ll still regret not spending more time with the people you cared about. But most of us aren’t curing cancer. Is making the cover of Wired magazine, or being written about in TechCrunch really going to matter then? While you are sitting there all alone, knowing you have no time left to see the things you wanted to see, proclaim the love you felt inside, help others you knew needed help, will you be happy that at least you got that VC investment to help build that million dollar startup…what’s it’s name? Oh yeah, the one using that now ancient technology to provide a service no one uses now, that all of today’s 20 year olds would roll their eyes at the mention of…if they even recognized the name.

You might love your job, have a career that is on fire, have a burning passion for a venture or idea, or be on the verge of landing a huge investment, but sacrificing time with people you care about is not worth it in the end.

Take Action

Unless you are in that rocking chair already while reading this, it’s not too late.

Go spend time with someone you love, and then another, and then another. Call someone you’ve lost touch with (no, don’t Facebook them, it’s not the same). Tell someone how much you care for them, admire them, enjoy spending time with them. Apologize to someone you are feeling guilty over the way you last spoke with them. Buy someone a coffee, take someone to lunch. Share your skills, experience and knowledge with someone who could use it, without charging them for it. Spend time with your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend; really get to know them and spend every moment with them as if its your last…because it may be, for either of you.

If you have kids, keep in mind, they grow up and out so fast. Time to spend with them will be gone before you know it, and you can’t get that time back. You should be their greatest influence, not friends, or their school. Are you sure they really deep down inside know and feel that you love them more than what you do for a living? Do you show them that daily? Telling them isn’t enough, just as telling your boss you enjoy your job every day wouldn’t get you out of having to work it.

Assess how you spend your time during the week, even if you have to log it all for a few weeks and make a pie chart to see where it all goes. Is there anything you can cut? I’d bet most of what you do each week won’t matter when you reach that rocking chair.

Finally, read through the resources below for further help in passing the Rocking Chair Scenario.

Make a change. Save a life…yours.

Further Reading

I’ve been sharing this scenario for most of my professional life, so it was great to see this recent article from someone working with those in this very situation: Regrets of the Dying.

To learn how to reduce your number of work hours and be more productive with your time, which leads to more free time, read The Four Hour Work Week. If you’ve never read it because you think it’s a hoax, please realize its not about how to work only 4 hours a week. The author never intended that. That’s just a title, but the book itself is worth your time. Please read it.

To learn to make your work more about people, and how you can serve them, than punching a clock and making money, read The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. This is the kind of book you should read once a year.

I’m blessed that I have always had other opportunities, but at times it can make decision making overwhelming when there are so many good choices and good people to work with. I appreciate all your interest and offers and considered them all carefully, but in the end, my heart spoke very clearly to me, with what fit me the best.

There is a local team who thinks, lives, builds, and interacts the way I do. This group holds to my same principles and ethics, all have family they treasure, all have a deep desire to do their best on every project and provide their clients with the best service they can. All strive for excellence, but not at the expense of their morals, their health, or time with their family. Equally important, my skills and experience are a perfect compliment to theirs, and vice versa. As a whole, we will all be much greater together than any of us could be individually.

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dori, Hugh, Keith, and Tim over the last 6 months, and have really enjoyed all the time I’ve spent with this wonderful team.

So, it’s with great excitement, I’m pleased to announce I’ll be joining the Gauged2 team. For the last few months I’ve been referring many of you to them for work because I believed in them and felt fully confident in my recommendation. Now I’ll be part of that team, bringing full Ruby on Rails development services and more than 16 years of IT solution experience to their offerings. We can take your project from concept to a finished online product, providing all the skills needed in between, from creative to design to video production to development, both web and mobile. Our reliable and trustworthy team will provide excellent customer service and a high quality of work. Whether you are a startup in need of consulting and technical advise, an agency in need of a strategic partner, or a large corporation in need of any of our services, I guarantee you won’t regret choosing the Gauged2 team.

I will still be working on my current startups and microprojects, and hopefully launching more in my free time, but the bulk of my focus, time, and passion will be on helping Gauged2 grow even further than they already have in the last 6+ years. It’s a great opportunity and I’m thankful that everything came together to make it happen.

If you’ve been paying attention to the startup world over the last few years, you are very familiar with the emphasis on company culture. 37 Signals and Zappos might be two of the most famous companies for stressing the concept, but many of the successful startups have discussed the importance and purposefulness of it as well.

When you think about company culture, you might think about the way the office is designed, the clothes people wear to work, the benefits provided, and the company mission statement for dealing with customers and employees. But what you don’t often hear about are all the other pieces that I believe come together to form the company culture.

Every element that impacts an employee during their work day influences the culture. From where they park in the morning, to the chair they sit in, the computer and software they use, the temperature in the office, any music played in the office, the colors in the room, the bathrooms, the location and commute, what employees do for lunch, expected work hours and the way they are enforced…all of these items impact the employees emotional mood. Their emotional mood directly determines how happy and productive they will be. These items make up the aesthetics of the company culture, the ambience, and they have an effect on how well an employee can perform over a period of time.

Even more important is your company’s project methodology. How are you organized and how do you communicate with your team? Do you only give the team the tasks they can handle at that moment, or do you give the team a list of the next several month’s tasks? Do you include the team on business direction and strategy planning, or fill them in once a decision is being made? Are the developers given long periods of focus time to develop, creatives to create, designers to design, or do you ask them to frequently change directions, and multitask? Do they have to work in an environment of constant interaction and interruption? Additionally, do you trust your employees and in doing so treat them like you believe they can and will do the expected job? Do you build a relationship with them, or stay more removed? All these variations come together to form the overall company culture.

In my 15+ years in IT, I’ve worked in about every variation of culture imaginable. Some have worked for me, some haven’t. I know what works best for me; what allows me to reach my fullest productivity levels. For me, being fully productive at work is what brings me happiness and the stamina, energy, and passion to work every day at my full potential, and deal with the difficulties that will always arise in any tech company or startup. It’s what allows me to not just crank out widgets, but think creatively and solve problems in a way that best helps the company achieve its goals. If the company culture isn’t a fit, then I can’t perform at my best, which means I can’t maintain productivity levels; stress rises, happiness fades, and my uncomfortableness with the situation will cause bigger problems in the company.

You can try and change a culture, but if you aren’t at the top, that’s nearly impossible to do. The culture will be set by the company visionary, even if unintentionally. And that is another important point I want to stress. If you are the company leader, and visionary, please be sure that you have put thought into all of these elements and your company culture is a result of planning and not an accident. If it’s an accident, you probably aren’t even aware of what it is, nor able to communicate it to prospective employees. Which means you’ll have a much higher turnover rate. Even if you are only hiring experienced and highly skilled people, if they aren’t a match for your culture, they will either leave, or, drag down the entire team.

I’ve often advised companies that they can get away with paying less than the top rates if their company culture is a good one and if they hire to match the company culture. It’s difficult for an employee to leave a culture they love for any kind of pay raise. However, it doesn’t take much encouragement to leave a company whose culture isn’t working for you, even for a pay cut.

Company culture is why I have decided to step down from CTO at Tour Wrist and move on to other things. It’s not that the culture at Tour Wrist is “wrong”, simply that it’s not the culture in which I work best and in which I am able to be my fully productive and creative self. As a result, Tour Wrist isn’t getting what they need out of me either.

Even worse, as CTO I am more likely to hire people that I work best with, who also aren’t going to fit in with the company culture. I realized this was not good for the company and its future. I didn’t want to be an obstacle to their growth and for that reason have decided to move on to other opportunities and allow them to fill my position with someone who is a better fit.

As with all experiences, I learned more about business and myself and so I have no regrets. I am most appreciative to Tour Wrist for hiring me and giving me the opportunity. I enjoyed working with the highly talented team and wish them all well. Keep an eye on all of them and the Tour Wrist platform for all the things they have in the works.

As for me, stayed tuned for my next announcement of what I’ll be moving on to. The saga continues…

The Original iPad
I purchased the original iPad when it was first released, and have used it almost daily since its purchase. I use it mostly to consume Internet content, nightly before bed, and to play games, and have watched some video on it as well. I take it with me daily to work, to every conference, and whenever I travel. I use it for taking notes at conferences and in meetings, and have created a few presentations with it. I also bring it with me to lunches to demo web sites. I’ve blogged from it, accessed files from my home computer on it, done some server administration and web site monitoring, and even edited some code. Overall, I would say I’m a heavy user of the iPad, and that it’s been well worth the investment and has benefited me significantly in my lifestyle.

The iPad 2
I purchased the iPad 2 Friday at 6:30, after waiting in line for about 90 minutes. Not bad at all compared to the iPhone 4 purchasing experience.

Speed
I ran extensive side by side tests between the two. I browsed the Internet, some videos sites, like You Tube, Netflix, Hulu, and played some games. Overall, the experience appeared not as though the iPad 2 was any faster, but instead, that it had a slightly faster Internet connection. This was true particularly when loading video. YouTube videos always started a few seconds earlier on the iPad 2 than on the original. Video games had no perceivable change in speed or playability. Scrolling was noticeable less choppy on content lists, but again that felt like it was because it had downloaded more of the content.

Of the 20 or so apps I tried, the most noticeable improvement was on Google maps. On the original iPad they were sluggish at best. Now they zoomed in and out with far less time to download and fill in all those squares.

I’m sure the perceived Internet speed increase is due to the improved graphics capabilities and therefore being better able to handle loading and displaying of the downloaded content.

Size
My first impression when I removed the iPad 2 from its box, was that of feeling like something had happened to my iPad; like some part of it was missing. After handling the iPad so frequently over the last year, it took some time to get used to the thinness and lightness of it. It was just enough that it almost felt like something was wrong. I prefer to use my iPads naked, so that’s how I compared the feel of the two, and it was a noticeable difference…at first.

However, prepare to be a bit disappointed if you purchase the magnetic cover, which, I would say the majority of people did at Best Buy yesterday. With that cover, and its magnets, the new iPad 2 feels almost exactly the same as the original in weight and thickness. What apple took off in size and weight, it put right back on with the cover that is essentially standard issue because of the way it integrates so impressively with the magnets.

However, after typing on it for some time the next day, I did notice some advantage due to the thinness. I like to type on the iPad with both thumbs, QWERTY style, while holding the iPad in each palm. That hold was always a bit of a stretch to pull off for me, and impossible for others with smaller hands, but with the new iPad it’s much easier, and will now be an option for faster keyboard entry for many with smaller hands.

Cover
I purchased the black leather cover. The most common case purchased at my Best Buy was the blue, it was the only color sold out, and next was the orange. Few opted for the leather. My personal opinion is that the vinyl covers look like a cheap 3 ring notebook. I can’t imagine wanting my $700 tablet to come off as a 3.95 paper binder, but to each his own.

The cover does work exactly as advertised. It’s easy to put on, lines up perfectly, and turns the iPad to sleep and wakes it up, though I need to retrain myself, because I keep turning it off before closing the cover. When I purchased the case I fully expected to return it in a few days, but I’m really loving its feel, other than the added extra weight. I’ll have to see if other non-magnetic cases feel as thin, and make the iPad as pleasant to use without the added weight.

Sound and Speaker
During the build up to the announcement, the rumor was it would have an improved speaker and sadly there was no mention of improving this on the iPad. However, as my son and I played video games, not thinking about the sound, but instead focusing on game play, we both independently came to the conclusion that the sound was better. We began doing blind tests on each other and could always determine which iPad was in use by the sound. A nice added, and unexpected bonus. The new iPad has a louder and clearer sound; the original sounds more muffled and dull. Perhaps its not the speaker but instead is the simple change in case that is causing this improvement which may explain why Apple didn’t mention it. Either way, it’s a noticeable improvement.

Graphics
It’s unfair and difficult to compare this yet as companies generally have not had enough time to make improvements. You won’t see any improvement by playing the exact same version of a game. It’s not smoother, not faster loading, not better looking.

There was one exception that was noticeable and that was in my company’s iPad app, Tour Wrist. With our app, you can use the iPad to spin and move around a full 360 panorama of thousands of locations worldwide. It’s an enjoyable experience for anyone who loves traveling, or nature, or architecture as I do. On the iPad original, spinning fast (for example while seated at a spinning desk chair) causes the iPad to fall behind. It’s then choppy in skipping ahead to catch up. With the new iPad no matter how fast I spun, the iPad did not get behind. It never had to skip to catch up. It remained smooth throughout full speed chair spins. Not that you’ll necessarily ever need to spin around in your chair that quickly, but I thought it was a good demonstration of the improved graphics processor and I look forward to the day when games take advantage of this.

Cameras
There are two cameras on the new iPad. From my perspective, they are useless. I don’t think consumers are going to use them as much they think they are. It’s extremely awkward to get it at the right angle that someone seeing you would expect. It can be hard to even center your own face. The quality is poor particularly if you aren’t in perfect lighting. The only use I can see for either camera is entertainment. My kids already had some fun playing with it. I think this was added simply because “everyone else is doing it” and not because its a real world use case.

Conclusion
My overall conclusion is that the iPad 2 is certainly another step toward having a lightweight computer you can take with you almost anywhere. It’s faster, lighter, thinner, and sounds better. For the first time buyer, they will have an even better experience than those who purchased the original. For those that already own the original, I can’t recommend an upgrade unless you are a tech junkie. This new version represents a 10% improvement at best. Probably worth about an extra $75-$100 over the original. I was able to sell my original iPad for half what the new one cost. Certainly nice to offset the difference in price, but for the masses, simply can’t recommend that option.

There is one catch however. I do think that within the next six months, we’ll see more and more apps taking advantage of the improved CPU and graphics chip, and I’d bet that many of the improved apps won’t work on the original. We’ve seen that happen between the iPhone 3GS and 4, and this should be an ever bigger difference in speed and graphics capabilities. If this happens, you may find yourself wanting to upgrade to take advantage of these apps, and the 10% difference between the two versions could increase exponentially if apps take advantage of the speed boosts.

At present, that difference isn’t noticeable enough to warrant taking the hit on selling your old model and buying the new one, unless you can pull of the switch for around $100.