Timed Turns  A common challenge for instrument students is often timed turns.  Timed turns require the pilot to turn the airplane left or right a given number of degrees to a new heading using only the turn coordinator, compass, and clock.  The stress created by the simulated instrument failures while under the hood can make doing simple math in your head very difficult.  This flash card trainer will allow you to practice timed turns arithmetic while on the ground so that the mental calculations become more routine and familiar.  Although there will be many things to worry about the day of your checkride, the arithmetic required to accomplish timed turns should not be one of them. 

Buy this Timed Turns flash card trainer and build your confidence today! This application is geared towards IFR pilots and students, pilots in training, etc.

Features of Timed Turns include:

• Randomized calculation questions
• Swipe to transition or click a button to transition to the next question
• Automatic transition after revealing the answer
• Timer to show how long each question is taking you

Timed Turns in the App Store

TimeTrak is a simple and elegant time tracking utility to help you stay organized. A perfect solution for consultants, physical therapists, contractors, or anyone else who has to keep a precise running log of their activities! At the end of the day, with the push of a button, you can have all of your time tracking information emailed to you!

TimeTrak lets you track your tasks like a stop watch. When you start a new task, you simply specify the start time of the task and the tag for the activity. While the task is running, you will see a real-time counter showing the duration time of the activity. When you are done with the task, you simply press a button to end it, and the information is saved. When you are ready to store your task information somewhere else, you can email all the data to yourself right from the application!

You can even use TimeTrak as a calendar, as it allows you to enter tasks that you have scheduled for the future.

In addition to task entry, TimeTrak has multiple ways that you can view your data, including a summary view mode (grouped into future tasks, tasks in the last 24 hours, task in the last week, and older tasks), and a view by date mode. TimeTrak enables you to add, update, and edit the tag of the tasks simply and easily with the swipe or push of a finger.

Here is a list of the great functionality you will get with TimeTrak

• Stop-watch style time tracking with sleek user interface
• View your data either by day or in a summary view. Easily scroll through all of your tasks.
• Email all of your tasks to yourself. You can either email all individual tasks (tag, date, and duration), or you can group by the date and tag
• All previously used tags for your activities are saved for easy entry later. This is great for when you perform the same tasks more than once
• Edit / Delete your tasks right from the views described above
• You have the option to automatically delete your emailed tasks upon application re-start (it will ‘clean up’ your previously emailed tasks)
• An ‘email icon’ is shown on each task row that has been emailed to you. This will make it easier to manage your tasks that you have already emailed.

This application is made for one thing –tracking your time — and it does it very well! If you need a simply utility to track your time, then TimeTrak is for you!

icons created by Joseph Wain / glyphish.com
main graphics created by Zach Poley

TimeTrak in the App Store

Thank you for your inquiry and apologize for any difficulties you are experiencing with your can. It sounds like you need a new hinge pin. We have changed the material of the hinge pin from plastic to metal to prevent future breakage. We will be glad to send you that part free of charge. Please allow 5-7 business days for the delivery of your replacement hinge pin. Your order will be shipped via USPS to the address you provided on the online form. You will also receive a confirmation email when your order has been processed and shipped.

At simplehuman, we stand behind our products 100% and are working to offer the best possible service. We hope that our products can continue to serve you well for the years ahead.

Is this for real? Yes it is, and it made me happy enough to take the time and write a blog post about it. Several things about this experience are interesting to me. For one, this is an incredibly cheap way for them to make their customers happy. The replacement part probably costs less than $5 to produce, and the postage to ship it to me was under $2. There are obviously other costs associated, but overall it is very cheap. This great service directly affected the opinions of only 1 person (myself) — however, I would argue that given the increasing reach and ease of adoption of social media tools (Twitter, etc.), customer service (both poor and great) can have dramatic effects on a large set of potential customers. It’s no secret that people like to complain about customer service when it is horrible — we’ve all heard our friend’s stories of 2-hour support calls, or being transferred to 8 different people in 6 different countries while just trying to get a simple question answered. But I believe it is so easy now to contribute content socially via Twitter and other tools, that consumers will actually be willing to rave about good customer service as well — and this will impact the purchasing behaviors of others.

Knowing this, some companies will be able to use top-notch customer service to their advantage and as a viable advertising alternative to flashy, expensive ads through normal media streams (my guess is that SimpleHuman doesn’t have a huge advertising budget). After only being on Twitter for a few weeks, I’ve seen my fair share of Tweets in the form of ‘Wow, X company is great because they did Y’ , or ‘Excited for my morning cup of coffee at Z, I love that place!’ — I think these types of social micro-advertisements generated by consumers will start to carry more weight, particularly as social media goes mainstream.

On the other hand, there are plenty of negative micro-rants out there (e.g. ‘<Insert Company Here> sucks because <Insert Reason>’ is a good template) — and companies will have to find a way to mitigate the risks of these attacks destroying their reputations. Some companies have already figured this out…

There are many companies on Twitter who actively respond to customer complaints and recommendations. In this BusinessWeek article, some companies noted as being on Twitter include Dell, GM, JetBlue, and Whole Foods.  There are also several documented examples of consumers receiving almost immediate customer service after posting negative comments on Twitter (one person notes being contacted immediately by a Customer Service representative after posting a comment about a software problem).  I did a quick search on Google and found many other intriguing avenues for consumers to get customer service in a relatively effortless and ’social’ way. One of the more interesting sites I came across was GetSatisfaction.com , a site that aims to remove the boundaries between people and companies to form a mutually beneficial relationship without the typical customer-service hula-hoops (’press 1 for help with your <X>)

This brings me to the three main points I want to make:

• Consumer-driven micro-advertising in social media is real – If you are a company and you haven’t started managing your online reputation in social media yet, do it now…before it’s too late. Twitter is hitting its Tipping Point – I challenge you to search Twitter for any major company name – Tweets will show up! (to test this theory, I just searched for CarMax, first entry I saw:  “bluedogexpress: Carmax offered way below KBB.com fair price.”  — See what I mean? You can use this media avenue to your advantage — or if you ignore it, it can explode in your face.
  
• Opportunities exist to help big companies deal with social media, and they will be profitable - This is new stuff, and it’s only going to get bigger. Companies will need help in getting this right, as managing online reputation can be a delicate challenge — I see ‘Social Media Consultant’ as a potentially popular and profitable job title in the next few years — so study up.
  
• You have the power to make companies better – When you call a company and complain, they don’t have a big incentive to respond. When you (constructively) criticize companies through social media outlets, and thousands of other people see it – companies have a huge incentive to respond. Use this to your advantage.

So whether you own a company, work in advertising / marketing, or are simply a consumer of goods — the game is changing all around. How will you use it to your advantage?

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• Dell cozies up to its Twitter followers (news.cnet.com)
• Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account? (techcrunch.com)
• Twitter promotions can add up to millions (news.cnet.com)

• Users can bid on items, but they don’t bid by specifying a price…they use a ‘bid’ that they have purchased
• ‘Bids’ can be purchased for 75 cents each
• Each time a user ‘bids’, two things happen: 1. The final cost of the item to the winning bidder is increased by a fixed amount (e.g. 15 cents) 2. The auction end time gets extended by a fixed amount of time (e.g. 20 seconds)
• The last person to ‘bid’ on an item before the auction expires is the winner, and must pay the total price of the item (e.g. the total number of bids multiplied by the fixed price amount increase noted above).

This is a little complicated, but here’s an example. Lets say that I purchased 100 ‘bids’ for a total cost of $75 dollars. The Mac Book Pro auction that I am checking out has a current price of $100 and a current time left of 10 seconds. I decide to use one of my bids on the item, and now I am the ‘current winner’. Because of my bid, the price of the MBP has increased to $100 + $0.15 = $100.15, and the auction now is over in 10+20 = 30 seconds…of course, other people are going to ‘bid’ against me, but lets say I spend a few hours checking the auction, and use all my bids….and I am somehow, beyond my wildest imagination, the last bidder. I have won the auction! Now, if the final price of the computer is $300, and I have spent $75 on the 100 bids, then I have bought a MBP for $375. Sweet! So Swoopo must not be making too much money right??? Wrong. They have made money…a lot of money — In fact, on this auction for a Mac Book Pro, I calculate that they have made almost 20 thousand dollars…

If you do the math on the above MBP auction….

• There have been 25,529 bids. This auction is a ‘penny auction’ meaning that each bid only increases the final cost of the item by a penny, so $255.29 indicates 25,529 bids. At 75 cents a pop, this is $19,146.75
• The final cost for the winner is $255.29
• Adding the two costs above, we are very close to a total profit of 20 thousand dollars!!!

But what’s that you say? The cost is spread across so many users that it doesn’t matter to any individual? One would hope so, but look at the poor winner of the auction. He has bid a total of 2872 times!! At 75 cents a pop, this is already over 2 grand for something that costs $1299 retail. To add insult to injury, he still has to shell out the $255.29 to purchase the computer.

So how does this business model work? How are people this stupid? And why didn’t I come up with this? Well, I can’t answer the last question, but I will try to answer the first two:

Although the business model may be new, the concept behind it is not. In fact, it is a published economic game / theory known as Dollar Auction. It exploits flaws in the calculations of expected value for a given game. At a high level, this model seems to work because

• It exploits a human irrationality where individuals think they will be the one who bids last – Everyone thinks they’re lucky once in a while…but really…do you think there aren’t 100s of other people out there thinking that they’ll bid last too? Thinking it to be true will not make it true…but it will make Swoopo a lot of money
• It exploits the sunk cost fallacy - If I keep bidding on an item, I will become tied to that item, thinking that since I have spent money by bidding so many times on the item, I must win it at all costs…even if economically it isn’t the right think to do (e.g. guy who won the Mac Book Pro Auction)
• It isn’t transparent – To an average Joe, it isn’t obvious what is going on. On EBay it is easy to see how much you will pay for the item, and understand how much the seller is making. On Swoopo, it isn’t transparent…and people will keep the bidding coming.
• It is like gambling – Why do people go to the casino? Obviously, not to make money — unless they’re kidding themselves or are playing Poker. People probably get the same rush from this site as they may get from putting it all on Red. There’s a chance to win at a small cost, many times over.

Anyway, that’s all I got on this site…what do you guys think? Should this be legal? Is it gambling? Are there any other sites out there that have wacky business models? I want to know about them!…I can’t say that I’m not jealous – the idea is simple and profitable – what else can you ask for?

I know what I am going to do next – search google for ‘economics irrational behavior’, and try to develop a business model around the results. Or maybe I’ll go back and re-read Nudge or Predictably Irrational , and see how to profit from human economical irrational decisions… is this an awful thought? Or is this just business as usual?

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• Evil Business Models: Turning The Dollar Auction Into A Profit Center
• Swoopo – eBay’s (more) evil twin
• Are Online Penny Auctions Actually Gambling?