Today, we’re going to share a few of our favorite tips for avoiding the awkward moment that many of us know far too well. The best connectors remember your name, every time. At least, it makes you feel valued… right? Other people will always remember how you made them feel, and one of the best ways to make someone feel good is to simply remember their name! Oh, and use it:

“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.“

It’s time for you to set the bar higher. Here’s some tips to start:

1)    I’ll begin with a personal example from my own life. If I forget someone’s name in the moment, one of my favorite tricks is to gamble on the chance that I might have saved their cell phone number in my phone. I’ll start the conversation by asking:

“Hey, I forget if we’ve exchanged numbers in the past. What’s your number again?“

After I type it into my phone, their name will pop up if I’ve saved their number before. If it does, problem solved! However, if nothing pops up and I haven’t saved their number before, I’ll usually extend my phone towards the person and ask if they would mind adding their info (including their email address). Even if it is a tiny bit awkward to start off a conversation like this, the person’s name almost always surfaces.

 2)    If you’re at a cocktail party and you run into someone whose name you forget, look to see if you have a friend nearby. Once you have selected your ‘intro target’, get their attention and motion for them to come over. Then, quickly pose the question:

“Hey, have you two met each other before?“

If they haven’t, try to use your body language to prompt them to give their own name. Naturally, they will introduce themselves to each other. Just like that, problem solved!

3)    If you blank on someone’s name and don’t feel comfortable trying either (1) or (2) above, stall the conversation and try not to let on that you’ve had a moment of forgetfulness. If appropriate, ask the person if they would fancy an exchange of business cards.

Or better yet, offer to hash ‘em up! Once you have their email address (or Twitter handle), you should be able to deduce the person’s name.

3.5)    Not working? Still drawing a blank? Look for a way to momentarily escape the conversation, promising your imminent return. Then, ask someone else (preferably, a friend nearby!) if they know the person’s name.

LAST RESORT:    If all else fails, ask the person directly. Be polite, don’t make a big deal of it, and don’t be embarrassed – it happens to everyone from time-to-time. For example:

“I’m terribly sorry but I’ve completely forgotten your name.“

*******

What do you think? What are some of your best tops for remembering names? Drop us a comment below!

I know, this list has now creeped us out, too. So please, enjoy your candy corn and mini-chocolate bars and be assured that it’s totally safe to go back in the water. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SKY?!?

Boo.

During the first phase of the internet boom, innovators wanted to connect to people across the globe. Services like AOL and MySpace exploded by bridging geographic gaps between people. Google allowed us to search the entire world. But soon, we realized technology was taking us away from our own backyards. Local community rose as a focus – and a business – on the web. You could say it started with Facebook, connecting people based on University affiliation. Hyper-local news sites like Patch and Baristanet sprang up and brought local to life. Daily Deal sites exploded. Blogs, Twitter, Foursquare – more and more tools developed for us to think globally – and act locally. All of this together – and more! – has put the hyper-local in focus as a major driver of tech-scene development, and opportunity.

Enter Street Fight – the site devoted to the business of hyperlocal:

The intersection between location-centric services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places; locally-targeted daily deals efforts like Groupon, LivingSocial and Yipit; and more traditional “hyperlocal” news and information sites and networks like Patch.com, Everyblock, Baristanet and the East Village Local. These are all marked by big new ideas, shifting consumer behavior, and technology-enabled innovation — and a similar push of venture funding is enabling serious projects that promise to build a new world of local advertising and commerce.

At last week’s Street Fight Summit, founder and CEO of Street Fight, Laura Rich, aimed to bring together these new ideas, attitudes and technologies to examine the future path of hyperlocal. Hashable was excited to attend part of the summit and learn from some of the great presenters. Here are some highlights:

How to be a standalone Hyperlocal news site?
To survive and thrive as a standalone hyperlocal, you need a dedicated audience. Provide great content to your readers, and they will be your greatest advocates. Debra Galant of Baristanet pushed the point that as a small news site, readers are your biggest advocates and enable smaller news sites to compete with local Patch sites.

How do hyperlocal news sites compete with Patch?
At the same time, Michael Shapiro stressed that Patch is a great player in the local news field and offers the competition needed to spur great journalism.

But how do hyperlocal news sites get ads?
Debra Galant and Scott Broadbeck, editor and publisher of ARLnow.com, reiterate that their addicted readers are their biggest advocates and often function as a de facto sales team, driving local merchants to purchase ad space. The issue is, merchants don’t understand digital ads, so many local news sites sell ads like newspapers, which can often cheat the merchants. There is a definite need for companies like Google, Clickable and American Express to work with their small business customers and educate them on these new concepts, otherwise, they are missing out on huge economic growth.

Two new hyperlocal experiments stood out of the crowd: CityPockets and Zaarly

 CityPockets, founded by Cheryl Yeoh, is a virtual wallet and secondhand marketplace for daily deals. As a management tool for daily deals vouchers, CityPockets is able to glean a stunning amount of data about daily deals users and their spending habits. For example, $1.2 Billion is wasted each year due to forgotten or expired daily deals vouchers. CityPockets tries to compromise for this loss by providing users with a secondhand marketplace, with 41% of deals re-sold at a break even price and 25% for a profit. Needless to say, CityPockets made quite an impression.

Zaarly, a mobile geo-specific marketplace to buy and sell anything, is a product of New York City’s startup weekend. CEO, Bo Fishback, took the stage and offered his candid opinion on the potential for businesses to harness the power of “local”. “There’s a lot of things about this [hyperlocal] hotness that are better than the last hotness,” said Fishback, referring to the bubble burst of the 90’s. The rise of consumer mobile GPS is huge, according to Fishback and “there aren’t enough people to exploit this opportunity.” Zaarly is currently focused on building the best product to connect consumers with the people and products around them. Until then, download the Zaarly app to start buying and selling. For those in Gotham City, NYC is the biggest Zaarly market, so trust you will find some opportunities and sales (in fact, Zaarly just moved to Manhattan from San Francisco to exploit their presence in the market).

Why is NYC the right place to incubate a hyperlocal tech company?
Dave Tisch, managing director of TechStars NYC pushed that the business and population density are biggest drivers for starting up hyperlocals in the five boroughs. Owen Davis, managing director of NYC Seed, identified that while the overflowing market for hyperlocal businesses is a huge driver, the relationship to the urban environment is dramatically different is New York City, as compared to other cities across the globe, making it the perfect environment to test new tools and services.

Why Foursquare’s testing worked in NYC
Panel Moderator, Lockhart Steele, recalled a conversation he had with Dennis Crowley, founder and CEO of Foursquare. Crowley mentioned that the best part about testing products in New York City is the diverse marketplace of new media consumers. “Here in New York City, your product gets tested by journalists & fashionistas, which helps make a better rounded product” This testing market ultimately gives you a better product that appeals to different tastes.

…whoof. Is that enough hyperlocal for you? For the full run-down, check out Jeremy Caplan’s storify of the entire summit and Street Fight’s own detailed recaps. Thanks very much to the Street Fight team for an amazing first conference.

Meet Hashable’s Android Engineer, Joe Lallouz

*Joe, several years ago*

Today, we have the most in-depth #HashByte interview yet. Before we get to Joe’s thoughts on building personality into a product and why Canada is awesome, here’s the lowdown on Joe:

• Follow Joe on Twitter here
• Hash with Joe here
• By day: Android & Web Engineer, Hashable
• By night: Co-Creator & Android Developer, Cloud Assassin
• Check out Joe’s blog here: http://kitchenhacker.com/
• City of Joe: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
• A short bio: “Entrepreneur | Application Engineer | I build Android & Web @Hashable full time | I built @cloud_assassin | I Live life like it’s sharkweek | I have 2 dogs, that I live for | I like cooking and sneakers, so i built @recip_io while wearing sneakers | I had a previous life in financial services at FactSet Research Systems | I now live the startup life. Currently working on some neat Android passion projects, including a Honeycomb tablet app for Shelby.tv, an unofficial 500px app & a game called ‘pirate dice’.”

1.     My memory tells me that you worked in the financial world after graduating… is this accurate? What were you up to before Hashable and what drew you to technology startups?

Before joining Hashable I worked at an incredible, publicly traded company called Factset Research Systems, based in Norwalk, CT. I spent about 2 and a half years working with a really great team on tough technical problems where I honed my skills and I learned a ton about team based software development. I was also very lucky to have a few key co-workers who left a strong impact on me. I still suggest the place as a great environment to work and I only left because I realized that the larger corporate lifestyle was not what interested me at this point in my life.

I have always been drawn to tech startups, so that was not something that I decided while I was at Factset. Building products, projects or companies is something I have been doing since I was very young and I am absolutely addicted to it. I thrive in fast paced, high stress environments so starting or joining a startup was just something I had to do to be happy and that’s what really matters, no?

2.     The ‘Internet infamous’ FakeGrimlock recently wrote a guest post on Fred Wilson’s blog (“Minimum Viable Personality”) where he said creating a personality for a product is the 2^nd most important thing for it to be successful. In my opinion, the app you ‘co-created’ (Cloud Assassin) is overflowing with personality. Were there any particular steps you took to intentionally create a personality for it?

This is one of those things that I feel like you can’t fabricate. Any personality that your product embodies comes from the people creating it. I’m flattered that you think Cloud Assasin has a ton of personality, that speaks well for Brandon, Aaron, Roy and I. But I have to admit, we built that game going with our guts and as a team, trusting in the aspects that we loved and cutting the ones we hated. All I can really say about building personality into a product is to make sure you are surrounded by the absolute best and brightest… the rest will line up.

 3.     What’s your favorite memory of playing hockey in Canada?

I wish I could say it was when I won a championship, but sadly that never happened. My fondest memory is bitter cold February weekend outdoor games. I know it sounds like a Disney movie but it’s true. Montreal is a magical place in the winter. The entire city is obsessed with Hockey.

I played at a very competitive level – every night after school and every weekend – but somehow when I wasn’t playing with my team, my friends and I would go play at one of the thousands of outdoor rinks in the city. It did not matter how cold it was, we would just throw on the skates and a pair of gauntlets and play for hours. You would get home at night and your feet would ache from the cold. I loved that.

The Finale: Get To Know Joe in Five Fast Questions

1.     What is your favorite thing about living in Williamsburg?

It’s amazing. The food, the art, the music, the people. It’s a very young and fun place to be – I find that energizing.

2.     From a design standpoint, what are some of your favorite Android apps?

Great question. I love foursquare, super talented design team. The GroupMe app is kind of unconventional from an android design standpoint, but I love their work. The team over at Lightbox are also at the top of my list.

3.     What’s the one thing that most people don’t know about you?

I represented my home Nation of Canada 2 times at the International level. Sadly neither were for Hockey. Once playing for the Canadian National Ultimate Frisbee team in Turku, Finland in 2004. I trained with the team for a month in Winnipeg before heading out for the 3 week tourney. We came in second…to the US. And once at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Silicon Valley. My partner and I were one of a handful of teams to rep Canada and we built a 3-dimensional environment to test the effects of aurally aided visual search. We got an honorable mention and it turns out, it helps – so you’re welcome, fighter jet pilots.

4.     You’ve been compared to Sidney Crosby (98% alike according to MyHeritage.com) before. Is he your favorite NHL player?

Nope. I Love Sid the Kid, but he’s not my favorite. The top of my all time list has been, and will always be Wayne Gretzky. I’ve drawn so much inspiration and awe from that man over the years, it will be hard to surpass. My favorite current player is Andrei Markov though, underrated and an over performer (when he’s healthy :/ ).

5.     Who is your favorite artist in music?

Freddie Mercury. I love all music, all shapes and sizes. But I have always been a huge fan of Queen. The Beatles are in a very close second.

**************

Have any questions you’d like to ask Joe? Well, go right ahead! Ask away in the comments below.

On Design

Jobs was known for his dedication to design and perfection, and that temperament was passed down to him by his father. “Paul jobs was a Salt of the earth guy who was a great mechanic,” said Isaacson in an interview with 60 minutes. “And he taught his son steve how to make great things. Once they were making a fence and he said, ‘You gotta make the back of the fence that no one will see, just as good looking as the front of the fence. Even though nobody will see it, you will know. That will show that you’re dedicated to making something perfect.’”

The Original Phone Hacker

One of Steve’s first hacks was with his later business partner Steve Wozniak. They re-created something called the “blue box” which was a tool that reproduced phone company tones, allowing users to make illegal long-distance calls. It was this hack that prompted the Steves to start Apple. Jobs said to Issacson, “With my marketing skills and Wozniak’s great design, we could sell anything.”

In Pursuit of Nirvana

Steve Jobs, like many free thinkers in his day, traveled to India in search of enlightenment. According to Issacson, Buddhism was a strong influence on his design sense. The idea that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” is at the core of Apple’s philosophy.

A Humble Billionaire 

Jobs was never the materialistic type. His house in Palo Alto was on a regular street, with no live-in help and no fancy driveway. He kept a humble demeanor in spite of his obvious wealth because he had seen how money had changed people in his life, specifically his colleagues at Apple. “I saw a lot of other people at Apple especially after we went public and how it changed them. And a lot of people thought they had to start being rich. So a few people went out and bought Rolls Royces..their wives went out and got plastic surgery…and I saw these really nice, simple people turn into these bizzarro people. And I made a promise to myself: I’m not going to let this money ruin my life.”

According to Issacson, Apple board member Art Levinson was the man who convinced Jobs to take on third party apps. Initially, Jobs did not think his team had the bandwith to “police” third-party developers. Little did he know that the Apps bazaar would create a whole new industry of products and innovation. Good thing the typically cantankerous CEO was able to be swayed, otherwise you wouldn’t have Hashable!

A Television Pioneer

One product Apple had not tackled in Jobs’ lifetime was the television. “He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote. “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

A Mysterious Long-Lost Son

Jobs met his biological father, unbeknownst to the two of them. He and his sister, Mona Simpson, tracked down their mutual biological father Abdulfattah John Jandali. While Steve did not want to meet him, Mona took the plunge and met Jandali at the restaurant he was managing at the time. Upon meeting, he said to her “I wish you could have seen me when I was running a bigger restaurant…Everybody used to come there. Even Steve Jobs used to eat there…He was a great tipper.” Jobs remembers meeting his father at the restaurant in Palo Alto years before. “We shook hands,” he said.

On Mortality

Death was a frequent conversation between Isaacson and Jobs. In one interview Job said, “I saw my life as an arc, and it would end. And compared to that, nothing mattered. You know, I mean. You’re born alone you’re going to die alone. What exactly is it that you have to lose Steve…nothing!”

One day, Steve and Walter were sitting in Jobs’ backyard, and they began discussing God. “Sometimes I believe in god, sometimes I don’t…but ever since I’ve had cancer I’ve been thinking about it more. Maybe because I want to believe in an afterlife that after you die, it doesn’t always disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated it lives on…but sometimes I think it’s like an on and off switch. Click and you’re gone…that’s why I don’t like putting on and off switches on Apple devices.”

The iconic CEO is now not only memorialized in our devices, but now in a 500+ page book. We suggest you leave your office now and grab a copy–or if you’re an Apple loyalist, get it on iBooks and read it on your iPad.

Photo via Obama Pacman

“If you had five minutes on stage, what would you say?” Those brave enough to answer that question present at Ignite NYC, a way for thinkers and doers to share their advice and experience with others in 5 minutes, based off 20 slides. Last night the Ignite NYC team celebrated their 13th presentation series as a closing event to the first day of the Web 2.0 Expo. These mini-talks ran the gamut of how to de-stale cheerios to the experiences of a “before and after” fitness model to how to insert more gratification into your workday. Ignite presentations can be zany and inspiring — and last night were especially so (the audience of over 800 was appropriatedly ignited). Here are our favorite quotes of the night from each speaker:

1) @MichelleBee: Mayor McCheese is the force that creates cohesive community. Community Managers should throw their money into finding Mayor McCheese. When you build that community they are going to be tight.

2) @MattLeMay: Music is stupid software, but musicians have to be really smart entrepreneurs. They balance old & new business models, design their products with emotion, are the best community managers and they keep going when the going gets tough.

3) @Corvida: The best way to destale cherrios? While liquid nitrogen and a George Foreman grill might do the trick, you’re probably best off purchasing another box.

4) @SuraJStar: While twitter is a great way to share information, the self-selection isolates opinions by creating echo chambers where users can reinforce their own beliefs.

5) @Shaka_Lulu: Current pictures of the sky are mere moments in Astronomy. We will soon see a movie of the sky, of stars consuming one another.

6) @JonLevyTLB: People do crazy things to change their body, like eat 4,000 calories worth of chicken and dislocate their legs.

7) @SarahFeingold: “In life, just like in jewelry and in law, you have to pay attention to the details.”

8) @Mmalkoff: “If you make conservative safe choices you get conservative safe results” — on racing an MTA bus across town in a kids’ big wheeler.

9) @Desifeminista: On the five dating myths…“Dating is socially sanctioned torture”

10) @SippingInk: Being an actor in LA is also like socially sanctioned torture. You’re better off moving to NYC, getting a degree from ITP and working at TechStars.

11) @Jackfoundation: Tweeting is great, but enjoy the world around you…and call your grandmother!

12) @kn0thing: Use the brilliance of geek culture to make the world “suck less”.

13) @akko: Do you feel chained to your work desk? You don’t need as vacation, you need a workcation–taking your work day outside of the office.

14) @TerezaN: “Ask excellent questions to create honest moments”

15) @nickcrocker: how do you change yourself? Pick one thing, change a little bit at a time, create a chain of change, and always remember “floss the teeth you want to keep.”

16) @Bougie: Ruby on Rails Barbie will not get more women in tech. You know what will? Stop calling yourself a girl — give yourself power. Call yourself a woman.

…and finally, from Hashable’s very own Emma Persky:

17) @emmapersky: Winning at Karaoke is easy if you add your own array of drama. “Go epic or go home”

Epic, indeed. Check out all the presentations online here and follow @igniteNYC for updates on the next Ignite.

Image via Flickr

Meet Hashable’s QA Engineer, Sam Gimbel

Today, Sam will share with us some tips on what it takes to be great at QA and tell a story from his pre-Hashable background. Before we get to the interview, here’s the lowdown on Sam:

• Follow Sam on Twitter here
• Hash with Sam here
• By day: QA Engineer, Hashable
• Check out Sam’s blog here: http://blog.samgimbel.com/ (Titled “Starting Up”)
• City of Sam: Brooklyn, NY
• A short bio: “I’m a DIY Connoisseur. I love building stuff, fixing stuff, and playing stuff.”

1.     What were you up to before joining Hashable? 

Well, directly before Hashable I was working for a small publishing company all the way up in Westchester.  It had this vaguely miserable quality to it that only got worse over time.  Publishing is just so established that nothing ever really changes, and I think that didn’t catch my interest. Also, it turns out I really don’t do well when I’m not challenged, which is why my time at Hashable can be so easily described as a success.  Before that I was backpacking through South America after graduating from college in Virginia.  I’m a young guy, and I think that makes working at a startup that much more exciting.

2.     What do you do when you’re not at Hashable?  

I spend a lot of time hardware hacking. I do a lot of Arduino projects, but my first love is designing and building guitar amplifiers.  I usually start with something classic and end with something totally unexpected sound-wise.  I’m slowly working towards a modular amplifier design that would allow anyone to experiment and build their own stuff.  I think musicians would really appreciate a modular approach to tone.  Other than that I love biking, learning to write new code (I’m picking up Ruby currently), and cooking. I guess I get bored easily.

3.     You’ve written that as a QA guy, you’re “pretty much all about finding ways in which things don’t work”. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would you share with aspiring QA engineers on becoming better at finding ways in which things aren’t working properly? 

Man, that quote makes me sound a lot more negative than I actually am, but I guess it’s true.  The advice that comes to mind first is: learn how something works BEFORE you learn how to break it.  If you do your testing modularly and learn to anticipate flaws in the product before they occur then you will save yourself big headaches when bugs are found in the wild.  Also:  AUTOMATE.  As soon as an aspect of your product is solid, write automated regression tests for it.  You’ll be so happy you did later on.  To be honest, I think the best way to be good at QA is to build things yourself, whether it’s writing code or hacking hardware or writing articles.  You’ll start to find the areas creative people tend to miss and learn to anticipate areas of weakness.  It really does pay to hone your instincts.

The Finale: Get To Know Sam in Five Fast Questions 

 1.     What is the longest you’ve ever gone without shaving?

5 months, while traveling.  It didn’t look ridiculous at all.

2.     What is your favorite book of all time?  

It’s a series, but the Ishmael books by Daniel Quinn (Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael). 

3.     What did you study in college?

Started with Philosophy and Psychology, have a degree in Neuroscience and Sociology.

 4.     What is your favorite website?

Honestly it’s probably Wikipedia.  It’s not really “cool” anymore but I use it at least once a day.

 5.     What is your favorite place in Brooklyn?

On a nice day, Prospect Park.  On a rainy/cold day, probably sitting on my own couch with my girlfriend, Taylor.

**************

Have any questions you’d like to ask Sam? Well, go right ahead! Ask away in the comments below.

I wasn’t expecting to feel so sad either. I’m not a lifelong Apple fangirl, or even a lifelong tech geek. I vividly remember moments of Mac-generated wonder, but came late to the Apple-love party. I was even a PC girl until two years ago, and have not even owned my iPhone or iPad for a year. But when you work in the tech industry, as I have for the past two years, you come by love and respect for Apple by osmosis. Not just because they are beautiful and easy to use, but because you realize quickly that they have just changed everything. “There’s an app for that,” did not exist 3 years ago; 5 years ago, the iPhone – the place to find those apps – didn’t exist, either. Steve Jobs died just a few weeks shy of a decade after the launch of the iPod: October 23, 2001.

“Great products don’t just showcase creativity; they unlock it in others,” wrote Hashable Director of Products Dave Sebag when it was announced that Jobs was going on medical leave. “I think this explains all the Steve Jobs love today.” This is the other reason you can’t move within the tech industry impervious to the impact of Jobs and Apple. Instagram. Square. Foursquare. Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Words With Friends. Evernote. And, Hashable. Apple created beautiful, functional products – and a fundamental platform upon which an entire industry — and the progress it has wrought — has been built.

On a more prosaic level, working in this industry means struggling over basic questions of user experience – there’s inventing the raw product, and then there’s making it easy to use. This is hard. Design, functionality, intuitive understanding of human nature, thinking ahead to the mechanics of repetitive hand movement – again, this is hard. Apple always did and does it beautifully. Things of elegant simplicity usually reflect the most brilliance in the process.

So yes – it is hard to be in the tech industry and not take in the Jobs-love by osmosis. It comes through respect for the details, awe of the scope and getting to use a beautiful product that brings you joy (even if my iPhone 4 were just a camera, that would be enough for me). But for me, my respect for Jobs became something else when I watched his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, which flew around the Internet when his leave from Apple was first announced. I’m sure you’ve seen this but if you haven’t, drop everything and watch it now – or read the transcript, which I have included below. His personal story is amazing, and reminds us that everything you do in life can and will be pulled into what you do later, that the random can become the pivotal, that second and third acts are possible, and that it is all worth it when you truly love what you do.

He also talks about facing death after getting his first cancer diagnosis:

When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

I have often said that I believe people create products in their image — they make what they want, the way they’d want it, and the way they think others would want it. Looking back at what Steve Jobs gave to the world across a truly incredible career, it is clear that the path to the Mac, and the iPod, and the iPhone, and the iPad and every sleek white minimalist beautiful gadget filled with game-changing innovation came straight through his heart. In his memo to Apple employees announcing his leave last January, Jobs wrote: “I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.” He’s still there; he’s in it, all of it.

Here is Jobs’ speech at Stanford in 2005; the transcript is below.

(Video via Stanford University.)

Thank you. I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop­in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five­cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand­calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans­serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.

But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever — because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We’d just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I’d just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer­ animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors’ code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept.

No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

(Transcript via Scribd; modified from a post originally published at Mediaite. Image via apple.com.)

Take Notes

Anchoring contacts with notes about the person, meeting or conversation can be very helpful for remembering details about an interaction.

Let’s say I just met Sam:

I can open the notes feature and jot down a private note I can reference in the future. It’s good to know he codes in Ruby, because I’d like to connect him with a friend of mine who’s looking for a developer.