Category: Product Review

Introduction to Game Development, by Michigan University, is a MOOC in Coursera that teaches the principles of game development.

It shows some general principles, and then mostly dives into Unity, which is a very popular game development tool, free for most users, and very easy to use.

You will then develop 3 simples games as you learn Unity and game development:

1. Solar System – a very simple model of the solar system, with planets that rotate around the sun, moons, light and sound effects.
2. A roller ball game, where you collect coins and avoid enemies.
3. A simple shooter where you shoot boxes till you run out of time.

You don't need to be a programmer, but it will make things easier on the last week of the course, and enable you to do more on your games.

 

You have mostly simple quizzes per section, and peer reviewed projects. On both, you will need to pay and verify who you are (by using a webcam) to get the certificate. Of course, that is just a way to get money, as verifying that you are in the room doesn't verify that you answered your quizzes yourself or that you made the project you are uploading. It is a simple way to monetize the courses, however, so I can't grumble much about it.

In this course, you can do all quizzes and projects without paying. You just don't get the certificate.

The course is part of Game Design and Development Specialization . It is interesting to note that quizzes and projects are disabled if you don't pay for the next course. Courses are cheap, though, just US$59.

Overall, I felt that the course was interesting, and I had fun building the games, even if I don't know if I am going to follow up on game development.

On a more somber note, the second project had the page broken (the assignment was blank) and even a week after I reported this and several people mentioned in the discussion forum, nothing was done. Questions about things that no longer work (because of Unity updates) went unanswered by the teacher or TAs.

So I'd be a lot less likely to buy one of these courses, knowing that if the course is broken, it is your problem.

Become a SpeedDemon: Productivity Tricks to Have More Time is a course on productivity by Jonathan Levi – author of Become a Superlearner (a much longer and better course, BTW).

It is nicely short and to the point, and there are some useful tips there – such as:

– prepare before starting a task, so that you don't have to stop in the middle to look for what you need

– batch similar tasks together

– keep SMART priorities (also featured on the very nice and free Learning to Learn course)

– create artificial deadlines (such as doing a task before your next meeting) so you don't spend time on pointless details.

– use the pomodoro technique (also featured on the very nice and free Learning to Learn course)

– keep a list of short tasks for when you have a few free minutes – so that you don't have to think about it or just kill time (review flash cards, view a lecture on an online course, etc)

– some sleep tips (I had seen most of these, but the one about using smart led bulbs was new to me)

– general outsourcing advice

– try to avoid excessive decisions – can cause ego depletion.

The format is the usual – video with a extra PDF and many links. Udemy is pretty good overall, and you can speed up the videos and there are apps for most platforms. No closed captions on this course, however.

Conclusion

Somewhat interesting, but nowhere near the asking price – US$199. You should be able to find a discount if you look around or on some Udemy sale – at US$15 it is useful enough and I can recommend it.

Just finished Enterprise WPF with XAML and C# from Scratch, by Jesse Liberty, in PluralSight.

It covers the basic of XAML with C# – panels and controls, data binding, animation, styles and templates.

The course is very short (less than 3 hours for me, while taking notes)  and to the point. You won't get in depth knowledge on the subject, but you will learn all the basics you need to get started quickly.

On a personal note, this is the second course I take with Jesse Liberty – the first course was Object-Oriented Analysis, with ZD University, back in 1998 – which was also the first course I took online.

Learning How to Learn: Powerful Mental Tools to Help You Master Tough Subjects is an excellent free course on Coursera.org that shows very useful techniques on how to learn more, faster.

The course is full of ideas based on actual research (instead of guesswork, which unfortunately is way too common in education) on the best ways to study and learn.

It covers many areas, including the most effective ways to study and retain material in many areas, avoinding procrastination, improving your memory and more.

I spent about 8 hours with the course, including some of the supplementary readings.

Overall, strongly recommended, and full of valuable tips you can use your whole life.

I have recently finished the Software Security course by Michael Hicks, from the Maryland Cybersecurity center.

I felt the course was interesting and useful. It covered:

– Old school buffer overflows/format string attacks and defenses

– Web attacks such as SQL injection, Cross-site Scripting, Cross-site request forgery and Session hijacking.

– Automated Tools – code review, static analysis, symbolic execution

– Penetration Testing

Classes are in a video format. There are projects (nicely presented in a Linux VM – I didn't do these), several suggested readings and quizzes.

Most of the classes have closed captions, and Coursera allows to speed up videos, too – even in their iOS/Android apps.

The course took me about 14 hours, including the interviews (which are considered optional, and are somewhat interesting).

Overall, very useful, specially for newer programmers. I'm sure if courses like this were required for most programmers, the landscape on cybersecurity today would be very different.

A lot of the general safety practices (defensive programming, etc) can be found in the still very good Code Complete 2 – which I recommend reading anyway if you are a programmer.

LinkedIn Strategy: Optimize Your Profile is a great course in Pluralsight by Jason Alba that covers a lot of ways in which you can make your LinkedIn profile more effective – and also some suggestions on how to improve your networking in the site.

There is plenty covered, starting with your picture, professional headline, summary and going into how to use rich media, how to get (and give) recommendations and more.

A particularly interesting tidbit is how to re-use recommendation lines on your summary, experiences, sites and more.

Conclusion

Overall, I found the course to be very useful and full of interesting techniques and suggestions. I think that if you use his ideas on your profile, it will be much better and more useful. I definitely need to spend some more time on mine.

Recommended, specially if you already have a Pluralsight subscription.

Recently I completed the course Pattern Discovery in Data Mining – by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in Coursera.

It was interesting but had a fair theoretical slant. Still, I learned about a lot of algorithms I was not aware about before in the area.

The course is free (you only pay US$50 if you want a certificate, but it doesn't likely to be useful to me), and part of a larger specialization sequence in Data Mining, which seems to have more practical courses.

Coursera was pretty good as usual. I particularly like their iPad app, which allows you to download, speed up videos (quite useful in this case) and has full closed caption support.

Recommended to people interested in the area.

 

I just finished The Essential Guide to Entrepreneurship – by Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki is fairly well known, specially as the Chief Evangelist of Apple (and now Canva, which you will hear about if you get the course). He is also the author of several books, including The Art of The Start (on the same topic as the course), The Art of Social Media, and several more.

It is a new, interesting course about Entrepreneurship divided in these segments:

Launching – Ideas on how to come up with a product, position it, and how to avoid common mistakes. It is the only pre-launch segment.

Pitching – how to pitch to investors, angels or venture capitalists. Clearly one of the big topics for the course.

Fundraising – types of funding, how to find investors, types of investors and rounds of financing.

Building a Team – advice on how to build your team – what to look for, how to get a good fit, checking for references and getting people to join.

Social Media – mostly generic (use pictures/videos, repeat tweets, etc), but does have some good advice on how to use specific platforms best.

Evangelizing – how to make people want to spread the “good news” about your company/product.

There is a bunch of supplementary files (PDF), some of which are quite useful. Check the image on the side for the list.

The course took me about 6 hours to complete, including taking quite a bit of notes.

My notes from the Course

I had a ton of notes, this is just what I felt is most interesting/useful. I'm adding my own comments in italics.

Launch

Getting your idea – use simple questions, such as “Is there a better way to do this?”, “How can I make it better”.

Look for the intersection of opportunity, your experience and passion.

Ideas are easy, implementation is hard.

Get a prototype ready – just asking people if you'd buy a concept is limited (a common theme on the topic – Nathan Barry and others suggest pre-selling to actually check for interest – that is when you really know if someone is interested and when they will ask the hard questions about your product)

Use a mantra (2-4 words) instead of a mission statement. Do with a co-founder, through trial and error, keep it logical and short. Think about why are you doing, and what you are trying to do.
On launch, tell a story using simple questions used before to stand out.

Worry about getting critical mass instead of scaling – it is much more likely to be a problem (can't help but be a little wary of this as a programmer – architectures tend to go very bad when you need to overhaul them after design because you ignore scaling. Obviously makes some sense on corporate infrastructure)

Watch out for the chasm between the early adopters and going mainstream – Early adopters will accept a lot that mainstream won't.

Ease of use can be more important on social media – old press reviewers tolerated a lot more complexity.

Common mistakes
– scale too much, too early
– hiring mirror images instead of having a diverse team with complementary strenghts.
– obsession with control

No one vests stock early – anyone can decide to leave at any time.

Doing a vc demo

•  only do it when ready
•  have backups for everything
•  use a local server instead of trusting the net
•  be ready – do the whole demo before and be sure of where everything you need are
•  fast start
•  do it alone, coordination is hard
•  no jokes or jargon
•  questions only at the end
•  start on a high,  show how it works, end on a high

Pitches

Think Tinder, not eHarmony – fast, not deep.

Preparation, 20-25 times before you go it, practice is key.
Start with a personal story on how/why you made the product/got the idea
10/20/30 rule, 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 size font
Small size fonts might make you add too much text and read from the slide. Don't.
Every time you state a fact, pretend someone said “so what”
Next level, after “so what” explanation, “give me an example”
Avoid adding answers to every question you are asked to the pitch, but keep the most important ones in mind and consider rewriting the whole thing periodically.

Dream pitch: explain what you do, talk about the magic, demo, show that you already
have users.

Bring backups for everything. Even printed slides just in case.

What to avoid

• talking about patents as a big deal, require cash and time to defend
• don't say you are the only one who can do something
• don't say you have no competition, either you are clueless or there is no market
• don't claim your projections are conservative
• don't try to invent scarcity,i.e. Say they have to decide soon because you have other offers.

The Pitch Checklist/Dream Pitch and Pitch makeover supplementary files are all quite useful.

Fundraising

• 3F, friends, fools and family – good for 25-100K
• Angels 5-500. More interested in giving back to society, faster decisions.
• Venture capitalists – look for bigger scores. 3-4 thou a year deals worldwide
• Crowdfunding. No equity share, proves there is a market for the product

Easier with proxies, such as corporate finance attorneys, professors, executives already in the VC portfolio.

Team Building

– shared qualities – vision, size, timeline, commitment
– different attributes – expertise, orientation (detail vs strategic), perspectives

What to look for:
– work experience, education, do they get it (shared vision)

Checking for fit
– interview by phone first, to remove variables
– should have a strong positive reaction when you see a candidate (uh, isn't that the inverse of the previous one?)

– use linkedin and find people that worked with them for references.

Do it so that they feel they can do the best work of their lives and make a difference

Recruting is never done, even after someone is hired
Map – mastery,autonomy, purpose

Supplementary:
Top 10 lies of job candidates
Big vs small company skills
Questions for reference checking

Social Media

Don't get an intern to do this – it is too important.

• Pinterest , for photo worthy stuff, such as fashion, restaurants,etc. Posts have a longer shell life
• Instagram – good topics are the same as Pinterest
• Linkedin – more for the serious bizdev, b2b, contacts stuff
• Buffer, Hootsuite, Sproutsocial – don't focus on twitter, Google plus and FB, just blast at them using an app

Pay attention to the cover photo, it is an important marketing image
Tagline, should be your mantra or near it
Repost tweets and posts several times.

Every post should have a graphic or video
Recommends letting FB grab the image from the link, not add it manually. Several times more engagement this way.
Twitter, can add up to 4 images and tell a little story. Can also tag people in the images and these do not count as chars on the tweet
Get more engagement/view by posting video directly to FB.

Best practices for sharing:

• be brief – 2 or 3 sentences for G+ and FB, 100 chars on Twitter. 500 to 1000 words on blog posts.
• have pictures, graphic or video on everything.
• post early in the morning (test!)
• link to the source
• use bullets for posts longer than 4 paragraphs
• use popular title schemes. (there is a list with a few)

Try promoting posts where available. or pin to the top of the page on fb and twitter for free.
Automate your posts  – Buffer, DoShare , Friends+me, Hootsuite, Post Planner, Sprout Social, Tailwind, TweetDeck (article actually has descriptions of each)

Conclusion

I feel that the course was not a great fit for me, because pitching, fundraising and evangelism are the biggest topics and don't really apply to most of my ideas. If these are of interest for you, it is bound to be much more useful. A little too expensive (US$200, I got it at US$40 otherwise I'd be getting a refund) for the amount of content in the other areas.