“I really need to learn how to use Photoshop.”

“I don’t know how people do all that stuff with After Effects.”

“If I only knew Ableton…”

Does this sound like you?

Learning creative software can be intimidating, but it’s not as hard as you might think. An ever-growing catalog of high-quality, online video tutorials available on sites like Lynda.com and Kelby Training are making learning on your own both efficient and engaging. To give you the downlow on where to go, we’ve rounded up a handful of the best tutorial resources across various creative categories – and follow up that list with some tips on how to stay focused and productive when you’re learning outside of a standard classroom setting.

For Photographers and Image Editors

Kelby Training ($25/mo, $200/yr)
KelbyTraining.com specializes in Photoshop and Photography by having skilled professional photographers teach courses in HD video. It’s an excellent resource for photographers who want to get more out of a DSLR, and for designers and editors who work with Photoshop on a regular basis. You can view all the video on the site for a 24-hour trial before buying.

For Adobe Creative Suite Users

AdobeTV (Free)
Adobe provides a series of free tutorials for all of their creative suite products, including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere, and more. Each software has a set of 5-10 ‘Getting Started’ tutorials as well as specific tutorials for certain techniques and effects. These tutorials are excerpted from the full courses at Lynda.com  (see below) that require a paid subscription.

For Musicians, DJs, and Sound Engineers

Groove3 ($25/mo, $100/yr, $15-20/course)
Groove3 offers video tutorials of all the latest audio production software, and new tutorials are released with new editions of each software to help you keep up with the changing environment.

Ableton Video Tutorials (Free)
If you’re trying to teach yourself Ableton, get started with the free videos available on their website, or this list of 17 amazing tutorials.

For Videographers and Editors

Izzy Video Final Cut Pro Tutorial (Free)
Izzy Video provides a detailed free tutorial course for Apple’s Final Cut Pro video editing software with 2 hours and 40 minutes of total HD video, as well as the practice files used in the course available with a paid download. The site also provides numerous general filmmaking tutorials on topics ranging from lighting to audio, which are accessible with a paid membership.

For Motion Graphics Designers and Animators

Video Copilot (Free)
VideoCopilot.net has a terrific series of tutorials that start with a piece of film illustrating a motion graphics technique and then show you how it was done. There is also a series of 10 basic tutorials for After Effects beginners.

For Web Developers

W3Schools (Free)
W3Schools provides lengthy (non-video) tutorials for learning HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, and other coding languages with frequent interactive elements that let you test what you have learned.

For Everyone

Lynda.com ($25/mo)
Lynda.com offers video tutorials taught by experts on just about every piece of software out there, from AutoCAD to ZBrush. All of the courses also have the option of downloading the files used by the instructor in the videos at the cost of a higher monthly subscription. A small number of videos on the site are available without subscription, or you can try to cram as much as possible into the 7-day free trial.

MacProVideo.com ($25/mo, $200/yr, $20/course)
MacProVideo.com is similar in cross-genre breadth to Lynda.com, but focuses entirely on products available for the Mac. MPV has tutorials on signature Mac-only products like Logic and Final Cut Pro, but also multi-platform software like Adobe CS5. It boasts an innovative learning platform called N.E.D. (Nonlinear Educating Device), which allows you to smoothly browse the tutorial content and use keyword search.

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Tips on Teaching Yourself

Now that you know where to go to learn your chosen software, you’re ready to start teaching yourself – which is no small task! You’re going to need a good dose of grit, and a plan. Here are a few tips for getting started:

1. Block out time.

One of the main reasons classroom settings are so effective is that they force you to show up and commit dedicated time to learning. Block out time in your schedule in advance for learning your software of choice, and then respect it just like you would a class where your grade could get docked for not showing up.

2. Use two monitors.

If you can find a cheap one, a second monitor empowers you to make much more effective use of video tutorials, by having the tutorial playing on one screen and having the application itself open on the other.

3. Find a forum.

There are going to be times when you just don’t understand how to do something in a tutorial. Fortunately, there are great support communities out there for most any type of software. Photoshop Gurus, Ableton User Help Exchange, and Creative Coware a few examples, or you can just google your question and take it from there.

4. Give yourself a project.

If there’s anything that will help keep you on-track with your learning and provide a meaningful structure, it’s setting up a real, tangible project that you will execute with the knowledge you’re gaining. (It will also keep you from feeling overwhelmed about learning software features you may not really need.) Whether it’s building a small website, making a song, or creating a short film, use your new learning to create something real. That’s what’ll make it stick.

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What Do You Use?

Are there any great software learning resources that we missed? How do you teach yourself new software skills?

Although all the news about Chinese investment in the U.S. has focused on the deals that don’t get done, Chinese investment in the U.S. is at an all-time high.

The Chinese are making headlines around the word for hungrily acquiring energy and resource companies in countries such as Canada, Africa and Latin America.

In the United States, the single largest Chinese investment to date is far more mundane: movie theaters. And to a large extent, that type of acquisition explains the broader story about China’s strategy when it comes to U.S. investment.

AMC Theaters, previously owned by a group of U.S. private equity firms, is now a division of Dalian Wanda of China—a huge entertainment conglomerate that spent $2.6 billion in 2012 on the theater chain.

It’s no accident that the largest U.S. purchase so far is for a company as non-controversial as AMC. Chinese businesses—many of them government-owned—have repeatedly been rebuffed by the U.S. government when trying to buy American firms that control natural resources or advanced technology.

Despite all the negative headlines, Chinese investment in the U.S. hit an all-time record in 2012: $6.5 billion. It will likely surpass that level in 2013, according to Rhodium Group, which does detailed tracking of Chinese investment. The Heritage Foundation says the U.S. was the single biggest recipient of Chinese overseas investment last year, eclipsing Australia for the first time.

“We are in the midst of a structural growth story that will transform the China-U.S. investment relationship from a one-way street into a two-way street,” says Thilo Hanemann of Rhodium.

CNBC profiled three Chinese-owned companies in the U.S. in order to explore what kind of deals and investments are getting done, and the motivations behind them.AMC Theaters, International Vitamin Corporation, and China Construction of America represent a cross-section of Chinese-owned firms.

Jianlin Wang, chairman of Dalian Wanda, which bought AMC, wants his company to reach $100 billion in revenue by 2020, up from the current $30 billion. While his home market China is the fastest growing movie market in the world, he’ll still need overseas acquisitions to achieve his goal.

“The acquisition of AMC is just the start,” says Wang, and “probably before the end of the year we may complete one or two more deals.” He says he expects to spend another $7 billion in the U.S. by the end of this decade.

International Vitamin Corporation, of Freehold, N.J., came into being after a Chinese company bought the vitamin assets of Inverness Medical from private equity in 2010. CEO Steven Dai says the investors (he’s one of them) have pumped “upwards of hundred millions of dollars into the company,” since then—improving its IT backbone, expanding warehouse capacity, and increasing the number of employees from 280 to 400, all in the U.S.

Dai, the only Chinese employee, says buying an American company made the most sense because the U.S. has a highly developed, multi-billion dollar, nutritional market “which constantly grows every year.”

Of the three companies that spoke to CNBC, the one with the longest history in the U.S. is China Construction of America, a wholly owned subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) that had $500 million in revenue in 2012. Although publicly traded in Shanghai, CSCEC shares are majority owned by the Chinese government, making China Construction of America part of what’s known as a State-Owned Enterprise.

China Construction set up shop here in 1985 because the U.S. was the world’s largest construction market at the time. Why are they still doing business here, when China is now larger and growing faster? Geographic diversification, CEO Ning Yuan tells CNBC, in case the home market falters.

The company has been successful at bidding for state-level and municipal projects such as public schools in South Carolina and New York State transportation projects such as the $407 million Alexander Hamilton bridge rehabilitation.

But Yuan expressed frustration at not being able to qualify for larger federal projects—what are known as “P3s”—Public Private Partnerships. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires companies to become prequalified before bidding on P3s. Despite numerous attempts, Yuan says they’ve never been prequalified. “I think that’s happened not only to a Chinese company but also to some other foreign companies,” he said. “I would say that it is a little bit political.”

That may be true. Firms owned by the Chinese government are perceived as having unfair advantages, such as access to cheaper financing from Chinese banks, which are also government-owned. Yuan rejects the notion, saying Chinese banks charge them market rates that are comparable to any other multinational bank.

While there may be critics at the federal level, the mood is the opposite at the state level. New Jersey’s lieutenant governor has visited IVC’s headquarters, and has asked CEO Dai to speak to other visiting Chinese executives to convince them to invest in N.J. as well.

Chairman Wang says that while members of Congress may be worried, officials at the state, city and municipal level “are quite welcome to Chinese investment, because such investment can create job opportunities and boost economic development.”

To be sure, even though Chinese investment is at a record level, it is still relatively small compared to the size of the U.S. economy. According to the Heritage Foundation, total Chinese investment in the U.S. since 2005 stands at $54 billion, compared with an overall wealth stock in the U.S. of $60 trillion.

The Heritage Foundation marks the starting point of China’s overseas acquisitions with the 2005 purchase of IBM‘s computer business by Lenovo for $1.74 billion. Not only was it a transformational transaction for IBM, it heralded the arrival of the Chinese investor.

But 2005 also marks the year of the highest-profile rejection of a Chinese purchase—when CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Company) tried to purchase Unocal of California for $18.5 billion. The mere announcement of the deal created so much Congressional controversy that Unocal accepted a lower bid rather than risk U.S. government rejection of the CNOOC offer.

China has never again attempted such a large energy acquisition in the U.S. even though it has done numerous major energy deals elsewhere in the world.

In the U.S., Chinese energy investments have been limited to minority stakes and joint ventures, including Sinopec’s $2.2 billion investment last year in some of Devon Energy’s venture plays, and a $1 billion investment for part ownership of some of Chesapeake’s shale gas properties.

In 2012, President Obama rejected a Chinese purchase of four Oregon wind farms due to their proximity to a U.S. naval drone-testing site. Additionally, a congressional report last year eviscerated two Chinese telecom companies eager to do business in the United States, Huawei & ZTE; members of Congress came very close to accusing the two firms of spying on behalf of the Chinese government.

The next key moment comes when AIG, the insurance company, finds out if it will be allowed to sell most of its aircraft leasing arm to a Chinese consortium for $4.8 billion. The deal was announced in December, and if finalized, would eclipse the AMC theater purchase.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the government agency that vets foreign deals for security concerns, has yet to sign off on it.

Again and again I see talented people with ideas they want to share – books they want to write, talks they want to give, businesses they want to launch – holding back because they think they “don’t know enough” about their topic.

“After all,” they reason, “there are real experts on this out there – and I’m not one of them.” They’re thinking about the people with advanced degrees and decades of deep experience working in the field.

In fact, that’s just one type of expert — “the specialist.” There are three other kinds of experts that make world-changing contributions, without specialist training.

You are likely one of these four types of expert, when it comes to the work you most want to do. As you read, identify which type (or types) of expertise you could bring to the projects you are currently pursuing as well as those that you want to pursue:

1. The Survivor
You’ve been through something, learned a heck of a lot along the way, and now you are on fire to share what you’ve learned. Maybe, like best-selling author Kris Carr, you lived through cancer and want to write about your path to health. Maybe, like Jonathan Fields, you’ve started a few businesses and want to share insights about entrepreneurship.

“Survivors” often worry that their personal experience is not enough to earn them credibility or allow them to make a meaningful contribution, but consider these powerful strengths of this source of authority: You have an ability to move and connect with your audience that most formal experts on your topic don’t have. You can provide inspiration and role-modeling– not just information. You have insider insights that will help you create a more compelling offering for your audience.

But, be careful, here’s where you could get in your own way: it’s easy to over-generalize from your experience to that of others. If “survivor” is your source of expertise, tell your story as powerfully as you can, and pass on your lessons learned as just that – without making claims on having the truth or the solutions for everyone. People will listen up simply because you are honestly sharing what did and didn’t work for you.

You have an ability to move and connect with your audience that most formal experts on your topic don’t have.
2. The Cross Trainer
When an athlete cross-trains,they “train in a sport other than the one that they compete in, with a goal of improving overall performance.” In our context, the “cross trainer” is the physicist who takes a look at a problem in medicine, the family therapist who writes about fixing dysfunctional teams at work. Cross trainers have deep expertise in field “x,” and bring ways of thinking from field “x” to bear as they look at field “y.” Business leaders Whitney Johnson and Clay Christensen each apply theories on business development to personal development. Tom Ford applied his expertise in fashion design to cinematography when he created the stunning film, A Single Man.

Cross trainers make interdisciplinary connections and drive innovation. They see the blind spots of the conventional thinking in the field they’ve turned their attention to.

However, if you are a cross trainer, here’s where to watch out: you may miss seeing how insights from your field of expertise are not applicable to your new topic. For example, many MBAs have hindered nonprofits by assuming that all the planning tools and metrics used in a business should be applied to nonprofits to make them more efficient.

For cross-trainers, the charge is to be bold in asking provocative questions and making interdisciplinary leaps, but humble about the applicability of anything across fields. Focus on starting new conversations and prototyping cross-training-based solutions without assumptionsabout what will in fact apply across fields.

3. The Called
Then there are those people that dive into a project out of a sense of calling. They feel an inner, mysterious sense of “this work is mine to do.” Jessica Jackley felt outraged that conventional charity didn’t empower the poor to help themselves, and out of a persistent frustration with that status quo, and a sense of calling, began developing Kiva.org, now the world’s largest microfinance platform.

The called bring many gifts to their work. They have sustainable passion. They have vision and – perhaps most important – ardent dissatisfaction with the status quo where insiders may have become resigned.

The challenge for the called is to trust their sense of calling. That is particularly difficult when they can’t find a logical reason why they’re attracted to a project, or qualified for it. The called generally feel that they don’t have what they need – and they aren’t who they need to be – to complete their calling.

Their charge is to start anyway in whatever partial way they can. They also need to gather mentors to fill in knowledge gaps –those who support (and aren’t threatened by) an outsider bringing new ideas and vision.

The challenge for the called is to trust their sense of calling.
4. The Specialist
In our culture, this type of authority is most validated and embraced. The specialist has formal training (degrees, certifications) or lots of work experience in the area of their project. They might also achieve their specialist knowledge by conducting extensive research on their topic.

Brene Brown, a professor of Social Work spent years conducting research on shame and vulnerability and now speaks and writes widely on these topics. Dr. Harriet Lerner honed her expertise with hundreds of clients in her private psychology practice before writing her best-selling books on our emotional lives.

The pluses of this kind of expertise are many: specialists have a sense of the standard industry knowledge on their topic. They have the benefit of industry networks. Because they’ve seen so many examples over the years, they can tell apart the trends and the outliers.

The downside? Specialists often get stuck in inside-the-box thinking. They can also get distracted with the politics of their field or in debates about minutiae. To avoid that, specialists must talk regularly with colleagues from related but different disciplines, and seek out rebels and dissidents at the margin of their fields, listening to their perspectives with an open mind.

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Immeasurable contributions are lost because many of us think that #4 – formal training/work experience – is the only kind of legitimate authority. We usually don’t hold that belief when it applies to other people – we are thrilled to read that nonfiction book based on someone’s personal journey or to listen to the interesting TED talk by a cross trainer. But for ourselves? We think we don’t know enough.

To be sure, specialists are extremely important. We benefit enormously from living in an age when there is so much information available, when formal education is becoming more and more accessible, and when there are people with deep, specialized knowledge. All of that is invaluable – but it is not the only kind of value.

Identify which source – or sources – of expertise you bring to your current project. Leverage its strengths. Most of all, trust that it is enough – not because it enables you to know everything, but because it enables you to make the contribution you are uniquely qualified to make.

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How about you?

How have you successfully framed your expertise?

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The new Z10 could save BlackBerry.

It won’t dethrone Android or put a major dent in Apple’s iPhone dominance. But it will make current BlackBerry users happy enough to lay down some cash. They’ve been waiting for a good shot in the arm for too long, and with its modern operating system and rich app platform, this is a very capable device that will exceed their expectations. It’s a phone that’s meant to do much more than just send secure e-mail. For the beleaguered Canadian company that’s catching up to the rest of the smartphone market, that’s the good news. But even with a whole new operating system running on some great hardware, the Z10 will not inspire a grand exodus from the two leading mobile ecosystems.

No matter how much it looks like an iPhone 5, as soon as you pick it up, you know it’s a BlackBerry. The user interface is totally redesigned, but there’s nothing groundbreaking about it, even if the higher-ups BlackBerry would have you believe the opposite is true — since the device was first unveiled, the marketing suits have been eagerly showing off the awesomeness of the new software as they repeatedly mention the fact that 100,000 apps will be available by the time the phone goes on sale in the United States this weekend.

Let’s take a look at the UI. The crowning glory of the new BlackBerry is the Hub. A repository for all your incoming messages, the Hub is meant to be a one-stop shop for notifications. The entire experience is smartly built to be controlled with one thumb, so you can tap around while holding the phone in one hand. You can access it with one thumb, too. Swiping up and to the right from anywhere in the phone will open this notification supercenter.

I added my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and e-mail accounts to the Hub, and it did exactly what it should do: place all of my various notifications into a single, easy-to-navigate area. “Good job, BlackBerry,” I thought — until I wanted to fine-tune those notifications. It throws everything in there no matter what. Get 50 replies to a Tweet? They all end up in there, burying any other notifications.

With a few flicks, you can go directly to any account. But, for the Hub to be truly a useful catch-all notification center, it needs an account-by-account granular setting to cut down on clutter. You can remove accounts from the Hub without removing access to those items in the Hub area, but such an all-or-nothing solution isn’t ideal. This information overload is something truly connected users battle everyday.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Even more central to the new UI than the Hub is the screen that displays all of the apps you currently have open in a vertically-scrolling, two-column grid. You end up here a lot. If you want to navigate from the Hub to your home screens where you’ve neatly organized your apps or your folders, you have to swipe past that two-column list of open apps first. It gets tiresome. This is a huge misstep, considering it’s so easy to get into the Hub from anywhere on the phone.

Once you do get past the open apps page and arrive at your home screens (the traditional pages filled with tiny app icons any smartphone user would immediately recognize), you can quickly switch between them. Jump to any home page by tapping on the square at the bottom of the screen that corresponds with that page. So, instead of swiping five times to get to your fifth home screen, just tap the fifth little box in the line of boxes at the bottom. It’s quick, intuitive and exactly like the TouchWhiz Android skin on Samsung phones.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Small aggravations aside, the UI is intuitive enough that anyone new to it (which is actually everyone) will feel at home within a few minutes. It’s smooth, quick and mostly does what you would expect it to. But it takes more than a fancy interface to woo the masses. You need an ecosystem.

BlackBerry knows it needs to catch up here. The game has changed since the company’s heyday. It’s all about the apps now. And you need two tiers of apps — the freebies to draw new users in, and the premium apps to keep your developers paid and happy.

BlackBerry has been trying to kickstart app development by hosting big developer events and offering financial incentives to those coding for the platform. This has lead to an impressive amount of activity around BlackBerry 10 development. BlackBerry announced Thursday, one day ahead of the launch, that it hit its magic number — 100,000 apps will be ready for download when the phone goes on sale. That’s a big, round, perfect-for-headlines figure. But some of the the key services are missing. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are baked in to the OS, and Amazon just put out a Kindle app for BlackBerry 10. But there are still big holes. No Instagram and no Netflix, most notably. Also, no GroupMe, no Flipboard and no Path. No official Flickr app, though there are some apps that interface with Flickr. Skype is weeks away. Also, Google pulled support for a native Google Voice app recently. YouTube is there, but with the Big G focusing on its own mobile platform, BlackBerry 10 could be left out.

And even if you don’t care about Instagram and Netflix (frankly, everything has Netflix now) it’s painful to go without the apps that you use on a daily basis that might not make the headlines. GroupMe, Path, and Surfline are apps I use everyday, and they’re missing from BlackBerry World. Low-quality, third-party apps that connect to big-name services don’t cut it. That’s the biggest hit against the Z10 and BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry World might be adding apps everyday, but the quality and depth might not be enough.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Something to note: You can side-load Android apps onto the Z10. It’s a feature BlackBerry turned on for Android developers to allow them to more easily port their apps to the new platform. To get it to work, I had to follow three different how-tos, activate two different services, enter a lot of terminal commands, and turn off the security settings in Chrome on my laptop. And of the 11 apps I loaded, I only got three to work (barely).

At least the keyboard is amazing. It had better be, especially for a company that’s long been personified by the business worker desperately clinging to some QWERTY brick of yesteryear.

But doubters take note, the on-screen keyboard experience here is great. The predictive text helps you fly through long passages. After a few days of regular tap-typing, the predictions got better and better, and I found myself swiping to use the predicted words more often that not. (For those from-my-cold-dead-hands types, the device with the physical keyboard you want is the yet-to-be-released Q10, which runs the same new software as the Z10.)

On the hardware front, the Z10 resembles a slightly embiggened iPhone 5 with a rubberized back, a 4.2-inch 1280×768 356-pixel-per-inch LCD screen and an 8-megapixel camera. The camera takes good pictures — not great, but good. It also has a “Time Shift” feature that takes multiple frames of a photo so you can pick the best one. This is helpful if you remember to use it — it’s not on by default.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

The insides — a dual-core 1.5GHz ARM processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage that can be expanded via microSDXC — are about what you’d expect on a $200 phone. You’ll need the extra storage if you plan on adding any media, as 16GB is a pretty paltry baseline.

So what’s the bottom line on the new BlackBerry? Good hardware, nice features and a growing, but flawed, ecosystem. The Z10 is a great phone, but not an amazing phone, and that’s what it would need to be if I were to recommend buying one over an iPhone or a flagship Android handset. At this point, I’d only suggest that long-time BlackBerry users check one out. They will likely find it reason to stick with the platform, even if the company appears to still be treading to stay afloat instead of swimming forward.

Everyone thinks that being a startup CEO is a glamorous job or one that has to be a ton of fun. That’s what I now refer to as the “glamour brain” speaking aka the startup life you hear about from the press. You know the press articles I’m talking about… the ones that talk about how easy it is to raise money, how many users the company is getting, and how great it is to be CEO. Very rarely do you hear about what a bitch it is to be CEO and how it’s not for every founder that wants to be an entrepreneur. I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about what it takes to be a great Startup CEO that is also a founder. Here are some of the traits I’ve found.

Be A Keeper Of The Company Vision

The CEO is the keeper of the company’s overall vision. I’m not talking about the vision for the next few months, but the larger road ahead. The CEO needs to be able to keep things on course for the current quarter to make sure that the large overarching vision of the company can be achieved. The takeover the world vision of a startup usually can’t be achieved in one year or even in some cases, like Google, in a decade. It takes a great startup CEO to keep the company on track to achieve that vision. A great startup CEO will often judge upcoming initiatives to see if they fit in as a piece of the large puzzle for the bigger vision.

Absorb The Pain For The Team

A startup CEO needs to be the personal voodoo doll for a startup. They need to be able to take on a strong burden of stress, pain, and torture all while making level headed decisions. You can’t have the troops stressing and worrying about the difficult challenges at hand. A good startup CEO will absorb the stress, so the rest of the team can carry on. He also needs to be able to mask this pain and stress. Not that he should hide or lie to the team- I’m not encouraging that. Most of the day to day nuances+stresses of a startup aren’t worth having the entire team worry about and the CEO needs to bear that pain.

Find The Smartest People And Defer On Domain Expertise

A startup CEO has a great knack for finding talent. The key is finding people that are smarter than you on specific topics. It might be technical team members/leaders or it might be a new VP of Biz Dev. A startup CEO has to have the ability to find these people and make relatively fast decisions to hire them. They also have to be able to show the fire and passion to convince them to leave what is most likely a better paying and more secure job to join the company. The real key to hiring as a startup CEO comes after the hire. A great startup CEO will be able to trust the hires that they make and defer to them on areas of domain expertise. It’s hard to let go, but you have to learn to, especially when the company grows.

Be A Good Link Between The Company + Investors

Whether you want to believe it or not, you are not an investor’s only portfolio company. Even if you are a superstar, they have a handful of other companies to help and a ton of incoming potential portfolio companies. A good investor will pick 2-3 new companies per year to work with. A good startup CEO will be a good link between progress, issues, and areas where they need help with investors. A good portion of early stage startups that raise money will have a board comprised of 3 people: the CEO founder, the investor, and an independent board member. You are the lone representative for your cofounder and other employees.

Be A Good Link Between The Company + Product

I have this unwavering belief that the best companies are those that keep a founder as CEO for the long haul. Not because the founders have the right to be CEO, but because the CEO needs to be close to the product vision of the company. Founding CEOs understand this the best and can carry out that same unified vision over time. To fill in the management gaps a great COO, other board members, and heads of divisions will come along. It’s a strategy that Facebook has employed and why Apple has had a great resurgence with Steve Jobs at the helm. It’s all about keeping the CEO as close as possibly linked to the product.

Be Able To Learn On The Job

Most startup CEOs didn’t start out with an MBA or some background in growing a company from nothing to something. The best have an ability to learn along the way and embrace their failures to become a better leader. Zuck started when he was 19 and now 7 years later, runs the most powerful internet company. Don’t worry about whether “you’re qualified” as it’s hard to put typical qualifications on the job. You’ll learn the really core stuff along the way. The best startup CEOs will surround themselves with smart mentors to be a sounding board along the way.

No Experience Almost Preferred

It’s almost better to have a blank slate of zero experience as a startup CEO. If you come in with preconceived notions and block out the scrappy methods of a startup founder, it actually hurts you. Traditional education often trains you to be CEO or manager for a much larger company, not for a startup of under 50 people. It’s a different kind of leadership and company.

Have An Uncanny Ability To Say No

You will be inundated with a list of requests from potential partners, investors, employees, and more. They will all sound absolutely wonderful. As you grow, you will also have the resources to execute more of them. Don’t. It’s easy to say yes, but so very hard to say no. By having an uncanny ability to say no, you can keep your company on track with the large vision you maintain. It will also keep your team members (notice I don’t like to use the word “employees”) laser focused and feel more rewarded as they are able to focus on one thing for a good chunk of time. I’ve seen too many startups sink because the CEO keeps changing what the head of product and engineering should be doing.

Have Some Technical Knowledge And Skillset

A good startup CEO shouldn’t be afraid of a little bit of code and a text editor. They don’t need to be diving into the source code on a daily basis, but they need to understand the technical requirements. It’s easy to say “go build this”, but it’s a whole other ball game to understand how to build it. What seems simple may be a huge mountain of a technical feat that just isn’t feasible with the given resources and deadlines. It can also help lend some street cred with hiring early technical team members too.

Be Able To Break Things Down Into Sizable Chunks + Milestones

Remember that huge unwavering vision that you are the keeper of? Odds are it only makes sense to you and your cofounder. You will need to break it up into sizable chunks and milestones for the rest of the team to understand it. You also need to be able to pick when and where to conquer things strategically. What is the past of least resistance so you can gain traction? What can you do first with your given resources?

Have The Ability To Call An Audible

Nothing goes according to plan. Things fall through, people quit, shit happens, servers crash, and other random things go bump in the night. You’re going to have to deal with it and fast. This is a football term:

“Seen when the quarterback goes up to the line of scrimmage, sees a defensive alignment he wasn’t expecting, and adjusts by yelling out a new play.”

You’re going to come up against things that you didn’t expect and just be able to call an audible. Launch faster, spend more money here, or even abandon a project.

Can Motivate The Team Through Despair

People love to talk in this business. People love to talk even more when you’re company isn’t fairing well. A great CEO will be able to take those moments of public despair and keep the company focused. They will be able to debunk the rumors or even approach them head on by keeping the members of the company focused on the bigger mission at hand. It can come in simple 5 minute talks or motivational emails. The worst thing you can do is avoid the situation and be passive aggressive. I repeat: DO NOT WUSS OUT.

Be A Great Communicator

You need to be able to portray the energy and passion that you feel into others…over and over and over and over and over and over again on a daily basis. As a startup founder you need to communicate the vision and hope for the future of your startup to the rest of the world. You need to be able to break down the overall vision of the company into something that mere mortals can understand. You can’t speak in crazy technical jargon or industry terms. It needs to be simple, clear, and compelling. You also need to be able to argue your point. Many will pick “fights” with you just to see how strong willed you are. Be respectful, but be very confident in your answer. Often wrong, but never in doubt my friend.

The new iPad 4 comes just six months after the release of the third-gen iPad 3. But is it a modest update or a whole new machine?

First up, don’t call it the Apple iPad 4. Even though that’s what we’re all calling it on the internet, Apple stopped numbering its iPads after the iPad 2, probably to open the way for the naming of the iPad Mini. The official name of the Cupertino brand’s latest tablet is Apple iPad with Retina Display.

If it hadn’t, then the last one would have officially been the iPad 3 (which is what we all called it anyway) and this would have been, well the iPad 3S, perhaps because this is a machine that looks near-identical to the last one, but with a big speed boost built in.

iPad 4: Size and build

Size-wise, this the fourth-generation iPad with retina display is the same as last time – same thickness, height, depth and weight. Nothing has changed visually, either, apart from the charger. If you’re not looking at the bottom edge, this machine is the same as the third-generation tablet.

None of which is a bad thing – the worst you can say about this year’s iPads is that they’re heavier and thicker than last year’s because of the bigger battery required to service the Retina Display. That charging port will be more controversial. It’s small and neat, but it means your old charger or iPad dock is no longer compatible.

This is the Lightning connector that first appeared on the iPhone 5 and is present on the iPad mini, too. There’s nothing wrong with Apple updating its connector when it can do the same job better.

And the new connector goes in either way up (this may sound trivial but you’ll know from trying to connect the old-style cable to an iPod or iPhone in dim light, it almost always seemed to take two goes).

What’s less good is that for your old docks and charging devices that don’t have the new connector, you’ll need an adapter and that costs £25. Of course, if your dock is AirPlay compatible, there’s no problem.

iPad 4: Screen

The 4th-gen iPad has the same immaculate and beautiful Retina display as the last model. It’s pin-sharp and gleams with every detail. On the other hand, since the iPad Mini arrived with its cute thinner bezel, the frame on the full-sized iPad does look a bit hefty. Who knows, maybe the next iPad will feature a slimmer bezel.

After all, this iPad has the same thumb rejection technology that made that thinner bezel possible, as does the 3rd generation iPad. This is a handy addition as even with a wide frame it’s easy to brush the screen unintentionally.

iPad 4: Features

The latest iPad has faster connectivity – if you opt for the wi-fi and cellular model. Actually, the third-gen iPad had the same 4G connectivity, just not compatible with UK frequencies.

This new model comes with different bands and will work with the new EE 4G LTE connections available in the UK. Note that it won’t work with the other 4G frequencies that the UK will have next year (850MHz and 2.6GHz). Let’s hope the iPad will be updated again by the time those frequencies arrive.

The new iPad has two other internal changes from last time: the CPU and the front-facing camera. We’ll come to the CPU under ‘performance’. The front-facing camera is beefed up to 1.2Mp so that you can have better video calls on FaceTime. Picture quality is definitely improved.

iPad 4: Performance

The chip has been upgraded from the A5X of last spring to the A6X here. That means it’s an upgrade from the A6 chip in the iPhone 5 with its graphical capabilities enhanced.

Since the A6 is already faster than the A5X, this means for a decent general speed boost and hugely improved graphics. Well, potentially, as it will take app developers time to come up with games and other apps to make the most of this extra power.

For now this new processor means that apps open fast, web pages build instantly, internet connection permitting. It’s a dual-core 1.4GHz chip which it’s claimed doubles the performance speeds of the third-gen model. It certainly seems much faster than any previous iPad, including the Mini.

iPad 4: Battery

When the first iPad arrived, we were impressed to find it had extensive battery life. You could leave it in a drawer for three weeks and more and it would still have enough charge to get you through a morning. That’s still the case.

However, where the third-generation tablet had battery life unchanged from the iPad 2, the cell here doesn’t last as long. That said, it’s easily enough to get you through a full day when it’s completely charged.

iPad 4: Verdict

The iPad 4 is definitely the best full-size iPad yet, but if you have a third-gen model, you may feel that six months is too soon to upgrade. Perhaps Apple thought the same, so it delivered a gentle rather than a killer upgrade, though the speed improvement over the last model is evident.

If you have an iPad 2 or earlier, there’s no need to hesitate – though remember that there could be another iPad along in the spring. If you want 4G connectivity now, this is a no-brainer.

Overall, though, we’d still have to recommend the iPad mini as the best tablet out there, because it’s lighter, smaller and cheaper. But this has that great Retina display and there are times where bigger is what you need.

iPad 4 release date: Out now

Here’s a lesson you won’t learn on the fly. It takes practice and a real control of your ego. Check it out.

Any great leader faces a multitude of challenges every day. Whether it’s communicating strategy, helping people through change, holding on to excellence in the face of compromise, or just navigating the leadership environment, there is no shortage of development opportunities lurking in each day’s schedule.

I’ve worked over the years with leaders on all of the challenges above–and many, many more. But surprisingly, the skill that I see more leaders struggle with more than any other is relatively mundane (but very important): the ability to work with their team as an equal. To be “merely” a resource, rather than the team leader.

As we’ve seen before, many leaders can only operate in one of two modes–in charge, or not there. In other words, once they join their team (virtually or otherwise), the team instantly defers to them, and they take the lead.

Truly great leaders have a third mode: The ability to sit with their team without needing to be in charge, using their subject matter knowledge just the same way as anyone else around the table would.

If you don’t already have it, here’s how to develop that skill:
 

1. Start with something small. Pick a topic that’s controllable. Don’t start with something that bets the ranch. It’ll only make you anxious, and you’ll end up grabbing the reins back when things lurch off kilter.

2. Start with something you’re not passionate about. Find a topic that doesn’t fire you up. Maybe new employee onboarding rather than redesigning the entire company’s branding, for example. Again, you want to be able to take part in the discussion dispassionately (at least for now).

3. Nominate a leader (and tell them). Put someone else on charge of leading a session on your selected topic. Tell them–and the other meeting participants–in advance, but don’t lobby them. Or tell them how to lead the session. The goal is that you hand over facilitation to someone else, not that they become your glove puppet.

4. Be there. Sit through the entire meeting. Resist the temptation to absent yourself when things get boring or granular. That’s not being a resource, that’s cherry-picking. Everyone else has to work through the detail, and you should, too.

5. Participate. Sitting in stony silence isn’t being a resource any more than dominating the meeting. Participate– hich means contributing when you have something to share that will be helpful to the rest of the group, and staying quiet when you don’t. Others do it, and with practice you can too.
 

6. Be comfortable with silence. There is a time for silence, however– the point at which everyone expects you to jump in and take over the meeting. Initially everyone will turn to you when a question is asked, or a decision has to be made. Say nothing–not even an explanation of what you’re doing. Jut be quiet, and get comfortable with silence. Let the person you put in charge of the session tease out participation from the rest of the group. If you do it, you’re back in charge.
 

7. Take an action point or two. When it comes to mopping up the implementation points and doling out responsibility, take on a few for yourself. And don’t cherry pick the “leadery” stuff. Take some granular, janitor-level action points as well. Everyone else has to, and so should you.

8. Resist the temptation to mop up afterward. When the session is over, let things sit as they are. Resist the temptation to email / call / drop in on others and recalibrate the results to reflect what you would have preferred the outcome to be. Do this once and no-one will trust you in a resource role again. They’ll just conclude (rightly) that you’re only pretending.

9. Rinse and repeat. Try it again after a while, this time with something larger, more strategic. Note what works and what doesn’t. Find your own style, you’re own way of “being there”, not just absent or in charge.

We have started seeing an increase in iPhone issues related to battery life and overheating. All of them seem to be related to users upgrading their devices to iOS 6.1.

A quick search on the Apple Support Communities forum for iOS 6.1 battery shows this is not an isolated problem. Apple released iOS 6.1 on January 28. It appears some users have been having problems ever since they’ve upgraded: complaints have been coming in from that date all the way till today.

The earliest report we could find was created on January 28 and actually comes from a user reporting great battery life on his iPhone 5. Yet the first reply is from another iPhone 5 user who is “seeing the exact opposite” and the thread goes down from there. It goes on for 11 pages, and at the time of writing has 157 replies.

There’s another 16-page thread started on January 29 (239 replies at the time of writing) and a third started on February 4 with just three replies. All these threads have the majority of their replies coming in today, on February 8.

A fourth thread started on January 29 has the closest thing to a possible solution:

I went to see the genius’ yesterday. My problem was that my usage was almost identical to my stand by times, which means that something was continuing to run in the background after closing all the apps.
I was told to turn off location services and then one by one turn each in turn to see which one was causing the drain on the battery. I was impatient so just factory reset the handset which seems to have fixed the problem.

I’ll keep you all posted on how it continues.

One possible theory links this problem with Apple Mail andMicrosoft Exchange. As pointed out by Michel de Rooij (as well asWindows IT Pro, Paul Robichaux, and SharePoint Pro) it appears iOS 6.1 is throwing up malformed meetings, causing devices to get into a sync loop which in turn causes excessive transaction log growth on Exchange mailbox servers. This then leads to Exchange performance issues and transaction log drives can potentially run out of disk space.

Again, it’s not clear if the two are related, but it’s certainly possible that the reason only some iPhones are having their batteries drained and are overheating comes down to not everyone using Exchange. A temporary fix is available at DevCentral. If you’re experiencing this problem and don’t use Exchange, we would like to know.

Much like with iOS 6.0, some (if not all) of these issues will likely be fixed with an update, probably iOS 6.1.1. In the meantime, if you haven’t upgraded yet, do so at your own risk.

We have contacted Apple about this issue. We will update this article if we hear back.

Update at 3:45PM EST: MacRumors is reporting that Vodafone UK today began sending out text messages to iPhone 4S owners on its network, warning them not to upgrade to iOS 6.1 due to issues with 3G performance. The text reads “If you’ve not already downloaded iOS 6.1 foryour iPhone 4s, please hold off for the next version while Apple fixes 3G performance issues. Thanks”

Based on the aforementioned reports, however, we don’t think the issues are limited to just Vodafone UK nor the iPhone 4S model.

With the launch of the new WD TV Play, WD — a company owned bystorage giant Western Digital – has laid down a fresh challenge to the Apple TV, offering access to Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Vudu, Spotify and Pandora for $30 less than its video streaming rival.

WD has previously enjoyed success with its WD TV Live and WD TV Livehub products, but the Play is aimed at providing access to all of your network hosted and on-demand content that you need, for more than a third of the price.

The WD TV Play is priced at a respectable $69.99, catering for media files hosted on a computer, DLNA-enabled server or USB drive. It comes with both Wi-Fi and Ethernet networking support, outputs full HD 1080p programming and features new customisation options that not only display your favorite apps on the home screen, but load them when the box is turned on.

Coming in $30 less than the WD TV Live, you may wonder what compromises WD has had to do to keep it at that price. According to the Play’s specifications, it won’t play MPEG, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPG files, output DTS audio nor will it be able to output content to other DLNA devices via multi-room streaming.

Like its older WD TV siblings, the Play can be controlled using WD’s iOS and Android apps, which provide an easy way to interact with media content from anywhere in the house.

For now, WD is selling the WD TV Play from its own online storefor $69.99, but you can expect it to hit Amazon and other retailers in the future.