Reuse of successful concepts

We often see how companies outstrip each other in applying already existing and successful concepts to a whole new range of products. Some take online concepts and apply it offline, others vice versa. It’s like rushing for the bone – if they aren’t ready soon enough, someone else might be. Probably the brightest example I can think about are the “Harry Potter” series. They took one film and multiplied its effect multiple times. Of course everyone was so excited, that he/she needed to have also all available Harry Potter books. Briefly, one film grew to obsession and consumerism. Well, there is nothing wrong with applying the same concepts again and again. The problem is that all good things get overused. I see such tendency lately, which is why I write this post.

Take “Avatar” as an example. They said that part of the reason, why the profits were so high was that they offered a 3D version. That’s the same film, but you use your glasses instead of your eyes. Probably many people needed to watch it two times, just to see the difference. And then, I heard about the Avatar game for iPhone. What a good way to target an audience, that already has spent so much money for the symbol of status device and probably has more. They used the psychological effect of the film to lead all consumers to a new, probably unseen before experience and fill their pockets.

Some time ago a bulgarian made a piece for а fashion underwear contest, which was inspired by a work of Picasso and was success although he doesn’t took any awards. Then the crew of Beyonce took the concept and applied it in her song “Video phone”. You can see the comparison of his and their work here. He said that everything was copied, and that’s the reason why he’ll seek his rights. You see that repeated, copied use of something that isn’t yours leads to lawsuits.

Everyone is talking about the Apple’s iPad lately. iPhone was a tremendous success and they decided to reuse it again. Of course in USA, where they have the biggest market and profits. I think that Apple intentionally produces devices targeted only at the american market. In other places of the world they are much more expensive and much harder to buy. As a politics of the preferences, this is intolerable and shows clearly their profit-oriented instead of people-oriented thinking. Anyway, as many have already stated, the iPad looks as an iPhone with a bigger form factor. But while the iPhone is a phone, what is an iPad? A pad? Such “pads” existed before the the announcement of this device, but they never got popular. My interpretation is that they aren’t quite comfortable to work with, although they didn’t have touch screen. Entering characters on a touch screen is slow and the feedback is lacking. For a constant use in internet, where you need to fill many forms, the keyboard will always remain a better choice. In this sense, I suspect that the much marketed experience on the iPad could probably be worse than even on the smaller netbooks. I like the fact, that the device is made simple, but many people already complain about the lack of web camera and built-in Flash support. Without Flash you lose quite a bit of interactivity with the web pages and probably quite of fun too, considering what’s possible. Comparing a multi-talent device like the iPad with the e-book dedicated Kindle isn’t very appropriate. Apple can’t use such black-and-white screen technology for web browsing, so for long reading hours and good readability, especially outside, the Kindle will still remain a better choice. I suspect that the majority of users will be again leapfrogging. When the first iPhone came out, it had many irritating problems(low battery life, high temperature, display problems, easy-to-scratch surface etc.) and they decided to wait for an improved version to resolve them. The same will probably happen with the iPad. There will be newer and better iPads, so only the future will show if this technology will make sense.

The “immediate” culture

How often have you been told that something had to be done yesterday by that time? Apparently we live in a society that doesn’t tolerate missed deadlines. We even created the scary word that contains “dead” in it, as if something life-threatening would happen. I think that going faster when it seems the only option is wrong. This is more like a trap. It means that products are shipped and tested sooner, but still tested incomplete, which says nothing if they will ever be complete. Relying on negative customer feedback for building a better product doesn’t seem appropriate to me and I can’t understand why people are so excited about it. Don’t get me wrong, feedback is important to me too, but not at an early stage. Yes, later changes are more time-consuming, but early changes might be discouraging or even cost you the motivation, because they drive you away from the direction you want to go. No matter what the resistаnce is, do not allow this to happen to you – consider it a test.

Everyday the financial crisis is screaming: “Quick, quick, there is not time!”. It forces us to take decisions – today and now. Working harder over the last decade haven’t made people feel happier or healthier. So why should quicker decisions today lead to better results tomorrow? The same old song, just with new notes. I think that unhappy people at the workplace are a curse, because they consciously or unconsciously sabotage everyone’s efforts.

Telling someone to work harder is an act of motivation as a result of this “immediate” culture. When you understand that most people are intrinsically motivated, you see why there is a conflict. Intervention could make the other person feel unappreciated and disrespectful. It’s because the telling person can’t see the things from the perspective of the told person, when concentrating only on deadlines. Instead of going faster, it may be more appropriate to ask: “Why are we going slower?”. Finding the reasons is much better than blaming them.

Quick overnight results are never possible. If you don’t have the persistence to gradually improve what you are doing, you should probably let it go. It doesn’t make a difference if you work harder 12-14 hours a day for 10 days, if you are going to be ill in the next 10. At the end, if you have worked only 6-7 hours a day for a period of 20 days, you would have the same amount of hours spent and a much more balanced life, without going to extremes.

Due to exams I won’t be able to write more this month, so have a great and successful January!

Thoughts on 2009

2009 has been an extraordinary and turbulent year. Financial institutions disappeared, the economy suffered and trust evaporated. This resulted in a striking damage to the way we think and act as human beings. It has brought to life our deepest fears/biases and showed us how vulnerable we are, but it certainly helped us realign again with our most important objectives and mission in life.

Globalization is everything
In this sense, I claim that our guest – the globalization – came sooner as invited to us. Whether we are hospitable or not, it will determine our future. Just don’t think that if you are a small dealer somewhere, it won’t hit you. You are no more isolated, there is no barbed wire around you and your next nearest person might already blog or tweet you. This interconnectedness is probably the equivalent of Internet in the real world. We live in the era of DSL, so if you still use a 56kbps modem to connect with your peers, this is your fault. That’s it, we became that, what we used so much.

Communication is everything
Traditional media does not allow you interaction. You can only listen(radio), watch(TV) or read(magazines, newspapers). Someone just wants to fill your brain with advertisements or news and he/she doesn’t even care if you like them or not. Creepy… and probably in some way totalitarian. That’s why I have quit watching TV – instead of allowing someone else to gain control over the information I receive, I search focused for it and save time that would be otherwise wasted.

Social media exploded in 2009. Facebook reached new heights with 350 million registered users worldwide and Twitter became word of the year being more popular than “Obama”. There are also plenty of other social media tools that also gain speed. The biggest questions here are: “How many tools can the market bear?”, “Do we all have to be future members of the 10 biggest networks?”, “Where are the boundaries of that?”. This problem was discussed in one presentation of Tim Burners-Lee, the father of internet, where he indirectly said that the future belongs to tools that combine all networks in one. There are some newcomers, who try to address this, like the ping.fm service, but still in a very vague way.
I think social media will remain popular, because it’s human. It’s our nature to communicate, feel appreciated, share thoughts etc. This is also a part of the Maslow pyramid, where everything you see is a great business model.

Speed is everything
If you don’t deliver your projects on time and within budget, you are in trouble. The world is changing every day with the speed of the light. Today’s working things are tomorrow’s broken things. Beeing adaptable to change is not only a requirement, but a way to survive. Everything that happens may support or threaten your survival. And you could not allow yourself to play with your life.

To clarify things, I’d like to give you an example from one of the “scary”(but truthful) books I’ve read lately. Imagine you are a small business owner, your business is doing well, and you are quite profitable. But suddenly a new competitor, much bigger and stronger than you comes to operate on your market. His prices are lower, logistic is better, his manpower exceeds multiple times of what you have available. You try to differentiate yourself, to eventually lower prices etc. If most clients decide to support the giant, you have a huge problem. He simply takes your juice away until you dry out. That is what happened to many companies, whose names I don’t want to mention here. That is what can happen to you too. Welcome to reality! We live in a highly competitive, rude and sometimes even inhuman world. One day you exist, the next you try to survive. It’s almost the same as if you are ill, need oxygen and someone comes and takes it away from you, while watching self-satisfied how you slowly die.

I don’t remember whose words that were, but he/she said that instead of solely competing, we should collaborate to develop and refine the market needs. I couldn’t agree more with that.

Knowledge is everything
Information overloaded? Uh, oh. Just wait for what comes. I truly believe that universities and knowledge institutions are obsolete now. They are just relic, that worked in the past, but is no more relevant. A global world demands a global, decentralized knowledge. If you rely only on a university degree, you are like a one-eyed person, so “upgrade” as soon as(and if) possible. Don’t tell me now that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I don’t get such an arrogance.

I believe that people could learn much faster by themselves, provided that they have the appropriate resources and will. The second prerequisite is often lacking, which is a deep root cause of a widespread missing entrepreneurial mindset. Many of us are scared of taking risks, partly because we were never taught so. But if we wait to be taught on everything… well, good luck.
Taking risks MostWe also lie ourselves constantly. Taking risks is not a subject in most They should not be bound to traveling, particular institutions or docents. I’m also not bound to

The desired path is everything
Knowing where you feel a burning desire to do something is critical. If you don’t follow your path, you won’t reach anywhere. This is especially true in 2009/2010. Losing time with something you are not completely passionate with is useless. Don’t change your path, until you have fully reached your goals. A clear path without knowledge is still better than a vague path with knowledge. In the first case you can improve, in the second you may have to start from null.

Unfortunately there isn’t a formula to find a path. You may struggle with this decision for a long time, but until trying out many things, you can’t be sure. Take yourself enough time as opposed to rush up and make mistakes.

Do not forget that everything you learn is only current within a certain amount of time. That’s why I don’t trust professors, who teach me with materials from 2001.
It’s just not the right time.

Principles are everything
Many individuals as well as companies follow their own core principles. It may sound ridiculous, but remaining true to yourself teaches you to discipline and dedication. Even in 2009/2010, I still see quite a room for improvement here. The fact, that words and actions do sometimes not match, is just one example. Neglecting your principles seems to me as neglecting who you are. Worse, I think that people, who force us to neglect our own principles, should not be in front of our eyes. They do not tolerate us, which is again rude.

I just can’t stress this last point enough. Following your principles increases your value as a person.
Feel your heart. It’s the authentic you.
- – - – -
Thank you for being patient reading my thoughts in the first year of the existence of this blog. Although my English isn’t very good, I always try to give my best to keep my message as clear as possible.

I wish you merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The roller coaster effect

Roller coasters normally take you on an exciting ride, while shaking your steady world and distorting your perceptions. Probably that feeling is also one of the reasons why people drink too much. They want that the world spins around them, making them feel different. Once this happens, they begin to see and think about everything in a whole new way.

When visitors come to a new web site, they tend to get a feeling of using it. Every click, every scroll invokes an inside reaction of satisfaction, joy or frustration. Unfortunately there isn’t too much difference in the way users interact with different web sites. The action that happens on one website might be similar to the action on another for a similar interface component, invoking the “I saw that before”-thought. There is no element of surprise(which is also good, because it contributes to learnability) and many web sites look and behave similar. People may get bored, because they have already learned the effect, but are confronted again and again with the same cause.

The roller coaster effect could help thinking in a different way. The idea is to consistently avoid experiences that are already typical and to try creating a new unique way to “shake” your audience. Why this name? Because you look at the same idea from above, but at a different angle at every time point during your ride.

Focal point and angle of view
Let’s say that the focal point is the idea/product you are concentrated on and want to realize/improve. Now ask yourself from how many angles you see your idea. Which are they? Which one do you miss? How quick can you identify and how many are the properties, that will make your experience unique?

Consider the speed difference of a Canon camera with 2fps and a Nikon one with 9fps, while shooting at a running player on a football match. With the second camera you have 4,5 times more viewing angles of the same situation and the chance to miss something is considerably lower, although it still exists. Always strive to have a 360degree-perspective on what you do.

Propertize
Before you rethink and prioritize your distinguishable properties, think also about the way they are perceived. Not all are equally important in your users’ eyes, but the right ones could significantly improve their experience.

Radiotracker’s UI

On the 3rd December the German IT magazine CHIP offered the program RadioTracker as part of their advent calendar with free downloads. They advertised it as a program to record music from online radio stations. My roommate was interested enough to try it, even more after he saw that its regular price is 39,90$. He started the installer and was unpleasantly surprised how long it took to install this piece of software on his laptop. It installed a C++ library without asking him or offering any alternative, required a system restart and took too long to load. My roommate began already to lose his patience, when he was presented with a similar interface as you see from this screenshot, but without the already available textual lists:

Initially, there were only genres to choose from and a button labeled “Start recording”, but the context was missing – recording what(song, radio station)? The rest of the icons, tabs and controls were scattered all over the place, as you can see above. He accidentally clicked on a tab at the bottom and asked me for help, as he couldn’t find a way to go back. We both stared at the interface and were not able to do anything meaningful with this software. Its clear that with such variety of options and “clever” UI decisions, we were simply overloaded and placed under pressure. After pressing the “Start recording button” the list on the left slowly began to fill itself. Before we even knew, it seemed like we started recording from multiple radio stations, which was not the effect we wanted. After stopping the recording process, we were not able to even find, where the recorded files are. An uninstall followed.

What can be learned from this story?
The user interface is the first thing people see(apart from the installation), when they try using new software. Making it hard to understand or learn, puts your software at risk. New things are always accompanied by an acceptance period, which should pass as smoothly as possible. Placing more UI components doesn’t increase the subjective value of the software, the user just gets more confused. There is no emphasis of important parts by this software – is it a recorder, a player, a music organizer, burner or media converter? You can’t tell immediately. It tries to be all-in-one and I think that it fails greatly.

It also tries to define its own UI standards, which aren’t found in other software(which makes it hard to learn). There is no menu with “File”, “Edit” etc. Apart from the minimize, maximize and close buttons we see three other buttons, whose meaning is questionable. There are buttons “Stop recording” and “Stop all” and its not clear what is the difference, except that the first remains above the list, the second below. Tabs exist at the upper and bottom part of the screen, making switching harder through increased mouse movements. The options stay at the bottom of the screen, as if they are not important…

Conclusion
If this is the best selling radio recorder in Germany, UK, France and Japan as they claim at their website, I’m truly worried. I hope that they hear at least the complaints of their customers and take appropriate actions. But if they aren’t interested how people actually use the software, and which options are more often used than others, they won’t be able to make a difference.

The global economy

Global view
In a global world, location is getting more and more meaningless. We saw the continuation of this trend in 2009. No matter where a business is located, it can communicate with and attract clients from the other part of the globe. There are cultural differences, but they are a base to find our commonalities, to better understand our behaviors, actions and most importantly – way of thinking.

No matter where people are, they want to be connected with like-minded personalities and feel as part of something bigger than themselves. Everyone gets excited about new connections and opportunities. Americans for example are firm believers in the principle “equality of opportunity”, as they believe that all people should be treated the same. This principle is partially valid only in the USA. On a global scale, it’s clear that people in developing countries aren’t so competitive. In the long term this leads to more and more know-how and capital concentration in developed countries and less and less in developing ones. This spiral clearly shows the enlarging gap in future perspectives of different regions and countries. Episodic injections from outside just can’t compensate for today’s situation. Does this mean that many people have lost the competetiveness race in advance? And will never even have the opportunity to show what they are capable of? This is just lost, unused human potential around the globe, which to me is even a greater problem than the high percentage of unused production capacities(e.g. machines).

There are “hot zones”, where people immigrate and “cold zones”, which people try to leave. The first are a symbol of better life opportunities, the second of deadlock. One EU paper wrote about the danger that Eastern Europe will be almost uninhabited by the year 2050 showing the seriousness of this problem. Can all “hot zones” accomodate most people from “cold zones”? I doubt so, but if this trend continues, some countries may be forced to close their borders on the map. I still remember one of my german geography teachers saying, that decentralization and development of all german states as opposed to one spot is a huge benefit. This principle is broken in my country and this results in a high people relocation percentage and high pressure over some bigger towns.

What I am trying to say here is that americans can’t live in isolation. If they don’t try to somehow improve their surroundings, they may be faced with very high unemployment rates worldwide, which will soon backfire on them. This isn’t a year 2001 anymore. If you don’t care about your neighbours, they will ignore you too, when you most need them. There is no reason to grump and pretend that nothing happens. Its in the interest of all to be competitive and to actively contribute to the future of our planet.

Local view
I live in small EU country, which still seems to live in lethargy and somehow ignores the fact that it should compete with everyone else. In the past years it lost much of its attractiveness probably exactly for this reason. There were no investigation, clear development priorities, motivation or clear social politics. I remember a german politician, who said: “The political effectiveness of a government is measured by how it treats its most heavily affected people”. They weren’t treated. Those same people rove like ghosts and grub rubbish in bunkers. Their number grows and grows and everyone is pretending again that nothing happened. You may say that in other countries people feel similar while living in tents. My observation is that such people without future are becoming a serious problem, unused potential and victims of inhuman behaviour. Many of them commit suicide, because of not having opportunities or because they are at their wits’ end.

Its clear that people can’t think of something else than survival, when they are forced to survive. If it goes this way, my country will remain unattractive, its market will shrink more and more, which will again support people’s thoughts that business can’t be made here and scare them to search for survival outside. Probably 1/3 live there, many of them do not see perspective in coming back, even in a world recession. Perspective is a key word here, because short term reliefs are not an option in an uncertain world.

Personal view
We are humans before everything else. Even if you are a carpenter, a cook, a car driver or even a web designer, you are first of all human. You can’t just close your eyes for the world’s problems. Educate people, make them more competitive, stimulate their creativity and proactivity. It’s only you that can show a strong character and try to make good gestures to people in your surroundings without being selfish. This will always pay back in one or another form. Don’t be human only on Christmas and New Year.

Models and documentation

Models are everywhere and everyone has interest to convince us that we should follow them. But if you know why you follow a particular model, you have a better chance to achieve the effect you are looking for. Deciding which parts of the model you include and which you exclude, returns the control back to you. It also leads to better understanding of the model. If you omit something and it was mistake, the next time you’ll know why it was a mistake as opposed to doing something just because everyone else does it in the same way.

The motivation for this post came from models, which exist since 1999 and are taught in university even ten years later to be “right”. Unfortunately models change sooner than people change. What worked ten years ago, might not work today, which means that the model should be adapted or discarded. I see a real danger here, which consists of simply teaching people old “deprecated” things and convincing them in their truth. At the very least this is wasted time, at the very best it generates false impressions that people “know their stuff”. My point is that if you teach someone to old models, you take him the time away to learn the new ones. In a certain sense, this is two times wronger than it could be.

I only follow models if I see a direct advantage in doing so. Sometimes there are smaller indirect advantages too, but I think that they couldn’t be a convincing point, only an extension of someone else’s partially specified idea to sell you something. Some models work in a particular domain and when that domain changes, they are considered useless. Imagine a company using a “recommended” collaboration software. What worked for another company might not work for them. Different domain – different requirements.

Documentation facilitates understanding, especially if you come back to your project after months. You may find that without it, you can’t understand what you thought just a couple of months ago. You are slowed down, use more resources for the same tasks and lose your nerves as a quick path to a variety of illnesses. I see a documentation is a mental model of how you describe logically a complex system. Using a natural language instead of a specialist language, you can make your work more understandable even to people, which don’t know the domain jargon. Even if you plan to work alone on a project, it always makes sense to document everything as clear as possible. You’ll stand much better later, when other people join.

Many people see documentation as a way to slow down the project and to avoid doing the real implementation work. If your main goal is building functionality instead of preserving maintainability, this is probably true. Web applications are getting very complex, so I think that the code maintainability should be the very first priority. It is the base on which you build later on. A roof without a proper base often falls apart – a major reason why projects begin from null again. This decision might be taken early in the planning phase to keep costs down as much as possible, which is especially important in a down economy.

Documentation also supports communication, which shouldn’t be neglected when a variety of personalities works together. If exposed to all team members, it could be questioned and improved and serve as a foundation for discussion, brainstorming and innovation. If you see it as an enemy instead of a friend, you might regret it in later project phases. Many people recommend writing docs in advance, because later you will most certainly forget to come back to document the ideas you just implemented.

Switching senses

If you are like me, you probably strive to consume your carefully selected daily information dosage. But have you actually “measured” how much you can comprehend?

Reading is slow…
If I’m reading a book, I can almost never reach more than 150 pages at the end of the day. This is somehow my “cognitive limit” by best available focus conditions. I am eager deep inside to find out what comes next, and I feel like I can’t catch up with a traveling train. But I have to wait and concentrate on the present thoughts, not on future ones. If I can’t wait for a particular topic, the only solution is to “skip” pages. Of course you may not “get” the full meaning then, because of some dependency with the previous chapters. Clearly, this is a compromise.

…so people prefer to scan
Scanning only for valuable content is what I sometimes do (you caught me!), if I feel that a book is “padded”. There are plenty of such books written to communicate a higher subjective value to the reader through an increased page count. Writers, editors etc. are paid for more pages, not necessary for a better content. The result is a book that makes you tired with long sentences, unclear semantics and links to graphics you saw 3 pages before. Slow, slow, slow. I’m glad you even read this.

Listening is less tiring
When I get tired of reading at the end of the day, I usually switch to my auditory senses to continue my journey. With the rise of podcasts, there is plenty to listen to. Listening requires the same level of concentration, if not even more. You can easily go back and forward between pages, but you hardly want to hear the same words repeatedly after you find that needle (timeline says 2:18) in the haystack. A good resource on podcasts I started with is 100 Best Small Business Podcasts 2009, although few listed there are of real value to me. Lately I like Inside Personal Growth, because of the discussions with a wide variety of authors, who most always have a viewpoint to provoke your thoughts.

Why an article about this?
I think that gathering information and life-long learning could shape you and your decisions in life. It can also help you:

• better understand why you do particular things
• inspect ways to transfer knowledge from other fields into your area of expertise
• be aware of new trends etc.

Remember that knowledge is there to be shared. Otherwise you prevent someone’s progress.

SEO or CEO

Recently I went to a web design forum, where I listened to a presentation about SEO (search engine optimization). I still couldn’t believe that many people see SEO as a profession, rather than as a property of the web design job. They are so agape, talk about abilities, surveys, mathematical rationale, the “golden rules” and so on. I could hardly swallow such a big morsel.

Most professions are created out of a problem to serve as an excuse for people who say “I’m not a (driver, accountant etc.)!”. This shouldn’t be the case. Think about it as broadening your horizon, not as a burden. A web designer has in fact many things to care about. But a good web designer takes care of the people, who visit the page, not just the robots. If your site is valuable for people, they’ll come back, generate more traffic and as a result the website will see increased ranking results. In short: If the site has many visitors, the SEO works automatically. Optimizing the other way around is a pure waste of time. Guess who has a longer lifetime – the search engine spider (whose algorithms are changed every couple of months) or a human life. If you optimize for spiders, you have to deal with that constantly, and when you stop, you will lose your hardly gained results. Generating content for humans will be read long after multiple spider versions are out of use. Not to mention that it will improve other people’s lives, not stupid spider’s, crawler’s, robot’s or whatever they are called. It’s a shame that we have more words for something, which (still) can’t analyze meaning.

SEO doesn’t create anything persistent. It’s not like making a graphic design out of a concept or a web design. SEO creates something temporary and unstable. If you don’t want to leave anything behind you, do SEO and nothing more during your whole life. What happens if you do SEO for a particular search engine (e.g. Google) and it suddenly disappears? Your valuable results are gone forever. Pity that you lost your time.

My definition of SEO is PVC – provide valuable content. Content is best understood, when it is descriptive and unambiguously written. I don’t support countless word repetitions or “tricks” which work only in the short term (until implemented by all other sites). I always try to think about my sites in the long term. I don’t want everything to work just now, but also in years, no matter what new versions of technologies might come. SEO is clearly not for me. I’d rather be a CEO.

Tag soup – 5$

Tag clouds help users make a choice among many categories. Sometimes they are referred as tag soups to describe the mix of ingredients. We know that too many cooks can spoil the soup but what about too many ingredients? The use of tag soups is highly controversial and not always desirable. Here I try to describe their advantages and disadvantages through my own point of view.

Advantages

• Users can quickly determine the relative importance of a particular topic, because they have a base to compare with.
• Content is accessed directly as opposed to a simple search, which is slower.
• Trends and interesting information are easily discovered.
• Categories are search engine friendly and may increase traffic, because of higher search engine rankings.

Disadvantages

• In most cases they consume too much screen space.
• They look as if a child from the second grade spilled some text over the page and tried to solve the puzzle.
• The choice of too many category options clearly overwhelms the user. I would consider reducing them to the smallest reasonable number.
• The variety of font sizes makes the tag soup almost unreadable. I would consider reducing them to the smallest reasonable number.
• Less important, but valuable information may remain undiscovered.
• A higher inbound traffic doesn’t make a statement if users actually find what they are looking for, especially if many other sites use the same technique.
• Search engines think that a tag overuse is equal to abuse.

As you can see, I think that tag clouds should be used sparingly, if at all. Content will always be king, not tags. Where appropriate, a good search can replace many of the downsides of using tag soups.