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I love Lady Gaga parodies. And I love geekiness. This one combines the two FTW.
29 April 2010
The telephone was an aberration in human development
Rick Webb: "The telephone was an aberration in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else's life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone's living room and start shouting."
(from Boing Boing)
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"It was a 70 year or so period"? Um, do we not still use telephones? And have they not encroached beyond the living room, into our bedrooms, cars, offices, etc.? Still, I disagree with this perception. People were stoked about the telephone when it first took off. They were all too eager to run to someone's call. And now that it's less of a novelty, people can ignore any call they do not wish to take. End of story. How is this an abberation?
Untitled
Remember, sous vide cooking consists of holding water at a specific temperature, and immersing vacuum-sealed food into that water, cooking it right up to the water temperature—and no more.
Not long ago, we tested the SousVide Supreme, a $450 machine that does this pretty well, and is "affordable" compared to a PolyScience precision water circulator. The basic premise is that you can keep water at a relatively fixed temperature in pretty much any insulated container, so why not use a cooler?
The tester, Chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt—whose superior cooking skills and experience are in no way called into question here—demonstrated that a cooler could be used as a sous-vide device when bringing tender meats to a pleasing internal temperature (around 125º F) before searing, and for holding cooked food at a nice warm serving temperature. I buy that.
But even Chef Kenji says that there are places you can't go with the cooler method, namely, "the ability to tenderize tough pieces of meat," and "the ability to cook vegetables without loss of flavor." Those two are big benefits of sous vide, as is any cooking practice that requires you to hold food at a particular temperature in order to ensure that all bacteria has been killed, without destroying too much of the food's own flavor by overheating. I wouldn't necessarily trust a cooler with that task, either.
The cooler sounds like it makes for unexpected fun in the kitchen, and a handy backup for people who already know what they're doing. But it's not a replacement for the SousVide Supreme. That's not to say there's no replacement for SVS. I've seen a few hacks involving slow cookers and temperature controllers that do a job that comes pretty close, and I may test some of those out. I'll keep the cooler method in mind, too, but for now I'm leaving my beer in it.
(via Gizmodo)
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Hey, guess what, Gizmodo: I tried this on Sunday with lamb, snd it turned out pretty effin delicious. Granted, I used a cut of meat that was thicker than the Serious Eats recipe called for, so leaving it in closer to the minimum than to the maximum amount of time made for a slightly more rare than medium rare finish, but you couldn't hear any complaints out of my roommate and me as we were smacking out lips on the tender flesh. So I wag my finger at GIz, because they didn't even try the method before dismissing it as unlikely to succeed. I, on the other hand, would like to give it a second shot, next time with beef.
27 April 2010
Shattered Dreams—iPhone Video Chat Might Be Wi-Fi Only [Unconfirmed]
(via Gizmodo)Shattered Dreams—iPhone Video Chat Might Be Wi-Fi Only
Code trickles promised video chat hiding inside iPhone OS 4, raising hopes and inflating sci-fi fantasies. Now code snippets bring us back to earth, that iPhone video calling might be real but only over Wi-Fi.
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The article continues on to explain that the code reveals a limitation when trying to access iChat, but this is a very clear UhDuh point to me. AT&T can just barely handle the capacity of it's current subscriber load with just OG, 3G and 3GS (Lord knows what's going to happen to speed and dead zone areas when the iPad 3G comes out, though I'm guessing there will be a negative correlation between the two - three guesses as to which direction). Imagine how IMPOSSIBLE it would be to check the Giant's score or holler at yer boy on facebook if people were trying to take up enough bandwidth on the data network to video chat. Crash and burn, folks. That's an inevitable crash and burn.
Untitled
After posting the Apple stock purchase vs. Apple product purchase thing this afternoon, I thought, hey, Microsoft's stock went up a bunch after Windows 95 came out so I'll figure out how much the software's purchase price would be worth in Microsoft stock today. The answer was not very exciting as you can see from this graph courtesy of Google Finance:
Since the Windows 95 launch, Microsoft's stock has only (only!) quadrupled in value while Apple's stock has increased by more than 24 times. 24 times! That kind of growth is remarkable for a company that had already been public for 15 years and, everyone assumed, had already been through their boom time. Of course, what goes up can easily come down...
I stuck Google in there for good measure. It doesn't show as much growth as you'd think because GOOG's IPO-day closing price made it a very large company from the start...the chart hides Google's pre-IPO growth in value. But still, look at how much Apple's stock price has grown in comparison to Google's since the latter's IPO. (For fun, add Yahoo into the mix and dial the graph back to 1996.)
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Also reminds me of several posts I saw among the technosphere this week about if you had bought AAPL stock xnumber of years ago instead of Apple Product A, you would have ZMillions of dollars now. My thought? If you had bought stock instead of buying that iMac back in Y2K, how would you have gotten all your technoblagy projects finished?
Oh man. That looks fun, doesn't it?
The Mashable Media Summit features presentations from thought leaders in the fields of Location (Dennis Crowley, Co-Founder of Foursquare), Branding (Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks Coffee Company), Online Video (Ricky Van Veen, CEO and Co-Founder, Notional and College Humor), Music (Josh Charles, Singer/Songwriter/Pianist), Hospitality (Brian Simpson, Roger Smith Hotel) and Sports (Len Berman, That’s Sports). We also have unannounced surprises and speakers, so make sure to buy your tickets before it’s too late. There are fewer than 220 tickets remaining.
Join us on Tuesday, June 8th during Internet Week New York at the elegant TheTimesCenter at the New York Times Building for a first of its kind conference. For the full agenda and more details, please see http://mashable.com/media-summit/.
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Aww, too bad it's $499 + $14.97 per person.
As I've mentioned before, I live and work in the thriving beat of downtown San Francisco - a stone's throw from tech-central Silicon Valley. In the 2010 calendar year, despite dozens of events taking place every month in this onderful city, I have been to exactly two tech events: The TechCrunch Crunchies, and the 2010 Macworld Expo. Why so few? Well the SMW public events happened to fall on the same night as the season premier of LOST, and I have priorities. But more to the point, I do not work in tech, so I do not get sent by my tech-relevant company, who is willing to pay thousands of dollars for conventions/ summits/ meetups. Nor do I work in the media, so my press pass is not sponsored. Nay, I am just an avid fan of all things geek, working at a job that pays me in high-fives and lolipops. Sad story, but also sadly true.
I understand why the conventions set their price schedules as such: to keep out the riff-raff (read: me). If tickets were $50, any rando who likes Foursquare could get in, and then what kind of productivity could the presenters possibly achieve? Still, it's frustrating for me because today the WWDC is supposed to be announced, and as excited as I am for the Apple Assembly, it will only be yet another tech event that I will not be able to attend due to lack of funds. Boo.
Cousin Lovin
In most states, it is illegal to marry someone of the same sex. In other states, it is legal to be married to your first cousin. While looking at gay marriage inequalities, Mac McClelland was inspired to make a map showing where kissing cousins can make an honest man/woman out of each other. "Map of the Day: Cousin Lovin'"
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Back in the 60s or 70s my grandmother's sister divorced her husband and married her first cousin. They had each already had children in their first marriages, so there was no question of imbreeding (which was prohibbited by law anyway), and they lived together as soulmates until my great uncle passed away last year.
This does raise an interesting question, though. Why is it alright for the children of two siblings to marry, but not two people of the same sex? As I mentioned, my great-aunt and her first-cousin husband were specifically precluded from legally bearing children together. Isn't this yet another piece of evidence in direct contradiction with the whole "it's not natural and they can never produce children which is what marriage was intended to do" argument?
The 21st-century textbook
With new technologies constantly coming on-line, and with states like California, Texas, and Oregon allowing digital curriculum to replace printed curriculum, the question arises: what will textbooks look like in the coming years?
Dale’s post, "A hunger for good learning," featured a fantastic video about teaching math. In a few brief minutes, Dan Meyer showed us a photo of a math problem involving filling a tank of water and calculating how long that would take, then showed us why traditional approaches to teaching this problem stifled student learning. The picture showed a traditional math problem with a line drawing of the tank, a problem set-up written in text (octagonal tank, straight sides, 27oz per second, etc.) followed by short sub-steps that are needed to solve the problem (calculate the surface area of the base, calculate the volume). Then, finally, it asks the question “how long will it take to fill the tank?” Dan’s view is that this spoon-feeding of problem solving in little steps trains students not to think like mathematicians and not to have the patience for solving complex problems. Instead, Dan prefers to show his students a video of the tank filling up, agonizingly slowly, until the students are eager to know “How long until that tank fills up, anyway?” And then they’re off -- discussing, questioning, and, most importantly, formulating the problem on their own, just as good mathematicians do.
...
In this example, the student finds all the needed tools lying around the page. A ruler for measuring the size of the tank, a cup of known size and a stopwatch to measure the rate of water flow, as well as various other tools, leaving it to the student to decide which ones are relevant to solving the problem. This textbook is interactive.
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In addition to living, interactive, participative, adaptive, and connected, we can expect the 21st century textbook to be personalized and mashable. Beyond that, though, could the 21st century textbook hold out a unique promise - that the student who uses this kind of textbook no longer needs to wait for high-stakes, anxiety-inducing tests to determine whether he had learned a topic? What if the digital textbook were instrumented to collect and interpret data in such a way that it could tell a student's level of mastery without test-taking, just from how he engaged with the content? Some of these measurements and interpretations are easy to imagine, such as: 'Which digital tool did the student first pick up to make measurements in the tank-filling problem', and 'What keywords did he search for on the internet?' Other kinds of data will be harder to interpret, such as: 'What solutions did he try on his scratch pad', 'What questions did he ask his peers', and 'Which of his peers' questions did he answer?' But to any degree, what would it mean for a textbook to understand a student's level of mastery in real-time from his work in this digital medium? With what information could a teacher know exactly what next challenge would be optimal for each student’s learning on a daily basis?
What if the textbook publishers could see, in aggregate, how effective their content is, learn from that, adapt their textbooks, and redistribute new and improved content in months, weeks, or days rather than the current seven-year adoption cycles -- much in the way that Google measures our interactions with their applications and improve them based on the results. Depending on how well the beta testers in Dan's classroom learned to solve algebra problems, the textbook modifications might become standard for all algebra students. What if the instrumented 21st century textbook were able to measure both a student's learning and its own effectiveness, and that capability moved education innovation itself to Internet time?
(via O'Reilly Radar)
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Kind of a long read, I know. I took out some of the bits that were less to the point I wanted to share, but I recommend you read the full article if you have the time. As a geek of both technology and publishing, I am fascinated by this story. I mean, I think back to the textbooks I had in schools growing up, and even if they were just a few years old, they were already outdated. What if content were updated every year? Or even every day? It makes so much more sense for grammar schools to have a subscription-based interactive and up-to-the-minute accurate lesson plans and learning materials than it does to re-purchase an entire wealth of knowledge every 5-10 years that will instantaneously lose value and accuracy after purchase. I think more publishers are adopting this strategy, and i hope that by the time I have kids (if ever I have kids) their classrooms are filled with learning devices that pull straight from the cloud.
Attacked by the WALD
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Something happened to me last night that I would like to share. I'm still a little tender about the subject, but knowing all's well that ends well is helping me push through the memories of the fear and pain I had to briefly suffer.
I was sitting at home, obsessing over Gruber's insight on the Gizmodo/ iPhone prototype faisco whilst watching Intervention*. My iPhone, the veritable Apple of my eye (heyyooo) was nesting on my speaker dock, charging on the other side of the room. Out of nowhere, the device flashed a bright white apple. Um. Excuse me there, little smartphone. Whatcha doin?
Now once in a while my iPhone gets a little glitchy. And about a week ago something incredibly traumatizing may or may not have happened that may or may not have very greatly disturbed the possible functionality of my favoritest contraption in the whole entire universe. Luckily a Lifehacker post I read about rice salvaged my baby, leaving zero trace that it was ever damaged. I mean zero trace. Anyway, the flash of an apple was sightly disconcerting, but not distressing. I just grabbed my 3GS and performed a hard reset. That didn't work. So I performed another hard reset. Nada. I did iPhone CPR on my phone for probably ten minutes before I realized this was bigger than me. I grabbed my Macbook Pro and I asked Google. This is when I learned about the WALD.
The White Apple Logo of Death is similar to a PC's BSOD, except it's for the iPhone and it's actually less lethal than the BSOD. While I cannot say for sure what caused my WALD, as I was nowhere near it when it reared its ugly head, I can say it was realtively easy to fix once I found this article explaining what to do. It took a decent chunk out of my evening, during which time I nearly overlooked Gruber's tweet about the WWDC being announced today, but I was able to completely restore my iPhone to its factory settings and then sync it with iTunes to restore all my media from the backedup version. Thank you Apple for making recovery from a catostrophic wipe as easy as holding and releasing a button and then waiting an hour.
*Let it be known that I'm not really into most reality shows, but my roommates are, and somehow in a house of three, twenty-five-year-old women, two prefer Bravo and VH1 to Science or Discovery. C'est la vie.They were even running Mythbusters back to back. *sigh*
Paper Manufacturer Launches "Print More" Campaign on Monday April 26, @11:36PM
"Domtar, a major North American paper manufacturer, has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to print more documents on paper. Domtar CEO John Williams opposes campaigns by other companies asking employees to be responsible with what they print. 'Young people really are not printers. When was the last time your children demanded a printer?' Mr. Williams said ... 'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.' The industry expects that, absent this campaign, paper demand will decrease by 4% annually. Williams's comments did not go down well in some environmental circles."
(via Slashdot)
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We really should be printing more, shouldn't we? The Amazon jungles aren't just going to deforest themselves now, are they? Jakes, jakes. I know we don't get our paper from rainforests.
Still, I can't help but think of other, equally offensive yet perhaps slightly more popular campaigns than this one. Like the Kill a Baby Seal: Because your baby deserves the softest furs, or perhaps More Abortions Means Fewer Unwed Mothers on Welfare. I mean, does this guy really think that promoting an anti-sustainability platform is going to help him sell more paper? I think if he just renamed the company Dunder-Mifflin he'd see stocks sky-rocket, even if only in the short term. In the long run, yeah it sucks that your family business is going under, but that's what you get for not innovating to keep up with the ever-changing global climate. Two words you've known about for a while now: technology and sustainability. Paper is the antithesis of both of these. Go cry at GM about it - they can relate.
26 April 2010
Whispers of the 2010 WWDC
Sorry, I'm too busy with this Gizmodo/Gawker legal thing to coyly hint that WWDC will be announced tomorrow.
John Gruber
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Last year I was still living in NYC for the WWDC, though I was here in SF just days before the convention for a job interview. I doubt I will be able to attend this year because it will undoubtedly cost $1000+ and I get paid enough for Top Shelf only if I ofset it with Top Ramen. But maybe I will linger around Moscone since it's only a few blocks form my work anyway... That's not creepy, is it?
And the Versatility of the F-Bomb
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As a grammar pedant, my strongest reaction is OMFGLMFAO!!!
The Amélie Guy Would Love to Make a Movie Here
French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie, Delicatessen) was here last week for the SF Film Fest premiere of his new film Micmacs. Sonny Angulo of VidSF catches him on the red carpet and asks him a sort of forced first question, but Jeunet eventually gets around to saying he's "a little bit special" just like the protagonist of his film who has a bullet lodged in his head, and that he loves San Francisco and would love to make a movie here. [via Mission Mission]
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I know I shouldn't be, but I am offended that Jean-Pierre Junet is refered to as "The Amelie Guy," but i guess not everyone is as obsessed with that movie as I am. Seriously, I used to wear skirts, cardigans and men's black oxfords while rocking mini-bangs and an a-line bob. Stop judging. It was in high school. I digress. My point is that I would love if J-P came to my city.
Invite (or, what’s the opposite of a Fail Whale?)
April 14, 2010 by Dale Larson
We asked our friend Yiying Lu to make for us the opposite of the Fail Whale for our wedding invitation.
She calls her new design “Win Penguins”
We combined the new and the old when we got engaged on Twitter. I asked Laura to marry me on bended knee with ring in one hand, iPhone in the other, in a room that included many friends as witness. In the same way, our invitations include Yiying’s new design and Laura hand-wrote the text of each one with a fountain pen. They were mailed last week.
Thanks, Yiying!
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I cannot express my adoration for every individual element of this design. I'm going to try anyway.
1. Fail Whale rhyming, Win Penguin rhyming. BRILLIANT.
2. The backstory of the couple makes me incredibly jealous. I should be so lucky to find a geek like that someday.
3. The actual design of this invitation is nothing short of charming.
I can go deeper into my mild obsession with wedding paraphranelia, with my fifth tour as a bridesmaid happening this December and my sixth tour next year. Also I have a deep afinity for penguins that may or may not be realted to my desire for Morgan Freeman to read me bedtime stories.
Men Value Sex, Women Value Love?
Jealousy can be devastating to a relationship—and it is well known that the genders experience the green-eyed monster in different ways. Men are more likely to be jealous of sexual peccadilloes and women of emotional infidelity, according to past research. The oft-quoted evolutionary explanation is that men care more about sex because an unfaithful partner could mean raising someone else’s kids, whereas women are protective of emotional attachments because the biggest danger for them is being left alone with the burden of single parenthood. But a new study from Pennsylvania State University suggests it may be time to rethink why the genders respond differently to each indiscretion.
In a study of more than 400 people, clinical psychologists Kenneth Levy and Kristen Kelly found that individual personality differences—which stem from a person’s childhood experiences—explain the genders’ jealousy patterns. The pair asked subjects what would be more upsetting: their partner having sex with someone else or forming a strong emotional bond with another person. Both men and women with a kind of insecure attachment called dismissing—typical of people who had inconsistent or insensitive parents and learned to shun intimacy and become “hyperindependent”—were the most likely to report being jealous of sexual infidelity. More men than women have a dismissing attachment style. The reason for this gender difference is unclear but may relate, in part, to cultural notions of what constitutes “manly” behavior. Levy says this understanding of personality formation, known as the attachment model, seems to explain both the average differences between men and women in what makes them most jealous, as well as the previously unexplained fact that a subset of individuals better fits the jealousy profile of the opposite sex.
Who's surprised, raise your hand.
Anyone? No, not so much?
25 April 2010
I'm Getting Into Podcasts
I've always really, really loved TEDTalks and This American Life podcasts. I automatically download and watch podcasts from each through iTunes. Lately I've been getting bored with Pandora because I feel like it's not much more diversified than FM radio, which I stopped listening to when I stopped driving (oh how I love living in cities that have amazing public transportation). I'm still waiting for Grooveshark to come to the iPhone, thought I doubt that will be a drastic improvement over Pandora or Last.fm. As such, I decided I need a little more entertainment in my requirement for continuous stimulation. I turned to iTunes to help me solve this dilemma, and I decided to test out a few podcasts, much to my satisfaction. Here's a quick review of the ones thus far I have tried on for size. The Nerdist
I can't sing enough praise about Chris Hardwick and his just-launched podcast. I spent a chunk of my weekend being a walking tourist through SF, and I threw on this podcast to keep me going as I wandered the streets. I'm lucky I didn't get arrested and committed for being insane because I was literally laughing aloud through the marina as I listened to his musings with Adam Corolla and Adam Savage (let's be real, there are people in SF who are WAY crazier than just random giggling passers-by). I've listened to several episodes now, and they're all equally brilliant. The Conversation
Thinking back, this may have been the catalyst to my let's-try-out-podcasts kick. Gruber posted a link to an episode last week in which he discusses the possible legal ramifications to the whole iPhone N90 lost/bought/leaked fiasco. I was intrigued by the conversations that were had, and I subsequently subscribed to and began listening to Dan Benjamin's pointed exchanges. The Pipeline
Also by Dan Benjamin (as I found out about 30 seconds ago when I grabbed the iTunes link), this was recommended to me by iTunes, and I am smitten. SMITTEN. The first episode I listened to was with Jason Snell, EIC of Macworld. Let's see: a dude who is all about publishing and Apple? SOLD. I've tuned in for a few other episodes and while not everyone who visits the podcast is necessarily tech-related, they're all intriguing and informative. I also downloaded several episodes of Dan Benjamin and John Gruber's The Talk Show and a an attention-grabbing title, Stuff You Missed in History Class, but I have yet to listen to either. I suspect that I will have plenty of time to check them out this week during my commutes to/from work. You should do the same!
I can't sing enough praise about Chris Hardwick and his just-launched podcast. I spent a chunk of my weekend being a walking tourist through SF, and I threw on this podcast to keep me going as I wandered the streets. I'm lucky I didn't get arrested and committed for being insane because I was literally laughing aloud through the marina as I listened to his musings with Adam Corolla and Adam Savage (let's be real, there are people in SF who are WAY crazier than just random giggling passers-by). I've listened to several episodes now, and they're all equally brilliant. The Conversation
Thinking back, this may have been the catalyst to my let's-try-out-podcasts kick. Gruber posted a link to an episode last week in which he discusses the possible legal ramifications to the whole iPhone N90 lost/bought/leaked fiasco. I was intrigued by the conversations that were had, and I subsequently subscribed to and began listening to Dan Benjamin's pointed exchanges. The Pipeline
Also by Dan Benjamin (as I found out about 30 seconds ago when I grabbed the iTunes link), this was recommended to me by iTunes, and I am smitten. SMITTEN. The first episode I listened to was with Jason Snell, EIC of Macworld. Let's see: a dude who is all about publishing and Apple? SOLD. I've tuned in for a few other episodes and while not everyone who visits the podcast is necessarily tech-related, they're all intriguing and informative. I also downloaded several episodes of Dan Benjamin and John Gruber's The Talk Show and a an attention-grabbing title, Stuff You Missed in History Class, but I have yet to listen to either. I suspect that I will have plenty of time to check them out this week during my commutes to/from work. You should do the same!
Mario Love (to the tune of Kiss the Girl)
via youtube.com
I'm not going to apologize for this, and this sort of behavior is likely to continue. So get used to it. I love all things Mario Brothers. And I was born in 1985 so The Little Mermaid is still one of my all-time favorite movies. I don't think the video is especially great (though I have an affinity for 8-bit post-it creations), but the song is GENIUS and I'm just a little too excited to be sharing this.
CGI Peter Pan Theatrical Production Coming to Ferry Plaza
While it will star neither Mary Martin nor Cathy Rigby, J M Barrie’s Peter Pan, which will be performed at "the world’s first 360-degree CGI theatre," will make its U.S. premiere on April 27 at the Ferry Plaza. SF Citizen describes it as "something like Cirque du Soleil, except it’ll be cheaper and aimed more at kids."
Show performances will be on Wednesdays - Sunday. All the details you'll ever need are at Facebook, Twitter, or here.
Tickets, which are now on sale, range from $15 - $125.
In the meantime, let's hope this Peter Pan production doesn't end up like this one. Egads.
I have a gripe. My apologies in advance for the subsequent rant.
I walk by this every day on my way to and from work, so naturally I wanted to go online and check it out. First of all, tickets do not start at $15. They start at $45. As I mentioned before, I get paid in packing peanuts, so to me, $30 is six $5-footlongs. Word. Secondly, there's that annoying thing that all ticketing companies do now where there's a $6 ticket handling fee and a $3 ticket processing fee. WTF. Can't we just say the tickets start at $54 and skip the nickel-and-diming? But that isn't even really what irks me.
Get this: for delivery options on your Peter Pan 360 spectacular tickets, you have two options. The first is delivery by mail. The second is print from home. For option one there is a charge of $1. For option two there is a charge of $2. I'll repeat that so you can take it all in. To receive tickets in the mail, you pay $1, and to PRINT THEM FROM YOUR OWN HOME ON YOUR OWN PAPER WITH YOUR OWN PRINTER USING YOUR OWN INK, you have to pay twice as much. I'm beside myself.
That's really my only point. I could carry on about the ludicrousness of this, but instead I will just opt out of seeing this production and spare the blogosphere further whining.
23 April 2010
Marshmallows and Spaghetti: How Kindergartners Think Like Lean Startups
The activity, known as the marshmallow challenge, was borrowed by Wujec from Peter Skillman, VP of Design at Palm. Small teams are given 18 minutes to build a free-standing structure made of dry spaghetti, one yard of string, one yard of tape and a marshmallow, which must be placed on top. The team wins by creating the tallest structure of all the groups participating. What Wujec discovered is that this simple game revealed some fascinating insights into how groups collaborate.
Wujec has conducted this experiment with over 70 groups of "students and designers and architects, even the CTOs of the Fortune 50," he says. Most teams quickly break into roles and plan their structure, and then spend the remaining time building it before quickly and gingerly placing the marshmallow on top as time expires. More often than not, the structure pitifully fails as the marshmallow is added, leaving the team with a pile of spaghetti and no time to try again.
"So there are a number of people who have a lot more 'uh-oh' moments than others, and among the worst are recent graduates of business school. They lie, they cheat, they get distracted, and they produce really lame structures," says Wujec. "And of course there are teams that have a lot more 'ta-da' structures, and, among the best, are recent graduates of kindergarten."
"Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand." - Tom WujecWujec says that business school grads are taught to seek out and execute the one correct solution their challenge, while kindergartners practice the iterative prototype and refine process, much like the methods of lean startups. The kids would build, test and repeat until they found a structure that worked, and most times, he says, they built the tallest and most interesting structures.Another interesting fact uncovered by these experiments is that incentivizing the teams didn't improve their structures, it actually made them worse. When Wujic offered the winning team a $10,000 software prize, not a single group was able to create a standing structure; however, when we returned to the same students later, they understood the need for iteration, and produced structures well above the average height.
What startups can take away from the marshmallow challenge is that bigger teams and higher incentives are no substitute for having the right skills and the right process in place. Wujec found that larger teams performed increasing worse than smaller teams, and incentivizing them with a reward did not make up for the fact that they were not using the right process.
As Wujec adds, every business challenge has its own "marshmallow," so consider bringing some kindergarten-minded people onto your startup team.
Photo by Flickr user John-Morgan.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. There have been several TED talks about how formal Western education kills creativity and discourages innovation. I wonder at what point our brains switch from the kindergarten-like trial-and-error methodology to the strategize-and-implement philosophy, and whether there's some kind of middle ground. I further wonder whether this kind of research will prompt a reevaluation of traditional ciriculum in a time when cutting-edge innovation seems the only way to tread water in today's vastly prolific and ever-advancing technological industry.
4G iPhone Misplacer Invited To Germany For Beer
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/firehose/011/726/240-1-thumb.png); width:130px; height:97px; humoreldavojohn writes "You may recall the hapless engineer who left a fairly sensitive iPhone at a bar recently. Well, in a PR stunt, Lufthansa has invited him to visit Germany on their dime after citing his latest Facebook status, 'I underestimated how good German beer is' as well as his obvious passion for German beer and culture. It's not clear if Gray Powell has decided to 'pick up where he last left off' (as the letter puts it). I know what my decision would be."
via rss.slashdot.org
I think it was pretty ridiculous for Giz to release the engineeer's name to the public, though I've heard Apple does not plan to dismiss him (and I can't help but wonder whether he's single... anyone a mutual connection?). As such, I think Lufthansa's gimick is a great marketing device to get their name out. And I think with all the negative backlash Giz and Gray Powell have been getting for the most sensational story in tech thus far this year, the Apple seedling should take the German airline up on their offer!
The secret ordeal of Miranda Piker
Before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was published in 1964 Roald Dahl pared down his cast of characters. Last to go was Miranda Piker and her chapter has appeared only once — in mirror script. Here, for the first time, we publish her comeuppance the right way round. (via TimesOnline)
Be Evil. Facebook’s New Like Button Has An Interesting Option
I choose this as my first link to share on my shiny new blog with the world for a number of reasons, none the least of which being that the growing ubiquity of facebook scares the shit out of me. That said, this also anchors a timeframe to the beginning of my blog (the 2010 f8, where the facebook 'Open Graph'/ Manifest Destiny was announced). And it gives me an opportunity to rant about privacy in twenty-ten.
I understand that there are several data aggregators that scope out my every click on in the webosphere, though I did disable google.com/history from tracking me. facebook is a profitable company that makes revenue by allowing third-party apps to use your information to direct products and services to you. I get that. It's a marketing and demogrpahics gold mine of information. That's fine. What I don't like is that I have no control over that information and how it is distributed. Wait, no. That's not exactly it, because I will not kid myself into thinking there are not dozens if not hundreds of other creepy-crawlies hiding in my netterwebs that will do exactly the same thing and I will never know about it (it's sort of like when you stop to think about the bacteria that are living on your skin - you know they're there and they are not hurting you, but the last thing you want to do is imagine how they are living off your dead tissue, defecating on you, and generally slithering around between skin particles... shudder). My issue with the facebook is that it brazenly tells me that I have zero expectation to privacy anymore. That may be true, but you can at least have the decency to LIE to me about it. If you're going to stick it in my backside without my permission, at least use a little lube, yeah?
I am growing increasingly skeptical of facebook's chokehold over my private data, but sadly I am one in the generation that pioneered facebook - my account was established in the Fall of 2005 when only a few universities had access to the site. Consequently, my IRL social network is very much wrapped up in Mark Zuckerberg's monstrosity of an online social network. Sad but true. Sad, but all too gd true, my friends.
Welcome to Teh Interwebs
Welp, I'm starting a blog against my better judgement. Why, you might ask? Honestly, for the hell of it. I read a lot. I write very little (outside bureaucratically-drafted emails for work). I know a fair few things about random stuff, and I have way more opinions backed up inside this geeky little female brain of mine than can possibly be healthy. So I will try to start writing (note, try modifies both writing and - more importantly - start).
Mostly I expect to share my favorite links and stories with anyone who should happen to StumbleUpon my musings, but from time to time I hope to espouse an opinion or thought, should one Flickr into my head.
I welcome criticism, including grammar corrections, as IRL I am in fact an editor. Please remember, however, that I am human, and therefor capable of error due to inattention, ignorance, and good old fashioned apathy.
Thanks for taking notice,
-rae
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