Galapagos article from one my my fellow travelers
Last year we went with National Geographic to the Galapagos islands for an amazing journey of discovery. The Galapagos are a set of islands, part of Ecuador, that I had heard about all my life, but never thought of as somewhere I could actually visit. Well, you can. We could. It was a wonderful trip. Here is an article about that trip to the Galapagos was written for the Sidney Morning Herald by one of our co-travelers.
Are smartphone apps “applications” or “features”?
Andy Payne wrote an interesting analysis about the future of the "software industry" or whatever we should call it nowadays (e.g. is Amazon a software company?)
Not long ago a classic "put down" of a business idea was: "that's not a business, it's a product", or worse, "that's not a product it's a feature." Andy asks:
"As friction goes away, things become much more fine-grained. You don’t need $5m anymore to start a company: a laptop and a cafe wifi connection will do. This enables an explosion of new projects, but with smaller teams and narrower ideas. The industry gorilla platforms fuel a “feature ecosystem”: are those icons on your phone “apps” or “features”? Viewed in person terms: a thousand 100-person software teams might now be 30,000 3-person teams. Software is no longer a sport of kings." (from blog.payne.org)
How to be a star engineer!
We all want to be star engineers, right? Here's an intriguing article from about ten years ago engineers from top companies helped to dispel the myths about star performers and uncover the surprising secrets of stellar achievement for engineers.:
"In 1985, I was asked a series of questions, and have been tracking down their answers ever since. Bell Laboratories (then part of AT&T Corp. and now mostly belonging to Lucent Technologies Inc.) was perplexed. It hired the best and the brightest from the world's most prestigious universities, but only a few lived up to their apparent potential for brilliance. Most developed into solid performers of mostly average productivity who did not substantially further Bell Labs' contribution to AT&T's competitive advantage in the marketplace.
What the labs wanted to know was: what separates the star from the average performer? Is it innate or can star performance be learned? Could a program to improve productivity be designed that would help turn average performers into stars?" (from How To Be A Star Engineer)
Looking for eRoom
Long time ago I worked at a company called eRoom Technology where we developed a product called… eRoom. It was pretty successful and it was bought by a company called Documentum, that in turn was bought by a company called EMC. Today, on a lark, I was wondering what had happened to eRoom and I can't really tell for sure.
Do you know: did eRoom become Documentum Centerstage? Or is that something else?
Do you know: does eRoom still exist? Or is the only thing left eRoom.net?
Did someone actually have to invent that?
A really charming article about John Karlin who was one of the first UX guys. He worked at Bell Labs back in the day and helped determine lots of little details about how telephones are designed. Simple silly things like that putting a dot (to "aim" at) visible through each finger hole of a dial phone improved accuracy and speed of dialing.
He determined, through testing, the best shape (square) and arrangement (a rectangular grid) and ordering (1-2-3 in the top row) of the buttons in touch tone telephones. Yes many other options were scientifically tested.
He also tested the impact of shortening the handset cables, and whether people could handle phone numbers that didn't include letters to aid memory.
Great article if you like to learn about inventors and invention!
Patents: Innovation Nation
An interesting view on patents from Judge Posner:
"In Posner’s view, many patents are unnecessary. Patents, he believes, are important for drug companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars bringing a new drug to market — a drug that can easily be copied by a competitor. Without the protection that a patent affords, pharmaceutical companies would have far less incentive to come up with new drugs." (from New York Times)
In another article that discussed Posner's view on patents: "Why there are too many patents in America" (from The Atlantic)
Loomio: Collaborative Decision Making
Loomio is a new app looks quite cool and worth checking out:
"Loomio is a collaborative decision-making tool. Loomio reduces the cost of participation in decision-making, making it easy for any group to translate online communication into real-world collective action….Creating a world where it’s easy for anyone to participate in decisions that affect them. With the right collaborative process, groups generate better ideas, decisions and actions than any individual would by themselves. Loomio breaks down the barriers to participation in decision-making at every level: in neighbourhoods, community organisations, businesses, social movements, and local and national governance.Collaborative decision-making balances individual autonomy with the collective good." (from Loomio.com)
This is an area I am quite interested in! I am planning to check Loomio out.
Zero Dark Thirty
I saw this movie last night and really thought it was great. I had read some negative commentary about Zero Dark Thirty:
"At the same time, a number of journalists and public officials—including three United States senators—have excoriated Zero Dark Thirty. Their main complaint is that the film greatly overstates the role played by torture—or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” in the CIA’s terrifying euphemism—in extracting from al-Qaeda-affiliated detainees information that ultimately led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011." (from New York Review of Books)
With the benefit of having seen the movie, I feel this critique , like the whole article, is quite overwrought.
You have to be a very observant movie watcher (catching the many unfamiliar names that are rattled off) to truly have an impression that torture played a key role in the information that led to USM's demise.
Also you have to have missed TV shows like '24 ' and 'Homeland ' to be overly shocked by the depictions of torture. There was no blood, and the hitting was quite mild really.
[spoiler alert] I mean an interrogation scene in Homeland this last season had the interrogator very suddenly and unexpectedly pull out a knife and stick it hard into the victims hand as the hands were flat on a table. That was shocking!
See the movie. It's really interesting while being a edge-of-your-seat story.