Amazing: 400ms makes a difference
Under the header "Natural Gas News Leak" (funny) there's a story about how the securities market reacted 400ms before a bit of news came out of the government and they reacted by trading on the news. The article has lots of charts and graphs which may say whether or how much money was made or lost. The article says:
"It is worth pointing out that the EIA Natural Gas Report comes out weekly (every Thursday at 10:30) and the market reacts within a few milliseconds. This is because the report centers on one number which makes it easy for machines to process and take action." (from Nanex.net)
N.E.A.T. Product from Gruve: Fact or Fiction?
There's something about this Gruve product that bugs me:
"The Gruve Solution is a new, completely revolutionary approach to weight management that incorporates the landmark discovery of N.E.A.T. (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) which is all the calories one burns while doing normal (non-exercise) daily activity. Scientific research over 10 years found that increasing the N.E.A.T in daily life results in sustainable weight loss and a dramatic improvement in overall health. In other words, increasing daily N.E.A.T. activity is more effective at achieving sustainable weight loss and control than short term intense exercise!"
All the superlatives and buzz words, and then the promises. They also seem overblown. It just seems like a glorified pedometer.
Next is the price: $179 for the device, and then an annual subscription after year one of another $80.00.
While apparently Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis has some coverage in 'the literature', I had to find that connection myself, there seems to be no mention of it on the web site. Another thing that makes me wonder.
What do you know?
How do you fit a 365 day calendar on an index card?
I
designed the calendar to the right to help me keep track of my piano practice.
As you know, maybe, to learn piano you need to practice every day. Well I
don't do that regularly enough, and as a result (and general clumsyness) my
piano study is going at a snails pace. So of course, technology to the rescue.
Jerry Seinfeld described how he would force himself to do something every day. In his case, work on his comedy. He would put an X on each day in his calendar when he worked. He would then psych himself up to never break the string of X's, and the longer the string was, the more it hurt to break it. Sounded like a fine idea to me.
The idea with the piano calendar is the same. I put an X over each day that I practive and, so goes theory, I am more likely to respect a string of days and not break the chain. It kind of works.
But in the meanwhile I have a fairly clever design that fits all the days of one year on a tiny bit of paper. That's cool!
What do pig intestines and squid have in common
This is just funny. Ok it's also a little scary as I love Calamari!
"Calamari is on one side of the plate, sliced hog rectums are on the other. Which is which? We got a tip about a meat plant selling pig intestines as fake calamari, wondered if it could be true, and decided to investigate. Doppelgangers, doubles, evil twins and not-so-evil twins, this week. Fred Armisen co-hosts with Ira Glass." (from This American Life)
Get someone to clean your gutters for you
I am not being metaphorical, in fact, I am talking about gutters on your roof. A few years ago I wasn't regularly cleaning my gutters and had a close call with roof leaks when we had an extensive period of rain and freezing that caused ice dams and all kinds of ugliness to many New England residents as well as friends of mine. I had a scare and since then I've been paying someone to clean my gutters each year.
Here's a far more 2013 solution to the same problem. Yes, Robots are no longer just for sweeping your living room!
Aaron Swartz Links
If you are in the tech community you've likely heard that Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York. I didn't know him but I was in the same room with him, at conferences or conversations a few times about 10 years ago. I certainly knew of him.
I've read many things about him in the last 24 hours. Here are some of the ones that spoke to me the most:
Harvard Business School: No Women Entrepreneurs
I was surfing around preparing for my class and happened to look at this page on the Harvard Business School web site. The page is called "Entrepreneurs " and it says, among other things:
"A video archive that captures insights from learning members of the School's entrepreneurial community. Entrepreneurs speak on a common set of themes including their development as entrepreneurs, strategies for identifying opportunity, and leadership. (from Harvard Business School)
Notice anything?
Not a single female in the picture. (And only a single female on the whole
list, Orit Gadiesh) I got to thinking, there are lots of prominent female entrepreneurs. Are we to conclude that for some reason HBS isn't generating them or that they were just overlooked by whoever made this page?
What happens if you set up an eRoom on the North Pole?
Here's a new product I just saw, Igloo. It's very nice and it reminds me of what eRoom might have looked like if we designed it 15 years later. They have a beautiful product. Here's what they say:
At its core, Igloo is about communication: In your day, you might give updates, have discussions and share files with your team. With Igloo, that all happens in one place. Igloo helps you communicate in an elegant and integrated digital workplace. You get visibility into what's happening throughout your whole team and your whole office. (From Igloo Web Site tour)
Virtual Assistant advice
I have a regular need for a small project to be done, a little bit of research, some following up on projects and so on. I've thought about using a "Virtual Assistant" for this but there is now so much noise in the area that it's hard to navigate. An example of many many is Zirtual.com
My needs are definitely episodic, so I don't want someone that I pay a fixed monthly amount to unless it's pretty small, knowing that it can go up and down depending on the work.
Any feedback on your experiences or thoughts about this would be really interesting!
Free pdf of Eric Ries: “The Lean Startup” (huh?)
I am a big fan of this book, so I was really surprised to find a freely downloadable copy of the file in pdf form. I snooped around and the site seems legit but it's odd that a very popular book is made available for zero dollars.
Here's the link to Lean Startup on PdfBook.co.ke
If you are wondering, .co.ke is Kenya. I posted a question to them to explain whether this was above board. I wonder…