Random Musings

Now here is a reason to get an IPad to get into a FLOW... http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/the-ipad-and-immersive-computi.html Conditions for being in a flow state . One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals. This adds direction and structure to the task. One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable to do the task at hand. The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows him or her to adjust his or her performance to maintain the flow state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

From a nice essay on why farmville is less social but more a sociopathic game!! Some snippets from the post for the newbie.. or the avid player... What it is.... ?? "Farmville is a free, browser-based video game that is played through one’s Facebook account. Users harvest crops, decorate their farms, and interact with one another, in what is ostensibly a game about farming." How many play these... " over seventy-three million people play Farmville .[7] Twenty-six million people play Farmville every day. " And how do you advance is such a game.... " Farmville is defined by responsibility and routine. Users advance through the game by harvesting crops at scheduled intervals; if you plant a field of pumpkins at noon, for example, you must return to harvest at eight o’clock that evening or risk losing the crop. Each pumpkin costs thirty coins and occupies one square of your farm, so if you own a fourteen by fourteen farm a field of pumpkins costs nearly six thou...

From somebody who has seen and is accomplished himself...

From a great speech by an ethnographer at http://sxsw.com/ In our quest to create a social profile ( linkedin/facebook/twitter) the battle of public and private on the web takes a whole new dimension... Its a struggle online to mantain the balance PII and PEI ... " If you've spent any time thinking about privacy, you've probably heard of PII - "Personally Identifiable Information." All too often, we assume that when people make PII available publicly that they don't care about privacy. While some folks are deeply concerned about PII, PII isn't the whole privacy story. What many people are concerned about is PEI - "Personally Embarrassing Information." And why do we want to be more social... "When people make information available, they make themselves vulnerable. We do this all the time in social settings. We make ourselves vulnerable because we believe that we might have something to gain from it. This is how we build friendships. We also...

Keep reminding myself that every human being in any context should be judged by this... "It does not matter where you are coming from, where you going is" - Condoleeza Rice another version the so called "American dream" "…to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him." ..... sure think in todays context where information flow is seamless , opportunities to execute such a dream sure exists in every part of the globe... Get inspired listening to these stories... http://etl.stanford.edu/

A simple definition.... of a most overkilled word in the business world... "Innovation is a valuable change, unconstrained by the way things are." http://blogs.parc.com/blog/2010/03/innovation-defining-doing-measuring/

“Three Rules of Work: out of clutter find simplicity; from discord find harmony; in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” - Albert Einstein

" Debt can be a good thing if you are right, debt comes from overconfidence, the more confident, less sense to issue equity and dilute your ownership of profits. Humans can't be trusted, we are always overconfident, so go into debt more readily than we should . "moderation" we don't now that moderation means, can express overconfidence with equity and not harm yourself too much " - Naseem Taleb Can't count the umpteen times have craved for that extra debt to feed the splurge binge than dip into once equity and take a "hit" by just waiting. Yes I agree not all debt is bad but moderation is the name of the game.... And if you overdo don't expect of a bailout ( http://nyti.ms/cOJEfp )!! http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/David_Cameron_in_Conversation_with_Nassim_Taleb

Some snippets from a nice post.... "... learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination. At first we thought it might be intelligence" " In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—" And the 3 part determination are.... "The simplest form of determination is sheer willfulness . When you want something, you must have it, no matter what." "Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline ." But don't be too hard..... ".....there probably are people whose willfulness is crushed down by excessive discipline, and who would achieve more if they weren't so hard on themselves. One reason the young sometimes succeed where the old fail is that they don't realize how incompetent they are. This lets them do a kind of ...

" It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. " The context here was Hank Paulson the treasury secretary who was ground zero during the 2008 financial crisis. Am sure there are ...

Whenever I see one of these “ We plan to officially halt the service on Wednesday May 26th at noon Pacific Time, at which point you will no longer be able to access your account or your posts ,” says the email. gets me wondering are there ones on my list that have to prepare to exit soon else run the above risk .... http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/10/radar-deadpool/#ixzz0nb1ZGdhQ

For the tell-all generation .... “Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior. “Now you are responsible for everything.” ....the experience of Kanupriya Tewari, a 19-year-old pre-med student at Tufts University . Recently she sought to limit the information a friend could see on Facebook but found the process cumbersome. “I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to limit my profile, and I couldn’t,” she said. She gave up because she had chemistry homework to do, but vowed to figure it out after finals. “I don’t think they would look out for me,” she said. “I have to look out for me.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/fashion/09privacy.html?src=me&ref=general Now is'nt this common sense... I guess not anymore

First it was Betamax vs. VHS and the winner was VHS ( though I loved my betamax ) http://www.mediacollege.com/video/format/compare/betamax-vhs.html Then came Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD ... looks like Blue-Ray is wining .... ( didn't care much ) http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/19/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-state-of-the-s-union-s-division/ and now it is Flash vs HTML5..........TODAY!! ( matters ) www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Am sure there were other smaller ones in between but was not watching.....

" Attention, multitaskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble." this scares you read on.... http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html