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An interesting concept, plus the music is available for online viewing & download too right after the show is aired.
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(Less) Screwed-up Packaging – The Daily WTF
Individual boxes & packets for each screw. Now that’s really green.
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Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them | Psychology Today
“We approach most of what we do with one of two types of goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and already know what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning a new skill. It’s the difference between wanting to show that you are smart vs. wanting to get smarter.”
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The trouble with Steve – Mar. 4, 2008
An interesting article on Steve Jobs from the pre-iPad era. Also sheds light on some of the rarely featured issues on Apple & Jobs like the back dated stock options & Jobs’ personal life.
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Paths of Innovation: Fountain Pens | Slideshows
I wonder how many of my generation would have seen or even heard of any of these pens.
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The 7 Most Innovative iPad Apps of 2010 | Slideshows
A handy list with the following lineup:
– Alice in Wonderland e-book
– Flipboard
– Air Display
– Auryn Ink
– Sound Note
– iA Writer
– Infinity Blade -
Pretty interesting article with a bunch of techniques ranging from priming to taking care of your health.
Author: Aditya
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Links for the week ending 07-02-2011
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Links for the week ending 31-01-2011
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Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young — chicagotribune.com
An interesting read – “Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.”
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Links for the week ending 24-01-2011
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The Rise and Fall of Yahoo! (Infographic)
Not a very pretty sight. At one time Yahoo shares were trading at $400+ & then they passed up buying facebook & youtube.
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Links for the week ending 17-01-2011
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Motivational Commencement Address by Marc S. Lewis
How you define & measure success changes over time and this is told very nicely through a bunch of 3 stories.
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Bill Watterson – Kenyon College commencement speech 1990
A pretty motivating speech that inspires you to find your identity & ideals.
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Best Commencement Speeches Quotes and Inspirational Advice : Graduation Wisdom
Pretty useful reference site. Contains a variety of speeches ranging from well known ones like Steve Jobs Stanford address to Bill Watterson’s. Also has a top quotes section.
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Lacking Knowledge Essentials – The Daily WTF
This is what happens when the purchasing department of a company turns out to be even more inept than the vendor’s sales team.
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Don’t Worry, We’ll Fix It! – The Daily WTF
A real classic… Who knew purging data could be so dangerous, that too when you are cross-checking the latest transaction date.
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List of common misconceptions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quite a list for sure, and one that is bound to expand. Think of it as a historical snopes.com. Found it all thanks to xkcd – http://xkcd.com/843/
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Myth of the Flat Earth – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
People were not that slow to warm up to the idea of a spherical earth after all. In fact most of the educated people in the middle ages agreed that the earth was round.
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links for 2011-01-05
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Things get really interesting once you get to the nebulas.
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links for 2010-12-08
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There have been quite a few accepted papers too from this generator. Stories are present in the blog.
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links for 2010-11-22
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The more things change, the more they remain the same – so seems to be the case with Steve Jobs & his approach to new products – build a simple, but robust core for the first iteration & then develop it over time. It worked for the Mac, then iPhone & seems to be working for the iPad. The article also touches on the closed Apple ecosystem & Jobs hostility towards flash (apparently similar to the arrow keys on the original Mac)
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An interesting take on Apple & Steve Jobs closed approach
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Quite a collection ranging from mainstream Windows screenshots to oldies like Xerox Alto
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You Pay More in Mechanical Metered Taxis
I’ve been doing quite a bit of travelling in taxis in Mumbai over the last 4-5 months, and one of the interesting things I noticed that the fares on the taxis with mechanical meters usually comes out higher than taxis with digital ones. This is especially true when there is a significant amount of waiting time due to heavy traffic. Here’s my theory on why this is so:
Faulty waiting time calibration on mechanical meters
On mechanical meters, we use a reference chart to convert the meter reading to the appropriate fare. All this was fine when the meters came out originally many years back and the meters were calibrated for a particular waiting fare rate. However, after several fare hikes that just raised the rate per km & not the waiting time rates, this calibration has become erroneous.
An example is in order to explain this. Say, initially 1.00 on the meter meant Rs 10 (per km) and 0.10 on the meter corresponded to 2 min waiting time at the rate of Rs 0.50/min (effectively meaning that for every 0.10 you pay Re 1, i.e., the same as the per km rate). Here, we have a uniform multiplication factor of 10 for both distance and waiting time.
Now, let’s say that there have a series of revisions and the rate per km has doubled, but the waiting rate is still the same. So, we should have 1.00 on the meter corresponding to Rs 20 (per km) as the distance rate, while 0.10 still signifies a 2 min waiting time at the rate of Rs 0.50/min. Therefore, the multiplication factors are now different for distance (20) and waiting time (still 10).
However, the fare charts are created only keeping the distance fares in mind, due to which you have the following scenario: For a trip of 2 km with a waiting time of 10 mins, the meter will read 2.50 (2×1.00 + 10×0.50×0.10) for both old and new rates.
- As per the initial rates, the fare would be Rs 25 (meter: 2.50×10 or rate breakup: 2×10 + 10×0.50)
- For the new rates, the actual fare should be Rs 45 (2×20 + 10×0.50)
- However, the new rate chart prepared would have only factored the increase in per km rates and would suggest a uniform multiplication factor of 20 for the meter reading, due to which you would end up paying Rs 50 (2.50×20)
Long live digital meters?
In the case of digital meters, they are recalibrated (at least in Mumbai, but not so much in Kolkata due to which the same problem exists) for the new fares without changing the waiting rates. Due to this you end up paying the actual fare (Rs 45 from the example above) when you use a taxi with a digital meter.
Of course, if the driver forgets to wind his mechanical meter before your trip, you end up avoiding the waiting charges altogether which gives you the lowest possible fare. So, I guess there’s a flip side to the whole mechanical vs. digital meter argument.
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links for 2010-11-16
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A budget simulation game (US centric)
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In the old days (before the Internet), no technology products were free, because distribution costs made it impossible to offer anything without some commitment from the end customer. As a result, new technology adoption generally started with the deepest pockets (the military) and worked its way down to the shallowest pockets (the consumer). Since the introduction of the Internet, many technology products can be distributed for free, and therefore have some free or free trial version. Interestingly, the order of adoption now follows decision-making speed rather than deep pockets. That is, consumers who can decide very quickly adopt first and the military — who has a notoriously complex decision making process — adopts last.
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links for 2010-11-11
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Highlights the good old GIGO principle for computers, and when all else fails, "Heads or tails, gentlemen?"
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Nicely summarises the importance of shipping the first version of your product using Apple as an example. Apple does sacrifice features in its products very often. The mantra seems to be "usage is like oxygen for ideas"
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