Brain Hack: The Ugly Carpets of Vegas

I absolutely love reading about brain hacks like this one.

The Ugly Carpets of Vegas are Hideously Clever Social Engineering at Work

Although I didn’t read any obvious psychological reasoning behind using gaudy carpets, you have to assume there’s a real hack there.

Personally, I think the surreal carpeting adds to the simultaneous sensory depravation and overload of the casino. No natural light or clocks, uncomfortably cold, lots of booze, loud noises, flashing lights and mad carpeting.

Interesting stuff.

Update: Steven Chan emailed me with an explanation about casino carpets. A friend of his who teaches at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration says the carpet is deliberately designed to camouflage chips that commonly fall on it. Apparently, casinos sweep up a large number of chips daily.

Casinos are fascinating business.Possibly Related Posts:

William Gibson on Google

William Gibson (yes, that William Gibson) penned a fascinating op-ed piece for the New York Times this week.

Op-Ed Contributor – Google’s Earth – NYTimes.com

This bit hooked me (h/t Geekosystem)

If Google were sufficiently concerned about this, perhaps the company should issue children with free “training wheels” identities at birth, terminating at the age of majority. One could then either opt to connect one’s adult identity to one’s childhood identity, or not. Childhoodlessness, being obviously suspect on a résumé, would give birth to an industry providing faux adolescences, expensively retro-inserted, the creation of which would gainfully employ a great many writers of fiction. So there would be a silver lining of sorts.

The whole piece is fascinating and frightening all at once, especially his observation that legislation is constantly playing catch up with technology, something that is potentially destructive to society as a whole.

What will the future hold for Google or technology in general?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

OpenWorld Tidbits

Photo by good friend Eddie Awad from Flickr used under Creative Commons

A couple items of note heading into OpenWorld.

Current students can get into JavaOne and Oracle Develop for free.  There are a few qualifications:

You must be enrolled in an accredited nonprofit institutions of learning during the Fall semester/quarter of 2010, taking a minimum of six (6) units, and you must be at least 18 years old.

The free pass gets you:

Admission to any session in the Java Frontier track for students, JavaOne, Oracle Develop and OpenWorld keynotes, three Exhibition Halls and the Mason street tent (more info below). Space permitting, you can also attend any JavaOne and Oracle Develop technical sessions, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions (BOFs), and Hands-on-Lab (HOL) sessions.

Also noteworthy, the location of the OTN Lounge is moving from its place in Moscone West in previous years to the Mason Street tent. Yes, that’s inside the huge tent built *on the street* between Moscone South and Moscone North. Check the photo if you haven’t see it in prior years.

This is likely to be relevant for other reasons (free swag, and ahem, refreshments), but in years past, our little team has hunkered down in the OTN Lounge and used it as a base of operations.

I don’t expect this to change in 2010. So, if you’re looking for us during business hours and it’s not Tuesday the 22nd at 5 PM, a good bet would be to try the OTN Lounge. Or, if you just so happen to be there already, look for us and come say hello.

See you in San Francisco.Possibly Related Posts:

Gmail Voice Is about Future Search

This is a fascinating piece, albeit speculative, about Google’s recent foray into VoIP with GMail Voice.

Gmail Voice Is About Future Search, Not Free Calls

It seems very likely to be true, considering Google’s similar use of reCAPTCHA for digitizing print.

If true, do you care? Should Google’s T&C for GMail Voice make their intentions clear?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

How Do You Capture Ideas on the Go?

Quiet time often produces the best thinking because it helps thoughts bubble up to the top of your mind.

You know the places, in the shower, on the can, lying in bed. Don’t act all surprised.

I often get these moments when I’m alone in the car, especially if I’m driving on a highway. Even if the radio is playing, my mind will wander, and I frequently want to capture the thoughts.

There’s a huge, obvious problem though; I’m busy driving a car.

I used to dial up my work number and leave a voicemail, which worked really well because it could happen hands-free. Our universal inboxes deliver voicemail as an audio file, so my epiphanies would be waiting for me when I got back to my desk.

Lately though, voicemail has been cranky. It stops recording when I pause and asks me if I’m done. This means I either have to call back or rerecord, which means using the keypad. Not very hands-free anymore.

I found an Android app that can record and send audio, but again, it’s not as hands free as I’d like.

Do any of you have this problem? I can’t be the only one who thinks in the car.

I’m interested in a solution and also to know where you do your best thinking. Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Building Smart Lists from an Inbox

Photo by koalazymonkey on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Saw an interesting quote attributed to Mark Zuckerberg yesterday:

But guess what? Nobody wants to make lists.

A bit out of context, but Zuckerberg was expanding on the best way to share things with a network of people. He’s absolutely right about lists.

They are simultaneously the right way to share and too cumbersome to manage. Lists are a lot like email filters and folders and other methods for controlling information: easy to configure, tough to maintain.

Setting up lists isn’t terribly difficult, but as your network grows, they become a chore to manage, e.g. a new connection may not fit nicely into an existing list. Does the new person warrant a new list, or should s/he be crammed into an existing list? If the latter, are their other connections that should also be changed?

Curation is work. This is exactly my problem with organizing email.

Clayton (@cdonley) makes this very point about enterprises. LDAP stores are perfect for creating these lists, and IT manages them, making this a better solution. Inside the firewall, your relationships are known (and protected), and LDAP can use backoffice systems to create smart lists based on this information.

But what if you don’t have these benefits?

Paul (@ppedrazzi) and I had an ad hoc brainstorming session at SXSW about this. As with most software problems, the answer is an algorithm. In this case, the data source for the algorithm is your inbox.

Email is the standard for sharing things. You have to tell it with whom to share and at what level, e.g. to vs. cc vs. bcc. And email already has lists.

Indexing an inbox could tell an algorithm a lot about the relationship between the sender and recipient, which in turn, would help build smart lists.

Facebook already offers email and is rumored to be moving toward offering web mail, e.g. @facebook.com addresses. Google already indexes GMail and could easily add a smart list capability to their rumored Google Me network.

The major downside is the freaky factor, as with most algorithms. Mining someone’s inbox to create smart lists could easily feel like an invasion of privacy.

Anyway, there’s a lot of useful information locked away in an inbox that could be used to create lists, among other things. Once created, the network could maintain the lists in a relatively hands-off manner, or leave it to the user.

What do you think? Do you mind curating lists? How would you automate list creation and management?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Don’t Miss the Blogger Meetup at OpenWorld

The guys at Pythian, specifically Alex Gorbachev (@alexgorbachev) will be continuing the grand tradition of hosting a blogger meetup at OpenWorld this year.

This meetup is a must attend because it’s the best opportunity all year long to meet your favorite Oracle bloggers and tweeters IRL and put a face with a digital identity.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that blogging and/or tweeting are not requirements for attending. If you read Oracle blogs or follow Oracle people on Twitter, I’m pretty sure that’s enough. You might even get the nudge you need to make that jump.

Here’s the skinny:

When: Wednesday, September 22, 5:30 PM

Where: Lower Dining Room, Jillian’s Billiards in the  Metreon, 101 Fourth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103.

If you don’t already know where Jillian’s is, you’ll know by Wednesday of OpenWorld week. It’s right in the middle of the show, across the street from Moscone West.

Make sure you drop a comment on Alex’s post, with a “count me in” so he can plan accordingly. See you there.

Bloggers Meetup Oracle OpenWorld 2010 The Pythian BlogPossibly Related Posts:

When Memes Collide

I love a good meme, not sure why, but I think it’s because of that moment when you can work a meme into everyday life. Awesome feeling, at least for me, but then again, I’m a giant dork.

Memes, of the internets variety, are a lot like geek speak, and I’m pondering the idea of giving an unconference session about memes at OpenWorld this year, much like the geek speak one I gave in 2008.

Knowing, if not understanding, memes helps demystify some of the jargon that permeates the internets, and basic knowledge goes a long way toward gaining some measure of credibility among your friendly, neighborhood geeks.

Plus, you might just find them fun.

IMO even more fun is the collision of memes, like the following munging of LOLcats and the double rainbow guy.

Incidentally, double rainbow guy, embedded for your enjoyment, is a great meme. Love that guy.

Another meme crash, Inception plus Yo Dawg and other Inception-themed memes.

I highly suggest Know Your Meme if you want to learn more, and no, it’s not a Rickroll.

Happy freakin’ Friday. Thoughts about meme-on-meme violence? Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Firefox Panorama Looks Cool, But Speed Kills

The latest Firefox 4 beta build (beta 4) includes the Tab Candy feature, which has been named Panorama.

Firefox Panorama: Tab Candy Evolved « Aza on Design

I’m running this version on Ubuntu, but not as my primary browser. Panorama looks cool, and tab organization is a nice to have feature, albeit probably a power user feature.

The problem for me is that Chrome (and Chromium) are still faster than Firefox, primarily at Javascript rendering. No, I haven’t seen any tests with Firefox 4 vs. Chrome 6, but it’s going to take a major improvement in speed to switch me back to Firefox.

What about you? What’s your browser of choice and why? Do features like Panorama matter more than flat out speed?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Geeks in Love

Luckily, I haven’t had to be this clever, but the bar has definitely been raised.

Found this via Gizmodo, seen in the wild on Hermosa Beach in Southern California. Of course, haters gonna hate, as the commenters prove, e.g. no opening tag, old picture. It does look like the opening tag might be on top of the barricade, possibly <GEEK LOVE POEM>.

Depending on the actual age of the photo, it could be lifted from ThinkGeek or vice versa.

Another one courtesty of Gizmodo, a poem created with song titles, with the same type of commentary. At least he stayed away from “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Captain Support to the Rescue

Friend of the ‘Lab, Tim Hall (@oraclebase) posted a quick note over the weekend that caught my eye.

More PC support… | The ORACLE-BASE Blog

For me, the interesting part part is his question: “How are normal folk meant to cope with this?”

This isn’t rhetorical either. It’s a serious issue with technology. Most of us likely don’t call tech support when we have issues, but that’s only partially influenced by our own ability.

For the most part, tech support is abysmal for consumer electronics, e.g. when I hit issues with the OTA update to Android 2.2, I made that mistake.

Support at Sprint and HTC both shrugged their shoulders and suggested a factory reset.

Anyway, Captain Support may be the reluctant (or not) alter ego many of us have, but what about all the other n00bs out there who don’t have family geeks?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

More OpenWorld Sessions of Interest

If you’re attending OpenWorld (@oracleopenworld) in September, you’re probably starting to plan your schedule.

Trust me, this isn’t something you want to leave for the plane ride or the first day. This year, OpenWorld, Develop and JavaOne are all happening at once, September 19-23, and sheer volume of content is enormous.

With all that good stuff, you’ll want to map out a game plan. So, first thing, plan on making our session, “Web 2.0 Versus Enterprise 2.0: Lost in Translation” S313346 on Tuesday at 5 PM at the Marriott Marquis, Salon 7.

It’s an Easter Egg surprise because we won’t be presenting what’s in the session guide; our new working title is “WebCenter: A Web Developer’s Playground”. If you read here, you know that already.

If you like dynamic languages, you should check out Christopher Jones’ list of PHP, Perl and Ruby sessions, and if you really love the Ruby, you’ll want to make time for Raimonds’ (@rsim) Rails sessions.

Side note, I’ve not actually checked to see if these sessions conflict. So, yeah, hoping they don’t.

Today, I got an email pointing me to a list of Enterprise 2.0 sessions (pdf), featuring many WebCenter sessions given by our colleagues, and a couple sessions from friends of the ‘Lab Billy Cripe (@billycripe) and Bex Huff (@bex).

Definitely check out that list if E 2.0 is your bag.

Among the many new and interesting topics at this year’s OpenWorld are Open Office and Cloud Office, which came to us via the Sun acquisition. Here are a couple Cloud Office sessions I plan to attend:

Have any sessions you can’t miss and want to share? Anything in our wheelhouse that I’ve missed?

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Philadelphia Charging Bloggers a Fee

Not sure how the city can trace bloggers who should pay this, but assuming they have that magic figured out, does it make sense to charge bloggers a fee at all?

Philadelphia Bloggers’ License – $300 Fee | Geekosystem

The economics of this are quirky. The cost of identifying and notifying bloggers has to outweigh the revenue they’ll collect, right?

I wonder if this is for a given time period, and if they can tack in on to municipal taxes.

Weird. Anyway, just another reason to forgo ads on your blog. Very few bloggers actually drive enough traffic to make it worth the annoyance of ads anyway.

Thoughts?Possibly Related Posts:

Discontent Grows With Facebook Places

This was inevitable, and I think “grows” is a bit out-of-context. The feature launched last week so any growth measurement is premature.

Discontent Grows With Facebook Places’ Ability To Tag Without Users’ Express Permission

I did notice a few people in my News Feed were using Places, and frankly, I was a bit surprised with at least one, knowing him IRL. I’ve yet to follow up to see what value he sees in Places, but I’m definitely interested to hear his thoughts.

This quote from the Crunchgear post says a lot:

Never mind the fact the such information, to a random friend on a hopelessly large friend list, is pretty much useless: what good does it do me to know that my friend at [sic] pizza at 9:30pm somewhere in Queens? No good, exactly.

Agreed. The relevance of Places information is highly subjective and dependent on the relationship with the friend.

Have you started using Places? What about people in your circle of friends? Thoughts on it, location services in general?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Two Web Design/Development Blogs for Your Consideration

Continuing a Friday tradition, today I’m sharing a couple web design blog that you’ll find useful, Smashing Magazine and 1stwebdesigner.

Smashing Magazine (@smashingmag)
First suggested to me by Rich (@rmanalan), Smashing has tons of resources for web designers/developers, ranging from operational stuff like how to work with clients to free-to-use fonts and icon packs to how-to tutorials.

Here are a couple sample posts I liked recently:

30 New Free High-Quality Fonts

Beautiful Examples of Transparent Screen Trick Photos

I especially appreciate that they publish entire posts (vs. excerpts) to their feed, especially since they do a lot of long posts with graphics, and the Related Posts are very useful if you find something that interests you.

1stwebdesigner (@1stwebdesigner)
Not sure how I found this one. Its focus is on tutorials (e.g. HTML, CSS, Javascript, Photoshop, WordPress, Flash) and resources (e.g. fonts, icons, photography) for web developers, including the occasional post on general software, business how-to or inspirational post.

Here are a few I liked recently:

JQuery for Complete Beginners: Part 1 (there have been four parts so far)

30+ Killer Web Development Screencasts to fine tune your skills

The Ultimate Roundup of 55+ CSS3 Tutorials

Getting Started: Learning to Code for the Web, Logically

Enjoy these two and if you’re feeling adventurous, check out these two data visualization blogs and these two design blogs.Possibly Related Posts:

Keeping a Journal with Checkins

Photo by incurable_hippie from Flickr used under Creative Commons

Had an interesting epiphany today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about documenting my life because I’ll soon be a father.

As I’ve gotten older, my memory and now, it seems more important (urgent even) to document it somehow in case my kid ever wants to see what a really dull man I am.

A while back, I had a discussion with Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marhsallk) of ReadWriteWeb fame, about GetGlue, a service that lets you checkin to stuff you’re doing, e.g. watching TV, listening to music, watching a movie, thinking about something, etc. Marshall is a fan, see here and here, and I wasn’t entirely sold.

Marshall’s a smart dude, and after listening to him, I made a mental note to try it sometime.

GetGlue has some easy benefits, e.g. it recommends content based on what you tell it, there’s a social element that exposes what your social circle is doing, it has bling and who doesn’t want bling.

As I do with most new stuff, I’ve made a conscientious effort to try it out for week or so to see if it sticks.

Back to the point.

I found myself running some errands and listening to the radio in the car. Since I’ve been testing GetGlue, I decided to checkin to what I’d heard (complying with the no-texting-while-driving laws, natch). I’m still avidly using foursquare, so I also was checking into venues. Of course, I threw in a tweet or two along the way as well.

It occurred to me that tying all these services together produces a journal of my life at a very granular (read, boring) level. For example:

  • I listened to Pink Floyd and Metallica on the way to Fred Meyer to do some grocery shopping.
  • I listened to Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and Pink Floyd again on the way to Steakadelphia.
  • While waiting on my cheesesteak, I watched a little preseason NFL football on one TV.
  • I tweeted a bit.
  • Then I watched CNN on the other TV, where they were reporting that an American Airlines flight out of SFO was delayed by a tip about hijackers.
  • I listened to Eric Clapton and Black Sabbath on the way home to eat my cheesesteak.

This is totally mundane crap, but then, we as people have a storied history of journaling our lives, whether in paper form, in weblogs or in status updates.

Why do we do it? It’s in our DNA.

I know very few people will care about my life in this level of detail, but for those that might, it’s a great way to document our lives accidentally.

Of course, one big issue is that it takes a handful of services to do this, making it difficult to get a complete picture.

Until Facebook sees value in it.

What do you think? Any interest in GetGlue or documenting your life?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Facebook Places Signals a Tipping Point for Location Services

Yesterday afternoon brought the official announcement of Facebook Places, the giant network’s entry into geolocation services that had been rumored for months.

We’ve been bullish on location for a couple years (whatever happened to Fire Eagle), so this announcement is huge, even though I rarely use Facebook anymore and don’t plan to use Facebook Places.

Why?

Because, as with social networking, status publishing, social gaming, photo sharing and a host of other services, Facebook has become the place where the bell curve gets acquainted with new stuff. As people use X on Facebook, they become familiar and comfortable (or not) with X, and they begin to understand the value of X.

Where X is aforementioned new stuff.

This helps us immensely because it provides context when we start talking about X. Location services have huge value within the enterprise, and Facebook Places will only help us make the use cases more obvious.

Plus, Facebook Places will help iron out the lingering questions about location, e.g. will anyone use it, is it a security nightmare, where’s the value beyond personal meetups with friends, etc.

Foursquare has made significant inroads lately with location and brand/business tie-ins, and Facebook is pushing in this direction from the get-go. There’s a lot of money to be made rewarding the loyalty of customers, and Places is a natural extension of the overall Facebook presence that (it seems like) every business has now.

Am I alone in feeling like it’s AOL all over again when businesses advertise their website and their Facebook page with equal prominence? So don’t even bother with their websites anymore.

Why?

Because they know exactly who you are when you land on a Facebook page. Now, they could also know how often you’ve patronized their establishment. This is gold for advertisers.

And potentially lead for users, or not, depending on what the rewards are.

Anyway, I’m very interested to watch Facebook Places evolve. It’s not available everywhere yet, so we’ll have to wait a bit. An interesting tidbit from yesterday’s announcement was that 20% of foursquare’s users push their data to Facebook. That’s pretty astounding to me, even given the relatively small user base of foursquare.

Imagine if 20% of Facebook’s 500 million users eventually use Facebook Places.

Find the comments, this stuff is interesting to me, especially the naysaying.Possibly Related Posts: