Einstein once said something to the effect of, “you cannot solve problems by thinking within the same framework or mindset that discovered the problems.” The implication is that you need to step into another mindset, another level of thinking. So how do we step into another mindset, as Einstein implies we should? One possible method is mind-mapping, which arguably triggers a much more natural way of thinking and problem solving. Overview Mind mapping has of ...

“We are listening.” is the startup mantra I hate. Companies are really starting to catch on to engaging their customers through where their customers are talking (this being done with some great points by Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan and Geoff Livingston). Chris says it simply: Conversations are happening online in all kinds of places. It’s important to understand how to get in there, and how to listen where the conversations are happening. Because of some ...

Does a clean house indicate that there is a broken computer in it? Why is it that, no matter what color of bubble bath you use, the bubbles are always white? Is there ever a day when mattresses are NOT on sale? Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with the hopes that something new to eat will have materialized? On electric toasters, why do they engrave the message ‘one slice’? How many pieces ...

Michael Abbott reports on an interesting observation, illustrating something that we’ve been saying around here for years. That games, basically, are a terrible waste of a perfectly fine medium. Talking about trying to get his non-gamer friends to play Braid, he says: The tragic thing is they want to play. The music, the visuals, the opening text - all hook them and pique their curiosities. They didn’t know games aspire to explore the human psyche. ...

Robot Monkeys :: Reverse FriendFeedI wanted to leave a comment on the site, but didn't find any place for that, so I'm making up one more post for my own blog. ;)This idea has got a rational seed and pretty much crosses with Atomkeep — people indeed have too many accounts and they need to manage them properly. Either you like it or not — the reality is that there are too many different sites ...

Sometime this afternoon, bloggers discovered the Myspace page of Sadie, the apparent sister of Levi, the reported father-to-be of Bristol Palin’s child. Bristol Palin, daughter of McCain VP Sarah Palin, disclosed a pregnancy after rumors of an incredible cover up emerged. Blogging at the Daily Kos, ArcXIX alleged that Sarah Palin was not the mother of Trig Palin, and that Bristol Palin was actually the mother of young Trig. Such an allegation seemed preposterous and ...

RDX : 對美國的 War on Terror 的分析簡直是清醒而精辟 建議看看 美國的地位是如何向目前不受歡迎的地位轉變的 美國發動的戰爭的真正問題又在哪里 說真的 那些反美的斗士們能從這篇文章里面學去一半就好了America, the World, and George W. BushRobert KaganThe world does not look today the way most anticipated it would after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Great-power competition was supposed to give way to an era of geoeconomics. Ideological competition between democracy and autocracy was supposed to end with the "end of history." Few expected that the United States' unprecedented power would ...

That Pandora might close shop due to onerous royalty fees has made headlines across the industry. If Pandora really follows through on its rhetoric, many fear that the same fate would befall other popular streaming music services online.At Qbox, we believe that our social network music streaming service is perfectly suited to address the music industry's unwillingness to let go of the ghost on untenable licensing terms. Social network music refers to the music published ...

A long time ago, I learned an acronym that can be used to organize our prayers. A.C.T.S. The "A" stands for acknowledge - expressing how great God is and who he is. The "C" stands for confession - Lord forgive me for.... The "T" stands for thanksgiving - thank you for blessing me.... And the "S" stands for supplication - God, please help so and so....I'll be honest I do an okay part at the ...

I was reading through my Google Reader list of new items and I came about this very interesting post by Hua You of Intel. What struck me most is this snippet: ... With proper tools, one experienced developer can tune their parallelized application approaching linear speedup or even super-linear. But that may require hours of training, weeks of practicing and maybe even month/years of experience accumulation. On the other hand, developers are expecting more intelligent ...

These glorious insults are from an era when cleverness with words was still valued, before a great portion of the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words. The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison,” and he said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.” A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable ...

When describing Twitter, I use a number of analogies. Most commonly, I think of Twitter as something like a slow-motion chatroom, or even a collection of away messages. I’ve got another one to add to this list: subject-only email. This new analogy actually comes from my use of the iPhone, where the Twitter interface isn’t all that different from the mail interface. Twitter displays a sender and a brief message, which mirrors the sender and ...

Wiggy has a clip from Mark Driscoll on his blog Mark is talking about how churches are full of chick-ified guys. He talks about the make up of church and says “60% are chicks and the 40% that are dudes are well sort of chicks”He has problems with Fuchsia and lemon!. Pete Greig wrote an article on the 24-7 prayer website and I think it applies to Mark, he’s right but only partly right.I think ...

I was driving to work a couple of days ago, and as a MINI passed me from the opposite direction, the owner stuck his hand out the window, making the victory sign at me. I smiled, and responded by raising my hand. This sort of thing has happened countless times since I bought my MINI. Why do MINI owners do this? Because it’s in the MINI literature. The pamphlets that come with our cars will ...

“Web 2.0,” if it means anything at all, is a term usually used to reflect the modern trend of interactive web sites that encourage users to create and share content. Blogs, wikis such as Wikipedia, forums, social networks, podcasts, comment streams, RSS feeds — all these approaches and technologies form the backbone of the web 2.0 universe. (The term also reflects the second decade of the web’s existence, and the transition of web users from ...

I am a cisgender woman.I use that term occasionally, and I realize that some people might not know what I mean. There are lots of academic-y ways of looking at it, but the simple explanation is that the sex I was assigned at birth matches (to some degree...because there are only 2 assigned sexes, and an infinite number of genders) the gender that I identify as. I was assigned the sex of female, and I ...

I won a contest. One of my favorite applications/sites Text2Go was holding a contest last month. I didn't realize they were, but I won anyway. The rules were the person who used their new speech correction feature to correct the most words in the shared database won a prize. You see, the new version of Text2Go has a cool new utility where you can correct the pronunciation of words for... ******************************************************** **** You are subscribed ...

My friend Jeff’s oldest daughter was learning one day in kindergarten a lesson that I’m sure all of us learned - that you are not supposed to talk to strangers. Having been taught something different, she raised her hand during this lesson and said, “Teacher, my daddy says that’s not right!” Confused, and a little alarmed by this, the teacher asked her to explain. She continued to say, “My daddy says that if you never ...

As an inevitable result of the ongoing military operation in the northern parts of our country, hundreds of men, women and children have died an unfair death while thousands had to leave their homes to escape being sandwiched in the militants vs military war. Recent media reports and personal accounts of individual visitors tell us that many of the families who fled the scene of fighting are now living in refugee camps at Mardan and ...

Reading the recent article by The Economist about Google’s Lively we thought that a bit of analysis would be useful to bring some perspective to the current state of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds are a fad, it’s for pervs and freaks The “pervs and freaks” comes from a user’s comment about MySpace, but it sounded so nice we could not resist to share it. Of course, uncontrolled environments are fertile ground for primal human instincts ...