Posts filed under “Big Ideas”
I Am Lazy
I am lazy. I’m the laziest person I know. But I’ve learned to take advantage of this trait. I think Bill Gates described it best: I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because he will find an easy way to do it. I suppose my packed calendar, extensive CV, and […]
Amazon’s Failure at Targeted Advertising
Let’s talk about companies that squander targeted advertising opportunities. Amazon has the perfect opportunity to serve amazingly targeted ads directly to me, on a device I use at least twice a day. I’ve owned every generation of the Kindle since the original launch, working my way to the $79 Kindle Wi-Fi with Special Offers, the absolute best Kindle […]
Depression and Internet Usage
Sriram Chellappan and Raghavendra Kotikalapudi wrote an interesting piece called “How Depressives Surf the Web” for The New York Times. Their findings include: The more a participant’s score on the survey indicated depression, the more his or her Internet usage included…high levels of [peer-to-peer] sharing files (like movies and music)…very high e-mail usage…[and] increased amounts […]
Hallucinating in the Quiet Room
A room so quiet no one can stand it for more than 45 minutes, for The Times Herald, by Bill Ward: Besides being able to hear one’s own heart, stomach and even inner ear, or the sounds emitted by a cellphone’s display, first-timers in the quiet room find their other senses discombobulated by “cross-modal” perceptual […]
Clicking Banner Ads
Steve Hanov: In recent years, hundreds of the brightest minds of modern civilization have been hard at work not curing cancer. Instead, they have been refining techniques for getting you and me to click on banner ads. This is a problem.
TED Censorship: The Rich Don’t Create Jobs
Edit: You can read Chris Anderson’s full explaination on his blog. Here’s an excerpt: We discussed [whether or not to feature the video] internally and ultimately told the speaker we did not plan to post. He did not react well. He had hired a PR firm to promote the talk to MoveOn and others, and the PR firm […]