Month: July 2008
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Top 50 Business Intellectuals
A list of the top 50 business intellectuals, as compiled by Accenture in 2002. Initially a list of 300, the top 50 were found using the following rankings: Google hits The LexisNexis media databases to 1997 Citations found in the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index to 1997 The top 5: Michael E.…
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The World is Flat – Audiobook Giveaway
The Other Side of Outsourcing is a Discovery Channel documentary by Thomas Friedman on high-tech outsourcing to India. In it Friedman visits a call centre in Bangalore to interview the young Indians working there, and then travels to an impoverished rural part of India where he debates the pros and cons of globalization with locals.…
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Losing Your Sense of Smell
Three years ago Elizabeth Zierah caught a cold; a few weeks later she was back to normal… except that she had lost her sense of smell. In Slate, she writes about the miseries of losing the sense of smell (and in the process, taste). I lost normal function on the left side of my body…
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Umami: The Fifth Taste
Sweet, bitter, sour, salt… and umami. The fifth taste. Psychophysicists have long suggested the existence of four taste ‘primaries’, referred to as the basic tastes. Umami is now accepted as the fifth basic taste, exemplified by the non-salty sensations evoked by some free amino acids such as monosodium glutamate. Umami is a Japanese word meaning…
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Barackbook
Republican site Barackbook mocks Obama’s Facebook support. With ‘his’ status set as “Barack is hoping to settle on an Iraq policy before November”, Barackbook attempts to highlight some of Obama’s “more controversial real life ‘friends,’ while cheerfully mocking his much-hailed online sheen”. In all, the site is a shockingly clever 21st century twist on the…
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Secrets of Book Publishing
The author of Bit Literacy (one of the Startup Bibles) on the secrets of book publishing that they wish they had known: The publishers are not doing it for the love of books; they want something that sells. If your book will sell, it doesn’t matter what you’re writing about. Your main job – practically…
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More Psychology of Mirrors
Mind Hacks has brought to my attention a number of interesting mirror-related studies: Mirror Agnosia […] a condition where people lose their sense of reflection. In these cases, the patient still has intact knowledge about mirrors, they can describe what they do and how they work, but they can’t seem to put it into practice.…
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Startup Ideas Y Combinator Would Like to Fund
A list of startup ideas Y Combinator would like to fund: A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom Simplified browsing More variants of CRM Web Office apps Online learning Tools for measurement A form of search that depends on design New payment methods A web-based Excel/database hybrid A buffer against…
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More Interaction Design Patterns
A huge library of interaction design patterns; from accordion navigation to virtual product display. [This library is] a reference or basic ‘toolkit’ you can use when designing user experiences. It is no substitute for creative design, it simply seeks to describe what we know and have learned about solutions you will find abundantly on the…
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The Psychology of Mirrors
The Psychology of Mirrors Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, [and] were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion. “When people are made to be self-aware,…