Month: July 2009
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Traffic Psychology and The Commuters Paradox
There aren’t many people, I believe, who are able to drive and who are not interested in traffic dynamics. Jonah Lehrer, in a recent column for Seed, takes a brief look at traffic psychology; including ‘the commuters paradox’ and the ‘critical density’. They found that, when people are choosing where to live, they consistently underestimate the pain of…
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Weather Forecasts and Economic Development
The economic impact of meteorological forecasts is wide-ranging and, sometimes, unexpected. A few of these influences are described briefly before this (tongue-in-cheek, yet still somewhat logical) piece of advice is offered to developing countries: A study from the mid-1990s […] concluded that every dollar invested in weather forecasting services would save $10 in economic losses.…
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Harnessing Collective Intelligence Online
The ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ theory, as popularised by James Surowiecki’s 2004 book of the same name, is an important—if misunderstood—theory that has influenced a lot of recent online ventures that rely on social networks and collaboration to work intelligently. For those who want to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds for their own ventures,…
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Cognitive Benefits of Exercise
Walter van den Broek (AKA Dr Shock) provides a summary of the research on the neuroscience of exercise, or: the cognitive benefits of an active lifestyle. Exercise… improves learning and intelligence scores. increases the resilience of the brain in later life resulting in a cognitive reserve. [attenuates] the decline of memory, cortex and hippocampus atrophy…
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Reporting Company Results
I don’t know if this is common knowledge or not (which in my case usually means it is), but Rowan Simpson gives a concise lesson detailing the three ways companies report their results, and how misleading each can be. Size “We made a net profit of $15 million.” Growth “Revenues increased by 9%.” Acceleration “We…
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Iconic Logo Designers
Last year logo designer David Airey launched Iconic Logo Designers. As he describes it from his post announcing the launch: On the iconic logo designers website, you’ll find biographical info and resources on more than 35 of the world’s most outstanding creatives. Seeing this I was reminded of how much I love the elegant simplicity…
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The Declining and Thriving News Magazines
While Time and Newsweek saw double digit falls in revenue last year, The Economist saw similar sized gains—despite increasing subscription rates (previously). The Atlantic discusses this phenomenon, looking in detail at why The Economist is thriving in a market seemingly in decline. The Economist prides itself on cleverly distilling the world into a reasonably compact…
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Microsoft, Google and Startups Compared
After visiting both the Microsoft and Google campuses to discuss Stack Overflow (Google Tech Talk: Learning from StackOverflow.com), Joel Spolsky discusses the similarities and differences between the two corporations and his own small company. What I’ll probably remember most about the trip is what I learned about company culture and how it’s affected by scale. Giant corporations…