Iconic Photos
Famous, Infamous and Iconic Photos
Stan Stearns (1935 – 2012)
Stan Stearns, who took the definitive photograph at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, has died, aged 76.
If you love photography you will want to check out this site....
Friday, March 09, 2012
Iconic Photos
Thursday, March 08, 2012
"Kara" by Quantic Dream - YouTube
via youtube.com
This is a fascinating little short on robotic sentiency......
Killer Whale Submarine a killer personal submersible | Crave - CNET
Submarines are awesome. A submarine shaped like a Killer Whale is off-the-charts awesome. It can be yours for a cool $100,000.
It's a whale! It's a submarine! It's a whale submarine!
(Credit: Hammacher Schlemmer)Jules Verne had the market on imaginative submarines cornered for many long years. And then Hammacher Schlemmer came along and offered a $100,000 Killer Whale Submarine.
The Killer Whale Submarine can breach from the water, just like a real whale. It has pectoral fins with control levers and a 255-horsepower supercharged Rotax axial flow engine. I can't really explain what that is exactly, but it sounds super cool.
via news.cnet.com
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Great Acquisitions! Now Put a Fork in ERP | TechCrunch
The bottom line is this: A series of cloud acquisitions won’t help lumbering old ERP one bit. Acquiring cloud companies doesn’t make you a cloud company any more than buying a Giants jersey makes you Eli Manning. It’s not a strategy for an on-premise solutions company. It’s an attempt to distract customers and hope they will forget about the ERP boat anchor they’re stuck with.
The big ERP players had their day, but now it’s coming to an end. This is the classic Innovator’s Dilemma. For too long SAP and Oracle have watched the enterprise market innovate around them, stuck to their knitting and failed to adapt. The cloud technology wave has passed them by, and now it’s too late.
It’s time for SAP and Oracle to either accept that they need to adapt and go all cloud, or accept that they are going to go the way of the mainframe stuffed in the back closet. They won’t die completely. They’ll just become irrelevant.
via techcrunch.com
Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than all the Macs it sold in 28 years | asymco
Tim Cook on the 55 million iPads sold to date:
This 55 is something no one would have guessed. Including us. To put it in context, it took us 22 years to sell 55 million Macs. It took us about 5 years to sell 22 million iPods, and it took us about 3 years to sell that many iPhones. And so, this thing is, as you said, it’s on a trajectory that’s off the charts.
via Transcript: Apple CEO Tim Cook at Goldman Sachs – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Tech.
That gave me an idea. Here is a plot of each major computing product Apple sold throughout its history shown as a cumulative total since product launch.
The iOS platform as a whole reached 316 million cumulative units at the end of last year. The iOS platform overtook the OS X platform in under four years and more iOS devices were sold in 2011 (156 million) than all the Macs ever sold (122 million).
via asymco.com
Minimal Mac | Microsoft's Biggest Miss
Microsoft’s DNA is software. They are primarily a software company. The very name of the company is a mashup of microchip and software. And of all of the software they produce, one is more important than all the rest and a huge revenue source that the very livelihood of the company has come to depend on.
Are you thinking Windows? Wrong.
This is also the main cross-platform software they build. Got it yet? Yep.
via minimalmac.com
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Microsoft's new Windows 8 logo: This one looks like a window | Microsoft - CNET News
The software giant continues its march toward releasing its upcoming operating system, debuting a new logo that does away with the flaglike design of Windows past.
The new Windows 8 logo, with previous Windows logos.
(Credit: Microsoft)Microsoft unveiled a new logo for the upcoming Windows 8, featuring a clean one-color design that leans heavily on its new Metro user interface.
via news.cnet.com
50 years ago, John Glenn became America's biggest hero | Geek Gestalt - CNET News
Monday is the 50th anniversary of NASA astronaut John Glenn's mission to be the first American to orbit the Earth. On that day, Glenn became one of America's most important heroes.
On Feb. 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. Here, Glenn is being inserted into Friendship 7, his capsule, prior to launch.
(Credit: NASA)
via news.cnet.com
Sunday, February 05, 2012
The Real Facebook IPO Winners? Sean Parker And Bono - Forbes
The real winners in Facebook’s upcoming public offering will be its current owners. Brian Barrett has a helpful pie chart illustrating just who these lucky few happen to be:
Honestly, I had no idea that Bono had such a large invest
via forbes.com
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Robert Scheer: The Democrats Who Unleashed Wall Street and Got Away With It - Robert Scheer's Columns - Truthdig
That Lawrence Summers, a president emeritus of Harvard, is a consummate distorter of fact and logic is not a revelation. That he and Bill Clinton, the president he served as treasury secretary, can still get away with disclaiming responsibility for our financial meltdown is an insult to reason.
via truthdig.com
This is Obama's biggest failure....the US government has done nothing to ensure the type of global meltdown we had will not happen again. Nothing....
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Facebook’s Revenue Growth Strategy: Ad Targeting By In-App Behavior | TechCrunch
Since Facebook has already exhausted much of the supply of highly monetizable first world users, it will need to make more money per user to grow revenue. Higher click through and conversion rates of action spec targeted ads will allow Facebook to charge advertisers more per click and waste fewer impressions to get those clicks. It’s also expanding ad inventory by complementing its ad sidebars with Sponsored Story ads in the web news feed, and it will likely monetize its mobile user base in the same way. By serving more ads at a higher cost per click, ad revenue will grow with time.
Until the launch of action spec targeting, advertisers looking to target those with purchase intent often went to search or ad networks employing cookie retargeting that scraped a user’s browsing history. Facebook only offered biographic, social, and interest targeting. These are effective for institutional brand advertising and demand generation, but aren’t as useful for reaching users in the purchase funnel. Direct response performance advertisers sometimes had to buy large volumes of clicks to drive one conversion.
Open Graph action spec targeting will help these Facebook advertisers reach users who’ve stated they’ve already made a related purchase, or plan to. This could help it break out of the demand generation stage of the purchase funnel and into the more lucrative demand fulfillment stage where Google search ads currently reign. Some Facebook advertising experts tell me action spec targeting could double ad conversion rates.
via techcrunch.com
If Facebook can pull this off successfully, their valuation of $100B is entirely justified.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Apple’s quarter results visualized
Apple’s quarter results visualized
An interactive chart containing various data from Apple’s quarter results. How to use and read it.
via frncs.co
Friday, January 27, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Apple’s Massive Numbers And Some Context | TechCrunch
Apple’s profit of $13.1 billion was equal to their revenue in Q4 2010, as Jordan Golson notes. To be clear, that was just a year and a quarter ago. That’s how quickly Apple is growing.
via techcrunch.com
These numbers are just hard to fathom...absolutely mind numbing.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
John Mann at the Victoria House Concert B: Venice is Sinking - YouTube
via youtube.com
Another video from the concert we saw last weekend. His story about how "Venice is Sinking" song came about is hilarious! Well worth the listen...enjoy!
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Microsoft Girds Itself For Windows 8 Battle And Beyond | TechCrunch
The next year will show Microsoft positioning itself for major product synthesis. The post-PC era isn’t here, as some people are fond of suggesting, but it is coming, and Microsoft wants to guarantee itself a part in it. Not an easy task for the company that pioneered the PC era. They almost seem obsolete by definition — but the straitlaced Microsoft has been loosening up ever since Vista, and they might just have learned enough to ride this next wave without washing out.
via techcrunch.com
Microsoft cannot make any missteps in order for this strategy to work. They are behind the 8-ball but they still have a chance to make an impact.
Monday, January 16, 2012
John Mann - Home For a Rest - YouTube
via youtube.com
What an amazing night!! The singular best way to see an artist that you like.....in someone's living room. I took this video with my iPhone....John played two sets with the total concert being over 2.5 hrs. Even better the house was in walking distance of our house (of course only in Fernwood).
Sunday, January 15, 2012
OK, MG, I Take It Back | TechCrunch
OS fragmentation, though, is an utter disaster. Ice Cream Sandwich is by all accounts very nice; but what good does that do app developers, when according to Google’s own stats, 30% of all Android devices are still running an OS that is 20 months old? I sure would have liked to stop caring about Android 2.2 bugs fixed in 2.3. It would have been awfully nice to be able to use the animation libraries from Android 3.0, described in this almost-a-year-old blog post, to say nothing of Ice Cream Sandwich’s features; but at this rate, Android developers aiming for a mass audience will have to wait another year, if not longer, before they can actually build apps that take advantage of all the shiny new features.
via techcrunch.com
This really sheds some light on the differences in the platform. It remains to be seen whether this will really hold back the Android market.....there is so much momentum that app developers cannot afford to ignore the platform regardless of how difficult it is for them to provide backwards compatibility for all the versions of the OS.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Terapeak Appoints Chief Revenue Officer
Terapeak, the leading provider of e-commerce research and payment analytics, is pleased to announce the appointment of Scott Crawford to the role of Chief Revenue Officer. Mr. Crawford joins Terapeak from Boomi (acquired by Dell) and Ascential Software (acquired by IBM).
via sfgate.com
My new boss ;-)
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Want A Great Team? Focus On Talent, Not Hiring | TechCrunch
One of the questions most founders always ask is about the key secrets to hiring. What they need to understand is that there’s a big difference between “hiring” and “talent”.
via techcrunch.com
Great article on talent and hiring.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
CrunchBase Reveals: The Average Successful Startup Raises $25.3 Million, Sells For $196.8 Million | TechCrunch
Most investments fail but the few successful ones more than make all the money back — or so startup investors hope. But what sort of returns do these profitable exits bring in? According to a new analysis of all the exits listed in CrunchBase, the average successful company has raised $25.3 million, and sold for $196.8 million, for investor profits of 676% (if you assume the investors own 100% of the company, which they normally don’t).
Meanwhile, IPO-bound companies generated lower percentage returns, but made a lot more money per exit. The average one raised $580.3 million while private, then went public with a market cap of $2.3 billion on its first day of public trading for 303% profit on investment (yes, investors probably aren’t selling all their stock on the first day, this is just one way to measure IPO exits). Mouse over the dots below for more details.
The analysis, done by Belarus-based engineer and TechCrunch reader Alexey Tolkachiov with help from his brother Anton, looked at all CrunchBase-listed companies that had exits over the last five, and are ten years old or younger. So, these stats (which you can also find on their data analysis site, BuzzSparks) are squarely focused on the modern startup world. And that’s not the only qualifier here. As readers should note whenever we cover CrunchBase data, some company information it contains may be incomplete or inaccurate, even if it’s the largest free source for startup information in the world.
Anyway, the analysis has also uncovered some other surprising trends in recent startup returns.
Exit prices fluctuate over the course of a company’s life before it exits — but they don’t trend upwards the older the company is, overall. Peak ages seem to be 1.5 years and 7.5 years in, for whatever reason. This data suggests that selling early could save you some time making money
….The acquisition price per employee appears to peak when companies are a little less than two years old, or four and a half years old, or a little over five years old. My guess is that a few extra lucrative deals are throwing things off here.
Nobody Understands Debt - NYTimes.com
But Washington isn’t just confused about the short run; it’s also confused about the long run. For while debt can be a problem, the way our politicians and pundits think about debt is all wrong, and exaggerates the problem’s size.
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
via nytimes.com
Monday, January 02, 2012
Chart: How Google And Apple Won The Smartphone Wars | TechCrunch
What a difference just one year can make. In our Year in Tech post, I pointed out that 2011 was the year that Apple and Google won the smartphone wars. I put together the chart above from comScore U.S. mobile subscriber estimates to illustrate the dramatic shift in market share in the smartphone market. In less than 18 months, Apple’s and Google’s combined market share of U.S. mobile subscribers for iPhones and Android phones went from 43.8 percent to 75.6 percent between August, 2010 and November, 2011.
via techcrunch.com
What have you done | TechCrunch
Steve Gilmour on Steve Jobs
How audacious it was to overturn our love/hate relationship with computers. The first clue was the sofa in the middle of the stage at the iPad introduction. Here was the man who perfected the computer as art form invading the center of the television’s turf. Disrupting the click of the mouse with the insouciant swipe of the hand. Enough of this, what else? Replacing the linear steps of navigating to and from documents with Siri and her guidance. Is this who you mean?
None of these ideas are new. Jobs was not spending his time on incremental improvement. He was choosing his battles and fighting the next war before others could marginalize the opportunity. He viewed each decision, each choice, as requiring his and our best effort at seizing the day while we still had the light. In that pact, we were no more the audience than he was the inventor. We were collaborators in transforming ourselves to the people we thought we could be.
via techcrunch.com
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
parislemon • The Windows Phone Problem In Three Words: Way Too Late.
The Windows Phone Problem In Three Words: Way Too Late.
Earlier today, Charlie Kindel, a former Windows Phone GM, posted some thoughts on why Windows Phone hasn’t taken off. Essentially, he blames Microsoft’s model pressuring both OEMs and carriers — so much so that neither really wants to push the platform.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I largely agree with his criticisms of Android. He believes Google’s platform has completely laid down for both the OEMs and the carriers to the detriment of the users (hence, the fragmentation we continue to see). This has allowed Android to flourish with regard to market share, but he thinks it won’t last forever because eventually the consumers will revolt, just as they did against Windows Mobile.
I agree.
Where I don’t agree with him is that Windows Phone is the correct model. I like the model a lot more than Android’s, and I like the OS a lot. But I don’t like the OEM strategy. And I hate the timing.
The new Nokia Windows Phone device looks nice (though I haven’t personally used it yet), but the others I’ve seen are largely the same crap that Android phones run on. The iPhone blows these phones out of the water.
Kindel believes Apple’s strategy (of making the devices themselves and bending the carriers to their will this way) will eventually backfire. But he declines to elaborate as to why he believes this (he says it will be a different post).
All of this is very interesting to think about. But I think Kindel is silly to overlook a couple key things.
First, Apple’s initial model, while frustrating, was actually quite smart. They partnered with one carrier to ensure they got the terms they wanted. And rode this until other customers demanding the iPhone hit a fever pitch. At this point, the other carriers (in the U.S. at least) had to accept to play ball with Apple on their own terms.
Apple could afford to do this because they knew their device — their complete device: OS and hardware — was that good.
But Apple could also afford to do this because they were first to market. When the iPhone launched in 2007, the other smartphones on the market were shit. There was no actual competition for the iPhone. The first Android phones that launched over a year later were a joke.
Contrast that with Windows Phone which launched far too late into the market. Kindel never mentions it, but you simply can’t downplay that fact. Had Windows Phone launched in 2007 or even 2008, the story would have been different. Instead, it launched in late 2010.
Way too late.
Two to three years in the hole, the only way Windows Phone can win the market now is to make a product that is leaps and bounds better than what’s out there. They need something that’s an iPhone-in-2007 type product. The product they have, while good, isn’t that.
It’s not enough to be better. (And we can argue as to whether iOS or Android or Windows Phone is better.) You need to present a product so good that people have to buy it. Windows Phone isn’t close to being that. I’m sorry, but it’s just not.
And one other big reason for that is something else Kindel oddly downplays: apps. Even if you think Windows Phone is better than iOS or Android right now, you’re unlikely to buy it because all of your favorite apps are available on those competing platforms and very few are available for Windows Phone.
Microsoft has been pushing hard to change this, offering third-party developers bags of cash to port their apps to Windows Phone. But for most developers, the money isn’t enough. The users just aren’t there. It’s very much a chicken-and-egg problem.
I just think the main Windows Phone problem is a lot more simple than Kindel wants to believe. He blames carrier marketing — yadda, yadda. Microsoft has all the money in the world; if it was just a marketing problem, they could fix that.
He also thinks it’s almost a conspiracy theory to ensure the Android model — which is favorable to carriers and OEMs — wins out. To some extent, I have no doubt this is true. If I was a carrier or OEM, Android would be my best friend. But Windows Phone availability in 2008 may have altered this.
You can’t overlook being two to three years late to the market. And as a result, having essentially no third-party developer support. This does matter.
So what can Windows Phone do? I don’t know. But I’d consider betting it all on the Xbox Live integration. Or I’d go back to the drawing board and come up with something completely different to blow the market away. I’d invent the iPhone in a world of RAZRs all over again. Small task, I know.
via parislemon.com
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Monday, December 05, 2011
Damn You Auto Correct Reveals 9 Funniest Texts of the Year
The auto-correct feature on mobile phones can be a blessing for catching text message typos but also a nightmare when a word is automatically replaced with an embarrassing one.
Popular blog Damn You Auto Correct — which features a collection of outrageous auto-corrected text messages submitted by readers — has unveiled its top laugh-out-loud entries of the year, based on Facebook shares, tweets, comments and page views.
Here’s a look at some of the most wild and blush-worthy texts that topped the list. Warning: Some of the content is not safe for work.
via mashable.com
Friday, December 02, 2011
HTML5 Smart Board Attempts To Out-Surface The Surface | TechCrunch
Intuilabs is showing off their proof-of-concept HTML5-based multi-touch smartboard in an effort to prove a) that HTML5 is pretty rocking and b) that someday we may all have smart tabletops in our home. To see the big screen in action you can fast forward to about 3 minutes in.
It’s obviously a little wonky in terms of applicability in the real world, but these guys aim to add multi-touch interfaces to the entire web, at least in some form. It will definitely be fascinating when web apps can do what native apps can do, especially when it comes to pinching, zooming, et al.
Introducing the Web as a multi-touch application hosting option opens the door to instant availability and universal access, giving retailers, advertisers and the like a powerful new medium for communicating with their prospects and customers. Web designers and their clients will be able to create immersive Web experiences without requiring plug-in downloads or excessive cross-browser scripting to ensure compatibility. Interactive mobile phone experiences could be ported to the Web, establishing a consistent look-and-feel, and then expanded to take advantage of additional screen real estate. Ambitious retailers, hospitality vendors and the like could take things a step further and carry over the phone and Web experience to their stores, lobbies and gathering places through interactive tablets, kiosks, tables and touchscreen walls.
via techcrunch.com
Thursday, December 01, 2011
The state of digital music (as I see it) | Jason Paul
Several months ago I wrote an essay about how I thought Netflix could save music. Since then I’ve become a big believer in subscription music services. I chose Rdio because I liked the design, the social aspect and lack of ads. I honestly don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t use a subscription music service (MOG, Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio) instead of paying more and listening to less with iTunes. I’ve come down pretty hard on iTunes in essays and on Twitter. I fail see why we need it and how it’s good. In this so called ‘cloud’ age owning an mp3 has become redundant. While I’m skeptical of the cloud for personal data I think distributed media (music, movies) has found a perfect and profitable future in the cloud. Apple has introduced their version of cloud music called iCloud which will be released soon. My gut response is an immediate aversion. It seems better than the totally wasteful Google and Amazon cloud music offerings. The problem I foresee in iCloud is that it continues to coddle the antiquated consumer impulse to objectify music. While iTunes can claim they are helping artists earn money off of digital music it actually amounts to an enormous scam against both consumer and artist.
I am 100% for supporting the artist. To use iTunes as an argument for artist charity is delusional. An artist can sell directly on their website and collect 100% profit instead of paying the middleman. We are talking about the world wide web damnit. I’m more likely to buy when I know my money goes direct to the artist. With regards to subscription music I do see immense value for distribution. It’s interesting Apple won’t be jumping into music subscriptions as they are the most poised to popularise this very rational approach. But they won’t cannibalise their very expensive old-school approach to selling mp3s (in my opinion worthless collections of data).
Why I think Rdio’s social model is so important is because of the access it provides. It’s not just access to any impressively large library of music but it’s also access to a network of audiophiles interacting around common music tastes. Where Rdio is all about discovery iTunes leans more on traditional promotion. Discovery is much better for artists so their work can speak for itself. Most interestingly on Rdio I’ve noticed that really good indie music tends to hold its own against pop juggernauts and in many cases does better. This could be a reflexion on the Rdio user base.
Music in a social network has other important implications. Many Twitter users seem to be aiming for and a few have actually attained a kind of social capital (influence). In a music social network gaining this kind of influence is actually more straightforward and less self-serving. The goal simply being to find great music from like-minded listeners. At least that’s why I’m hooked on Rdio. I’m always looking for my next art pop fix and the people I follow represent leads for my addiction. I love discovering new, good music. There’s way too much music but nowhere near enough good music.
My positive experience with Rdio has convinced me that the success of the music economy (and the end of what they call piracy) lies exclusively with access, cloud and social. I’m so sure of this I won’t even bother elaborating and let the immediate future convince any skeptics. What I hope you will consider is that any digital music service that isn’t based on these three attributes is DOA. That’s right, Amazon and Google, have already failed in there forays into digital music. What absolute redundancy! Having people backup/duplicate music files that could simply be accessed in the cloud?
The Future
I’ll close and go back to the future and recount a social music experiment I participated in on Rdio. Although it is a social network it is surprisingly (and deliberately) difficult to communicate with people directly to ensure the network maintains its focus on music. The desire to communicate with other users is so strong that people create playlists and use them as forums where they communicate through comments. Someone started a forum where they devised an experiment to get as many people in the network as possible to listen to the terrible 1976 comedy album by Redd Foxx “You Better Wash Your Ass.” It was an effort to get popular artists such as Fleet Foxes and Adele bumped from the Rdio heavy rotation charts. I did my part and left the album on loop all night (on mute as it is pretty terrible). The experiment worked. The next day Redd Foxx’s album was the top album in Rdio’s heavy rotation.
From the comments on the forum it seemed that a few Rdio power users who’d participated were a little disillusioned with the experiment. Perhaps they felt a little used and aesthetically compromised (I felt a little like that). What I found incredibly interesting about the experiment was how it simultaneously revealed how powerful users are and how easily the social music system can be gamed. If/when subscription music goes mainstream we undoubtably will have to deal with major labels paying off listeners to exclusively play their releases to gain rankings. The algorithm will evolve as well hopefully in favor of the real user. Perhaps there will never be a totally fair music utopia but for the moment it’s nice to be part of a network where the good stuff, even when obscure, actually gets noticed.
Related content:
Categories: Blog, Essays | Tags: access, Apple, cloud, iTunes, music, Rdio, subscriptions | Permalink
via jasonpaul.net
Wow....Jason's analysis is exactly how I feel about current music offerings. First I stored my CD collection 5 years ago (never unboxed) as everything I listened too was from iTunes and now I never use iTunes and just use rdio.....
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Netflix scores new Arrested Development episodes for 2013 | Electronista
Netflix scores new Arrested Development episodes for 2013
updated 08:20 pm EST, Fri November 18, 2011
Netflix gets lock on Arrested Development return
Fox and Imagine Television confirmed a major deal on Friday to get new episodes of Arrested Development. The agreement outlined by Variety would revive the cult hit TV show starting from early 2013. It reportedly won out in a fierce bidding competition with traditional TV that included Showtime, among others.
The terms of the deal weren't given out, but are likely to be expensive. Netflix' first exclusive show, the Kevin Spacey headliner House of Cards, is unofficially believed to have cost over $100 million.
It comes in sync with plans for an Arrested Development movie and could be crucial to Netflix keeping its status as the primary source of online video in the US. Netflix is on the verge of losing Starz content that, while a small piece of its overall content, may cost it variety that it has been working for years to build. A deal, while not coming for over a year, would help smooth out the public relations fiascoes created first by hiking the price of getting both DVDs and streaming as well as the flip-flop on splitting off DVDs under Qwikster.
If exclusive, it could significantly shut out competitors like Apple and Amazon. Both as a whole get much more recent content through their willingness to sell TV episodes, but they rarely have true exclusives.
By Electronista Staff
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via electronista.com
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Metamemory and the User Experience | UX Magazine
An article published in Science Magazine in June provides evidence that the Internet has become an “external part” of our memory systems. Rather than remembering information, we seem to have “outsourced” this effortful task to an entity other than ourselves.
On the face of it, this is not an astounding finding in that psychologists have demonstrated for over 30 years that we use outside sources, such as family or team members, to supplement our less-than-perfect memories. What makes this research remarkable, and of interest to the UX community, is that the researchers found that when we expect to be able to access information in the future, we tend to have reduced memory for the actual information, but enhanced memory for where to find the information. Thus, while we do measurably worse at remembering that the capital of Vermont is Montpellier, we apparently remember with greater accuracy, where on the bookshelf the atlas is located. These findings suggest that making sites memorable as the repository of information may be the key to gaining return visitors.
What the Science Demonstrated
The Science Magazine article’s authors conducted a series of experiments that explored whether the Internet actually functions as an external memory source. In the first experiment they found that attempting to answer difficult trivia questions disposes people to think of computer-related terms and brand names such as Google and Yahoo!. In the second experiment they found that memory for information is better if people do not believe they will have access to the information in the future. In the third and fourth experiments they showed that when people believe they will have access to information in the future, they are more likely to remember where to find the information than actually remembering the information itself.
The authors propose that this is an adaptive use of memory—we use the Internet as an external source of memory because it is available as an easy repository for knowledge we do not store in our brains. They conclude that we are using the Internet in a manner akin to transactive memory, a social form of external memory in which individuals within a team or social group rely on one another to be sources of information.
These findings suggest that people are willing to spend more energy remembering the location of information rather than the information per se. What does this mean for the UX community? Perhaps not surprisingly, the answer lies in the three components of transactive memory: specialization, coordination, and credibility.
Transactive Memory and Reliance on a Conglomerate
Transactive memory theory is based on the idea that individuals can serve as external memory stores for others. Typically, the theory relates to groups of people such as families or work groups. Each individual has specialized knowledge, and other group members rely on the “expert” to be the keeper of that knowledge and share it when necessary. Although people often form their own memories of information, they also rely on others to hold that knowledge. For example, one spouse might be the keeper of knowledge about how the furnace works, allowing the other spouse to ask for the information if it’s needed without having to retain the memory him or herself. The memory is transactive in that the content of the memory is passed between the knower and the person with the need to know.
Transactive memory is thought to be composed of three components: specialization, coordination, and credibility. Specialization results from one member of a team assuming expertise in knowledge not held by other team members. Coordination occurs when the team members develop a “metamemory” of each member’s specialization, and credibility describes the extent to which team members believe in the accuracy and trustworthiness of one another’s knowledge. In other words, once a team has developed a transactive memory and each team member believes in each other’s skills, then success of the group is predicted by the conglomerate rather than relying on each individual to remember everything. The gain here is twofold: first, the group can rely on an expert, and second the group gains greater efficiency.
Successful Websites Reflect Elements of Transactive Memory
Singular purpose
It’s spooky, upon consideration, how many successful websites faithfully mirror the components of transactive memory described above. Some of the most successful sites specialize in a particular offering—Expedia does travel, Epicurious focuses on food, and Amazon sells stuff. Even though they are large sites, there is a core offering that is easy to remember. Amazon may sell many products, but they do not offer information about how to use these products or news about the product manufacturers. Similarly, Expedia is known for travel—booking flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, etc.—but is not known for advice on planning a trip. These sites have a singular purpose and state it unequivocally. We return to them when we want what they offer; there is no need to search for “travel” or “books.” Thus, site specialization may contribute to memorability.
Lack of specialization can potentially hurt a site’s memorability. Case in point: About.com. This site attempts to be all things to all people. Lack of broad loyalty may be due to users’ inability to pinpoint what precisely the site can offer them. Breadth makes it cumbersome.
There is one way, however, where breadth is apparently, powerful: what if people believe a site is the gatekeeper to all knowledge? As a matter of fact they do. Google appears to have become our metamemory and in this way has cornered the information market. Don’t believe me? Just Google it!
Niche market segments, products or services, or geographic concentration of resources may be recommended. This strategy may increase the probability that users will remember the location of information rather than the information itself.
Coordination is metamemory
Coordination is the user’s awareness of all the sites needed to get through the day. Supplies, sustenance, and resuscitation easily translate into shopping, food, and vacation. This, in turn, is one step away from Amazon, Recipes.com, and Travelocity. Metamemory, therefore, is the awareness and categorization of all information sources.
Just being memorable is not enough
Finally, credibility of a site is crucial for return visits. Memorability of information location is not enough; users need to feel that a site is trustworthy in order to make it worth remembering. Trust can be generated in multiple ways. Firstly, trust comes through making a site understandable. Understanding provides a feeling of control that results in positive regard for a site and site owner. Trust is also increased when a site functions without errors and appears professional. Credibility is also dependent upon the perceived accuracy of content. Sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor utilize user-generated content, and trust is an emergent property based upon convergence of opinions. Additionally, the authenticity of posted information is subject to questioning by the users themselves and thereby subject to the requisite checks and balances. Alternately, sites like CNET gain their credibility through the use of expert reviewers. Regardless of how it is earned, trust is a critical component of memorability.
The science has offered us a blueprint for gathering and keeping a loyal and satisfied customer base. This is likely to work best when websites use the heuristics of human cognition to allow the customer’s experience to echo their own natural behavior. In this specific case, being a credible information source for a specialized offering seems to form the foundation and framework for loyal customers because of the human penchant to form metamemory systems.
via uxmag.com
Narcissists Feel Like Better Leaders | Psychology Today
Because narcissists are so confident in their abilities and opinions, they may keep group members from sharing information. In situations where shared information is crucial to good performance, a narcissistic leader may cause a group to be very confident that their leader is a good one and yet they may perform poorly.
To test this possibility, groups of three people were asked to evaluate candidate for job. Before getting together as a group, a leader was selected at random. The group leader was the one who had to make the final decision in the task. The participants in this study also filled out an inventory that measured their level of narcissism.
Each group member was given a list of 9 characteristics for each of three job candidates. Some of those characteristics were given to each group member, but some were given only to individuals. The descriptions were cleverly set up so that one job candidate would look best if only the information that all group members shared was considered, but that if the group pooled all of its information, then a second job candidate would actually be the best one.
Two results emerged from this study.
First, group leaders who had a high score on the narcissism scale, were generally seen as more effective leaders than group leaders who had a low score on the narcissism scale. That is the typical result from studies of narcissism and leadership.
Second, groups with more narcissistic leaders tended to share less information than those with less narcissistic leaders, and as a result, they made worse decisions. So, even though the groups with narcissistic leaders felt better about their group leader, they actually performed more poorly than those with less narcissistic leaders.
What does this mean?
There are often two distinct issues in group performance. First, groups do need to have some confidence that they are going to succeed. That confidence can increase motivation to continue with a difficult task. In that way, a narcissistic leader can be good.
However, if the group needs to share information in order to succeed, then narcissistic leaders need to curb their tendency to dominate the discussion and decision making and let others share information. Otherwise, the group runs the risk of rushing to judgment without key information that might lead to better performance.
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