ZA

Movie Review Prototype for WNYC's The Takeaway

2008-05-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

As always, I seem to be extremely challenged at regularly updating this blog, especially now that I am back in graduate school.

I'm currently working on a class project in the Stanford d.school trying to redesign the movie review segment on The Takeaway, a new morning radio show on WNYC (NPR). One of our prototypes takes voice reviews from multiple listeners and combines them in a short segment, which we call the Mother of All Reviews (reference to the Mother of All Trailers, something they currently do on the show).

How does that sound? Did it give you a sense of what people think about the movie?

Our goal was to give listeners a "sense" of what people think about the movie. People don't particularly care about one long anonymous review, but the radio medium doesn't allow people to scan reviews like they do on IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes. So if we put together several short reviews, would it give people the "sense" of what the general public think about the movie?

What do you think?

The $13 ramen experience

2008-03-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

Today I had the 極新味 (Kiwami Shin Aji) Ramen (pictured above) at 一風堂 (Ippudo) which cost 1300 yen (roughly US$13).

If that doesn't sound expensive for ramen, it is. A $13 ramen is similar to a $13 burger, except ramen is never sold in hotel restaurants or boutique-y cafes. Ramen is almost exclusively sold in ramen restaurants, and the normal cost is between $5 and $7.

If that sounds too expensive for ramen, it isn't, and you might be eating too much instant noodles.

When I got to the restaurant, as is always the case during lunch time, there was a line. No problem; there was ample seating outside and electric heaters to keep customers warm. As soon as I arrived, a waitress came outside, greeted me, and asked me how many in my party. This made me comfortable in knowing that I'm not being forgotten and my place in line was set. The wait was short, about ten minutes (ramen in Japan is a fast, high turnaround food like sandwiches in the US).

The decor of the restaurant was tastefully done in warm wood and bamboo, modern but not over the top. Jazz was the BGM, slightly better than the normal elevator music and much better than the slightly out of tune TV blaring in the corner. There was a place where you can put your coat and bags, rare for a ramen restaurant in Japan (where space is a premium).

The Kiwami Shin Aji Ramen is their flagship ramen, and only 50 are available everyday. The more common red and white ramen cost around $8, which is still pricey for ramen. When I ordered the ramen, they brought out the place setting with the oversized spoon and an information pamphlet. The pamphlet had instructions on how to eat the ramen deliciously, where they got all the ingredients, and why they made some of the design choices. As I was combing through the pamphlet, the ramen arrived.

Couple minutes later, as I was sipping the noodles and broth, they brought out the rice and nube, which is a gelatinous cube of flavor that can be added to the broth. The delay felt peculiar at first, but in retrospect it makes sense. No one starts with the rice first, and if they brought it out with the ramen, it will go cold before most people touch it. As for the nube, they state explicitly in the pamphlet that they want you to try the ramen with and without the nube.

So how did it taste? Different. It was definitely unlike most other ramen I've had in Japan. It tasted good, but it wasn't spectacular. Is it worth trying? Yes. Is it worth $13? Probably not.

But one thing Ippudo did have down was the ramen experience. From the moment I stepped in the restaurant to the moment I stepped out, everything was well designed. They grok that they aren't just selling ramen, they're selling the ramen experience. You eat with your mouth, your eyes, and your mind. That's why your grandma's apple pie tastes better than the one you can get at IHOP. How good food tastes is not only a function of the food itself, but the atmosphere and the service.

Apple understands that they are selling a personal computer experience. That's why their computer doesn't come bundled with crapware and in fourteen separate hard to open boxes. They don't over segment the market and offer eighteen different products confusing potential customers.

Companies that can design experiences will survive over the companies that design products. That's why Ippudo can charge $13 for a bowl of ramen and Apple can make a profit in a slim margin consumer electronics industry.

User experience design, it's the hot topic now. What's next?

Inferior Industry

2008-03-14T04:50:00.000-07:00

I'm coining a new term: Inferior Industry.

The New York Times ran an article today describing the booming debt collection industry:

So many people are in so much debt that the government says bill collecting is one of the fastest-growing businesses. By 2016, employment in it is projected to exceed half a million workers, up 23 percent in a decade.

As the economy slips into recession and unemployment rises, more people default on their loans and create new jobs for debt collectors. If you're looking for a career change or new opportunities, this might be a good industry, at least in the near future.

Inferior goods are goods that decrease in demand when consumer income increases. The text book example is long range bus travel (i.e. Greyhound): as people's income increases, they choose to fly (quicker and costlier), hence decreasing the demand for bus travel. Other examples are fast food, frozen dinners, and instant ramen (when did you eat the most instant ramen? college? case in point).

Inferior industries, as I define it, are industries that hire more people when the economy as a whole is declining. The debt collecting industry is a perfect example of this. In Japan, during the late 90s recession, the Pachinko (legalized form of gambling) industry soared, opening parlors everywhere.

I wonder if economists have studied employment across different industries during various economic climates. This would be nice information for those sick and tired of getting fired at every economic downturn. The best bet, however, might be to get a job that is completely independent of the economy, like a university professor.

1,000 True Fans - Not impossible, but very very difficult (still)

2008-03-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

Kevin Kelly from Wired Magazine wrote an interesting post on how 1,000 True Fans, willing to spend $100, can support a musician.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans...

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable.

It's a great story: with the internet, musicians can support themselves by finding a small handful of True Fans. 1,000 sure sounds like a realistic goal, something most musicians should be able to achieve. But is it? Let's look at the numbers.

First, how many True Fanisms are out there? Someone may be a True Fan of five bands, which makes up for those people who aren't True Fans at all, so True Fanism is the more applicable metric in this case. How many True Fans do you know (fits the description above)? I'm not a True Fan of any band, and I know very few people who display that behavior. I'm going to make a very liberal assumption and say that there is one True Fanisms per person in the developed world. If every person in the developed world spent their "one-day-wage" on music, the industry would be much bigger than what it is today, but I'll stick to the assumption for now.

The total population of the OECD countries in 2000 was 1.1 billion people, and that included Turkey whose GDP per capital is one seventh that of the US. If we take that 1.1 billion True Fanisms and split them equally in 1,000 True Fanism chunks, the developed world would be able to support 1.1 million musicians, but you know the world doesn't work like that. The most popular bands (U2, Amy Winehouse, Jay-Z) with major record labels grabs most of the True Fanisms in the world, and the lesser known artists have to fight it out for the small left overs. If 50% of the True Fanisms are available to the musicians you and I haven't heard of, that's a maximum of 550,000 musicians that could make a living. In reality, I'm guessing there are millions of bands that have one or two True Fans, not enough to earn a living, and couple thousand that have captured enough True Fanisms to "make it."

Is 550,000 musicians a lot? MySpace has more than 8 million bands, which I presume is only a handful of all the bands in the world. If there are 16 million musicians, and only 550,000 could possibly make a living, that's a survivability ratio of 3.4%, a dismal figure (It's easier to get into Harvard). In reality, I expect less than .1% of all musicians to be making a living off music, and most of us only see the handful that succeed.

What if those 8 millions bands listed on MySpace actually captured 1,000 True Fanisms and made a living on $100,000 a year? That's 8 billion True Fanisms (more than the population of the world, developed and developing) and $800 billion spent on those musicians, slightly under 2% of the world GDP in 2006.

I agree that now more than ever are the tools in place for creative people to survive off a handful of dedicated fans, but it's far from easy. Sure musicians and artists will be discovered through MySpace and become icons of the post-broadcast era, but for every artist that gets noticed, there are thousands that will never see the light of day (Journalism is riddled with survivorship bias). The music industry is still very competitive, and that hasn't changed with the internet or MySpace.

As for 1,000 True Fans, it's a goal, it's reachable, but it's very very tough. If you're thinking of becoming a musician, you better like music a lot because chances are, you won't be making much money; If you are doing it for the money, you're making a horrible life decision. Go apply to Harvard instead.

Pick your own on-hold music

2008-02-26T17:09:00.000-08:00

We all hate being on-hold waiting to talk to an (usually) intelligible human being that could help with your bill or cellphone minutes. At best, you hear the most non-offensive generic elevator music and at worst, you hear repeated advertisements and propaganda about the company's new line of credit cards. What if you could pick you own music?

I'm NOT suggesting another voice menu that allows you to select the music you want to wait on ("press one for reggae, press two for jazz, etc..."). By the time you're ready to wait, you probably navigated through four or five different questions, and the last thing you want to do is answer another one.

Instead, just pick your favorite music when you sign up for your credit card or your bank account. They'll have your phone number, so by using caller ID, they can match the phone call with the account ID and play the right kind of music.

Of course setting up such a system will cost money, and since the call center industry is very cost sensitive (why many are going to India), customer satisfaction is probably not a justifiable cause. Instead, let the music industry pay for it. By knowing someone's musical tastes, you can stream new music from the genre as advertisement. Is the user a fan of R&B? play the newest Amy Winehouse tracks. Alternative? How about the newest White Stripes tunes?

While one could, instead, run a continuous stream of advertisements, that will ultimately irritate the customers and make them more combative (you know the kind) when a person finally picks up on the other side. The best advertisements make people happy as much as it informs them.

Brazilian Fire Door Warning Sign uses Babel Fish

2008-01-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

I took the above photograph while visiting a tourist attraction in Curitiba, Brazil. At first I just passed it off as a bad translation: "HA! Engrish is not only for Japan." However, when I was sorting through my travel photos the other day, I had an eerie suspicion that the poor grammar may have been a result of some online translator. Sure enough, I typed in the Portuguese into Babel Fish and out came the English translation (almost) spot on:

"Mantenha Fechada" translated to "It Keeps Closed" perfectly.

I had to remove the hyphen in "Corta-Fogo" since Babel Fish refused to translate hyphen pairs. This was almost identical, if not for the grammatically correct placement of "s" in "Cuts."

Of course this doesn't prove that the designer used Babel Fish to create that warning sign. However, it does bring out two interesting points:

1. Babel Fish is good enough. While not grammatically correct or professional, the Babel Fish translation did get the point across: "Fire door, keep closed." With Moore's law still keeping pace, I think it's not too long until AI translators can hold it's own against human translators. I'm not saying human translators will be replaced, since they are good at reading mood and knowing context (not to mention providing a "human touch"), but the entire web might become legible using AI translators.

2. If the designer did not use any translation software or service, Babel Fish came close to the human translation. I don't think this is the case, but if no software was used, it's interesting that the computer and human translated the same way.

Print your own customized newspaper

2007-12-09T19:05:00.000-08:00

A while back, I talked about the idea of a customizable travel guides (Lonely Planet to be exact) and commented on how the publishing industry probably was not capable of creating customized books with how the printing presses were set up today. Mike Masnick over at the infinitely more popular Techdirt recently took a tour of the Wall Street Journal's Palo Alto printing plant and found out that most of the technology and innovation had gone to streamlining the printing process and saving cost, but not really at creating a better product (in this case, a customizable newspaper). A customizable newspaper is probably more complicated than a customizable book due to the numbers involved and the delivery method (paper boys versus mail).

I'm not sure if customized newspapers are the solution (I'm more sure of customized travel guides), but there is probably a easier way of accomplishing this. Imagine a web service that will tabulate the top stories from different news sources (online newspapers and blogs) every day and provides a .pdf which you can print (or even prints for you, but that would probably require some kind of software). All you need to do is specify the sources (in my case, Engadget, Gizmodo, BoingBoing, Techdirt, etc.) and print. You could even specify the printing frequency (i.e. once a day, twice a day, etc.), or the target number of pages. There's clearly a business opportunity here for advertisement since by knowing someone's reading habit, you can also provide targeted ads (same for a customized newspaper too).

I don't know if something like this exists, but it would (hopefully) standout in the myriads of readers and start pages.

Don't put all your pictures on one memory card (or eggs in one basket)

2007-12-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

It's tempting: buying a 8GB memory card with your digital camera so you can hold 2,500 pictures and never have to worry about switching cards. You can go days, even months without connecting your camera to the computer and show pictures of Christmas parties at Halloween balls. That is, until something goes wrong with your memory card and you lose everything on it. The ability to store 2,500 pictures means you can also lose 2,500 pictures, at once.

That's what happened to me the other day when I was shooting my cousin's wedding (don't these things happen at the worst possible timing?). Two thirds through the reception, my camera gives me a "Card not formatted" error. This was a split second after I took my 250th (roughly) picture of the day. I panicked; here was someone's once in a lifetime (hopefully) event, and I just lost 250 pictures portraying it (for those that don't know me, I used to shoot for a newspaper in college, and still shoot as a hobby). Luckily, besides the 1GB card that died, I also had an old 256MB card which allowed me to keep shooting, albeit conservatively (I once shot 360 pictures in a 2 hour span, and that was on film).

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. After trying the 1GB card on numerous card readers, I took it to a professional data recovery service, and they were able to salvage all the pictures except eight. They charged by the MegaByte, so recovering a 1GB card cost me about $70, the cost of many GigaBytes of CF cards, but it was worth every penny (or in this case, yen).

Having learned my lesson, I will now go purchase two or three 512MB cards (or 1GB, if the price is no different) and be adamant about changing cards during a shoot. I carry my camera in a camera bag so holding several extra cards is no problem. As for the criminal 1GB card, I will ceremoniously destroy it by driving nails through it. Actually, I'll label it as risky and only use it if all my other cards spontaneously combust and I'm hundred miles from the nearest electronics store.

As for the images above and below, the data recovery service had an interesting side effect of recovering pictures I deleted long time ago. Many of these reappeared, and some of the images were garbled together. None of these pictures are edited in Photoshop. I'm simply uploading them as I found them on the recovery CD. The one on the top is actually a mix of two weddings, one of my college roommate back in December in Kansas City, and my cousin's in Japan two weeks ago. Call it accidental art.

Another Kansas City Wedding Image.

Class mugshots.

For some reason, this guy kept getting resurrected.

Isn't it kind of creepy? It makes me want to take a lot of random photos and and take a hammer to the memory card to see what the recovery service will pull together. Maybe I'll do that with this no longer reliable 1GB card.

Socks for Sandals

2007-11-15T20:22:00.001-08:00

I got this pair of socks at an Onsen Ryokan (Hot Spring Hotel) in Japan. Why does it have a separate slot for your big toe? So you can wear your geta (Japanese sandals) with it!

These socks are called tabi in Japan and they've existed for a very long time. These days, it's used primarily with kimonos (traditional Japanese clothing) though you can usually pick one up in a neighborhood 100 yen store. Another pair I saw once had rubber grip on the sole to prevent slipping (and unintentionally massaged your foot as you walked).

I wonder if these can be sold in the US. I know several people who prefer to wear sandals on a regular basis instead of shoes, but that may be because they don't like wearing socks. What do you think?

And no, I'm not wearing a skirt in that picture. It's a yukata.

Which burns more calories, running or walking?

2007-10-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

The answer to that question may seem obvious if you look at it from a time standpoint: it's much exerting and tiring to run for ten minutes than to walk for ten minutes. However, if you think of it from a distance perspective, the question is harder than you think. You could walk five miles in ninety minutes, or run five miles in thirty minutes. Sure it's more tiring running, but you're exercising for three times longer if you walk. Now it doesn't seem like a straight forward question does it?

Jumping to the conclusion: You burn more calories running the same distance than walking, but the speed at which you run doesn't matter as much unless you run very fast.

Here is the plot comparing calories consumed walking and running at different speed (click to enlarge):

191 pounds is the average male weight ages 20-74 years, and 164 pounds is the average female weight ages 20-74 years in the US (source). The calorie consumption per minute for each of the running and walker speeds were taken off the Healthstatus.com website (I entered 100 minutes for each activity then divided to get the extra significant digits).

As you can see, you spend more calories running the same distance than walking, but there is no clean correlation between speed and calories spent. In fact, you spend less calories if you walk briskly or too slowly than if you walk at a normal speed. On the other hand, you spend more calories running slowly or running very fast.

The above comparison falls short, however, since each exercise takes different lengths of time. Since the human body consumes calories while resting (or even sleeping), in the above comparison the runners are not given the benefit of finishing early and burning calories after the exercise.

For the following graph, I set the total time to be 150 minutes (how long it takes to walk five miles at 2 mph) and added the resting caloric consumption for exercises that don't take as long (I chose "reading" off the Healthstatus website since resting wasn't available).

As you can see the benefits of running is now further exemplified by adding the extra resting calorie consumption. Nevertheless, there still isn't much benefit in running fast, unless you run very fast. Of course this completely ignores the benefits of extra time which enables you to do things like lifts weights or blog.

In conclusion, lessons learned from this number crunching exercise:

Run if you can, you burn more calories than walking the same distance.
Don't worry about running fast, unless you run very fast or you want the extra time for something else.
Fast walking is counter-intuitively unproductive. Try to step it up to a light jog.

If you want to play around with this more or just want to double check my numbers, here is the Excel spreadsheet I used to create these charts.

Answers for the Corporate Intranet

2007-10-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

Working for a multi-national corporation bigger than many nation states, there are many times when I'll have questions for people in different time zone who I will never meet. Sometimes these are requests for specific information that needs to be addressed to one specific person, and I'll have to search the corporate website or ask around in the office for his or her contact info. However, most of the time, the questions can be answered by many people, typically in departments very disconnected from where I reside. This may be partly due to my job function, but I've seen it happen with other people in other departments and other companies. E-mails are great tools when you want to communicate with specific people, but they aren't very useful when you don't know who you need to ask.

This is where something similar to Yahoo Answers (or the now extinct Google Answers) would work greatly. If you don't know about those two services (and there are other similar services, I just can't remember them) , I highly suggest reading about them. In short, they are places where a community of users can post and answer questions. Different services have different incentive schemes to get people to answer questions; Yahoo works on a point system where you have to answer questions in order to ask them, Google worked on money. Simply, what's needed is a platform where people in the company can ask questions to a broad audience.

Of course the finer implementation details are what makes or breaks this system. How would you provide incentive for people to answer questions? You could make it a company policy for everyone to answer one question a day, or you could make it part of someone's performance. How do you make sure the right questions migrate to the right people? Yahoo and Google both use categories and subcategories. Corporate departments and organizational charts might be a good starting point for questions taxonomy. A powerful search function would also be imperative to prevent the same questions from being asked over and over. Furthermore, a powerful search function combined with an archive would create a new type of knowledge database for the company.

Last but not least, Answers could also be used to increase social interaction amongst employees and raise morale. Wouldn't it be nice to ask everyone's opinion on what the best restaurant around the office is? A new employee could ask where the best neighborhoods to live are (and then subsequent new employees could use that knowledge in the future).

It will take a lot of iterations and experimentations to get this right, but anything is better than what we have now, the blind search for someone that could potentially answer your question (and hoping that he or she is not on vacation).

Make your own Lonely Planet

2007-10-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

I have no good excuse for abandoning this blog for four months, although I was in South America for a month backpacking where the internet was surprisingly abundant and my excuse even weaker. Like many backpackers, I consider Lonely Planet to be the inseparable travel companion and almost a Bible if backpacking was a religion. Nevertheless, it's not perfect; I can never find a book that covers only the places I intend to go to. This wasn't much of a problem in South America since the South America guide simply had more information than I needed, but when I traveled to Eastern Europe and weaved in and out of some Central European and Scandinavian countries, I had to carry both Eastern Europe and Europe guides (which had minimal information on most of the Eastern Europe countries, and the Baltic chapters were practically unusable). This was three pounds worth of paper that traveled with me for thousands of miles.

The simple solution would have been to tear the book and keep the pages I needed, but when the books cost $30+, that can feel very wasteful. Why can't I just make the Lonely Planet with only the information I want?

Wouldn't it be great if you could simply select the countries you wanted on the Lonely Planet website and make your own book? With this you could easily make a customized book for some interesting trips like the overland Morocco to Japan passage.

Now you (sort of) can. I was actually looking for some images to add to this post when I discovered that Lonely Planet is experimenting with a similar idea which they call Pick and Mix. Instead of selecting the chapters you want and ordering a customized book, you can just buy chapters straight from the Lonely Planet website in .pdf format. Although they claim that the files are not "digitally restricted" they do "contain a tool that allows us [Lonely Planet] to track when and where each chapter is opened and printed." I guess Lonely Planet is scared of piracy too (this has a very similar feel to those user data embedded non-DRM tracks from iTunes).

So far they only have the Latin America guides available; I presume they did this to test drive the service and verify that piracy won't hurt their earnings (The European guides are probably their biggest sellers and also the continent where Pick and Mix makes the most sense).

I would still prefer a customized book than .pdf files for the simple reason that professionally bound books are much lighter and tougher than ones you make at home. No one in their right mind is going to be reading the guide off a laptop (and no one in their right mind will be traveling with an e-book reader, yet) so sooner or later the .pdf files have to be printed out. If you do it at home, you would either print one sided or go through the head ache of figuring out how to print double sided, and it would most likely be on 8.5x11in paper which is too big to be portable. The other option would be to take it to Kinko's but that would quickly add to the cost (and the chapters are surprisingly expensive already). For this reason, I don't think Pick and Mix is going to be popular just yet; there is too much inconvenience involved with making a .pdf file practical. However, it's still a good idea and a step in the right direction.

Currently, I also don't think the publication/printing industry is setup to offer customized books at a reasonable cost. From the little I know about book printing, presses are usually set up to produce thousand copies of one thing, and not thousand similar but different book. If the automotive industry can build cars to meet individual requests, I don't see why the publication industry can't. For how much they complain about the internet ruining their market, they need to accept the facts and innovate to work with the internet, not against it.

iPhone waiting costs $34.4 million?

2007-06-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

My coworkers and I just ran a back-of-the-envelope calculation on the societal cost of all these people waiting for the iPhone:

150 Apple Stores in the US. Approximate, but close. If someone wants to count: Store list.

100 people per Apple Store. While the NY and SF stores are getting all the attention, the Apple Store in Palo Alto has more than 150 people waiting. I actually think this number is conservative.

10,000 AT&T stores in the US (Source). I’m not sure how accurate this figure is (and if it includes authorized resellers who aren’t going to be selling any on the first day), but we’ll go with it for now.

20 people per AT&T store. It seems like the AT&T stores aren’t getting the same love as Apple stores, but 20 feels like a conservative estimate.

8 hours waiting per person. While the “iLoser” decided to sit in line 100 hours before the release, I think most people started first thing in the morning today.

$20/hr per person. This may seem high, but the average salary in the US was $15.54/hr in 2004, and you have to have some financial clout to afford a phone that’s going to cost you $2000+ in the next two years. I’m sure the mayor of Philadelphia makes more than that too.

What does it all add up to?

(150 Apple Stores x 100 People/Apple Store + 10,000 AT&T Stores x 20 People/AT&T Store) x 8 hr/person x $20/hr = $34,400,000

So there you have it. $34.4 million in people’s waiting time for the iPhone. To be fair though, it seems like some people were actually working while waiting in line with their EVDO cards and laptops (and others were waiting as their jobs).

Nevertheless, we need to come up with a new paradigm for buying release day products so that we don’t waste so much time. Any ideas?

PS Sorry for the long hietus. I should have some extra time in the coming weeks and have some ideas lined up to blog about.

Age Progression for the masses

2007-05-03T00:34:00.000-07:00

Combing through the tax return instruction booklets, do you remember seeing those missing children announcements with age progression pictures? Well, now you don’t have to be kidnapped to get your picture manipulated.

Phojoe will take any picture, and for $199, manipulate it to whatever age you want. I didn’t really see a need for it besides creepy gag gifts at weddings, but apparently plenty of grieving parents order it to see what their deceased sons and daughters would have looked like. One of the customer quotes:

“...I'm 78 and would like to see what my son would have looked like before I die. He was 2 when he was killed and would now be in his 30's...Wow, When I first saw the photo you did, I was floored, it was just shocking as if I was looking at the real thing. A tingle went through my spine. You really captured my son.”

Would you ever get one?

2-on-1 Basketball

2007-04-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

Don’t you hate it when you have three people and you don’t want to resort to the repetitive game of HORSE? Here is how you play a proper 2-on-1 game of basketball
Two people are always on offense.

When the offense scores, both players score a point and the scorer switches with the defender.
When the defender gains possession of the ball, he/she scores a point; ball goes back to the offense at the top of the arc.
Play until a preset score limit, win by two.

Simple isn’t it? If the players are good, the game might lean towards offense too much, at which point, you could raise the points given to the defense. I’m not very good, so when we play, this works out pretty well.

Artifact Design

2007-04-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

A while back, I wrote about how if your design produces an undesirable artifact, why not control it to make it desirable? Call it artifact design. Here are two products that control their artifacts beautifully.

Sakurasaku Glasses

These glasses are shaped in such a way that when the condensed water drips down the side and wets the table, it leaves an imprint of a cherry blossom. Such a simple and elegant solution, I wonder why more people don’t do it.

Stain

“Stain is a set of a teacups designed to improve through use.”

By artist Bethan Wood, these teacups stain at an uneven pace so that some parts of the cup turn brown more quickly than other parts. The end result is a beautiful design demonstrating how products can age gracefully too.

Small Ideas Round Up

2007-04-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

I swear I’m not trying to redistribute Gizmodo, but this round up is all from Gizmodo for some reason.

Paper in Pen

You know all those situations when you have a pen but no paper (and your hand quickly becomes paper)? Or when you have paper but no pen? Well, now you can lose both at the same time. Interesting idea, if only pens didn’t last forever and the roll of paper probably will run out in a week.

Product Page (via geekologie via Gizmodo)

Magnetic Clothes Hangers

Elegant alternative to the hook but it’s tough when all houses are built with closet poles and hook hangars are ~~dime~~ dollar a dozen.

Designer Site (via Freshome via Gizmodo)

Lego Sofa for all those awkwardly shaped New York apartments

It… just… doesn’t… look… comfortable…

No MadeDesign (via Notcot via Spluch via Gizmodo)

Book Pillow, or Boollow

The modern day camouflage, a pillow in the shape of a book.

Product Page (via Nerd Approved via The Uber-Review via Gizmodo)

The Magic Pen

2007-04-19T22:28:00.000-07:00

I subscribe to the post-it method of keeping track of all my to-dos at work since it gives me the gratification of destroying (shredding) any task I’ve completed. This goes a long way when you poke at the keyboard for most of the day (though rarely, I do get to dismantle really expensive electronics and hack at cars worth more than everything I currently own).

Inevitably, sticky-notes start to pile up, and I have nightmares of drowning in the trade mark 3M yellow... Ok, I kid. The stickies do start to collect though, with very low grade “I’ll get to it some day” task littered throughout the wall. While I know which stickies have been chillin’ for a while, I wish there was an easily visually noticeable way.

What if you had a pen that drew lines that changed color over time? Logarithmic would probably make more sense:

In 24 hours, the color changes from black to blue
In 10 days, the color changes from blue to green
In 100 days, the color changes from green to red

You could instantaneously tell when something was written, and my desk space would have a hint of color to break away from monotone cubicle.

(note, the picture is not my office)

Drop or raise prices on Saint Patrick's Day?

2007-04-18T01:59:00.000-07:00

If you run a bar, would you raise or drop the cost of your cover/drinks on Saint Patrick’s Day?

Raising the prices is a perfectly sensible business decision since chances are, your bar would be overwhelmed with customers cherishing one of the few (and possibly the only) drinking festivities. People will be drinking beer faster than the keg can flow, and you’ll probably be making twice what you make on an average night. Good business decision right?

Let’s look at this the other way around. What if you consider Saint Patrick’s Day to be an opportunity to not make money, but serve more new customers? It’s the perfect opportunity to grow your customer base. Instead of overcharging everyone for drinks, which everyone expects, surprise them by having good specials and bringing in the best DJ in town. Make your bar the cheap and happening place on St. Patrick’s Day, and you will be sure to have converted some new comers into regular patrons. Sure you won’t make as much money on that day, but you just increased your income for the rest of the year.

Sometimes the best business decisions aren’t measured by the most obvious parameters or aren’t measurable at all, but don’t try to make money, try to make customers and the money will follow.

The greatest rejection letter ever

2007-03-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

This is possibly the best rejection letter I’ve ever seen (not mine). It’s much better than the two page Stanford undergraduate rejection letter which proclaimed that my rejection had nothing to do with my accomplishments, grades, test scores, athletics, extracurricular activities, econo-social status, or the name I gave my puppy (it must have been the pigeon I kicked by accident in 2nd grade!). I hope every rejection letter writer will learn from this example. The crooked thing even adds character too.

Transfer my files!

2007-03-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

While upgrading to a new computer could be exciting (depending on the kind of person you are), there are a lot of annoyances involved in transferring the old files to the new computer. This is no problem for the tech savvy folks, who will most likely set up file sharing over a network or burn DVDs, but it could be a huge impetus for casual home users. Since most US households have computers and the market have saturated, the game (if you are HP or Dell) is now about how you can get people to upgrade their computers more frequently. The file transfer program would be perfect for those hesitant to upgrade because of the uncertainties surrounding moving data.

This would be easy for laptops since it could be sent in or brought to the store easily, but tougher for desktops. For Dell or HP, the best plan probably would be to partner with the Geeksquad (not that I think they are any good) or other home support service that already have the infrastructure to get to customers homes. They could even help set up the computer and collect the old machine for recycling.

I’m not sure if the business model for this service makes sense (might be too expensive), but it is a really attractive feature that could be bundled with new computers. Of course I would never use it, and in an ideal world, everyone would have a friend who could help them instead.

The New Music Experience. Going beyond the RIAA.

2007-03-24T04:55:00.000-07:00

The RIAA sucks, and if you’ve been following the recent lawsuits, political meddling, and fear tactics carried out by the RIAA, you’d agree too. If you’re well informed on the matter, you might want to skip to my idea section, “What can we do?” If not, here is a brief overview:

In a perfect world...

You would be able to purchase music from any of the many online music stores and play it on your computer, mp3 player, car stereo system, etc. You should be able to send that music to your friends so that they can listen to it and enjoy it. If your friends like it, they should buy it, but if they don’t, no problem. If you didn’t send them the songs, they weren’t going to discover the songs and buy them anyway, so it’s no loss to the record labels or the artists. Sounds perfectly reasonable right? This is how people enjoyed music with LPs, 8-tracks, Cassette Tapes, and CDs. Well, thanks to DRM, with more than 90% of the songs sold online, you can’t do this.

Dee-Arr-Emm?

Consider yourself lucky if you never had to deal with Digital Right Management. To put simply, DRM is the technology embedded in audio files that prohibit them from being playing on certain devices. If you ever bought a song off iTunes, you know that those songs will only play on your iPod or on computers which you certify as yours. Why are such arbitrary restrictions put on your music that you buy? Because the RIAA is scared of losing their business model and revenue, even if that means more inconveniences for an entire generation of music listeners.

If you want to find out more about DRM, Wikipedia has a relatively unbiased article (but also technical), while Defective By Design is waging a full scale war against DRM.

Note: DRM covers much more than music including DVDs and other forms of media. Also, DRM doesn’t prevent piracy or sharing as every DRM introduced to this date has been cracked and rendered useless for protection purposes. It really just makes media ownership much more difficult for the consumers.

RIAA?

RIAA (Wikipedia) is a trade group that represents the recording industry in the US. In layman’s terms, RIAA is a public relations organization that is funded by the major record labels. Their official goal is to “foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members' creative and financial vitality” which really means they try to sway law makers into passing resolutions that allow them to make more money. The RIAA is composed of many record labels, but mostly controlled by the Big Four, which are EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. The Big Four accounts for 70% of the music distributed world wide, and 80% of the music distributed in the US

As you may know, record labels sign exclusivity agreements with musicians and produce, promote, manufacture, and distribute their music while receiving a large cut of their sales and recouping some of the production costs, which the labels consider to be “loans.” Record labels are the middlemen between the consumer and the musician, who typically don’t have the resources to distribute their music. In that sense, they have two customers, the audience and the artists, and that is an important point to keep in mind.

So what’s wrong with the RIAA?

It used to be that they were the only way for musicians to distribute their music. If you wanted to become famous, you had to sign with a label so that your music could be distributed in thousands of CDs across the world. However, with the internet, that is not the case anymore. Musicians can record their music at a studio (or their garage) and put them on the internet, selling and/or promoting themselves at the same time. The music labels are losing their business model to the internet. They would rather be selling CDs, which has a much higher profit margin than digital downloads. Instead of embracing this new technology that allows for better distribution of music and new paradigms of sales, they decided to hinder it as much as they can: DRM.

Concurrently with pushing DRM, RIAA started a massive legal push against pirates of music by indiscriminately bringing lawsuits against individuals under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which they lobbied to pass in the first place. While some of the lawsuits were legit, they’ve taken a shot gun approach and managed to sue a paralyzed stroke victim, dead person, twelve year-old girl, computer-less family, and the list just continues. What makes this even more atrocious is that the settlement money never reaches the artists, whose copyright was infringed in the first place. If you’re curious on this matter, there is a great article on how the RIAA goes about suing people (and in extension, why the US legal system is broken).

More recently, they set up an online website where college students can settle their lawsuits with a credit card with the same ease as online shopping. Again, with the same shotgun approach, they’re sending out hundreds of pre-litigation settlement letters, in hopes that some students will confess and pay up.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the RIAA is trying to change the face of the internet by trying to hold Wi-Fi owners responsible for their internet connection. Can you imagine what would happen if this gets written into the law? Every coffee shop that offers free Wi-Fi will have to take them down for the fear that someone might download illegal music on it. No more Wi-Fi at airports. No more municipal Wi-Fi. It’s one thing for the RIAA to dictate how we listen to music; it’s another thing for them to dictate how we use our internet. Do you hate the RIAA now? I hope so.

What can we do?

Gizmodo is running an RIAA Boycott for the month of March and their Manifesto is extremely informative and well thought out. There are other boycotts out there and I respect their intentions, but I wonder how much effect it will have. First and foremost, only the well connected consumers are getting this information, and there are many more people buying music than that. Second, these companies are filthy rich (from their virtual oligopoly status) and a month of active bloggers boycotting might not put a dent in their wallets. I’m not suggesting we don’t boycott; every little bit helps. However, I think we need to look into the other side of the equation.

Earlier on, I mentioned that the record labels have two customers: the consumers and musicians. So far all the anti-RIAA movements I’ve seen have focused on the consumer side, and not the artist side. From what I can tell, the record labels screw over the musicians even more than the consumers. Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference in 2000 highlights a great deal of atrocities committed by the RIAA. To mention a few: in 1999, the music companies successfully lobbied to own the copyrights to any of their artists forever (it used to be 35 years). Numerous artists, including TLC and Toni Braxton, have declared bankruptcy in the past to free themselves from awful contracts. Of course, in our society, we’re conditioned to view this as irresponsible artists blowing their money on drugs and lavish parties, but that’s not always the case (the RIAA must love the bias). Renowned independent producer, Steve Albini also points out how skewed the system is in favor for the big companies and compares the contract signing process to swimming across a pool of shit. MC Lars, on the other hand, makes his points via YouTube through his own song.

Like many things in Capitalism, the label-artist dynamic works on a demand and supply principle, and since there are much more aspiring musicians than the companies can support, they have the upper hand in negotiating. Having dabbled in the fine art field for a bit, I can understand the temptation of signing something to get a “start,” even if that meant selling your soul. If some gallery offered to put my photos up while keeping 90% of the profits, I would have signed in a heartbeat (although the fine art field is different in that galleries will never own your work). In the old days, signing with the label was almost the only way to get noticed. However, with the internet putting everyone closer together, this isn’t the case anymore. Artists don’t need to sign with big labels in order to be noticed and to distribute their music.

I spent fifteen minutes today pretending to be a musician (which I am far from) and googled for advice on getting a record deal. I found a good amount of information on how to sign with record labels, but little on the atrocities of the RIAA, and virtually nothing in terms of alternative. In order to end this terror of the RIAA, we need artists to boycott the RIAA. How do we do that?

For starters, there needs to be more obvious information on the drawbacks of signing a record deal along with success stories such as Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. Artists need to realize that they need to spend an ounce of their creativity into distributing their music so that they don’t sign into indentured servitude for the rest of their lives. Many of the Boycott RIAA movements offer plenty of alternate options for consumers (DRM-less eMusic), but I haven’t seen them offer any alternatives for the musicians. If all our favorite musicians keep signing record deals with the RIAA, it’s going to be very hard to keep boycotting the RIAA. I keep talking about alternatives, but besides starting your own label or finding a benevolent independent label, is there anything out there?

Let’s skip the labels all together

Imagine a music service where musicians can upload their music and sell it on site, or link it to their website. They can choose to have people preview it for 30 seconds or listen to the song unrestricted (but still have to buy to use in your iTunes or iPod), and like YouTube, they can embed the music easily into their own websites. Of course, no DRM. The service would work great in conjunction with Pandora or last.fm, internet radio that focuses on music discovery. Think cafepress for music.

I’m sure this service will face a fair share of lawsuits, from copyright infringement (which gets very tricky when bands cover or remix music), like Viacom vs Google, to malicious RIAA fear tactics. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue that this isn’t good for music, and since we have the enabling technology, why don’t we have this already?

Update: I found some alternatives

Thanks to the loyal commenters on Gizmodo for these finds.

SellaBand - It takes some time to understand the whole system, but in short:

1. You buy parts (like stock) in a band you like on their website.
2. If a band reaches 5000 parts, $50,000, SellaBand will help the band record their music professionally and release a CD.
3. The music will then be available on their website for free, and the ad revenue will be split amongst the band and the fans who bought parts.
4. The CD will also be available for sale, and the profits again will be split amongst the band and the fans who bought parts.
5. No long term contract. No DRM.

Interesting concept. It’s definitely an system that puts the fans closer to the artists, and that’s a good thing. However, browsing through the website, I think there is something missing: discovery. Right now, in order to sample the music, you have to search for a band (filter by country or genre if you want), and then go to their page to listen to the music. There is no way of sampling multiple bands at the same time. They really could use a radio on their website, ideally with some rudimentary filters such as genre and language. I don’t want to make music listening a full time activity; I just want something in the background while I write. If something interests me, I’ll look over, and see who it is, and then maybe find out more.

Magnatune - Magnatune is easier to understand; they are the record label for the internet era. Unlike other labels, they give 50% of the income to the artists, which is unheard of. Even cooler, they let the buyer decide how much they pay for the music download. While this seems like it could be abused very badly, apparently the average album sale price is $8.93. They also have a radio which you can filter by genre; I’m trying it out right now. If you want to find out more about it, USA Today has a good article from 2004. Like SellaBand, it seems like Magnature also relies on word-of-mouth and the fans to advertise their bands. I’m not sure if they have already, but I hope this label signs with Pandora.

These websites need to be better known. If you have any friends that are aspiring musicians, be sure to tell them about it.

So what am I doing?

I’m writing this on my blog in the tiny corner of the internet in hopes that someone with more visibility and resources will run across it and get inspired to do something. I’m still boycotting RIAA, but that’s more because I’m content with Pandora and don’t need to buy any music. I’m sure that sooner or later, the paradigm shift will occur and the music industry will become consumer-centric again. The RIAA will change or die, and we’ll be able to take full advantage of the internet and other technologies that have risen recently, but they’re wreaking major havoc on their way down. I hope that when the New Music Experience does arrive, enough fans are left to enjoy it.

Reuters Second Life RSS Feed Hacked?

2007-03-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

This isn’t what this blog is about, but since none of the SLI editors seem to be in world, I’ll write about it myself.

Browsing through my Google Reader feeds today, I noticed that one of the links sent me to the Wikipedia entry on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. At first, I didn’t realize what sent me there, but looking carefully at the Reuters/Second Life feed, many of the article titles were linked to the Wikipedia page rather than the article themselves.

Since “Print Screen” gets rid of my cursor icon, I highlighted the ones that send me to Wikipedia. The same thing happens using Google Reader Widget.

However, looking at the original feed file, the links are correctly directed to the relevant articles.

So what happened? Did someone manage to hack the Reuters feed to mislead people to an extremely politically charged page? And if so, why only the Second Life feed (the other Reuters feeds seem completely intact)?

My friend (who is digging this article) verified on his Google Reader too, but neither of us has tested any other readers. Anyone else get the same results?

Update: Tateru Nino from SLI tested it on Sharpreader and Sage and noticed no errors. She then noticed the same results on Google Reader but investigated further and discovered something interesting. The articles that link to the Wikipedia article are duplicates of earlier articles that link to the correct pages.

The original posts in green links to the correct pages. So this means it’s actually Google Reader that got hacked? Either way, who ever planned this must be grinning, now that it’s been discovered.

Call your friend during a date

2007-03-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

One of my friends is out on a first date with this girl he met on eHarmony, and I just called him 40 minutes into dinner. Why?

1. If he is having a shitty time and needs a way out, he would pick up the phone, and I would ask him if he wants to get out. If he says yes, I’ll fake a conversation like his mother just had a stroke (or something a little less serious but equally time critical).
2. If he doesn’t pick up, he would still (most likely) look at the phone to see who it is and not answer. 90% of people (note: unsubstantiated) would see this and think “Ah, he has friends,” (especially important with internet dating) or “he’s having a good time because he didn’t answer.” 10% would probably think, “Asshole screens his phone calls.” Odds are in your favor.

Of course, this is far from my specialty, so I should stop writing about it now.

PS Don’t call on movie dates. You’ll make him the “jackass that forgot to turn off his cell phone.”

Taking the future for granted

2007-03-09T02:06:00.000-08:00

Every generation accomplishes some impressive feat that changes the way we live lives which then becomes taken for granted. Often, these are technologies that enable new experiences. For our generation, the most obvious example is the internet which allows us to search and find vast quantities of information without leaving your seat. It was so significant that we named this current period of time as the information age. Because the internet has become so ubiquitous, it's sometimes hard to appreciate what it has enabled us to do. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to find out who won the Oscar in 1957, you'd most likely have to go to the library or call up that movie-loving friend, who likely used a reference book himself. Now, you can literally three click your way into IMDB or other numerous movie websites and extract that information.

The less obvious, but just as important is mobile telephony, or simply put, cell phones. Can you imagine how difficult multiple car road trips were in 1985?

Looking more into the past, there were things like:

The invention of radio: This was the first time you didn't have to bring content home in order to enjoy it.
The advent of automobile and the national highway system: You could travel at your own schedule at speeds well beyond horses.
Air travel becoming affordable: People can travel from any part of the world to another with in 24 hours.
The disappearance of infant mortality: During the early 20th century, scientists and doctors fought many of the leading child killing disease. It was the first time in history where people stopped expecting kids to die from simple sicknesses.

And of course I haven’t forgotten the other recent major technological inventions such as the TV, telephone, fax, and electricity.

All this brings out another way of looking into the future: what will we take for granted next?

In the near future, WiMAX and other high speed WAN technologies will make mobile internet the norm. People will come to expect information anywhere anytime and use this technology to settle bar bets on the spot.

However, beyond that, what can you imagine taking for granted?

Will personal robotics continue on this current trend and automate every remedial task at home? Will we some day come to expect all chores around the house to be done by servos and gears? Will one robot per household become a norm? (In 1990, did you think that most households in the US would have computers by 2007?)

Will AI take a discontinuous jump in competence so that computers can have meaningful conversation with humans? Can you imagine taking for granted having an AI agent that searches and answers such questions as: "Who won the Oscars in 1957?"

Will neural interfacing take off making typing on keyboards a thing of the past? Will future generations take for granted the ability to send and receive information straight from the brain?

Personally, I want to see teleportation during my life time so that we can cut all dependencies on planes, trains, and automobiles. However, can you imagine the political and cultural ramifications that would result today if people could go anywhere?

So, what will you take for granted next?