Imagining the 10th Dimension

I found this last week and have watched it about 5 times. This is a site dedicated to the book "Imagining the 10th dimension." There's a flash animation you must watch explaining each dimension, starting with 1 all the way to 10. I think previousy the furthest I've been able to contemplate (according to this site) is the 5th dimension. This is absolute mind-blowing brain candy, and I think you'd all get a kick out of it. Particularly well done and simple animation as well. Check it out.

Google Mobile with Real-Time Traffic

For those of you with a cell phone that runs Java-based apps, check out this new version of Google mobile.

http://www.google.com/gmm (you can browse to this from your phone)

"Real-time traffic: New! See where the congestion is, and estimate delays in over 30 major US metropolitan areas."

Digg.com launches Digg Labs

The popular social news networking website Digg.com has debuted Digg Labs to showcase some of the new features they're working on (ala Google Labs). My favorite is Digg Swarm, it gives you a realtime visualization of the activity on the Digg website. Stories appear as circles...oh whatever, it's better if you just check it out than read my paltry description.

They're suffering from a bit of the digg effect themselves so it may have sporadic outtages.

Monopoly Debit Cards?

I always liked dealing with cold, hard fake cash. It gave a tangible feeling to "learning" about money management as a kid. We truly are moving towards a credit driven society when Monopoly gets a cash card.

Monopoly Replaces Cash with Visa
"Monopoly board game players can now pay for properties with debit cards. Game makers Parker have phased out the standard multi-coloured cash in a new version. Players will instead use a Visa mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose... The new electronic Monopoly reflects the changing nature of society and the advancement of technology."


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And on a separate rant that wasn't worthy of it's own post...

I hate websites that don't correctly setup their DNS records so that BOTH www.xyz.com and xyz.com work.

Please don't send me Microsoft Word documents

A philosophy I've had for some time, very eloquently stated. Text in the body of an email is just so much more convenient and easy to manage. Nothing worse than opening a Word Doc containing half a page of bullet points and that's it.

Please don't send me Microsoft Word documents

Negotiation

BoRyan and I have been talking about cars a bit this week, making this fitting. Also on topic here as a parallel to September 20, 2001, the red letter date in the history of iNetNow...

The ONE key thing to know about negotiation

"In negotiation, the one thing that really strengthens your position is the ability to walk away from the deal.

My current vehicle is a Chevy Avalanche. When I was shopping for it, I went to my local Chevy dealer, picked out a truck, figured out what I wanted to pay, and made an offer.

The sales guy smiled at me and said, "That's absurd."

I calmly replied, "I am quite certain you will make a profit if you sell me this truck at the price I have offered. It won't be your most profitable deal this month, but you'll make money, and you'll get a vehicle off your lot. But either way, I am going to buy a Chevy Avalanche. Somebody is going to accept this offer. The only question is whether it's going to be you or somebody else."

Protein DVD Memory

Weird. New genetically engineered protein capable of storring massive amounts of digital data.

Reminds me of the biological machinery we were talking about in Vegas.

37 Amazons

(Sorry, I'm too tired to be clever in the post title.)

Anyways, this seemed to be cool news:

Bezos Expeditions invests in 37signals
"We’ve never been interested in the typical traditional VC deal. With a few exceptions, all the VCs could offer us was cash and connections. We’re fine on both of those fronts. We don’t need their money to run the business and our little black book is full. We’re looking for something else.

What we’ve been looking for is the wisdom of a very special entrepreneur who’s been through what we’re going through. Someone who sees things a little differently and makes us feel right at home. Someone with a long term outlook, not a build-to-flip mentality. We found a perfect match in Jeff. Jeff is our kinda guy."

Dumping Unprofitable Customers

Cingular has an entire theorum - complete with fancy metrics charts and cold calculations - on how to determine "customer value".

AOL Retention manual Revealed

Heh-heh. Niice. AOL gets some comeuppance for its hostile "retention" policies. Somebody over there went turncoat and sent the Consumerist.com the whole retention sales manual.

Also notice what the article says about the CRM they use -- pretty interesting how it is automated.

NewsMap

This is really cool -- and could have been an interesting next step if we were still using the surfboard.

This was on 37 signals a while back - a visual news aggregator.
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm

Have fun with it. I, personally, think its brilliant.

Term Trail 2.0

Saw a post over at TechCrunch about a coming-soon service called ClickTale that actually records movies of a user's behavior on your website and analyzes the data, allowing you to redesign and tweak based on actual visuals rather than just raw statistics of click totals and time spent.

Besides the great usability aspects, seems it would have great applications as a "Term Trail 2.0" in call center software. Hear about a bad call, and incorrect order, or any other type of mistake, then just pull the video of the session from the archive to get the real story and decide if it's best fixed by software changes, training, or a bit of both.

Decision and Choice

SELECT ALL: Can you have too many choices?

Cool article/book review in the New Yorker for The Paradox of Choice, a book about how having too many choices can paralyze you, something that I'm often guilty of.

A great quote in the intro:

"A radio producer in Washington, D.C., got a promotion a few years ago on the grounds that he was a “good decision-maker.” Self-deprecating to a fault, he reminded his bosses that many of the decisions he’d made since joining the station hadn’t exactly worked out They didn’t care. “Being a good decision-maker means you’re good at making decisions,” one executive cheerily told him. “It doesn’t mean you make good decisions."

iNetNow: Born Again?

Got an email from my mom about this after she read about it in the Delta Airlines magazine. "It's like iNetNow reborn!"

Info Angels

(Note 5/1/2009: Info Angels changed their name to Maestro sometime after this post was written. I've updated the link but left the rest of the post intact.)

"To use Info Angels all you need to do is call our toll-free number and, within seconds, our live Angels will be able to answer any questions you may have. Our Info Angels are trained web experts, giving callers instant access to any web-based information. From phone numbers to current eBay bids to price comparisons to real estate listings, Info Angels will offer a wide range of information only limited by your imagination. Even better, we will immediately text message and email you the query results after each call is completed...All your queries will be kept in your own Info Angels webpage accessible at any time. If you need to make an online purchase, Info Angels will provide you with your very own purchasing assistant that will be able to buy anything you request online."

Sound familiar? Interesting pricing plans, including calling cards.

At least I can take solace in the fact that they can be added to the list of Daylight Savings Time violators.

UPDATE: Check out their Job Posting for an Info Angel.

Google Plane

Google founders spar over 'party plane'
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin need more adult supervision than previously thought.

While the two billionaires agree that they both love colored balls, they can't agree on what types of beds should be placed in their Boeing 767 wide body corporate jet. Brin and Page broke out in a dispute over whether or not Brin should have a long California King size bed in their plane, according to documents tied to a lawsuit over the jet. Ultimately, Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to chime in and make the bed decision for the youngsters.

"Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on," Schmidt told the pair, according to the court documents.

High Times vs. The Onion

"High Times" and "The Onion" have softball teams that recently squared off in Central Park in a long-standing feud. Hilarious. Filmed in black and white with a 1930's style sports announcer.

Apparently, the "Bonghitters" play better when stoned...

Simplified Spelling

Never knew until reading this article that Roosevelt tried to convince the government to start publishing official documents in a "simplified spelling" format. It's quite amusing when the article repeatedly throws in paragraphs like this:

"Carnegie tried to moov thingz along in 1906 when he helpt establish and fund th speling bord. He aulso uezd simplified speling in his correspondens, and askt enywun hoo reported to him to do the saem."

It gets old after awhile (and feels like reading an SMS from a 13 year old), but the story is still pretty fascinating. Plus, I always love Wikipedia articles that have the dreaded "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed" tag at the top.

Evolution "Debate"

So -- here's that Doonesbury cartoon I was discussing earlier about evolution -- which antibiotic do you prefer?

Thought you all would get a kick out of it, fantastic reasoning.

Cow Pie Electricity

Okay boys -- I'm on. Sorry I'm so slow.

This is cool. A Vermont Dairy Farm collects its manure and turns it into electricity - which it sells to the neighboring community. How cool is that? It powers about 400 homes.

This could actually work for alot of rural Idaho and Utah communities. What do you think, Bo?

Check it out here.