APP: Naview Prototyping and Testing

Free during the beta period.  Could be fun to try out.

Design and build navigation prototypes quickly

• create drop down menus without any coding
• interactively review and modify your navigation
• visualise your navigation in multiple ways
• import taxonomy easily from spreadsheet or text file

Test the usability of your navigation with users

• evaluate the navigation yourself
• test with users locally without distractions
• test with remote users using surveys
• view and analyse survey results visually

from http://www.naviewapp.com/plans-and-signup/

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HOWTO: Wolfram Alpha

I am a uniquely creative thinker, but usually mathematically and statistically challenged. Advanced algebra works just fine.  Beyond that, I aks for help ;)  On July 27th, 2010 Saikat Basu writes:

10 Search Terms To Put Wolfram Alpha To Good Use Everyday

Calling Wolfram Alpha a computational knowledge engine surely puts off a lot of people who are mathematically and statistically challenged. I am one of them, so it took me a fair amount of time to get around to using Wolfram Alpha and the way it takes a query and spits out factual data.
If you are still drunk on Google and other traditional ways of doing search, take a sober pill and give Wolfram Alpha a look.
Yes, Wolfram Alpha still doesn’t have a handle on the entire human knowledge, but it has its unique take on answering questions, comparing keywords, and projecting data.

After understanding the true power of Wolfram Alpha, you will appreciate it as one of the most powerful search engines out there. But is Wolfram Alpha too daunting for a layman? Looking at all the mathematical equations and statistical graphs that the search tool drums out, it seems so.
But even an Average Joe like me can sometimes throw everyday problems at it. And come out with answers easy enough to read. So here are ten of those search queries.

Which Website Is More Popular

Instead of individually looking up figures, you can do a quick comparison of websites to see which is more popular. Computational comparisons are a nifty feature of Wolfram Alpha. You can also lookup website data of any web address.

(Wolfram Alpha pulls in the data from Alexa.com’s database. Some SEO experts do have a problem with the way Alexa draws its data however).

My IP Is?

Wolfram Alpha comes with location awareness. So it can used just like an IP tracker. Type in ‘Where Am I?’ and you get your exact geo-located co-ordinates.

Alternatively, you can find the souls behind an IP number or an URL by putting it as a search string.

As The Crow Flies

You can get the direct travel times and the distance between two cities. Average figures are calculated for ships, cars, and airplanes. Other information like local times at both locations is also attached.

Get To Know Your Kissing Cousins

Wolfram Alpha has a Genealogy engine that can trace your family relationships. To make it easier, you also get a ‘tree’ diagram. Just the thing to find out the right introductions at family dos.

What We Speak & Write

Wolfram Alpha has a host of tools or ‘converters’ which are of real use. For instance, you can figure the number of words needed to fill up the right number of pages (and the typing time to finish a book).

Then the search engine extends a ‘cheating’ hand with its puzzle solvers along with the usual dictionary help. Here’s what the Words & Linguistics features can do:

The Time In Timbuktu

You can get the time information of any place, compare local times of several places, and also convert a time in any city to your time.

Following the Date & Time calculations, you can do a host of things like printing out calendars, find out how many days till Christmas, or get the dates of holidays for a given year. The results are as per your location.

Switch On The Weather Channel

Wolfram Alpha can be your personal weather search engine. It covers a host of ways to get specific weather information and forecasts for your city or one of your choice.

Watch What You Are Eating

Wolfram Alpha can be used as an online calorie counter. You can not only get nutritional information on a food, you can also get it for those that end up as packaged brands on our kitchen shelves. Yes, some of the information goes into the actual mineral and molecular composition, but you can pick out the calorie information for the serving and the percentage of daily intake. And export is all as a PDF.

Again, let’s put a food (or beverage) through a comparison. It tells me that drinking vodka would be the quicker way to get the beer belly.

Hit The Gym…Or Climb The Stairs

You know how many calories you are picking up. So use the same search box to find out how many you can burn with a specific activity. There are a few ways you can compute the physical exercises needed to burn the fat.

When you do this calculation, also scroll down and check out the Equivalent Activities section. Mine tells me that I can repair an airplane for two hours or conduct an orchestra for three to burn the same amount of calories.

Color Swatch From A Search Box

We know ‘bittersweet’ as a feeling, but do you know what it looks like? Wolfram Alpha tells us that it’s a color that’s a shade closer to salmon and Indian red. Complementary colors are also given which tell us which colors can be matched. If you are looking for a three color scheme, pick up the swatch on the color triad. Designers can also quickly pick up the hexadecimal and RGB color codes.

From top to bottom, Wolfram Alpha is a search engine. Just like any other search engine, it depends on third party sources for the information and its accuracy. Also, results will hit the target or miss the spot depending on the search query you feed it. It is not a magic oracle but a work in progress. But the work done so far is impressive.

reposted from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-search-terms-put-wolfram-alpha-good-everyday/

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VIDEO: The Story of Bottled Water

The Story of Bottled Water, releasing March 22, 2010, employs the Story of Stuff style to tell the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over five minutes, the film explores the bottled water industrys attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to take back the tap, not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/storyofstuff

Twitter: http://twitter.com/storyofstuff

http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/

The Story of Bottled Water production partners on the bottled water film include five leading sustainability groups:

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Helpful Review? Amazon's Why and Hows

This is an interesting article on the how and whys of Amazon's question, "Was this review helpful to you??

The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar Question

By Jared M. Spool

Originally published: Mar 17, 2009

Since its release in 2007, the last volume of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has garnered 3,490 reviews from Amazon.com customers. While response has been overwhelmingly positive for the book, several hundred Amazon customers rated the book as mediocre or worse.
Because of a very subtle yet clever feature, Amazon makes the best of both the positive and negative reviews easy to find. And that feature, based on our calculations, is responsible for more than $2,700,000,000 of new revenue for Amazon every year. Not bad for what is essentially a simple question: "Was this review helpful to you?"

The Problem with Chronology

Amazon had reviews from the very first day. It's always been a feature that customers love. (Many non-customers talk about how they check out the reviews on Amazon first, then buy the product someplace else.)
Initially, the review system was purely chronological. The designers didn't account for users entering hundreds or thousands of reviews.
Interestingly, only a fringe portion of the audience writes reviews. For example, while Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has more than 3,000 reviews, our calculations indicate Amazon sold more than 4,000,000 copies of the book. That's 0.075% or only one out of every 1,300 purchasers that took the time to write a review.
For small numbers, chronology works just fine. However, it quickly becomes unmanageable. (For example, anyone who discovers an established blog may feel they've come in at the middle of a conversation, since only the most recent topics are presented first. It seems as if the writer assumed the readers had read everything from the beginning.)
The problem came with the eleventh review. Since the product page only showed ten on the first page, the eleventh pushed the earliest review onto a different page. This worked fine as long as every new review was better than the existing ones.
But that wasn't happening. Newer reviews often had a what-he-said vibe to them, echoing the sentiments of the well-written reviews, while, at the same time pushing them out of the reader's view.

Adding Editorial Perspective

Amazon needed a way to make the best reviews bubble to the top. The obvious approach would be an editorial team to select the best reviews for highlighting.
However, the cost would be exorbitant. While Amazon already has a team that checks reviews to eliminate spam and off-topic comments (you never see unwanted promotions in their reviews), it's a lot more work to rate each review and select the best.
Doing so would also go against Amazon's philosophy of letting the market decide what's good and bad, which makes Amazon a trusted agent. If customers perceived Amazon was selecting reviews for items that provided better profits or manufacturer kick-backs, it could damage the credibility the site.
So the team had to come up with an approach that scaled well but didn't hurt credibility. In true Amazon tradition, why not ask the customers what they thought?

The Elegance of the Question

Even though the question is one of Amazon's most important features, it's impressive how understated its introduction was. One day, for many of Amazon's users (but not all), it just showed up. It was one of many changes occurring on the site that month. Most users didn't notice it for weeks and few understood how it was going to change the value of the reviews. (It's not even clear that the team, when they launched it, truly understood what was about to happen.)
Even today, little effort is made to draw attention to the question. It falls neatly at the bottom of each review with two simple buttons: Yes and No.
Even though this is a critical function, it's easy for most visitors to miss. It blends nicely into the review above it.
Similarly, reviews only acquire the "n of n people have found the following helpful" heading when someone has voted. Amazon doesn't taint a review just because nobody has voted yet.
Even the behavior of clicking Yes or No is elegant. Amazon tracks who rates each review as helpful, allowing each person to only vote once. This prevents "gaming the system" by voting for a friend's (or your own) review multiple times. Clicking either Yes or No pops up a quick message, saying the vote will take effect within 24 hours. (This delay also reduces gaming.)
Amazon quietly bumps the three most helpful reviews to the top. It tries to balance positive and negative reviews, so shoppers get a balanced perspective. An interesting side effect is how these selected reviews get more votes. If they are controversial (in that not everyone agrees they were helpful), their ratio goes down, allowing the most helpful reviews to bubble up past them.
This makes it a self-managing system, letting the reviews people find the most helpful to maintain their standing at the top of the list. The result is an understated implementation that works great.

Amazon's Subsequent Enhancements

Since the initial release of the helpfulness question, Amazon's team has played with many variations, some of which have become mainstays of the design. One of the first enhancements was to use Ajax instead of a page refresh when the user pressed the Yes or No button.
This simple change of removing the page refresh dramatically increased the likelihood a user would vote on more reviews.
To make more room on the product page, Amazon reduced the number of reviews they initially display. Now, when they have helpful reviews, they appear separate from the rest. On the most popular products, only the most helpful reviews show up.
Recently, Amazon has added a tally feature to the ratings, summing the five-, four-, three-, two-, and one-star reviews. When a reader selects to see all the reviews, the site presents them with a highlight of the most helpful positive review and the most helpful negative review.
In our studies of Amazon shoppers, we found many start by looking at only the negative reviews, using them to try to "talk them out" of buying the product. Interestingly, Amazon now has a feature to easily see the more negative reviews together.

The Dependence on Volume

While the helpfulness question is extremely powerful for Amazon, we wonder if it can work on other sites as effectively. Amazon has an advantage in that they have millions of visitors every day. The volume of visitors makes this feature work so well.
While only one in 1,300 purchasers of the product writes a review, the number who indicate a review was helpful is even fewer. For the Harry Potter volume, which is Amazon's best selling product ever, it was about 0.0014% or about one in 7,300 purchasers of the product. The most helpful review garnered only 566 votes, even though it was written on the first day the book was released and Amazon has sold more than 2,000,000 copies since.
Using the pattern we see frequently in web use, we can predict that the number of reviews that will get any votes follows a power-law distribution. This means that only a few will get a substantial number of votes (helped by the fact they'll be promoted to the top). A handful will get a small number of helpfulness votes, but most reviews won't get any.
Because of the power-law distribution, on sites with substantially lower traffic than Amazon, it's very possible that the helpfulness question won't be answered enough to be useful. That said, if it's implemented like Amazon and reviews without votes avoid saying "0 of 0 people found this helpful", there's probably no harm in implementing it for lower volume sites.

The Power of Good Design

In 2008, Amazon brought in $19 billion, of which 70% came from media products, such as books, movies, and music. It's not an accident that these products also make the best use of the reviews feature.
As we’ve watched Amazon customers make purchases on the site, we can clearly see that promoting the most helpful reviews has increased sales in these categories by 20%.(One out of every five customers decides to complete the purchase because of the strength of the reviews.) From this, we can project it has contributed to Amazon's top line by $2.7 billion.
This is a case of a simple question - asked in the right way at the right time - that can have a dramatic affect on the success of the organization. Simple, subtle design once again proves it has great magical powers (and, in the right circumstances, very lucrative ones).

reposted from http://www.uie.com/articles/magicbehindamazon/

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Realtime Google Earth Rain and Snow

Google Earth Now Displays Real-Time Rain and Snowno word on when this feature might be enabled in other parts of the world.

http://mashable.com/2010/07/30/google-earth-real-time-weather/

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Why Not to Make Career Plans

I stumbled across this...while looking for something else of course.  Life happens, A+ for getting it.

Don’t make career plans – here’s why By Rebecca Thorman  

"I thought something would happen the last week of March, but what was supposed to happen didn’t.
See, I was supposed to figure out who the man of my dreams was this past week. Stop laughing. This is serious business. Last year, I felt overwhelmingly that this would happen in March or April, and as time went on, I began to believe that it would happen in the last week of March.
I told a couple people about this craziness – my mother, Belle, Hercules. They all humored me while explaining in a good-natured way that I shouldn’t count on it.
You can’t plan for things like this, they said. You can’t plan for love.
Fine, I told them. But I went ahead and had drinks with every eligible bachelor I knew. Just in case. Then I waited for fireworks.
Nothing.
Okay, so you can’t plan love. And you can’t plan for your career any better.
When you stick to a plan, you miss out on opportunities. Besides, you’re only in control of yourself. You may have goals, but unless you’re ruthless with yourself and who you are – your abilities, your strengths, your weaknesses – you’re not going to get anywhere.
For instance, I had drinks with Johannes last week. He’s been planning one particular career path for a number of years now and found out recently that he didn’t get the job he really wanted. He got another great job, but it wasn’t the one he had put on the map he carried around and relied upon. Understandably, he was pretty despondent.
This was probably you when you realized that you would never use your degree. Or when you found out you couldn’t have children. Or when you started your dream job, the one that paid you large sums of money, and you looked outside your corner office with a view and realized you’d rather be a musician.
That’s the thing about life. It doesn’t really care about your plans. So you can chart all the courses you want, but it’s much better to just be prepared and flexible for the opportunities that come your way.
Like Sunday, when I shot a gun. Um, yeah.
If you know me at all, you know how ridiculous this is. And my mother is probably having a heart attack right now. But mom, it’s okay. I was very safe.
I’ve never believed that people should own guns. In England, they don’t allow people to own guns, and there’s virtually no gun-related crime. Seems easy enough to me. So I’ve always thought that owning a gun was downright stupid. Or I did. Until my friend drove us to a shooting ground, taught me the rules of gun safety, and I pulled the trigger. I actually even hit the target several times.
Do you know how exhilarating it is to try new things? To take risks and do something you never thought you would?
That’s why it’s so necessary not to hold onto your plans, opinions, and beliefs with such strictness that you can’t change and adapt, and with such fear that you don’t live your life.
You know, I was never going to be the person I am today. I was going to be the next William McDonough. I was going to be the next Samuel Mockbee. And well, I’ve always wanted to be Oprah. And maybe someday I will be. But I’m pretty glad life got in the way of my plans.
In summary, to rock your life and your career:
1) Focus on the now.
2) Like plans, love change.
3) Take risks.
4) Repeat.
In the meantime, I’m accepting that maybe I’m just not ready for a relationship. Or maybe the person that I like isn’t ready. Or maybe we’re not meant to be together. Whatever. The point is, I’m done worrying about it. And I’m ready for today.

Love it like you mean it."

reposted from http://modite.com/blog/2008/03/31/don%E2%80%99t-make-career-plans-%E2%80%93-h...

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COMIC: Computer Mice Types

HT to Mochtader

http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/types-of-mouse/

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HOWTO: 5 Ways to Learn to Code

5 Great Resources To Learn How To Code

by Abhigyan on Jul. 17th, 2010

More and more people are turning towards coding as a profession/hobby. From freelancers to actual developers, everyone seems to have their foundations strong in at least one programming platform.
However, more often than not, there seems to be a problem of actually finding good content online that can teach you to code. Experimenting with a language can only get you so far. To master it, you need to have proper guidance from people who actually know what they are talking about.

So where can you find expert guidance without shelling out a fortune for it? You could start with checking out the websites below:

Dream In Code

Just taking a look at their logo ought to tell you that the community at Dream In Code isn’t something to mess around with. You can browse their content for free, or you can sign up to become a permanent member.
They have everything. Right from fundamental elements to programming examples, Dream In Code can help you master any language you choose. That’s because Dream In Code is not restricted to only one language. It covers almost everything under the sun and the community of users/experts is just amazing.
They also have a video channel and links to developers’ blogs if you want to look deeper.

W3Schools

If what you want to master is a Web technology, you’ve got to give W3Schools a look. There’s hardly a place on the Internet that’s as exhaustive as W3Schools when it comes to tutorials about Web technologies.
You can get tutorials ranging from plain-Jane HTML, right up to AJAX and the likes. There’s even Server Side Scripting thrown into the mix if that’s what you fancy.

Eloquent JavaScript

If you’ve ever had to use a Greasemonkey Script or a Bookmarklet, you have a clue about the kind of power that JavaScript possesses. It can dynamically modify the contents of the page that you are viewing.
If you’ve ever wondered how any of this is done, then you’ve got to checkout Eloquent JavaScript. This is an interactive tutorial, which you can either read off the Internet, or download as an archive and use on your local disk. It includes a live console to try out any code that you might want to. The entire tutorial is written in very lucid English, and is very easy to follow.

TryRuby

Ruby is another one of those languages that is taking the world by storm. Slowly, but surely, it’s making its presence felt on the Internet. If you are thinking of venturing out into web application development, then you’ve got to give Ruby a shot. There’s a chance you may never have to look back.
The only trouble is finding good sources of Ruby tutorials. TryRuby is a website that’s dedicated to teaching you about Ruby. When you first open the page, all you get is an interactive console for you to code in. Type “help” (without the quotes) and hit Return/Enter to start the Ruby tutorial.
Like Eloquent JavaScript, TryRuby is not at all intimidating. Five minutes into the tutorial and I was wondering whether the syntax can really be that simple.

A Miscellany of HTML5 Tutorials

Last but not least, we come to HTML5. HTML5 has been creating a furore all over the Internet over the last year or so. It’s definitely going to be big (especially with giants like Apple and Google backing it). Therefore, as a developer, you’ve got to have knowledge (either elementary or advanced) about the capabilities of this standard. Tripwire Magazine has a list of more than 30 tutorials at their website. You can get access to all of them using the link above.
Now that you have our list of resources from where you can learn how to code, why don’t you pick up that keyboard and put your fingers to good effect? Once you master a language and come up with an awesome app, let us know about it and we might just dedicate a post to it.

reposted from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-great-resources-learn-code/

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Neuroplasticity or Prayer and Meditation

What I really liked about this article was the sentence, "spiritual teachers....expounded upon extensively in their discussions of prayer and meditation long before we had the language to describe it."  From Thomas Merton, to Yogananda to Elizabeth Clare Prophet, they discovered something that works...even if others didn't think so at the time.

From http://www.psychologytoday.com, read: BLOG: Enlightened Living, Mindfulness practice in everyday life.
July 28, 2010 by Michael J. Formica

The Science, Psychology and Metaphysics of Prayer

What do we pray for, and for what do we pray?

Some weeks ago, the students of Paramahansa Yogananda -- the teacher widely credited with bringing Yoga and Yoga Science to the West - approached me to write an article on prayer, coincident with their upcoming annual week-long Self-Realization Fellowship Convocation. An exploration into the subject reveals prayer to be a considerably more complex subject than the stereotypic image we tend to have of the ardent believer, fervorently casting forth pleas for help, forgiveness or some other momentarily pressing need. Prayer is not just a going out, but also a going in, and it is a practice woven deeply into the fabric of global culture -- a rich tapestry of science, psychology, metaphysics and, of course, faith and spiritual sojourn.
As a practice, prayer is the setting of an intention; it is not a plea, but a resolution, and that resolution takes many forms. Whatever that form, the psychology that underlies prayer issues forth from two fairly distinct perspectives. On the one hand, God, or the object of prayer, may be represented as an external construct of the ego, or something "out there". On the other, God may be represented as an interior archetype, or something "in here".

The various spiritual and religious traditions -- major and minor, dormant and new - each fall primarily into one of these two containers, and then include some lesser blending of the other. This fundamental psychological framework subsequently influences and informs the form that prayer and meditation take within each of the various spiritual traditions.
The major Western traditions, such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam subscribe in large measure to the "out there" construct; so, God is primarily "prayed to". The mystic traditions associated with each of these larger traditions -- Gnosticism, Kabala and Sufism, respectively - lend the "in here" aspect to this particular container, resonating with the notion of the Self as divine.
The major Eastern traditions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism issue forth from the other side of this coin, subscribing in large measure to the "in here" construct; so, prayer from this perspective is something more introspective and akin to meditation. Within each of these traditions, there are also reflected varying aspects of the "out there", compassed by things like the Hindu and Buddhist pantheons, or Tao begetting Yin/Yang begetting I-Ching, in a parallel of Genesis.
Smaller traditions both East and West, such as Wicca, Jainism Bon, Native American shamanism, Shinto, Voodoo, Santeria, etc., reflect a similar set of balances within their fundamental psychological underpinnings. Witness the Great Spirit of the Native American Sioux tradition, which also emphasizes the relationship between The People and The Land, anthropomorphizing tatanka, the Buffalo. Similarly, Wicca relies heavily on practitioner's relationship to the 5 Elements as aspects of the self, but regularly calls The Goddess into the ritual circle, while Voodoo and Santeria hold close association with Christian tradition.
No matter the form of prayer particular to a tradition, one type of prayer that is ubiquitous to all is the prayer of blessing. Again, speaking to the psychological aspect, blessing is when prayer - no matter its antecedent - moves from the egocentric (praying for me) to the ethnocentric (praying for you/us) and geocentric (praying for all of us). After all, one of the most ubiquitous terms - and blessings -- in the English language is "goodbye", which is shorthand for "God be with ye".
An interesting bit of science attached to this ethnocentric and geocentric evolution of prayer comes out of Duke University Medical Center, where a study found that, within a group of 150 cardiac patients who received alternative post-operative therapy treatment, the sub-group who also received intercessory prayer (they were prayed for) had the highest success rate within the entire cohort. The fascinating thing about the study is that it was double-blind - neither the researchers, nor those on the receiving end of the intercessory prayer knew that these patients were being prayed for -- suggesting an intervening variable.
A comparable double-blind study, conducted at San Francisco General Hospital's Coronary Care Unit, demonstrated similar results. Those patients "prayed for" showed a significantly diminished need for imminent critical care, maintenance medications and heroic measures, as well as witnessing fewer deaths - again, suggesting an intervening variable.
Clearly, the intervening variable implied by these studies isn't a case for God. It does suggest, however, some relationship between the states of consciousness experienced by those praying, and the subjective experience of those prayed for.
From a metaphysical perspective, what we are talking about here is the reciprocal resonance that has been demonstrated to exist between states of consciousness - specifically, casual states of consciousness (prayer, meditation and deep, dreamless sleep)-- and the quantum field (what we like to call reality) described by quantum physics. From a more practical perspective, the notion of this relationship leads us to consider both the individual and collective experience of prayer, and the potential influence it can have on our experience both in and of the world.
Prayer, like meditation, influences our state of mind, which, in turn, influences our "state of body". It reduces the experience of anxiety, elevates a depressed mood, lowers blood pressure, stabilizes sleep patterns and impacts autonomic functions like digestion and breathing. Further, in influencing our state of body-mind, prayer and meditation also influence our thinking. This prompts a shift in the habits of the mind, and, subsequently, patterns of behavior. These changes, in turn and over time, induce changes in the brain, further influencing our subjective and objective experience of the world and how we participate in it.
Does all of this sound familiar? It should, because what we're really talking about here is neuroplasticity, a topic that spiritual teachers like Thomas Merton, Baal Shem Tov and Paramahansa Yogananda expounded upon extensively in their discussions of prayer and meditation long before we had the language to describe it.

So, if prayer and meditation influence the body-mind, which, in turn, influences our experience of the world and the manner in which we participate in it, what happens when you get a group of folks praying or meditating together? Logic dictates "one is good, two are better", and one has only to witness the orgiastic union of a Baptist congregation or the quiet solemnity of Islamic Salaat to recognize the power and potential of collective prayer, as well as its larger social impact.
With collective prayer, we move from the egocentric to the ethno- and geocentric. Generalizing the individual experience of ethnocentric and geocentric prayer to the collective, along with its associated motif of neuroplastic change and the evident influence of intercessory prayer, it becomes clear where an effort like the Self-Realization Fellowship's Convocation finds its intention, and inspiration.
Remarking on prayer, meditation and the power of intention, Paramahansa Yogananda and his contemporaries drew not only on the core of spirituality, but also fundamental principles of psychology and specifically neuroplasticity to describe the transformation of the interior landscape. The exterior expression of that interior transformation extends the intention of transformation outward, with prayer, and most specifically collective prayer, providing, in part and quite literally, the vehicle, to quote Mahatma Gandhi, for "[Being] the change [we] wish to see in the world."

 © 2010 Michael J. Formica, All Rights Reserved

Michael J. Formica, MS, MA, EdM is a social scientist and educator. 

Reposted from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/enlightened-living/201007/the-science-psy...

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Netiquette A.K.A. Pardon me, but Your Ignorance is Showing

Join the sarcastic brains Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz in this ever-timely poke at....you!  (Well, we hope not, but we get your email, too!)

Composing an e-mail is kind of like breathing: Everyone assumes they know what they’re doing, but in reality plenty of people could use some pointers. But even with 247 billion messages per day, myriad senders are horrifying recipients every day.

Here are three big e-mail mistakes you're probably making.

Egregious e-mail error: Recklessly BCC'ing and forwarding
E-mail entry forms are not that complicated. We all understand how BCC (blind carbon copy) and Forward work. Why, then, do so many people persist in using them incorrectly -- awkwardly fumbling about in the internet ether?
Use BCC when you're e-mailing a gazillion people and you don't want to junk up their inboxes with the recipient list, and/or you don't need everyone to see everyone else on the list.
For example, if you're sending a mass e-mail to let your networking contacts know you're on the lookout for a new job, it wouldn't really be good form to give everybody the e-mail address of that big-shot VP your parents know. Also use BCC if you're giving a whole list of people bad news (e.g., that they didn't get a gig).
Last year, Twitter published the e-mails of scads of rejected job applicants. Awkwardness and tail-between-the-legs sheepishness ensued.
Do not use BCC to secretly let someone know an e-mail exchange is going down. You run the risk that the idiot will fail to notice he wasn't candidly CC'ed, in which case he can hit reply-all, blow your cover and create a situation so awkward, it rivals that walk of shame where you ran into your boss in the same clothes you wore to work the day before -- only backward.
The smarter way to loop a buddy in (say, you want to clue a co-worker in on a client's latest display of stunning idiocy): Reply to the client, then forward the whole exchange to your colleague. Just bear in mind that said recipient is going to read everything in the convo up until that point.
It's easy to be like, "Oh, we're talking about meeting up at Samson's, I'll forward this last one to Samson," forgetting that Samson is going to read six e-mails into your and Julie's personal e-mail exchange, where she reveals that last night's episode of "Friday Night Lights" really spoke to her about her and Jude's relationship problems.
Egregious e-mail error: Being a thankless jerk
In interoffice e-mails, especially, the purpose of an exchange is almost always to demand or supply information. In the give-and-take, you must remember the magic words your mom drilled into your head until you were huddled terrified in the corner, simpering into your Apple Jacks: please and thank you.
When you request something via e-mail and get back what you need, it's easy to think, "Oh, I won't clutter up his tremblingly overstuffed inbox with a pointless note of gratitude."
But if you say thanks as soon as you get the info, you won't throw off his e-mail-checking routine. Just try to respond quickly -- if it's been more than 20 minutes, skip the gratuitous gratitude and tack the thanks on to the next e-mail volley. ("I appreciate your sending me those survey results last week. I'd like to set up a meeting to discuss...")
If you're the one providing the info, don't just paste it into the body of an e-mail and hit send without salutations or a sign-off. That just makes it sound like you're pissed off to have to help.
"Here you go, thanks" takes three seconds to type, and prevents resentment from brewing in the bowels of your coworkers. Leave that to pay cuts, the hellish drone of fluorescent lights and increasingly bizarre money-saving schemes.
Egregious e-mail error: Playing fascist dictator
Show of hands: How many of you under-30s have ever received the following e-mail from a higher-up?
"???"
It's typically a response to your e-mail or a forward of something someone else said, right? And yeah, it feels like a nauseating shot of Wild Turkey and makes you momentarily hate your boss, right?
Now imagine sending that same e-mail to your boss: She sends a note giving you a completely unrealistic new deadline, say, and you just hit Reply and give that question mark three jabs. Ridiculous, right?
My friend even had a higher-up pepper a message with comic book-style cuss words: "There's no way I'm calling another #&$% meeting..." Classy.
The rule here is simple: Address your employee the same way you'd address your boss. Unless you're still a two-finger typist, "I'm not clear why this hasn't been taken care of. Can you please send me a status report? Thanks," is not an onerous message to compose.

If you're especially bad at judging how your e-mails come across, there's ToneCheck, a (slightly silly) plug-in that flags harsh phrases. If you can prevent your workers from feeling like Bazooka gum on the bottom of your shoe, surprise! -- they'll actually want to impress you. Kissing ass is a whole lot easier to master than the other kind.

CNN Editor's note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and soon-to-be-book Stuff Hipsters Hate. When they're not trolling Brooklyn for new material, Ehrlich works as a news editor at Mashable.com, and Bartz holds the same position at Psychology Today.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/07/28/netiquette.email.mistakes

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Gulf Spill No Accident + I Believe in the USA

On the morning of August 28, Carl Safina writes:

"The blowout is stopped. The oil disaster that began with an explosion 100 days ago has not ended by any means. But we seem to be seeing a murky ending to the beginning of the crisis.

We have an enormous amount of floating oil, and Gulf waters polluted by oil and dispersant. Most estimates range from 2 million to 4 million barrels (84 million to 168 million gallons). The higher end would make it the largest unintended release of oil ever. (In 1991, Saddam Hussein's army intentionally released about 400 to 500 million gallons into the Persian Gulf to slow American troops.) Added to the Gulf of Mexico's troubles: about 2 million gallons of dispersant, a major intentional pollution event in itself.

What now? As a naturalist, I'd say the wildlife effects remain hard to grasp. The damage to people is most easily observable, best quantified and perhaps even most acute. No one knows whether the seafood and tourism and fisheries will be clean and healthy again next year or in a decade.

We should be willing to learn some lessons.

One is that this catastrophe wasn't just an accident. It was the result of reckless corner-cutting by the oil company and scandalously compromised oversight by the government. As U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, observed, "BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure."

The compromised oversight included the Minerals Management Service failing to require a backup shutdown system required in much of the rest of the world, failing to require offshore drillers to file plans to deal with major oil spills and specifically allowing BP to drill without a detailed environmental analysis.
The George W. Bush administration gave top Interior Department jobs to former lobbyists of the fossil fuel industry. Now the inspector general finds that Interior had "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity."

Another lesson: Preparedness is near zero. The only two things responders could quickly muster were booms that can't handle open water, and dispersants. But dispersants sink oil, defeating the idea behind booms, polluting much more water, making the oil more widely toxic to marine life and making it impossible to recover or clean up.

Absent preparedness, BP and other companies responding to the spill made stuff up as they went; during weeks of blundering, hare-brained schemes like using shredded tires and golf balls to "top kill" the well, and fabricating new slap-dab caps and domes that didn't work. Meanwhile people sent their hair clippings to the Gulf. A comedy of horrors. That is not a response plan.

Obviously, reforms are needed. Rig regulations should now require that the best equipment and procedures are used. To eliminate guesswork and argument, these procedures must be specified and quantified. For instance, blowout preventers should have a specified number of valves for drilling in a particular range of depths, all spelled out as requirements. Further, there should be explicit checklists and decision trees.

If the driller detects a possible problem, the operation must be shut down; they must not retain the option of arguing about whether it's probably OK to keep going. A culture of safety and best practices must replace the culture of risk.

We should never again be subjected to the comment, "We've never tried this at this depth." It's as if, after the house is on fire, they set about devising and then building a truck capable of spraying water.

With all the contracting companies servicing thousands of rigs, you'd think the oil giants would have, say, two or three pieces of equipment in a warehouse somewhere capable of stopping and controlling a blowout at one of their wells -- and capturing the oil. This should be devised and required.

Because an oil company's interests are not aligned with the public's interests, the oil company must be liable, but not in charge. Allowing an oil company to run the response to a spill makes it possible for it to try to hide the amount of oil and the numbers of wildlife killed, to suppress scientific data and hamper journalists.

The federal government should nationalize major spills, avail itself of the best pooled talent in the oil industry, and send the offending company the people's bill.

Once it's on our property, the offending oil company should not touch anything unless specifically directed to do so. As it is now, things are so insanely backward that at the end of June the Coast Guard made it a felony for boats to get within 70 feet of boom. We need to stop putting the murderer in charge of the crime scene.

Larger lessons lurk.

The mortgage bubble, banking collapse, taxpayer-funded bailouts and this blowout all stem from a three-decade assault on government effectiveness, the consequent deregulation Mardi Gras, and the unleashing of corporate greed and corporate "personhood."

Corporate capture of government away from the public's interests is the basic poison. Campaign finance reform and publicly funded elections would be the antidote.

Lastly and probably most important, to honor the scale of this catastrophe, we need to create a historic moment that begins to give us some energy options and creates a graceful phase-in of greater reliance on the clean, eternal energy that actually runs our planet.

There are many reasons to do this.

Blowouts and dead workers and the awful environmental destruction wrought by coal mining and oil are some.

Helping weaken petro-dictators and gaining U.S. energy independence is major.

Helping stabilize world climate and the acidifying seas, and securing agriculture, are yet others.

Providing jobs, incentives for construction and investment opportunities are others still.

The basic vision is to reduce oil subsidies, create a level playing field for clean renewable energies like wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, algae fuels, etc; construct a national smart grid capable of carrying power produced by any energy source whether dirty or renewable from where it's abundant to where it's needed.

Electric cars would be the grid's storage battery. Other countries -- China and some in northern Europe -- are doing this.

But I'd rather see American leadership regained. The nation that owns the future of energy will own the future. I want that nation of the future to be the United States of America."

479 shares | 163 comments

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Carl Safina writes about how the ocean is changing and what it means for wildlife and for people. A MacArthur fellow, Pew fellow and Guggenheim fellow, he is adjunct professor at Stony Brook University and president of Blue Ocean Institute. His next book, "The View From Lazy Point; A Natural Year in an Unnatural World," will appear this fall. He is working on a book about the oil blowout. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Carl Safina.

excerpted from http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/28/safina.oil.lessons/index.html

YOUTUBE VIDEO: "I Believe in the United States of America," A timely and penetrating look at America’s spiritual destiny: http://fb.me/yRzm9yfA

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HOWTO: Delete All Flash Cookies on Your Computer

You've probably read about the hacking class action suit against Hulu et al. for using Adobe Flash to store cookies on your computer.  If not, you can read about it here: http://ecommerce-journal.com/node/29071.

(thenextweb.com)
A "Flash cookie," is a "local shared object," a data file that can be created on your computer by the sites that you visit. 

Now, while you might think that you have cleared your computer of tracking objects, most likely you have not.

YIKES! If you do not change your Adobe Flash settings, it is possible that you have hundreds (or more) cookies stored on your computer.  The default is to allow cookies.

Perhaps you think your Objection Firefox extension will clear Flash cookies.  No, it doesn't clear them all. (You might try the BetterPrivacy Firefox add-on, which promises to remove all Flash cookies each time you close the browser, here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623 )

HOWTO: Delete all currently stored Flash Cookies on your computer at the Macromedia Website Privacy Settings panel online.

One important note here: The Settings Manager that you see on this page is NOT an image; it is your actual Settings Manager.  Go here:  http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_...

You can delete data from a specific website by selecting a website and clicking Delete.

You can also delete all data currently stored on your system in Flash Cookies by clicking Delete All Sites. This is similar to the function in your web browser that lets you delete cookies.

Click the tabs to see different panels, and click the options in the panels to change your Adobe Flash Player settings.  For each tab, allow the page to reload, change the panel, and read the new text below appropriate to that tab.

DEMONSTRATION VIDEO: Steps to use the Flash Player Settings Manager to manage and delete Flash Cookies (local shared objects).

Additional Information

For additional information regarding security please visit theFlash Player Privacy and Security Center.

Thanks to: http://tips.webdesign10.com/flash-cookies-privacy and http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/526/52697ee8.html and the sites linked above.

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VIDEO: TED - What Adults Can Learn from Kids

I love TED videos.  And this is one of those inspiring "must pay attention tos"

What adults can learn from kids

via ted.com

In this impressive speech 12 year old Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.
Astonishingly see seems very grown up while she speaks...

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HOWTO: Online Mouse Draw Chinese & Japanese Characters

Okay, so the title didn't really make much sense.  But this is fun:

Skritter: Learn To Draw Chinese & Japanese Characters With Mouse Online

Although a number of people learn to speak Chinese and Japanese, writing these languages is a different matter. Most people cannot properly differentiate between the characters of these languages. To help them write these languages better, Skritter was created.

Skritter is a web service that helps users learn to draw chinese Chinese and Japanese characters with mouse. Although the site is a paid service, you can try out the demo during which you will learn a number of Chinese and Japanese characters.
You start the demo by selecting a language: simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, or Japanese. According to your chosen language the following screen will present characters as well as tips on stroke rules in each language. Initially character outlines are shown which you need to trace but as you progress, the outlines are no longer there and you draw the characters completely on your own. Character pronunciations are also available on the site.
Features:

• Learn Chinese and Japanese characters online.
• Supports simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and Japanese.
• Brush stroke rules are focused on the site.
• Contains pronunciations for each shown character.
• Similar tools: Tatoeba, Busuu, LangoLAB, LearnItLists and Lingt.

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/skritter-draw-chinese-characters-with-mouse/

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VIDEO: Tron Legacy #2 Trailer

"Tron: Legacy"  The second official trailer for the follow up to 1982's "Tron" is the first that feels like a strong and complete representation of what fans hope the finished film will be like. But will it be the same underlying message...and will people get it?

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VIDEO: Pacific Water Vapor Loop

Northeast Pacific - Water Vapor Loop

These java applet loops will no longer be supported after 01/01/2010.
Flash loops (if linked below) cover the same area.
These pages will remain active and online for the forseeable future. More Information

Java must be enabled for radar loops to display.

In Netscape:
Select: Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced
Check "Enable Java" and "Enable Javascript"

In Internet Explorer
Select: Tools -> Internet Options -> Security tab
Select the Internet zone and set the Security level for the zone to "Medium"

You may need to restart your browser after making these changes.

 

This loop intended for informational purposes only!
For Emergency situations and/or decisions, please refer to your local Emergency Management Office.

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/loop-wv.html

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APP: Watch Google Spy on You

Is Google Watching You? New Plugin Will Let You Know

Another rad browser plugin called Google Alarm hit the Internets this week, which alerts you every time your personal info is sent to Google’s servers. How? Via notifications, a running tally of dangerous sites and, naturally, a super annoying, vuvuzela-like alarm.
After seeing this new plugin — which works with both Firefox () and Chrome () — on F.A.T., I contacted the developer who made it: Jamie Wilkinson, who also created Know Your Meme and Mag.ma. Google Alarm, which was made during F.A.T.’s F*ck Google Week in Berlin, is supposed to make users aware of how much info they’re sending to the search giant.
According to Wilkinson, “Google () makes great products and gives them all away for free, which has made them into a ubiquitous and omniscient force on the Internet (). Google Alarm and F*ck Google in general are meant to illustrate how this single unregulated company now captures more information about us than any government agency ever could. When I started developing Google Alarm I was blown away to discover that 80+% of websites I visit have some kind of Google tracking bugs on them.”

So how does the plugin work?

“[It] inspects each page you visit for Google-related URLs: googleanalytics.com/ga.js for Google Analytics (), doubleclick.net/googlesyndication.com URLs for AdSense, youtube.com/v/ for YouTube () embeds, and many more,” Wilkinson says. “Each service triggers an individual visual and audible alert to help you become more aware of when you’re transmitting data to Google.” If you’re into the idea, the source code is currently open, and Wilkinsen welcomes suggestions. Check out the video below for more info:

We’ve been seeing a ton of interesting plugins like this lately — Shaved Bieber, BP Oil, Ex-blocker (which, disclosure, I helped come up with). It would be interesting to see if they actually become legit tools. Wilkinson would tend to agree: “Browser addons offer a unique opportunity to hack our web browsing experience,” he says. “We spend so much time on the web that it’s only natural to begin playing with how we observe and interact with it. I wish we had something as powerful for our TV sets.”
What do you think of this plugin? I personally would not recommend enabling it unless you really dig the vuvuzela.
[img credit: twicepix]

http://mashable.com/2010/07/27/google-alarm/

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