Duncan Gotobed

Colossal failures

Adam Savage is an American industrial design and special effects engineer, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters.

In this video he tells 'juicy stories' about his failures. Very watchable/listenable.

http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/MythBuster_Adam_Savages_Colossal_Failures

On designing tools

I like this quote from Dave Snowden 

"Technology is a tool and like all tools it should fit your hand when you pick it up, you shouldn't have to bio-re-engineer your hand to fit the tool."

It describes a key quality of a well designed product/service.

(via davidtjones)

Look after your copywriters

http://consumerist.com/5295538/sausage-package-illustrates-what-happens-when-youre-a-jerk-to-the-copywriter

(via PSFK)

Making use of space

This recent Apple advertisement on NYtimes.com shows the unique creative opportunities of three different ad units that are talking to each other…literally.

Watch the video here.

Crowd sourced accountability

The Guardian has created a crowd-sourced website that asks readers to check through all expenses submitted by MPs over the last four years. The site contains 457,153 pages of documents of which 311,584 need to be reviewed. When someone finds something suspicious they can flag it for further investigation by the newspaper.

Readers have made a number of discoveries, whch the Guardian lists here.

Follow others

Schulze & Webb have designed a prototype digital radio that has your social network built in, showing you the stations your friends are listening to. Would you listen to it?

On projects...

"If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete." 

Joseph Gavin discussing the design of the Lunar module.

(via davidjones)

'Yes'

This list of 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive is very good. I particularly like:

Introduce herd effect in highly personalized form. The hotel sign in the bathroom informed the guests that many prior guests chose to be environmentally friendly by recycling their towels. However, when the message mentioned that majority of the guests who stayed in this specific room chose to be more environmentally conscious and reused their towels, towel recycling jumped 33%, even though the message was largely the same.

Writing things down improves commitment. Group A was asked to volunteer on AIDS awareness program at local schools, and was asked to commit verbally. Group B was asked for the same kind of volunteer project, but was given a simple form to fill in. 17% of volunteers from Group A actually showed up to their assigned local school. From Group B 49% of volunteers showed up

Insanity...

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein.

A great quote that sums up the 'official' publication of MPs expenses.

Music maestro

Warning this is highly addictive!

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Creating social objects

The Incidental was a daily paper that was created to make navigating and surviving the Milan Furniture Fair that little bit easier. It provided daily reviews and comments on what was worth seeing plus the previous day’s highlights and everyone was invited to contribute. Pictures and observations could be submitted via Flickr, Twitter, text, email  or just scribbled down.  

Matt explains more about it here.

I like the way the idea combines digital and print. I'm also impressed by the British Council for taking such an innovative approach to sharing information and facilitating conversations.

(via russell davies)

Maglev train spotting

This is a fascinating video of a maglev train. If you watch right to the end you will see a nice demonstration of a train using tracks mounted vertically on buildings.

Popular Science published an article five years ago on the possibility of a trans-Atlantic maglev train that would travel in an airless underwater tunnel at 4,000 MPH and make the trip from New York to London in an hour.

(via kotke) 

Free education

The United Nations recently announced the launch of the world’s first tuition-free online university. Named the University of the People, the school will open up access to higher education for many individuals around the world.

Twittering troubles

As events continue to unfold in Iran, the BBC reports that heavy restrictions have been placed on foreign news organisations in Iran. While this approach may have worked in the past it is unlikely to have much of an impact now, particularly as Clay Shirky argues it's the 'first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media'.

Read the TED Q&A with Clay Shirky on Twitter and Iran here.

I think there are a number of lessons to be drawn from what is happening in Iran:

1. People increasingly exoect events to be reported in real-time
2. It's virtually impossible to control what information is communicated about an event  
3. Anyone who has a camera phone and access to the internet is a potential journalist  
4. It's relatively easy for people to access and register support for a cause 

The noisy few

According to a Harvard Business School study, about 10% of Twitter users contribute roughly 90% of its content. Anecdotally, these 10% are subject-matter experts, passionates, mavens, and thought leaders who break news, write strong opinions, and tell jokes. Like on Wikipedia, most users merely read this information, and a modest number of people in the long tail use the information in the form of re-tweets, comments, corrections, and alternative opinions or links.

(via O'Reilly Radar)

It's all too much...

A survey of more than 1,600 workers out today by the Keep Britain Working campaign, whose mission it is to promote innovative ways to preserve and create jobs, found that more than half (52%) of all UK bosses have become worse at motivating their employees since the recession began.

Some of the results were startling with one in three bosses found to have increased their criticism and blame of others, nearly a third have hidden themselves away, more than one in four have simply become indifferent, a quarter have pretended that nothing's happening, while 17% have started shouting and raging. Only one in six bosses have done more to motivate staff since the recession began, the survey said.

It also cited some astonishing examples of a number of clearly unstable bosses who had blatantly ignored every single piece of communications advice ever given to them. These included:

• A charity boss who brought in his hunting rifle and pretended to fire it at staff to make them work harder.
• A boss who made staff clean toilets because she had sacked the cleaners to save money.
• A boss who cut staff hours and pay while boasting about using his bonus to re-decorate his house.
• A public sector boss who advised a worker that people were queuing up for her job.
• A telecoms boss who chanted, “hit this target, keep your job...hit this target, keep your job”. 

(via Team Melcum) 

Image insane mind by Rodrigo Vera

Language changes everything

Lera Boroditsky has found that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world.

Read the article here.

Presenting with style

Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) is one of the best presenters I have seen.

In this talk he explains the principles of great presentation design. 

Playing to strengths

 

Alex Linley is a psychologist, social entrepreneur and author of Average to A+: Realising Strengths in Yourself and Others. 

After time spent working first in business and then in academia, Alex founded the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology, where he is now Director. CAPP iis focused on the applications of strengths in organisations and schools. In this interview I recorded in 2008 Alex clears up some of the confusion around using strengths in organisations.

Download AL_Strengths_At_Work (4.7 MB)

Positive behaviour change

How do you increase the likelihood of positive behaviour change after a learning programme?

stickK.com provides an innovative answer based on behavoural economics. It helps people to achieve their goals and objectives by enabling them to form Commitment Contracts. 

The process is simple, you: 

• make a 'public' commitment
• choose what is at stake if you do not achieve your goal
• select someone to verrify your progress 
• enlist supporters to cheer you on
• get started and report regulalrly
• pay up if you fail