A deceptively addictive typing game created by the maker of Minecraft, in the mould of an old-school typing programme. Words appear in a spiral with spinning cubes and shapes in the background. You simply type what you see. There are minimal instructions.

The trick is recognising what words would come up. You also get bonus points by pressing enter after completing each word, with more points for a string of consecutive words. The maximum bonus score appears to be 20.

You probably won’t survive long on your first try. After 30 minutes of playing, I managed to chalk up a personal best of 595.

Have fun!

I once bought an inflatable kayak. The darn thing was so heavy I practically need to trolley to chug it around, and takes so long to assemble I’ve used it only 3 times. It’s now safely hidden away in the dark corners of my storeroom.

Now, a new Kickstarter project promises the best of both worlds – a light weight and portable folding kayak. It’s performance remains to be seen but its unique application of origami techniques is intriguing to say the least.

No idea how to pronounce it but it sure sounds wonderful.

These are some of the startling findings of an emerging field called work-force science. It adds a large dose of data analysis, a k a Big Data, to the field of human resource management, which has traditionally relied heavily on gut feel and established practice to guide hiring, promotion and career planning.

Work-force science, in short, is what happens when Big Data meets H.R.

No company would admit to making important personnel decisions without any concrete basis, yet this is precisely what is happening in most companies. Think of how you were recruited, evaluated, and managed by your employer. How many of the decisions were based on real evidence, and how many were based on instinct?

This is a healthy trend, and part of a larger movement called evidence-based management. Put simply, management should be based on hard science and not gut feel. That was how modern medicine moved away from alternative medicine and witch doctors.

It’s about time the field of management does the same.

Adam van Koeverden is one of the best sprint kayakers in the world. Check out his beautiful technique in this video – both from the front and back.

Now that Facebook has gone public, there is incessant pressure to increase revenues. With the growing importance of the mobile platform to Facebook’s success, it’s no wonder that over the years, Mark Zuckerberg has had to regularly debunk persistent rumours of a so-called “Facebook phone”. After all, Facebook has dipped its toes into the waters before with the HTC Cha Cha in 2011, which featured a dedicated button to quick-launch the Facebook app:

The HTC Cha Cha was launched in 2011, and featured a dedicated button to launch the Facebook app.

But as Zuckerberg shrewdly pointed out, such a phone could never hope to reach more than a fraction of their billion-plus users. For example, Samsung’s Galaxy S3, the best-selling Android phone by the world’s largest smartphone maker, has shipped out 50 million units as of March 2013. An impressive achievement, but a mere 5% drop in the Facebook blue ocean.

Last week, Facebook held a press conference to unveil their vision of the Facebook phone – they want every phone to be a Facebook phone.

“Facebook Home” is an app launcher for the Android platform. App launchers are basically software that determine the look and feel of your phone’s lock screen, home screen, and app drawer. It’s the part of the phone that users interact directly with, and Facebook is determined to claim that space as its own.

With Home, Facebook is in your face from the second you turn on the screen. For example, you can browse even through your Facebook newsfeed without unlocking the phone. This makes snacking on little nuggets on Facebook a much more streamlined process.

Facebook Home screens (from left to right): lockscreen, Chathead (closed), Chathead (open), and app drawer.

Here’s a quick demo review by The Verge:

Facebook Home was initially available at launch for a selected range of HTC and Samsung phones. But new software updates in the past week have introduced limited functionality for other Android smartphones and iOS devices. I’ve been trying out Facebook Home for the past week, which is probably enough to provide an accurate overview.

Overview

There are three parts to Facebook Home: the app drawer, Chat Heads, and lockscreen.

The app drawer is similar to your typical app drawer containing icons of all your installed apps. Swiping right reveals extra pages for your most frequently used apps. The biggest difference is the addition of dedicated Facebook shortcuts at the top of the screen to update your status, upload a photo, or check in at a location. I disabled the app drawer after just five minutes. This is a real pain to use – I needed extra swipes and taps to open my favourite apps, and widgets are no longer possible. No widgets? That’s one of the greatest benefits of using an Android smartphone over an iPhone, and Facebook for some reason have decided to eliminate them.

Chat Heads allows you to message your friends from within any app simply by clicking on a floating bubble of your friend’s profile photo. It combines both Facebook messages and conventional SMS text messages. It makes conversations much less of a hassle as you no longer need to jump between apps. Playing pong by flicking the bubbles across the screen is pretty entertaining too. Useful for many, but not for Whatsapp users like me.

The new lockscreen is the most intrusive part of Facebook Home. I see status updates and photos from the instant I turn my screen on. However the presentation is beautiful, with elegant typography and photos scrolling slowly across the screen. Even mundane photos look measurably better here. After my initial shock, I actually began to like the lockscreen. It sure makes for a refreshing change from my static lockscreen, providing a different “wallpaper” every time.

How to get Facebook Home

Facebook Home is officially available for the latest HTC and Samsung phones, such as the HTC First and Samsung Galaxy S4. But helpful hackers have already found a workaround, which was how I have installed Facebook Home on my LG Nexus 4.

Chat Heads is available for most smartphones if you update to the latest version of Facebook messenger.

Somehow, the PAP has managed to twist TFR into an excuse to import more foreigners to boost the GDP. It’s always about the GDP because that’s the lens through which PAP views the world.

It’s the same issue posed in my previous post – our values determine our policies. Given their single-minded focus on GDP (there’s even a special bonus for hitting certain GDP growth targets), the Parliament appears to be an exclusive club for economists.

Opposition candidates pose a simple question at their rallies: “Singapore has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world (currently ranked no. 3). But do you feel rich?”

The reason most of us do not feel rich is because Singapore also has the 2nd highest income inequality among developed economies (only Hong Kong fares worse). The gulf between the rich and the poor grows wider every day. This is a global trend exacerbated by the policies of the PAP government.

Singaporeans have experienced the financial and social costs of high economic growth in the past 7 to 8 years: Inflation, overcrowding, erosion of our national identity, failing public transport infrastructure, sky-rocketing costs of property, transport, health and child care.

Now, is slower or negative economic growth really such a bad thing? Singapore society have already evolved beyond mere economic considerations, but the PAP is still stuck firmly in the past.

Instead of blindly chasing simple GDP growth, we need to re-consider what our values are. Perhaps we should have a White Paper on that instead.

More probably, the aim of the Conversation then is to explain and communicate. Why do they have such a deep seated belief that their policies are fundamentally correct, and the problem lies in people not understanding them?

I got a clue when talking with a friend the other day. He said that Singaporeans don’t understand the constraints and tradeoffs politicians have when formulating policies. Our ministers have access to information that ordinary Singaporeans don’t; they could see the big picture that we miss. Therefore the PAP is in the best position to make decisions. The one thing they could have done better is to communicate and persuade.

This is a particularly pernicious form of wishful thinking. By this logic, the PAP is always right. They could never be wrong simply because they know more than us.

I think we don’t give enough credit to ordinary Singaporeans. We might not understand all the nuances of policy making, but we do know that there are tradeoffs and compromises in every policy.

Many of us simply disagree with the current set of tradeoffs, where we appear to bear the brunt of the costs and the government tastes the sweet fruits.

PM Lee recently said that one factor for losing the Punggol east by election was that their candidate couldn’t connect with the ground. He probably made this conclusion because the cheery opposition candidate with N levels somehow crushed the elitist high flying surgeon at the polls.

He totally missed the point. The likeability and personal charisma of candidates is important, but even more so, is the message they are telling.

Policies reflect the values the political parties believe in. If the values don’t resonate with the people, it doesn’t matter whom they send out to the electoral battlefield.

In fact, parts of the summary have conveyed the opposite of what was said, even though that was not my intention. This is the problem when one tries to summarise a 3-hour discussion between various people, in a few sentences.

I have therefore taken down my post.