rickwebb.net

Tumblr: "Edison guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal..."

2012-05-30T06:27:09-04:00

“Edison guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal invention quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months.””

- What It Takes To Innovate: Wrong-Thinking, Tinkering & Intuiting :: Articles :: The 99 Percent

Tumblr: "An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by..."

2012-05-30T06:27:09-04:00

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn’t work out, you had your head cut off”

- Edwin Land

What It Takes To Innovate: Wrong-Thinking, Tinkering & Intuiting :: Articles :: The 99 Percent

Tumblr: jayparkinsonmd: Exciting stuff to report about my new company,...

2012-05-29T22:53:44-04:00

jayparkinsonmd:

Exciting stuff to report about my new company, Sherpaa.

First, I’m super happy to say that Cheryl Swirnow (Greenhill) has joined me as a co-founder of Sherpaa. Cheryl was head of HR at The Barbarian Group so she knows pretty much everything to know about health insurance for companies. Prior to that, she worked at Quintessentially, a 24/7 global concierge service. So she pretty much knows everything about making things happen. She’s awesome and I’m honored to be working with her on building Sherpaa.

In the past four months, we’ve learned a ton about companies and health. We’re universally seeing that most companies are overinsured and spending way too much on health insurance. Here are some numbers to back that up. Seventy-five percent of all-comers will spend less than $2,000 on medical expenses per year. Ninety-six percent will spend less than $10,000 per year. These stats are for all-comers, not the typical tech and creative companies we’re focusing on here in NYC. Therefore, it just makes sense for these kinds of companies to have a high deductible health plan with a deductible of at least $2,000.

And then here’s the kicker. We’re recommending that companies then give their employees a debit card with $2,000 loaded on it (that’s a health reimbursement account). At the end of the year, whatever the employee doesn’t spend gets rolled back into the company. Essentially, it’s the poor man’s version of self-insurance.

But by doing this we’re finding that we can save companies up to $4,000 per year per employee. And that, my friends, is wonderful news. It’s extremely frightening to peer in to the backend of healthcare and realize there is just so much unnecessary waste.

And then…on top of saving companies a ton of money, we then give each of their employees 24/7 access to our doctors. So when any of their employees have a health issue, they contact us via email or phone and we then do everything we can do solve their problem. About 70% of the time, we’re solving the problem over email. For the other 30%, we personally connect them with one of our carefully chosen specialists here in NYC. Or sometimes we send them to the urgent care center or the ER. It’s basically like having a 24/7 doctor on your side who’s trying to save you as much hassle as possible.

So, to sum it all up, we analyze your company’s health strategy, secure the best health insurance plan for your company, and then give you 24/7 access to our group of doctors. We save companies a ton of money and offer them unparalleled service that nobody else can provide.

We’re off to an amazing start and signing up multiple companies a week. I can’t wait to report more good news.

Tumblr: buzz replied to your quote: Organizations may be better able to tame optimism… I’ve always...

2012-05-29T05:15:17-04:00

buzz replied to your quote: Organizations may be better able to tame optimism…

I’ve always thought it would be pretty cool to have been one of those GBN scenario planners with Stewart Brand in the 90s.

OMG totally. I had the privilege of meeting Napier Collyns from GBN a few times, and he even gave Benjamin and I a tour of the office. I would have love love love to have worked there. Benjamin and I also got to do some scenario planning at a World Economic Forum conference in Tokyo. My team had the CEO of SK Telecom on it. It was so fun.

Tumblr: "Anyways, finally getting to my reason for posting - Blake Hazard, the great-granddaughter of F...."

2012-05-29T05:15:17-04:00

“Anyways, finally getting to my reason for posting - Blake Hazard, the great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ms. Hazard lived in Boston, MA at the same time I was there. And although I never met her, the record company I was a partner in, The Archenemy Record Company, included her song Glittering on our Know Your Enemy compilation. (Interesting fact: We had the mirrored digipacks, so you would see yourself in them as ‘the enemy’, made in The Netherlands and the cds themselves manufactured in Canada, each country being cheapest for said product. When the digipacks arrived at Customs in NYC, they had never encountered such an item before - an empty digipack made from such paper, without the cd - and thus had to invent a new tariff for it).”

- First Kiss Lips: Blake Hazard - Glittering…

Dear god, getting those digipacks out of customs was a nightmare for me. Why did I make the whole thing such a production. I had seen the JSBX’s “Orange” CD in mirrored digipack and thought the whole thing would be simple. I was so so wrong.

An interesting aside to this aside, I remember just avoiding my record label partners when the digipacks were delayed for a month or so awaiting a tariff ruling. Afterwards, Sean Drinkwater patiently explained to me that I could have simply explained what was going on, rather than avoiding the situation. Wise words, and ones I still have trouble with. This was right after I had just spent a full four months avoiding Jason from Neptune regarding the delays in the packaging of his sheet-metal-clad LPs.

Man. Experimental packaging. I do not miss those days. Oh wait, yes, yes I do.

Tumblr: Photo

2012-05-29T05:15:17-04:00

Tumblr: "Organizations may be better able to tame optimism and individuals than individuals are. The best..."

2012-05-29T05:15:17-04:00

“Organizations may be better able to tame optimism and individuals than individuals are. The best idea for doing so was contributed by Gary Klein, my “adversarial collaborator” who generally defends intuitive decision making against claims of bias and is typically hostile to algorithms. He labels his proposal the premortem. The procedure is simple: when the organization has almost come to an important decision but has not formally committed itself, Klein proposes gathering for a brief session a group of individuals who are knowledgeable about the decision. The premise of the session is a short speech: “Imagine that we are a year into the future. We implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Please take 5 to 10 minutes to write a brief history of that disaster.””

- Kahneman, Daniel (2011-10-25). Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 264). Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Maps without Alaska: thebicycle: USA cycling map. Saw it on the Guardian. larger...

2012-05-28T21:41:39-04:00

thebicycle:

USA cycling map. Saw it on the Guardian. larger link here.

There are actually some gorgeous, amazing bike lanes in Alaska: In Fairbanks, there’s an amazing 9 mile loop around Farmer’s Loop. Gorgeous. In Anchorage, there’s a stunning bike lane along the shore. In McKinley (erm, Denali) Park, the Parks Highway has a bike lane and several run through the park. I suppose it’s tough to distinguish between “trails” and “lanes,” though, and it’s probably true that though they’re marked as bike lanes, they probably only got built so people in the winter could use them for their snow machines and ATVs.

Tumblr: Strle: Do any of you lovely people want to buy Health Month for cheap?

2012-05-28T19:10:26-04:00

Strle: Do any of you lovely people want to buy Health Month for cheap?:

bustr:

healthmonth:

Through a series of personal realizations and business inevitabilities, it looks like I’m going to have to try to find a new owner for Health Month.

Ideally, it would be someone from the community who loves it and has the time, energy, and resources to keep it…

Tumblr: slicingeyeballs: Video: The Cure debuts new guitarist Reeves...

2012-05-28T19:10:26-04:00

slicingeyeballs:

Video: The Cure debuts new guitarist Reeves Gabrels, digs out rarities at Pinkpop Festival

Haha! OMG Reeves! In the Cure! Boston is so proud of you. I loved the Bentmen!

I once spent an entire halloween party dressed up as a Pilgrim chasing Reeves around and stalking him, but never actually speaking to him.

Tumblr: Primal Scream - Country Girl (by SresCAiN)

2012-05-28T19:10:26-04:00

Primal Scream - Country Girl (by SresCAiN)

Tumblr: "It is no coincidence that interaction design is replacing technical prowess as the primary..."

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

“It is no coincidence that interaction design is replacing technical prowess as the primary competency at startups. People who create great experiences will be the most valuable to startups, and startups that create great experiences will be the most valuable to users.”

- The experience economy - Chris Dixon

This is both welcome news and totally terrifying. Because if you’ve been practicing interaction design for a while (which I guess I have), you know that what qualifies someone for the title “interaction designer” has always been squishy. With this new emphasis from startups, I fear the term will get even more nebulous. There’s an art and science to the discipline - shaped by years of maturing the way we work and guided by thoughtful writing from respected authors, from Wurman to Garret to Saffer and everyone in between. And while there has always been a certain level of mercenary charlatanism to the field of interaction design, I can imagine it’ll only get worse as startups pick up every rock trying to find their now-essential practitioner.

(via Brian Oberkirch)

Maybe it’ll become one of those fields where you just live and die by the quality of your last work, like film director or record producer, where the results have to speak for themselves in terms of measurable improvements in visits or engagement times?

Tumblr: thenextweb: In 2012, Brooke and Ashley have been laser-focused...

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

thenextweb:

In 2012, Brooke and Ashley have been laser-focused on continuing to build their product for users both in the United States and abroad. 60% of Fashism’s users are located in the US including power user Lady Gaga. While outside of the U.S., Fashism is attracting fans in China, Japan, Russia and the UK. When I asked which city dresses the best, Ashley answered, “The Parisians are the best dressed. Their look is always chic and effortless.” (via Fashism’s Online Community Caters to the More Fickle Fashionistas)

Tumblr: A Tragic Tale

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

There is this item I want. It is a scarf. It is a promotional item. It is a promotional scarf. I have wanted it for years. I want it desperately. Irrationally.

It is a promotional scarf in support of the album ”Waiting for the Sirens Call” by the band New Order. It’s sort of become a white whale for me. I really want it. Here is a picture of this mythical beast. While not actually a Factory Records item, its so close to being one, owing to its association with that famed Factory band, and because I believe it was a nod to The Vikings, new order’s fan club, who do actually have their own Factory number. And since I have an almost complete Factory collection (only missing the lawsuit, the cat, the record contract binders and FAC 15 - the Zoo Meets Factory Halfway concert poster), I really, really want it. It would be a lovely addition to my collection, and is more obtainable than the rest of the missing items.

I want this scarf so much I have an eBay alert on it. Every day, I get an email from eBay telling me all about any items that match my keyword search “new order scarf.” I wasn’t sure exactly what to put in the search. I didn’t want to get too specific and say something like “waiting for the sirens call new order scarf,” because I am not 100% the poster would mention that.

So, every day, I get this email. And naturally this rather broad search query yields some unintended results. Almost every day, it’s some variant on “hand made blue scarf, new, order now!” Every day. I check the email and delete it. I have been doing this for several years.

I say “almost” every day because there have been two days where things went differently. First, about two years ago, a “harry potter and the order of the phoenix promotional scarf, new” went on sale. It was kinda cool. It was a Hogwarts Griffyndor scarf. I bought it. Emma used it once when she dressed up as Luna Lovegood for Halloween (Potter trainspotters out there note, yes we are aware Luna was in Ravenclaw, but luckily most of the people at the halloween party were not Potter fanatics). That was a nice surprise, a nice change from my daily routine of disappointment.

Then, not too long ago, a miracle occurred. I woke up, checked my email, and my eBay alert was alerting me to the item I wanted: The New Order Waiting For The Sirens Call promotional scarf.

I panicked. I drew in my breath, excited. I clicked the link. I immediately looked at the price. It was reasonable! I had often worried that should this scarf ever appear on eBay, it would be priced higher than an Hermes scarf. But no! It was under $40. I immediately looked for a buy it now button. My dreams were within my grasp. THE SCARF WOULD BE MINE.

‘Twas then that I noticed that the item had already been sold. Eighteen minutes earlier.

If only I hadn’t slept in that weekend morning. If only I hadn’t taken a shower. If only I checked my email before breakfast. If only. But no.

And so, every day, I still get my alert. Every day it’s a little reminder of my disappointment. Of my sloth. Of my lack of dedication.

Or is it, perhaps, a reminder of my dreams? The emotional inverse of the birthmark in Hawthorne’s tale? Proof not of life’s inability to support perfection, but of life’s inability to ever completely repress our dreams. I have not given up. One day, the scarf may still be mine.

I try to tell myself that’s the case, but every day, every day that eBay alert email reminds me of that sad, tragic missed opportunity.

Tumblr: jaymug: 11,000 paper lanterns float into the night sky -...

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

jaymug:

11,000 paper lanterns float into the night sky - Poznan, Poland.

Tumblr: "I remember there was a humorous column in the Independent which would have been in about 1992 or..."

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

““I remember there was a humorous column in the Independent which would have been in about 1992 or thereabouts, about the decision to give the Booker Prize to the Maastricht Treaty – a postmodern novel in strict treaty form. And throughout the novel one senses, in the background, powerful forces with unknown motives. Who are these forces, what do they want? We never learn.””

- FT lunches with Paul Krugman (via dboy)

Tumblr: "But, my favorite part about multi-tasking is that it’s proven that the more you do it, the worse you..."

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

“

But, my favorite part about multi-tasking is that it’s proven that the more you do it, the worse you are at it. Check that out. It’s one of the only things where the more you practice it, the worse you get at it.

The reason why that’s the case is that when you practice distraction (which is what multi-tasking really is – paying attention to something that distracted you from what you were originally paying attention to), you’re training your brain. You’re training your brain to pay attention to distracting things. The more you train your brain to pay attention to distractions, the more you get distracted and the less able you are to even focus for brief periods of time on the two or three things you were trying to get done in your ‘multi-tasking’ in the first place.

How’s that for self-defeating.

”

- We’re creating a culture of distraction. (via superamit)

Tumblr: James Bond themes I have seen live.

2012-05-28T01:33:05-04:00

Live and Let Die
A View to a Kill
The Living Daylights
The World is Not Enough

Seems like a fun project to keep working on.

Tumblr: Single Ladies #beyonce (Taken with Instagram at Ovation Hall)

2012-05-27T07:53:32-04:00

Single Ladies #beyonce (Taken with Instagram at Ovation Hall)

Tumblr: Beyoncé just started. (Taken with Instagram at Ovation Hall)

2012-05-27T07:53:33-04:00

Beyoncé just started. (Taken with Instagram at Ovation Hall)