Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a crowd surfing tool to help maximize the liquidity in the work force. If task X will take 1000 hours to complete, using the power of the crowd, you could break this task up and get 100 people working on it, thus completing the task in 10hrs. (Aside: Amazon's service is affectionately named after Wolfgang von Kempelen's 1770 chess-playing machine pictured above)

Unfortunately, most enterprises have become even more guarded about intellectual property leakage that Amazon's service mostly inaccessible to large organizations. Yet, it is in large enterprises that could most benefit from a local Mechanical Turk service:

• To varying degrees all employees have spare cycles that go unused
• In large organizations, department boundaries prevent collaboration and utilizing
• Route tasks are often solved with spending money on consultants or third party services
• New ideas are often stifled because of lack of time/energy to initiate and build momentum

The larger an organization becomes, the more in-efficient it becomes. This is a function of increased bureaucracy, department silos and political relationships. A private Mechanical Turk service would help break down these barriers and leverage the spare brain power and time in the organization without having to worry about intellectual property leakage. A private Mechanical Turk service would befit the enterprise by:

• increasing net productivity
• decrease departmental silos
• foster innovation and skunk-works projects
• increase collaboration and idea sharing

What other ways could the enterprise benefit from having a private mechanical turk?

My rating:
Read from Aug 16 to 26, 2011

A novel exploration of relationships and economics. While not a deep scholarly paper, it was an amusing read. If I were to teach an economics 101 class I would use this book because it introduces economic theories in ways that are very accessible using relationships as the example.

The ideas presented are not going to make or break your relationship. It will, however, help you understand how you act better by framing the context in terms of economic theories such as sunk cost, game theory and aversion of loss. In many ways it helps illustrate the illogical way that we behave and offers a better response in order to maximize our results.

Sometimes the editorial comments on economic policy were presented as straw men arguments. One example was with the negative commentary on the use of government spending to stimulate an economy. Thus downplaying GDP economic theory (GDP = C+G+i+(X-M)). That aside, these straw men appeared to be more soap boxes but were rare enough to not get you riled up and frothing at the mouth because, well, you can't argue with the conclusions - just have more sex.

My Rating:
Read from August 01 to 16, 2011

Wow. I'm super excited about the future! Michio Kaku connects work being accomplished the labs with the applications in the future. This isn't about imagining some mythical utopia, but looking at the discoveries and inventions that exist today and how they can be combined and utilized in the future once the economies of scale and mass production are flushed out.

For example: We already can remotely control micro robots and we have the ability to analyze cells on a single micro chip. In the future we should be able to inject micro controlled robots into the blood stream that then can perform biopsies and analyze the results instantaneously.

The only odd thing about the book is that Kaku seemed to reference 'Pentium' chips numerous times in the first half. It was almost as if the first part of the book was written a decade ago when people still knew what Pentium chips were.

On a personal note, I am not filled with dread of a future when moores law has hit a physical ceiling where chips can't get any faster. What will we do?!

My rating:
Read from August 01 to 09, 2011

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My rating:
Read from July 11 to 12, 2011

I forgot I had read this book once before. This is not a good omen for any book. Worse yet, it took me a full chapter before I recognized that the parable was familiar.

Lencioni does present 5 valid dysfunctions of the team. I'm not sure I would go as far as concluding with a definite article that these are THE 5 dysfunctions. In short they are:
1. Abesent of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to result

The story is a bit of a straw man that once you get past the functional dialogue you can ponder the basic principles. For example, I would add personality conflicts as a critical one to the list. If you build your own team from scratch you are likely to build it with people who are compatible with yourself. If you are dropped into a pre-existing team you also need to get beyond any personality conflicts/clashes before you can be a functional team.

Five Dysfunctions is an easy sunday afternoon read where the amount of 'meat' in the book is directly proportional to the length of the book.

My Rating:
Read from July 01, 2010 to July 11, 2011

Irreverent, sacrilegious and ridiculously funny! Who said all that religious education was a waste? Just make sure you you aren't in a quiet place when you're reading this because you'll be breaking out into laughter every few minutes!

The biggest disappointment with the book was that there wasn't any Monty Python allusions. That would have been awesome. The first half is certainly more funny than the back section

A few choice quotes:

Joshua and I played at being rabbis, and he insisted that we stick to the authentic Hebrew for our ceremonies. It was more fun that it sounds, or at least, until my mother caught us trying to circumcise my little brother Shem with a sharp rock. What a fit she threw. And my argument that Shem needed to renew his covenant with the Lord didn't seem to convince her. She beat me to stripes with an olive switch and forbade me to play with Joshua for a month. Did I mention she was besought with demons?

Overall I think it was good for little Shem. He was the only kid I ever knew who could pee around corners. You can make a pretty good living as a beggar with that kind of talent. And he never ever thanked me.
Brothers.

Nobody's perfect. Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him....

The medium obscured the message.

Josh: "What is this thing?"
Gasper: "It's a Yeti. An abominable snowman."
Biff: "This is what happens when you fuck a sheep?"
Josh: "Not an abomination, abominable."

Joshua's ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here's the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give.
You should be nice to people, even creeps.
And if you:
a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and)
b) he had come to save you from sin (and)
c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say) (and)
d) didn't blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c)
then you would:
e) live forever
f) someplace nice
g) probably heaven
However, if you:
h) sinned (and/or)
i) were a hypocrite (and/or)
j) valued things over people (and)
k) didn't do a, b, c, and d,
then you were:
l) fucked

This story is not and never was meant to challenge anyone's faith; however, if one's faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do.

Blessed are the meek, for to them we shall say "attaboy"

Blessed are the dumbfucks.

Biff: "Actually , I thought I'd stay Josh. Your mother needs someone to look after her, and she's still a relatively attractive woman. I mean a guy could do worse"

Josh: "I've got to think that that was unethical,"
Biff: "Josh, faking demonic possession is like a mustard seed."
Josh: "How is it like a mustard seed?"
Biff: "You don't know, do you? Doesn't seem at all like a mustard seed, does it? Now you see how we all feel when you liken things unto a mustard seed? Huh?"

My rating:
Read from July 01 to 03, 2011

Great bootstrapping advice for any business startup - especially software development shops. Fried would even argue that remaining a small business is, in the long run, a more effective desirable state than growing to be a large soulless organization. Agree or not with that premis, the message here is motivational and there are clear take aways for anyone managing a team, department, small business or large business. Having worked in businesses of all sizes - from very small, to medium to very large, I found many of his small business mantras resonated well with me - even though I work in the antithesis of a 37signals shop.

My rating:
Read from June 09 to 21, 2011

A fascinating history of vaccines and the generations of opposition to vaccines because of religious conviction and ignorance. People such as Andrew Wakefield, Jenny Mccarthy and Opra are the recent villains in this story using greed, mis-information, bad science and emotive plees to convince well educated and well meaning parents to not vaccinate their children. As a result society's herd immunity has been compromised for viruses that were eliminated decades ago. The deaths of hundreds of children caused by the of recent outbreaks in whooping cough, measles and other forgotten child hood illnesses is the blood on Wakefield's, McCarthy's and Opra's hands.

One very interesting point he raises is the role of the internet to allow silos of mis-information to perpetuate. Where once these silos were forced to reconcile their thoughts with the challenges from the majority, now the fringe groups can find more like-minded across the globe and more easily ignore the challenges to their ideas. The anti-vaccination crowd continues to grow in spite of the building evidence that contradicts each assertion they put forward. MMR and mercury don't cause autism yet the anti-vaccination community still fervently believes that big pharma is somehow to blaim and not genetics.

My rating:
Read from June 02 to 08, 2011

Like it or not, America is an Empire. Potentially an Empire in decline. The next decade, Friedman argues, will need to be navigated adeptly by the president. Overall, the book is like an applied version of Chompsky. Most of the book is focuses on foreign policy and what will be necessary to accomplish in order to ensure that America survives. The premise is intriguing and his reasoning is pragmatic and he avoids being an ideologue.

My rating:
Read from May 04 to June 02, 2011

This is the story of Cancer over the last 100 years. It is an emotional roller coaster and harrowing story of accidents, dirty politics, fanciful thinking and perseverance. Mukherjee weaves the tale of scientific accomplishment with rich scientific research. Mukherjee does a fantastic job blending these hard sciences with the story of being human. At times heavy reading but overal a great read.

By the end of the book you realise that Oncology really is in the dark ages; we are only just starting to understand how cancer works. It wasn't until the 1980s that oncologists abandoned radical mastectomy's which cut out ribs, muscle, collar bones and anything in between leaving debilitated patients which had a no better survival rate than more conventional treatments. It is only in the last decade that gene targeted cancer therapy has emerged which is the first real cure for cancer. 24 others are in the works. Since the human genome project we are only just starting to understand that complexities of how cancer mutates and is activated by our own genetics. In the end, the future looks hopeful, but there is a long road yet to go.

My rating:
Read from March 19 to May 15, 2011

Nothing really new but a good packaging of motivational ideas.

My rating:
Read from April 22 to 29, 2011

Your brain sucks. You think you're smarter than you really are, your memory is flawed, you think that you notice more than you do and your confidence is fraudulent. In short, our brains are really stupid at at observing reality and are easily fooled. At least everyone is equally flawed. Memories can't be trusted, but at least everyone's memory can't be trusted. We think we are smarter than we are, but at least everyone thinks they're smarter than they are. We think we observe more than we do, but at least everyone is just as oblivious to the world around us.

Put succinctly: our brains are a design failure. They are evolved to maximize a very different world than the one we live in now.

Overall, an interesting book with lots of great research. Makes me a little depressed though. My only criticism is that Chabris seems to have a hate on for Malcolm Gladwell. I think every single fo Gladwell's books were bashed throughout the book (though sometimes warranted).

My rating:
Read from April 18 to 21, 2011

Interesting story but a bit preachy at times. Valley of Horses, unlike the prequel, feels like it's trying too hard to fast forward human history and show how all the pivotal discoveries in human society could be brought about (by a single person!). And unlike the prequel, doesn't seem to try as hard to focus on plausibility.

My rating:
Read from April 06 to 12, 2011

My rating:
Read from March 31 to April 04, 2011

Sharp's thesis is that our mood and behavior are substantially affected by our own personal emotional calendar. Our emotional calendar is culmination of events, biology, nature (sun, season, time), festivals, and other experiences with friends and family. Understanding our own personal patterns will help us better deal with those influences on our emotional health, mood and behavior.

Sharp builds his argument using numerous case studies and examples. While interesting, the content quickly becomes dry and redundant. That said, periodically he introduced a few interesting tidbits and thought provoking implications.

About 2/3rds of the way through he starts to work through the implications and complications of these case studies. This is where he finally catches his stride. Unfortunately, he only quickly addresses the 'so what can I do about it' subject with a few ambiguous responses ('it depends! it's different for each person!) and then ends the book quickly.

Overall: an interesting idea. However, the book reads more like a journal article. There are some good nuggets buried inside, but it can take some slogging to get there.

My rating:
Read from March 23 to 30, 2011

This is the kind of book that makes you feel better about your own family experience. All families might be screwed up, but at least yours isn't as screwed up as the Berglunds. In many ways, the over-the-top family drama is reminiscent of HBO's six-feet-under, L-word, or Big-Love.

The intensity of the story line aside, the character development and quality of writing are superb. I really enjoyed the changes in authors voice as the story is told from different perspectives.

As the novel concludes, you can't help but wonder if the intention of Franzen is to be self referential: Is "Freedom" intended to be marketing material for Walter's Free Space initiative?

My rating:
Read from March 13 to 19, 2011

Not Bryson's best work. A humorous, yet cynical drive across america. Unlike his other world traveling type books, this one makes you want to avoid driving through or visiting most american states. Kinda sad really.

My rating:
Read from March 01 to 09, 2011

I was both gripped and bored by 'Last Call'. The pure volume of names, dates and events made the book dry and read like a school history book. Fortunately the book was not completely dry and wove a very interesting story connecting all parts of the content during the temperance years.

The book did give me a much better understanding of the lead up to the 18th amendment, the cause of the gangster years and the background to the more 'odd' artifacts such as max % alcohol in beer and drinking age limits. If prohibition had never been attempted, the USA likely would not have ever introduced income taxes!

Even more shocking is that I'm likely related (albeit distantly) to Mary Hunt who started the WCTU that spawned the prohibition movement!

My rating:
Read in March, 2011

An Ok collection of anecdotes on what it takes to make an outstanding organization. Similar to Good to Great but without the research and data.

My rating: My rating:
Read from February 18 to 24, 2011

This is a good companion book with Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. The Happiness Advantage takes a fascinating look at the psychology and scientific research into all of the old advice of motivational speakers and sages.

Success in life doesn't lead to happiness. Rather, happiness leads to success. Hapiness is important for our physical, and emotional health. Relationships help increase our hapiness quotient and lack of human contact is directly correlated to our perception of hapiness and our blood pressure.

A great read.

My rating:
Read from February 11 to 16, 2011

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My rating:
Read from February 01 to 06, 2011

The bottom line is that our brains are really hyper active pattern matchers. We see patterns where they don't really exist and we have an over tendancy to see causation where it isn't (aka "hind-sight" / "survivor" bias). Put another way, our brains are ill equipped to handle probability and decision making in uncertainty. We tend to believe stupid things and make poor decisions because of these deficiencies. It takes a lot of extra work to overcome our own propensities toward silliness.

My rating:
Read from January 20 to 22, 2011

Like History of Nearly Everything, this one is chalk full of useless facts and historical information about the origins of things in our home. It is an interesting read, but not nearly has humourous or witty as his other works.

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My rating:
Read January 17, 2011

I can easily see why this book has become so popular recently. Many of the themes echo in today's troubled economy. The irony is that the allegory that I think best fits is one where the 'looters' are not the liberal democrat of today, but the conservative republican who looted the financial system and caused the economy to collapse. I wonder what Rand would say about that.

Atlas Shrugged was a marathon of a read. I enjoyed the story line, the insight into what business was like 60 years ago and a story line that blended business, finance, science fiction, and mystery. I found the book motivational and even inspiring in many ways. It makes me want to get up and get to work and produce!

However, in other ways I found the preaching to be too over the top and too contrasting. The antagonists are set up as straw men in order to easily defeat their dissenting opinion of Ayn Rand's philosophy. In many ways I agree and many more that I disagree. I have to concede that I would not have been able to get the education I received or build my career as I have, were it not for the benevolence of society and the social safety net that the government creates for families to recover from poor financial decisions. I think this is where Ayn Rand misses the mark. Balance is needed.

My rating:
Read in December, 2010

Gaiman's alternate worlds are always disorienting and intriguing never the less. In the world of 'american gods' the gods from myths of old live as men and women in america who are fading and dying because of unbelief by the massses. A war brews between the old gods of oden and thor and the new gods of internet and tv. A bizarre and engaging read (although a few times it felt alice-in-wonderland acid trip like).

My rating:
Read in December, 2010

I had a hard time reading P&P a decade ago and failed. Retrying this time with the zombies twist made it a little more bearable but quite frankly I can't stand Austin. The only reason I read as much of it as I did this time was because I was always wondering what was originally written and intrigued with how the zombie segments were woven into the story. That said, it was not enough for me to endure to the end. As far as I can tell Austin is enamoured with "small talk" and writes about it from beginning to end. The language is interesting but the story line is mind numbing. I guess I'm just an uncultured swine.

My rating:
Read from December 18 to 24, 2010

Overall: a decent religious survey and contains an interesting idea that population size and globalization has caused the evolution of most (all) religions in a common direction. At times Wright is rather long winded and has a rather unnatural fascination for 'zero-sum games'. So unnnatural that I don't there there was a chapter where he did not reference it at least a half dozen times.

Wright seems to have two major thesis and one ambiguous thesis:
1) there are distinct characteristics of religion as it evolved with society. The role and purpose of the gods reflects the social evolution: hunter gather gods tends to answer why it rains, why there are no fish, why there are lots of rabbits, etc. Agrarian cultures transition to occupational gods (hunter god, haircut god, traveling god, etc) and ultimately as societies became larger and more globally focused, the role of these gods transitioned into satisfying political acuteness: it is easier to conquer by assimilating other religions than trying to rip and replace (which is the second thesis). Fundamentally, all forms of religion and god have roots in trying to explain the world around and using anthropomorphic projections to do this.

2) the abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all evolved similarly - starting from polytheism and only stumbled into monotheism. The religions of the book were not radical departures but slow evolutions. All three have evidence of synthesizing the religions around and then over time amalgamating the gods into a singular form. Over time as editorial processes occurred in the sacred texts a cohesive narrative is constructed.

His final ambiguous thesis is that the moral evolution of all religions are evolving to a common non-zero sum game. And that this common evolution is evidence for a moral designer. However he never quite commits to this generic 'god' idea but does spend a lot of time defending it. He could have skipped the last number of paragraphs and had a stronger finish.

My rating:
Read from December 7 to 12, 2010

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My rating:
Read in December, 2010

The premise for Linchpin is excellent and sound, but I find that most of the book lacks substance and is more of a motivational ra-ra. The first 50 pages are inspirational as are the back 10. Maybe this might have served better as a series of blog posts instead of a book.

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My rating:
Read in November, 2010

Overall impression: Meh.

Coupland is good at setting the stage and introducing us to interesting characters, but just like Generation A, he has a hard time finishing the story. In fact, this book mirrors a lot of thoughts from "Generation A" that I would almost call this world a parallelquel.

The story line premis and back of the book description is interesting, but the story lacks any final punch other than to remind us of the precarious dependency that we have on oil. Even that seems to be a lost subplot.

My rating:
Read from June 21 to November 22, 2010

I read this book at the same time I was listening to Player One so I think I might have over done it with apocalyptic Coupland stories.

Much like Generation X, the story is about the characters and the stories they tell. The premis is interesting and the five principle characters are even more intriguing.

Alas, the momentum that the first half of the book delivers is squandered in the second half. The bee story line is discarded and ignored half way through like a dejected sub-plot that never existed. The second half of the book is really a collection of short stories from individuals in a post-bee world. However, even these sub-stories became mundane as they all seemed to have the same fatalistic and depressing punchline. Almost as if they were the same story recast with different settings.

My rating:
Read in November, 2010

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Isn't it funny that each home owner in north america has somehow been convinced that we need to buy our own lawn mower? I bought mine right after I bought my first house. I checked out all the models. Shopped around for the best price and weighted the choice of gas v. electric v. push mower. In the end, I bought my one. After all, the lawn needed cutting!

But then, as all dutiful home owners do, I stored it in the shed, and pulled it out once a week for 45 minutes. It's kind of silly that I would spend that much money on something but only use it for so little time.

Here's my proposition - buy only one community lawn mower for all the houses on your street. One mower to share. Each person chips in a few dollars for maintenance and (gasp!) gas. When you add it up, that's a lot of money saved and one less thing to clutter your garage.

There are other benefits from sharing a lawn mower too:

• the number of lawn mowing gas engines leaking oil into the ground is reduced
• save space in the shed / garage
• you meet your neighbours

Think of all the other power tools that we could probably share amongst neighbours instead of each person buying their own!

The Pause button is broken. It's broken because you resume exactly where you left off. As more audio and video becomes available via on-demand, the usability of the pause/resume button will become more important and will become a distinguishing feature among players.

For music, where you resume the song is not very critical. However, for longer content, such as video or podcasts, the pause/resume functionality is much more important. When you resume, you often lose key plot points and generally lose time rewinding the content.

Typically, you Pause a video or audio because you are interrupted - you are switching tasks. When you return to your movie, tv show, or podcast, it takes you a few moments to get back into the frame of mind when you left off. This is called the cost of task switching. As a result you often end up having to rewinding the stream a few seconds into the past and then restarting.

Here are 5 ways to enhance the usability of the Play/Pause button:

1. Paused Video and Audio content should automatically resume a few moments in the past - not at the pause position.
2. The amount of automatic time shifting should be proportional to the length of the content. For example, A short podcast, should backtrack a second or two while a TV show should resume 3-5 seconds in the past. Feature length films might rewind even up to 30 seconds to a minute.
3. The nearest a scene change or audio lull should factor into the auto time-shifting calculation.
4. If the content is played on a computer, the Pause point should be set to when the mouse starts moving before the paused button is pressed.
5. If available, the reflex time should factor into the Pause point. (eg: the time between moving the mouse over the pause button and actually clicking the pause button)

Timezones and Daylight Savings Time are antiquated ideas that need to be replaced. I propose that they be replaced with a new Universal Time that would synchronize the globe

Standard Time was an invention for the emerging global economy. A version 1.0 if you will. Of course it was never implemented with the order that Sr. Sanford Flemming originally envisioned. Standard Time solved these problems:

• each city had a different noon and midnight based on the local view of the sun
• communication and train schedules were complicated and convoluted

Standard Time introduced:

• 24 zones representing 15 degrees of latitude that would use a consistent time
• each zone would be exactly 1 hour different from the next
• colloquialisms such as 'noon' and 'midnight' remained with minor changes

Unfortunately, Standard Time had its own set of problems:

• confusing when a political region is divided into multiple time zones
• scheduling meetings and coordinating events are problematic since Noon is different depending on your local timezone
• Therefore timezones became organized using political boundaries instead of latitude zones causing broad inefficiencies of the use of solar time

Daylight Savings Time was finally enforced after WW2 as an attempt to reduce the use of incandescent light bulbs at night (the primary use of electricity) and ultimately maximize the sunlight for working hours.

However, DST has its own serious drawbacks:

• DST doesn't reduce electricity use but increases electricity consumption
• psychologically, people are more likely to go out in the evening if it is light after work - thus more automotive & gas consumption
• Schools and office buildings use more gas/energy to warm up in the morning because the ambient temperature is lower due to the darkness.
• DST is least efficient for central US states and Canadian provinces and benefit the East and West costs the most.
• In these central states and provinces DST is not observed causing switching costs and potential loss of productivity during the adjustment.
• Each country has its own DST rules

Ultimately DST is an inefficient attempt to recreate the solar efficiencies that local-time once had.

As we move to a more and more globally dependent economy, timezones still introduce complexity and communication hurdles when dealing with different organizational units spanning the globe. Often businesses will adopt a single timezone to communicate companywide (often choosing the timezone of the company headquarters) More importantly, we are looking for ways to optimize our daily routine to minimize utility costs. Heating big office buildings in the dark hours of the morning is less efficient than letting the sun heat them up and

To solve these problems, I propose a new Universal time. We'll call this Version 2.0 for timekeeping in a global environment. Here is what I propose for the New-Universal-Time:

• Globally adopt a single timezone for timekeeping. Ideally this would be UTC, but I'm fine with arbitrarily choosing NST too.
• Each region locally defines how to maximize solar time. For example, in Boston, the local hours of business could be 13:00 to 21:00 while in San Francisco it could be 16:30 to 00:30

Aside from the transition period, this will solve the two major problems: 1) communication consistency and 2) maximize daylight to minimize electricity/gas consumption (and minimize SAD). While each city/state/region will define their own business hours there will be a universal language to communicate the difference.

Now, when someone on the west coast proposes a meeting at 22:00 (middle of the local solar day) the person on the East will say, "sorry I can't make it, I'm putting my kids to bed then."

Of course, I realise that while the benefits might be many, getting wide spread adoption will be next to impossible. It'll likely happen right after the US adopts the metric system.

Let's be honest. The real reason that Neilson Boxes track TV watching patterns is to ultimately report Advertising reach to they people paying for the TV programs - the advertisers. Neilson reports to the stations what shows were watched and when. This data is correlated with the commercials and fancy charts are produced when the station is wooing a new advertising client.

The problem with the internet is, while we know a lot more about advertising impressions, we also know a lot less. When a commercial comes on the TV, consumers watch only the commercial. It's eyeball monopoly. When an ad is placed on a webpage, the ad is competing with the content on the page for attention. Eyes bounce over advertising with great ease.

But what if you could track a person's eye on the webpage? This would be valuable information. It would not only give feedback to the effectiveness of the placement and layout, it would also provide another valuable metric - eyeball attention.

There are two ways to track eyeball movement:

1. indirect using the movement of the mouse. People read with their mouse, so just track the movements of the mouse
2. Use the computer's built in iSight to track the person's eye movements on the page.

All Mac computers bought over the last few years come pre-equipped with a webcam facing the user. iSight is the colloquial name for this webcam. The webcam is present not just on Macs these days, but also on Dells, Lenovo's and most other home computers.

Why not pay users a small fee to watch them as they surf the net?

Sure it's more intrusive than a Neilson Box, but the information would be immensely valuable. Even today we don't know if the person was actually in the room when the ad played on TV. Tracking eye movement on a webpage (and correlating it to the window position and the contents of the viewport) is a relatively simple computational task. The big challenge will be getting user adoption.

Would you allow a third-party computer program to watch you as you surfed the net?

The truth is that the Zune is not the success Microsoft hoped for. Even now there are rumors that Microsoft will look to shut down the Zune as the company tries to cut costs.

Instead of trying to beat Apple using Apple's trategy, Microsoft could beat Apply by conceding defeat. Instead of trying to build an eco system of proprietary adaptors and peripherals, Microsoft should make the Zune compatible with the ecosystem that Apple has already created. The Zune should be able to plug in and use every iPod enabled product already available.

Even if they have to pay a licensing fee to Apple, Microsoft needs to adopt the adapter standard. This will lower the cost of switching and consumers will be more willing to 'try' the Zune. Microsoft's greatest strength is embracing the existing ecosystem. This is how Microsoft won the first round of the OS wars.

Microsoft's strenth is compatibility, while Apple's strength is usability. Microsoft should bat to their strengths instead of trying to emulate the competition. As I see it, this is the only way that they can win the music player wars.

Over the last 50 years, the average life expectancy of a person has been increasing at a rate of 5hours per day. Tomorrow you are expected to live 5 hours longer than you were expected to live today.

Today, my life expectancy is supposed to be around 80 years of age. Once you adjust it, my average life expectancy is around 100 years. If I'm above average by even one standard of deviation I could easily expect to live to 111.

The problem with projecting life expectancy is that we don't have very many data points. The people that are dying now, are people that lived through the depression, used asbestos for their table clothes, and smoked like a chimney.

However, I'm willing to bet that the average increase in life is not a regular average, but an increasing average. Meaning, that I might very well expect to live until well past 120 years.

So what? If I can reasonably expect to live to well past 100, or 120 years old, then:

• I can't retire at age 50 or even at age 65 and have enough money to hold me out
• I should plan to work well into my late 70s
• I have another 45 years of my career ahead of me
• Retirement is not an option. I should be plan mini-retirements throughout my life now.
• While I might live longer, my risk of neurological degeneration dramatically increases! (near 100% chance)
• I should be "investing" my donations into research into Parkansans, alzheimer's, etc.
• The rate of global population growth is underestimated.
• A significant boom in the health care industry (especially palliative care) is set to boom.

Some interesting Ted Talks on the subject:

• Gregory Petsko: The coming neurological epidemic
• Aubrey de Grey: Why we age and how we can avoid it

The challenge for many of the old subway systems is that the technology has changed, and they are left with an infrastructure that must be maintained. For example:

• Boston, London and Toronto (to name a few) used to use coal engines. This meant that the tracks could not be enclosed in glass because the space was needed for ventilation.
• Without enclosed tracks, you can't automate the trains with robotics for safety reasons
• The ventilation system is based on the movement of the cars. Enclose the tracks and each subway stop needs to be redesigned and equipped with new HVAC systems. Very Pricey.

Unfortunately, public transit is typically built after the need is causing pain. Municipalities start with buses until they get overloaded, then they move to trolly cars, and then finally to rapid transit.

But if you were to build a new rapid transit or public transit system in a budding city, how would you build it? Here are my suggestions:

1. Developers should band together and build corridors through new developments. In the short term it could be used for public parks. When the city grows, it can be resold to the city - at a premium - to make easy access to the suburbs.
2. Focus on skytrains instead of underground subways. This makes it more subject to the elements, but substantially decreases in the implementation cost
3. Use smaller cars of various sizes (2 person, 4, and 6 person) that are queued at each station and can be introduced into the transit system on-demand. This requires robotics and queue planning (so that empty cars are available at source stations at all times). The result is higher variable cost, and lower fixed cost.

Any other suggestions?

Microsoft should stop developing Office for Mac and instead ship Office for Windows running on a Virtualized Windows environment on OSX.

Microsoft Office for mac is a paradox for Microsoft:

• Microsoft can't risk losing the income from Office for Mac - It's 10% of Office sales.
• Office for mac makes it easier for PC owners to switch to Mac.
• Microsoft makes money from office, regardless of whether the person is using OSX or Windows.
• Its cross platform support means 2X the cost of development
• Making sure it works consistently between OSX and Windows increases the cost substantially
• Features in Office Mac lag that of Office Windows.
• Feature adoption slows because of the lack of cross platform support - especially in enterprises.

So what should Microsoft do? Microsoft needs to get back into Virtualization.

At the same time that the Mac has risen in popularity, so has Virtualization technology. Virtualization allows you to run a different Operating System inside your primary Operating System. This way you can run Windows in OSX with very little performance loss. VMWare and Parallels are just two of many companies competing in this space. Unfortunately, Microsoft pulled its Virtual PC product for Mac several years ago.

Instead of developing a separate product called Office: Mac, Microsoft should develop one version of Office. The Mac version would simply be Office for Windows running in a virtualized environment of windows.

The benefits?

• single development cycle
• consistent user experience
• additional revenue from selling the virtualization environment as a standalone product
• Office for Mac would mysteriously runs a little slower than the Windows counterpart (because of the virtualization shim).
• The best side-effect? How do you speed up Office for mac - Use Windows.

Is there another way to pay for public transit? Could we even make it free?

There are three ways that most municipalities pay for public transit:

• Tickets - where each rider pays per trip
• Tariffs - where the people who don't use public transit pay a fee (see London, UK)
• Taxes - where everyone pays a portion whether you use the system or not

Unfortunately, public transit has a very inflexible cost structure:

1. huge setup cost (sometimes >$20 million per km)
2. large fixed cost - the buses and subways run on a schedule, regardless of ridership
3. very low variable cost - a very small incremental cost for fuel per rider

This means that whether people use the system or not, the municipality has to pay the bills -including labour, fuel, and maintenance. Therefore, the public transit system needs to be efficient and valuable to attract the maximum number of riders.

This leads me to wonder: Are there other ways to pay for public transit other than Tickets, Tariffs and Taxes?

For example. While people pay for tickets to go to the movies, the revenue hardly flows to the movie theater - it goes straight to the producers. Instead movie theaters make their money on the value-ad, on the popcorn and soda sales.

Further, could you give away public transit for free and make money via another revenue stream? (Much like advertising to Google's free search).

These are just questions for now with no real answers. Some possible answers could include:

• targeted or focused advertising (such as forcing people to watch tv commercials)
• up-selling for cellphone or wifi coverage during the trip
• selling comfort or convenience on longer trips (such as padded chairs, etc)
• integrated restaurant ordering systems so your table is ready for you when you get to the restaurant or your pizza is waiting at your door by the time you get home

This is just the tip of the iceburg. What other ways can public transit be funded - without asking riders to pay more for each trip?

No filler. No Bull. Just Ideas.

Take 'em. Use 'em. Make them you're own. These Ideas are for everyone. Open to the public domain.