ZZE.ST - inspiration & lifehacks to make life better

Social media use case

Maxim — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:30:35 +0000

Brazilian fashion retailer shows Facebook likes count on clothes.

What I like about it is that they do not try to do social media marketing, but instead try to be actually helpful.

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Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden

Maxim — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:32:37 +0000

I visited Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden in March, 2012 and want to share some pictures and impressions. From the happiest and the second happiest countries in the world.

It is funny that when I checked the most popular Google query with “Copenhagen” word was “where is Copenhagen” and the most popular query with word “Malmö” was “where is Malmö”. I am sure that you, unlike those guys, have no doubts about the actual location of Copenhagen. So, I will skip the introductory part about Denmark and Scandinavia. Most likely, you can even find Malmö on a map in under 10 seconds. But nevertheless I will tell you that it is only half an hour away from Copenhagen. So, if you have some time left, you might consider taking Copenhagen to Malmo train.

It is certainly not a travel guide, more of a collection of pictures with short comments. But I still want to provide some value and share several useful links for those who are going there. I think you might want to print these.

As I have limited time, I will keep the descriptions short and focus on pictures instead. All of them were taken on my trip to Denmark in March, 2012. Enjoy!

Copenhagen, Denmark

Simply put, Copenhagen is awesome.

Grass in park was already green in March. Credit goes to my GF for taking this pic

New architecture.

I believe that bicycle lanes should be adapted by all the cities!

Figuring out a cycling route.

What I liked about Copenhagen is that it remains just as awesome when you leave the city center. In some way it even gets better.

We wanted to try some Danish cheese but could not find a proper shop. Finally, bought some at the airport. Too bad, one of them turned out to be from Ireland… But this one was actually tastier.

Unfortunately, Freetown Christiania was a disappointment. Instead of free and happy people, we saw a crowd of mostly unappealing people.

And that is good news!

Copenhagen business school.

Overall, Copenhagen is very nice, cozy and comfortable. I think it is also quite a good option for expatriates. Everybody speaks English.

Malmö, Sweden

I would certainly recommend renting a bike to experience he city.

Fog that day made the place look surreal.

Overall, Malmo resembled Copenhagen to a certain degree. Maybe all Scandinavian cities share something in their DNA?

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Ellen Degeneres’ stand up: Here & Now

Maxim — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:03:33 +0000

Hilarious Elen Degeneres’ stand-up comedy for all us overachievers out there with “too busy disorder”.

It gets a little silly and less funny in the middle. But it’s absolutely awesome in the beginning and in the end:

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Harvard positive psychology class

Maxim — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:19:59 +0000

Positive psychology course at Harvard by professor Tal Ben-Shahar is freely available on YouTube. Highly recommended!

It covers all the well-being related topics: health, happiness, longevity, optimism, change, success, self-development, emotions, goals and many others. It’s all spiced with a reasonable amount of scientific scepticism that popular self-help books usually lack.

However, to my taste Tal speaks too slowly and the whole thing takes too much time. That’s why I would recommend actually downloading all episodes using one of the Youtube downloading services, such as Offliberty. And then listen to it using VLC or other player that allows you to increase playback speed 2x.

Here are the videos. It gets especially videos at 3-4th video.

If any of them don’t work, try one of these lists: Positive psychology playlist, links in the description for the first lecture.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

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GMAT sample questions

Maxim — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:13:15 +0000

Ok, let’s assume there is still somebody who is interested in mind-boggling GMAT practice questions.

Today we switch from math to Critical Reasoning. Let’s have fun!

I can provide right answers in comments if needed.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

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Cool stuff digest: December 2011, January & February 2012

Maxim — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:59:22 +0000

Things that I liked in December 2011, January 2012 & February 2012:

Startup hopes to hack the immigration system with a floating incubator;
Video: “TEDxBucharest – Eric Weiner on Geography of Bliss“;
The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011;
7 Things Highly Productive People Do;
2011′s best psychology books;
Top 10 business ideas & opportunities for 2012;
Video: Richard Feynman, No Ordinary Genius – Horizon documentary;
Video: Powerful philosophy from Will Smith;
Video: Awesome TEDx talk about perception and “plugging in additional peripherals into brain“;
The 11 Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2011;
Video: Religulous trailer;
The 7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives;
Interestings stats: The Average Successful Startup Raises $25.3 Million, Sells For $196.8 Million;
Video: Great Tony Robbins’ talk on goals, growth, success and self-development in general;
Pavel Durov on DLD;
Numbers: Facebook is 10 times more profitable than Google was before IPO;
Summly creator’s interview @ Techcrunch “The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO and the Hong Kong Billionaire“;
In San Francisco, the world’s first airport yoga room. Isn’t that cool?
Free videos course: Positive Psychology at Harvard;
The Daily Stat: Reading Irrelevant Info Hurts Your Ability to Think;
Aussies’ fix for ‘stagnated’ email;
Video: Joshua Foer on how he greatly improved his memory;

All links are from my twitter.

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Moonwalking with Einstein review: memory & mnemonics

Maxim — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:02:54 +0000

I’ve just finished listening to an interesting audiobook about memory and mnemonic techniques: Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. Author is a young journalist who decided to try all the memory improvement techniques himself but remain sceptical and objective while doing so. He talks about memory itself and the way it was influenced by spread of written language and by technology. Than, he tells us stories about people with extraordinarily good memory and amnesiacs, about people who had an ordinary memory but became memory champion and about mnemonic techniques they used.

Joshua begins his quest with a totaly ordinary, if not mediocre, memory. Bus after long preparation and work with best so-called “mental athletes” wins one of US memory champtionships. Although he himself acknoledges the fact that most of techniques he learned are useless in day-to-day life, I actually extracted a lot of intersting and useful ideas from the book. And this is what I would like to share with you.

Interesting facts and ideas

Memory becomes highly underestimated nowadays because of all the various ways to store information “externally”. But in fact, the better we remember our life, the more connections we can make. Memory is also necessary to understand and appreciate many things in life. For example, a person who never read or heard anything about China would not get as much culturally from the trip there as somebody who studied history and architecture of this country for a couple of months.
One of the people Joshua interviewed for the book tried to increase “subjective” (perceived) life expectancy by improving his memory. The idea is that the more events you remember the longer life seems to be.
Best chess-players don’t really evaluate all the possible moves logically. Instead, they recognize familiar patterns from other games.
Cab drivers in London pass obligatory and very demanding exam called “The Knowledge”. It has been found that those who passed it after months of preparation have larger brain region that is responsible for orientation in space. Interestinlgy, brains of “memory champions” are actually quite typical.
Odyssey and Iliad were initially created the way that made it easier to remember it and paraphrase verbally instead of writing down.
We can remember almost unlimited number of pictures. At least the fact whether we’ve seen one or not. That is why many memory techniques revolve around transforming other types of information into visual images.
Also, Joshua acquaints us with several interesting, although ambigous personalities, such as Daniel Tammet, Ed Cooke, Tony Buzan and others.

Mnemonic techniques:

Some savants naturally use synesthesia (mixing visual, audiotory and other types of perceptions) to enchance remembering and learning through associations.
“Chunking” is a technique of breaking information into smaller pieces. For example, it is easier to remember a phone number when it is presented as 12-34-56 than when it is presented as 123456.
Major system. To use this technique, one should use the same consonants for certain numbers. Then, to remember a number, one uses these consonants to form words, which are supposedly easier to remember, by inserting vowels.
Memory palace. Images are placed in a certain space (appartment, city route or real imagined palace). The more absurd, shiny, sexual and animate the images the better.
Speech preparation. Try to remember key topics to cover in your speech by visualizing them.
Remembering texts. Try to feel empathy with an author, to resonate emotionally with a text.
Deliberate practice: here Joshua gives just another interpretation of the same old study, which almost everybody mentioned recently. The basic conclusion is that people who are best at something did not necessarily spent more time practicing it. But they practised differently.
In essense, deliberate practise is an effort to consciously improve one’s level of mastery instead of stopping at the minimum acceptable level (“ok zone”). For example, one might try to type faster than he or she would normally do in order to progress.
Deliberate practice also comprises of constant adjustment to feedback and focusing on the most difficult aspects. For example, top violinists practiced most difficult pieces instead of just playing what they already know. Top chess-players re-played best chess games in their heads trying to understand the reasons behind each move. Similarly, Benjamin Franklin learned to write essays by first attempting to cover a certain topic by himself and then comparing the texts to those of best writers.
Person – action – object system. According to this mnemonic system, one should come up with a person, action and object for each of 100 digits: from 00 to 99. Then, these “PAOs” are used to form sentences in order to remember long lists of numbers.
Remembering names. Try to come up with a meaningful association. For example, nobody of people studied could remember name “Baker” (no associations) but majority remembered profession “baker” (a lot of associations).
The reason why people sometimes get an impression that times flies faster might be related to the fact that our life becomes more boring and we get fewer new experiences. In other words, we have less interesting things to remember. So, make your life more memorable!
Practical advice to remember things in day-to-day life: pay attention. For example, focus on remembering that name instead of just waiting for your time to introduce yourself.

However, it is less clear how to apply it all to learning things that might actually be useful, such as grammar rules, math formulas or just life experiences. Any ideas?

Overall, there are not so many practically applicable things in the book but it is still very interesting to read.

Here is the short interview with an author that covers many of the topics from the book:

You might also like my other post: “2 books about brain: What best neuroscientists can teach us about memory, creativity, society, productivity, work & leadership“.

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7 failed businesses of 2011

Maxim — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:01:27 +0000

Same guys that told us about the most successful business models of 2010 year ago, prepared new presentation about failed business of 2011. Learn from failure.

7 Business models that Got Shot in 2011 (by @nickdemey)

View more presentations from Board of Innovation .com

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Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman

Maxim — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:48:51 +0000

Feynman is one of the brightest physicists of the 20th century who also happened to be a talented lecturer and an author of a book which is fun to read. Here are some excerpts from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” that I found interesting:

On freedom:

So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel heed by a need to maintain your position In the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

Isn’t it a modern luxury that very few of us can afford?

On pointless communication

When it came time to evaluate the conference at the end, the others told how much they got out of it, how successful it was, and so on. When they asked me, I said, “This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There’s a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!

On mindfulness and watching your thoughts become dreams:

I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don’t notice that they’re not logically connected until you ask yourself, “What made me think of that?” and you try to work your way back, and often you can’t remember what the hell did make you think of that!

So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they’re completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.

After four weeks of sleeping all the time, I wrote my theme, and explained the observations I had made. At the end of the theme I pointed out that all of these observations were made while I was watching myself fall asleep, and I don’t really know what it’s like to fall asleep when I’m not watching myself. I concluded the theme with a little verse I made up, which pointed out this problem of introspection:

I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!

…

One night, while I was having a dream, I realized I was observing myself in the dream. I had gotten all the way down into the sleep itself!

Interestingly enough, it eventually got him into a lucid dream.

On hypnosis:

All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, “Damn it, enough is enough! I’m gonna go straight to my seat.”
When it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t continue. I walked all the way around the hall.

I was hypnotized in another situation some time later by a woman. While I was hypnotized she said, “I’m going to light a match, blow it out, and immediately touch the back of your hand with it. You will feel no pain.” I thought, “Baloney!” She took a match, lit it, blew it out, and touched it to the back of my hand. It felt slightly warm. My eyes were closed throughout all of this, but I was thinking, “That’s easy. She lit one match, but touched a different match to my hand. There’s nothin’ to that; it’s a fake!”

When I came out of the hypnosis and looked at the back of my hand, I got the biggest surprise: There was a burn on the back of my hand. Soon a blister grew, and it never hurt at all, even when it broke. So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”–which is just another way of saying that you can’t.

Feynman is an interesting person to hear about hypnosis from. I don’t think it’s easy to find somebody with a more skeptical mind. What I find intriguing is how one’s brain can theoretically become conditioned to be inclined to do or feel one thing over the other. And what would be awesome is to use it consciously to condition yourself.

On learning instead of memorizing

So I tell them that one of the first things to strike me when I came to Brazil was to see elementary school kids in bookstores, buying physics books. There are so many kids learning physics in Brazil, beginning much earlier than kids do in the United States, that it’s amazing you don’t find many physicists in Brazil–why is that? So many kids are working so hard, and nothing comes of it.

Then I gave the analogy of a Greek scholar who loves the Greek language, who knows that in his own country there aren’t many children studying Greek. But he comes to another country, where he is delighted to find everybody studying Greek–even the smaller kids in the elementary schools. He goes to the examination of a student who is coming to get his degree in Greek, and asks him, “What were Socrates’ ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?”–and the student can’t answer. Then he asks the student, What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?” the student lights up and goes, “Brrrrrrrrr-up”–he tells you everything, word for word, that Socrates said, in beautiful Greek.

But what Socrates was talking about in the Third Symposium was the relationship between Truth and Beauty! What this Greek scholar discovers is, the students in another country learn Greek by first learning to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then sentences and paragraphs. They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually mean something. To the student they are all artificial sounds. Nobody has ever translated them into words the students can understand. I said, “That’s how it looks to me, when I see you teaching the kids ‘science’ here in Brazil.” (Big blast, right?)

…

“I have discovered something else,” I continued. “By flipping the pages at random, and putting my finger in and reading the sentences on that page, I can show you what’s the matter–how it’s not science, but memorizing, in every circumstance. Therefore I am brave enough to flip through the pages now, in front of this audience, to put my finger in, to read, and to show you.”

So I did it. Brrrrrrrup–I stuck my finger in, and I started to read: Triboluminescence. Triboluminescence is the light emitted when crystals are crushed.. I said, “And there, have you got science? No! You have only told what a word means in terms of other words. You haven’t told anything about nature-what crystals produce light when you crush them, why they produce light. Did you see any student go home and try it? He can’t.

“But if, instead, you were to write, ‘When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called “triboluminescence.”‘ Then someone will go home and try it. Then there’s an experience of nature.” I used that example to show them, but it didn’t make any difference where I would have put my finger in the book; it was like that everywhere.

Overall, it’s an amazing memoir with stories varying from building an atomic bomb to pickup up girls.

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Superfreakonomics review

Best books, films and music of 2011

Maxim — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:19:13 +0000

Better late than never. 201 was quite a year with lots of risks, mistakes and challenges. A lot learned and it’s time to jump start 2012 and make it awesome. As I am not a big fun of sharing personal stuff and goals, let me share with you the best books, films and music I stumbled upon in 2011. Who knows, maybe you will finding something interesting for yourself as well. Or maybe I will caution you from something that is not all that great.
So, what was worth spending time on this year?

Films

Best: Everything is a Remix, Exit through the Gift Shop, The Social Network, History of English language in 10 min, Human Planet Series, Stanford Prison experiment documentary;
Good: BBC: 2011 Do You See What I See, BBC: An African Journey, BBC: Inside Facebook, BBC: The Life Of The Buddha, Benjamin Franklin documentary (PBS), Full Circle with Michael Palin, Incredible human journey, Khodorkovsky 2011, Limitless, Little Man (short film), Midnight in Paris, Protagonist, Smartest Guys in the Room: Enron, Submarine, The Inside Job, Too Big to Fail, new episodes of Big Bang Theory;
So-so (did not finish many of them): BBC: Chinese are coming, BBC: Okinawa aquarium, Casino Royale, Life in a day, Moon 2112, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Просветление гарантировано (Erleuchtung garantiert);
Certainly not for me (finished none of them): 127 hours, Everything is Gone Green, The Good Night, Wild Target.

Music

Cool discoveries of 2010-2011: Baba Brinkman, Blank & Jones, John Lenehan, Ludovico Einaudi, Nujabes, St. Germain, The XX, Tosca, (relatively) new albums by Chicane and Mattafix.

Books

Best: Geography of Bliss, Get the Edge, The Four Hour Body, Steve Jobs (reading it now), Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, Siddhartha;
Good: A short history of nearly everything, Business Model Generation (reading it now), Delivering Happines, Getting to YES, Ghost in the Wires, Happiness, A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, Introducing NLP (reading it now), Physics of the Impossible, Ogilvy on Advertising, Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking, Stumbling on Happiness, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;
So-do (did not finish many of them): 8th habit: from Effectiveness to Greatness, Atlas Shrugged, How Pleasure Work, Problogger – blogging secrets, The First 90 Days – Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders, The Goal, Working with emotional intelligence, Lolita, Financier, some Chekhov short-stories;
Certainly not for me (finished none): Green Hills of Africa, On the Road, Solar, Ultimate secrets of total self-confidence, Generation A.

Two short stories worth separate mentions. “The Whore of Mensa” by Woody Allen and “They are made of meat” by Terry Bisson made me smile.

Apparently, I didn’t enjoy reading fiction books all that much this year. Probably, because I read 95% of books in audio format and it’s, hmm… Slightly more difficult to immerse yourself in a fictional world when running around a city or catching a subway train.

Blog

As I recommend books to read why not look back and mention some of the posts on this blog that I think worth reading if you missed them at the time they were posted?

Reading: Business model generation, Summary of Succeed: how we can reach our goals, How to win any negotiation: summary of “Getting to Yes” by William Ury, Лушие книги о карьере, профессиональном росте и саморазвитии, Favorite blogs;
Watching: TED-conference alternatives: best edutainment videos from PopTech conference, Singularity University, Learning Without Frontiers & OpenCulture, Validation: funny and intelligent short film, Geniuses, savants and gifted children, Best ad campaigns of all time: Nike, Intel, Apple and others, The most watched and most highly-rated TED talks at the moment;
Traveling: Ao Nang Krabi, Thailand + breath-taking pictures, Shortest guide to free or radically cheap travel, Singapore;
Health & fitness: 23andme review, Tabata burpees: 4-minutes high-intensity interval workout, Optimizing health through nutrition: paleo/primal solution,
Web-services & gadgets: Android apps: best and free on the market, “If this then that” review: a new web 2.0 tool;
Background music at work;
And for those who are “in the club”, GMAT-brainteasers;
And of course, you can find more recommendations of great stuff in digest.

А вы что-нибудь посоветуете?

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Cool stuff digest: October & November 2011

Maxim — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:46:46 +0000

Things that I liked in October & November 2011:

In the UK, pop-up cinema runs on pedal power, cool!
Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S;
Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired;
Google Unwraps Ice Cream Sandwich, the Next-Generation Android OS;
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen;
Kevin Mitnick tells about his “pranks” at Google. The guy is unbelievable! ;
50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive;
Very interesting TED talk about connection betw income distribution in countries and their well-being;
“If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong” – interesting article about ways “elite players” study;
“THE TWEAKER“: Malcolm Gladwell writes about Steve Jobs in the New Yorker;
6th grader iPhone developer @ TEDx 40-летней давности;
Brainstorming by Steve Jobs: several videos;
Inside McKinsey @ Financial Times;
‘Magic Mushrooms’ Trigger Lasting Personality Change @ TIME.

All links are from my twitter.

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Math brainteasers from GMAT, part 2

Maxim — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:10:55 +0000

As first part of GMAT math brainteasers attracted some attention (especially in my Russian blog), I decided to continue with the series. Let’s go!

Problem solving – uno

Problem solving – dos

Problem solving – tres

Problem solving – cuatro

Problem solving – cinco

Problem solving – seis

Data sufficiency – uno

Data sufficiency – dos

Data sufficiency – tres

Data sufficiency – cuatro

Enjoy!

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Math brainteasers from GMAT, 1

Background music at work

Maxim — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:01:50 +0000

In last 10 years I tried numerous music genres to listen to while working, learning, reading and just surfing the web. Sometimes, there is nothing better than plain silence. But sometimes you want to put headphones on, disconnect form the world, find the rhythm and totally immerse yourself into Flow.

In this post I would like to share with you the best music I could find to do it.

What worked best for me

These are the ones I enjoy listening to most when working or studying:

Intelligent drum and bass is the single best type of background music I found in 5 years. Also known as atmoshperic drum and bass. You might check it out on Youtube or download wonderful 8GB collection from torrents.
Minimal and ambient: Boards of Canada, Brian Eno, Paul Kalkbrenner, Susumu Yokota, Ulrich Schnauss.Very good option, especially for learning. It is slightly less energetic than IDNB but also less distractive. Minimal is a little bit more energetic (at least Paul). Ambient in turn works better for something that requires deeper thinking.
Chill-out, downtempo, primarily without words: Chicane, Smooth Jazz Luncheon, Saint Germain, Tosca.

Alternatives

These are the other options I tried but that didn’t worked as smoothly for me:

Trance, house and other energetic electronic music, primarily with words: Chicane, BT, Chemical Brothers, Tiesto. It might good for some kind of work but usually is too distractive for learning.
Chill-out, downtempo, primarily with words: Morcheeba, De-Phazz, Massive Attack, Mo’ Horizons, Oi Va Voi, Royksopp, Thievery Corporation. Despite my huge love for this genre and despite it’s perfect as a background music when you are not in front of a computer, I learned that it is not optimal for high contration work or studying. Sometimes it’s too relaxed, sometimes vocal is too intense. However, it might be an option if you chose tracks carefully.
Rock music is just great for workouts and sometimes start you up before work, but usually it’s too distracting in the long-term.
Classical and instrumental music: Ludovico Einaudi, John Lenehan. You probably already know that so-called Mozart effect is unsubstantiated to say the least. But sometimes you still want to listen to classical music while studying. Besides, classical music is beautiful and usually has no vocal. However, I personally cannot listen to it for very long unless it’s really selected, calm and smooth collection. I tend to think that classical music is to be enjoyed in limited amounts, not too often and not as a background music. Like cognac for example. But if you go this route, I’d suggest something from Baroque era, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart.
Meditation, new age music: Deuter, Lifescapes, etc. Although I love them as a background for yoga or maybe meditation, they are not rhythmic and energetic enough for me to work or study to them.

That’s what I like. And what kind of music gets you into Flow?

BTW, you might want to add me on last.fm.

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Android apps: best and free on the market

Maxim — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:09:02 +0000

As I bought my first tablet last December which was Samsung Galaxy Tab on Android and as I’m currently I’m trying to migrate from an old iPhone to new Samsung phone that also runs on Android, I’ve put together my own top of free Android apps. And this is what I’d like to share with you in this post.

So, what is worth installing?

The most useful:

Evernote: all notes in one place;
Rememberthemilk: all plans in one place;
Gmail;
Calendar: sync with Google;
Google Reader: sync with Google;
AnkiDroid: scientific way to learn through spaced repetition, free vocabulary sets;
Picplz: Instagram-alternative for Android, sends pictures to mail/dropbox/facebook/twitter;
Dropbox: access to your files in cloud;
Docs: Google Documents;
Skype;
Note 2 self: transforms voice to text and sends it to you via email.

Readers:

Moonreader: highly-customizable reader;
Aldiko: nice alternative.

Social media:

Facebook;
Foursquare;
Twitter;

Players:

PowerAMP: player mainly focused on music;
Astro Player: player that allows you to increase the speed like on iPhone which works great with audio-books;
Listen: free podcast-player by Google, sync with Reader but it’s far from perfect;
DoggCatcher: IMO, the best podacst player out there, also allows you to change playback speed (if you install another app called Presto), but it’s a paid app;
PowerAMP: one of the best music players, free trial;
DoubleTwist: synchronizes podcasts with Windows / Mac OS application in a way similar to iTunes. I personally decided not to use it.

Games:

Chess Freе.

Miscellaneous:

WhatsApp: SMSing via Internet and avoiding corresponding charges;
Prey Anti-Theft: protect your Android device data form being stolen and, if you are lucky, catch a theft;
HDR Camera: allows you to take HDR pictures;
QR droid: to scan codes;
Flashlight: speaks for itself;
What’s app & AppBrain: to save, share & discover apps;
Qik: real-time video streaming from phone camera (haven’t tried personally yet);
App 2 SD Free: to move apps to SD-card;
SD Speed Increase: as obvious from the name, allows you to increase SD-card performance;
GoLauncher: alternative desktop;
Antivirus Free.

Widgets:

Animated Weather Clock;
Rememberthemilk-widget to add task quickly.

Shortcuts and folders:

I highly recommmend to:

Create shortcuts “direct dial”, “direct message” on desktop to make calls and send sms in 1 click;
Create Maps shortcuts to addresses where you frequently go;
Put all the stuff into folders: they open instantly and are very convenient.

Do you have anything cool to add?

PS The title is my first SEO-experiment.

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Math brainteasers from GMAT, 1

Maxim — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:35:26 +0000

So, I also started preparing for this awesome GMAT exam. And now Saturday and Sunday mornings are devoted to studying which I haven’t been doing for years.

So far, I try to learn concepts from Divisibility, Primes, Odds & Evens, Consecutive Integers and other amusing topics.

This is the first and test post in which I’d like to share few exercises that make me break some sweat. Let’s see if anybody is going to be interested. If yes, I might continue the series.

So, how about solving these 5 exercises?

One

Two

Three

Four (data sufficiency problem)

Five

Please, write down your answers in comments and share your own difficult problems.

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Math brainteasers from GMAT, part 2

Everything is awesome and nobody’s happy

Maxim — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:16:48 +0000

“You’re sitting in a chair… In the SKY!”

Louis C.K. makes you laugh while expressing his view that the world is as awesome as never before but over demanding generation is still annoyingly dissatisfied:

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Cool stuff digest: August & September 2011

Maxim — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:58:46 +0000

Things that I liked in August & September 2011:

History of English in 10 minutes, very insightful and fun!
Everything is a remix – documentary about copy&paste nature of culture;
Most epic pictures ever taken (Quora);
‘Lucky’ woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD :)
Minimalist Portraits of Cultural Icons @ Brain Pickings;
Madonna feat. Gogol Bordello - La Isla Bonita;
New Apple office in Cupertino;
Very useful tool to convert e-books from various formats to .pdf and vice versa;
This link is probably going to be the most popular one: interactive infographics about sex;
The 50 Best Websites of 2011 @ TIME;
The best 100 opening lines from books;
Interview don’ts. Funny
Stanford Prison Experiment documentary;
How Music Works @ The Vibe;
Interesting case of using A/B testing to increase conversions on website @ 37 Signals;
Richard Branson’s iseland photos;
Useful catalogue of the best free web apps. Filtered by topics (business, music, etc) and # of likes;
Tweeted Times are quite good. My newspaper;
Glimpse into daily life in North Korea photo report @ the Atlantic;
Stanford Digital Photography course;
Google Fails To Hire The ‘GooglePleaseHire.Me’ Guy;
Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories. Obvious but smart & funny.
Was Marx Right? – Umair Haque @ Harvard Business Review;
Vintage ads for modern brands - rather amusing;
Ziggy Marley – True to Myself;
Google Wallet;
Culturomics: What We Can Learn from 5 Million Books - TED @ Brainpickings;
15 Startups With $100 Million+ Valuations That Hardly Existed Last Year;
“Fuckarounditis” – very funny and true article about working out

All links are from my twitter and Google Reader.

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Best ad campaigns of all time: Nike, Intel, Apple and others

Maxim — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:42:01 +0000

I recently spent some time thinking what ad campaigns I would call my favorite. I think it would be Nike, Intel & Apple. See yourself.

Nike

Nike probably create the most motivational and vital commercials. Not only they motivate you to engage in sport but to to act and compete life in general. One of the best ones: “Nike Courage“.

Few other Nike video ads: No excuses, Impossible is nothing, I can do this, My better is better than your better.

Intel

Intel’s snobbish humor is awesome. I think the favorite one is: “Intel jokes“.

Few other Intel video ads: Rockstar, Doodles. Then, just follow “similar videos” links.

Apple

Well, Apple is a kind of banal choice, but they really did a good job. It’s hard to pick a favorite one, but I think it would be classic “Think different“.

And then the whole “Mac vs. PC” series. For example, “Legal“. Yes, they do manipulate facts sometimes, but it’s so funny! Few other great videos: Viruses, Restarting, Security, Surgery. Then, just follow “similar videos” links.

Others

Few other great ads pop-up in my head. This Jim Beam commercial is just great. “Bold choices“:

Also, guys from Barclays did a good job turning economic crisis situation to their advantage: “Fake“. And Nissan made us smile and think with their “Gas-powered everything“.

What are your favorites?

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Summary of Succeed: how we can reach our goals by Heidi Grant

Maxim — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:00:54 +0000

Despite pretentious title and correspond cover, “Suceed” fully met my expectations and appeared to be not an empty self-help “You can do it all” rant but more or less practical interpretation of scientific research in a field of psychology and motivation. Probably, the biggest compliment I can give a books is to say that I wrote down many notes in my Evernote while reading it. In this case notes were record-high long. Basically it’s my notes that I’d like to share here. Otherwise, how would I force myself to re-format and make them more structured?

Book is about setting your goals in a way that increases your chances to achieve them and enjoy the process. Percent of trivialities not as high as I expected it to be which is quite rare for self-help/self-development books. I personally found quite many ideas to be practically applicable and I hope so will you. So, what is my summary?

Difficult goals & self-control

Usually, it pays off to set difficult goals. They usually bring much higher gratification than the ones you, honestly speaking, considered to be quite easy to achieve. For example, corporate departments that identified themselves with hard work usually appeared to be happier as well.
Metaphorically speaking, self-control is a muscle. Immediately after its usage it gets temporarily weaker (you ability control yourself is lower) but in overall it grows and develops as you use it.
Example of weakness: 2 groups of people were presented with 2 plates, one with a chocolate and another one with radishes. While 1 groups was allowed to eat as much chocolate as it wanted, another one could only eat radishes. Than, both groups were given a difficult (in fact, unsolvable) task and the 1 group performed much better (didn’t give up for longer time). Same effect after attempts to suppress laughter when watching comedy, etc.

Positive thinking

It’s very important to distinguish between 2 types of positive thinking. First type is believing that you are capable of achieving a goal one day. Second type is expecting that it will be easy for you to resist all the temptations and get through all the obstacles.
1 type is important and helpful, while the 2 type might be harmful and dangerous. Instead of expecting your way to be easy you should better realistically expect it to be quite challenging but prepare for obstacles and believe that you will be able to get through them.
When setting goals you might use this tactic: name one barrier or sacrifice associated with a goal and than one reason why this goal is important for you. Then, repeat it few times. It allows you to think more realistically and decide whether you really want to pursue this particular one.

Contagiousness

Goals can be contagious to a certain degree. If you see people around you striving to something, you become more likely to want the same thing.
Even when walking past a gym every day can potentially increase you desire to exercise.

WHY vs. WHAT thinking

There are 2 ways you can think about a goal: WHY you want to achieve it and WHAT particular small actions you need to take.
For example, you might think of drinking coffee in terms of getting energized or divide the process in several small stages, such as lifting a cup, taking a sip. Second approach can be very helpful if you drink in an unfamiliar situation. For example, huge cup or very hot beverage.
Nor 1, neither the second type of thinking is optimal but each of them can be more useful in certain situations.
WHY thinking helps when you need to motivate yourself, remind why something is important for you. WHAT thinking can help when the problem you face is new, complex or difficult and you need to somehow get going.
Somewhat ironically, there is a higher chance of not doing anything eventually when thinking WHY. People, concentrated on WHAT often achieve more.

Be good vs. Get better

(entity theory vs. incremental theory)

Not surprisingly, our beliefs including unconscious ones) influence our goals a lot.
People can be divided into 2 groups (yeah, it’s not the first time people will get divided into 2 groups in this book)

1. First type of people (BE GOOD) think that our abilities and talents are somewhat given to us and we cannot get significantly better in things we weren’t born to and vice versa. For example, they think of themselves as being “smart” or “not good at math”. Usually this type of people chose tasks that help them highlight their own presupposition about their abilities. In other words, they will try to prove that they have the abilities (show others how “smart” they are) and not to get caught in their weakness (trying to solve a math problem that they “are not good at”).

2. Others (GET BETTER) think that everything can be changed if enough persistence is applied. When starting something you they naturally expect it not to be good at it from the very first minute (because the key believe is that mastery as the result of getting better). They usually study to get knowledge and not grades and are more likely to try harder on task they cannot solve (to get better) than to give up (because they “are not good at it” as the 1 type of people would do).

In overall, get better path is better and is closer to the actual reality. But be good approach can sometimes be very motivating, especially if the task is simple and you already know how to do it. The problem is that “be good” people often base their sense of self-worth and identity on how well they perform which can cause disappointment and depression.
Behavior: Get better often ask questions that will not be on exam, they clarify and challenge. They don’t give up on their goals for longer time because if the task is complex they to get better at is step by step. They also ask for help, advice and recommendation more often, they try to learn from others, from better specialists as they are not afraid to look stupid.
One more advantage of “get better’ philosophy” is that this type of people are more likely to enjoy the process, not only result. Be good are more often dissatisfied with themselves which might turn in to a vicious circle and prevent them from acting.
Summary: get better are usually happier and achieve more.

Promotion vs. Prevention

Goals can be perceived as prevention of problems or achieving something new. Partially it’s influenced by childhood. Some kids are praised when they do well but don’t get berated too much when their fail. Others are neutrally approved when they do well but berated a lot when they fail.
So, promotion-oriented people experience strong pleasure when they achieve a goal. When not, they can get depressed, can even think of themselves as loosers.
Whereas prevention-oriented people calm down when everything goes ok but will do everything they can if something can go wrong as it’s perceived as a danger. Danger should be addressed anyway and anyhow. Similarly, seriously sick people can try any treatments without considering the probability of it being helpful.
Again, there is no clear “what’s better” answer, but it’s important to understand that people are different and might need a personal approach.
One of advantages of prevention-minded people is that they deal better with distractions. But confidence & optimism only lower their motivation (“why worry if everything goes ok?”)

Good & bad goals

Despite the fact that we are different and goals is very personal thing, research shows that some of them appear to be better than others in the end.
For example, people who pursue fame (and everything that relates to improving their image in eyes of others) or wealth (setting financial goals only) appear to be less happy even if they achieve their goals.
All people have 3 really important needs: relatedness, competence & autonomy (this seems to be a topic that even the laziest authors covered recently).
Autonomy is not an ultimate freedom from everybody and everything (which would contradict relatedness need), but rather a feeling that you can make choices in your life, that you are the decision maker.
It can be used for motivating people by giving them more choices.
Absence of autonomy can destroy the motivation. Example: a kid who loved to read but started to hate it when he was given an obligatory task to read for at least 30 minutes each day. Counter-example: children who were playing when learning math and were able to make choices within a game, like naming one’s battleship, performed better and enjoyed the process more.
Another example: people in nursing home who had a chance to chose their own schedule and furniture for a room had lower mortality rates.

Conflicts

Surprise-surprise! Contradictory goals can be a big problem.

IF THEN plans

Plans should be actionable. Often people create plans like this: “Eat more. Exercise more”. (Author is a little obsessed with weight-management or maybe this is just a convenient example). Plans like this are useless.
Recommended strategy is ”if -> then” plans. For example, “if today is Thursday evening, I call my mom to talk to her” or “if today is Wednesday, than I go to gym after work”.
Same strategy can be applied to obstacles. For example, “if my friends call me to join them for a movies the night before an exam, I will politely reject an offer” or “if I begin to doubt it, I will remind myself why it’s important to me”. This way you know in advance how to act instead of considering all the options when they present themselves.

Visualization

Visualization in a sense that it’s usually presented in self-help books & movies is total bollocks and has little scientific evidence.
But visualization can work in the case if instead of imagining a final result and how great it would be if you achieve something, you actually imagine steps that you need to take and difficulties that you might face.

Quitting

Yes, sometimes it’s better to quit on goals. And ability to do is inherent characteristic of happy, integral people.
When you should not quit: if you think that the reason is that you lack some skills or abilities to achieve a goal. In this case it’s more likely that you just weren’t persistent enough to get better.
When you should quit: when you need to sacrifice too much (you cannot be successful in everything at the same time).

So, these are my conclusions and notes. To be honest I don’t know whether all the research projects that author quotes were scientifically proper and I don’t know whether it’s applicable to us all, but it’s certainly a lot of food for thought.

Hope, you found it useful! Good luck!

Here is the short video with the author, Heidi Grant Halvorson, in which she present the book.

The book itself is available at Amazon, but you search really good, you’ll be able to find audio-version online.

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Russian stand-up comedian

Maxim — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 09:30:28 +0000

Quite funny at times

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Ellen Degeneres’ stand up: Here & Now

TED-conference alternatives: best edutainment videos from PopTech conference, Singularity University, Learning Without Frontiers & OpenCulture

Maxim — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:46:39 +0000

Yes, we all love TED. They probably have the best collection of video presentations online with most of them being either inspirational or insightful. But is it all there is?

Actually, there are few places where you can find some edutainment videos for you dinner watching. Here are the main alternatives to TED I stumbled upon and some introductory videos that I personally liked that can help you get started.

1. PopTech

According to the website:

PopTech is a unique innovation network – a global community of cutting-edge leaders, thinkers, and doers from many different disciplines, who come together to explore the social impact of new technologies, the forces of change shaping our future, and new approaches to solving the world’s most significant challenges. We are known for our thriving community of thought-leaders, breakthrough innovation programs, visionary annual conferences and deep media and storytelling capabilities.

A good video to start from: Sebastian Seung’s Connectome.

2. Learning Without Frontiers

According to the website:

Learning Without Frontiers is a global platform for disruptive thinkers and practitioners from the education, digital media, technology and entertainment sectors who come together to explore how new disruptive technologies can drive radical efficiencies and improvements in learning whilst providing equality of access.

A good video to start from: Gordon Brown’s Pirate’s Dilemma.

3. Singularity University

According to the website:

Singularity University is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, Singularity University hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. Singularity University is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley.

A good video to start from: Aubrey de Grey In Pursuit of Longevity.

4. Open Culture

According to the website:

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content — it’s all here. Open Culture was founded in 2006.

Good videos to start from:

1. The Age of the Dictionary – The History of English in 10 minutes

2. 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God

5. Google Talks

According to the website:

The @Google Talks program brings authors, musicians, innovators, and speakers of all stripes to Google for talks centering on their recently published books and capturing the popular and intellectual zeitgeist of the day.

Good video to start from: A conversation with Conan O’Brien

Good luck finding other gems! And let me know if you found some!

You might also like another post of mine which concentrates a little more on education than entertainment part of edutainment: How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning.

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How to get Ivy league education online for free: the best internet resources and video courses for distance learning

Cool stuff digest: June & July 2011

Maxim — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:21:16 +0000

Things that I liked in June & July 2011:

All links are from my twitter and Google Reader.

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Conan O’Brien’s 2011 commencement speech

Maxim — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:41:37 +0000

Well, one might of course get an impression that I’m a fan of Conan O’Brien as this is the second video with him on this blog. But c’mon the man is charismatic and this commencement speech is probably the funniest one I’ve seen so far! And a little wise too

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Validation: funny and intelligent short film

Maxim — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 19:08:45 +0000

One of the best short movies I know, Validation:

Do you know of any similar short films?

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Optimizing health through nutrition: paleo/primal solution

Maxim — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 20:09:33 +0000

Let me make it clear. I am not really a type of person who is really into things like “diet”. But the whole Paleo movement really got me interested. So, what is paleo? It’s a nutritional approach that focuses on optimization of one’s health through self-experimentation in part but based on few basic principles.

There has been a huge boom around it with lots of blogs created and it seems to really work for many people in terms of overall well-being, energy, etc. Some even report dramatic transformations that literally changed their lives.

There are few reasons why I, personally, got interested:

Smart. Most recommendations are as scientific as it gets. No ethical or historical speculations as in case of vegetarianism and no-nonsense in general. Nutritional advice is based on interpretation of the latest high-quality research as it should be.
Open. It’s in a sense a perfect example of crowd-sourcing discussed in books like Wisdom of Crowds & What Would Google Do. There is an overall atmosphere of transparency and great community with people recording free podcasts answering questions, replying to critical and challenging questions, etc.
Fitness-oriented. It doesn’t significantly contradict everything I’ve learned before about nutrition
means to optimize physical performance (which is what got me interested in nutrition theories in the
first place). Although, people use it for “weight loss” specifically, I like the fact that the whole thing is
not about losing pounds but building a healthy body.
Comprehensive. The fact that it’s not so much a diet but an overall “well-being solution” that includes optimal training strategies, ideas for proper recovery and many other things.
Daring. It does challenge the conventional wisdom in few areas, grains and fats specifically but in a sensible and reasonable way.

Summary of key principles

So, what would be 5-points summary? From what I’ve learned, the key principles are the same:

Don’t eat neolithic foods: things that produced industrially usually aren’t good for you;
Don’t eat grains (especially wheat, barley & rye), sugar (incl. high fructose corn syrup and other similar things) and food that contains them;
Try also avoiding soy (men especially), legumes & industrial refined oils made (such as refined sunlower oil). Experiment with excluding dairy to see your personal reaction.
Eat more animal meats & fats (preferably grass-fed and try organs as well), fish (preferably wild-caught), vegetables (variety of them, incl. green leafy veggies, cruciferous veggies, etc);
Sleep enough, prefer high intensity exercise, listen to your body & experiment.
* Usually the only useful supplements are multivitamin, vitamin D, fish oil and sometimes magnesium. And more often than not even they are not needed.

What to read next

First you might want to check out the info-graphic demonstrating the main ideas. Click to see the full-sized version.

However, don’t stop here as the summary is only an introduction and is not even 100% accurate. What to read next?

Mark’s Daily Apple
Great blog written by Mark Sisson. At first it might look a little kinky with the whole Grok thing but it actually contains tons of incredibly useful and awesomely structured information.
Where to start: Primal Blueprint 101. And then just follow links, there are plenty of them!
The Healthy Skeptic
Another great blog written by Chris Kresser.
Where to start: 9 Steps to Perfect Health: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Robb Wolf
Robb records an awesome podcast and distributes it for free via the website and Itunes store. It is quite extensive, so you might want to find specific topics that are of some interest of you. What I like about Robb is his incredibly ability to make even boring things sound fun.
Modern Paleo
Another nice blog by Paleo enthusiast.
Where to start: shortest and probably best summary of key Paleo principles with links to more detailed posts.
PaleoHacks
That’s exactly what I meant by transparency and openness above. This is the Q&A site with lots of users that has almost all the topics imaginable covered. Great place to find answers for specific questions.
LeanGains
This is not “paleo” blog, strictly speaking, but Martin Berkman brilliantly covers an interesting aspect of Paleo solution called intermittent fasting and shows how eating only 2-3 times a day (instead of obsessing about 4-6 meals as many bodybuilders do) can still get you ripped.
And yes, you might want to check out a Wikipedia article too.

And if you prefer books, I’d suggest The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf, Perfect Health Diet by Paul Jaminet & 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss (this is not exactly paleo and covers much wider set of topics but worth reading).

Hope, somebody will find it helpful.

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