mobrec

So
In an amazingly progressive move from embarrassingly staid Cincinnati, the city has introduced dedicated parking spots around the central business district dedicated to two wheeled vehicles. Though in typical Cincinnati fashion, they introduce the parking spots at the onset of winter when there will be fewer riders to actually take advantage of them. What I hope doesn't happen is that they assess the usage of the spots over winter and conclude that no one is using them.

Technorati Tags: cincinnati, parking, scootering

So
At least the 'logic' sounds familiar, if not the tactic of not allowing a response.

Technorati Tags: batman, dubious, politics, video

So
I bet this guy has wanted to do this ever since he was a little kid.

Technorati Tags: fun, video

So
I tried out the latest Yahoo Go mobile app on my Nokia N95 8GB. Go quickly demonstrated that Yahoo have no idea about the mobile market and their offering stinks. By focusing on bandwidth wasting adverts they undermine the entire mobile experience.

In my case I loaded up Go to try out the new voice search feature. Marginal success in that it mis-interpreted most everything that I spoke into it. Just for fun, I clicked over to check for my email. Up pops and error that it can't connect to email. But apparently what it *could* do was connect to a server and start streaming some useless video for some Ford product that I had absolutely no interest in. If I wasn't on an unlimited plan, I'd be really pissed. Oh, an there is no way to stop the ad until it downloads completely — sheer genius.

This is just further confirmation of what I have talked about before: Yahoo is clueless, it's offerings suck and they should just agree to Microsloth's offer to buy them and put them to sleep.

Technorati Tags: crap, dubious, mobile, n95, suckage, yahoo, yahoogo

So
Another study shows that people come up with more creative solutions to problems by using simple paper and pencil than they do by using a computer. Fundamentally, the difference seems to be between a constrained environment (the computer) and an unconstrained one (pencil and paper).

This mirrors my own experience in computer programming and other areas. When I first started programming over twenty years ago, I felt I came up with a much better solution by sketching out the overall flow of the app and the different sub-routines and modules on paper first. Now it seems the first instinct of most developers is to reach for google and copy and paste some code rather than think through the problem themselves and come up with an approach.

Technorati Tags: cognition, creativity, ideas, technology

So
From Counterintuitive physics may help everyone drive home quicker

If you're trying to drive to a destination as quickly as possible, you might think that knowing the traffic conditions would help you choose the quickest route for yourself. Traffic reports and new GPS technologies that provide traffic data are based on this assumption – but scientists have found that knowing this information may do more harm than good.

A recent study has investigated just how much time is lost due to individuals opting for strategies that maximize their own personal utility rather than the social optimum, which often aren’t the same. Physicists Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, Korea, and computer scientist Michael Gastner from the Santa Fe Institute and the University of New Mexico in the US, call this lost time “the price of anarchy” (POA) that society must pay for the lack of individual coordination.

This would appear to be another demonstration that acting for a greater good rather than for individual gain actually benefits the individual as well. Check out Robert Axelrod's excellent book The Evolution of Cooperation for more on this topic.

So
Trying to keep these forays into politics to a minimum but this is one that really struck me last night watching McCain and Obama debate:

Someone needs to sit John McCain down and explain to him that no matter what he does, he can't 'win' the Vietnam War by fighting in Iraq/Iran. It just isn't going to happen.

Technorati Tags: dubious, mccain, opinion, politics

So
My recent sniglet creations:

Solutionating: Combination of solution and hallucinating. What vendors and software designers do when they convince themselves that their product (solution) does something that it absolutely does not.

Annausysis: Combination of analysis and nausea. That feeling you get during your analysis that tells you just how screwed up something is. Frequently accompanies solutionating.

Technorati Tags: fun, humor, ideas, language, sniglet

So
Finally had a chance to try out the Genius function in iTunes. In a word: unimpressed.

Here is Apple's breathless description of Genius Sidebar:

While you reacquaint yourself with the music you already own, let Genius introduce you to new music you’ll love. As you select songs in your library, the Genius sidebar displays songs from the iTunes Store that go great with it. The Genius sidebar won’t recommend songs already in your library, and you can preview and buy recommended songs directly from the sidebar.

In my experience, not quite. Granted my rather eclectic set of music in iTunes gives a wide berth to what passes for American pop music, it is not like it is all way-out exotic stuff. Genius seems to think so. For I would say better than half of the music tracks that I clicked on, Genius came back with 'I got nothin', but here is the tired old crap that everyone else is listening to...' displaying the top selling tracks and albums in the iTunes store. Great, not interested in being homogenized like the rest of the herd.

It also frequently falls into the trap that Amazon recommendations does, that of assuming that you are a moron. For example, if you buy a CD by, say, David Bowie, Amazon proceeds to recommend every single CD that David Bowie has ever made, whether the style of it is even close to the original CD. It's as if Amazon (and Apple) are saying: 'You found that first CD, but your probably not smart enough to find all the other stuff by the same artist by using our search function, so here they are for you, nitwit'. Not helpful at all.

The Genius Playlist function does a slightly better job than the sidebar, but I still get plenty of “Genius is unavailable for the song “.

I suppose it can only get better as more and more info gets fed into Apple's hungry servers over time. We shall see...

Technorati Tags: apple, genius, itunes, music

So
Over two years ago, I posted about the idea of marrying an accelerometer and the iPod to be able to shuffle iPod tunes and otherwise control it. I guess Apple thought it was such a good idea that they stole it and implemented it in the new iPods announced today.

So where is my money, Apple? :)

Technorati Tags: apple, ideas, ingenuity, innovation, ipod